Oliver was talking to her, she knew, but she couldn't focus. Couldn't hear his words above the empty roar in her head. She was being pulled in a million different directions at once. The forensic specialist in her wanted to grab cones and point out every little piece of evidence that could mean something. The doctor who'd graduated third in her class knew she was in shock, knew that the numbness she was feeling was her mind and body's way of protecting her. The cop's girlfriend struggled to be strong, struggled to keep herself together, to keep herself whole so that when Gail came back to her, she'd be proud of how strong Holly had been.
When Gail came back to her.
When.
… "undercover right now. They're trying to contact him as we—"
"No," Holly said, standing up and shrugging off the blanket the EMTs had wrapped around her, "no. Gail wouldn't want that, wouldn't want to pull Steve out. Oliver, tell them, tell them that Gail would hate it."
The look on Oliver's face was sad, "Darling—"
"Oliver, she'd hate it, you know that." Gail would, Holly knew it. Gail was a Peck, and as much as her girlfriend hated the heavy baggage that name came with, Holly knew that Gail wouldn't appreciate months of hard police work being wasted. She'd be so angry when she came home, that something that major had been interrupted just for her.
"Holly, honey," he said and laid a hand on her shoulder.
But the numbness had been broken, and reality was starting to slip in through the cracks.
"Oliver, you can't. Tell them, you can't. Gail will be so angry, and her parents, they won't understand. She doesn't want to disappoint them, she hates it disappointing them. Ollie, tell them."
Some part of her brain recognizes that she's become hysterical, but she can't help it. She's lost any semblance of control. Rationally, she knows they need to pull Steve out, that Elaine and Bill will want him with them as they wait for their daughter to be returned to them. That no one will blame Gail for anything at all. But her girlfriend is missing and their home was compromised and Holly hasn't had a rational thought in her brain since the moment she opened the door and found a masked man tying her unconscious girlfriend up in the entryway to their apartment.
She's crying now, wild tears that burn down her face. She wonders if they'll scar, they feel so hot against her skin.
"Oliver, please. Please."
He looks lost, like he doesn't know what to do.
"Holly," she hears a soft voice say from behind her, with a firm but gentle hand on her arm.
Elaine's voice.
Elaine's hand.
This is what breaks her, what makes her tired limbs go limp. She collapses back down onto the couch where Oliver had been taking her statement while the EMT checked her over.
Elaine sits down next to her and Holly is too far gone to hide the surprise in her eyes. This isn't the Elaine Gail has talked about; this isn't the polite but cool woman who hosts Peck Family Dinners every month, or the hard police officer who Gail has never truly been able to please. This isn't the distant professional woman Holly's interacted with at work, or the disapproving one who'd told Holly that she could do better than a beat cop with no ambition.
No, this isn't any of those women.
This is a mother, a mother faced with the reality that one of her children may not be coming home. A mother suddenly faced with all of the missed chances and wrong turns she'd made with her child, and the realization that she may not be granted a second chance to make amends.
"Oliver," Elaine says, her voice wavering, "pull Steve out."
It's then that everything hits home for Holly.
That a serial killer has her girlfriend.
That Gail may never be coming home.
She starts to cry harder, and Elaine pulls her close, wraps her arms around the doctor's body and holds her close. And in that moment, Holly knows.
Elaine doesn't expect Gail to come home at all.
Her thoughts are foggy, and everything feels heavy. She wants to roll over into the heat of Holly's body and ask how much they'd drunk the night before, but she doesn't think she can muster the energy. She's tired, so tired, and even though she can't see the alarm clock to get the time, she knows she's got a few more hours of blissful unconsciousness before she has to get up for work.
So she closes her eyes again and lets sleep take her back under.
When Holly wakes, she's in a hospital bed.
The last thing she remembers is crying into the expensive silk of Elaine's shirt. Telling them that she didn't need to go to the hospital, that she wasn't hurt. Just a cut on the head from where she'd collided with the coffee table when Gail's assailant had thrown her off his back. The sharp pinch of a needle in the crook of her arm—oh.
He'd drugged her.
She'd forgotten about that.
She needs to tell someone, needs to tell them immediately.
She's rustling about looking for the call button when the door opens, throwing a shaft of harsh hospital lighting across the dark room as Elaine enters.
"Elaine," she says desperately, "drugs, you need to have them check my blood for drugs. Some kind of sedative."
She comes to sit by the bed.
