Safest Place to Hide

Chapter 9

Giving Up

Alex awoke in the white hospital room with her shoulder stinging painfully. She realized they'd cut back on the painkiller and hissed as she tried to move the joint. Her memory came stuttering back and she flinched. Staring at the ceiling, she reflected on her stupidity.

She should have seen the signs. The eyes she'd met across the road had not been coincidence. The robbery had not been a robbery but a fit of rage that she had not been home when he came calling. Then it hit her.

Bobby was probably blaming himself.

He was the profiler, he was the one that had accompanied her to the office, who comforted her in her nightmares. She was positive that if I weren't for the morphine drip in her arm over the last couple of days she wouldn't have slept at all without her partner beside her. They'd created a routine, one that she missed more than she'd ever admit.

Looking up at the ceiling again, she hoped he was okay.

Bobby walked into interrogation alone to face Patrick Sparks. He hadn't wanted to do it, but he knew that it would have been for worse of Alex to be there to watch. Plus, he wanted to understand the psychopath that wanted to stalk his partner and kill her. Vaguely he understood the motive. Patrick truly believed that they system had screwed up and sent the wrong man to jail. Thus, he set out for revenge on everyone involved: the key witness, and the woman that had lured his father in.

At the same time his mind screamed at him for being stupid. He was the one trained to see this kind of thing, to see the signs of a stalker or violent person. He'd comforted Alex in her nightmares of eyes across the street, taken her in when her apartment was broken into, totally missed the connection to Alex when they'd decided this was about another case that Horace Mitchell had been a witness for and he felt ultimately responsible for her shooting.

Patrick Sparks looked up as Bobby sat down, malice in his eyes.

"The bitch dead yet?" Bobby said nothing. As angry as he was that this man, a man who had to rights to his partner in any way, shape or form, was insulting his partner, he knew the value of keeping his cool. It was more important for Alex and every one else to see Patrick Sparks go to jail. It wouldn't help if he were on his way there too. It was an interrogation he dreaded almost more than the ones with Nicole Wallace/ Elizabeth Hitchens. This wasn't about him at all, but could hurt him just as easily.

Alex had become his world.

"On the contrary, Detective Eames will recover just fine." This only seemed to anger Sparks more. Bobby was very happy they'd cuffed him to the table. Bobby sat across from him, careful of his heavily beating heart and the red glaze of anger in his mind.

"The murder had no real motive, did it? It was a perfect crime, kill the witness and get the investigator in the process. This was about revenge."

"The bitch was the reason my father is rotting in jail. He was my last family," he spat back. The red in Bobby's mind became that much more solid.

"She ruined my life!"

"By locking away the only person you could count on, the only person you felt truly loved you.

"She took it away. She took away my life." Bobby nodded sadly.

"So you had to take hers." It was the first time the thought had truly hit home for him. Sure, he'd realized that Alex could have been gone in the blink of an eye – just a few inches down and to the right and the bullet would have killed her instantly – but he'd put it to the back of his mind. Even with the nightmares of his life without her, he'd managed to stave off the thoughts that she could have actually died. Here and now, it was different. The man's words cemented the thought in his brain and he couldn't let it go.

"I almost had her, too." Bobby absorbed this statement much slower than usual. 75 of his brain was focused on losing Alex. Emotions were bombarding him from all sides as he realized what the loss of Alex would truly mean. It was the first time he'd ever even ventured to name the unknown feeling he'd been experiencing in her presence. To admit he loved Alex would be opening himself up for the greatest pains of his life, greater than losing her.

"That bitch ruined me." The whispered words snapped Bobby's tenuous control on his emotions. He was up in a flash, hand gripping Sparks' collar as he growled.

"Alex is not a bit. She is an upstanding citizen and one hell of an officer. She was doing her job, following orders and evidence. You killed an innocent man in cold blood and shot an officer of the NYPD. She's twenty times the person you will ever be." Reluctantly, Bobby removed his hand and turned to his files, packing them away in his portfolio. Finally, he walked to the door, turning before he closed it.

"I hope you rot in jail with your father."

Alex looked to the door as it opened and hope flooded her chest. However, the man who walked through the door was not her partner, but her captain.

"How are you feeling?" She smiled tiredly. She'd seen her family multiple times, many of her work colleagues – Carver had even come twice – and a few of her friends but the one person she'd shared an apartment with, spilled some of her deepest secrets and insecurities with, was nowhere to be found. Sure, he'd called numerous times over the last week, but hadn't visited once since the first day.

Subconsciously, and partly consciously since she'd been alone and thinking, she understood his aversion. She'd had plenty of time to consider the working of Bobby Goren's fears and had become well aware that he'd seen her at her most vulnerable, at her weakest. She wouldn't be surprised if that had broken some of his faith in her immortality. Or, at the very least, broken a few levels off of her pedestal and settled her more in the realm of reality.

She hadn't realized how long she'd been quite for until Deakins settled a hand on her arm.

"He's had a rough time with it too, Alex," the captain said gently. "The interrogation…"

"That bad?" The question was whispered fearfully.

"He did what he had to do, Alex, but without the usual Goren gusto. He lost control in the end, we almost had to call in backup." Alex shook her head, having not comprehended the full effect of her injury on her unstable partner.

"In fact, he froze after Sparks mentioned he almost killed you." Alex shivered at the thought. She'd realized long ago that she'd been lucky she'd flattened herself against the wall when she did. Any later, and that bullet would have torn through her heart and she wouldn't be lying in the hospital, alive and breathing. Originally, the thought had scared her out of her wits, but it had taught her something too. Her life wasn't going to last forever. She may never get lucky like this again. Everything became clearer to her then. Bobby's actions since the shooting, his reluctance to come and see her…

He did care, that's why he was so scared.

"Alex?"

"I'll be fine Captain," she said with a tight smile. "I'm on light duty in two weeks if I can manage it." Deakins nodded.

"I'll send a tech to hook up your laptop to the databases outside of the precinct. When are you supposed to be back on full duty?"

"Six weeks, providing I don't strain my shoulder."

"I don't want to see you for four. Take a break, Alex. You deserve it." She smiled tightly as he left before she returned to contemplating the ceiling, and her partner.