Standard Disclaimer, I don't own Spider-Man or any of it's characters. Just wanted to give a quick author's note and apologize for any grammar and spelling errors. I read and reread each chapter that I post several times checking for mistakes, but sometimes they just slip by.

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Chapter 5

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Mary Jane made her way down as quickly as she could, ducking under the police tape and ignoring the officers who gave chase. She didn't care about them, she didn't care about anything, all she cared about was getting to that body and proving that it wasn't Vivian. She refused to believe that she was dead, she just needed to look, to see with her own eyes.

Her friend was okay, Vivian was okay. She would look and it would be sad but it wouldn't be Vivian and then she would meet up with her friend who would tease her that she had worried for nothing and scold her because she shouldn't have come down here and then they would go home and talk and… Mary Jane wasn't sure what would happen then but she knew that whatever it was, as long as Vivian was there everything would be okay.

She reaches the body bag, gasping for breath when she feels an arm grab her, the warning in her head had gone off, but she ignored it. She had more important things to worry about. As she is spun around she sees that it was an officer who had grabbed her, his partner standing right behind him. Both of them glaring at the girl who had slipped past them.

"What do you think you're doing, this is area is restricted?" The one who had grabbed her growls.

"Please, my friend… she… she was supposed to be here, please I just need to see… who's in there."

The other cop rolls his eyes and the one that still hasn't let go of her says in a nonchalant voice. "Just some dead hooker."

Mary Jane's eyes flash but before she can do the officer a serious injury a calm masculine voice speaks up. "What's going on here?"

Mary Jane turns to look at the new comer. He's older, probably in his mid-forties, with light brown hair that is combed back. He has on thick black glasses and he looks like a no nonsense kind of guy, except his eyes. He has very warm, bright blue eyes, the kind you wouldn't expect to see on someone as severe looking as him. He's wearing a suit and tie and over it is a large brown trench coat.

"Sorry detective, this girl broke through the line. We'll get her out of here."

He waves them off, "I'll handle this, you two get back to your posts."

As the two officers walk away, the man gives her a kind smile and leads her away from the body bag and over to a police cruiser. "Now, I'm Detective George Stacy, can you tell me your name please?"

Mary Jane ignores his question and looks at him imploringly, "Please I'm looking for my friend, please tell me is she here, that's not… it's not her in there is it!?"

"What's your friend's name?" He asks gently.

"Vivian, Vivian Taylor, please, just… just let me look, I know it's not her, it can't be her, but she was supposed to be home already and… please, I just need to make sure!" Mary Jane pleads desperately.

"What does your friend look like?"

"She… she's tall, like 6'2", beautiful blonde hair, blue eyes, she… she… no…" Mary Jane shakes her head in denial at the look of regret that forms on Detective Stacy's face.

"No, no, no, no, nononononono!" Mary Jane starts to cry in earnest.

"I am so sorry-"

However Mary Jane doesn't hear him, she pushes past him and runs over to the body bag, ripping it open, and laying there, a large bullet hole in her forehead, is Vivian. Mary Jane grasps at the body and loses it, wailing in grief, her heart shattering over the corpse of her friend.

She feels a set of arms wrap around her and gently pull her away, she turns into someone, who she in the back of her mind recognizes as Detective Stacy, and clings to him for all that she is worth. Her friend, her… she didn't know what, but friend was too inadequate a word, but she was dead. Vivian was dead and her world was crumbling around her.

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xXx-Scene Break-xXx

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George Stacy leads the crying girl away, motioning for them to take the body away. His heart broke for the young girl. A paramedic on scene hands him a blanket and he wraps it around the red head. She is sobbing and shivering and so he leads her off to the side and helps her sit down, running a fatherly hand in circles on her back, trying to sooth her.

