She almost can't get into Game of Thorns Flower Shop, the line of customers zigzagging all the way to the front door and then winding its way around the sidewalk outside. Mostly men who look like they're in a hurry, Emma wedges herself through them into the shop, flashing her badge whenever she hears the slightest trace of a grumble starting. Disgruntled husbands and boyfriends can wait. She's supposed to find a Peony Erbse. Henry would probably have a field day with that name.

She has a feeling she knows what this is about. Mr. French had apparently robbed Gold earlier, Gold dead sure it had been him, and she had recovered most, or "most," of the items he'd reported missing. And now she's gotten a call from the flower shop.

"You're going to have to wait in line like everyone else," a small, harried woman with her hair in a messy bun says without looking up at her, taking some cash from a customer.

"My name's Emma Swan. You called the sheriff's office."

The woman's head springs up, her mouth perfectly rounded in surprise.

"Oh! Oh, I'm so sorry, Sheriff Swan. I..." Spinning around with her hands out in confusion, she motions for the next customer to wait while she sets a little placard on the counter that says "Back in Five Minutes" in flowery cursive writing with stenciled roses on either side.

The moans and groans echo throughout the shop.

"This way," Miss Erbse says, ushering her toward the back of the shop, past the arrangements and booklets of wedding bouquets and corsages.

"It must be the busiest night of the year for you," Emma says as Miss Erbse stops in front of a small corridor leading into all their stuff refrigerated stuff. Best place to talk, she decides. A good distance away from all the teddy bears over near the window.

"I-I don't know if I'm doing the right thing calling the police. It's actually probably nothing—"

"You felt the need to call. Something bothered you." Emma pulls out a small notebook and pencil.

"Yes. Yes, it does. Mr. French. He's not here. Like you said, it's the busiest night of the year, and he's not here. He's always here. He didn't call to say he wouldn't be in, didn't leave any directions. It's just me, and half of these guys don't know what they're looking for and just want me to put something together I think will look nice, so...he knows it gets this way, and I need all the help I can get, and he's not here!"

"Okay, okay," Emma hushes her, completely understanding the frazzled overworked employee versus frazzled, oblivious customers. "When did you last see him?"

"This morning. He had the van—oh! The van's gone, too. Never said he was making a delivery or anything."

"Can you think of anyone who might have a grudge against him?" Like any name would really deter her from her Number One suspect, but it would look weird if she didn't ask it. Miss Erbse is shaking her head, taken aback at the question.

"He's a very mild-mannered guy! He knows his flowers, runs things efficiently. The only man I've ever seen him argue with is Mr. Gold."

Why is she not surprised, she thinks, sighing, writing "Gold" in the notebook in bubble letters and darkening them in with her pencil.

"What would they argue about?"

"Petty things. This morning, Mr. Gold was yelling at him about something, but Mr. French fully intended on being here at work! He said as much. Sheriff Swan, please find him. I'm swamped!"

"I'll do my best," she promises her, ready to ask if she can take a look around the shop, but Miss Erbse is already dashing back to the counter. Fantastic.

Emma weaves her way around a couple of trash bags that haven't been taken out yet to the back of the shop, flower petals all over the place. Calling Gold won't help much. He'd play innocent like he always does and cryptically tell her the guy got what he had coming to him. Rolling her eyes at the hypothetical conversation, she bends over to peek into cubby holes and open drawers, not finding anything out of the ordinary.

Letting herself out, she finds herself on a small loading dock, the empty space for the missing van. A few tire marks here and there, but nothing that showed signs of foul play. Yet. She pulls out her flashlight, the streetlight not enough.

Practically doing lunges to search the loading dock, the flashlight lands on a glint of something. Stooping over again, she picks up a hair, shining from rain and being under the light. Gray, long...definitely not a match for French's short whorls. She doesn't have a baggie to put it in, but if she finds them in time, she might not need it.

He won't be at his house. Too obvious. She runs back to the front of the building and starts her car, quickly choosing Mary Margaret's number.

"What?" is the super-pissy greeting.

"Hi...?"

"Emma. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't look at the phone when I picked it up. I thought it was...what's up?"

"I need you to walk over to the pawn shop," she directs her, backing up into the street and shifting gears.

"The pawn shop?" Mary Margaret repeats, the angry tone gone.

"Yeah. I need you to walk down there and tell me if there are any cars or vans parked there—front or back. If lights are on, if doors are unlocked, if you can hear anything," she trails off.

"Emma, what's going on?"

"Just please hurry down there."

