A/N: Alright, here's the last chapter for today... It's still setting up a few things for later... hope I don't bore you too much. Have a fabulous night everyone!


Shortly after 8 p.m., Jane and Maura sat at their preferred table in the Division One Café on the ground floor of Boston Police Headquarters, both with a plate of fries and veggies in front of them. The detective rested her head on her hand and absentmindedly stared into the distance. The medical examiner gave her a worried look.

"Still got your headache?"

"Nah, it's okay," Jane sighed. Her hangover from the previous night was indeed gone, but she would rather have another wine-induced headache than those nagging worries filling her mind. Save me. Save me. She still couldn't get those words and the pictures of Karen Newman out of her head. She wanted to save her, and she could certainly use a positive outcome after several weeks of rather depressing cases at work, but somewhere deep inside, she already knew they wouldn't find the woman in time. She peeked at Maura and watched her relish some of the crispy, golden fries. Despite spending most of her days examining dead people and determining their often tragic causes of death, Maura still managed to preserve her positive outlook on life and usually lifted Jane's mood as well. Over the past few weeks, however, Jane had found it increasingly difficult to ignore all the tragedy and despair that she encountered on a daily basis. She wasn't really sure why or when it had started. Maybe she just needed a break, a few days of vacation. Geez, I would even consider joining Maura for another of her spa weekends with mudbaths and fancy lemon water, Jane thought.

"Are you thinking about that woman?" the medical examiner pulled her out of her thoughts and studied her face.

"We won't find her in time, Maura."

Before Maura could respond, Angela Rizzoli snuck up to their table. "What woman?" the always-exuberant Rizzoli matriarch inquired with feigned casualness.

"A kidnapped woman who's probably dying as we speak," Jane explained with a heavy voice that instantly wiped all joy from Angela's face.

"Oh."

Maura soothingly placed her hand on Jane's. "Come on, we don't know that yet. Try to stay positive."

The detective arched her eyebrows. "Yeah, tell that to Karen Newman." Slightly taken aback by her own cynical tone, Jane caught Maura's and Angela's concerned looks and forced a smile. "Sorry, I'm just having a really bad day."

Her motherly instincts kicking into full force, Angela stepped closer, ready to give Jane the hug she needed more than anything right now. Or at least that was how Angela interpreted the situation. Jane, however, immediately squirmed away with an annoyed groan.

"Ma, no! Not here!"

Visibly disappointed, Mama Rizzoli pouted her lips and settled for a brief comforting squeeze of her daughter's arm. "Can I at least bring you a milkshake to make you feel better?"

"Yes," Jane said with a conciliatory smile. "Thanks, Ma."

The good soul of the Division One Café scurried away and disappeared through the kitchen door behind the counter.

When Jane still didn't pay any attention to the food in front of her and instead let her eyes aimlessly wander around, Maura decided to give her one last push. "Those fries are really good. I might have to eat yours, too, if you don't want them."

Unable to resist the medical examiner's endearing smile, Jane finally gave in and began to eat her fries. "Don't you dare."

As soon as the warm food reached her taste buds, the detective actually begun to enjoy the rather spontaneous dinner and the relaxing company of her best friend. At least for a little while, her worries about the case were forgotten and, much to Maura's delight, her face brightened up a little.

Just moments later, another distraction in the form of Lieutenant Sean Cavanaugh entered the café. With his calm and reserved demeanor, he could easily be mistaken for an accountant or a city clerk, but behind his soft crust hid the strong heart of a man who had once loved and lost but nevertheless got back up every time someone knocked him down. The lieutenant shyly looked around, searching for the woman who was still in the kitchen preparing a milkshake for her daughter.

Jane suspiciously watched her boss, and when their eyes briefly met, he gave her a polite nod before sliding onto a stool at the counter to wait for Angela.

Noticing Jane's uncomfortable stare, Maura turned her head until she spotted Cavanaugh and realized the cause of Jane's concern. "Oh, looks like my guest house will remain dark again tonight."

"Again?" Jane grimaced. "How often has she been out with him lately?"

"How would I know? I'm not spying on your mother, Jane," Maura declared indignantly, but Jane's piercing look immediately made her fess up. "Well… It's been quite a few times…"

Jane rolled her eyes and groaned. A second later, Angela emerged from the kitchen, a strawberry milkshake in her hands, and instantly locked eyes with Cavanaugh. The two lovebirds exchanged a quick kiss, and the older Rizzoli woman absentmindedly put the milkshake on the counter while giggling at the sweet-nothings the lieutenant kept whispering into her ears.

"So much for my milkshake," Jane sighed.

"You should be happy for her," Maura recommended.

