Chapter Two


I gave Patrick the key to my apartment today. I could lie and say it was purely for convenience's sake – that because he offered to cook me dinner and I was going to be working later than him it made sense, but how could I lie in my own journal? Truth was that I'd had the key made for him over a week ago, I was just afraid that if I brought it up he'd run a mile in the other direction. He almost did, I saw it in his eyes, but he rallied at the last second when I made light of it. He'll probably leave the key on the desk later tonight. If he does, it'll sting but I'm the one who created this pretense I'm living.


Patrick rubbed his hands over his face and leaned back against the pillows that Robin liked to have piled onto her couch. The image of her leaning against these same pillows wearing the killer black dress and those boots the first time he was here shimmered at the edge of his consciousness. Anna's strident demand that he start at the beginning again snapped him back to the present.

"I told you everything already. We worked. We came here last night. We had dinner; you've already retrieved the pizza carton from the garbage. We went to bed. We woke up. I showered. We made plans for tonight. I left for work. When I came out of the emergency surgery I was called in early for I overheard that she was late and I left her the message." Patrick paused and cleared his throat. Something about Anna Devane made him feel uncomfortable in his skin. Every time the message he'd left on Robin's answering machine came up during the countless retelling of the events of the past couple of days she nailed him with a glare that made him slightly ashamed. Even though he knew he did nothing wrong, this was Robin's mother who listened to it and had since played it for Robin's uncle and his own father. He pressed on.

"I left her a message and I was in surgery the rest of the day and I didn't know she hadn't come in until my father told me. Then I came here and you know the rest." He slumped back into the couch. He felt as frustrated and helpless as everyone else in the room looked. He didn't know what the hell they expected from him. He hadn't been here dammit!

"What was her mood when you left this morning," Mac Scorpio asked with a slightly pained expression on his face, as if he knew he needed details, but didn't really want them since this was his niece they were talking about. He was sitting on the couch next to Patrick.

"Happy. She was very happy. We, uh…" Patrick frowned and looked at his father who was standing behind the chair Anna Devane was sitting on.

"What?" Anna snapped.

"We planned on my making her dinner tonight. My special macaroni and cheese." He shared a slight smile with his father before continuing. "Because she was going to be working later than me, meeting with my father, she gave me a key to let myself in."

"Don't tell me, you freaked out." Mac who hadn't heard this part of the story yet, rolled his eyes.

"I was surprised, for a moment. I assure you everything was fine before I left, which I only did because I got called in by the hospital." Patrick's voice was hard with frustration. "Why are we sitting here grilling me when we should be out there looking for Robin?" Unable to stay seated anymore he jumped up and stalked behind the couch.

Anna and Mac shared a knowing look.

"We need a clear picture of the last time anyone saw Robin. Where was she the last time you saw her?"

"I'm not the last person to have seen her, I couldn't have been. She went out shopping, a friend had an emergency. That's it. Some friend of hers had an emergency!" Patrick stood with his hands on his hip glaring at everyone.

"Where was she the last time you saw her?" Mac asked again.

"She was in bed. That bed. Over there. Do you want to know what she was wearing or wasn't wearing too?" He pointed towards the bedroom. "Now she's not. So can we stop standing around here like she's magically…" Patrick broke off and swore. He closed his eyes. He wanted her to come walking through that door more than anything right now. First, he'd sweep her into his arms and then he'd give her hell for worrying everyone.

"Son." Noah walked over and tried to put his hand on Patrick's tense shoulder. Patrick moved away. "Anna and Mac know what they're doing. There are people out there already looking for her, including a lot of people who know and care for her. She's going to be fine."

It was on the tip of Patrick's tongue to ask his father if that promise was as firm as the one he gave before taking his mother into surgery, but he had enough presence of mind to realize that he was lashing out at the wrong people. He knew he needed to stay calm. Logical.

"Are you sure she had no reason to want to disappear, that nothing happened between the two of you. She got upset, ran off?" Mac asked.

"Dammit, Mac. I'm telling you she was happy. We…we're working on where we're going with this, us. Do I need to take a lie detector test? Some sort of forensics tests so you could stop looking at me like I did something to Robin? Call the hospital, they'll verify where I was all day! I don't know where the hell she is!"

"Mac." Anna Devane's strong, cultured voice cut through the tension. "I don't believe Patrick is lying. I know that Robin was very happy with Patrick. She invited me here to meet him. Even if she wanted to run off for some reason she would have told someone where she was going. You. Me. The hospital. This isn't like Robin."

"Exactly, so now can we get down to doing something productive?"

Mac and Anna ignored Patrick's outburst.

"We've called Jax, Nikolas, Maxie, Georgie, Felicia and everyone else on her cell phone contact list. I left a message for Brenda in case she called her. We need a list of her friends." Anna turned and looked at Patrick. "Can you help us put that together?"

"Um, yeah." He looked around for a piece of paper. When he opened her drawer he found her PDA. He pulled it out and looked at it strangely. "She syncs this up with her computer in the office. She never leaves this here."

"Put that down and don't go into her office. I have a forensics team coming any minute to go over the place. In fact, we should take this down to the station, now," Mac said.

"Forensics?" Patrick's voice was raspy, he paled. His heart started hammering in his chest and he unconsciously put a hand over the ache. The PDA dropped the few inches to the desk with a clang.

Noah moved closer in case his son needed physical support. "Are Robin's meds still here?" Noah asked quietly.

