Okay so I have to go to work this morning so it's only a quick little note from me. This has a lot of angst, or at least me writing what I think is angst. XD. Not a lot of Stella, but heaps of Shannon angry and upset and now I just want to hug her.
Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter, but now I have to get ready for work, so read this instead.
She couldn't breathe; there just wasn't enough air coming into her lungs and they were beginning to burn. She couldn't focus on anything with her mind or her vision; pieces of the puzzle weren't fitting together like they should, and there were simply too few pieces for her to make a whole picture. Her heart was beating too loudly in her ears, so loud in fact that she could barely hear the commotion the few hundred meters up the road. Her shoulders were heavy with guilt that had only pushed her down as the hours passed; she had been the one who instructed Stella to go one way with a rookie constable. The last thing she had heard from Stella was the grunt as whatever tool was used had connected with the brunette's head, and she was sure that it would haunt her for a very long time.
There was just no way, not a snowballs chance in hell that this could actually be happening.
Shannon was standing in the middle of the industrial road, watching the scene from a distance in the early evening sun as it shone in her glassy eyes, her fingers laced behind her head. If she could physically distance herself by walking away, it would just look like a nightmare or an extremely frightening dream. From a distance. Up close, the whole situation was even more dizzying, and mind turning than Shannon thought possible. Her knees weren't able to hold her up any longer, and she dropped into the gutter without a second thought. The few words Kerry had spoken to Shannon the moment she arrived were quick and simple, and rang out clear in her mind. 'Stay calm and hold it together.' It took her a while to put the pieces back together, but she managed to stop the tears and uneven breaths slowly. When her eyes finally look up to see the entire situation still unfolding, the first hour finished.
Two ambulances were sitting on the far edge of the commotion on relaxed alert, red and blue lights still flashing even though they had been there going on forty-five minutes. One set of paramedics was tending to Constable Cooper, checking his head wound and his competency; the other treating Josh, who had taken a tumble down two flights of stairs with the man he had been chasing, Stella's call through the radio taking him by surprise. A third ambulance had taken the mystery man to the nearest hospital to treat him for the serious injuries he gained in the fall, while Josh had gotten away with a black eye, a headache and a few bruised ribs. TR2 was still on the other side of the building, temporarily considered evidence in the case of a missing police officer. Anything that could have been used to trace Stella, like her radio, phone or camera, had been dumped in a pile next to the unconscious Constable, along with boots, a belt and a wallet.
TR1 had sped down here and somehow managed the thirty minute trip in just over fifteen, Kerry's police issued vehicle right behind them, at the announcement of Stella's sudden and ill timed disappearance. Kerry was pacing back and forth on the closest edge to Shannon, talking away quietly and rapidly on her phone, to one the Senior Sergeant could only guess was the Police Minister as she explained the situation so a press release could be issued to the public. Leon and Audrey had been instructed to comb the exterior surveillance and Stella's lapel camera footage for anything that may have been of use, while Lawson and Michael were interrogating Cooper, wanting to know if he knew or saw anything, the younger officer becoming rather heated. Christian had gone to the hospital with the unknown attacker as a protection detail and to question him after the doctors had checked him out.
The events leading up to Stella's kidnapping kept running through Shannon's mind; the basic protocol they used, how they operated, standard procedure had all been followed to a 't'. Their presence there was only supposed to have been for check out the reason behind the silent alarm being activated, but now in Shannon's mind it was obvious that the entire set up had been a trap. The only thing she had trouble figuring out was why Stella was their intended target. Something was missing and it was eating at her mind.
"Something's not right," she said to herself, muttering ideas and consequences and possible suspects under her breath.
"Shannon," Kerry said, having briskly walked the distance Shannon had put between herself and the situation. The Senior Sergeant hadn't noticed her boss's arrival into the immediate vicinity, still throwing ideas around in her mind as she tried to piece together a few of the distorted shapes. "Shannon."
As Kerry continued to raise her voice in an effort to gain Shannon's attention, she realised that she had never seen the woman become so invested in something, anything, no matter the topic. Then again she shouldn't be surprised considering what the missing woman meant to Shannon. In her own time and experience, the Inspector had come to know what a lot of things looked like; love, happiness, deception, anger. She had felt quite a few of them in her lifetime, and in the ten months that had passed since her two officers had admitted their relationship, she had seen the more positive emotions in both of them.
Without warning, Shannon's trance broke and her head snapped up to look at Kerry, her arms around her knees loosely. "Something's not right."
