Shawn watched as Antone was dragged towards the interrogation room in handcuffs, by a very irritated Lassiter. The tall Latino man had a manic sort of smile on his face as he passed the pseudo psychic and Shawn could never remember being so angry before.
He wanted to strangle Antone with his bare hands; and if he wasn't in the middle of a police station, with said man being dragged away in handcuffs, he probably would have.
"Spencer, you in on this?!" Lassiter demanded as he started down the steps and Shawn nodded, racing after him. He didn't have the presence of mind to be surprised that Lassiter was actually inviting him in on an interrogation.
"Yeah, I'm in Lassie."
Gus followed, right on his heels, the same manic glint to his eye, and if he wasn't plotting all the creative and painful ways he could kill Antone, like Shawn was; he wasn't that far from it.
Lassiter threw Antone into the interrogation room and into the metal chair on the far side of the table. He leaned heavily over said table and stared the man in the eye. His jaw clenched as that vein in his temple throbbed dangerously close to its breaking point. He wasted no time in asking what it was that he really wanted to know, throwing all interrogation technique and procedure out the window.
"Tell me where she is."
Antone stared up at him as though he couldn't care less. He merely shook his black hair out of his eyes and attempted to look bored with the entire situation.
Lassiter was not amused or deterred.
"Tell me where the hell she is, Antone, or I swear to God I'll…"
"You'll what, Detective? Shoot me?" was the antagonistic reply. Antone smirked; they had nothing on him and he knew it. All they had was some psychic and a crazed police detective.
"I just might, so don't tempt me Antone."
A raised eyebrow was the only suggestion that the man understood the threat.
-----
Shawn paced on the other side of the two way mirror, Gus a few steps away to give him his space.
"He isn't going to tell us where she is man, he just isn't."
Gus looked in at the man and shrugged, honestly having no idea about any of this.
"Maybe he doesn't even know," Shawn sent him such a violent look that he immediately amended his answer, "or he totally does and is going to crack any minute under the pressure of Lassiter's creepy forehead vein."
Shawn didn't even crack a smile; he just looked haggard and malnourished.
"I found him, Gus, I know this is the guy, Lassie just has to get him to confess to where she is."
Gus shrugged again as he peered through the two way mirror. Lassiter was yelling and even without Shawn pressing down on the intercom button they could hear what he was saying through the cement wall and thick wooden door.
"I want to know where she is and I want to know, now!"
Shawn shook his head, still pacing, still looking haggard and malnourished, but adding hopeless to the list.
"Yelling won't work; he isn't going to tell us, he isn't going to crack unless we actually have something to make him."
Gus was unsure as to what he was supposed to add to this conversation, and so he did the only thing that made any sense to him. He treated this case like any other one. He didn't treat it like a personal friend had gone missing about a month prior. He treated it like any other silly-there-might-be-a-ghost-in-my-attic case that he and Shawn usually got. He asked the questions that Shawn might have over-looked, or felt were irrelevant.
"Okay, so if we want him to crack, what will make him?"
Shawn stopped pacing long enough to look at his lifetime best friend and sigh before resuming his pacing, only now with crazy mutterings under his breath and his arms waving about like a diseased albatross attempting to take flight. He scratched his chin, ran his fingers through his hair, did his classic "psych" pose. Everything that he usually did to help him think; and then a memory flashed back to him.
~ "Gabriel Antone, you're coming with us." Lassiter cuffed his hands behind his back with much more force and slightly manic glee than entirely necessary.
"For what charges?" Antone questioned nonchalantly.
Shawn felt like he was going to throw up. Gus looked just as green around the gills as he felt and Lassiter looked like he was about to commit murder.
"How about aiding and abetting a dangerous fugitive, for starters?" the Irish cop suggested snidely and Antone looked subtly confused.
"Fugitive?" he asked, as though he didn't know what or who they were talking about. Lassiter tightened the cuffs as he dragged the suspect out to his maroon car and tossed him in the back seat; reading him his rights along the way.
"Yeah, the Ying Yang killer; we know you were working with her."
Antone looked properly pale at that.
"I didn't tell you guys nothin'."
Lassiter just slammed the car door. ~
Shawn looked up at Gus with the first ghost of a smile he'd worn in weeks.
"Ying Yang, that's his weakness, he wants her to be proud of him, to know that he's on her side, not ours."
Gus quickly jumped on the bandwagon, as he always did, and for once Shawn was immensely grateful that he had such a great best friend.
"He craves her approval."
"Yes, Gus, exactly, so pretend like she's not proud of him for his little stunt; pretend that she flipped him over to us, or pretend that we told her he was the one who did the flipping."
Gus smiled, nodding, "I like that, call Lassiter, we'll tell him."
But Shawn was already swaggering through the interrogation room doors, and for once in their entire working relationship, Lassiter did not yell at him for doing so, if anything, he looked relieved the psychic was there.
"Want to know a secret, Antone?" he questioned almost sweetly, and both Gus and Lassiter leaned against the wall, their arms crossed, watching the events unfold.
"I'm not really that big on secrets," Antone replied snippily. Shawn smiled and it very obviously unnerved even the career criminal.
"Well, you see, it isn't really a secret, the whole department knows."
Antone looked slightly intrigued and so Shawn continued.
"Everyone in this room knows, except you, sucks doesn't it?"
Antone stood violently but Shawn didn't back up, he was on a role, angry, and not to be messed with. Instead of fleeing (as per usual for the psychic) he took a step into Antone's space, his expression unimpressed, unintimidated, and even. Antone slowly sat back down and Shawn's impish smile returned.
"Ying told us all about you."
As much as the Latino man attempted to look nonchalant and uninterested, his discomfiture was obvious. Shawn grinned widely again.
"She told us where you were, how to find you, all of it. She's the reason you're here."
