A/N: To my loyal readers, thank you for sticking with me for this journey so far! You will be happy to know that I have almost finished the story. It will have 39 chapters when I am done. I have written the climax (both of them, for those of you who are looking forward to the smut!) and all I have left is cleaning up all the loose ends. To celebrate, I decided to post a second chapter this week. Enjoy!

Chapter 31

Just before lunch the next day, Agent Boyd walked into their office. Karen was on the phone trying to work out a payment plan with an elderly client and motioned him towards Matt's door. She pulled the phone away from her ear and mouthed "I'll be right there" to him before resuming the conversation.

Matt had already heard Boyd come in and stood up to greet him.

"Agent Boyd how are you today?" he said as they shook hands.

"I don't know," the agent replied, "you're the ones that wanted to see me."

Matt smiled sheepishly, "have a seat and I will get the others."

"The others are here," Foggy announced as he and Karen entered and shut the door behind them.

"Great, the gang's all here," Boyd said with a touch of sarcasm eliciting a short laugh out of Matt. "So, what's so important that I had to sneak down here?"

"Nyah is missing," Matt told him.

That got his attention. "Missing? When?"

"Two days now."

"And you're sure she's missing?"

Karen answered his question, "yes, we have lunch together every Wednesday and she didn't show up."

"And she's not answering her phone," Matt added.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Boyd held up his hands and made a patting motion in the air. "There could be any number of explanations."

"Of course," Karen said dryly, "we are looking into multiple disappearances of young women approximately the same age as her, she's been threatened by a cop involved, and beat up in an alley. Our office was set on fire by said cop. And now Nyah's missing? Oh, she must be in Colorado skiing or something!"

Boyd looked at Foggy for support, but the lawyer just shrugged.

"Well, when you put it that way, ok," he conceded. "But what do you want me to do? We still do not have enough of a case to go up against Montgomery and his lackeys."

Karen's anger left her at his admission.

"We know that, Agent Boyd," Matt said. "We just wanted you to know they stepped up their threats against us and Nyah's paying the price."

Boyd stood, "let me see what I can find out. Do you have her phone number? Maybe we can track her phone."

Not likely, thought Matt, since it was turned off right now to save its battery. But to keep playing the game, Karen gave Boyd the number.

"You guys just lay low until you hear back from me," Boyd cautioned them. "If they did kidnap her, then you are in just as much danger. Don't go anywhere alone. If you do go out, try to stay in public places with lots of people."

"Got it," Foggy nodded and gave him a thumbs up. "Lay low. Don't get kidnapped."

After Boyd left, Karen turned to Matt, "well, that sucked."

Matt chuckled, "yeah, but it was what we expected. Wait until Nyah resurrects tonight and calls. Then the shit will hit the fan!"

"And they would have gotten away with it," Foggy said in a fake voice, "if it weren't for those meddling kids!"

Nyah's eyes fluttered open to complete darkness, her pupils dilated to their fullest in the complete darkness of the basement room. Years of experience allowed her to fight back the momentary disorientation that occurred immediately after her resurrection by closing her eyes and taking deep breaths. Keeping her eyes closed, she listened to her surroundings for any clue to her location, but apart from an occasional creak of the building, there was nothing of note to hear.

She opened her eyes again to the darkness. The darkness around her was absolute. Reaching out with her right hand, she felt for clues from her surroundings. Pressed up against her right side were cardboard boxes. Her searching fingers disturbed a thick layer of dust that drifted down onto her face, making her eyes water and her nose itch. She successfully fought off the sneeze that it triggered and blinked her eyes to clear them.

Her left side was pressed up against an irregular shape that was as cold as the floor she was laying on. Her fingers encountered fabric when she tentatively felt the shape. She swallowed the feeling of dread that it aroused and continued to explore the shape. Near her hip, she felt the cold skin and hair of the corpse lying on the floor beside her.

Nyah sat up and scooted away from the body, then carefully climbed to her feet, careful not to disturb the boxes that were crowded around her. Stepping around the body on the floor, she explored her surroundings. She was in a storage room of some kind, crowded with boxes. A few steps down the narrow aisle in was a door with no light coming through under it from the other side. She tried the handle and found it unlocked but didn't open it.

She smiled as realization dawned: Matt must have followed through on her plan to entrap the DA. That would mean her cell phone was somewhere nearby. She felt the wall beside the door and found the light switch and flipped it on. Blinking furiously at the sudden light, she was able to make out that the room was small and had no windows, so she was safe to leave the light on while she searched.

As her eyes adjusted to the light, she looked at the body on the floor and gave a soft gasp: it was Mrs. Williams from the Women's Center. Kneeling beside the body, she could see ligature marks on her neck where she had been strangled. Apparently, she had outlived her usefulness to Montgomery.

Behind Williams, she spied her cellphone tucked in between two boxes. She reached around the corpse to pick it up and turned it on. It was fully charged. The time read 10:21 and there was a text message from Matt waiting for her.

~Welcome back! Give me a call when you find this. Stay safe. ~

She was pushing the button to call him back when she heard a noise upstairs. Hurrying to the door, she turned off the light and used the illumination from her phone to make her way to the back of the room and squeeze in between a stack of boxes and the wall. Overhead, she heard at least two people walking and the murmur of their conversation, but she couldn't make out the words.