"Yeah, I gathered that from the fact that Stella has been missing for over an hour," Kerry retorted. She was about to go on to say that it would be a good idea if Shannon wasn't involved with the direct investigation and search for the much loved, and tolerated for others, brunette, but she before she was able to get three words out she was interrupted. "Now, I'm not sure-"
"Hang on," Shannon demanded, running halfway down the street and calling Lawson up to her. While she had only called out for the squad leader, Michael had practically sprinted past him in his effort to get to her and Josh had grunted with difficulty for the whole hundred meters. "Something isn't right."
"Are you serious?" Michael asked, the despair and anger evident on his face at her comment. "Do you see what's going on here?"
"Yes, Michael. I can see what's going on. I was in there when it happened, remember?"
"Alright, alright," Lawson said, waving a hand between the two of them, telling them both to return to their respective corners and for Shannon to get on with it.
"Look, it's not about Stella missing." Kerry looked at her as if she belonged in a closed ward that had padded rooms. Michael looked like he wanted to stomp and scream and chuck a tantrum in the middle of the street to avoid hitting something or someone with his fist. "It's not about the fact that she's gone."
"Oh really? And what is it about?" Josh asked.
"It's about why she's missing," Shannon explained, standing from her seat on the cooling concrete. Her face lit up a tiny bit as ideas came together and connected effortlessly. "Kerry, you know as well as I do, what is going on here."
"Well it is a bit obvious," Kerry snapped.
"There's no need for sarcasm, we still don't know who took her and where."
"Shannon, what the hell are you talking about?" Lawson asked.
Shannon ignored him, keeping her gaze on the Inspector with a sense that something was being kept from her. "Dirty cops in league with Buczek and his boys." The secret connotation was fully understood by Kerry, but still partially lost of the rest of the group. The two remaining women began a silent argument over whether or not to tell the boys that the dirty cop was in fact one of Stella's older brothers, while the boys began voicing opinions and theories and throwing them at the Senior Sergeant. Shannon was close to opening her mouth to blurt it out when Kerry grabbed her arm and dragged her a few meters away back up the street.
"They don't need to know," Kerry warned. "Technically, it's still an ongoing ESD investigation."
She could feel the boys watching her. "If it could help us find her, they need to know."
"No, Shannon, they don't." Kerry sighed and shifted her position so that her back was facing the boys. "Look, I know that you're worried about you girlfriend, and that you have more puzzle pieces than the guys do, but that does not mean that you get to jeopardize an ESD investigation by outing Frank Dagostino. This needs to go down through the proper channels."
"So ESD get to control how hard we look for Stella because of his mistakes. This has all gone south and Frank is in the middle of the whole thing. We don't even need to tell them that it's Frank. All they need to know is that a dirty cop may have tipped off a member of the mob, someone close to Buczek, that Stella was held for questioning about a case possibly relating back to him, and now they kidnapped her to find out what she knows," Shannon explained in a hurry.
"It's not going to work."
"Why not?" Shannon snapped back, as equally forceful. "If it is Buczek that has her, we need to start looking now. We can't look in all the right places if members of this tactical squad aren't privy to the specific details."
"I know that, but it's not going to work Shannon."
"What is it?" The copper-haired woman eyed her boss for a moment, finally taking in her demeanour of defeat and her slumped shoulders. Kerry's huff and following sigh only verified Shannon's suspicions. "You know something, don't you? You're holding something back."
There was another huff before Kerry nudged her head in the direction of the group. With the present members of the team listening in to her words, she began to explain. "I was only made aware of this, this morning. Yesterday afternoon, when TR2 stopped for lunch, Stella was directly threatened by Connor Barry."
A cry of outrage echoed from the boys, none of whom knew about the brunette's relationship with Shannon, which was then followed by an unrelenting wave of questions. Shannon however was only left with more questions, than answers. "Why wouldn't she tell me? She tells me everything," she whispered to Kerry. "You knew. Why wouldn't you tell me?"
"Stella didn't want anyone to worry or be placed in any unnecessary danger."
"Unnecessary danger? She's missing!" Shannon yelled. "You should have taken her off the rotation today."
"And what good would that have done, Shannon?" Kerry asked. "You know very well that when the Mob is after someone, they will get their target. Nothing will stop them."
"You could've kept her at base for the day. Organised a security detail or told us about the threat."
If this was anyone else, Shannon would have been angry along with the rest of the group sure, but not as fiercely pissed as she was at the moment. Her girlfriend had lied to her about a threat made directly at her life, and her boss had kept that a secret from her. In the end it had resulted in a negative outcome. There was a good chance that this was only going to get worse before it got better.
"What was the threat exactly?" Josh and Lawson asked simultaneously, before looking at each other silently stunned. They surprised themselves often by how much alike they were at times.
