Author's Note

So, I started writing this back around Easter time. I flew through ten chapters or so, which is the longest thing I've ever written, then I just ran out of steam. I abandoned it. Then we got the new series of Rookie Blue, and of course no more Holly (boo!). So I didn't return to it until I found it on the hard drive a couple of weeks back. I read it through and suddenly got all enthusiastic and wrote a few more chapters. I figured this time, I'd actually post it and see where we go!

Anyway, this story is kind of AU, as it's a different way for Gail & Holly to meet. Timeline wise though, I have kept Gail's history the same and she meets Holly at the same time in her life - so we're set halfway through season four, after Perik and Nick, but before the shootings. Who knows what will happen next in my universe?! I'm hoping nobody gets shot.

The first three or four chapters are beta'd, because my lovely friend helped me out. However, she got busy with real life so after that I'm on my own - if anyone wants to volunteer and give me a hand then that would be brill, drop me a line.

I'm not Canadian, I try to convert my language but apologies again if I accidentally go terribly, terribly British on you and it wrecks the characters.

Lastly, just so we're all clear on this; these aren't my characters. However, I have borrowed a few lines from the show here and there; not to make my fortune but just for a giggle. They can have them back when I'm done, no worries.

Cheers all, hope you enjoy. :)

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Protect and Serve

Officer Gail Peck of the Toronto Police Force had spent years avoiding family connections at work. It was easier that way. People had certain expectations of a Peck. Gail had lived up to them in some respects, pushing through her Rookie years with a single minded approach and a certain level of game playing. She was now at the stage where she was more comfortable with herself, her role at Fifteen Division and where she was heading. Gail had even started to believe that most of the cops she had come through the ranks with now ignored her connections. She couldn't hide her white shirt parents, particularly Superintendent Mom, or her Detective brother but she had been pretty successful in downplaying them. But when said brother had just marched through the station and was standing right in front of you, whilst your fellow officers abandoned their work in favour of gawping at the situation, it was kind of hard to do that.

"I need your help." It was a simple request, but Gail Peck wasn't really the type of girl to grant a simple answer to anything and Steve had already annoyed her with his grand entrance.

"You're a big boy now Steve, you can tie your own shoelaces," she said flippantly, avoiding her brother's gaze.

Steve stood to the side of the desk that currently had Gail's paperwork tossed haphazardly all over it and waited patiently, the only still presence in amongst all the hustle and bustle of Fifteen division. He looked down at his younger sister. Gail was sprawled in the chair, swinging it gently back and forth as she waited for her report to load up on the computer screen in front of her. She circled the mouse irritably, in the vain hope it might help the machine go faster. Her eyes seemed to be following the whirling cursor on screen as if she considered her response an end to the matter, and was merely waiting for Steve to go away. However, the elder Peck had spent too many years living under the same roof as Gail; he knew that her curiosity would eventually get the better of her.

Gail bashed the mouse against the desk a couple of times and sighed loudly when the egg timer blinked back at her. As the chair swung to her left, she lifted her feet and let it drift round to face where Steve was waiting for her attention.

"I really need your help," he said, his voice grave. Gail looked up at him, noting the tension in his shoulders and his straight face. She knew that look; her brother was serious. She raised her eyebrows at him, querying whether she should be worried. Steve tipped his head in the direction of the interrogation rooms and she stood, immediately following him into the nearest empty one.

"What's wrong?" she blurted out as soon as the door closed behind them.

"Nothing is wrong," Steve replied, sitting on the table placed in the middle of the room.

Gail shook her head; "Something is wrong," she said, "You never ask for my help." It was true. Gail and Steve were close; you couldn't grow up under Elaine Peck's rule without becoming allies, but their relationship was based around more of a watchful eye than anything else. They didn't call upon each other for advice or a shoulder to cry on. Gail couldn't imagine ringing Steve to talk through any of the problems in her life. She certainly hadn't during her latest disaster. Nick had come back into her life when she least expected it, and she had never planned on getting back with him. But he'd been charming and safe and reliable…until he fell for McNally whilst they were undercover.

The blonde had put her usual snarling face on things, not letting anyone know how much it had hurt. She never even told Steve what had happened, but somehow he knew. One night he turned up at the flat Gail shared with her colleagues, tequila in hand. As they went through the bottle he sat and listened as her rants became more offensive and emotional. When she crashed out in the bathroom, he put her to bed and then passed out on the sofa. That summed up their relationship; if one of the Peck siblings had a problem, the other one would simply appear. They could go for weeks without seeing each other unless they bumped into one another at work or in the Penny, yet they always had each other's back. It just so happened this was a fact of life, rather than something they had to ask for.

