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"We'll find her, Jay," Al attempted to reassure the younger detective as he paced the bullpen, fingers laced behind his head as he tried to comprehend how and why someone would kidnap his partner, "You said you last saw her just before eight this morning?"
"Yeah, um, she got a text while we were drinking coffee, said it was Landon, one of her CIs." Jay slammed his hand down on his desk, "Fuck. I knew I should have gone with her."
Jay was absolutely kicking himself. The second that Kevin pointed out the blood on the ground, he thought he was going to pass out. In fact, he almost did, had the Jeep not been beside him to put his hands on. Voight almost broke his hand on the cement wall after shouting orders at the team had Al not been there to lower his elbow. Jay was just grateful it wasn't his face.
Landon, or whoever Landon was working with, or for, they still didn't know, had clearly thought through the location. There were no cameras in the parking garage, and the pods around the corner had been disconnected the night before. Erin had been missing for almost six hours, and with each ticking minute, Jay was becoming more and more undone.
"What happened next?" Al pressed on, "Where did she say she was meeting him?"
"She didn't. I-I didn't ask," Jay ran his hands over his face, "Fuck, I should have asked."
"Should ofs and fucks aren't going to help us find Erin," Voight rasped, "Burgess and Atwater are pulling the last six months of cases she worked, and Mouse is working on her cell. What we need you to do," he gestured to Jay, "is tell us everything you remember from this morning, from this week, from this whole god forsaken year. Any detail that could help us find her."
"Don't you think that's what I'm trying to do?" Jay shouted back, "She's my partner!"
"Hey, hey," Al interjected, "Both of you. I know tensions are high. This is Erin we're talking about. But she's strong, and we're going to find her, alright?"
Both men went silent, unable to verbally acknowledge what they both felt. They loved Erin, and knowing that she was missing and likely scared and alone was killing them. Voight's phone rang and he turned for his office, leaving Al with Jay. "So Halstead, what else do you remember?"
"She's wearing my shirt," he mumbled, sitting down at his desk and burying his face in his hands, "Black jeans, black boots, black belt, blue and green flannel."
"Who's there?" Erin tried, her voice muffled by the gag in her mouth. She attempted to shuffle backwards but was met with the cement wall. The chill in the basement seemed to get worse as whoever was holding her captive descended the steps.
"What, you don't recognize my voice?" The man chuckled and took three heavy steps down the stairs. The light from upstairs illuminated the side of his face and Erin gasped. "After all those years together, Erin? After all I did for you? For your mom? For Annie?" Charlie Pugliese stood at the base of the wooden stairs, arms folded across his chest, "All that, and you don't even recognize my voice?"
Erin grunted and struggled against the ties at her wrists. "Tsk, tsk, Erin. Don't you know not to struggle?" he offered a sinister smile and stepped closer, "C'mon, now. I know you were sleeping for a bit, but if I recall, you have a good memory."
"No, no," she attempted to move backwards again. This couldn't be happening. Charlie was supposed to be in prison, far outside the city. He wasn't supposed to set foot in Chicago. Her heart pounded in her ears with each step her former boyfriend took. This couldn't be happening. It must be a nightmare. Erin squeezed her eyes shut, desperate to wake up. When she opened them again, Charlie's intoxicating smell bombarded her nostrils and she choked on the gag between her lips, wanting to vomit as the traumatic memories of her turbulent upbringing washed over her.
"Shh," he cooed, approaching her body to tower over her, "It's alright, I'm here now."
Erin shook her head vigorously as he reached out to her, wanting to kick herself for the desperate whimpers that emerged from her gagged lips. She was supposed to be a badass Chicago detective, for crying out loud. She wasn't supposed to be scared. Yet here she was, feeling thirteen again as Charlie Pugliese put his hands on her. "You know I don't like it when you struggle," Charlie chuckled, rough hands now on her cheeks. He slipped his fingers through the gag and pulled it down.
"Ch-charlie?" Erin gasped out, her brain feeling too big for her skull as the air previously obstructed by the gag filled her lungs, "What-what are you doing out of prison?"
"I'm here for you," he replied simply, lifting her heavy head with his calloused hand, stroking her hair off her forehead, "There's some debts that need to be paid."