"We know, Holly. A ketamine mixture. Same as he's used on all the others. You should be fine, the doctor said it wouldn't have any lasting effects. We've got people tracking down suppliers and buyers in the past few months."
They haven't found Gail yet then.
"How long," she asks, not sure what she's asking.
But Elaine seems to understand.
"According to the timeline you have us, Gail's been missing for almost eight hours now. The ketamine knocked you out for a bit, so it's been about five hours since you called 911. You've been asleep for almost two, though not straight through. The nurses have been come in to wake you. When you hit your head, you got a pretty nasty concussion."
But Holly already knew that.
What she doesn't know is what happened. How she ended up in the hospital. How a mad man ended up in their home. How Gail ended up missing.
How her whole life fell apart in an instant.
"Others," Holly asks, trying to ignore the throbbing in her head, "what others? What happened? What's going on?"
Gail's mother takes a deep breath and sits up straight in the chair. It's almost amusing, how much she reminds Holly of her girlfriend right now. That same straight back, the same hard line of the shoulders. The way Gail always squints just the slightest when she's about to tell the brunette something bad, the way both mother and daughter crinkle their brows in frustration.
And fear, Holly realizes. Frustration and fear.
"Gail went undercover to catch a man suspected of abducting a woman, possibly more than one," Elaine starts explaining as Holly nods. This much she knew already. "Physically, she matched the description of the missing women," Elaine continues, "and so she posed as a call girl."
Holly already knew this too, Gail had called her from work to explain why she wasn't going to be home until late, to let her girlfriend know what was up. They'd come to an agreement early on in their relationship. Holly didn't need to know the details, she'd told the blonde, but she did need to be kept in the loop. Just so she wouldn't worry needlessly.
So before going out to the hotel, Gail had called and told her a little about the operation. That she'd be a prostitute. That she'd have back-up. That everything would be fine.
That was the last time they'd talked. Not counting the voicemail Gail'd left on her phone when she was on her way home, letting the doctor know that everything had wrapped up quickly, and that she didn't have to debrief until tomorrow, and where on Earth was Holly? The doctor had gotten the message as she left the restaurant where she'd met up with some friends for a last-minute dinner after finding out that her previous plans—stir-fry in front of the TV with Gail—had fallen through. And she'd laughed at the pout she could hear in her girlfriend's voice.
It's the thought that that might be the last time she ever hears Gail's voice that sends a shiver down her spine and has her gripping at the railings of the bed.
"Holly," Elaine says softly, with something like pity coloring her tone, "maybe you should—"
But Holly doesn't let her finish.
"Tell me," she demands, and if her voice trembles she ignores it, "tell me everything."
Elaine does.
Gail's mother tells her everything. Not that there's much to tell. But when Elaine stops, when Elaine goes quiet, Holly knows it all.
She knows that the previous victims were drugged, abducted, held for a period, and then killed and their bodies dumped with almost no forensic evidence. She knows that the bodies showed signs of violence, and some of sexual assault.
She knows that there's precious little time left.
She knows that every second means the chances of finding Gail slip further and further away.
Maybe wanting to know was a mistake.
It's the throbbing in her head that wakes her.
But it's the darkness that scares her.
Her eyes are open, she knows they are. She can feel herself blinking, feel the sharp pain that over her brow when she does.
But she can't see.
At first she thinks that the lights have gone out—some storm knocked the power out—but after a moment she realizes she's not in her bed.
She's not snuggled under the covers next to her girlfriend. There's no sound of Holly's steady nighttime breathing in her ear. No scent of the doctor's lotion—the barely-there scent of lilacs—soothing her back to sleep.
She tries to roll over, tries to sit up and figure out where she is, but her arms and legs are tied down.
She can't move.
And that's when she starts to panic.
There's not a lot of evidence.
Gail's blood at the apartment—on the door, the floor, the lamp the blonde had hated and always threatened to accidentally break. A few strands of her hair—DNA tags still intact where they'd been yanked out of her head.
She'd put up a fight, Oliver said when he came in to update them on the search. Gail'd fought back.
It hadn't been enough.
Her abductor had still overpowered her, and Holly as well; still managed to slip in and out of the apartment unseen, even with an unconscious body on the way out.
But it was something.
She'd been alive.
As for Holly, there'd been a little trace on her—some fibers, black and cotton, probably from the suspect's shirt or gloves as she clawed at him while he held her and drugged her.
