Logan POV

I paced through Steve-O's while I waited for the Gorens. It had now been nearly an hour since I last saw Carolyn.

We'd been having dinner, both of us studiously avoiding any discussions about Rhonda.

I hated that woman.

And I hated myself for having slept with her.

And now I felt nothing short of murderous rage toward her.

If she hurt Carolyn…

I didn't even want to think about it. I didn't need to, because I knew exactly what I'd do.

I'd kill her.

Plain and simple.

I needed the Gorens here because I couldn't get my mind to focus on the facts. I couldn't think about anything except possibilities of what might have happened.

Because Carolyn wouldn't have been easy to abduct. And yet no one had seen or heard a thing.

She'd left the table after suggesting that I order a round of after-dinner drinks.

She went to the ladies' room and didn't come back.

"Mike!"

Thank God.

I looked up to see Bobby and Alex hustling into the bar.

And while I was tremendously relieved to finally have back-up, the fact that they were here now seemed to send a signal to my body that it no longer had to hold up under the pressure.

As Alex pulled me into a hug, I sagged heavily against her and fought desperately to hold back the emotion that wanted to surface.

"I don't know where she is," I told her, my voice cracking on the words.

"It's okay," she told me. "We'll find her."

"I don't know how this happened."

"Mike, we'll find her," Bobby said, his hand a comforting presence on my shoulder. I finally let go of Alex, realizing that at any moment she was likely to be crushed under my weight.

I had to pull it together.

"Take a minute," she told me, locking her eyes onto mine. "And then you need to walk us through it."

"Okay. Okay. I'm okay," I insisted, as though if I said it enough times then it would actually be true. I was anything but okay. I felt like I needed to throw up. "Let's go outside though. I need some fresh air."

I led the way out of the bar and stood out on the sidewalk, gulping in the frosty night air.

"Mike," Goren began, and then he waited for me to look at him. "You didn't call any cops?"

"No. I just…no."

I hadn't wanted to call the cops.

They would have a million questions for me. They'd want to go through our life with a fine-toothed comb.

I didn't want that. I just wanted her back.

And why bother with the NYPD when I had the best cops in the city as friends?

"Okay," Alex said soothingly. "That's fine. We can make that decision later. Tell us what happened."

"We just finished dinner. She told me to order another round and then she went to the bathroom."

"Did you see anyone follow her?" Goren asked.

"No," I answered.

"You didn't see anyone, or you weren't looking?" Alex clarified.

"I was looking. No one followed."

"Did she have her gun on her?"

"Um…yeah. Yeah, she did."

"What about her cell phone?"

"Yes."

"How long before you went to check on her?"

"About ten minutes. When she didn't come back, I went down the hall and knocked on the door, and then I went inside."

"Was there any sign of a struggle?"

I shook my head and looked down at the ground.

What did that mean? Carolyn hadn't put up any fight at all? Had she been drugged?

"Then what?" Goren encouraged.

"I went back into the hall. There's a fire exit door at the end of the hall, so that must be how she got her out."

"She," Alex stated. "You're assuming that it was Rhonda."

"It was either her or someone working for her. I mean, who else would it be?"

"I don't know, but let's not jump to conclusions. We don't want to get blinded by assumptions."

She was right, but it was still frustrating, and before I knew it, I was pacing again. I ran my hand through my hair for the hundredth time in the past hour and looked at them.

"I went through the door and looked around outside, but I didn't see anyone. I didn't see one damn thing. It's like she just fucking vanished into thin air."

"Alright," Alex said calmly. "Did you talk to anyone in the bar? Did you ask around?"

"I asked every damn person in there. No one saw a thing."

"You stay out here," Goren said. "Alex and I are going to go take a look at the scene."

I nodded vehemently and resumed my pacing. They would find something. They were the best. She hadn't just disappeared. She hadn't just walked away.

I stopped in my tracks.

Had she? Had she just walked away?

It's not like she hadn't done it before. When she'd left Major Case, it was like she'd fallen off the face of the earth.

My heart was in my throat and I was beginning to hyperventilate.

She wouldn't leave me. Not Carolyn. She loved me. Right?

But why wasn't there any evidence?

Carolyn would never go quietly, and even if she'd been drugged, it wouldn't have been instantaneous. And surely she would've seen someone approach her.

There would be something…

But there wasn't.

I only had a split-second of warning before my dinner decided to make a repeat appearance. I stepped around the edge of the building, and threw up into the alley.

Bobby POV

I could feel Mike's pain as though it were my own.

I'd been there before, right where he was. Of course, Alex hadn't been my wife at the time, so maybe it wasn't exactly the same, but I'd loved her. And I would've been devastated if I'd lost her. Just like Mike would be if he lost Carolyn. We all would be.

But I had to quit thinking like that.

We'd find her.

Alex was right to insist on keeping an open mind, but I knew that Rhonda was behind this. It was too calculated. Too organized. Too specific.

"What do you think?" Alex asked me as we looked through the ladies' room. Mike had gotten the bartender to close it off with a construction cone.

"This was definitely well-planned out," I said as I squatted down to look closely at the tile floor. It was old and worn, but it was kept fairly clean. "I don't see any blood."

