Merry Christmas one and all! Hope you're having a good holiday period and are looking forward to what the new year might bring. The month of January is going to big for me in regards to fanfics, as I want to get all, if not all, of my fics finished before I go back to Uni for my final semester.

Oh, and you have to use your imaginations a little. Yes. This is an interactive story.

We left the last chapter just as things where getting good, and although I know you would love to read some of it, I'm just not at a level yet to write it. When I get there, you'll get some…story people! Get your minds out of the gutter. Back to the story - they haven't been alone together for two weeks so are slightly frustrated. So imagine wild, mark leaving sex.

That is all.

When they appeared at the crime scene together, nobody batted an eyelid.

Even if he hadn't told Mac that he was going to go round and pick her up, the two of them turning up together wasn't anything for anyone to get worked up about. They where partners in a sense, friends in another. Spotting them out and about anywhere wouldn't give anyone cause to think anything was going on.

There was one person however, who kept an extra eye on them as he saw the department issue SUV draw up. There was nothing to give them away though, and had he not seen them out together at an intimate lunch little over a month ago, he still wouldn't believe that there was anything going on.

No matter what Sid told him.

Flack and Lindsay exited the car together and made their way across to Mac before leaving on their respective assignments; Lindsay to find Stella and continue processing the alleyway, and Flack to speak with the officers and eyewitnesses.

"Hey Stella," Lindsay said as she set down her case and took a pair of gloves from her pocket.

The normally dark and quite alley was awash with activity. At the far end, the ME's van sat waiting, as two men loaded the trolley with the DB on it, into the back. Yellow crime scene tap was stretched across both ends and several bystanders had stopped to see what was going on.

Stella was sat hunched by one of the garbage dumpsters, swabbing at a smear of blood on one of the corners. A portable light had been set up nearby so that it cast a well needed light on the scene and Lindsay could see several pieces of evidence, in the form of a purse, bag and binder, laying about on the ground.

"Hey kiddo, I though this was your night off?" Stella asked as she turned towards Lindsay, putting the swab away in its protective seal, ready for testing back at the lab later.

"It was," Lindsay said as she took in the dimensions of the alleyway, trying to piece together, from what she had been told, what had happened and how one man had ended up dead while another was fighting for his life in hospital and how one frightened young woman, who was now sitting in the back of a ambulance, clothing torn, was suffering from shock. At the very least.

Stella looked up at her. "I take it you had some plans tonight."

"Something like that," Lindsay replied, snapping on a pair of gloves and going to crouch beside Stella. "What do you have here?" The corner of the dumpster was smeared with blood and what looked like skin and bone. "I didn't hear anything about anybody have a head wound. At least," she said leaning round with her touch to take a closer look, "None this bad."

"There wasn't," Stella admitted as she stood up, taking a quick look in the dumpster, "Which is why I thought this was so out of place."

Lindsay nodded and continued to survey the surrounding scene; the dumpster didn't seem to have been moved. The wheel locks where still in place and several stray pieces of rubbish littered around the base that didn't look like the had been disturbed. Leaving Lindsay to the conclusion that whatever had happened, had happened there.

"These plans," Stella continued as she flashed the light of her hand held touch around the ground further along the alleyway. "They didn't happen to include a certain mystery man, did they?"

"Might have done," Lindsay grudgingly admitted.

In the past seven months in which Stella had made the assumption that Lindsay had bagged herself a new man, Stella had only managed to get a few details out of the younger woman on what this man was like.

All Stella knew was that he liked sport - all kinds, pizza, Chinese take ways and food in general, that he was a city boy through and through and that he had blue eyes. Oh, and he was over thirty.

On gathering that sum total of information, Stella had remarked that that had narrowed it down to only about a million or so men.

Stella stopped searching round the alleyway and watched as Lindsay leaned in close to examine the biological trace on the dumpster. Frowning, Stella swung her torchlight in the direction of the young woman, her gaze being caught by something entirely different.

She smiled. "Did you have dinner plans."

"Nope," Lindsay said looking up. Seeing the look Stella was giving her, "What is it?"

"He must hungry then" She remarked, her smile taking the form of an amused smirk.

"Who?"

"Your mystery man."

"Stella, what?" Lindsay began. Shaking her head.

"He's taken a chunk out of your shoulder," She said, motioning with her torchlight.

Lindsay jerked her head round to the side and took a look at the bare area of her shoulder that Stella was pointing to. She couldn't see anything.

"Here," Stella handed her a compact mirror which she kept in her case. "Its right, here," she said, pointing the mark out on her own body.

Lindsay took the compact, flipping it open. She held it up so that it showed her right shoulder area. Sure enough there was a nice, clean bite mark impressed into the muscle where her neck met her shoulder.

"Now," Stella said as Lindsay continued to examine the mark and the rest of her skin. "Do I have to take a dental impression of that? Or are you finally going to tell me who it is you've been seeing?"