I'm done with another chapter of this strange FF story. Hope you enjoy it and thanks for reading and the feedback!

Matt just looked at the two investigators who had walked onto his helipad, shocked into silence. The copy of the arrest warrant still rested in his hand, with C.J.'s name on it. He took another look at it and frowned at he recognized another name typed onto it below hers.

Dylan Cade.

Confusion ran through him at that blast from the past and he looked back at the two men.

"He's dead," he asked.

The two men nodded and C.J. just looked at all of them as if the world had gone crazy.

"What's going on here," she said folding her arms, "Is this some kind of joke?"

The two men looked at each other then flashed their badges.

"It's no joke Ms Parsons, I'm Investigator Garcia and my colleague is Investigator Peterson" one of them said, "We're going to have to take you down to the county courthouse to sign the paperwork to fly you out to Laredo County tomorrow morning for an arraignment."

Matt just stared at them, after inspecting their badges.

"Now hold on here," he told the two men, "You think she killed him?"

Garcia looked up at him.

"She's the primary suspect," he said, "after an extensive investigation."

Now Matt folded his arms.

"She didn't kill anyone," he said, "There's something wrong with your investigation."

"We'll see about that," Peterson said.

"When did this happen," Matt asked, "When was Dylan Cade murdered?"

C.J. had gasped inwardly when she heard that familiar name, the name of her ex-boyfriend from her years back in Wild Fork, the town where she and Matt had grown up.

"They found his body a month ago but he'd been dead a long time," the investigator said, "We just got the tests back and there's evidence tracing Ms Parsons to him at the time of his disappearance about five years ago."

C.J. shook her head.

"Last I heard…he disappeared but that was some years ago."

The investigator nodded.

"That's right and you were in Wild Fork at the time that he turned up missing, weren't you?"

She hesitated.

"Yes I was," she said, "I didn't associate with him."

Garcia looked at Peterson.

"That's not what some people told us," he said, "They said that you two had a rather serious relationship."

"When I was 18," she said, "but he left town not long after we got together and I didn't see him until several years later…"

"He was married to a woman named Nadine Carter," Garcia said, "She said that you two were quite the item even after he got married."

Matt remembered Nadine and that not everything that came out of her mouth could be accepted as factual. She liked to spin her words when it suited her.

"She's not telling the truth," C.J. said, "I never wanted anything to do with him after we broke up."

Garcia shook his head.

"She said that she saw you together…"

C.J. remained silent.

"She admits that they argued quite a bit before he disappeared," he said, "Mostly about his wandering eye and a lot of their spats were over you."

C.J. stared back at them.

"That still doesn't mean that I killed him," she said, "Like I said I barely saw him after we broke up and that's all I'm going to tell you until I talk to counsel."

Garcia smirked.

"You'd better get yourself a lawyer," he said, "You're going to need one lady."

Matt put his hand up.

"Now hold on here, this is crazy, there's no way that she killed him," he said, "How can you put her under arrest when you haven't even questioned her?"

"We've got enough for an arrest Mr. Houston," Peterson said, "Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to have to take her with us. We need the judge to sign some paperwork."

Garcia took out a pair of handcuffs and moved towards C.J. She backed up a step and looked at Matt, who balled his hands into fists and placed himself in front of her.

"Now you can make this easier for us or tougher, it's your choice," he said then turned to Matt, "That goes for you too. Anything you do to stop us isn't going to help her."

C.J. rubbed Matt's shoulder with her hand.

"Come on, it's going to be okay," she said, "I'd better go with them. You follow, okay?"

He looked at her and nodded. When he saw fear in her eyes despite her attempts to hide it from everyone, he took hold of both of her hands in his own and kissed her gently on the mouth.

"I'm not going to let anything happen," he told her, "You can count on that. I'll get Uncle Roy and we'll be down at the courthouse with you, okay?"

She smiled weakly and nodded.

"You still owe me that date," she said.

Garcia and Peterson moved towards her and handcuffed her hands behind her back. She allowed it, not wanting to make a bad situation worse and she smiled at Matt so that would understand that she could handle it. She never took her eyes off of him nor did he from her as they walked her to the elevator and left the way they arrived.

Matt phoned his uncle after he had gone to the parking garage and gotten into his sports car, to drive to the courthouse where he knew they would be taking C.J. The skies had darkened as night had arrived in L.A. but Matt knew that the investigators would be able to track down a judge to conduct an extradition hearing to turn her over to Laredo County where she would await prosecution on murder charges.

