A/N: Hey I am so terribly sorry for the delays with getting this chapter up, I was snowed under with assignments and tests and had to time write or to post it up!Once again thanks to everyone that reviewed, it's always greatly appreciated.

Chapter 14- Playing for keeps

Arriving at the station Scotty met tension that was so thick, you would need an axe to have any hope of breaking through it. News of Lilly's disappearance had spread throughout the station and it seemed that everyone he passed was watching him as thought intent on gaining inside information. Not that he had any to offer. But they didn't know that.

The atmosphere in the homicide division wasn't any better. On his desk was a small pile of notes from the lady at the front desk that detailed calls he'd got before he had got in that morning. Most of them he disregarded and threw into the bin, they were calls from reporters. But there were two that caught his attention. In the last hour there had been two calls from the ADA's office. Shit. That meant Kite. Hadn't he already done enough damage? Knowing it was better to find out what he wanted now that to just put it off he dialled the number and waited.

Ten minutes later he was sitting back at his desk lost in his thoughts. Kite had sounded terrible. He clearly felt guilty about how he'd treated and wanted desperately to know whether she was all right. Scotty had told him what they knew and then gotten off the phone as soon as he could. He seriously didn't trust himself not to something really rude to him. He wanted to hurt him so badly, to cause him some of the pain he'd caused Lilly.

He took a deep breath and sighed. They had nothing. No leads, nothing. She had simply vanished into thin air.

Just then the phone on his desk rang. He answered and was told he had a call on line two. He answered and was greeted by a voice so cold that it sent shivers down his spine.

"Valens. Who is this?" He was momentarily lost for words. This was a ransom call. He listened to the other man speak before taking a deep breath and continuing.

"How do I know this isn't just a prank call? If she's really there you had better put her on." He waited while the other man muttered something about her being a real bitch and a pain in the arse. Scotty felt slightly relieved at this. Pain in the arse; that sort of sounded like Lilly. He prayed to god that she was okay.

He heard the clicking over a key in a lock and the opening of a door.

"Talk," he heard the man command.

"Lil, are you there? Can you hear me?" Panic was etched into his voice and he waited for what seemed like an eternity before he heard a reply.

"Scotty?" She felt relief at the sound of hearing her partner's voice.

"Are you ok?"

"Yeah, I think so." She actually felt far from fine but she wasn't going to tell him, he sounded worried enough as it was.

"Where are you? Can you tell me?" He felt breathless and his heart was racing, she was ok, she was alive.

"I don't know, uh," she sounded close to tears, her doubts and uncertainties rising steadily, " I was unconscious when I got here, but I think I'm in a basement of some sort…"

"Lilly, don't worry I promise I'll find you." His promise to her was met with only a man's laughter.

"Yeah sure you will. We'll be in touch." The line abruptly went dead.

He put the phone back on to its receiver and exhaled deeply. Stillman who had been watching him from across the room strode over towards him.

"Scotty who was that?"

" I don't know, but he's got Lilly, I talked to her she says she's alright."

"Do we know where she is or what he wants?"

"No, but the guy says he's going to call back."

Stillman thought for a second and then spoke. "Okay, Scotty, find Will and Nick and meet me in my office."


Ten minutes later they were all seated in Stillman's office, Will and Nick having been told about the phone call to the station.

"Okay, here's what I want you to do. Scotty, I need you to organise phone tracing for when he calls back, you know the drill. Nick I need you to go through prison releases; see if anyone she helped put away has recently been released. Will, I need you to contact traffic, see if there were any cars that got caught on any of the red light cameras near her house. I will be notifying her family. Do any of you know if she has any relatives that live in Philly?"

"I know she has a sister, but I don't know where she lives. She never really mentions anything about her parents though," offered Scotty.

"Ok well I'll track that down, but we all need to put aside personal feelings and deal with this properly. We all have to work together on this, if we want to have any hope of finding her."

With that, they left his office and emersed themselves in there various tasks. Scotty's didn't take him long, he could have organized phone tracing in his sleep. Once he was done with that he went and helped Nick with the release records. They all had to be cross-referenced with people she'd helped put away; and that was no short list.

Will had gotten the speed camera photos and was running license plate numbers through all the databases. After an hour of work, one possibility emerged. A white 1992 Ford Transit ran a red light at 11:23pm, a red light that was situated about five minutes from Lilly's house. He ran the license plates and they came back as stolen, but they weren't from a van. The license plates on the screen belonged to a red 2000 Honda Civic, they were reported stolen only hours before the van had run the red light. This suggested to Will that they hadn't had much time to plan what had happened, which probably explained the chaotic state of Lilly's house and made him wonder what they planned to do next.


Lilly thought that she was now past the point of being afraid. She was angry and upset, but not really afraid. Who was she trying to kid; she was terrified. But talking to Scotty had calmed her down. He was worried. But she hadn't been able to help him. She didn't know anything about why she was here, or even where here was. She didn't know who had taken her either; all she did know was that it did have something to do with Sharon Gallagher's death. But she had forgotten to mention that to Scotty, something she was very annoyed at herself about.

Since the phone call the 17-year-old guy had been down to bring her food. She had once again tried to get him to speak to her but he either didn't want to tell her anything or he didn't know anything. She had seen the look of worry and concern in his face again when he had seen her. He had un-tied her hands to allow her to eat; obviously she wasn't going to get very far if they were letting her have her hands free with no gun to her head or knife to her throat. Her shoulders ached terribly from being in the same position for so long.

After she had finished he picked up a new roll of duct tape and went to tie her wrists together again. Instead of binding them behind her back however, he wrapped them in front of her. She didn't try to stop him, knowing it was pointless, and that by wrapping them in front of her would be something she could use to her advantage anyway. He chucked the tape to the floor before going back on the door, shutting it and locking it behind him. At least he head still left her some light. For that much she could be relieved.

She slowly pulled her knees into her chest before moving her arms so they were around her legs, which gave her the opportunity to pick at the tape the bound her ankles. She rested her head on her knees and let a few tears slide down her cheek. The feeling of helplessness and being under someone else's control was a feeling that she had always hated and it just brought her to despair. She wanted to be home with her cats, she wanted to live her life. For the most she liked her life. Well, in the daytimes anyway. At night she was always over come by loneliness. She had no one there for her. Silently she vowed to herself that if, no when, she got out of this she would make herself a better life. She would take more chances and have more of a social life. She deserved to have something in her life other than her work.


Scotty had been reading the pageswith Nick on recent releases when the phone rang. "Valens," he answered before signalling that this was the call they had been waiting on.

"So what do you want? We don't know…" was as far as he got before the man interrupted him.

"Ok then. Maybe you should let me talk to Lilly again," he said knowing that since he was calling from a mobile phone that if took them one minute at least to trace a mobile call.

His only response was a dial tone. Scotty felt sick now. The man had said it had to do with Sharon Gallagher's case. They had only been investigating that for two days. How the hell had anyone found out? He thought back to their last actions in the case. It had involved meeting with Special Agent Kurt Roberts. Then he remembered something. Roberts had been going to fax over the case file of Sharon Gallagher when he got back to New York. Scotty searched through the mess on the top of his desk until he found the files. He hadn't looked through them yet, he had been waiting for Lilly to turn up but she never had. He informed the others of what had happened and he and Will sat down to go through the case files of Sharon Gallagher, while Nick continued with prison release records. Somewhere in the case was the reason Lilly had been taken. Though he hated to admit it, he had only just started to realise what was really at stake here. They really were playing for keeps.

A/N: Hopefully the next chapter will be up in a couple of days!