Kerry threw a sideways glance at Shannon before she answered. "It seems that Connor is aware that she was picked up by ESD Friday night. Most likely from an inside source."
"Dirty cop," Michael commented. Kerry glared at him to shut up.
"Yeah," she agreed, still maintaining her glare in the young officer's direction. "If she knew anything and therefore told the ESD detectives what she knew, Buczek's boys would come after her."
"This doesn't make any sense," Lawson said. "She's TR, she works with us. How would she know if anyone in any other department was crook?"
"Unless they think one of us has got something on the side," Josh added.
"I talked to the lead on the ESD case, and it's no one in this squad. She was offering her knowledge for a joint case ESD is working with another department."
"What department?" Michael asked. He had become quite defensive, having crossed his arms across his chest.
"I don't have clearance."
"Nah, that's bullshit Kerry," said Lawson. "There's way more to it than that. We all know something big is going on, so just tell us. We're going to find out eventually."
Josh raised his voice. "Kerry, whatever is going on, we're not going to judge Stella and I sure as hell don't care about a dirty cop. But if this could lose Stella her life, we need to know, and we need to know now!"
"Just tell them, Kerry," Shannon begged. "If you don't, I will. You knew it was going to come to this. Since Friday night, you've known."
Kerry kept her mouth shut. "If you do, you're gonna get in serious shit."
Shannon made a small theatricality of measuring the weight of her options, showing which one would win out every time. Kerry knew, even before Shannon even made the gesture, of what was going to happen. She wouldn't admit it to the team, because she was trying to instil that little bit of fear in them to keep her level of authority high, but if and when it came down to explaining the whole thing to the Police Minister, she would back them up and put it all on her own shoulders.
"The dirty cop that I mentioned earlier," Shannon started.
"Shannon!"
"It's Stella brother Frank."
The atmosphere circling the group went dead quiet, no one questioning or making smartarse remarks. Just standing there in silence. The boys watched her in horror, at the admission that she knew Stella's brother wasn't quite the saint he had been painted to be within the Victorian Police Force. Kerry could only see red at the fact that Shannon had actually told them.
"You realise that you're risking your career by telling them that?" The Inspector looked at Shannon, that familiar condescending and angry expression covering her face. Shannon simply shrugged and nodded; she would give up her career in a heartbeat if it meant that Stella would come back to her safe and sound. Whether or not it was a willing choice to leave the force. Whether or not they, as a couple, worked out in the future.
"You knew that it was her brother?" Lawson asked. "You knew on Friday morning, thanks to Stella and the rat squad telling you, that her brother in running under Anton Buczek?"
"Yep," Kerry admitted.
He turned on Shannon. "And you knew this whole time?"
"No," she answered honestly. "You know that Stella invited me to Bendigo for a family function, to get out of the city after Dom died. I saw Frank get the crap kicked out of him by Udinov in the pub parking lot. I thought whatever was going on was a onetime thing, maybe he was undercover. I didn't think that he would be dirty."
"You've known about this for almost two months now?"
Shannon could tell that Lawson was trying to pick if she was telling the truth or not. All she could hope for was that if he came to the conclusion that she was lying about anything, other than her ten month long romantic relationship with Stella to the team, he wouldn't out them to the team. The gears were turning in his mind, as he connected sour attitudes to the timeline Shannon had provided when she mentioned Dom's death.
"Stella convinced me that it was nothing, Lawson."
Suddenly telling the team wasn't such a good idea as they began to turn on her for knowing about the issue before hand.
"You could have prevented this Shannon," said Michael, his hand pointing to the ground angrily.
"How was I to know that she would get kidnapped? That it was that serious. She didn't tell me about this threat, did she?" Shannon asked. She tried to stare him down but it was unlikely that he was going to relent. That was until a light bulb when off in her mind. "Something's missing," she repeated.
"What now?" Kerry asked.
"You left something out of the threat from Buczek."That comment was what got everyone's attention off Shannon and onto Kerry. "If she knew something, she would have simply told Connor that yesterday, knowing that if he caught her out, he could have had her killed within the hour. He already knows that Stella is aware of Frank's involvement so how does he play into it?"
"When Stella told me this morning that Connor fucking Barry had threatened her, she explained that she was considered Frank's collateral."
"Collateral?" Michael asked. "What does that mean?"
"It's like leverage. Usually a family member is threatened to get whoever has been doing the dirty to cough up on their end of the bargain, or pay back what they owe," Josh explained.
"In this case, its Stella's life for her brother's mistake," Shannon finished, as everything began to click into place. "Thing is, we don't know what his mistake it. As far as I can tell, he's in deep shit. That's it. The kind of shit that it is, is another question entirely."
