A/N I took advantage of the stat holiday to enjoy some down time and indulge in writing. So here is another chapter. I apologize in advance for what will inevitably be a longer wait until the next installment. xoxoxo mustlovecat

Sam shot Andy a quick look before he raised his fist to knock on the wooden door in front of him. A slight flash of his dimples and he saw her visibly relax. And in that moment, as he took her in – full uniform, hair pulled back in a French braid, little make-up – one thought ran through his mind: his girl was not really the mushy, romantic type, which was kind of unfortunate because he was starting to think he was the get-down-on-one-knee type. Not necessarily the put the ring in a dessert or sky-writing type, but he could definitely see a bended knee in his future. A bended knee followed by dust as she high-tailed it out of there. He chuckled to himself.

"What's so funny?" she asked.

"Nothing. You ready?"

She nodded.

Sam knocked on the door three times in quick succession and willed the thrumming in his chest to slow down. Men like Anton Hill did not scare him, but it was hard to put the last time he had faced him out of his mind.

"Well, well, well. To what do I owe the pleasure, Sammy?" Hill asked as he threw the front door open and took in the two uniformed cops standing there before him.

"I'm afraid we have some bad news, Anton. May we come in?" Sam requested.

Hill stepped aside, holding out his arm to wave them into the penthouse. As he closed the door behind them, he said, "Officer McNally. Still doing Swarek's bidding, I see."

Andy resisted the urge to scowl, willing herself not to be intimidated by the man. "I'm his partner. Where one goes…"

He snorted. "Partner. So that's what you're calling it." He waved his hand dismissively then. "What's this bad news?"

"Your bar just went up in flames," Sam explained, perhaps a little more glee in the announcement than there should have been.

Andy and Sam both watched the man for his reaction. If he was surprised, he did not show it. It had wasn't, he did not show that either. He just hmm'd and shook his head. "Twenty years and it's come to this," he said.

Sam cocked his head. He had worked under Hill for almost eight months, had got so he could read him. He was not the least bit shaken, or feeling the least bit closed in – he was certainly not ready to even consider admitting defeat. There was some plan, and everything had been perfectly choreographed. It pissed Swarek off a little. "You know anyone who would want to burn your club to the ground?"

Meeting the challenge, Anton smiled tightly. "Oh, I'm sure we both could come up with quite a list, couldn't we, Sammy?"

"I don't know. The list is pretty short these days. Landrys are gone. Henry Bergen. Tomasz Antonechuk's closest crew members met an unfortunate end not all that long ago…Unless Antonechuk is doing his own dirty work these days. I guess that's a possibility." Sam looked over at Andy.

"It's a lead worth pursuing," she agreed.

"You think so, Hill? You and Antonechuk having some problems? Any reason he would want to take your business out?"

Hill shrugged. "You never know. People have their reasons for doing things. Sometimes things that appear to be random really…aren't."

Sam narrowed his eyes. What was he talking about? Cormier's death? The fire? He chanced a look over at Andy to see if she had any insights, and noticed that she had deftly moved across the room and was subtly glancing around. And as his eyes fell on her, he felt like his blood had caught fire, the burn quickly moving throughout his body. It took everything in him to hold onto his control, not to pull out his piece and put a bullet between Hill's eyes. More than that, it was a fight to school his features, not to let his face, his stance, his hands, betray him. "We'll look into Tomasz. Any other possibility comes to mind, give us a call."

"Oh, you'll be my first call."

Sam was not proud of himself – at his faltering sense of control – but he knew himself. He knew that if he was not going to blow this entire investigation, he had to get himself out of there and fast. "Officer McNally, let's go."

She nodded, seeing Sam was suddenly struggling with something. "We'll be in touch," she said as she followed her partner across the living room and towards the front door.

"I look forward to it," Hill said dryly as the two uniforms let themselves out.

Andy wanted to ask Sam what was wrong as soon as they were out the door, but she waited until the elevator doors closed before she turned to him and raised her hand to touch his arm. "Sam?"

He caught her completely off guard as he grabbed her and pushed her back against the wall of the elevator, his lips crashing down on hers unrelenting and demanding. In spite of her surprise, her body responded on her behalf, her mouth moving with his, until the elevator reached the ground floor and dinged to announce its arrival. Sam pulled away, took a breath, and strode quickly across the marble lobby towards the entrance.

