5.

The next morning Clarke woke up early, still wearing her light blue singlet and pajama pants, and made a cup of coffee before she ventured into the living room and sat down on the couch to relax and smoothly ease into her day. On the top of coffee table sat the brown box with 'Good times' written on it, waiting for her to open up. She knew what she had to do because this was it. The moment of truth or rather moment where she had to chose which path she was going to take from here on and finally get the chance to move on with her life just like Lincoln stated.

Continue denying who I really am and force myself to simply live the quiet ordinary life as an outcast and an art gallery owner/artist? Or go back to being the private eye that I really was and change everything?

Clarke breathed in and out, while clenched and unclenched her hands in order to calm down her nerves.

Come on, Clarke. Are you ready to go down that road? Start up the pleasurable yet dangerous and addictive drug that made your life a mess in the first place? Because once you take that first taste, there is no turning backs and no stopping it.

After thinking about it for a long time she finally reached the decision to open the box and face the demons inside. Well, you know what they say, 'Once a junkie, always a junkie.'

The first thing she took out of the box was her old black leather jacket that had a bluish hue to it, it used to be her signature outfit during her old PI days, and somehow looking at the jacket brought a recollected smile on her face before she put the jacket away and continued scorching through the rest of the box's contents. Her old private eye tools were there, her camera, her mics and wires. Even her old taser was in there. (At the time she was too young to be allowed to carry a gun and honestly she didn't like to use them either. Never really been that huge fan of violence, but the taser was a reassurance her father provided for her as protection when she began her sleuthing ways.) There was other trinkets there as well, a couple of drawings, childish rings won at the local carnival, and also old photographs.

She wanted to look at the photos, she really wanted to, but decided against it. She knew all too well that it was a bad idea, so she let the photos be and put most of the things back in the box again. However she kept the jacket and her PI things, knowing herself all to well she was bound that she was going to need it when she began poking her nose around.

Monty had politely, yet frustrated explained to him that there identification software was going to take some time and that hovering over him and wait for results were definitely not going to help speeding up the process. When Bellamy asked the answer he received was between a few hours to many days, in other words that was he was at a dead end there as well.

So he had no other choice except retrieve back for the evening and return back to work in the morning, with hope that the coroner was finally finished with his autopsy or at the very least gave them a lot more clues to go on then they had at the moment.

He slept for a few hours, not much due to his thoughts being occupied by the case as well as the mystery of Clarke's return, and he came down to the station first thing in the morning with Miller sitting at his desk, that was next to his, waiting for him. That's a first. Miller always comes after me. He's notoriously known here at the department to be the one who arrives late to work, but never at crime scenes or when his presence really matters. So I'm guessing that the reason why he's here now is because something has happened.

"Is the coroner finished with the autopsy or at least worked out the cause of death?" Bellamy asked, while he sat down at his chair by his desk. "Because besides that, you wouldn't normally be here up and early like a little solider on duty."

"Hardy-har-har," Miller rolled his eyes and handed over a brown file. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, and instead tell you that the coroner called a few minutes ago."

He took the file, opened it and began reading its content. "What did he find out?"

Miller shrugged his shoulder before he folded his arms against his chest. "Not much. It will take some time to determine what exactly happened to our Jane Doe, but he disclosed the possibilities that she was shot, stabbed, choked or drowned. He's sent a sample of her blood to toxicology, and is now only waiting for the results to come back. So in the meantime he's doing a rape kit to see whether our Jane Doe was sexually assaulted prior to her death."

Fantastic. That's really helpful. What other possibilities was there that explained how she dies? Although I'm certain we can disclose the possibility that a CareBear killed her. The only assault they would do is annoy me out of my mind, and besides it's not like those colorful bears had the guts to rape someone. Whoever killed her; possibly even raped her was someone far more mentally disturbed than a freaking CareBear herd. Bellamy thought sarcastically before he sighed annoyed and almost threw the file on his desk. "And I'm guessing that we don't know who she is either, seeing as you continue to call her Jane Doe?"

Miller nodded. "Yeah, according to the coroner our girl haven't had dental work done for several years and her finger prints haven't popped up any flags in the database either, so you can assume that she either doesn't have a criminal record or anyone missing her."

Orphan maybe? That's one explanation to why no family members have claimed their girl missing, considering this is a very small town and pretty much everyone knew or at least would have heard about one another. And then there was also the fact in this town words traveled fast and wouldn't have take long to discover whether the girl was dead or missing, and certainly what her identity was. A couple of other explanations could be that she was invisible, someone no one cared about or would bother to miss, or if she was a tourist visiting town. Again if the latter was the right alternative then people were bound to at least know something about her. And if it was the former, then this case was going to go on a whole another level of difficulty.

Bellamy sighed. So they were pretty much reaching dead ends, which frustrated him enough that he wanted to punch someone's eyes out, preferably one blond-haired princess who seemed to cause emotions he didn't want to deal with, but there was no way he could do that unless he wanted to get arrested himself for assault and possibly lose his job. Which brought back the other mysterious question regarding the case.