"According to Connor, who wanted Stella to give Frank a message but she was forbidden from contacting him by ESD. Frank has a week to get himself out of that deep shit he's found himself in."
"If he has a week to get himself out of it, why was Stella taken the day after the threat was made?" Shannon asked. Her mind lit up with ideas, only to but cut short when her train of through was interrupted.
Kerry's phone went off at the particular moment, pulling her away from the group as she took in the caller ID lighting up the LED screen on the front of the device. She walked away far enough for the words she was speaking to be nothing but mimed words, and paced the width of the street for several minutes as Lawson and Josh threw more plausible theories back and forth. 'Why not Frank's wife or child? Why Stella? What is Buczek holding over him? How has he supposed to have been helping the crime lord and Mob boss?' Michael was attempting to pitch in, in an effort to not feel more helpless than he already was.
Shannon was only half paying attention to the boys, listening with her auditory senses and she gazed at Kerry talking rapidly on the phone again. Shannon longed to be able to hear the conversation in full, but knew that when it came to having it explained, it would strictly be the cliff notes version. Shannon already knew the answer to one of the boy's questions.
"It was Stella because she knew he involved in something," she explained, still refusing to let her eyes leave Kerry's form. "It was Stella because she saw Frank get beaten up by Udinov at her father's birthday party."
"You saw that too, so why not you?" Michael asked.
"I don't mean the same thing to Frank as what Stella does. They act like the quarrelling siblings all the time and that they don't love each other, but in reality they would do anything for each other. Family means a lot to the two of them, no matter how badly they get along. It's how they were raised," Shannon said. Eventually when she realised that Kerry's conversation was probably going to a relatively long one, she turned back to face the remaining male members of the team.
They were all looking at her with the same exact curious expression. Yes, Lawson knew about her relationship and she was sure that Josh suspected, but Michael was still completely clueless that it was in fact Shannon who was the mystery girl that meant everything to Stella. It seemed to have dawned on Lawson Blake just how much they meant to each other, who first thought that it was just a joke, that Shannon was sexually frustrated and Stella simply wanted a root. He thought that it wouldn't last long and eventually Shannon would be his. Apparently the situation had gone in the complete opposite direction, and at full speed.
"Well, now that we know the basics, it give us a starting point to try and find her," said Lawson, over the engine of the two ambulances as they pushed their way down the street.
"Not yet, it doesn't," Kerry announced, coming back to join the group.
"What do you mean?" Shannon asked. "We know who is responsible for taking her."
"Yes, we do. But that doesn't mean that we are legally allowed to attempt to bust down Anton Buczek's front gate to ask him who of his boys kidnapped a cop, and where they took her," Kerry explained.
"I hate it when you're sarcastic," Shannon mumbled.
Kerry glared at her like she did at Michael when he made his own smartarse comment. "Now that one of my team members has gone missing and this is related to Buczek, the AFP have decided to make themselves known in this situation."
They all looked at her with no hope, but only Michael was on to voice the question they were all thinking."The Feds? What are they doing on this?"
"Seeing as Frank Dagostino is in the Major Crimes department, he can't work the case against Buczek. One, it's a conflict of interest, and two, he could make half of the evidence against a Russian crime lord disappear. Not to mention all of the other ethical and moral wrongs that would be happening," Kerry said.
"If the Feds are working this, Stella is as good as dead," said Josh, rubbing his shoulder with a glare at Michael, who had just punched him hard in the arm for his comment. He threw a solid punch back at the boy, who tried not to show any effect from the strength of the hit but failed when Josh wasn't looking. "I know that we shouldn't think like that, but they take too long to do this sort of stuff. A search and rescue isn't their style. We could find her faster."
"In a way that can be considered unconventional and at times illegal. I know that this team would be able to find her faster than anyone, but if we bust up a four year investigation to catch Buczek doing the dirty, we could never get her back and we could go down in flames with the case too." Kerry threw another sideways glance at Shannon, who had become closed off to the rest of the group.
"We can't do nothing, Kerry," she said quietly. "You know we would all crash and burn for each other."
"I didn't say we were going to do nothing. We just can't bust up their investigation," Kerry smirked. "Leon's trying to track the van, where it came from, where it went but any security cameras in the street are either dummy's or feed has been looped. Exterior cameras give us practically nothing. Audrey's running through Stella's lapel camera footage to see if there is anything useful. Christian is waiting for the guy at the hospital. We are all going to go there and then come up with a secondary plan. Understood?"
They all nodded.
