Inamorata (12/36) – WMC fic

PAIRING: Lindsay/Cindy
DISCLAIMER: Characters, not mine. Story, mine.

She didn’t even make it all the way in before Agent Ashe was greeting her with what could be deemed a mild expression only in comparison to how violently he yanked the door open, nearly causing Lindsay to fall into the room.

“Is this the kind of FBI stuff you meant?” Ashe asked, holding a photograph in front of her.

The potent urge to crumple to the floor was hard to resist, but Lindsay put her hands to the doorframe on either side of her, commanding her arms to hold her up. She refused to go to her knees in front of him. Apparently, this was the night of pictures, though Jacobi’s had been considerably less distressing.

Slowly, Lindsay released her tight grip on the door’s molding with one hand to take the print, wondering what the probability was that it wasn’t authentic.

“It’s real. We checked,” Ashe informed her, as if reading her mind. “Now are we going to speed up this process?”

Tom walked up to them, noticed the picture in Lindsay’s hand, and tossed Ashe a look conveying his disapproval at his handling of the situation.

“Linds, we haven’t found anything yet, but the entire force is out there combing the streets. It won’t be long.”

Lindsay bobbed her head in what she hoped resembled a nod, swaying precariously as she let go of the doorframe completely

“Whoa,” Tom put his hand on her forearm. “Do you need to sit down?”

“No,” Lindsay shook her head, looking at Ashe. “Let’s get to work.”

Both Tom and Agent Ashe seemed surprised by the response, but Ashe was smart enough to take the opportunity while it was there.

How she made it into the interrogation room again physically she didn’t know, but mentally it was all about the photograph. Because now she could be sure that Cindy was alive. At least she was alive at the time of the picture. Cindy’s eyes were closed and she was way too pale. She almost looked like a wax doll. Anyone else may have been unable to tell if she was alive. But Lindsay could tell. And clearly Ashe thought so.

“Is there anything that strikes you about it? Anything that draws your attention,” Ashe questioned.

On the table before Lindsay, Cindy lay captured in the 8×10 border. Kiss-Me-Not had gone to a lot of trouble setting this scene.

Cindy wasn’t wearing the dress she’d been abducted in. She was dressed in period costume, a renaissance dress straight out of a storybook. So, he had stripped her, and it was difficult to not think about how much he might have touched her in the process, but she couldn’t. There would be time for that later.

The bed that Cindy was lying on was bona fide medieval too, a huge wooden canopy bed that had to be either an antique or specially made to look like one. It was cloaked in a heavy velvet curtain that matched the velvet coverlet, also from another era, though no way near as old as the bed itself.

“Have you checked on the bed?”

“They’re working on it,” Ashe responded, his arms crossed, as he watched Lindsay examine the photograph.

Cindy wasn’t in any way restrained. She didn’t have to be. She was lying almost peacefully, one arm by her side, the other draped gracefully across her waist, her head tilted just so, perfectly arranged. If she were to wake up, she could get up and walk right out of there. But she wouldn’t wake up. Not until he wanted her to. Whatever he’d given Cindy would continue to work. He was too proficient to make that kind of tactical error. Until then, he could do anything that he wanted with her, and she couldn’t even fight back. He had complete power over her.

“Lindsay?” Ashe prompted.

Other than those theatrical characteristics, other than Cindy, other than the blood that had been used to color her cheeks and lips, other than the fact that she was unconscious, was there anything that caught Lindsay’s attention?

Yes. The flowers did. She knew the flowers.

“The blood does, obviously. That’s gotten my attention every time.”

“We have no way of knowing if it’s hers or not,” Ashe offered.

“It’s hers.”

“And you know that how?”

Because it was always the woman’s own blood. But it was never from the blood that flowed later, like they had believed it to be the first time around. It was always from a pin prick in her left middle finger, rubbed across her lips and cheeks, painted on prior to the torture and the murder.

When Elaine Lewis had been discovered in that copper tub, they’d known right away to look for the pin prick. It was there.

