'I will send out an army
To find you in the middle
Of the darkest night
It's true, I will rescue you.'
"Rescue" ~ Lauren Daigle
Twenty-five. Twenty-five!
To the average observer, that isn't a very big number at all. Twenty-five people is just a trickle, barely a bus load. This briefing room alone can hold upwards of forty for a big bust.
Greg imagines them all, including Spike and Ed, standing shoulder-to-shoulder around him. Twenty-five people wouldn't even take up half of the room.
In law enforcement speak, twenty-five is astronomical.
Worse still, in law enforcement speak—seven months is hopelessness. A dead end. If you're going to catch a major suspect, you do it in the first three weeks, let alone months.
And this isn't some amateur county clerk. Not even an inner city crimes unit.
This is a federal investigative agency, one of the best in the world. They've stopped home soil terrorist plots and mob dons.
And their first major lead on an abduction ring happens to be two missing SWAT officers from Canada.
Greg loses a few seconds while his brain reboots from the shockwave of it all.
There are a million concerns in that one piece of information alone. Professionally, evidence and its compatibility with what the FBI has collected is the best place to start. It's imperative to understand where they are, how close to making an arrest. Greg, on any other case, would ask about that first.
What comes out of his mouth, instinctive and burning, is, "Why?"
"Greg—"
"Law enforcement, and I could argue even more so SWAT, are not easy targets," Greg insists. Professionalism goes out the window. "They are the opposite of ideal. They aren't pliable or likely to give in to fear. They're trained for these exact scenarios. Why grab them?"
This phone conversation hasn't even lasted ten minutes but it's enough to get a read on Director Hartford, a sense of personality and manner.
So when he hesitates, Greg sits up straighter in his chair. "Director?"
It's not the silence of last time, the working up of nerve or weighing how to word something. This is downright indecision, and it balloons between them.
Greg's eyes widen.
Then Hartford says, in a very soft tone, "They reappear all over the place. Our officers have sprung up as far away as Gibraltar."
"Okay…And then you get them back. Retrieve them, right? They were kidnapped and shipped far away but you get them back?"
Please, Greg wants to add. Please tell me you get them back.
This is Spike and Ed, two of the most important people in Greg's life. He can't fathom living without them and hasn't even entertained it until now.
"Sometimes," says Hartford. "Sometimes they come home in body bags."
Greg closes his eyes.
"Sometimes with one of our bullets in their chests."
Ice slicks down Greg's spine. He stops breathing, the hammer pulse of his dizzy panic echoing in his ears.
No...no, he can't be right.
None of this is right. The implications…the possibility of it happening to…
"What are you saying?" Greg's voice, broken, is not even a whisper; a breath. A vapor of desperation and stretched humanity. "What happens to them?"
"I think this is something I should tell you in person, Greg. I'm heading to the airport as we speak."
"Not something you can tell me over the phone?"
"No," says Hartford, resigned. "Plus, I want to be there to run interference with CSIS. My superiors tried to grab this case out of your hands, but this involves all of us now."
"Small comfort, but thank you."
"In my opinion, you have the right to know." It's the most fire, righteous sounding, from the man Greg's heard so far.
"Okay." He runs a hand down his face and the skin feels like gravel. "Okay. Call me when you land."
"You'll be the first to know," says Hartford. "And for the record, Parker…I'm sorry. I know how this feels. I've been where you are now."
"Yeah." Greg shakes his head and then remembers Hartford can't see it. By the time he goes to say something else, the line is dead.
He slumps there a moment longer, imagining all these exceptional personnel vanishing with barely a trace.
Phantom images of Spike and Ed hover somewhere too, just over Greg's shoulder. Not one next to each, but both together, pressed tight and looking at Greg with those hopeful eyes. His imagination of them is crystal clear yet they are hazy in the space of this empty briefing room where they've shared so many laughs and tears.
He blinks, and they are gone. Greg's breathing hitches.
When he resurfaces from the rare moment of panic, his ears finally clue in to a growing noise behind him. It's low, climbing in volume, like a river.
Greg stands, turning, and wonders if he's at last reached the hallucinating stage:
All the SRU teams—all of them—mill around the too-small space of the front lobby, chattering over each other while Sam tries to contain the chaos. It's like the night before a huge bust, only bigger.