"TR2 has just been released from forensics so one of you can take that. Michael, you're not on your own. Shannon, you're with me," Kerry instructed, nearly having to drag the Senior Sergeant to her car by the armpit of her vest. "Also, Frank Dagostino is purely off limits to you all. ESD is handling him. You keep your distance."
It was more of a warning to Shannon, but since the woman was going to be riding shotgun in the recent model Ford there was little chance that she could actually seek out Frank to interrogate him. For Kerry, it was complete déjà vu as she sat in the driver's seat of her car, heading towards the hospital. Her passenger was sitting next to her quietly and Kerry was either to angry to speak, or she just simply didn't know what to say.
"Technically, I should take you off of this," Kerry said.
Shannon scoffed. "The same way you should have taken Stella off duty this morning?"
"Look, I understand that you're pissed at me for it. You know better than anyone that when Stella wants her way, she gets it. No matter what. Now I don't want to know how she works that with you, but with me she used the whole 'a security detail won't do shit, you saw how it went down when I was being stalked'."
Shannon chuckled. "Yeah, that sounds like her. Why did you let her come out?"
"I figured that she would be safer with a tactical squad that would actually watch her back." Shannon felt another wave of guilt roll through her. "It's just our luck that it had to be Anton Buczek's warehouse that had the silent alarm tripped."
"They were waiting for us. They knew that we would come. But how did they know that it would be Stella that here."
With Kerry's level of expertise and life's experiences on the job, she jumped to the conclusion before Shannon did. "They do it twice."
"What?" Shannon asked.
"They have two traps. If they can't get her at the first one, they trip the alarm at the second one. With the owner being so high on the Police Watch list, Feds or otherwise, a tactically trained squad which happens to have their target in the group, was bound to turn up at one, if not both."
"So if they didn't get her this afternoon in Carrum Downs they would have gotten her somewhere else?"
"Exactly."
They both sat in silence, pondering within the boundaries of their own minds. Seeing as Kerry's position within the team was the highest, anything and everything that could and probably would go wrong was running through her mind, along with how she was going to explain everything to everyone that needed to know and where she was supposed to start. Shannon was connecting the dots and in her mental haste, creating theories that were more and more less likely to happen but completely possible in her thoughts. If it worked in her mind, it would work in reality and they could use her unethical or occasionally morally wrong thinking to back the idea.
"We need to start with Frank," she said, barely having noticed that Kerry had just pulled up to the hospital, TR1 was parked directly behind them.
"He's off limits-,"
"Kerry! He knows what is going on! If anyone is going to know why Buczek has had Stella kidnapped, it's going to be the cop who is doing his dirty work! You said it yourself that Frank had a week to handle his debt." Shannon was red with anger at Kerry's ability to brush off Frank's part within the whole messed up situation. "If he had the week, why are they six days early?"
"You need to calm down!" Kerry demanded. "Now! Shannon, if you become out of control and God forbid, 'pull a Josh' by going off road to find her, I will have no choice to apply to proper punishment. That could very well include the end of you place in TR!"
Shannon sulked in the passenger seat, her hands wringing tightly between her knees as one of foot bounced rapidly, moving the car with the force of the gesture. When she looked up at Kerry, there were tears in her eyes.
"Shannon, I don't want to take you off of this," Kerry begged the younger woman, her hand covering Shannon's own. "I know how much Stella means to you. But you can't lose it right now. You have to keep it together. Because if you do, and Stella finds out that you outed your relationship to the entire team, you're probably going to be in some trouble."
Shannon chuckled through her tears, and nodded slowly. "Yeah."
"You sit here for a few minutes, calm down and catch your breath. Have a cry and then pull it together, because I know that you can bottle it all up. Hide the redness that's now around your eyes, okay?"
"Alright," Shannon said. "Pull it together, got it, Boss Lady."
She watched out of the corner of her eye as Kerry made a show of taking the keys with a pointed glare and a raised eyebrow. The Inspector muttered under her breath about the nickname, and how the two women were spending way too much time together because Stella was rubbing off on Shannon. Without the key's, Shannon wouldn't be able to drive back to the city, hunt down Frank Dagostino and beat the every loving shit out of him for bringing Stella into the mess. She wouldn't be able to put the blame on him publicly, regardless of the fact that she would screw up a rather large investigation and probably put his life in even more jeopardy.
But she didn't care. Stella had been missing for over an hour by now, and for all the TR members knew, she was already dead. Shannon had to blink back another few tears at the thought. She could see and feel the rest of the team standing outside, waiting to go in and interrogate Josh's mystery guy and get a more detailed statement from Cooper, watching her, asking Kerry what was going on when the Inspector finally reached them.
