Disclaimer: I obviously do not own CSI: NY. I just own my car, my laptop and my crazy muse who seems to want to write 4 different stories at a time. I also do own any characters that you do not recognize. You can borrow them if you ask permission first!

A/N: Okay. Thanks to everyone that read and reviewed! Here's the next chapter!! Many thanks to Aphina and Axellia for the beta. I don't own the chapter title either. That belongs to Dashboard Confessional.

Chapter 4.

Matters of Blood and Connection

Adam processed the public areas of the fast good restaurant, mentally flinching anytime someone walked into the room. I've got to get over these nerves! He tried to shake off the uneasy feeling of being watched as he glanced around the room. He had processed the front of the restaurant, coming up with what seemed like millions of fingerprints. Shaking his head in frustration, and disgust at the number of prints he pulled from a supposedly clean store, Adam moved towards the kid's playground.

As he dusted the surface of the tables, he noticed immediately that there were fewer fingerprints in this room. As he moved towards the ball pool, he noticed a small drop of what appeared to be blood. He quickly withdrew a swab and dabbed the spot before spraying it. Blood, he thought with a frown as the swab turned pink. Maybe this is where the fight began, but if so, why is there no other evidence?

Going with his gut feeling, Adam shifted his focus to the ball pool itself. Pulling out the Luminal, he sprayed the balls and watched as they began to show traces of pink all over them. Carefully, he leaned over the side and began to shift through the balls. He crawled into the pool and was through the first part of it when Danny walked in.

"I knew you were a kid a heart, but I didn't expect to find you playing in the ball pool," the more experienced CSI teased.

Adam looked up and just rolled his eyes at him. "I found blood by the pool and then traces of blood in the pool itself."

Danny nodded as he watched Adam continue processing. "I found traces of gunpowder in the freezer."

Adam looked up. "Someone fired a gun in there?"

Danny shook his head. "Nope. It was in an empty box of meat."

Adam was about to comment when he felt his foot strike something solid. He looked at Danny, a sick feeling forming in his stomach. "Um…" he said in shock.

Danny frowned at him. "What?"

Adam just looked at him as he began to shovel the balls out of the pool, to uncover a dead body. "I think we need to call Sid back," he stated simply, trying to control his nausea.

--

Cory had just glanced at the clock, realizing that she was going to have the rare pleasure of going home early when her phone rang. "Reid," she answered briskly. There was no answer, but she could hear someone breathing on the other end of the line. "Hello?" she questioned. "Is anyone there?" Finally after no response, she hung up.

Shaking her head, she gathered up all the papers on her desk and put them in her briefcase, preparing to leave. Just as she got to the door, her phone rang again. "Reid?" Again, she heard no answer, only breathing and her annoyance got the best of her. "Look, if this is a prank call then I'll trace it and have you arrested," she snapped testily.

"Agent Reid, I have some information for you on the man you know as Etienne," a raspy voice stated.

Cory's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Who is this?" she asked bluntly as she sat back down.

"That is need to know information. Right now all you need to know is that I'm a friend," the man answered calmly. "The question is how much you really want to capture Etienne and his organization."

Cory drew in a breath. "What do you want in exchange for your cooperation?"

"Nothing, although that is subject to change. When you arrive back at your home, you will find a manila envelope on your doorstep. I'll be in contact," he said before he hung up.

Cory stared at the phone for a few minutes, her stomach in knots. Finally, she took a deep breath and marched out of her office, all pleasure at being able to go home early leaving her body.

--

After Sid had taken the newly discovered dead body away, Danny and Adam finished processing the room. After a brief spate of questions, it became clear that none actually knew who the dead man was. Sighing in annoyance, the two CSI's marked the kid's playground and freezer with police tape and as they left made sure that the worker's were not able to go back inside the crime scene. On the drive back to the lab, both mused over their discoveries.

"Okay, so we have a well liked manager, who was in a good mood when she arrived at work and was murdered seemingly by strangulation," Danny thought out loud. "Then, I found a box that holds traces of gunpowder in it in the freezer."

"Then I find a dead man, who appeared to have been shot in the back, buried in the ball pools of the kid's playground. This has to be connected somehow," Adam finished.

Danny shook his head. "Yeah, but how? I wonder if Angell has had any luck in locating the night crew yet," he said as he grabbed his phone and dialed her number.

"Hey, Messer. What do you have for me?" Angell answered.

Danny smirked. "Another dead body in the crime scene."

"What?" she exclaimed in shock. "How did we miss that?"

"Adam found the body in the playground, buried in the ball pool. I also found traces of gunpowder in a box in the freezer. Have you heard from any of the night crew yet?"

"Nope. I've been to three houses so far and no one is home. I don't like the feeling that I'm getting here."

Danny sighed. "Me neither. What the hell was going on in that restaurant?"

Angell sighed. "I don't know, but I hope that we can find someone to fill us in. Did you get anything from the surveillance cameras?"

Danny turned his head to Adam. "What's the status on the surveillance footage?"

