Logan POV

As Bobby and I approached the crime scene of our fourth victim, I could hear Liz talking with one of her assistants.

"Can you believe he did that to me?" the young assistant was saying.

"How long have you two been together?"

"Two months. He said he wanted to be exclusive, but I went home at lunch one day last week and I found him in bed with his ex."

"Ouch. I'm sorry to hear that. What'd he have to say for himself?"

"That he didn't mean to," the girl said dramatically as she stood up and changed positions, moving up to the front seat so that she could take a photo from another angle. "I mean, come on. What do you think happened? They both just happened to be naked and he slipped and…"

I heard Liz laugh, but I stopped in my tracks as the assistant continued.

"But seriously, he just ran into her one day and he said she came on to him and he couldn't help himself. What do you think, Doc? He seems really sorry about it, but I just don't know."

"If I were you, Sarah, I'd change the locks and never look back."

Bobby glanced over his shoulder at me and then moved over to where Liz was leaning through the open back door of a Volvo station wagon.

"What've we got, Doc?" he asked her as he stuck his head down next to hers.

I was temporarily rooted to the spot as my mind filled in the missing pieces of my forgettable night with Detective Michelle Coleman.

"How'd your interview go?" she'd asked me.

"Great. Sorry, but I'm sure they'll pick me," I'd replied flirtatiously, because hey, she was cute, and she'd waited for me, and like I mentioned to Bobby, I was freaking lonely. He and Alex had been going at it like rabbits for forty-eight hours straight while I sat around playing solitaire.

"Well then, it sounds like we need to go get a drink and celebrate your new job," she'd said.

So we'd gone out to a bar.

And we'd had more than just the aforementioned drink.

And I'd awakened the next morning, naked in a strange bed.

Michelle had already left her apartment that morning, so I never saw her again. She'd left a note, including her number so that I could call her, but I didn't, and I'm pretty sure I never intimated that I would.

It wasn't the first time something like that happened with me, but it was the last.

After that, I got caught up helping Bobby and Alex with their investigation, and I was afraid they might need me at a moment's notice, so I couldn't risk going out and getting drunk because if something happened while I was incapacitated, I would've never forgiven myself.

"Logan?"

I looked up and found all three of them staring at me: Liz, Bobby, and the assistant whose boyfriend had cheated.

"Yeah, sorry. Um…so what've we got?"

"As I was telling your partner," Liz began in a tone that clearly said she'd already been down this path. "It looks like the COD is strangulation. No sign of sexual assault, no defensive wounds…"

"On a strangulation? You need to do a…"

"Tox report. Yeah, we covered that."

She looked at me questioningly, her gaze softening after a moment.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Let's finish running it."

"Okay," she said, back in business mode. "TOD is roughly two hours ago, which is about thirty minutes prior to the 9-1-1 call."

"So the dump was made in broad daylight. Even with the victim in a car, it's still gutsy," Bobby remarked.

"And new," I added. "The others were all tossed overnight."

"Uh huh. And this is new, too," Liz said as she raised the girl's shirt just enough to show a bellybutton ring. "Literally. I'd guess that it was done maybe within the past twenty-four hours."

"So…body piercing on a Sunday," Bobby said thoughtfully.

"Or early this morning," I posed.

It was less likely, but still possible. It was early afternoon, and if Liz's guess was right, she probably died around eleven or twelve. I don't know how many girls woke up on Monday morning with a sudden, urgent need to pierce something, but it was possible.

"Could be," he agreed as he extracted himself from the back seat.

We both spent another moment looking at the girl's face. Like the others, she was pretty. And now that we had four, it was safe to say that pretty was one of our killer's prerequisites.

This latest victim was dressed fairly conservatively in jeans and a sleeveless top. Although, the victim that Vinley had so callously labeled a pro was killed on a Friday night. She was probably just dressed for a night out on the town, as opposed to this girl who was heading…where?

My cell phone rang and interrupted my train of thought. I glanced at the display but didn't recognize the number, so I took a step away and answered the call.

"Logan," I answered gruffly, my thoughts still on our victim.

"You know, I don't remember you sounding so serious. Maybe Major Case isn't the best place for you. I'd hate for it to take away your sense of humor."

At the sound of the flirtatious voice on the other end of the line, I instinctively turned to get a visual on Liz. She'd gotten out of the car, too, and she and Bobby were engrossed in conversation while the assistant was putting away her equipment.