A couple of his officers start to come up to him, probably to report but he waves them away. They were only going to tell him what he already knew, that they had found nothing. They were so close, he was so close, this area was a hotbed for drug activity, and after months and months of fighting an uphill battle with his superiors to get them to agree to make a serious effort in this area he had finally gotten enough evidence to bring this place down. He had thought it would be his lucky break, he was certain that this organization had connections to the mysterious crime lord known only as the King Pin, and that this bust was going to be the first step in taking him down. He had no solid proof, but if he could have just gotten here in time he was certain that he would have been able to find a connection. But when he had arrived on scene with his men, ready to do the bust they had found the place abandoned and cleared out, the only thing there was the recently dead body of a young woman. A woman he now knew to be Vivian Taylor.

His focus is brought back to the young girl when she makes a retching sound and begins to throw up all over the ground. He ignores the vomit at his feet and continues to rub circles on her back, his fatherly instincts kicking into over drive. When she finally stops she's still shivering, her breathing is heavy and ragged, only interrupted by the occasional hiccup.

He kneels down in front of her and looks her in the eyes. She's pretty he notes, quite possibly the prettiest person he had ever seen in real life, with pale skin and vibrant green eyes and long and lustrous red hair that fell to her mid back. And she was young, so very young, fifteen or sixteen if he had to guess at her age. But what struck him most about the way she looked was that he couldn't recall ever seeing someone who looked so lost and defeated before. "I am so sorry for your loss." He says as gently as he can.

Her face scrunches up like she's going to start crying again she manages not to, but she doesn't speak only nodding her head in acceptance of his condolences.

"Now, does your friend, Vivian?" He questions, wanting to confirm.

She nods her head.

"Right Vivian, does she have any next of kin that need to be notified? Any family we can call?"

"No," her voice cracks, "It was just me and her?"

"Okay."

"What happened here? Why, how did this happen?" She sounds so meek right now that he doesn't have it in him to not answer. It went against every protocol and rule to discuss an ongoing investigation but this girl and the victim had obviously been close and she deserved some kind of answer.

"We were here to do a drug bust, we had evidence that the owner of this warehouse, Marcus Fletcher was moving a large shipment of cocaine tonight-"

The girl looks up startled, "What? No!? Marcus… he's, he's the scum of the earth sure but… he runs a fight club, he's… he's not drug dealer. Vivian and I worked here, we… we would have known."

He frowns at that. "You two worked here? What can you tell me, what did you do here?"

"We were basically…" the girl looks down and he can see the shame written all over her face.

"Hey now, it's okay." He tries to reassure her, "Whatever it was, it's okay. You're not in any trouble."

"We were going to quit…" She whispers, "We were going to quit and start our new lives together." The red haired girl starts to cry again, and he would like nothing more than to make it all better, but he really needs whatever information she can give him, and in all reality the best thing he could do for her is to catch the people that had done this.

"I am truly sorry for your loss but please, what can you tell me, what did you do here? Names, people, anything at all? You'd be surprised what can help, please."

She forces herself to calm down with some visible effort on her part before she answers him. "We… we were models for… for the talent… we… we would give the crowd something to look at in-between fights and stuff… sometimes we would fight but mostly… we…"

"Okay, that's okay, anything else? We know Marcus Fletcher but can you give me anything else?"

He pulls out a notepad and quickly writes down the names and descriptions of people that she had worked with, her voice numb and emotionless, like she's speaking on autopilot. Most of the names were nicknames and aliases, but with the descriptions given he was positive he would be able to make some ID's, especially if he could get the girl to pick people out of a line up.

"Thank you, thank you so much for all of your help. I know you've just lost your friend, but you are being so brave right now, and I promise you that this will help. That the information you've just given me will help me bring the people who did this to your friend to justice."

She nods her head, but he's not sure she actually heard him. "Now one last thing, can you tell me your name and how old you are? Where can I best contact you at?"

"Mary Jane… my name is Mary Jane…" She mumbles, "I'm eighteen." After that she doesn't offer anything else up.

"Alright, I have to go real quick, but I'll be right back okay. Don't move, alright, I'll be right back." She nods her head again, but he doesn't think she paid him any attention. The name sounded so familiar and so he wanted to run a check on it. Mary Jane, it was so familiar, on the tip of his tongue on where he had heard that name before.

