TITLE: Temporary Girlfriend (16/20)
PAIRING: Lindsay/Cindy
DISCLAIMER: Women’s Murder Club does not belong to me. The characters do not belong to me. They are the property of James Patterson, 20th Century Fox Television and ABC. I have no problems with that as long as I can borrow them for short bursts and use them in pursuit of my own enjoyment. I am not trying to infringe. Though, I don’t know why anyone has a problem with fan fic. After all, it really is a compliment. If anyone wants to write fan fiction about my book, feel free.

(Cindy’s POV)

Cindy knew that Lindsay was extraordinarily busy. She knew that Lindsay was with Jacobi, surveying the crime scene, gathering evidence, and trying to help people. Logically, Cindy was well aware of the reason that Lindsay hadn’t called her. But every belated explosion she heard, whether they were discharging late by accident or were purposely set up that way to hinder rescue efforts, gave Cindy a start as if it was taking place right in the room with her. It would have really helped to know where Lindsay was.

After she’d showered and made sure that she had no injuries she was too in shock to feel, because she knew that’s what Lindsay would have told her to do, Cindy had taken up her current post. Several times she’d tried to move away from the window, to turn on the television for news, to start on the article, her article, the article Lindsay had invited her into and virtually handed her on a silver platter with a rose in a vase and a fresh-squeezed glass of orange juice.

This was a huge story. Downtown San Francisco Bombed, a front page feature if ever there was one. If anything could distract her, that should have been it. But, far from distracting her, she was instead too distracted to write it.

When she called her boss and told him that he needed to put someone else on the story because she couldn’t finish it in time, he was actually concerned. He thought that she’d been injured, a decent assumption considering how far she usually went to be entrusted with an assignment of this magnitude. When she told him that she wasn’t hurt, that she just couldn’t write it, he hadn’t given her as much grief as she’d been expecting. She agreed to call the reporter who picked up her discarded assignment to give a first person account of the incident, and spent the next forty-five minutes on the phone willingly giving her article up to someone else.

After that, she called Claire and Jill, because they’d both left voicemails and she knew that they were worried.

The entire time she was talking, she’d sat with the lights off, for better visibility, and stared out the window. Several fires were still burning, and the electricity seemed to be out in every property surrounding the hotel. Lindsay could be anywhere down below, and none of it looked safe.

Cindy was still sitting there in the silence and the darkness when the door finally opened. She whirled around to watch Lindsay walk in. Her eyes well-adjusted to the darkness, Cindy could see Lindsay pause at the sound, before continuing over to the light on the dresser and turning it on, dropping a little bag of medical supplies beside it.

Lindsay was head-to-toe filthy. There was a bandage on the side of her head right by her hairline, just as dirty as the rest of her and barely noticeable because of it. She looked tired and humorless and decidedly unapproachable. She was far from a site to behold. But Cindy beheld anyway, because Lindsay was alive, and before she had materialized in the room before her, it had been a question.

And the unapproachable was only in appearance. Cindy found that out when she rushed over to Lindsay and was met with open arms.

“I’m dirty,” Lindsay whispered, even as those arms closed around her.

Cindy buried her face in Lindsay’s chest anyway, the tears that she had been too tense to cry suddenly coming forth in torrents.

“Shhh,” Lindsay gently breathed over and over.

When the tears let up at last, Lindsay took her by the arms and gently pushed her back. She glanced down at Cindy’s, now dirty, clothes, and managed a subdued, but honest smile, before raising her hand toward Cindy’s cheek as if to wipe it clean. She seemed to realize that her dirty hands would do more harm than good, and never made contact, but Cindy could feel the phantom touch as if it were there.

“Let me shower, okay?”

Though there was nothing she wanted less than Lindsay out of her sight again, Cindy mutely nodded her consent.

“Okay,” Lindsay said softly, before walking off into the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

For a while, Cindy just stood there, staring at the bathroom door, afraid that if she stopped looking, Lindsay might vanish from behind it. When she did move, it was to go to the mirror, where she saw what had managed to get a smile out of Lindsay. She’d stolen quite a bit of her grime.

She went to the sink outside of the bathroom and washed her hands and face. As she was changing clothes, she realized that Lindsay didn’t take anything into the bathroom with her, so she found the t-shirt and shorts Lindsay had been sleeping in, snuck in silently, and left them on the counter.

Not long after, Cindy heard the shower shut off and the sound of the blow dryer, and then Lindsay finally reappeared. She went over to the supplies she’d left on the dresser, and Cindy rushed to meet her there, putting her hand over Lindsay’s to stop her.

“Let me do it.”

Lindsay looked over at her, just looked, for the longest time. Then, she went to the bed and sat down on it.

Cindy reached in the bag, pulling out everything that she’d need. She ripped the packaging of the gauze open with her teeth on her way to the bed.

Lindsay watched her every move.

“How many stitches?” Cindy asked, looking at the small dark lines moving back into Lindsay’s hair line.

“Just eight.”

Now it was Cindy’s turn to smile.

“That’s all, huh?”

She put a dab of antibiotic ointment on the gauze - there had been way too much ointment this week - then held the gauze at the edge of Lindsay’s hair and taped it down.

When she was finished, Lindsay wordlessly moved to the head of the bed, pulling the covers down, and slid beneath them. Cindy turned the light off, immersing the room into darkness again and went to her side, climbing in beside her. She felt Lindsay’s hand on her back and the subtle tug urging her closer, and settled against Lindsay’s side. Her head came to rest on Lindsay’s shoulder, her arm sliding across Lindsay’s waist. Lindsay’s arm around her back was gentle but sturdy.

There was long enough of a lull that Lindsay could have fallen asleep, but Cindy could tell by her breathing that she hadn’t.

“I was so scared,” she admitted.

“I’m sorry.”

Lindsay didn’t mean for making her worry about her. She meant for bringing her into the situation in the first place. If the atmosphere had been different, Cindy might have laughed.

“You do realize that, if you hadn’t brought me with you, Jill would have told me you were undercover and I would have followed you here anyway, right?”

She felt Lindsay’s quick exhalation stir the hair on the top of her head. Under different circumstances, that would have been a laugh too. But Lindsay didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. They both new that’s exactly how it would have gone down.

“Did anyone die?” Cindy asked quietly.

After a long silence, in which Cindy wondered if she’d actually get an answer, Lindsay simply said “Yes” without expanding on the subject.

“How many people?”

“Twenty-three.”

The knot formed in Cindy’s throat instantly, at the fact that people had died, that it was so many of them, and that she was so selfishly grateful that none of them were Lindsay.