"Tell me," Gail said, not willing to wait for Steve any longer.

He kicked out the chair that was tucked under the table, inviting her to sit and Gail did so with frown.

"Do you remember the Kolarov case I worked on last year?" Steve asked. He shuffled backwards on the table which, alongside the pathetic conversation starter, Gail read as a sure sign this was going to take a while. She sat back on the plastic chair and scanned through her memory. Steve worked a lot of cases; Guns and Gangs wasn't exactly the quiet life.

"Was that the one where you had Taylor and Ingram undercover for months?" she queried. Gail remembered Steve being particularly stressed out because at one point they thought they had lost Taylor.

"That's it," Steve confirmed, nodding away. "They were looking at what we thought was a front for gun running, and turned up all sorts of other dodgy dealings; drug smuggling, protection rackets, prostitution…you name it, Kolarov was into it."

The details were starting coming back to Gail. Kolarov was an Eastern European gangster who had gained a foothold in Toronto through a number of coffee houses. The legitimate arm of his business enabled him to spread people throughout the city, and the gang members were behind several spates of petty crime and intimidation over a decade ago. As their influence snowballed, the seriousness of the offences did too. Steve had been put in charge of the investigation into a sudden increase in the number of a certain make and model of guns which had been seized across the city. They were standard Ukrainian army issue, but because the serial numbers were burnt off with acid, it was difficult to trace back where they had come from. Intelligence eventually led to Kolarov and Steve's team spent months trying to pin something directly onto him. The man himself had moved on however, and was involved in other schemes in several other cities. Money and fear were powerful motivators also, so his henchmen kept quiet whilst witnesses suddenly changed their stories.

"You didn't get him, did you?" Gail asked, trying to remember.

"No," Steve said with a grimace. "We couldn't get the direct evidence. Then Taylor thought he had been ratted out. He had to run and the whole case was at risk if we didn't move it. We settled for nailing several of the top boys and they all went to jail. Nothing stuck against Kolarov, but the fall out essentially meant he shut down most of his Toronto operations,"

"Good result then?" Gail said, not seeing where Steve was going.

"In a way. We cleared up most of the people involved in the Toronto side of things, but some of the leaders followed Kolarov out and settled in Vancouver. Apparently he has an equally charming cousin out there who he set up with. It was outside my remit of course, so I had to hand the case over once the trials were done," Steve told her.

"Bummer," Gail murmured softly, knowing how frustrated her brother would have been about this. She hated pushing off work to anyone else, and she wasn't even in charge of any cases. She could imagine Steve being incredibly pissed about handing over his hard work for someone else to have a crack at Kolarov.

The elder Peck pulled a wry face at her, knowing where Gail's thought train had gone. "Yes and no," he told her. "The case was picked up in Vancouver by Ross Stone…"

"Your old academy buddy!" Gail exclaimed, understanding why Steve wasn't cursing the loss of his case. Steve and Ross had gone through the academy together and had spent their rookie year at the same division. Ross had then taken up a job in Vancouver to be closer to his girlfriend of the time, but the two men had remained close and had both taken up the same specialism when they went through the detective rotation. Gail had teased Steve mercilessly about 'copying' his pal but Steve hadn't cared, saying that Guns and Gangs only took the best so it was no surprise the two of them went there.

"Yep," Steve confirmed, with a grin before continuing the story. "Stoney has kept me up to date ever since. I've been putting in some hours on the case in my own time, and his team has done some stellar work gathering evidence from all over the place to back up my theories from Kolarov's Toronto days. We were close to taking it in front of a judge and getting a warrant. Then we got an even better break,"

Gail sat back fascinated as Steve explained the story, but she still couldn't see what he was asking for from her. Apparently, one of Kolarov's most trusted lieutenants was a guy called Robak, a third generation Serbian who had taken the opportunity he had been handed when many of Kolarov's allies ended up in jail during Steve's operation. He was running the shipping side of things in and out of a warehouse Kolarov had registered under his coffee company name. Despite having no family ties to Kolarov, Robak had fought his way to the top of the organisation through a combination of brains and charisma tied in with a nasty, violent temper. From hatchet man to supply chains, he'd done it all and become something of a right hand man. There wasn't much he wasn't privy to.