"Mich…um…Detective Coleman," I managed to say. "What can I do for you?"

"Oh, now there's a loaded question," she said on a laugh.

When I didn't respond, she continued, "Look, I know you're busy. And this isn't just a personal call. I mean, it is, but it isn't. I wanted to tell you how nice it was to see you today. I've been thinking about you lately, and I kind of feel like it's fate that we ran into each other again."

"Logan!" Bobby called out to me as he waved me over. I held up one finger to let him know to give me a minute.

"I'm at a crime scene here, Coleman," I said firmly.

"Right. Um…yeah, that's inappropriate of me, isn't it? I'm sorry. I can just call you another time about that."

"It's...you…" I began, but she interrupted me before I could figure out a polite way to tell her not to bother.

"I got the ballistics report back on Sally O'Hara. I faxed it over to Major Case, but I thought you might want to hear about it, since I knew you were out of the office."

"Why, what's it say?"

"The slugs in Sally don't match up to the one in the first Jane Doe."

"Two different guns?" I asked rhetorically.

"It's unusual for a killer to switch weapons, right?"

"Um…yeah. Okay, thanks. I need to go."

"I can call you later?"

I can't explain why I said what I said next.

"Yeah, sure."

And okay, maybe I can explain it.

I wasn't currently in a position to nicely explain that I was no longer on the market.

And I wanted to be nice because she was a colleague, and a sweet girl, and I didn't blame her for her actions. If it hadn't been for Liz coming into my life, the fact that Michelle wanted to see me again after our eight-months-in-the-past one-night stand would've been a nice ego-boost.

So I said she could call me just because I wanted to clarify my situation for her, not because I wanted to perpetuate the interest.

I hung up with her and then walked back over to Bobby and Liz.

"What's up?" he asked me, nodding towards the phone still in my hand.

Why in the world do I feel so guilty?

For some reason, I couldn't even look Liz in the eye, so I focused on Bobby.

"Oh, um…that was um…Detective Coleman," I said. He raised his eyebrow and I quickly added, "She got the ballistics report. Our killer's using two different guns."

"Great," he said smartly. "Because we need something else in this case not to make sense."

He turned to Liz and asked her how long before she'd be able to do the exam.

"It depends on where you want me to start," she answered. "I've got the other three back at the morgue."

"Work backwards," I said. "Our best chance is to jump on the most recent murder."

She nodded and then started to turn around, but as her gaze dropped, she caught sight of my hand, which I was holding protectively against my body.

I hadn't even realized I was doing it.

"What'd you do?" she asked me sharply, and then instead of waiting for my response, she looked at Bobby. "What did he do?"

"Nothing," I answered as I moved my hand away and shook it out, as though it didn't hurt like hell.

Because if I told her that I hit the console, then I'd have to tell her why I was mad, which means I'd have to tell her about Michelle, and I wasn't going to do that standing at a crime scene.

"Habit," I added when she looked at me disbelievingly.

"So it's okay?" she questioned, her gaze bouncing back and forth between me and Bobby.

"It's fine."

She finally nodded and then headed towards the van where her assistants were loading up our latest victim.

"We'll come by the morgue in a little bit," I called out to her. She glanced back and held my gaze for a moment and then got in the vehicle.

"Got a shovel?" I muttered to Bobby as we went to the front seat of the Volvo so that we could start poking around.

"For what?"

"Because I'm digging myself a hell of a deep hole, and I figured you might want to help me."

"She didn't just call about the ballistics report, huh?'

"No. She wants to see me again."

"And you told her no."

"No. I told her I was busy and couldn't talk about it."

"So you acted like it's a possibility?" he asked me incredulously.

"I didn't mean it like that," I replied defensively as I whipped open the glove box.

A piece of white nylon rope fell out of the box and onto the floorboard of the car.

I picked it up with my gloved left hand and showed it to Bobby.

"Three-eighths inch rigging rope," I mumbled. "I think we just found our murder weapon."

"I wonder if it'll match up to the marks on Jane Doe #1's wrists," he mused, and then he called out to a CSU tech who came over to bag the rope.

I emptied the rest of the glove box while he searched under the seat and in the console.

"So how'd you mean it?" he asked me after we worked in silence for a minute.