"I'm outside. I'll go look now." Over the phone, Emma can hear footsteps against pavement, Mary Margaret's breathing picking up. Emma parks the car again and pulls the map of Storybrooke out of the glove box. She'd found it back when she'd looked at all the files, red dotted lines outlying what belonged to Gold and what was the private property of other people. Most of the main streets of the downtown, the harbor, a few residential areas, and the surrounding woods all belonged to Gold, and she would bet anything that somewhere in there was a hideout of sorts for him, some secret place where he could do anything he wanted...

"It's empty, Emma," Mary Margaret pants into the phone. "I crept up to see if I could hear voices inside. No one's parked here. The lights are off. Just looking through the front window, nothing looks touched."

"Okay. That's what I thought. I need to find Gold. If you wanted to go somewhere within the town where no one would find you, where would you go?" she asks.

"T-that's...why would you ask something like that?" Emma rolls her eyes at the flustered response.

"Look, we can discuss what all you've been up to another time. You've lived here longer than I have. Every place has an old abandoned building, a house all the kids think is haunted, anything like that, and I know Storybrooke has something like that."

There's a pause, and Emma knows she's onto something.

"There's a cabin," Mary Margaret breathes. "There's a cabin in the woods, not too far from the bridge. No one knows if anyone actually lives in it."

"Have you ever been in it?"

"Y-yes." She can picture Mary Margaret nodding as fast as her head can.

"Does it look lived-in?"

"Oh yeah."

"You said by the bridge?" Turning the flashlight back on, the pencil in her mouth, she traces the contour lines of the map, finding the elevated hills near the bridge. She recognizes the blue section of the creek, and then finds a place where the land flattens off, the map showing it as a small clearing with trees behind it. That has to be it.


"You don't need to guide me to my cell, Miss Swan. I can take it from here." Gold doesn't jerk out of her hold, nor does he fiddle with the handcuffs, but she can feel him edging away as best he can, dragging his bad leg along with him, trying to walk from the door to the cell with as much dignity as he can. Not that anyone else is there to see him. She keeps up with him, though, and once he sits down, she pulls the cell door shut and locks it without seeing any defiance on his face.

"You want to tell me what this is all about?" she demands, standing over him, watching him stare at the wall across from him.

"I thought I had the right to remain silent."

"And I thought this was all about your stuff being recovered, only to hear you yourself say it's about something else entirely—a person. Gold, there is no report of a missing person in all these files, not one unsolved crime."

"Cause for Regina to increase your funding, or at least throw a ball."

She strides up to the bars, towering over him while he sits.

"You've got a clean record, pristine, actually. At least for the last twenty-eight years." He doesn't flinch. "That's when the paper says a fire destroyed most of Storybrooke's records, and we all know how skilled you are at making fires."

"And putting them out. In my own way, of course," he sniffs, resting his weight on his cane.

"This kind of thing should be happening all the time with you, someone getting mad at the fact you own everything, and yet not one dispute in over two decades. But here I've been sheriff for just a few months, and I've already got you in a cell. I'm no math expert, but the odds aren't quite matching up, are they?"

"I told you the town is afraid of me," he argues, his brogue deepening a little. His stillness isn't passivity; she's learned that much about him. It's predatory. It's just him waiting, unseen, until he's ready to snap. She sets her jaw.

"You realize if Mr. French presses charges, you're looking at time? It's kidnapping and battery. And while the town may be afraid of you, guess what? They're not afraid of me. They'll tell me things if I ask them. I bet you most of them have lived here their entire lives and they remember things from way before all the records got burned. And if cold case after cold case comes up and you're attached to them? All that's going to get out in the open in a trial."

Standing up, his cane still directly in front of him, Gold turns to face her, back rigid, his smirk one of the coldest she's ever seen. His eyes meet hers without hesitation.

"Miss Swan, you have no idea about anyone's life before those twenty-eight years. You're fantasizing in the wrong genre if you think your suspicions have one iota of impact on me. I'll be out of here before you know it, and then everything will happen exactly the way I've foreseen it, just like it always does." He bares his teeth at her, his forced grin shiny and narrow.

There's not much Emma can do, and she knows she'll just look stupid if she continues to stand here with her arms crossed, so she ambles back to her desk, leans back in her chair, and grabs the top of it with both hands, elbows jutted out at him.

"A lot of bluster for a guy who has to tie people up before he hurts them," she notes, knowing her eyes can look just as dead serious as his.

"A formality," he growls.

"For a coward," she counters.


A/N: Oh, I've missed writing dangerous(!) Rumple soooo much! "Peony" comes from the Japanese fairy tale "Princess Peony" and "Erbse" is the German word for "pea," for "The Princess and the Pea." Coming up? Heart to heart time with Mary Margaret.