The door creaked as Nicole let herself in. The wind swept dust across the floor. The room they used for recreation back when she was young, was bare. There was no longer colour on the walls or voices or laughter giving life to this place. It echoed loneliness. The wall was damp and chalky, the bricks were reusing and the lights were out. Wires were hanging down where a small, understated glass chandelier used to be. There was no furniture; just emptiness accompanied by silence.

"Nikki," Caroline called. She was sitting on a plastic chair, using a stack of mouldy bibles as a table. There was a quarter-burned candle illuminating her face. A menacing light on a calm expression. "So you finally came to see me?"

Nicole walked over and sat down on the adjacent plastic chair.

"How've you been?" Nicole asked with sincere concern. Caroline looked around the room.

"Not so good. Not that you care. How many years has it been?"

"Are you quite finished?" Nicole asked, in no mood for a guilt trip.

Caroline held a cigarette between her teeth and lit it up with the candle. She took a long drag as though she was inhaling peace of mind. "You're right, no need to reminisce on the past. Or dwell on how you left me."

"Stop."

"You left me Nikki. I begged you to stay."

"To stay to protect you. And everyone else. Always playing someone else's saviour. Damn it where was mine?" Nicole tone had heated up like red metal. This wasn't like her, her endeavoured to be in control. But her past had a way of stealing her joy and playfully running away wit it. All that was left was this resentment. This teeth gritting, head swelling, migraine inducing, temper flaring resentment. She wished for a gun, with no idea of a target.

"I had to go."

"Well…" Caroline said about to embellish on her hardships since Nicole left the home.

"No!" Nicole interrupted, tired of everyone blaming their misery on her. "He beat me unconscious Cally; that was the one time somebody took me to the hospital. The marks are still there on my lower back. They're not going anywhere. But I took it for you. I always stepped in front of you and took it; the belt, the extension cord, the wire hanger. I would died within a year if I would have stayed at that hellhole." Nicole shook her head, pained at having said things she hadn't vocally recalled in years. Those times were recurrent in her dreams but that wasn't for telling. "Besides; you called me and I'm here. Still playing saviour."

Caroline looked around the room, again. Ash fell on the table. "I heard you did seven at the County Jail. Is that true?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

Caroline nodded her head, emphatically. "Yep, you, Darnell and them. I guess you weren't so damn Untouchable. It's true what they say. Kids from homes always end up in jail."

"That's not always the case." Nicole replied, downplaying her success. "Some people fight against the system."

Caroline looked her straight in the eyes. "And some people become a part of it."

Nicole shrugged her shoulders; knowing that Caroline was baiting her.

Caroline leaned back in her chair. "Why do you think I called you? Nicole Scott, Special Agent for the F.B.I. That's far from the Nikki Scott I used to know. Do they know about your little stint in the slammer huh? Nikki Scott who used to have my back, until…"

Caroline stood up and paced around the room. Nicole's eyes followed her persistently. She was prepared for Caroline's denial; she was a frail girl when they first met. Caroline walked into the home wit her knobby knees and was instantly a target of the other kids. On the first day most of her memories of her mother; her porcelain doll, pendant necklace, peach diary and an old edition of "Alice in Wonderland" and been stolen and traded. She was eleven. Nicole was a tough and defiant thirteen-year-old who took her under her wing and fought to reclaim her things. This surrogate relationship was unhealthy as Caroline grew attached and Nicole, more responsible. That's why Nicole wasn't being hard on her, she understood Caroline's plight; Nicole was her mother and this was the second time she was abandoned.

Caroline was no longer that woman, she was feisty and strong willed. But that little girl lived inside and cried for someone to rescue her from this mess. She slid into the chair.

"Let's not waste each others' time." Nicole suggested. "One hour. Sixty minutes. No more outbursts."

"Oooh, hardball."

Nicole stood up and leaned over the plastic table into Caroline's face. Less than two inches separated them. "I can play hard ass with the best of them; I have and I will. Don't bullshit me. We're not Nikki and Cally anymore. We're Nicole and Caroline, the Agent and the Murderer."

"I'm not a murderer."

"You killed them."

"I didn't kill them!" Caroline screamed.

"I can work with you or against you, 'fess up and I'll see what I can do."

"You can't do this to me."

"Can and will. Why'd you kill them and leave that girl parentless? You know what that feels like and you did it anyway. What if she was at home?"

"She wasn't." Caroline interrupted, blowing gently on her nails.

"You planned it. All your IM chats. You told her to leave home."

"I was helping her."

"How?"

"She didn't deserve that. They did."

Nicole stared into the eyes of the past and felt feverish from the influx of conflicting emotions. In Caroline, she saw herself and all that she could have become. Jealous, unforgiving and guilty. Seeing the girl she used to call Cally, this way, scared her beyond description.

A sharp voice interrupted her thoughts. "You don't understand. You don't understand me. You never did."

Nicole rolled her eyes, knowing it would throw Caroline off the blame game. Se checked her watch.

"That hour is slipping between your fingers. Forty two minutes. Forty two minutes between you and the system. It's me or the County. Or Maximum Security rather."

Caroline lit up another cigarette nonchalantly. "I'm not going to jail." The smoke dispersed freely threw the air. "I left that place immaculate. Body hairs, fibres, blood; none. Except for the bodies. But I didn't kill them."

"Thirty eight."

"I didn't use a .38."

"Minutes."

"Why, Nikki, someone may thank that you're try'n'a get a confession outta lil' old me." She said in her fake Southern accent.

Nicole slapped a wad of papers on the table and Caroline jumped.

"Evidence. I know you didn't shoot them both, but you shot Dick. He shot Jane then you shot him. Left them for dead and fled the scene, through the back. The wind was blowing and that cashmere sweater was snagged on their backyard fence. Someone could have seen you from that tree house that overlooks the pink roses. The roses that you trod on. The family you ruined."

"They were already ruined."

"You just added some empty bullet shells to the equation, huh? But let's get back the murder. Fact now; motive later. Now I know you shot him and that's enough to earn the death penalty."

Caroline leaned forward.

"Nikki; I only called to because we go way back and I know that you can make this disappear. Fact, fiction, who the fuck cares? You can spin this Nikki, I know you can."

"You can't be serious."

Caroline stared over Nicole's shoulder. "I'm as serious as he is."

Nicole turned around slowly. Her eyes grew with shock.

"Darnell?"