Hello everyone! Hope you like it so far! As this story is named after a song, so too all the chapter titles will be named after songs as well, so you will essentially have a built-in soundtrack for the story! Now to the good part!

FIVE DAYS EARLIER - JANUARY 3RD

'Thanks again for helping me with this, Dave.'

Meredeth look at Dave with a grateful smile as she ushered the aging Arturo down the short set of stairs of her vet's office. 'He's getting old and I don't like to bring the kids with me to the vet's in case the doctor has bad news for us.'

'Well, how old is he?'

'Almost thirteen. Great Danes don't usually have a long lifespan but he's a mixed breed with a boxer so that's given him some more years.' Meredeth looked at her dog's honey-brown face as he lifted his leg beside the maple sapling and took a giant whizz. 'Good boy, get it all out Artie.'

'Did he check out okay?' Dave asked as he held Arturo's leash and helped into the back seat of Meredeth's Nissan.

'Yeah, he's fine, just keep on taking his steroids, and his-'

Meredeth's words were cut off as she looked up the street and heard the explosion of a high-speed metal-on-metal impact. Glass crunched and shattered, tires squealed, and everyone in the vicinity began to to yell or shout. 'Oh my god! Dave, you-'

But Dave was already sprinting towards the accident, yelling at Meredeth over his shoulder. 'Call nine-one-one, get them to this intersection.'

'On it.' Meredeth chirped the locks on the Nissan, whipped out her phone and dialed as she moved to catch up to her friend. When the dispatcher asked what her emergency was, her voice was calm but her tone was urgent. 'Yes, my name is Meredeth Esposito, I am at the intersection of West Forty-Seventh Street and Eighth Avenue, and there has been a collision between two cars, one traveling north and the other traveling east. I am with a paramedic Dave Robbins, he has gone to assess the situation.'

'Thank you Meredeth, we have registered a radio call from David Robbins and ambulance and fire assistance will be sent to your location. Are you a first responder as well?'

'No, I'm a civilian, but my husband is Javier J. Esposito badge four-one-zero-two-three out of the Twelfth Precinct, and I have a Level three CPR and First Aid certificate.'

'Be advised, assist Paramedic Robbins in whatever way possible without compromising the scene. Are there any dead?'

'One moment.' Meredeth looked where Dave was focusing on the driver of the northbound vehicle; she made a mental note to give the dispatcher the information. 'Dave is there any fatalities?'

'Yeah the driver of the eastbound car, steering shaft went right through his chest and skewered him, he's DOS. Ma'am?' Dave focused on the woman, a pretty blonde in her late fifties with a nasty gash to the head and many other obviously-painful injuries. 'Ma'am, my name is David Robbins, can you hear me?'

'Yes,' she managed in a thin, reedy voice.

'What is your name?'

'Chri...stine. Christine Doran.'

The name had a bell jangling distantly in the back of Meredeth's brain, but she spoke once more to the dispatcher. 'The driver of the eastbound car is dead, he appears to have been killed on impact, and Paramedic Robbins is attending to the driver of the northbound car. The license plate is...Romeo-Juliet-Lima-one-two-six-six. Dave, you have the name of the driver?'

'Yes, her name is Christine Doran, tell them she took the most of the impact.'

'She is the driver of the car,' the dispatcher agreed, calling up the information on her computer. 'Does she have any passengers?'

'Yes, a male, Paramedic Robbins is attending to him now,' she replied, then looked over as she saw the Crown Victorias roll up, uniforms cordoning off the area. Meredeth's stomach did a bounce as she saw her husband and his partner step out in the lead car, Kate Beckett in the second one. 'Detectives Kate Beckett, Kevin Ryan and Javier Esposito have just arrived on-scene.'

'Excellent, please close this call now, as police and paramedic radios can now be used to communicate, my name is Gabrielle deRoche and I am on scanner channel three-eighteen.'

'Meredeth? What are you doing here?' Esposito asked, surveying the scene. 'Where's the dog?'

'Artie's in the car, I just loaded him in with Dave when we heard the tires squealing and before I knew it, crunch-time.' Meredeth gave him a statement in brisk, efficient terms of what had happened as they moved to follow up with Dave on the status of the passenger. A few seconds later, they heard the wail of fire and ambulance sirens. 'Dave, how's he doing?'