Patrick shook his head and bit his lip. "She keeps them in the kitchen." Patrick moved towards the kitchen and then looked back at Mac who nodded. Swallowing past a lump in his throat Patrick walked into the kitchen and opened the cabinet next to the refrigerator. The spot where most people kept their juice glasses was where Robin stored her meds, except now that space was empty. Stunned, Patrick backed away and then stormed out of the kitchen, ignoring everyone's shouted questions. He walked towards the bedroom where the unmade bed was visible through the open doorway.

Before he could enter Mac grabbed him by the arm. "You can't touch anything."

"I need to see, Mac. Her meds are gone. I need to see." His voice was quiet, but firm.

"Wear gloves." Mac let him go when Patrick nodded.

Patrick walked through the bedroom directly into the bathroom and pulled gloves out of the box Robin kept near the first aid kit. He put them on and opened the shower door. Her shampoo and conditioner were gone. So was the vanilla and lavender body wash he had been teasing her about just that morning. Stone-faced, Patrick walked into the bedroom and began opening drawers, one after another, his face darkening with each one. He looked up at Mac and Anna watching him from the doorway. "They're a mess. She never leaves a mess. What the hell is going on? Where is Robin?"


They put him in a windowless interrogation room to wait. He paced the length of it over and over again. He had gone over the timeline again, this time it was typed up by a clerk and he signed it like he was a suspect. His fingerprints were taken to compare to the ones they'd find in Robin's apartment. He had also given them permission to inspect his locker at work, his car and his hotel room. He felt like a criminal, but he didn't give a shit, nothing mattered but finding Robin. For the millionth time he asked himself where she could be. It had been over eighteen hours since he had seen her. Eighteen hours and no one had seen or heard from her. According to forensics no emails had been sent out that morning and there were no calls in or out of her cell phone or house phone other than the messages from himself, his father and others at the hospital looking for her.

It was like she had just disappeared off the face of the earth.

"Patrick Drake?"

Patrick stopped pacing, braced himself and turned to face his latest interrogator. He nodded.

"I'm Aidan Devane, Robin's cousin."

The tension dropped out of Patrick's shoulders and he walked forward to shake the proffered hand. "Robin's told me about you. You're an investigator, right?"

"Yes, and former…"

"Spy, yes it seems to be the family trade, not that it's helping much today. Sorry." Patrick forced a weak smile and put his hands on his hips.

"You're worried for Robin. I can't fault you for that. She's a Devane-Scorpio she'll be fine."

"Does the mean you don't think I did something to her like everyone else around here except for her mother and my father?" Patrick sagged back against the concrete wall in relief.

"No one really suspects you, Patrick. They're just eliminating the possibilities because that's the first thing that must be done when there's no other obvious clues."

"Excuse me for not getting that when I've been locked in here, fingerprinted and questioned for hours." Patrick rubbed his forehead tiredly.

"Have you had dinner, mate?" Aidan tilted his head.

Patrick blanched. At Aidan's questioning look he told him, "I was supposed to make dinner for Robin tonight," he said softly.

"Come on, Mate. Let's get something to eat." Aidan held the door open.


Patrick walked into his hotel room to find it in shambles courtesy of the cops. "I can't believe this is happening," he mumbled as he tossed his keys onto the table near the door and walked further into the room without turning on any lights.

Despite the personal items lying about, the place looked for the first time exactly what it was, a lonely hotel room. Weary beyond belief he went to the bed and sat down, hunched forward and buried his face in his hands. This just wasn't possible. This morning he had woken up, their naked bodies entwined and they had made slow love as the sun came up. She glowed with it, he remembered.

He knew deep in his gut she was happy, except for that moment when she had handed him the shiny new key to her apartment. Her happiness had slipped then, he saw it, knew it would happen but he couldn't stop himself from freezing; couldn't battle back the lick of panic in time. This had never happened to him, the only women who had ever given him a key were the fallback girls, never someone he ever genuinely cared about or who cared about more than the pleasure they could share with their bodies. This was a big step, he knew it and he knew she knew it; it was bigger than making her his mother's macaroni and cheese.

It had just been a moment, a moment when the air between them chilled, but it had passed. At least he thought it had, but now he wasn't so sure now because she was gone and she had packed. She had taken the time to pack her HIV meds, her clothes, her car. She had left her PDA, her cell phone. Maybe she had been hurt, feared he was going to back off and hurt her and she had left. He hoped so.

"How sick is that," he said into the empty room, commenting on how sick it was that he was hoping she had decided she'd had enough of him and ran away to lick her wounds before she came back and delivered him a swift kick in the balls. Because it was better than the alternative, the thing he wouldn't even allow himself to think.

He had spent the last couple of hours with Robin's cousin Aidan. He had genuinely liked the guy. They'd gone to Converse, a sports bar on the seedy side of town where he didn't know anyone and he'd never gone with Robin. A place that had an open kitchen and a crowd not interested in the stilted conversation of two brooding men. They hadn't spoken much, and he knew that Aidan was picking his brain about Robin's life but he hadn't been offended, he'd been hopeful that Aidan could find where Robin had gone.

Patrick sat up and stretched his sore legs in front of him, as he did so something sharp in his pocket stabbed at him. He closed his eyes and stood up and stuck his hand in the pocket of his black pants. The key. He opened his eyes and looked at the silver item in his palm. Without giving himself time to think he got up, grabbed a pile of clothing from the open drawers and began throwing them into a small suitcase. Moments later he was gone, the door slamming behind him.