Adam looked at him. "I talked to the security company and they promised to send all the footage to the lab. Hopefully, it will be there when we get there," he answered.

"You get that, Angell" Danny said.

"Yeah. Let me know what you find and I'll call you if I get anything."

"Okay," Danny said as he hung up.

--

As Cory rode the elevator up to her apartment, several things were going through her head. Could this be a trap? And how the hell do people keep getting into my building to put things on my doorstep? That was the one that that was frustrating her the most, and making her nervous about her own security. Shaking her head, she put those thoughts behind her just as the elevator doors slid open.

Taking a breath, she stepped into the hall to see the expected sight of a manila envelope sitting on her doorstep. Unconsciously she shivered, her thoughts going to the last time she found an envelope on her doorstep. It had been left by a former lover who had become obsessed with her and had contained a number of pictures that threatened Danny's life. She trembled as she carefully avoided the envelope and opened the door.

Cory left the door open as she put her bags on the couch and grabbed a pair of latex gloves from the kitchen. She walked quickly back to the door and grabbed the envelope. As she walked towards the kitchen table, curiosity was eating her alive. She tested the flap while she walked and found it was sealed tight.

Rolling her eyes, she dropped it on the kitchen table and turned to find her scissors. She dug through a couple of the kitchen drawers before remembering that she had taken them into the spare bedroom to do some gift wrapping. Sighing in frustration, she grabbed a knife instead.

Quickly, she slit the bottom of the envelope and when she turned it right side up again a stack of papers and a glossy 8x10 portrait of a man fell out.

Curious, she looked at the picture, getting a sense that she knew who this was. Staring intently at the picture, she got an idea and went to her briefcase, to extract the ever present case file on her mother's kidnapping. She quickly withdrew the sketch of the man her mother had called Etienne, a person who worked for the as of yet nameless organization that Montoya was being controlled by. From what her mother had told her, he was the man that was pulling the strings on Montoya and when Montoya's obsession of her mother started to make him make mistakes, he was ordered to kill them both. Thankfully, Montoya—in a rare moment of unselfishness—had saved her mother, before being killed by a bomb that tore apart the boat they were on. It was thought that Etienne had perished in the explosion, but obviously not since the picture was date stamped three weeks after the explosion.

She flipped the picture over, to find the back filled with information.

"Name: Boleslav Kladivo

Alias': Etienne Martel, Ivan Barteslavic, Fredrico Martelli, Dominic Caspian

Date of birth: November 21, 1961 in Prague, The Czech Republic

Former KGB operative before the Iron Curtain fell, then an operative for InterPol. Went rogue in 1992, then became one of the most successful freelance assassins. Whereabouts and loyalties unknown."

Cory mused over the information, most notably the fact that he was an InterPol operative, which made her question her own InterPol contact, Alistair Murphy, who claimed not to know anything about him. She glanced at the rest of the papers; they mostly seemed to be overviews of his missions, both KGB and InterPol. One paper caught her eye in particular. It was dated just after the Iron Curtain had fallen and it seemed to be a memo of some sort.

She glanced over the greeting, seeing that it was addressed to someone high up in the organization and then read the body of it.

"I contacted Boleslav Kladivo and requested a meeting. After being part of the KGB for close to twenty years, I feel he has some useful intelligence for us. He indicated in our preliminary contact that he would be interested in joining the agency to continue his clandestine work. We met 5 January 1990, in a public place to ensure both of our safety and had an agreeable conversation. He provided some interesting intelligence on operatives on both sides and I feel I must be completely honest here. The KGB knows much more about us than we do of them.

So, I feel that it is in the best interest of this agency to extend a hand of friendship to operatives of the crumbling communist nation in order to secure valuable intelligence.

Sincerely,

Alistair Murphy"

Cory felt her heart plummet into her chest and anger began to rise. You told me you didn't know who he was! Cory felt like someone had just hit her on the head with a board. She and Alistair had worked many times on cases. She had always been brutally honest with him and had assumed that he had been in return. Oh Alistair, why did you lie to me, she thought as the implications of his deception began to sink in.

AN: Only 5 reviews for the last chapter? :( Anyways...I figure that everyone is busy either watching the Olympics or getting read for school to start!

Soccer - LOL. You may get some Hawkes jealousy when Morgan actually comes to NYC!

katydid12 - Thanks!

lapland - Thanks for the welcome back! I missed writing this and now my muse has tempered down a bit and is actually productive! I love NCIS and am currently reading a crossover with HP at adultfanfiction dot net. It's fab with Harry being Tony. :P Hopefully your muses will calm down! I love Morgan and Garcia and how they play off each other, so I'll have a lot with them!

turtyhurty07 - Welcome and thanks! I try really hard with them, but I've been writing Cory for almost 3 years now, I know her inside and out!

BEG - Thanks! I didn't know if you'd made it to this since you are working your way through the series! I'm glad that you liked it (and shame on the bf for deleting it). I love Criminal Minds, it's great and I hope I do the characters justice! As for the cases, I try to think of what would keep me interested and write that!