6° Of Separation: Cold Killer (PREVIEW)

Chapter 1

"Good morning Agent Lane." Supervisory Special Agent Alexis Lane nodded at the guard that passed her through security to the FBI headquarters in DC, and grabbed her gun and badge along with her bag and made her way to the elevator. She made it just as the doors were closing and slipped in, pressing the button to her floor. She sipped at her coffee, ignoring the fidgeting person beside her, other than a quick glance at the visitor's badge that they sported. By the time Alexis made it to the floor she needed, the visitor was long gone to the floor they wanted. Walking out of the elevator she cast her gaze around the bullpen. Her eyes locked onto her team's area, noticing that her SFA, Riley Sharp, was once again teasing Probationary Agent Enzo Peretti, and Breena Mercer, her third and final agent, was looking at them with amusement, but somehow still managed to have the paperwork that needed to be done stacked in a neat pile on the corner of her desk. The sight was something Special Agent Alexis Lane walked into more mornings than not, and it didn't bring her any surprise. The scene brought both fond feelings as well as a small hint of irritation.

While Lane knew the teasing that Sharp directed towards Peretti was affectionate teasing and showed that he cared, she also knew that as the youngest and newest, Peretti didn't have the experience that the rest of them did when it came to Sharp's affectionate teasing. The rest of them were used to it and just took it as the show of affection that it was. Sharp wasn't the best at heart to hearts, and used humor and teasing when he wanted to deflect or show that he cared. Learning when it was humor in an uncomfortable situation versus humor to show he cared was something that Lane had to learn over time;

It took her almost a year before the lead agent of the FBI's Military Crimes Unit, or MCU, learned that Riley Sharp wasn't just some wet behind the ears probie that goofed around and made jokes at everything. Alexis was both relieved and surprised that she didn't follow her first instinct and fired the young Texan, and let him return to serving onboard that Naval ship, a temporary assignment that his CO had given him, she later learned, because he was told that some of the drugs had gotten into his unit from that ship. She had given the man the benefit of the doubt and learned later on a particularly bad case involving children that Sharp's humor and jokes when working on a case were, more often than not, hiding the pain that he didn't want to share with the rest of the world. It was seven years until Sharp trusted her enough to not wear his usual mask when alone with her, and eight until she was trusted enough to be told his past. She didn't abuse his trust and never told a soul on what she was told. Lane knew that Sharp didn't want pity, so she showed her support in other ways. She made sure to be a pillar of support when a particularly harsh case popped up, letting him rant and rave when they were alone, letting him have dinner at her house and to stay in her guest room when she noticed those cases that had the goofball mask slipping. Alexis made sure that when a suspect was brought in during those times, Sharp was kept away as much as possible from them, using a myriad of excuses, her favorite being that the paperwork for losing a suspect would take weeks. Goofball he may be, but he was still a former Marine, even if he was medically discharged. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on who you were, the Marine doctor that said Riley could never shoot a gun properly again never met the force of Sharp's stubborn will to succeed. She had scooped the man up when she had been working on a drugs case on the USS Vulture, and he had helped her discover that not only was a lieutenant selling drugs, there was a drug ring on the large ship, including the fact that they made their own homemade meth lab in one of the thought-to-be off-limits rooms. It was one of the rare times that someone was able to figure out something so huge that Lane didn't even suspect going on in one of her cases, let alone explain it and follow leads when he had no prior experience in police work. He even personally handed her a report a day later before she left the ship, detailed and in triplicate.

All this went through her mind as she walked towards her teams' area of the bullpen, and tuned into the teasing;

"...Told ya' probie, you're gonna have to accept that I will always be a step ahead of you, and as good as you get, you can't beat me in any video game involving guns, let alone a real one,"