Abby lay on the thin government-issue cot in the holding cell and stared at the tiny barred window in the corner. The glimmers of pink and orange she saw told her it must be nearly dawn. She supposed that she ought to be grateful for the window while she had it, because she knew after the arraignment hearing, she'd be moved to a standard cell - an eight by eight concrete box without a glimpse of the outside world. She wondered briefly how she'd tell time in there, but then quickly realized it probably didn't matter.

Her hand lingered just above her collarbone while she stared at the ceiling, feeling for the thin piece of gold that was no longer there. She wondered if Richie had given it to Brody yet – if her brother would even do it at all. Abby tried to imagine what Brody's reaction would be. Anger? Hurt? Fear? Maybe all three, she thought solemnly, quickly wiping the tear she felt in the corner of her eye.

There's no crying in prison, she scolded herself internally.

With a sigh, she turned her head back toward the wall, shutting her eyes and trying to remember the last time she'd seen him – only a week ago, but it felt like a lifetime ago now…

Abby lay on Brody's bed, her cell phone in one hand and a take-out menu in the other, absentmindedly humming as she stared at the options.

"Hey Brody, what do you want?"

Brody smirked as he walked out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair still damp from the shower. "You."

"Not what I meant."

Brody shrugged and grabbed her hand, pulling her up so that she was facing him and sitting on the edge of the bed, her legs spread so he could stand between them.

"Isn't it?"

Abby shivered with anticipation as he cupped his hands on the sides of her jaw, tilting her face upward before leaning down and kissing her deeply.

"Mmm…" Abby moaned into his lips, smiling when she pulled back. "You know that's not what I meant."

"You want to know what I want?"

Abby nodded warily, not quite sure what was about to happen when Brody took the takeout menu out of her hand and tossed it to the floor.

"Well, for starters, I want to kiss you every night before I go to bed and I want to wake up next to you every day for the rest of my life."

"Sap," Abby muttered as he kissed her again.

"I want to catch you when trip over rocks that aren't there, and I want you to yell at me when I leave the toilet seat up. I want to trip over the clothes you leave on the floor when the hamper is all of two feet away…"

"I do not do that!"

Brody smirked and kissed Abby again to silence her. "Yes, you do. And you know what? I don't ever want you to stop, because when the place is clean, it means you haven't been here in a while, and I don't like that."

Abby laughed and leaned forward, burying her head in his chest.

"You know what else I want?"

Abby shook her head, watching in confusion as Brody pressed a finger to lips before he stepped back and walked over to the bedside table.

"Brody?"

Abby leaned forward over the edge of the bed, balancing on the edge of her palms and craning her head to catch a glimpse of what was in the drawer he'd opened. As he turned around, carefully holding one hand behind his back, Abby tried to lean back to hide her curiosity. Instead, she managed to lose her balance completely, tumbling forward off the bed. Almost instantly Brody lurched forward, getting himself underneath her just before she hit the floor.

"Oh my God, are you okay?" Abby gasped in horror as she landed on top of him.

"Yeah, I'm…" Brody turned his head to the side and paled slightly. "Oh, shit…"

"What? Oh God, did you hit your head? Is it your back?"

"No, it's not…" Brody gently pushed Abby off of his chest, coming up onto his knees and running his hands along the floor. "Damn it, where is it?"

"Where's what?"

"The ring! I must have dropped him when I caught you." Brody groaned and dropped a little lower, realizing the ring must have rolled underneath the bed.

"The ring?" Abby frowned and dropped down to her knees next to him. "Why did you…? Oh, Brody, you didn't…"

"This was not how this was supposed go," Brody grumbled, sticking his head under the bed.

"Oh my God," Abby sighed, slipping under the bed next to Brody to look for the ring. "Oh my God, oh my god, oh my God."

For nearly ten minutes, Abby and Brody silently crawled around on the floor, covering nearly every square inch without finding the ring.

"Damn it," Brody muttered, smacking his palm into the floor and leaning back against the side of the bed.

"Were you really going to propose to me?" Abby called out from under the bed.

"Yeah," Brody said. "Still am, when I find that damn ring."

"You really want to be married to me?" Abby asked, popping her head out next to him and propping her chin up on her hands.

Brody looked down at Abby and smiled. "Is that okay?"

Abby sighed. "We've talked about this, Brody. Relationships are complicated enough. Why would we want to add lace and flowers and joint checking accounts?"

"You can have your own checking account, Abby."

"It's not about the checking accounts, Brody. I just don't know."

"I know."

"Do you really?"

"Hold on." Brody stood up and went back the drawer.

"If that's another ring, you better hold on tight, because I'm not crawling around for this one."

Brody laughed and shook his head, crouching down in front of her and opening his fist to reveal a thin gold chain.