And what she could remember wasn't much.
He'd been strong, strong enough to grab her and hold her. Strong enough to almost lift her off the ground as he pressed his heavy arm over her neck, over her windpipe.
And tall. Taller than her, at least.
But anything more than that, anything important, it was all just fog. Just fog and this sweet exhaustion slipping through her veins.
"How much time is left," Holly asks Elaine again, "how long has he had her?"
She knows, she feels each and every second as it ticks away.
But she asks anyway.
"About twelve hours," Elaine says quietly.
Oliver looks at them both, his eyes sorrowful.
"We'll find her," he says, a wish masquerading as a promise.
Neither woman responds.
Maybe if she can plant her feet on the table—the bed—whatever she's being held on … maybe if she can plant her feet she can push and work some of the straps loose. Just enough to let her move a little bit. Just to get the blood moving in her legs and feet again.
Just enough so that when whomever has taken her comes back and undoes the straps, gets ready to do whatever he plans on doing, she'll be ready to run.
She has no idea how long she's been here in this room. No idea how long she was drugged, how long she was asleep.
The last thing she remembers is a bar.
No, a car.
No, her girlfriend.
The last thing she remembers is calling Holly.
"Holly," she whispers, praying to a God she's certain isn't watching that there won't be a reply. That she's alone.
And there isn't.
She is.
She's alone.
She can't see, but she can hear.
Her breath in the darkness.
Something, a fan perhaps, in the distance.
And then above her, heavy, a terrible drumbeat, footsteps. Back and forth, back and forth. No rhythm. No pattern.
A basement, she realizes. She's in a basement.
The footsteps get louder, the soles of his shoes sharp against the floor, the steps, the cement floor.
Closer and closer.
Until they stop.
Right at her side.
Holly checks herself out of the hospital AMA despite everyone's objections.
She's not a Peck, no, but she loves one. She knows what she needs to be doing. And it's not sitting in a hospital bed waiting.
She needs to be out there, doing something. Helping somehow.
Elaine brings her a change of clothes, something one of the rookies dropped off, and then waves off the orderly with the wheelchair.
She squeezes Holly's hand the entire ride back to the station.
Tight.
There's a prick in her arm and then she's floating again, a disembodied voice in her ear as she slowly stops struggling.
He's going to kill her.
She knows this now.
He's going to rape her and kill her and someone someday will find her body. Someday someone will call the police about a body. Someday the police will be called, and they'll bring her home.
She hopes it's not one of hers. Not one of her colleagues. Not one of her friends.
Not Holly.
Holly.
The drug swims through her and she smiles, even now, even in this darkness, to think of the woman she loves.
I'm going to break my promise, she thinks to herself, and hopes someday Holly will forgive her for not coming home.
In the end, it's a fluke.
Just regular police work; following the timeline, tracing the lead.
In the end, it's a tragedy.
Just not for who they thought.
In the end, someone dies anyway.
Just not Gail.
"You're a cop," he shouts as he undoes her restraints, as he pulls her off the table and drags her up the stairs.
Everything's a blur—sounds, sights, feelings. Even her thoughts are a blur, one blending into the other.
There's someone on the floor. There's someone's hand on her, someone's voice in the foggy, far-away.
And then everything's dark again. Dark and muffled.
If this is the end, she decides, she's going out remembering how much she's loved.
How much she loves.
She closes her eyes against the dark and sees Holly.
Perfect.
And whole.
She dreams her memories.
They find Gail in the trunk of a car.
Drugged, confused. Bruised and battered.
But alive.
Holly doesn't even try to stop the tears.
Elaine doesn't even try to hide hers.
Her eyes are closed but the light still burns through her eyelids.
Still, her head still hurts and there's still the slight prick of a needle in her arm and so as soon as the heavy weight of the sedative lifts she struggles to free herself.
Except this time, she's not bound.
This time she's free.
"Gail, sweetheart," she hears.
Her mother's voice.
It's strangely comforting even as it cuts through the last tendrils of the fog that clouds her mind.
"Holly," she asks, not recognizing the sound of her own voice, hoarse and ragged.
Her mother lays a cool hand against her cheek, helps her to turn her head.
"There, asleep in the chair next to the bed. It's been a long day for both of you. But she's fine," her mother pauses to take a deep, shuddering breath, "and you will be too."
Sleep beckons again, and Gail lets it take her.
Her mother will watch over them.
Her mother will keep them safe.