"What's wrong with Shannon?" Josh asked.
"She's just feeling a little guilty," she heard Kerry say, and the emotion itself was dropped like a ten tonne slab of concrete from the roof of the Eureka building onto the other feelings that had been bubbling for sixty minutes.
"Why? I was the one that told them to take the back." Shannon had to strain her ears just to hear the man's words over her uneven and heavy breathing.
"But she was the one who suggested they split up in the first place," Kerry explained. She and Josh looked back at Shannon in the car, and even though she wanted to divert her gaze from them, she couldn't. Her inability to look away made the guilt in her heart and the pit of her stomach grow stronger. Josh offered an encouraging smile, one that said 'it's not your fault', one that said 'we will get through this, she will be fine'. Shannon shook her head at him and felt a few new tears slip down her face.
Lawson appeared next to him out of thin air and gave him an order. "Go and find Christian."
With a glare in the direction of Lawson at the offhanded demand from his best mate, Josh stalked off towards Michael who was waiting impatiently and angrily at the front doors of the hospital. Once he was sure that the two boys were out of hearing distance, he turned on Kerry. "This is your fault," he warned, a pointed finger in Shannon's direction as she was sitting in the car. His negative body language told Shannon that their conversation wasn't exactly going to pleasant and she slinked out of the car to hear their heated words be exchanged. He was so taken by the impending argument that he didn't see her arrive within ten feet.
"How is this my fault? Huh?"
"You were the one who 'set boundaries' for a relationship rather than telling them to end it," he said. "They never should have happened. And you know it."
At his words, Shannon lunged and pushed him with a juvenile and primal anger growing inside of her, dwarfing any other emotion that was still able to fit inside of her. She didn't want to be the cop with anger issues, looking for punch-ons every other week, especially with her superiors, but he had insulted the one highly important thing she had going for her at the moment. He had also come full circle to contradict himself. Kerry made her presence known by getting in between the two of them. The last thing Tactical Response needed, along with the news of a missing officer, was the brawl between two of its team members outside of a hospital.
"Never should have happened, my arse!" Shannon remarked. "Says the guy who tried to get it on with me after I told you I wasn't single. Ever since you found, you've resented our relationship!"
"What do I have to resent?" he threw back at her with an equal amount of spite. "Huh?"
Shannon lowered her voice, suspecting that they had a few members of an audience. "The fact that it's Stella and not you." Lawson just looked at her, almost as if he was unwilling to believe that Shannon had just outed him to Kerry about his feelings for the only female senior officer in the squad. "This happens and I temporarily loose the plot, and now you're all against a relationship within the team. But if you were in my shoes, you would be defending a relationship rather than trying to support it."
Lawson sighed and huffed and refused to look up to watch Shannon rush into the hospital to get away from the Senior Sergeant. Kerry had her arms crossed over her chest, ready to rip him a new one. "What and when exactly did you try to 'get on' with Shannon? You told me that you were supportive of their relationship as long as it didn't interfere with work."
"It's interfering now. Kerry, you understand that I can't have an emotionally volatile officer on the roads while we try and hunt down her missing secret girlfriend," he argued back.
"Lawson, she feels guilty. She told Stella to take Cooper and search the south side of the warehouse. A Tactically trained officer with a general duties cop? That is excess baggage."
"That's not the point. Stella probably would have gone missing with or without Cooper. She's involved in all of this bullshit, how do we know that this wasn't an escape plan?"
"That is horse shit and you very well know it. Stella has nothing to do with any of this side job crap. Now I know she doesn't exactly have the cleanest record, but she's not stupid, and she knows right from wrong."
"Then-"
"And don't say that if she knows right from wrong, she wouldn't have gotten into a relationship with a colleague." Lawson huffed again. "They are both good officers and have a great relationship Lawson. I set boundaries, that you agreed to, and they have stayed well within those lines. I know that you can see it, that it's real between them, so stop acting like a child, resenting them or hating the fact that you lost Shannon to someone else, and go and find another girl. Jesus, it feels like I work in a bloody high school with the amount of drama we have every week."
Kerry shook her head and walked away from her squad leader, heading into the hospital to find out who this man was and what his connection was to the whole thing. She had barely made it ten paces into the building, with the intention of asking at the front desk, when Shannon's voice stopped her.
"Thank you," came out across the open foyer.
"For what?" Kerry asked.
"Defending us. Defending me against Lawson for losing it."
"You heard the whole little spiel I just spat out, huh?"
"Yeah," Shannon nodded.
"Well, he did kind of walk into it. But he has a point about one thing."
"What's that?"