"I just want the chance to tell her nicely that I'm in a relationship and that while I appreciate the interest, it's not going to happen. Don't you think that's the mature thing to do, instead of just shooting her down?"

"I think…that I'm really glad I'm not in your shoes."

"Thanks," I said sarcastically.

"But," he added. "I've got your back. I know you didn't do anything wrong. Or at least, you haven't yet."

"And I'm not going to," I said firmly. "I just need to talk to Liz alone and tell her what's going on, and then call Michelle and explain things to her."

After we finished with the car and arranged to have it towed to impound, Bobby and I headed for the morgue.

He made a call while I drove.

"Madeline Reese reported that car stolen yesterday morning," Bobby said after he hung up his phone.

The registration in the glove box had shown that the car belonged to a woman in Brighton Beach.

"She actually filed a report?"

"Uh huh. Says she woke up Sunday morning, and her car was gone. Jacobs is going to run down her history for us and see if there are any flags, but I'd bet it's the truth. No killer would be dumb enough to leave that kind of evidence behind."

I nodded thoughtfully, struggling to keep my mind on the case rather than on Liz, but failing miserably.

Was she going to be upset with me?

Or would she understand what was going on?

How would I feel if someone from her past suddenly showed up?

That last thought made me feel slightly nauseous about the way I'd been handling this situation, because if someone from her past showed up, I'd want to know about it immediately, and I'd want her wearing a neon flashing sign that stated Property of Mike Logan.

"You're going to let Liz look at your hand, right?" Bobby asked me as I parked near the morgue.

"Yeah."

"Good. Okay, let's see if we can get the lab to doctor up the morgue photos so that we'll have something we can release to the public. Somebody knows these girls."

So, on our way to the autopsy suite, we stopped by the lab and got Sarah working on the pictures.

We didn't want to release photos that looked overly morbid, but with the three unknowns, it was all we had, so she could alter the coloring a little and cover up the damage to the mouths and we might be able to release a likeness.

"Sarah's getting us some pictures," Bobby told Liz as we entered her domain.

She was bent over one of the victims, looking at something with a magnifying glass.

All four girls were on tables, causing the room to be a little more crowded than normal.

"Yeah, I'm sorry I don't have anything else for you to go on," she said as she stood up straight. "Your killer did a great job on the finger prints."

"We found rope in the Volvo," Bobby told her. "I don't suppose you found evidence of rope on the first victim, did you? We know she had binding marks on her wrists, but the original report doesn't mention the source of the marks."

"I'll look for it, but to be perfectly honest, I'm really just getting started here. It's going to take me a couple of days to give them all the attention they need."

She resumed her position over the body

"Of course," Bobby said with a wave. "I'm not trying to rush you."

Then he glanced over at me, and said meaningfully, "I'm going to run down to the vending machine and get a soda. You want something?"

He was giving me my alone time with Liz.

"Are you buying, Detective?" Liz asked without looking up at him.

"I'll buy the sodas now if you buy the scotch later."

"That doesn't sound quite fair," she replied, smiling as she continued to work.

I just stared at her and wondered if she'd keep smiling even after I came clean with her.

"Sure it is," he called out as he headed for the door. "I'll check on Sarah's progress, too."

The door had barely closed when Liz stood up and set down her magnifying glass, pinning me with her gaze.

"Okay, what is it?"

"What's what?"

"Mike," she said on a sigh.

The sound was like a punch in the gut and it filled me with a sense of longing because it was the same sound she'd made this morning when I'd reached for her in the bed, stroking my hand over her hip and then pulling her towards me.

"I love waking up to you," she'd said as she turned in my arms and then brought her lips to mine. "I love everything about you."

I couldn't help but wonder if she'd still feel that way about me after I explained about my morning.

She stepped back from the table and pulled off her gloves and then crooked her finger at me, motioning for me to come closer.

I glanced around the room hesitantly and then crossed the five feet of space between us, stopping directly in front of her.

She held out her hand, palm up, and the command was as loud as if she'd shouted it.

So I placed my right hand in hers and she started taking off the bandage.

"So are you going to talk to me, or do I need to inject you with sodium pentathol?" she threatened.

I raised my eyes and found her staring at me, not my hand, and a small, nervous smile crept across her face.

She's worried.

And I'm making it worse by not talking.