His daughter Gwen was 16 and if this girl was older than that he would eat his shoe. He goes over to a squad car and puts her name into the computer and scrolls through a couple of names before he sees it. Mary Jane Watson, he knew he recognized that name, it was from a missing persons report. He pulls up the file and it pops up with her picture next to it.

Mary Jane Watson, age 15, ran away from home. Missing for one month now, student at Midtown High, he raises a brow, Gwen went there too. Her parents were Philip and Madeline Watson, both alive and still married and they both have files on them for domestic disturbances. The Missing Persons report was filed by a Eugene Thompson, not her parents. No current leads on her whereabouts.

He looks up from the screen and scowls. He sees this far too often, abusive family, young kid runs away and falls in with a bad crowd. He would talk to her about her situation and see if he could get her to agree to meet with a social worker, she was young with her whole future ahead of her, and she just needed a little help to get her life back on track. He couldn't stand the thought of her wasting her potential out here on the streets or worse ending up like her friend. She was Gwen's age for god's sake, she shouldn't be out on the street like this and especially not in a rough area like this one. He didn't even want to think about what she might have had to do to survive or what she may have experienced.

He calls over an officer and gets a quick update on the investigation. CSI were doing their thing but so far there was nothing to indicate that anything had been there was showing up. He lets out a frustrated sigh at that bit of news. This, the complete lack of evidence, more than anything else confirmed for him that the King Pin was somehow involved. Anytime they were about to close in on one of the man's… or woman's, he conceded as he honestly didn't know for sure, operations they would disappear without a trace.

He walks back over to the girl and kneels down in front of her again. "Things are wrapping up here, but I was wondering if you would be willing to come down to the precinct with me and talk a little bit more?"

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xXx-Scene Break-xXx

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She was numb, she felt nothing and she was doing everything in her power to keep it that way. Vivian was dead, Marcus was a drug dealer, and she no longer knew what her future held. She looks around staring at the scene impassively, what did she do now? Did… Vivian didn't have any family, at least none that she knew about, did Mary Jane handle the funeral arrangements? It seemed too awful that she would be the only person to mourn her passing but Mary Jane didn't know if there was anyone else.

She didn't want to say goodbye. They were going to start brand new lives together, they were going to follow their dreams. They were going to be there for each other and now… now she was gone and Mary Jane was all alone again. She starts to cry again, hugging the blanket closer to herself. She felt cold and sick and like she couldn't breathe. She needed… she didn't know what she needed.

She looks up when she hears someone approach her again and sees that it's Detective Stacy. He kneels down in front of her again. "Things are wrapping up here, but I was wondering if you would be willing to come down to the precinct with me and talk a little bit more?"

Mary Jane can see the sympathy on his face and hear it in his voice. It was different now, before he had been sad for her, but now there was an underlying current of pity there that hadn't been there before. It takes her a second but she realizes it's exactly how an adult talks to a child, she hadn't heard it in a while, not since she had run away, anyways. But here it was, an adult speaking to a child who they felt was in over their head. And if her friend hadn't just been murdered, she may have even accepted it, allowed herself to be a child again. But she couldn't go back.

His eyes widen for just a fraction of a second, years of experience and training kicking in. He knows exactly when she does that she is going to run. Unfortunately for him he has never had to chase down anyone like her before.

She jumps from her seat and ducks under his arm and around him as he reaches for her, taking off away from this place and into the night. She hears him call for her to stop and when she doesn't he calls for someone to catch her. Two police officer's block her path, she duck under the first one and then leapfrogs over the second one. A third officer almost catches her by the arm but a warning in her head goes off and so she reacts, grabbing the offending hand and flinging the cop over her shoulder and sending him flying through the air.