There has to be over fifty officers, let alone the dispatchers who've joined Peter and Guns n' Gangs members with Wordy and even Dean, shuffling around with boxes of food. They're all clearly trying to keep their voices down on his behalf.
Stunned, Greg freezes for a moment. Then Jules waves him over.
"What are you all doing here?" he blurts.
The jovial atmosphere of moments earlier halts. Conversations hush and fade away.
Sam shoulders his way to the front of the crowd, some half dressed and others fully geared up. One officer has slippers on. Another is eating a danish, frozen half way to her mouth.
"Greg," says Sam, "I called them. Well…some of them. Word spreads fast around here." He casts a wry, appreciative look behind him and there's a communal chuckle. "We all want to help."
Greg huffs a helpless, gobsmacked laugh. "It's three in the morning! Some of you have families! Not to mention there has to be a team here on shift for the city's needs too."
"Already taken care of," Jules pipes up. Seven people raise their hands. "Team Four is covering."
Greg indulges himself in another long look. He's trained nearly every face present, seen them fail and succeed.
Legacy. The word washes over him again. Maybe this will be the thing that saves me—us—in the end.
Greg's eyes grow bright. "I can't ask you to do this. We're way out of our league as is. This is international jurisdiction now."
A dizzying chorus of glances are shared. Then everyone's gaze zeroes in on someone towards the back of this huddle. In a unison, completely wordless motion, the hoard of police parts.
Winnie steps up, Moses passing through the Red Sea. Greg immediately reaches out for her, hand on each elbow. "Boss, Greg…it's Spike and Ed."
Everyone nods. A shared hum spins through the room.
"Please," she says. "We can't just go home. Please."
It's an echo of Greg's earlier words to Hartford.
"They'd do the same if it was us," says Wordy, his voice thick. He swallows, lips unsteady for a moment. "How can we do any less for them?"
They're all looking at Greg, and just like that he's thrown back into the past, the role that fits like a long lost friend's arms. Seeking leadership, seeking a direction.
Greg's gaze falls on Jules, her eyes coals of fire.
"You're Team One leader," he says, once he's sure he can without making an embarrassing noise or breaking down. "What's the plan?"
There's a muted cheer of victory and Winnie squeezes Dean's hand. Wordy wipes at his eyes.
"Nuh-uh, boss." Jules winks. "This is all you. Go for it."
Greg puts his hands on his hips. He thinks for a moment, running through what they know so far.
"Alright, listen up."
The crowd straightens.
"That was the FBI on the phone," he says, watching the ripple of surprise. "We know that Spike and Ed were probably taken into the US, which means we can't download their traffic camera footage without permission. Wordy—"
"We're on it!" Wordy jots some notes while his team nods along.
"Thanks." Greg smiles. "Where are we on our impostor?"
Leah holds up a sheaf of papers. "We're tracking his car after he left the house now."
"Good. Keep on that. Sam? Interview the uncle who lent his nephew the paint truck. I want to know everything about Rook this morning—down to his deodorant and what he ate for breakfast."
"Copy that," says Sam.
"Jules," he continues, "We're going to work with the FBI when our director friend gets here. Make sure he's up to speed with the latest information."
Greg points to the crowd. "Teams Two and Five, see if we can figure out where Rook may have purchased a gun. Contact CI friends if you have to. Team Six, I want you to interview the gas station where our kidnappers stopped. See if they said anything or noticed something unusual.
"Team Four—stay safe, please. This may not be an isolated incident."
The shuffle of renewed activity halts again, this time with a hurt kind of wonder. It's muted, courtesy of them being in a profession which sees much worse horrors everyday.
But kidnapped cops…it's like hitting a nerve. They're all alight with pain.
"I know this is hard." Greg lets some of the turmoil inside his chest leak out. Just enough to see and commiserate, to wrap tendrils of empathy around their fast beating hearts. "It isn't fair and it isn't right. But we don't leave our people behind and we certainly don't give up on them—we're not about to start now."
Jules reaches out when Greg's tongue falters. He can feel her hand through his sweater, warm on his shoulder, her thumb looping on its track.
That's all they are, planets circling, drawn in and propelled by love for each other.
The four members left of this little family find each other's eyes through the pack. Wordy nods at something in Sam's face, and Jules sniffs.
Greg's own eyes light up. Scalding. "Let's get to work."