"This unit cannot afford to have an emotionally volatile member out on the road during this search." Kerry had that smirk on her face when she was having a silent conversation with someone. It practically screamed at whoever was within three feet of her, whether or not you knew the actual topic of conversation, that you played by Kerry's rules no matter what.
Shannon understood the warning loud and clear. She nodded. "Keep it together, or I get taken off of the job, I know. I've had my breakdown. I'm good now."
"Good. Now let's go and find this arsehole"
They ended up with Josh and Michael in the emergency department, because Christian was still with the man and he was up in radiology, getting a few scans to make sure that there was no major head damage or possibly sneaky injuries on their way to developing. Lawson had gone up to meet the Junior Constable, to fill him in on what news had happened and the conclusions they had come too. He also thought it be best if he wasn't in the direct vicinity of Shannon or Kerry for a little while. The four of them were crowded around the bed of Constable Cooper, as the nurse sent a greasy expression to the lot of them as she left, having snapped on the hospital issue bracelet and stabbed him with a few needles.
"What happened?" Shannon asked, the moment she was gone. Her tone held no reservations and was more solid than a wrecking ball. Josh pulled the curtains closed to offer them all some privacy, due to the nature of the conversation.
"We were checking the first aisle. There was a noise."
"What was it?" Kerry asked.
"We didn't quite get there. You know, we were kind of assaulted, but it was a crashing sound, like one of those wooden pallet things being dropped onto the floor.
"Then what happened?" The group watched him with as much attention as they could muster, hanging on his every word in the hopes of picking up any details, no matter how small, that could possibly give them an idea of what steps they needed to take.
"We start going down the aisle slowly, I guess the Senior Constable wanted to be cautious, you'know? Anyway, we were about halfway down when I thought I saw something move. I'm pretty sure it was a shadow. Made when whoever was hiding behind the tarp moved. I told her I saw it, she told me to wait behind a crate and to cover her. I did, and she starts calling out. A few seconds later I hit the floor. I didn't see or hear anything after that, seeing as I was out cold."
"Well, that's give us a whole shit heap of nothing," Michael snapped, getting trapped in the curtains on his way out.
"Nothing?" Shannon asked.
"No. Sorry." Cooper shook his head. "Is she okay? I know you guys are protective of each other and everything, but-"
"Senior Constable Dagostino is missing, you idiot. And there is nothing you can give us that might help us locate her now," Shannon drawled out slowly and sarcastically, frowning at him with disappointment and anger. He muttered another apology and shrunk into his pillows. The heart monitor he was attached too began to beep more rapidly. Kerry smirked; Shannon was learning how to scare people with a very easy sentence, and a look. The nurse came and told them to remove themselves quickly.
In the nurse's station, the last of the six o'clock news was playing out on a small TV quietly above the staff's head as they went about their jobs. Something caught Shannon's eyes, drawing her over to the TV. It wasn't very high, but she still had to ask Josh to reach the volume so they could hear it over the hustle and bustle of the department. That was when she realised what had drawn her attention; there was an insert picture of Stella smiling that looked like it had been taken from a group photo. She could see half of Michael's face in the background, blurred out so the audience would focus on the brunette. The male newsreader was sitting there, scanning a piece of paper he had just been handed from off screen.
'And lastly, Constable Stella Dagostino, a member of the Tactical Response Police Unit has gone missing this afternoon during a routine check of warehouse district in the south east suburbs. There is yet to be an official statement from Police officials as to exactly what has happened today and if this is an act against the police, or a more personal issue with severe consequences. We will keep you updated at the story progresses.'
The closing credits of the news rolled and Shannon was angrier than she had been outside after hearing Lawson putting her relationship down.She turned to Kerry, but wasn't able to vent her rage through words, huffed and left the department for some fresh air. It was probably a good idea if she wasn't there to interrogate the man upstairs. Shannon leant against a wall outside the main doors, hoping that if she could show Lawson and Kerry that she was able to take herself out of the equation momentarily, they would be less inclined to remove her from the job entirely.
"You alright?" Josh asked, having followed her after all of thirty seconds. He had that expression on his face, when he was worried and caring and scared of Shannon's overall reaction. Josh came to a stop directly in front of her with his hands buried in his pockets.
"That news broadcast could get her killed, Josh."
"Yeah, and so could ten thousand other things," he commented, earning himself a glare.
"But almost all of those things won't do any harm in the next seventy two hours, Josh."
"Look, I know you feel guilty, but you're everywhere at the moment. You sure you're okay?"
Shannon held his gaze. "She's my best mate Josh. If hadn't told her to take the south side.."
"Then you would have been a part of their little diabolical plan to get to her."
