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Author's Chapter Notes:
Beta'd by VampstasticA- thank you for everything you do. You are my rock, baby without you I wouldn't have made it this far.

The chapter is dedicated to Spufette. You have been my little cheerleader though this fic. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.

Disclaimer: Don’t own any charters of BtVS or AtS. I make not profit of them or my work. I just write because I like to. This is my story, any similarities are purely accidental to any other stories and it's partially derived from my own life experiences.
So is anyone still with me? Hope so…

For those of you who chose not to read the last chapter, do to its graphic nature, here’s what happened.

-Spike picked up Angel and Dru up from the airport. He wants to tell Angel about what’s going on with Buffy, but has a gut feeling that there’s more to it than just a simple battered wife case and doesn’t want to involve his best friend and in danger his life, just in case he’s right.
- While at working a double, Buffy can’t concentrate on what she’s doing because she’s too worried that Spike will show back up. She’s also scared about what Riley will do if he finds out about her going to the reunion and Spike.
-Meanwhile Sara, Buffy’s coworker and friend, has found herself in the middle of something she didn’t bargain for in the form of one Riley Finn being an incubus. Oh yeah and she spilled the beans about Spike looking for information about Buffy to him too. Which only got her chained to the bed of one very pissed off demon. And did I mention- she’s pregnant with his demon spawn?

*LOL* The things my mind comes up with late at night…. Anyways here’s the next part. Also there is no violence in this part just the barest mention of it. (a flash back from a previous chapter)

~*~*~


After dropping Dru and Angel at their hotel room Spike went to make some more phone calls back in his room. First he checked in with LT. Gunn unfortunately he wasn’t available so he left another message on his voice mail to call him back.

The next call was to Lindsay. He hoped he’d gotten more information on Riley and his family than he himself had found earlier.

“Anything?” Spike asked eagerly as the man on the other end of the line shut his office door for privacy.

“Yeah, I did. But I’m not too sure you’re going to want to hear it.” Signing Lindsay sat on his desk and looked out the window at the city skyline. “Are you’re really sure you want to get involved with this case, Spike?”

Spike’s face grew grim at the tone he heard in his former partner’s voice. They’d been though thick and thin together.

They’d made a wonderful team, one of the best in the country. It was one of the reasons why Lindsay had gotten the promotion to Head of the Paranormal Investigations in Los Angels. He’d been asked to come and build a team from the ground up based on several of the cases they’d solved together.

He’d asked Spike to come and be his second in command when Lindsay first found out, but he wouldn’t go. No, rather he couldn’t go. He felt he couldn’t leave New York without a paranormal expert.

He knew that tone well, it meant he was about to tell him something bad, really bad. “I really don’t have a choice, mate. Already told ya this is important to me.” He’d told him just about everything about this case, except who Buffy was.

“I know, I know…” the brunette detective sighed before plowing head first in to what he found. “First of all the Finn family is loaded, seriously loaded, which I assume you already know.”

After Spike confirmed that his suspicions, Lindsay continued. “Old money too, Riley’s great- great grandfather was part of the railroads as they expanded westward from what I can find. So it’s not surprising that they back some government officials.”

“Yeah, mate not telling me anything I don’t already know about. Get to the good stuff already.” Spike couldn’t sit still, he knew just from how much Lindsay was stalling that it was something big.

There was a long pause as he considered withholding the information. If what he found out got back to the wrong people it would be the end of his career, if not his life. But at the same time he felt like Spike did, he’d do just about anything to save the victim.

“Fine, but know this could get us both killed. On the surface the Finn family looks like an everyday next door neighbor, but their not. Over the last ten years there have been multiple missing person cases with ties to the Finn Modeling Agency. Both male and female alike, most of them in the last five to six years, strange but not alarming considering its Hollywood after all. Lot of actors, actresses and models come up missing around here.”

“Then there’s Riley himself. I can’t put my finger on it but something’s off here. First of all he’s the Vice President of the agency, and has been for the last eight years. But almost never comes in to work from what I gather. He’s supposedly “away” a lot in search of new models.”

“When I dug a little farther in to Riley’s past I found before he starting working for his parents’ company he was in the military for nine years. But that doesn’t make since if you compare that to his age, and how long he’s been working for the company and married to Buffy. It makes him at least thirty-three almost thirty-four, if not older. But definitely not twenty-nine like all the documents say he is.”

