Elementary

Oxygen

A/N depicts a decaying body

Chapter 8: Oxygen

The clatter woke Taylor from her dream, from one of those lucid fantasies you never want to wake from. The one where you get the girl, the intimacy is electric passion, and every glance, smile, and touch is pure love.

She cuddled into a pillow while she mourned the missing dream girl. At the same time, a flash of brilliance saturated every inch of the room. The rain battered down with a steady, intense rhythm. One Mississi... the noise was deafening. The room felt like it buckled under the blast.

There was a freshness to the air for the first time she arrived in Danvers. It filtered in through the ajar balcony door and refreshed her body, damp from the hotness of the dream.

She thought about the dream girl in a recalled memory and wished it was here. She thought about sitting on the balcony of the 10th floor watching the rain while the dreamy brunette stepped from the room, naked as the day she was born, and strolled over with all the confidence in the world. Giving her that look, her clear blue eyes were full of needed desire. "I'm not finished with your body yet," She whispered into her ear, placing soft lips on her neck.

Taylor felt her tummy tighten and send a pulse between her legs. She slid her hand over her toned torso and let it slip below the waistband of her shorts.

She recalled the naked woman straddling her on the balcony. She closed her eyes as she tried to pull up the sensation of her teeth sinking into her collar and hands on her body. She gasped and pictured the dream girl teasingly pushing their fingers between her lips.

She moaned and smiled into the eyes of her lover. The ringing frustratingly broke through the fantasy, lifting her hand from between her legs, removing her from the memory and dream, and pulling her from Abigail Ward. Fuck. "Andersson."

"Andersson," She repeated the reception affected by the storm. "What? I can't really hear you. But if you're getting me up at..." She paused, removed the phone from her ear to glance at the time, then continued, "4:30 am on a Sunday... It must be important. What? No, give me 30 minutes. I need to shower."

She needed that cold shower for more than one reason this morning.

...

The FBI doesn't really do it covertly. I'm sure the teams who do that disagree; the wiretap guys and the undercover agents. But do we have to brand everything? She pulled on her issued rain jacket and baseball cap to keep herself from getting soaked on the way to the patrol car.

"I'll give you three guesses about what I do for a living." She joked with Carson, who had just picked her up.

He laughed, "Subtle."

"I couldn't make out what was being said on the phone. Just something about New England and Jenifer."

"We got a report of a body in the New England Water Park. We believe it's Jennifer."

"When? I mean, it's the middle of the night. Who finds a body in the middle of the night? When did you get the report?"

"A little after 2 am. A lifeguard who works there was trying to impress some girl he picked up. I think they were heading to the pool for sex."

"Lovely."

"Yeah, well. Anyway, the first weird thing was that the water features were on. But they hadn't really noticed until they headed for the cove."

A sheet of lightning illuminated the sky, momentarily breaking the conversation.

"Coconut Cove, I think they were aiming just to float around there while they did it. But that's when they saw the body just drifting around in a lazy river," The rumble in the distance denoted the storm had moved on.