"Uncle Roy, I'm on my way there right now," Matt said, turning onto a street which would take him straight to downtown.

"If the judge grants the motion, they'll have her on the next plane," Roy said, "and on the way to their jurisdiction for the next stage of the process."

"I can't believe this just happened," Matt said, "C.J. wouldn't…she didn't kill anyone. This is just crazy."

"So Dylan Cade was dead all this time," Roy said, "That explains his absence for the past five years.

"Couldn't happen to a nicer guy," Matt said, "but that just means the list of suspects could be longer than just one name."

"Doesn't sound like the police did much investigating," Roy said, "if they only found the body a month ago."

Matt turned his car into a parking garage adjacent to the courthouse.

"I'm here," Matt said, "I wonder where they're holding her."

"They've got a detention wing inside there," Roy said, "Unless they can round up a judge to sign their papers, that's where she'll be staying."

"I'll talk to you later…"

Matt parked his car and got out to head into the building.

C.J. sat in the holding cell while Garcia and Peterson talked with a deputy at the front desk. The woman had started making phone calls to find a judge. She knew if that happened, then she would face an extradition hearing tonight and be on her way to Laredo County not long after. She sighed, as she thought how quickly her life had changed in just a matter of a couple of hours.

She had been in Matt's warm embrace, enjoying how he made her feel when they were together. And trying to decide where they would go on their first official date as a couple. Paris or Zurich were suggestions that he had dropped but it didn't matter to her where they went. As long as they were there together.

But then while she had been weighing that decision, in had walked those two investigators who had just arrested her not too long ago.

"Judge Walker will be hearing your case any minute," Garcia said.

That was quick, C.J. thought. There must be some serious political heat coming down over this back in Texas. She hadn't been back to that corner of the state where she had grown up in five years mainly because she had no desire to return. Matt and she had left Wild Fork and Laredo County behind them when they had taken his fledgling company and had traveled out to California to turn it into an empire. Leaving a lifetime of memories behind them.

For Matt, he had felt like he had been drowning in guilt over the disappearance of his cousin while in the military each day he stayed and for C.J., there had been other painful reminders of her life there. Once they had hit the golden state and settled in with their entourage of friends, life had taken a much better turn.

Quite a few interesting twists and turns over the years now leading up to her arrest in connection to the murder of someone from her past.

Two deputies removed her from her cell and handcuffed her before taking her to the judge who presided over the nightly court session. Most of those paraded before him had been people arrested for prostitution, drugs or drunk driving but several were extradition cases like her own. The judge, an elderly man sat on the bench and she looked around and saw Matt and Roy sitting in the audience as the deputies instructed her to sit with the other defendants on a bench. She sat there, her hands forced behind her so that she couldn't move them nor could she sit comfortably. Sweat beaded on her face and dampened her shirt and she wondered if she even had legal representation. She would bring that issue up when it was time for her hearing.

She had stolen a glance at Matt and he had smiled encouragement but it didn't reach his eyes. She had nodded back at him before sitting down several yards away in front of him. The judge called the cases one by one and C.J. noticed a harried looking woman in a tired business suit who she realized passed for legal representation in night court. The woman who carried around a stack of color coded folders spent about a minute briefing each client before they appeared before the judge. Not enough time to help advise them, C.J. knew from her own experiences.

Matt looked over at C.J. seeing the back of her head as she awaited her hearing. He had located an attorney back in Texas to help her once she arrived because he knew this hearing was but a formality. Roy had phoned in some contacts in Texas as well who would help them find out what the hell had just happened. They both knew that the very idea of C.J. killing anyone was ridiculous unless she had been protecting herself as in the case when she had pushed her murderous stalker off of a cliff near Matt's mountain cabin. Then again, the circumstances of Dylan's murder weren't clearly known, only that his body had been found and somehow tied to C.J. Matt's search for answers hadn't yielded much information so far, certainly not from the two investigators.

He had tried to read her face as she had walked by and if she felt any fear, she kept it clearly hidden from him and anyone else. But he knew she felt much differently than she had appeared, about what had just happened but about other situations as well. After all, he discovered not too long ago that she had harbored feelings for him for quite some time that transcended their life-long friendship. Feelings that had erupted years ago when they had been younger but had gone into hiding as they had grown up and moved forward with their lives far away from the town where they had grown up together.