"Have you found any connections or reasons to Clarke? Besides being a possible yet unlikely suspect, is there any reason why her name would be written on a dead body like a personal signature?"

Miller hadn't, not that he expected him to since the guy didn't know that much about Clarke and her affiliations, so Bellamy made a mental note to check up on that lead later. But for now the only alternative they could do about the case right now was to go and talk to the locals as well making a few phone calls to other police departments and see if they knew anything.

"I'm glad you decided to do this again," Lincoln said, while standing in front of the police station with her. "I really am, but I have to ask why are we here? More importantly, why am I here?"

Clarke smiled and shrugged her shoulders, thinking how easy it had been donning into her leather jacket again with her dark skinny-jeans and boots to match. What more was how easy it was to slip into her private eye mind of thinking, and right way know which direction she was going to start her investigation. It was unbelievable, really. She had fought a hard battle when she gave it up, but it was so easy and fun that she found herself more at ease with herself. Although she was not guilt free, never would be, but she felt like she was finding herself again and the last three years had been about forgetting and losing yourself. Anyways that's the reason why the two of them were standing outside the police station, with a specific plan in mind.

"Well…here's the thing. In order for me to poke into the police's investigation I need to get certain type of information, and to get that information I need to talk to the coroner. And seeing as the police, more specifically Detective Blake, wouldn't voluntarily give me the information so I need to take certain measures in order to get it. The thing about that plan is that the police don't find out about what I'm doing and get me arrested for it, and that's where you come in."

A deep frown appeared on his face, obviously not comfortable about what she was insinuating and yet he didn't openly reject to it either, and asked carefully. "What exactly did you have in mind?"

"Distract them, keep their attention occupied and away from me until I'm finished." Clarke said coolly, even though there were few quirks about the plan that made her uneasy, especially leaving Lincoln to deal with Bellamy and the police because he had mentioned before that people treated him like a savage as soon as they heard about his affiliation to her. And she didn't want to be an even worse friend and make his stay here in town harder than it already was.

Lincoln was quiet a moment, thinking over the proposition before he nodded. "Okay, I'll do it. But what exactly am I supposed to distract them with, I mean I really don't have any reason to be there, let alone talk to the police. Wouldn't my presence alert them that something fishy is going on?"

Good point. Bellamy would know something was off the minute he saw Lincoln, and not her, and that alone would lead to him to jump on the caravan to track her down, which was the last thing she needed right now.

Clarke pondered about a good and reasonable excuse for Lincoln to be at the police station, going over several ideas that went from bad to maybe believable at best. Then settled with the excuse that he was there to pay some of her old parking tickets. Apparently she forgot to pay them before she skipped town, and seeing as the police couldn't track her down the tickets remained unpaid, which was a good and reasonable excuse that even Bellamy couldn't argue with. And if anyone asked why he was doing it, and not her, then he would use the perfect excuse. That she was avoiding the townspeople, which was perfect considering the huge mess she left behind, and no one would question him about it.

So she handed him a couple of bills and let him walk into the station first, in order to not ruse any suspicion, and followed behind him. They separated by the elevators and the stairs; he took the elevator up meanwhile she took the stairs down to the lower level of the building where the morgue was located.

Octavia Blake described herself proudly as a strong-willed person, with a short temper that could literally push anyone's buttons if she pushed them hard enough. Her brother was one of many who had the honor of that experience first hand, which frustrated Bellamy to no end yet loved her all the same. The feeling was mutual and made their relationship stronger, especially considering that they were the only family they had with their mother dead and neither of them knew their biological father, but all in all she appreciated having her brother in her life.

Although what she didn't appreciate was that her brother would work for several hours and skip meals, and the worse part is that he didn't seem to see the problem with it and only reprimanded her if she did something along those lines. That is why she was at the station, leaving a lunch box at his desk for him to eat when he came back from wherever he was, and was just about to enter the elevator and go down when she accidently walked into someone. She looked up to see a muscular man, with brown skin, brown eyes and tribal tattoos on many parts of his body. The shaven head hid his original hair color, but she had a feeling that it had at one time been dark brown or black. But never mind his handsome appearance, she quickly estimated that he was an outsider because she didn't recognize him, and trust her when she would say that she would have remembered someone like him.

"Sorry," Octavia apologized, with awkwardness and embarrassment. "I should have watched where I was going."

That man hadn't taken his gaze off her and smiled sincerely, "It's all right. No harm done." Then he held out his hand to introduce himself. "I'm Lincoln Woods. What's your name?"

She smiled sincerely back at him, feeling a certain heat building up inside of her. "My name is Octavia. Nice to meet you, Lincoln."

Very nice indeed.

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Thank you guys so much for the reviews, favorite and followings, and I'm glad so many of you got interested in my story. So I hope you guys like the this chapter, and the next one will be out next week.

Clearly I don't own either the series, they belong to their respective owners.

Also I like to add that there are and will be grammar errors in this story, I had forgotten to mention before, and not a perfect writer and I don't have a Beta to fix it for me (which I have no intention on getting anyways), so if people have issues with that then you just have to live with it, okay? I write and release this mainly to entertain you guys as well release some of my creativity.

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xXrebelgirl07Xx