But then Robak had made his big mistake. He'd started seeing a local girl, someone who wasn't part of the family. He'd gotten her a job on the legit side of the business, managing one of the coffee houses. Things had been fine, but as Robak became more important in the set up, he became more complacent. He let his girlfriend tag along when he was visiting the warehouse, and meeting people who could take Kolarov's interests forward. He even had her doing some of the paperwork. Worse still, he mentioned his boss by name. He might have gotten away with his carelessness, and the girlfriend might have stayed completely unsuspicious if his famous temper hadn't gotten the better of him. During a row about his strange working hours, of all things, he had lashed out and slapped his girlfriend. Of course, he had apologised immediately. He had been scared, contrite, ashamed and all the things that had made her take him back. But then it happened again. And again. And again. And then he broke her nose. The hospital knew at that point what had really happened to the broken nose they were forced to report as 'patient tripped whilst jogging' but without confirmation there was little they could do. Until the girlfriend turned up once more, this time with broken ribs. A young and earnest doctor referred his patient to the police and in a cascade of tears, the story of the abusive boyfriend came out. The girlfriend went to a shelter, and the police knocked on Robak's door. He denied everything. When the police went back to see the girlfriend and tell her this, they had to confess they didn't have enough to hold Robak just yet. They explained they were waiting for the doctor's report, but that she shouldn't worry as she would be perfectly safe here.

However, the young woman's fear was horribly evident and it was at that point she offered up a gem. What if Robak had been involved in something else he shouldn't have been, she asked? What if she could show them certain places, and certain documents and certain dates? Well, that was a different matter, said the officer in charge of delivering the bad news. Another statement was taken, and it seemed the girl was far brighter than Robak had ever thought. She knew an awful lot about Robak's business dealings, and by default, Kolarov's. Warrants were secured, multiple arrests were made and Robak started singing like a bird. Kolarov lawyered up and kept quiet, but the testimonies of Robak and his now ex-girlfriend were enough for him to be denied bail. It looked like Stone and his team were finally going to get their man.

"The trial starts in six weeks," Steve said as he came to the end of his story. "But we have a problem. Robak has been attacked in prison, and he's now drinking his meals through a straw. We don't know if he'll be fit to testify. And there have been credible threats made against the girl, so she is running scared too,"

"How credible?" she asked.

"Very. It started off small, but it's escalated. She's had bricks through the windows, poison pen letters…then someone messed with the brakes on her car. Ross can't prove anything against the few of Kolarov's guys that are still on the street, but we know he's behind it. The girl's evidence is crucial. If Kolarov can frighten her off, the case begins to look shaky,"

Gail made a face. It would be devastating for Steve and Ross to have come this close then have the case fall apart. "But surely he wouldn't be stupid enough to actually hurt her? He must know you're watching her and you're on to him?" she mused.

Steve rocked his head from side to side, disagreeing with his sister's assessment. "You'd hope so. But the guy is powerful and he's literally got away with murder over the years. This isn't the first time he's intimidated a witness; not even just when his own ass is on the line. He's pulled his buddies out the fire before by ordering a few well timed beatings. When Taylor was undercover, we thought he had turned one of the local henchmen into informing for us, and eventually taking the stand. When Taylor left, the guy went missing, and we never found out what happened,"

"Taylor had to leave," Gail said, remembering the panic that had spread through the station when Taylor had dropped off the grid. He had heard rumours of a traitor in the gang and that action was about to be taken, so he had run. Taylor stayed hidden for a day or two before contacting Steve's team. It turned out the rumours were about the guy he had tapped up, but Taylor's escape meant Kolarov made him as a cop, and he'd left Toronto soon after and moved to the States.

"He got a few threats," Steve said, by way of an explanation. "The brass thought it best,"

"Can't you hide your latest star witness too?"

"Yeah. We've had to put her into witness protection actually. She's not even in the country now," Steve told her.

"So that's good then, problem solved?" Gail said, confused. She had found the story of this case interesting, from a professional perspective and because she was secretly proud of Steve for being part of such a big collar. But she couldn't see why he was here talking to her about it and asking for her help.

Steve was already shaking his head. "Kolarov has gone a bit further. He's targeting her family now instead. Again, it's something he's done before and it's been a pretty successful tactic."

"Ok," Gail said, ticking things off with her fingers, "You're got a dangerous mob boss in prison, a battered gangster in hospital, a frightened witness in god knows where and a bunch of threatened family members back home here in Canada. All linked into this one case, which is coming to a head soon," she summarised.

"Yes," Steve replied.

"So, what's your point?" Gail asked, thoroughly exasperated.

"What do you mean, what's my point?"

"What's it got to do with me, Lunkhead!" she said, kicking the leg of the table under where her brother sat.