As she crosses the police line and back out into the night her warnings flair worse than anything she had ever felt before. She continues running and when the warning in her head screams at her like it never had before she leaps as high into the air as she can twisting herself as she does. Three loud bangs echo into the night air and she feels something fly past her, just barely missing. The ricochet sound lets her know that someone had just shot at her. She gives one final leap, kicks off of a warehouse wall and onto an adjacent building's roof, moving out of sight. She can hear someone shouting above the noise but she pays it no mind. She's free, for all the good it does her.

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xXx-Scene Break-xXx

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George Stacy was furious, no scratch that, he was just barely this side of homicidal. "You idiot! What the hell do you think you're doing!?" He snarls, as he pushes the arm down of the officer who had opened fire.

The officer gives him a blank look. "Perusing the suspect, then she assaulted an officer so I opened… fire?"

"She wasn't a suspect, she was a witness, you moron. She was fifteen year old girl and you shot at her!"

The officer looks a little angry and says in a forced calm. "You saw the way she flung Eriks, witness or not she was running from a crime scene and she attacked one of our own."

George looks over and sees a couple of officers helping the other man up. It was strange he would give them that, but they had over reacted in his opinion. He rubs his eyes, trying to prevent the oncoming migraine. This city, he truly hated it sometimes. Even the police, the people who were to protect and serve, some of them were little more than thugs at times.

"Just… wrap up this crime scene. Put out an APB for a Mary Jane Watson, and make damn sure that they know that she is to be brought in unharmed. She is a witness and she needs our help, she is not a criminal, she is not a suspect. You got that?"

"Yes sir."

It takes him another hour to wrap things up at the crime scene and then another half hour to get the paperwork started, before he finally decides to finish it up later. When he gets home he takes a moment to look in on his family, stopping at his two sons' room first, after watching them for a few minutes he goes and checks on Gwen.

She is sleeping soundly, so he quietly goes over and pulls the blanket a little higher over her and kisses her forehead and she lets out a little sigh. She was home and she was safe. As he exits her room he shuts the door quietly and then turns to look at his wife Helen who had gotten up to greet him.

"Hey, you're home late?" She says softly, going up to him and wrapping her arms around him.

"Yeah…"

"Rough night?"

"Just a bit."

"Well then let's get you into bed." She stands up on her toes and gives him a light kiss.

"Now that's the best thing I've heard all day."

As he's lying in bed with his wife, lightly running his hand up and down her shoulder as she snuggles closer to him, he just can't get that girl out of his mind. He had to find her, she was only fifteen years old. The poor girl was out on the streets, her friend was dead, and to top it all off the police had shot at her. He could still see it in his mind, her sobbing form, as she cried over her friend, the look in her eyes just before she ran away. He had seen bad things before, he had seen other kids in positions like hers before, but for some reason she had struck a nerve.

"You're thinking too loud." His Helen says with a yawn.

He sighs, "Sorry, just a rough night."

"Do you want to talk about it?" She asks as she sits up and looks at him, she is smiling that beautiful kind smile of hers that he had fallen in love with the first time he had seen it.

He takes a moment to gather his thoughts before sitting up himself, clicking on the lamp by his side of the bed. It takes him about twenty minutes to tell her everything. From the months of build up getting ready for this bust, to arguing with his superiors that it wasn't a waste of time, to finding the place abandoned except for the body of a dead girl, and finally how the dead girl's friend, Mary Jane, had showed up as the only witness to Marcus's activities and that she turned out to be a classmate of Gwen's who had run away last month.

"And you're worried about this girl, Mary Jane." She states rather than asks.

"Yeah, I just… I keep picturing Gwen out there and it breaks my heart. That was rough part of town and-"

"And you're a father and a good man and you care about people."

"I want to find her, help her if I can."

"Then I know you will, and from what you've told me it sounds like she could use it. How about tomorrow you talk to Gwen, if they went to school together then maybe she can give you some insight on her."

He leans over and presses his lips to her. "See, I knew I married you for a reason. Beauty and brains."

"Yep, you sure did luck out," She teases him, "but you know what?"

"Hmm, what?"

"So did I."