"Liz, it's nothing, really. It's…okay, the investigating detective at the 7th…she's…um…"

"An old girlfriend?" she guessed.

"A former one-night stand," I admitted.

She swallowed visibly and held my gaze, my hand forgotten for the moment.

"Okay," she said evenly.

"I didn't recognize her, but she remembered me."

"I'm sure she did. She's the one who called you about the ballistics report."

"I thought I was supposed to be the detective," I joked lamely.

"So did she really only want to talk bullets? Or did she have something else on her mind?"

"She said she wants to catch up with me."

"And you said…"

"Liz, I don't have any interest in her," I replied quickly.

"I'm asking what you said."

"I was at a crime scene. I couldn't exactly get into my relationship status."

"She didn't have any problem hitting on you while you were at a crime scene."

"No, I know," I said on a sigh.

"So how did you leave it?"

"She asked if she could call me. I said that she could, but I only said that so that I can tell her about you and that there's no possibility of anything between her and me."

She stared at me dubiously for a moment and then she went back to work on my hand.

"Liz…"

"It's fine. So how'd you hurt your hand again?"

"I punched the console in the SUV."

"You did what? Mike, are you crazy?"

"Absolutely," I said. I put my left hand under her chin, tipping her face up so that she was making eye contact again. "I'm crazy in love with you, and I'm sorry that I handled this so badly, but I honestly didn't know the best way to do it, and…I'm just really sorry."

After several agonizing seconds, she closed her eyes and said, "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah. I trust you, Mike."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. So set the record straight with the slutty detective, and then let's forget all about her, okay?"

"Definitely. Although you know I may run across her from time to time, especially with this case…"

"I know. Just as long as she knows you're committed to a woman with a scalpel and an intimate knowledge of human anatomy, then it's all good."

I let out a relieved breath and flashed her a smile, and then took a swift glance around the room before giving her a kiss.

It was supposed to be a light, quick gesture, but she turned it into something a little more, and arousal zipped through me so fast it made my head spin.

But then she broke off the kiss and took a step back.

"No PDAs in my morgue, Detective," she said with a grin.

"Won't happen again," I promised insincerely. "Today, anyway."

"Uh huh. So, your hand looks okay, but it should probably be x-rayed again. That was really stupid, you know."

"I know. Let me give it a day or two and see if it gets better. If it doesn't, then we'll do the x-rays."

We heard a loud banging sound outside of the door and then Bobby came back in, carrying three cans of soda.

"What did you do, drop a can out there?"

"I just wanted to make sure that Liz had time to cover up her crime before I came back in."

"I decided not to kill him," she joked. "Yet."

"Good. Okay, so Sarah's almost done with the pictures, and she's doing a great job."

"So what do we want to do? Have Alex release it to the media tomorrow when she does her first press conference?"

"Actually, she's doing her first one today. I just got a text from her a few minutes ago. She had to run home to change because apparently the commissioner wanted her to look…different."

"That guy's a tool," I muttered, shaking my head. "Well, okay, so we'll release it at the second press conference."

"Uh huh," Bobby agreed. "We should make a list of bullet points as to what we know so far so that she'll have something to go by when she gets under the gun."

We used Liz's office and worked out a summary of the facts that we knew so far.

Four victims found between Wednesday and Monday.

All approximately the same age, all fairly attractive and in good physical shape.

Two were killed by gunshots, two by strangulation.

All victims were found in outdoor, relatively public locations.

A couple of aspects of the latest killing were slightly different.

She was found in a stolen car, and the murder and subsequent disposal occurred during the daylight hours.

"It's not a lot, but it's something," Bobby said as he sent the list to Alex's phone. "So everything okay with you and Liz?"

"Everything's great."

"You still need to call Coleman."

"I know."

"Do it now. Don't let it fester."

Bobby left me alone in Liz's office and went out to pester her as she continued to examine our victims. I saw him speak to her and then she made eye contact with me through her office window, but she just gave me a nod and a smile and then went back to work, so I pulled out my phone.

"Mike, I was hoping you'd call," she answered. Which means that she already had my number programmed into her phone because I didn't even have to tell her it was me.

Great.

"Yeah, um…about that. I may have given you the wrong impression earlier."

"How so?"

"I appreciate your help with the case, and I really appreciate the fact that you don't hold it against me that I never called you last fall after…well, after. But I'm in a relationship right now."