"Oo-kay," Andy said as she caught up to his long strides outside on the sidewalk. "Apparently going toe-to-toe with your arch nemesis turns you on."

Sam did not respond. He crossed the street to where they had parked the squad car and slid into the driver's seat, slamming the door shut before he allowed himself to give in. He slapped the steering wheel a few times, a low growl finally emanating from deep inside. By the time Andy slid in beside him, she was almost a little scared. "Something went wrong," he was saying as she shut the door, his tone quiet, calculated, as if trying to put together pieces that should not have belonged to the same puzzle.

"What?" she asked, her brows knit together in confusion.

"The park. Nothing is random. We're not just partners." His voice was low, and she was not sure if he was answering her question or talking out loud hoping it would help line things up.

"Sam, I don't…" She trailed off and her eyes widened in realization. "No."

"You were supposed to die that night. Cormier – Cummings. He was an enforcer and Cassie Valens was just a pawn. But something went wrong. You calling 9-1-1? I don't know, or maybe Shaw and Epstein being so close? Whatever it was, something went off the rails and now he's stuck cleaning up the mess. Cormier I get. But what was at the bar?" With each word, his hands tightened around the steering wheel until his knuckles were white.

"Wh-why?"

He looked over at her and almost smiled then at her naïveté. "Because you're the most important thing in the world to me. We barely knew each other and you walked into a bar and put everything on the line to back me up. Hill knew from that day that we weren't just partners."

"But –"

"But what? We were? C'mon, Andy, that night I would've ravished you in my car in the middle of the parking lot at the Penny if you'd let me and it wasn't just because we were hopped up on adrenaline. We were inevitable. Turns out we were just the last ones to figure that out. Meanwhile, it chapped Hill's ass that he let an undercover get close, that he trusted me and let me into his organization. I should've known he would never just let it go. But killing me would never give him the satisfaction that watching me spiral after losing the woman I loved would." Sam's grip loosened around the steering wheel and he reached up to rake a hand through his hair, his hand scrubbing the back of his neck. "Son-of-a-bitch."

"I need air," she whispered, moving to open the door.

Sam reached over and grasped her arm. "Not here."

She just nodded slowly.

"Division. I'll call Boyd and fill him in from there while I get the duty roster from the night of your attack. We need to let Best know what's going on, too."

Andy did not say anything, her mind trying to process everything and just finding it impossible.

Sam manoeuvred the squad car through the late morning traffic downtown and pulled into the Sally Port. He led Andy into the precinct and they headed straight to Best's office. They got Don on speaker phone and Sam outlined his suspicions to them simultaneously, feeling the vein in his neck start to pulsate once again.

"With Cormier dead, connecting Hill to the attack is going to be next to impossible," Boyd pointed out, his tone bearing the weight of the frustration they were all feeling.

"We're going to find a way to prove it Don, and we're going to add the attempted murder of a police officer to the long laundry list of charges he's going to be facing. You get anything from the scene?"

"No, the place has been gutted."

"Fantastic," Sam muttered.

"Let's try cross-checking the duty roster against the list of people with access to Cormier while he was in protective custody. Our best shot now is finding Hill's inside man."

"We're on it."

"I'll get those lists going," Frank said after they had disconnected the call with Boyd.

"Thanks." Sam looked over at Andy who had not said two words since they had entered the station. "C'mon, McNally. You need to hit something."

She looked up at her boyfriend as he stood, an eyebrow raised at his suggestion.

"Come on." He looked at their Staff Sergeant. "I'll be back later for the info. In the meantime, you get anything…"

"Yeah, I'll call. McNally, stay strong. We're gonna get this son-of-a-bitch," Frank assured her.

"I know." But she didn't. She had thought they had already caught the man who had nearly killed her. She had made peace with the deal that had been made, thinking it was for some greater good, because she had only been collateral damage anyway. But she was the mark all along? How long had they been watching her, figuring out her movements, planning some kind of death that would look like anything but a hit?

"McNally…" Sam startled her as she felt pressure on her low back and realized he was practically pushing her out of Best's office. Once they hit the bottom of the stairs, she thought he would lead her to the locker rooms, or maybe back to the parking lot to get his truck so they could return to Headquarters. But instead he led her down the hall towards the gym. He pushed open the door, unbuttoning his uniform shirt and pulling it off, leaving him in the t-shirt beneath. He grabbed a pair of gloves and handed them to his girlfriend.

"Sam, we have work."