'Much better than the driver. Sir, can you give us your name.'

'Raglan. John Raglan.'

Esposito looked at Meredeth, turned and saw Beckett standing with Ryan. She was very still, ashen-faced as she watched the man gingerly touch his forehead, winced when his fingers came away with blood.

'Raglan,' she whispered in a hoarse voice. 'Detective John Raglan?'

'Retired, but yeah, I...' He trailed off, went pale as the snow on the sidewalks when he saw Beckett. 'You. What-

'Meredeth, do me a favour,' Ryan murmured to her as she went to move to her friend, 'go take down the license plates, then-'

His words were cut off by the crack of a gunshot. Everyone, including the Lookie-Lous behind the yellow police tape ducked and covered, but even as she did so Beckett kept her eyes on Raglan, the man who had broken her world into a thousand little pieces she hadn't quite picked up yet. She watched his body freeze, then slump, his chest blooming red. A kill-shot, straight through the heart.

She belly crawled the remaining eight feet saw Dave flat on his front as well, saw Esposito had thrown himself over Meredeth. 'Anyone hurt?' she yelled over the din of the crowd. 'Mere? Javi? Dave?'

'No,' Meredeth coughed and gagged on the smell of death. Her eyes were dark and round but clear. 'Where's Ryan?'

'Over here,' he called. 'Nothing punctured.'

'Dave?'

'Tutti presenti,' the paramedic replied in Italian, switching to his ancestral tongue. A flick upward of his eyes had him shaking his head. 'Questo non tanto.'

'English, dude,' Esposito spluttered.

'Oh, sorry, this one not so much.' Dave jerked his thumb up at Raglan.

Beckett looked around, saw the uniforms had called for backup and were getting the crowd under control, so she radioed it in. 'Dispatch this is One-Lincoln-Forty, be advised, shots fired, I have a single gun-shot victim who is DOS at vehicular crime scene at West Forty-Seventh Street and Eighth Avenue. Send patrol units for crowd control and OCME for examination and transport of body. Over.'

'Bodies, Kate. The driver of the other car is dead too.'

'One-Lincoln-Forty, be advised, units are en route, ETA of OCME is approximately ten minutes, over.'

'Acknowledged.'

Beckett rolled to her back, looked up at the windows as her hand went to her weapon; she scanned the columns of plate glass windows, looking for anything that would give her an idea of where the shot came from. Crabbing-crawling on her back, not caring or noticing the number she was doing to her favourite jacket, she moved over to Meredeth and Esposito.

'Guys, you okay?'

'Yeah, just a little rattled,' Meredeth replied, and Esposito's heart swelled in love for his wife. She may have looked like a kindergarten teacher but she was strong as titanium. 'I need to get the license plate numbers for you.'

'Mere, it's okay, the scene is secured, we'll get the numbers for you.'

'No, I need to. I need to do something so I don't panic.'

'Okay. Get the license plate numbers.' Beckett knew how to handle people in shock; Meredeth was a cool head under fire and would do well with a task. 'Give them back to me, then go to one of the ambulances.'

Meredeth nodded, then pressed a hard kiss to her husband's mouth before going to complete her task. With the civilian occupied, Beckett poked her head up to look at John Raglan's body, saw the paramedics hot-footing their way over in their winter-boots to tend to the unconscious Christine. They would tend to her, and Dave would give them the bullet so she gathered her Ry-Sposito monster close.

'Ryan, get on the phone to Montgomery, tell him what's going on. Espo, get on the horn to Adam Brennan, he's in Civilian Liaison Bureau, tell him...' She trailed off, wondering in the back of her mind if she was jumping the gun. Fuck it, this was Raglan and she had a history with him, a history that was disgustingly murky. 'Tell Brennan he needs to meet with Montgomery pronto regarding the Jarrad case.'

It was the code name they'd given her mother's case, but given who the sniper victim was, Esposito knew it didn't take a genius to put this together. 'You smelling blood in the water?'

'I smell something, and it's very familiar,' she replied lowly. 'Right now, we need to work the scene.'