"Right now?" she asked coyly, and I realized that maybe my wording wasn't all that great, but damn her for not just saying okay and being done with it.

"As opposed to last fall, is all I'm saying. I'm in a relationship."

"Why didn't you just say so to begin with?"

"We were working. It wasn't really the right time."

"Or maybe subconsciously you wanted to see if I'm still interested," she suggested. "But as I'm sure you remember, I'm not shy. I'm definitely interested."

"And I'm sorry, but I'm not."

"Are you sure?"

"I've never been more sure of anything in my life."

"Okay," she conceded at last. "If you change your mind…"

"I won't."

I hung up quickly and stared at the phone for a moment, and then jammed it in my pocket and joined the others.

"Done," I stated firmly.

Liz opened her mouth to ask me about it, but one of her assistants came into the room.

"Hey, Doc. Your friend's on the TV," he said as he went over to the little nineteen inch television that's mounted in the corner of the room.

He flipped it on and changed the channel, and suddenly there was Alex.

"…it was unknown to them at that time that the suspect actually has an identical twin," she was saying.

"Who's she talking about?" Bobby asked sharply.

"I don't know," I mumbled.

We listened for a few more minutes until the answer became clear.

"I can't believe it. Martha Schuler has a twin…and she's acting like a career criminal. How'd I miss that?" Bobby muttered to himself.

"She's handling those reporters great," Liz remarked about Alex. "And she looks incredible. She's a natural, isn't she?"

"She's spitting nails," Bobby commented. "Look at her face."

I looked, but I didn't see it. But Bobby knows her better than anyone, so I didn't doubt him.

And she had every right to be mad.

The reporters were all over the whole Yuille-Alonzo thing, and surely she was sweating bullets about her own personal indiscretion.

But Liz was right.

She handled it all with grace and professionalism and after a few more minutes, she had the topic back on track.

We listened for awhile, and then Sarah came in with our photos.

"I hope this'll work for you," she said as she handed them to Bobby.

"They look great. Thanks," he told her, then he turned to me and said, "We'll get these on the air first thing in the morning and maybe somebody will call. We'll have to set up a tip line."

"Goren, your theory about the rope is right," Liz said, breaking into our conversation.

She'd continued working while the press conference was on, and she was currently standing next to the first victim.

"I've got one nylon thread embedded in her wrist," she stated as she plucked out the evidence with a pair of tweezers. "I'll have the lab match it up to the rope you got from the Volvo."

"Okay, so we can try to track the origin of the rope. We can work the stolen vehicle angle. We can get the girls' faces out to the public," I ticked off.

"And we start tracing back through Sally's life and see how she spent her last twenty-four hours. Since we have her identity, we have to start with her."

"And you can check on body-piercing shops for the naval ring," Liz added. "I got a close-up snapshot of it. It's a little unusual."

Since we had a plan, and it was nearly six o'clock on a day when lunch was non-existent, we decided to take a break and go to Pete's.

Bobby texted Alex, and Liz made the arrangements for the bodies to be taken back to the cooler, and then we left the morgue.

"Alex is coming," Bobby said as we went outside.

"You sound surprised."

"I am, a little. She would've had a busy day even without the song and dance the commissioner made her do. I mean, I'm glad she's coming. Otherwise I would've had to kidnap her from her office, so this just makes it easier."

Liz laughed and said, "Now there's something I'd like to see."

"Oh, it's not that hard," Bobby joked. "She's little. I just pick her up and throw her over my shoulder."

"Uh huh. And then she pulls her gun and shoots you in the ass," I added.

My hand was throbbing, so I pulled out the keys and tossed them to Bobby as we approached the car and then I walked around to the passenger side with Liz.

"So we're good?" I asked her quietly, trapping her against the door before she had a chance to open it.

"You tell me."

"I told her that I'm in a relationship."

"And she said…"

"She said something about calling her if I ever change my mind. But I assured her that's not going to happen. Unless you plan on dumping me. And even if you do, I'll be so heartbroken, I'll never look at another woman again."

She smiled at me and kissed me quickly and then said, "Okay then. We're good."

Her words were like music to my ears.

Because considering my past, this was probably one of the hardest obstacles we'd have to face.

And now that this first one was under my belt, I felt like we could handle anything that came our way.

TBC...