She pushed the call button on her phone and held it up to her ear.

Matt picked up on the first ring. "Nyah?"

"Yeah," she answered quietly. "Am I in Montgomery's basement?"

"Yes, it only made sense to go with your idea."

"Thank you. But we might have a problem. Mrs. William's body is in here with me and I hear someone upstairs."

There was a pause on the other end as Matt considered the situation. "Ok, I'm calling Agent Boyd as soon as I hang up. There's an opening for a crawl space on the wall opposite the door, hide there if you need to."

"Good to know. Text me when someone is on their way."

"Be safe," he said before the call ended.

She set her phone on vibrate and put it in her pocket. Now she just had to hide until help arrived.

"Is she alright?" Karen demanded when Matt got off the phone.

"Yeah, but they killed Williams and her body was dumped in the same room."

"Oh, my God! She needs to get out of there!"

"Calm down. She's ok for now and you heard me tell her about the crawl space. She can get out of there if something happens," Matt assured her. "Now, let me call Boyd."

"What?" was Agent Boyd's incredulous response to Matt. "There's a body? Why didn't she call 911?"

"Come on," Matt said impatiently. "You know the answer. We can't trust the cops."

"Yeah, I know," came the weary reply. "Did she say where she was?"

"No, but Karen has an app to track her and she's on the same block as the DA's house. If you need more confirmation you can have her phone located."

"Ok, I'll have someone do that. I'm heading to the office now."

"Karen," Matt said after the call, "text her and let her know everything is in motion."

"On it." Karen was already typing out the message on her phone.

"What now?" Foggy asked.

Matt stood up. "I'm going to change and go keep an eye on things until the FBI gets there."

Karen stood up too. "I'm going with you."

"No!"

"No, you're not!" Matt said at the same time as Foggy.

Karen raised her chin, "you can't order me around. Either of you!"

Matt shook his head, "it's going to be crawling with the FBI before long. You don't think it will look suspicious if you are found there when they arrive?" He tapped his temple with a finger, "use your brain. We want this case to be a slam dunk. If you're there, they can make a case for entrapment or a setup."

She sighed and flopped back down on the couch beside Foggy. "I hate just sitting here and doing nothing."

"Then make yourself useful," Matt said, tossing her an ear mic. "Stay in contact with her and keep me updated. I'll relay information back to you from there."

Karen smiled, mollified, "thank you." Then she picked up her phone and texted Nyah the plan.

The voices overhead grew louder as a third voice joined in. Nyah stayed in her position behind the boxes even though it was uncomfortable; it was out of sight and near the opening to the crawl space in case she had to move fast. She had turned off the light and could no longer see anything in the darkness even after her eyes adjusted. She felt her phone vibrate and pulled it out to check the incoming text from Karen. Everything was progressing as hoped, she just had to hold out for a little longer.

A door slamming jerked her attention away from her phone. The footsteps were overhead now and getting closer. Another door opened and she could hear them descending the stairs down to the basement. She shoved the phone into her pocket and made herself as small as possible to avoid detection.

A faint light filtered into the room from under the door and she could make out the voices from the other room.

"Just stop your whining and take care of the body, damnit!" the voice had to be the DA. She had only heard him on the TV, but there was no mistaking the carefully modulated voice of the career politician.

"You're the boss, but this won't be as good of a dump as Hog Island." The second voice was Detective Farley.

"I'm not going to keep a body in my basement until Diego decides to show up. I'm the District Attorney for fuck's sake!"

A third voice tried to calm Montgomery down, "don't worry, we'll take care of it and even if it's found, it won't be traced back to you."

There was a scuffle and followed by the sound of a body hitting the wall.

"Listen here," growled Montgomery, "it better not be found. Period! That's what I pay you for. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Boss," the third man wheezed.

"Yes, Boss," repeated Farley.

"Good. Now go get her and get the fuck out of my home. And do NOT EVER bring a dead body here again!"

"Yes, Boss," both men replied.

The doorknob rattled and the door opened, admitting light into the room. Nyah didn't dare peak around the box to get a look, but she heard one of the men enter the room and move toward her.

"I'll get the feet, you get the head," Farley told the other man. "Shit, there's no space to move in here. Get the light."

The overhead light flickered on and lit the room. She could hear him shoving boxes out of his way and the stack next to her teetered precariously. She held her breath and said a silent prayer to the Eternal Heaven that it wouldn't fall.

Farley and the other man grunted as they lifted the body and carried it towards the door. Nyah let out her breath and sagged back against the wall in relief as they exited the room.

"Hey, what's that?" the third guy asked.

"What?"

She heard him step back into the room. "It's a necklace."

"Must have broke when I strangled her," Farley told him. "Grab it. We can't leave it here."

"Check and make sure nothing else is left behind," Montgomery told them. "I can't have anything down here that can tie me to her."

There was a shuffling, then a grunt as something collided with a stack of boxes. The stack next to her wobbled then toppled over, knocking the stack she was standing behind down and exposing her.

"What the hell?" the man in the middle of the room stared at her in shock.

"Fuck, it's that Bitch!" Farley yelled from the doorway. "Grab her!"