"Why?" The detective squealed in her phoniest teenager imitation with added jazz hands. "Because I'll soon be getting a new daddy?"

Maura suppressed a chuckle. "No, but she's been through so much…"

"I know, I know," Jane conceded.

"Besides," the medical examiner added, "statistically speaking, at her age, your mother only has a 23% chance of remarrying. Even less if she prefers a partner who is still mentally and sexually able to fulfill all her needs."

"Eww, stop!" Jane shrunk back in disgust. "I'm officially putting my mother's needs on the list of things you're not allowed to talk about while we're eating."

They both laughed and decided to let Angela and Cavanaugh have a moment to themselves.

"I am happy for her though," Jane added in all honesty before reaching for another of her fries. Maura rewarded her with an approving smile, but their sweet moment of relief was interrupted when Frost rushed into the café and headed straight to their table as soon as he spotted them.

"We just got a third e-mail," he blurted out but then hesitated when he realized that his sudden arrival had interrupted the two women's first meal in hours. Jane still held her fork with two fries halfway to her mouth in anticipation of his bad news. Frost hated having to ruin their night, but he had no choice. "Karen Newman is dead."

Maura's face darkened and she worriedly glanced at Jane. The detective let her fork sink back down and pushed her unfinished food away. "Damn."


As Jane, Maura, and Frost emerged from the elevator and re-entered the homicide squad's bullpen, Korsak was standing bent over Frost's computer and squinting at an expanded e-mail header filling the screen. Clearly, the cryptic list of X-envelope data, MIME types, TNEF correlators, return paths, and numerous other information sounded like Klingon to him.

"Let me see," Jane asked tersely.

Korsak stepped aside, knowing quite well that this was not the time for elaborate courtesies. "Same style as before," he announced dryly.

Jane clicked away the header information and opened the e-mail's attachment. When another photo like the ones they had already received earlier that day popped up, the lifeless body of Karen Newman filled the screen. She lay on a wooden floor, her ashen skin dipped in a pool of her own dark red blood, which had already begun to dry. Her eyes were closed, her fingers clenched in one last attempt to hold onto her life. Except for the missing crime scene markers, the picture easily could have been mistaken for an official evidence photo from any given murder case.

And similar to the previous photos, the gruesome scene in this final picture came with a plain two-word caption: TOO LATE.

For a moment, Jane, Maura, Frost, and Korsak just stared at the screen, hanging their heads in a mix of anger and frustration.

Too late. The words reverberated through Jane's mind. Too late. I couldn't save her. She was used to dealing with the most horrendous crimes, with violence and anger, with death and despair. But being forced to watch idly how an innocent woman slowly died alone in the dark corner of a room probably not very far away had ruthlessly ripped her out of her comfort zone. She needed to act, to go out there, to fulfill her duty and save those she had vowed to protect. But today, she couldn't do anything. And it tore her apart inside. I couldn't save her. I failed.

Maura instinctively sensed the detective's inner turmoil. She comfortingly patted Jane's arm and felt her touch ease the brunette's tension right away. At least for now. But given Jane's often withdrawn behavior over the past few weeks, she wondered how long her best friend would let her worries eat her up inside before finally finding the courage to confide in her.

"We still don't know where those e-mails are coming from?" Jane asked.

Frost shook his head. "No. Whoever is behind this relayed them multiple times, sent them through different anonymizers, stripped off all traceable data, and eventually used hijacked computers to deliver his messages."

Korsak gave his younger colleague a blank stare. "In plain English?"

"We have no way to determine the exact origin of those e-mails," Frost conceded.

Their gloomy gathering was interrupted by the simultaneous beeping of their phones. And as they checked their displays, whatever optimism had still been lingering in the room was instantly gone. Just like the life from Karen Newman's body.

Jane swallowed hard but tried to keep her composure. "Well, looks like we have a body."


It was close to 10 p.m., dark and drizzling, when Jane's blue sedan arrived at the crime scene near the Neponset River Reservation in the south of Boston. The detective was behind the wheel, with clenched fingers and narrow eyes, and maneuvered past several parked police cars as well as two TV vans with half a dozen reporters anxiously pacing up and down. Next to her, Maura sat tensely in the passenger seat, already gathering her bag and equipment needed for her preliminary examination of the body at the scene.

When they reached a police road block close to Cedar Grove Cemetery, Jane rolled down her window and waved her badge at one of the two officers guarding the road. "Rizzoli, Homicide," she announced, then pointed at Maura. "And this is Dr. Isles, Chief M.E."

The cop nodded, pulled the road block out of the way, and signaled her to pass through. Once Jane's sedan had made it past the two uniformed men, they put the road block back into place and dutifully held out in the rain.