"Boyd, Donner, Talon and Wells are still at the scene. Frank's working on getting the lists we need…We got some time. Now, despite the fact that I think it would be justifiable homicide, Hill's off limits right now. So put on the gloves, will you?"

Andy rolled her eyes a little, but she took the boxing gloves from him. She set them aside while she removed her own uniform shirt, then pulled them on and suddenly found herself full of energy that needed to be expended. She watched as Sam pulled on another pair of gloves, and then met him in the centre of the mat. They tapped their gloves together, and then all bets were off.

Andy was quick on her feet, but Sam's reflexes equally matched hers. They sparred for well over half an hour, working up a sweat and wearing off the aggression that had to be displaced before either of them did anything stupid and compromised the badge they were both so proud to wear. Then finally, worn out, Andy yanked off the gloves and collapsed down onto the mat, laying back as she struggled to catch her breath.

"You all right?" Sam asked gently, coming over to kneel down beside her.

"Sure, just great."

He smirked.

She looked up at him, her chest still heaving from the exertion. "You're my most important thing in the world, too, you know."

"Yeah? Makes me a damn lucky man." He chuckled as she closed her eyes to continue her recovery. He pushed himself up off the floor and walked over to the shelf at the end of the room and replaced both sets of gloves. He turned back and looked over at his girlfriend. Sweaty, her hair escaping the neat braid she had pulled it into earlier, her face flushed…His blood was boiling for the second time that morning, this time for a completely different reason. He cleared his throat and ran the back of his hand over his forehead, ridding himself of some of the sweat that still dotted his brow. "I'm going to marry you," he said, the words escaping before he could really question the intelligence of speaking them.

Andy's eyes shot open and she bolted up so she was sitting upright on the floor. "What?"

"Jerry didn't buy Nash earrings. You were holding your own engagement ring."

Her heart that had just finally stopped pounding in her chest started up its crazy thrumming again. "Sam…"

"It's not here, McNally. And I'm not asking. I'm just telling you that it's part of the plan. You're it. We're it. I'm going to marry you someday. And I'm not talking some abstract someday in some abstract future. It's not going to be years and years down the road because I don't think we have anything to wait for except for you to be as sure of me as I am of you. But I get that finding out that you're a target for that very reason might set us back a little, but – Anyway, I just thought you should know."

Andy slowly eased herself up from the mat and shook her hands out a little nervously. "Oh," she finally said, her brow furrowing at the most nonsensical thing that she could have said.

Sam smirked a little at her response. "Sweetheart, I told you I wasn't asking. So you don't need to formulate any kind of answer, all right?"

"But…"

He walked over and cupped her face in his hands. "Relax." He leaned down and kissed her gently. "Let's go grab a shower and get back over to Headquarters. I'm feeling very motivated to get back into that evidence pile." He released her and walked over to the door. When he realized she had not followed, he stopped and looked back. "Andy?"

"What kind of ring?"

He raised his eyebrows.

"I mean, you've never bought me jewellery before so I don't know if you know my taste."

He laughed. "That's what you're worried about?"

She shrugged. "Well, it's something I'll never take off, so I want to like it."

"You're never gonna take it off, huh?"

Her face flushed.

"You'll like the ring, Andy. I have no doubts."

"But you have doubts that I'll say yes."

"No, that's not –"

"Because I will, you know. I mean, maybe not today, or tomorrow, 'cause right now the thought makes me want to break out in hives, just a little bit. But if you wait just a while – and I'm not talking about a long while, really. Just a while. Then I'll say yes. But maybe you should show Traci the ring 'cause it would kind of suck if you asked and I said yes and then I didn't like the ring."

"I'm feeling kind of insulted, McNally, that you don't trust my taste in jewellery."

"I'm just saying…"

He grinned. "You're gonna say yes, huh?"

She walked over into his arms and hugged him. "I love you," she murmured into his neck.

He sobered, his arms grasping her more tightly against him. "I'm sorry that that's put you on Hill's radar."

"Don't apologize, Sam. We choose to do this job, knowing the risks that come with it. And if we let Hill scare us, then he wins. We're going to build a solid case against him, and this time, he is not going to get to walk away."

He ghosted his lips over her forehead. He took her hand then and led her out of the gym.

As they headed down the hall towards the locker rooms, Andy leaned her head against his shoulder. "Are you going to tell Jerry he doesn't need to buy Traci those earrings anymore?"

"I'm thinking about it."