"But if we had stayed together."
"Stop arguing, Shannon," he ordered. "Look at me. What's done it done, and all we can do now is try to fix it, alright? We're going to get her back. No argument. It hasn't even been two hours yet. This isn't your fault. It's...Franks'."
"What I wouldn't do to have a go at him," she muttered, before realising that she had said that out loud and to Josh. He smirked at her, and she relaxed, understanding that he would probably help her get away to 'talk' to the middle Dagostino child, or turn a blind eye if she lost hold of the reins on her emotions when she saw him.
"Fuck!" Shannon hissed, her closed fist hitting the cement wall she was leaning against.
"What?" He asked stupidly.
"Her parents. What if they've seen that news broadcast?" Shannon asked, pushing off of the wall and heading inside to find Kerry. Josh trailed behind her, almost struggling to keep up with her. "It's not exactly the way you want to find out that your youngest child is missing."
Kerry was upstairs already, having walked the whole way on her phone talking to one ESD Detective Jamieson, who was attempting to warn her again and again that Frank was off limits. Shannon and Josh came up to her just as she was ending the argument. She paced outside of the private room of their unknown assailant, her phone pressed to her ear. When Shannon tried to walk passed her and into the room, a hand snapped out and stopped her.
"Look here Jamieson, I get that this is a big deal for you ESD guys alright? But I've got a missing cop to find and her brother is the closest thing we have to starting to find her. If I feel that it is necessary to talk to him, I will. One of you can be present if and when we do question him," she explained with a tone of icy steel. With that, she ended the call and shoved the device back into her pocket.
"Remind me not to mess with you," said Josh, lightening the mood for a few seconds.
"Shut up Josh," she demanded, before turning on Shannon. "Not a word out of you while we talk to him. In fact, I don't want you here."
"Kerry!"
"Do not argue. We have the warehouse until Stella is found, so I want to the two of you to go back and see if you can find anything that we can use. There were at least two people there who took her, and they had to be waiting at least since the alarm initially went off. That's a good forty-five minutes of waiting for something to happen."
"I go get the car," said Josh, turning on his heel and walking odd down the hallway. He frowned when Shannon didn't follow him. He didn't stop, but threw a glance over his shoulder instead.
"Have her parents been called yet?" Shannon asked.
"No, not yet." Kerry sighed and added the task to never ending and rapidly growing list of things to take care off.
"I want to do it," came from her mouth before she could really stop herself.
"I don't know if that's a good idea, Shannon. You're too close to this. If you are the one to tell them, given the nature of your relationship with Stella, it might do more harm than good. An authority figure will be better. Look, if you want to help, go to the warehouse with Josh, run through ideas, have a good snoop for anything forensics missed," the Inspector said gently, her words laced with demand.
Shannon conceded and nodded, before turning to run after Josh.
"This is going to be a long day," Kerry muttered to herself, watching Shannon push through the stairwell door. Kerry shook her head, already exhausted, and headed into the private room.
Shannon was lying next to her, smiling through a curtain of dark copper hair as they were cuddled into the doona of Stella's bed.
The brunette reached out to try and brush a strand of hair to the side, to see Shannon's eyes more clearly, the distance between them grew and suddenly her girlfriend was out of arms reach for her.
Whatever grip she had on the old woman was gone, and she began clawing at the mattress, in an effort to reach Shannon.
A heavy pounding in the side of her head began to set in, pulling Shannon further and further into the darkness and away from Stella.
Stella's eyes snapped open suddenly, and her eyes hurt from the force she had opened them with. Her head was pounding unrelentingly, and her arms were tied behind her back with what felt like a pair of her own flex-cuffs. Thankfully, she was already sitting up so any of the energy that she didn't have wouldn't be used up. Stella took several large breaths, trying to get her bearings and tilted her head back and forth to look around.
Most of her prison was in complete darkness and at times, she could barely see her feet. There was nothing that could give away her position. There was very little light coming in to wherever it was that she was being held, the only source coming from the few air vents across the top. Fresh air with hint of salt and petrol reach her nostrils. There was a cool metal against her back, and she realised how cold she was. The backs of her pants and her feet were wet. Her body was shivering yet she was feeling hot and sick; she wanted to puke. Stella gauged that it would be because of the head wound. She could see stars in the darkness.
Stella gulped and shivered again. The distant sound of a deep resonating horn reached her ears. Her whole body was sore, as if she had been given a few kicks for good measure and dropped on her side. For all she could tell, she was alone in her prison and wondered momentarily if the darkness was just a bad dream. And then the cuffs dug into her wrists sharply.
It was going to be a long night.
Where do you think she is being held?