Moments later, Jane stopped her car by the roadside and quickly grasped the flurry of activity unfolding in front of them. The area had been sealed off and several men in uniform as well as half a dozen Crime Scene Response Unit techs were busy examining and documenting the scene.

Jane reached for a styrofoam cup in the holder on the dashboard and took a sip of her still steaming coffee. My highlight of the night, she gloomily thought to herself and gave the medical examiner a heavy-hearted smile. "Let's go."

The two women got out of the car and marched straight up to an opening in the bushes close to the road where most CSRU techs had already gathered. For a split second, Jane hesitated when she spotted the body from afar and all those nagging doubts crept back into her mind. Save me. Save me. Her face darkened. I'm sorry. I failed.

"You okay?" Maura nudged the detective and studied her face while putting on a pair of blue nitrile gloves.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine." Jane straightened up and decisively approached the body on the ground, hoping that the medical examiner would soon be distracted enough by her task at hand and not notice that Jane was anything but fine. Just keep it together and let's get this over with!

Three steps farther into the bushes, they reached Karen Newman's dead body in the wet grass, partly covered by the first fallen leaves of the season. The rain had smudged her mascara, and her blouse was now stained with a dark blend of her own blood and the dirt of her surroundings. Strands of her hair had gotten entangled with thin branches of wood, and her hands were still tied with those white zip cuffs. Her body had been carelessly thrown away like a bag of trash.

As Jane stood there and watched Maura kneel down to begin her preliminary examination, one of the cops at the scene stepped closer. Jane recognized him as Officer Bradbury, a greenhorn with potential whom she had met before at various other crime scenes. She nodded politely. "Who found her?"

Officer Bradbury wiped a few raindrops from his forehead. "Some guy living nearby. Was walking his dog when the mutt suddenly pulled away and wouldn't stop barking. He's already at the station giving his statement. We also found fresh tire tracks, possibly from the car of whoever dumped her here."

Jane looked around even though she couldn't see very far in the dark. The area was dominated by trees with only few houses scattered in between. As she let her eyes wander back towards the direction they had come from, Korsak and Frost joined them at the scene.

"Cozy little spot to get rid of a body, huh?" the older sergeant remarked and shook his head in disgust.

"Her body temperature is 90.3," Maura announced and removed the thermometer from the dead woman's liver. "Rigor has already set in. She's been dead for approximately three to four hours."

"So, there's no significant delay between her kidnapping and death and the e-mails we received," Frost deduced.

Jane nodded. "Yeah, and given the afternoon rush hour and the time it takes to get her out of the house, into a car, and then dump her without being seen — she must have been held within a radius of… what? Ten miles?"

"Maybe less," Korsak agreed. "But still a huge area…"

While the detectives discussed the killer's possible whereabout, Maura lifted up the dead woman's blouse and carefully examined the wound to her abdomen. The blood had dried for the most part, and the incision was neatly visible. "She bled out." She carefully pulled up the victim's skirt and checked her thighs and genital area for any signs of sexual abuse. "No exterior signs of rape," she continued.

"What about those bruises on her head?" Korsak asked as he was still curiously studying the body, whereas Frost had discreetly withdrawn to check out the surroundings.

The medical examiner carefully wiped a strand of hair off the woman's right temple and touched the swelling with her gloved hands. "Blunt force trauma…"

"They probably knocked her out when they kidnapped her," Jane guessed. "She's already had those bruises in the first photos."

A few moments later, Maura completed her preliminary examination and closed her bag. "I'll do the autopsy first thing in the morning," she promised, exhaustion from the long day with its unfortunate ending written all over her face.

Korsak suppressed a yawn. "Alright, we should all get some sleep. There's nothing we can do right now." He helped Maura up and went after Frost to inform him of the end of his duty for the day.

As two CSRU techs bagged the lifeless body of Karen Newman and wheeled her off, Jane, Maura, Frost, and Korsak gathered back together and returned to their cars. On their way, Frost checked his PDA. "I'll keep an eye on our mailboxes and check back with the lab about their tracing analysis. I'll let you know in case I hear anything new."

"Thanks, Frost," Jane said with a tired smile. "I'll see you in a few hours."

Frost and Korsak waved goodnight, got into their car, which was parked right behind Jane's sedan, and drove off into the night. Jane leaned against her own car and absentmindedly stared into the darkness.

"Jane?" Maura asked from the other side of the car.

The detective shrugged and gave the medical examiner a worried glance. "I don't think this is over. This is just the beginning," she said in a quiet, husky voice.

Maura simply nodded in silence. She wasn't one to guess, but throughout this awful day, she had seen enough to be able to conclude that Jane was right.