Roots and Seeds

a Law and Order: CI story

by RoadrunnerGER

Disclaimer: Dick Wolf still has not agreed to sell them, so they're not mine. This is just for fun and practice.

A/N: Thank you for your nice comments. So, you think this is incorporating "Frame"? LOL You're good... and you're right. ;) Thanks again to Bammi1 for beta-reading. Enjoy.

Chapter 10

"What do you mean, she's gone?" Bobby snapped when the nurse told him the latest news about Nicole Wallace. It was early on the morning after he found his brother dead in his apartment and about two hours ago he had received a call, letting him know that Nicole awoke from the coma and asked for him. After a quick shower and a not so quick talk with Alex Bobby drove to the hospital and now they told him that Nicole had left.

"I don't know, Mr. Goren," the nurse said. "She isn't in her room anymore and nobody has taken her to do any test or treatment."

"She's in no shape to wander around!" he exploded. "She just had an emergency C-section, so she can't be far! Find her!"

"What's going on here?" a man in a doctor's jacket demanded to know.

"I just told Mr. Goren that Miss Wallace is not here anymore, Dr. Harding," the nurse explained to him. "And that's when he started to shout."

"Mr. Goren?" Dr. Harding turned to him. "Please, what's wrong?"

"What is wrong?" Bobby panted. "Nicole Wallace had surgery only a few days ago, she was in an artificial coma and I just got called that she woke up again. Now I'm told that she's gone! You tell me what's wrong with that."

Dr. Harding frowned at him.

"And don't let me get started about the open arrest warrant on her."

Now Dr. Harding frowned even deeper. "Let me have a look at her file."

"Sure. Do it now," Bobby growled.

So Dr. Harding followed the nurse to their station office and took the folder she handed him.

"Okay, as far as I can see, Miss Wallace was released against medical advice into the custody of her husband."

"Her husband?" Bobby panted. "She's not married…" He paused when he remembered that that was not entirely correct, "Not anymore."

"That's all I can tell," Dr. Harding said. "I'm sorry."

"What about the baby?" Bobby demanded to know.

"Oh, the baby should still be in the nursery," the nurse told him. "Why don't you go and see for yourself?"

"I will, you can be sure of that."

And with that Bobby turned and rushed down the hall to the elevator that took him to the floor with the children's medical unit. There he found Naomi sleeping peacefully in her cradle.

Soon, my daughter, Bobby thought. Soon you'll be home with us.

Soon, because he could not simply take her with him. He still needed to convince Alex.

xXx

"Now who's that? She seems to know him, but who is it?" Ross asked, watching the hospital's security footage together with Bobby and Bishop.

"He's standing with his back to the camera the whole time," Bishop murmured and leaned slightly forward in a subconscious attempt to see more than actually could be seen.

Bobby sat astride on his chair, his forearms folded on the back rest. He had the remote control and let the tape wind back and run again.

"You see that?" Bobby pointed out. "Even now, when he's helping her settle in the wheelchair, he's paying attention to stay out of clear view of the camera." Attentively he watched the scene on the TV. "See?" he said excitedly, getting up from his seat and leaning over the back rest forward far enough to touch the screen with his index finger. "He knows where the camera is and turns when they step through the door! See? Here he bows his head to hide under his hat. When they go into the next corridor he's walking the whole length with his head down. It looks like he's talking with her. He doesn't raise suspicions."

"Okay, detective," Ross said. "I can see that. But is it really intentionally? He could be talking with her as well. And he could also have turned his attention to her when they left the room."

Bishop harbored doubts, too, but she was careful not to voice them because she just was not sure. Their captain had made a point but so had Bobby. From her earlier experience with working with Robert Goren she knew that his hunches often were more reliable than many a so called solid evidence. Of course they had to prove their theories with evidence, Bishop knew that. But she also knew that she could trust Bobby's instincts.

"Who is he?" Bobby murmured more to himself than to his captain and substitute partner. "This posture… the gestures… seen before…"

Bishop could not hide a smirk. Back then when she had worked with him for the first time, during Alex's pregnancy as surrogate mother for her sister Fiona, he had hardly talked at all. All she could do was to try and draw her own conclusions and hope that she would reach the same result as he did. When he talked to himself like that she might have a chance to keep up with him.

"Do you have any idea where you've seen him?" she asked.

"No idea," Bobby said absently. He sounded like he did not even know that he was talking with her, though she suspected that he was conscious of everything that happened around him.

"So, what did Nicole's doctor say about her state of health?" Ross asked.

"Well, how's her health supposed to be after a C-section?" Bobby said. "After all it's a surgical intervention, plus she was in an artificial coma for days. Even though she rested that long the cuts from the surgery can't have healed already. That will take time. She must be weak and in a lot of pain." He shook his head with inability to understand her motives. "When she went into labor she called me for help. She wanted her baby to be safe. She knew she could not do it on her own. Why would she go with this man now?"

"Unless he really is her husband?"

"No, I don't think so." Bobby chewed on his bottom lip, thinking. "She's divorced and her last relationship was with a woman, Naomi. Nicole desperately wanted a child, kidnapped Alex and forced intercourse on me to get pregnant. I can't imagine her with a man now, even though she lost Naomi in an accident."

"Do we know if it really was an accident?" Ross wanted to know.

"We don't even know Naomi's last name, least of all how she died. All we have is Nicole's word that it was a car accident." Bobby shrugged. "Maybe she is dead, maybe she isn't, but that doesn't help us with finding Nicole."

"Wouldn't Nicole have been arrested once she's recovered enough to be transferred to a prison's hospital?" Bishop asked. "Maybe that is why she fled from the hospital with that man. Is there anyone in her history who would help her escape?"

"Nicole always works like that, first she seduces and once she doesn't need her partner anymore she'll kill him."

"Like a black widow," Ross remarked.

Bobby nodded. "Well, whatever she's up to, we can be sure that it is nothing good. Maybe she'll have to put it off due to her surgery, but maybe it's something she can't postpone. It's possible that this man only helped her to leave the hospital, but he may be an accomplice, too."

"For all we know it could also be her girlfriend, Naomi," Bishop said. "There's no picture of him on the whole tape. She could be in disguise."

"Dr. Harding said that it was a man."

"He could be mistaken," Bishop argued and pulled up her hair to hold it in a roll behind her head. "If I wore a hat and glasses and glued on a mustache you'd think I was a man, wouldn't you?"

"Only if you wear a really wide coat," Bobby mused with a distinct glance at the part of her anatomy that would give away to him that she was a woman.

Bishop rolled her eyes at him.

"Is she built like me or more like an ironing board?" she challenged.

Bobby chuckled.

"I'd say somewhere in between," he then said. "You think that Naomi is alive and well and that the women followed a distinct plan by calling me in time for Nicole's labor to set in, that they wouldn't be content with what they did to me and Alex last year but have new ideas about torturing us."

"Something like that," Bishop agreed with a shrug. "Or would you put that past her?"

"No."

Thoughtfully Bobby kneaded his hands, slightly rocking forward and back in his chair. Then he said, "Why would they leave the baby at the hospital? They've taken a lot of risks to get her and now you say they'd just abandon her in order to try and finally destroy me?"

"I didn't say that they have abandoned her," Bishop said. "I just say that they left her at the hospital where they knew she would be safe."

That rendered Bobby silent. His mind started to race. Maybe Bishop was right. But that still left them with the question what Nicole was up to.

Then his heart started to race, too, as he remembered that there had been a blond hair in the sink of his brother's kitchen.

No, it's too vague a thought. Don't jump to conclusions, Bobby!

Still he excused himself and left the office to make a call.

tbc…