On the first victim, Sarah Rice, the traces of blood, barely detectable after the stitches through her lips and the outdoor exposure played their part, had been found by Claire. But they’d missed the blood’s source. Not so on Melissa Paquin. As faint as it was, Claire noticed the tiny mark during her examination. For days, she had berated her preliminary mistake, convinced that if she’d just caught it the first time around, the tiny detail might have made all the difference. It wouldn’t have, but back then, they were blaming themselves religiously for any and all stumbles on the case, no matter how trivial. Lindsay wasn’t the only one who had convinced herself that she was to blame for Melissa’s death. The shame, warranted or not, was shared and intolerable. That, above all else, may have been what drove Jill and Claire away from the case. She, on the other hand, had to solve it. She couldn’t move on. Maybe if she had, they wouldn’t be here now.

Those were Lindsay’s thoughts.

“I just know” was all she said.

“Anything else?” Ashe pressed, seeming to sense her lack of candor.

Lindsay eyed the black calla lilies lying on the pillow next to Cindy’s head, a full dozen, for the most part still fresh.

“No,” she responded.

“Okay,” he huffed. He was already perceptibly displeased with the amount of help she was giving. “Any idea on the story?”

“Sleeping Beauty, Snow White,” Lindsay shrugged. “There are a lot of fairy tales with unconscious women in them. I can’t see where it matters all that much.”

“You think you’re supposed to wake her with a kiss?”

“I don’t know,” Lindsay responded quietly, her eyes returning to the photo, because she didn’t like the way that he’d asked. It seemed as if he was taunting her.

“If it’s Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, wouldn’t that be your part? Or are we still not discussing it?”

“What’s there to discuss? Clearly you’re aware that she’s my…” Lindsay paused not because she was uncomfortable, but because every word she could think of in the moment didn’t do it justice.

What Cindy had become to her was… everything. And it terrified her.

“Your friend with benefits?” Ashe supplied for her. “Your girlfriend? Your inamorata?”

One thing that not many people would guess about Lindsay was just how good she was at poker. She had bluffed more than a few of her co-workers out of a week’s pay, because she had, what others described as, a deceptive poker face. It wasn’t that people couldn’t read what she was thinking. She just had an incredible knack for making others believe she was thinking what she wanted them to believe she was thinking. If she had a royal flush, her face said she a hand full of low number cards, none of them matching. That trait proved incredibly valuable now.

Her eyes never left the photograph. She didn’t flinch or tense up. She didn’t even glance up. What she did do was start crying, just enough. Two or three tears that she quickly wiped away. The emotion was valid, but the timing was misleading, because she looked distracted. Other than those rare moments when she was completely on the edge of control, when would Inspector Lindsay Boxer let herself be seen crying by Agent Ashe?

“It would destroy you, wouldn’t it? If she died,” Ashe asked, quietly, as if they were sharing a secret.

“Actually, it’s harder knowing she’s still alive out there where I can’t find her,” Lindsay husked.

It wasn’t true, despite what she had said to Jacobi. At least with Cindy alive, there was a chance. If Cindy were dead, that would be it. For both of them. Lindsay would never survive it. She wouldn’t want to. But she knew it was what she needed to say.

Her eyes were stationary, but behind them, her mind was spinning through a thousand different scenarios. How could she get what she wanted?

“The flowers,” she finally uttered.

Ashe leaned across the table toward her. There was an exhilaration in the movement that wasn’t lost on Lindsay.

“What about them?” he asked.

“What do you think? Time frame?”

Because time was what she needed now.

“You mean like a countdown?”

“Right. I have until the flowers die to find her.’

At last, she looked up across the table. Agent Ashe’s eyes bore back at her. She could almost hear his thoughts processing.

“What would that give you, two or three days?”

“Tops,” Lindsay responded.

“That sounds reasonable,” Ashe said after a reflective pause.

“It’s not about her. It’s about me, right? He wants to torture me, doesn’t he?

“I think he does.”

No. You don’t think, Agent Ashe, Lindsay silently countered. You know.