"Oh!" Steve exclaimed. "Yeah I'm getting to that, just thought you'd want the whole story," Steve knew that although Gail may appear to be unconcerned with much of the goings on around her, she was always watching and always listening. He continued with his explanation. "So, we're intercepting the witness's post obviously, and we found the threats to the family in there. There were photos of her parents and sister going about their day to day business with targets drawn across them and a couple of letters. Now we've spirited away the witness, we're thinking the family are even more at risk, so we're putting them under protection too,"

"All of them?" Gail asked, thinking of the manpower.

"The parents and the sister. There isn't much of an extended family. Ross has got the parents covered in Vancouver, team of six round the clock, but the sister lives here in Toronto. He has the budget and numbers to send three guys out here, then he's asked me to sort out two more -"

Gail suddenly saw where her brother was going and interrupted sharply. "No, Steven. No way!" she said firmly, glaring up at him.

"Come on, Gail…" Steve tried to talk over his sister, but she wasn't done.

"No! I'm not doing it! I'm a cop, not a babysitter. Get the protection squad on it," Gail snarled.

"There's no budget for them! I need a couple of regular cops, this is a favour, not an official assignment," Steve explained.

"In which case Frank will never go for it anyway. He's not going to give you two cops for over a month," she replied, smugly.

"I've already spoken to him. He said I can take two officers out of shift rotation and move them onto this," Steve grinned, pleased he was one step ahead of Gail's objections.

"This is not my job. This is not even anything I'll be good at," Gail retorted. "Get a couple of rookies on it! They're used to standing around doing nothing," She didn't like where this was going.

"I need a woman. Ross's guys are guys, and so it would be better to have a woman on the team for the subject's sake. Fifteen's rookies are all guys this year," Steve reasoned. "And also, you've done the VIP Protection training course! You're perfect for this!"

Gail stood up and let the chair skitter backwards away from her as she faced her elder brother, "Firstly, you're a sexist pig. And secondly I only did that course because your Mother made me! She thought I could land a fancy job protecting politicians and schmoozing with the top brass!"

"Doesn't change the fact you already know the basics, so you're one step ahead of the other cops we've got…." Steve said, not backing down under Gail's glare.

"Get McNally on it. She loves this sort of shit. She'd read all the manuals before the weekend and make Nick be her practice dummy," Gail complained, hands on hips.

Steve caught Gail's stare square on with his own eyes. He lowered his voice, and said earnestly, "I need someone I can trust, Gail. I've been building this case for years, I can't let it slip now. I need you. Will you help me?"

Gail groaned internally. Her brother was asking her straight out for help now. She knew she couldn't turn him down. But several weeks of babysitting? Probably more once the case was on trial as they'd have to wait until the witnesses took the stand. What an absolute bore off.

"Fine. Count me in. But you owe me big time!" she said, punching Steve's shoulder lightly. He caught her wrist and gave it a quick squeeze.

"You're a life saver, Gail. So, you're with me this afternoon until the end of your shift. Frank has agreed it already. We'll go look at the file on your new best friend; good news is she is out of town for another two days, so we pick her up when she gets back. Ross's team arrive tomorrow; you can meet them then and they'll brief you. They work in witness protection, so they'll lead. Only one question left – who else do we want from Fifteen? McNally or Price?" Steve asked.

This just gets better, Gail thought. Spending the whole of this assignment with the woman who screwed her over with Nick, or Miss Disney herself? "Nash," she said, trying it on.

"I'd love to get Traci on board, but no can do," Steve said. "McNally or Price?"

"I don't care," Gail replied. "You choose." She turned away from Steve and moved towards the interrogation room door. Her brother followed her and just about caught the door she dropped in his face as she walked through and back towards her desk. Gail began to shuffle the papers into some semblance of order, putting her work aside ready to be handed over to whoever took on her cases whilst she was off on this stupid assignment. She rammed the paperwork into the open file and snapped it shut before grabbing her jacket and turning to face Steve, ready to go.

"So, tell me about this sister then? What's she like, where does she work…where am I going to be spending my precious time?" She asked Steve as they moved off in the direction of his office.

"Well funny you should ask," Steve told her. "She actually works for the division. She's the new forensic pathologist; Dr Holly Stewart. So actually, you're going to be around here a hell of a lot still…" he continued to stroll down the corridor, without noticing Gail had stopped walking in shock.

It really does get better and better, she was thinking. Not only do I have to spend my time minding some joe public, she turns out to be one of the weird dead people doctors and works with the police force. Which meant there was every possibility their paths could cross again, even when the case was over. "Fantastic," Gail muttered under her breath, before trotting after Steve.