"I don't get it," Alex admitted as she looked in each stall. "I don't see just anyone being able to sneak up on Carolyn. And she's got some damn good reflexes."

"Stay right there a minute," I told her as I headed for the door. She waited in a stall while I opened and closed the exterior bathroom door. It made noise.

"Yeah, I hear that," Alex called to me as I walked back into the room. "So either the abductor was already in here, or…"

"Or she caught her in the hall," I filled in while Alex nodded.

We stepped out of the bathroom and into the hall. I looked in the direction toward the bar, and found that no tables were visible in my line of sight. I turned and looked back toward the exit door.

"The alarm doesn't work. This was definitely the escape route," Alex stated as she bent down to take a closer look at the handle. "We'll have to find out if management disabled it on purpose."

I stood next to her and looked carefully over the floor for anything out of the ordinary.

"Um, yeah, I don't think so," I said as I reached down to pick up an object from the tile near the threshold. It was a very short section of yellow wire coating.

My eyes tracked around the door frame until I found a spot that looked scratched. Alex found it at the same time I did, so she reached into my pocket and pulled out my knife.

"You know I would've killed for you to do that last year at this time," I commented idly as I watched her use the blade to push back the door casing.

"Do what?"

"Reach into my pocket."

She threw me a smirk and shook her head.

"Give me your handkerchief," she added with a chuckle.

"You're not going to get it yourself?" I asked, although I reached into my pocket and pulled it out. She used it in place of a glove and grabbed hold of the frame. It came back easily and exposed a small bundle of wires.

They'd been cut cleanly.

"So that answers that question," she said. "But whoever did this must have staked out the place. They were familiar with the layout and with this door. We definitely need to bring in a picture of Rhonda and show it to the staff."

"I don't see her as being the type to do her own dirty work," I countered as we stepped outside into the back alley. "She had help."

"She managed to do some damage to you," she reminded me, with a quick downward glance. "She's not above getting physical."

"She caught me off guard," I agreed. "But we know what she is now. If Carolyn had seen her, she would've never let her get close. And yet it's hard to do an ambush without leaving behind a trace of evidence. I think it was someone else, someone working with Rhonda, and they managed to lure Carolyn close enough to then be able to drug her."

"Or threaten her," Alex suggested.

Damn, the woman is smart. I hadn't even considered that, but it made the most sense of anything we'd come up with so far.

"You mean, threaten to harm Mike," I elucidated. She nodded her head.

"If I'd come out of that bathroom while you were waiting for me in there," she said pointing down the hall. "And someone told me that there was a gun pointed at your head, but if I came quietly then nothing would happen to you, well…I'd go. I mean, that's kind of like what Frankie did to me. He said he'd blow up the whole building if I didn't go with him. Threats work better than force if it's done properly."

"Okay," I nodded. She was right. I hated thinking about the time that Frankie had grabbed her, but at least then, we'd known she was in the building. We'd been on her trail in a matter of minutes, and we'd had an entire police force at our disposal.

And yet I'd still been a wreck.

"Let's go get Mike," I said suddenly. I didn't want him to be alone any longer than necessary. "We need to get organized, lay out what we know, and then make the decision as to whether or not to call it in."

"I think we should," Alex stated. "We need the manpower."

"But then we'll be kept out of the loop," I reminded her. "We're not cops anymore."

"We don't need cops."

It was Logan. He was standing at the end of the hall and he looked like hell. And I don't mean just because of the remnants of the bruises from last week's beating.

He had broken out in a sweat despite the fact that it was well below thirty outside, and his face was haggard and pale. He had his cell phone in his hand.

"I don't think it's an abduction after all," he added.

"What are you talking about?" Alex asked him. We both went down the hall, and Alex took the phone from his hand.

"Oh my God," she murmured as she looked at the message. "Mike…"

"I knew it. I fucking knew it," he ground out, and then he turned abruptly and slammed his fist into the wall, busting straight through the sheet rock. He absently pulled his hand from the wall as though he hadn't felt a thing and headed for the front door. "It's what I've been telling myself all along."

"Mike, wait!" Alex called out as she ran after him. I followed closely behind, still in the dark about what was going on.

We caught him on the front sidewalk. He was still moving quickly away from us, so Alex grabbed his arm to stop him. Logan jerked away from her, causing her to stumble backwards a step or two.

That was when I'd seen enough.

I took hold of his shoulder and shoved him into the front of the building.

"You need to calm down," I warned him, pinning him against the wall with my hand on his chest.

His eyes were looking everywhere at once and were filled with unshed tears. He was breathing in short bursts, and then he finally closed his eyes and took in a long, shuddering breath.

"I'm sorry," he rasped out. "Shit, I'm sorry, Alex."

"It's okay," she assured him, but I wasn't so forgiving.

"What the hell is going on, Logan?"

"Bobby," Alex said, and now she put her hand on my arm to get me to let him go. "Look."

She held out the phone to me and I glanced at the screen. It was a text message from Carolyn.

I'm sorry, Mike. I love you, but it's not enough. I have to go. Please don't hate me.

TBC...

A/N: This is all for today - my son graduates tomorrow (although I have no idea how that's possible since I'm only 25...) Anyway, hopefully more on Monday!