"You want money?" she asked, pulling back as sharply as her body would let her, "Kidnapping a cop is one hell of a way to get it."
"Don't fucking sass me," Charlie shouted, shoving Erin backwards toward the cement wall, "I'm in charge here, and I'd like some damned respect." She winced as she made contact, the aching in her head escalating.
"Okay, okay," Erin attempted to raise her bound hands, still painfully tied behind her back, "I get it. Trust me, I do. We-we can talk about this." She shifted backwards, her head still throbbing, "Why don't you untie me, and we can talk?"
"Nice try, detective." He almost laughed and stood, leaving her on the dirty floor, "We'll talk when I'm ready to talk." Charlie turned to leave.
"You're just going to leave me down here?" Erin shouted after him, the anger finally catching up to her as her head cleared from the blow back in the parking garage. "You knocked me out, dragged me to god knows where and now you're leaving? You have my fucking attention, Charlie."
"You know where you are, Erin," he replied, "Bucket's in the corner if you have to go."
"Can't imagine what Halstead's goin' through," Ruzek mused, leaning against the desk while Mouse typed, looking for a way into Erin's busted cell phone, "Dude must be in hell."
"Yeah," Mouse replied, barely registering Adam's comment, "Look man, I'm almost in. You can tell Voight that we should be into Erin's phone in the next half hour."
"That's not going to be good enough," Adam replied, "Lindsay's practically Voight's daughter, and she's been missing for almost six hours. We found blood next to her car, and there are no cameras, no leads, no nothing. This cell phone is the best chance we have at finding her."
"I know that," the squirrelly technical whiz replied shortly, "These things take time." He paused as data populated on the screen in front of him, "But lucky for you, that time is now."
"Her phone looks clean," Adam announced to the bullpen, holding up paper copies of Erin's cell records and distributing to the team, "Calls and texts to Jay, Voight, the rest of this squad, Platt," he wrinkled his nose at the mention of the desk sergeant who wasn't exactly his biggest fan, "Two recent texts this morning from a line that has since disconnected, which matches up to the number we found in Landon's CI file. Mouse is tracking that one now."
Voight grunted as he flipped through the papers. He turned to look at Jay, who was appearing to lose color with each passing hour. "Wait, what about this number?" Al read it aloud, "Half a dozen text messages in the last week, two two-minute phone calls."
"Recognize the number?" Voight asked Jay, who shook his head.
"No," he managed. Jay took a seat at his desk, unable to stand any longer. He and Erin built their relationship on trust. There was little about him that she didn't know, and most of that consisted of the nitty-gritty military details that almost nobody, outside of Mouse, knew about. He told her about his mom, his dad, the bullies on the street where he grew up, all the times that Will didn't come through for him, the good, the bad, the ugly.
She'd told him all about Charlie, Bunny, Bunny's never-ending onslaught of boyfriends and husbands, the horrible girls in high school, even about her earliest memories of the man she thought was her father. They swapped the horror stories of patrol, old stakeouts and growing up. Erin knew him better than anyone in the world, and he thought the same about her. When Erin brought up a story that he'd heard before and he teased her about it, she had replied with, "Well Jay Halstead, looks like you are the first person to know absolutely everything about me." That statement had filled his heart to the brim, the fact that he could get Erin Lindsay, one of the most guarded people he'd ever known, to fully and completely open up. It was an honor he didn't take lightly, and he'd promised himself that he would do everything in his power to be that person for her, as long as she'd have him.
"You coming, Halstead?" Voight called over his shoulder as Mouse rattled off the approximate location of the cell phone.
"Yeah," he replied weakly, getting to his feet and following his team with the hopes of finding his partner.
Erin sat awake in the dark basement, her stomach grumbling. She wasn't positive how long she'd been unconscious, but it couldn't have been more than a few hours. Her head was still pounding as she glanced around the basement, her wrists raw from tugging. On one hand, she was glad she'd skipped breakfast because she could avoid the bucket situation, but on the other, she was positively famished. Jay probably had a toasted everything bagel waiting for her on her desk.
Jay.
This must be killing him. She was sure that by now his overprotective instincts had kicked into overdrive, and was hopefully at or on his way to the parking garage to find her abandoned car. Unless Landon moved it. Her keys weren't in her pockets. Fuck.