He hadn't been any different. Having spent years working with her and watching her adapt to life out in California first while running Houston Enterprises and then when they focused their energies on his investigation firm. She had blossomed when he hadn't been looking and had become a force in her own right while he had been preoccupied with his constant string of eligible and not so eligible young women. And when he had finally really looked at her and noticed, he had been overcome with emotion so untapped and passion so raw that it had threatened to blow the lid off of their friendship.

So much like what had happened years ago before their lives had changed so irrevocably. This time, he reined himself in and took a more pragmatic approach. Not because his feelings were any less intense but because he knew that if he didn't, she might slip away. Back into their comfortable roles as best friends, the rules of their relationship so deeply etched into boundaries between them that had been built over time and due to circumstances in their lives that had threatened to break them.

"I think C.J.'s case is next," Roy said.

Matt looked up and saw her poised in her seat and ready to face the judge.

"God, this is such a nightmare," Matt said, "I don't even know what to do at this point, where to start."

Roy looked at him, unemotional.

"Yes you do Matlock," he said, "You go back to the beginning…"

Matt sighed, wondering what his uncle meant with his advice. The beginning for both of them was when they first met on his daddy's ranch after C.J.'s uncle had been hired as foreman. Before the accident that had changed him and before C.J. at the age of 17 had taken his place supervising a group of older men, some of them wanting to get their hands on the only freshly beautiful woman in miles. She had learned how to handle herself alright, and Matt made sure that he was there to protect her too only without her knowing it. If she had, she would have told him to back off, that she needed to find her own way to be effective at doing a man's work.

"She was always the liveliest force of nature on that ranch," Matt said, "Even when life really changed her."

"And this Slade character?"

"That's what really changed her," Matt said, "I wasn't around for all of it but I don't think he ever really let her go. Maybe not until he was dead."

Roy looked at him and Matt read his thoughts quickly enough.

"She didn't kill him Uncle Roy," he said, "I'd bet my life on that."

For Roy, that wasn't necessary. He had his secrets too.

C.J. stood before the judge who asked her if she had been informed of the process and she answered in the affirmative.

The actual hearing passed quickly as she was merely one of an assembly line of cases that evening. The public defender spoke with her a moment before telling her that she didn't have many options for avoiding extradition and that it just might prolong the inevitable, that she was going to go back to Laredo County to be prosecuted on murder charges. Today or a year from now, which greatly helped C.J in making her decision not to contest the order.

The judge asked her if she were sure in her decision.

"Yes I am Your Honor," she said, "I'm ready to go right now."

The judge talked to the investigators and they said that they would be flying out with C.J. back to Texas first thing in the morning. C.J. listened and realized she would be spending the night here in custody because there would be no chance of a bail hearing until she was on Texas soil. If it were granted, she knew it would be set high.

After the hearing, the deputies led her away and Matt had gone into the hallway to make arrangements to have his Lear Jet ready for him and his uncle to fly to Laredo County to meet her there. But not before he had told her goodbye and not to worry because she wouldn't be facing this crisis alone. The deputies nodded when they saw him approach and allowed him to spend a brief moment with C.J. before they led her back to the detention wing for the night.

He stroked her face, looking into her eyes and she yearned to touch him, to let him know not to worry about her. Concern etched his face and she felt pain tug at her from that.

"I'm not going to let anything happen to you," he said, "Uncle Roy and I'll be in Laredo County when you arrive and we'll be right in that courtroom to bail you out."

She sighed.

"I don't know if they'll grant bail in a murder case Houston," she said, "It's Texas after all and that state has its own laws for criminals."

"You're not a criminal C.J. and you're no killer."

"I don't know if that will matter Houston," she said, as the deputies began to pull her away.

He watched them lead her away and every fiber pushed at him to stop the deputies but he knew for her sake, he had to just stand there and say goodbye to her for now. Roy joined him and patted his nephew's shoulder.

"I know it's tough but we'll be there to help her through this," he said.

"That will probably involve finding Slade's real killer," Matt said, "when the fact is, he probably deserved what he got."

Roy didn't argue with that for his own reasons.

"Come on, we'd better get going," he said, "We've got a lot of arrangements to make before tomorrow and we switch battlegrounds."

Matt thought back to the life he'd spent in Wild Fork and thought that he couldn't come up with a better description of what was to come than his uncle's own words.