"What's that?"

"It goes with the ring," Brody said, grabbing Abby's hand and pulling her out from under the bed. "If I had the ring right now, I'd put it on this chain and put around your neck and tell you not to answer me just yet. Just hold onto it, you don't have to put it on your finger if you don't want to. Just think about it for a while."

"And then what?"

"And then someday soon you're going to come to your senses and realize that I'm not those other guys you've dated, and I don't want you to change. And when you do, you're going to admit that I'm right, and let me put that ring on your finger for good."

Abby tucked her legs underneath her and frowned at him. "You're right about what?"

"About the fact that you love me." Brody wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her up against his chest again. "And about the fact that you do want to marry me."

"Awfully sure of yourself, aren't you?"

"The confidence masks my deep-rooted fear of rejection," Brody said. "So please don't reject me without at least thinking about it."

Abby leaned forward, reaching around Brody's waist quickly before coming back so that she was face to face with him. Smiling, she held up the ring, kissed him softly and handed it to him. "I suppose it couldn't hurt to think about it," she whispered, holding up her left hand. "Will you put it on me? Just for tonight?"

They'd stayed up half the night talking about dreams that night, laughing and planning and shutting out everything except each other. It hadn't been until she'd seen the two agents walking across her mother's front lawn that it had dawned on her exactly how foolish and impossible all those dreams were going to be.

And as she lay there on that cot, staring at the wall and fighting back tears of regret, she knew that the worst part was that there was no one to blame but herself.


"Are you out of your God-given mind?" Lina Flores slammed her fist onto the bookcase next to her and turned her head to shoot a glare at the man behind the desk.

Lieutenant Papadol sighed and shook his head. "Lina, sit down."

"I'm not sitting down until somebody explains to me how the hell the feds managed to arrest twenty-two cops without IA having a damn clue anything was going on!"

"Lina…"

"We investigate cops, not them! Where the hell do they get off stepping on our turf? And why are you not on the phone giving them hell about it?" Lina frowned, staring through the glass office wall into the bullpen before turning to her boss. "And where the hell is Abby this morning?"

"Sit down, Lina."

"Why?" Lina asked hesitantly, slowly taking a seat across the desk from Lieutenant Papadol. "Lieutenant, where's Abby?"

"Detective Kowalski was arrested last night as part of Operation City Sweep."

Lina leaned back in her seat in shock, staring silently at her boss for a moment. "Is this some sort of sick joke?"

"I wish it were." Lieutenant Papadol sighed and rested his elbows on his desk. "Our friends at the FBI apparently didn't trust us to collar one of our own."

"Lieutenant, this is absurd! Abby would never be involved in something like that. Not a chance. There has to be something we can do to clear her name, some sort of investigation or…"

"Detective Flores, let me make something very clear – this is not an internal investigation. My orders are that no one in this department has worked or will work on this case. This goes way beyond us, and we're staying out of it. There's nothing we can do."

"Bullshit," Lina snapped. "You just don't want to rock the boat because you finally got your big fish off the streets and you're afraid of messing that up."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"Bob Barchelli, that's what I'm talking about. I'll bet it really rubs you the wrong way that you spent four years chasing him and the feds were the ones who managed to bring him in."

"Lina, you know as well as I do that Barchelli is as dirty as they come. The bottom line is that he's off the street for good now. Not to mention the fact that Felix and Luis Mariano's operations have been a danger to this city for a lot of years, and this morning they're weaker than they've ever been. That's a victory in my book, even if our department takes a casualty or two along the way."

"You're kidding me, right? Yeah, I knew Barchelli was dirty. I knew it, you knew it, Abby knew it. But if you think for one second that my partner would be involved in something that that…that scumbag was involved with, you need a nice long visit with Dr. Alexander."

Lieutenant Papadol shook his head and grabbed a thick manila envelope from the side of the desk. Reaching across the desk, he handed it to Lina.

"Consider this a gift from the feds."

"What the hell is it?" Lina asked, breaking the seal and peeking inside.

"Tapes. A small sampling of the evidence the government is using to build its cases against a majority of the people arrested yesterday. The feds have hundreds of hours more."

"What's on them?"

"A better question would be what's not on them – or who's not on them. Luis Mariano, Felix Mariano, Bob Barchelli, Abby…they're all there. Tipping the group off to police raids, taking payments under the table, arranging drug deals, running cash for weapons deals, getting paid to let dirty cops slide…"

Lina shook her head vigorously. "No. Not possible."

"Listen to the tapes, Lina." Lieutenant Papadol sighed wearily, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. "As much as I don't like to think it, it looks like we're going to have to start accepting that Abby Kowalski was not who we thought she was."