“Wait he can’t be that old. It would make him older than his half sister Gwen, she’s only thirty.”

“Right, so either Daddy Finn was playing around before Gwen’s mother left him or Riley isn’t a Finn. Take your pick, either way you look at it, it just doesn’t add up.”

“Right,” Spike said jotting down a few quick notes.

“I was a bit curious about this so I started digging in to Riley’s mother’s background. Seems as how this wasn’t her first marriage. It was her seventh. Want to take a guess what happened to the other six?”

“They all came up missing?” Spike asked as a horrible idea accrued to him.

“Not all, but must though. The others died of mysterious causes or at least they were suspicious. Julie Finn had even been interviewed on a few of them.”

“Black Widow?” Spike inquired referring to a case they’d worked on back in the day, where the wife was a serial killer who preyed on rich, powerful men and then killed them.

“I can’t say for sure, but if that’s the case she’s broken pattern. She’s been married to Richard Finn for the last twenty-nine years. All her other marriages lasted less than ten.”


~*~*~

Buffy was so nervous and distracted by the time the dinner rush started she didn’t know what to do. Let along what she was supposed to be doing. All day long she’s messed up orders but now it was getting so bad that customers were complaining. For the most part she regulars didn’t mind because they knew she wasn’t normal for the petite blond to be this way.

Normally Buffy could handle anything. Hell she’d even run the whole diner full of customers one night when they were in a pinch.

The door sounded again and Buffy did in fact jump this time, spilling the tray she was holding down the front of her on to the floor. Cursing under her breath she apologized to Lorne, one of the regulars then bent down to start cleaning up the mess.

She couldn’t live like this, no she told her self she was going to stop pretending and just not go to the reunion. It would be safer for all of them if she didn’t. Then that way Riley wouldn’t find out about Spike and he couldn’t hit her.

‘Yeah, like that’s gonna stop him? Oh please?’ her subconscious snorted at her as she placed the broken pieces of coffee mugs on her tray.

Returning to the counter she sighed. She knew that was true. Riley didn’t need an excuse to beat her. He did it just for fun when he wanted to.

‘We really need to find a way to get out of this…mess. He’s gonna end up killing you,’ her inner voice chided.

And just how am I going to do that? Last time I tried he nearly killed me…. And killed our unborn child. her heart clinched every time she though of it.

It had been more than four years since he’d thrown her down three flights of stairs at their old apartment in downtown Los Angels. It wasn’t long after that that Riley had forced her to move in to the grungy one bedroom apartment that they now lived in.

‘Well you could ask Spike for help, along with the others? You know Faith and Gwen want you out of there. Momma would most likely help as well as Giles.’


She considered that for a moment. She knew for a fact that the two brunettes would defiantly help. And so would the older couple that owned the restaurant. She knew how they both felt about Riley and how he treated her.

The Question was would Spike? Could she even ask him for help after all these years. Her thoughts drifted back to the night before when he’d shown up unexpected. He seemed to be the same Spike she remembered for the most part.

The only thing that was different was his eyes, they seemed lonely, lost if it were. The only exception to that was when they’d ran in to one another in the hall. There when they kissed she saw something else in his eyes- longing, love and hope.

It was why she had to run away, well that and she was terrified that Riley would find out.


Spike stood just inside the doorway watching Buffy, who seemed absorbed in thought, as she bustled around the packed diner. After all that Lindsay had told him about Riley, he was worried that something was going to happen to her.

And that was one thing he wasn’t going to allow.

He needed to concentrate on the facts of the case and not be consumed with fear over her safety if he was going to find a way to stop Riley and get her away from him for good.

Even seeing her didn’t loosen that knot in his stomach. He’d hoped the nagging feeling that something bad was going to happen would ease some if he knew she was safe- even if it was just for the moment.

But still his gut was telling him something bad was going to happen and soon by the tightness. So that meant he had to work fast.

After another moment of just observing her he slipped out, bound and determined to find Riley and put an end to the whole thing.

Turning back one last time to look at her he whispered, “Not gonna let anything happen to you, never again.” With that he headed out in to the growing dark of night.

Tbc.





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