"No." it was the defiant plea of a desperate man.
"Yes, yes she did, just ask Detective Lassiter. We didn't have to do anything. I didn't need a vision, and Lassie didn't need his badge. Because your mentor, that woman that you'd go to jail for, tossed you aside for a better deal. She threw your body under the bus to save her own ass."
"No, no I don't believe you."
"Well it doesn't much matter at this point, because it's been done, the D.A. already struck up a deal with her. You're done for."
Antone shook; his face and knuckles a similar shade of white. Shawn could see the wheels spinning in his head, attempting to figure out what to do.
Lassiter came up behind Shawn and clapped him on the shoulder.
"The only way to save yourself from a needle, Antone, is to tell us where she is."
Antone looked unsure for a moment, and then his muddled and betrayed mind focused on Lassiter's words. THE NEEDLE. He couldn't let that happen.
"She's in warehouse six on Fisro Boulevard. But I got workers there, and they're not supposed to allow trespassers."
Lassiter put a hand on his gun and started out the door, Shawn and Gus on his heels. The way Lassiter gripped his gun spoke volumes of what he would do to any "worker" who attempted to stop him from entering warehouse six.
"You better hurry; she only has about a half hour worth of air left."
The men ignored him until they reached the hallway, Buzz and a few other uniforms standing guard over Antone.
"How long does it take to get to Fisro from here?" Gus questioned as they all continued to Lassiter's car. Each of them thinking the exact same thing. What if they didn't make it?
They got in.
"Fifteen minutes without traffic or a police light," was Lassiter's gruff response. Shawn paled.
"And with a police light?"
Lassiter switched it on along with his siren and pulled out of the station.
"Eight minutes tops."
He picked up his radio and called for an ambulance and backup. Looking very much like a badass, and if Shawn wasn't so worried, he would have told him so.
-------------------------------------------------One Month Prior-------------------------------------------------------
Juliet sighed heavily and tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder. God she was…disappointed. Or happy and thrilled. She was unsure. Disappointed in the one hand that she had waited so damn long. Why did she do that? She had known with the whole Luntz thing. The moment that he had given her a hotdog and taken her for a walk just on the edge of the beach. She'd figured it out then. Why didn't she do anything about it?
She was a coward.
She had missed her chance.
She felt like curling into a ball and crying.
And what was worse was she was happy for him.
He had grown up and stepped up. Abigail was lucky woman. She wanted to hate her, and couldn't.
The whole damn situation was just unfair.
He'd told her he wanted her to be happy. Why hadn't she told him that he made her happy? Why? Why? Why! Those simple words and she could be with him, laughing and watching a movie. Happy for the first time in a very very long time.
She'd known for a long time that the pair of them would be a formidable couple, that they would be able to do anything together, that they would last.
She'd ruined it. All because she was too much of a coward to go for what she wanted when it came to her love life. And she was happy for him, because he deserved a steady influence in his life, he deserved to be happy, and she wanted him to be.
She really wanted him to be happy with her, but this…as much as it made her sick to her stomach, she'd let him be happy with Abigail.
"Detective O'Hara?"
She turned, looking up at a tall Latino man, his eyes dark and glinting, tattoos crawling all over his body, even up his neck. She gulped and wished that she was carrying her badge and weapon. She wasn't.
"Can I help you?" she closed her hand over her keys, mentally calculating how long it would take her to run to her car.
"You work with Shawn Spencer, the psychic, right?" he asked her and she felt herself start to relax.
"Yes." Was he just a fan of their work? Of Shawn's? Maybe she was just being paranoid, the grip on her keys relaxed.
"I thought you did." He grinned at her and took a step closer. A cold feeling snaked down her spine and her eyes darted around, looking for her car. Where had she parked?
He reached out to her and before she could scream had a white cloth over her mouth. She raised her hands to fight him off, but he was bigger, stronger. Her arms were pinned to her sides, and she struggled, but slowly her mind was becoming fuzzy.
Where was she? How had she gotten here?
Then darkness enveloped her.
-----
She woke up later, unsure as to how much time had lapsed between the drive in parking lot, and wherever it was that she was now. It was a relatively large room, with a cot, a chair, and a table. She sat up slowly, her eyes focusing on the room as she went into "cop" mode and ignored the pounding headache she had.
One window, high, small, and dirty, barely letting in any light, and certainly too high for her to get to even if she stacked every piece of furniture in the room to attempt to reach it; there was a door across from her, and slowly she stood, her heart beating in her throat. She reached out, touched the doorknob, everything seemed normal about the door and slowly she started to turn the knob.
It stopped.
She jerked the door.
Locked. The door was locked.
Her stomach lurched as her headache intensified and her heart pounded harder in her throat. She was locked in this room, alone, and she had no idea where she was, how long she'd been there, or if anyone even knew she was missing. Would Shawn notice? Would Lassiter? Gus, Chief Vick?
She felt even sicker when she remembered something.
She had three days of vacation time; she'd taken them the same day she'd asked Shawn out. No one would be expecting her at work until the three days were up, and then they'd start to get suspicious. It could take them a week to notice she'd gone missing. Cases went cold in less time than that. They'd never find her.
She searched her pockets.
Empty.
Her purse was gone too, no cell phone, no flash light, no I.D. She was completely alone.
She backed up, tears pricking her eyes. She sat down slowly on the bed and cried.
She was such a coward sometimes.
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Okay, so this is my next attempt at a multiple chapter Psych fic, and I know that I've been ignoring Shules for the longest time, but this idea popped into my head and I just couldn't let it go. So I wrote it down, I hope that this first chapter isn't too confusing, and hopefully this fic will go over as well as Juliet? Juliet Who? Did. And hopefully I'll be able to update faster.
Leave me a review please.
~Andrew's Slinky