Either way, a few hours without a call or text would have sent Jay looking, and after a bit, he'd have to reach out to Hank for help.
Hank.
He would have to find her. There is nothing that Hank wouldn't do for her, and he'd find her. She was literally the last family the man had left. Hank and Jay and the rest of the unit would stop at nothing, this she was certain. It was all she could do to keep the tears that threatened to fall behind her eyes back. Just thinking about her partner and her father figure had her craving their embrace more than anything she'd ever wanted before.
"Hungry?" Charlie called down the steps, snapping her out of her reverie. His heavy footsteps descended the stairs and he emerged in the darkness, bearing a plate of what appeared to be a bagel with cream cheese. Was her mind playing tricks on her? Erin looked again, the bagel still appearing before her eyes.
"Caught your boy picking up one of these for you this morning and thought I'd get the same." Charlie extended half the bagel to Erin's lips, but she didn't open her mouth.
"What were you doing following Jay?" she spat out, anxiety brewing in her stomach. Had Charlie gotten to Jay? Was he hurt?
"Makin' sure he wasn't with you," Charlie replied, waving the bagel in front of her mouth again, "Don't piss me off, Erin, and take a bite."
She narrowed her eyes and bit down begrudgingly, her hunger getting the best of her. "How long have I been down here?" she asked after swallowing, "How long am I staying?"
"That's for me to know." He held up the bagel again, "You don't remember our trip?"
"I was unconscious," Erin bit back, "You or Landon or whoever the fuck hit me on the back of the head, and I woke up tied up in this basement."
"Oh right," Charlie let out a laugh, "Gosh, you were really out. Guess it was a good thing. I know how carsick you get. I'll never forget that trip out to Roklahoma back in the day, when you'd eaten that hot dog and made an absolute mess in the back of Landon's mom's minivan."
Erin widened her eyes slightly. She'd all but blocked that trip out of her memory. The drugs, the booze, the heat – it was a complete and total shitshow, and she'd been the star. Growing up in the city, she wasn't used to riding in the car all the time and the long road trip had really messed with her stomach. It was one of the big reasons why she liked to drive instead of her partner. There was something about feeling in control of the vehicle, coupled with the fact that she didn't feel like she was going to blow chunks after getting out at the crime scene.
When she had confessed this fact to Jay at a rest stop in the middle of a long road trip, she expected to be met with teasing. Instead, he had passed the keys over with a kiss to her cheek. He did tease her a bit after, but it felt good to tell him something that none of her other partners had been privy to. The funny thing was, Erin didn't really mind Jay's driving. She enjoyed ribbing him about it and she didn't want to pass up the power of the driver's seat, but there was something about him driving that made her feel safe.
"Eat up," Charlie instructed, holding out the remaining bites of the bagel, "Can't have you wasting away on my watch."
"But somehow you're okay with leaving me locked in this basement with my hands behind my back?" Erin snapped, "C'mon Charlie. Just tell me what you want from me. Tell me why I'm here."
"In due time," he sing-songed, "Now eat the fucking bagel, Erin."
She practically growled but complied. "Now you're going to tell me what this is all about?" she asked, "I can get you money. A ticket out of the city. Nobody needs to know this happened."
"I'm sure Voight's already got his panties in a twist over this," Charlie chuckled, "Don't worry, Erin, all will be revealed." He smiled as he watched her eyes glaze over. She felt her head feel heavier as Charlie's shadowy figure began to blur.
"Did you slip me something?" she slurred, leaning back against the wall, too tired to support herself, "Was there something in the bagel?"
"Nothing you haven't had before," he assured her, reaching out to stroke her cheek, "Just a little something to mellow you out. You've been so hostile toward me, and that's not the Erin I know. I just wanted a bit of the old Erin back."
"The Erin you used to know is gone," Erin muttered, her mind fogging over as the drugs kicked in, "She doesn't exist anymore." Her limbs went slack as she fought to keep her eyes open.
"Well, we will just have to see about that then, won't we?"
Eek sorry to leave on a cliffhanger! Hoping to get another chapter up ASAP but in the meantime if you're looking for another story, there are 78 chapters of Jay&Erin in the other story on my profile :)