Chapter 32:

As soon as they had been aware of Elizabeth's disappearance, even before Jack and Vivian had been forced to see the judge delaying the trial due to the current situation, Jack had called in to the office and asked them to start the search for Elizabeth.

He had hoped for some good news after all, when they returned, but he knew it was most definitely pointless. The Chileans were far too experienced to do anything wrong. But none the less they had to try to find the young woman.

Jack had headed over to Martin's desk, getting an update on the investigation results.

„What do we have so far?"

„Her apartment has been cleared out about three weeks ago. She obviously decided that it was much too dangerous to stay there, with the other two handy men of Adamén still out there. As to be expected she left no further address to her landlord.

No phone logs – neither home phone nor cell. Last outgoing call has been to the hospital that Friday morning before the trial. The nurse who took the call said, she asked if she may come there that very same afternoon. Seems like she finally came up with the courage to pay Danny a visit."

„She had a hard time deciding about that. She was blaming herself for what had happened, naturally. Of course it wasn't her fault - but that's easy for me or anyone else to say. I guess she was afraid of Danny's reaction..."

„She had plans for that day, Jack. Big plans – she was about to testify, she had planned on going to the hospital that afternoon. She hadn't meant to get away. Whatever happened to her didn't happen on her own free will."

They had known this before, but having proof on it made the situation even more desperate. Chances had been low already and they were fading into nothingness more and more. Elizabeth had been taken – there was no doubt about that.

„I didn't know she left her apartment. She didn't tell me, she didn't tell anyone around here. She must have had some other hiding place, some spot she felt safe at..."

He was thinking loud, more than he was actually talking to Martin. Jack had been surprised about that fact, especially as he had expected Elizabeth to inform them about such a thing. But as she hadn't been willing to give in to the protection offered, she obviously hadn't seen a necessity in sharing information...

„So - where did she go?"

„That's the one decisive question and the even more important one is – who knew about it? Someone must have betrayed her to them. We didn't even know she moved out of the apartment and if she didn't believe we were trustworthy enough to be informed about that fact, I can't think of a lot of other people who knew."

„I don't think anyone would have betrayed her. I mean the only people who would possibly know about it was that group she was working for – family members of people being tortured and killed by the two men that most definitely are responsible for Elizabeth's disappearance. No one would have betrayed her, not for anything in the world."

Martin was right – Elizabeth had been way too paranoid to trust someone she barely knew and the people she was representing had suffered far too much, due to the actions of the Chileans they had tracked down. There must have been some other reason why they had been able to find her that easily.

„Maybe she has been under surveillance, maybe they knew where she was and where she went to, even before we encountered her?"

„But that wouldn't make any sense, Jack. Why wouldn't they track her down or kill her – if she had been under their surveillance, they could have get rid of her much earlier. Why would they go after Danny instead of her, if they had known about her every step? It would have been much easier and it would have gathered a lot less attention. They could have found out about her investigation results without drawing the interest of a federal agency to themselves. So why didn't they do it?"

„Because she hadn't been a danger to them. She was a foreigner in a foreign country with no connections and no one she could ask for help. In her homecountry she was very well able to gather information, but this wasn't her turf..."

„She wasn't able to find them."

„Exactly – and that's why she never became a danger to them. Why should they bother killing her, if she wasn't even able to get close to them. Killing her would have drawn too much attention and it would have been far more dangerous – there could have been some evidence pointing to them and then they would have been in a hell of a lot of trouble – all for nothing."

„So you're saying she had never a chance to endanger them and therefore they left her be?"

„Yes – until she asked for help. Danny had a chance to help her track them down, he had connections and ways to find out, which she hadn't and he was willing to help her. From that point on all further investigation got dangerous for them. They had been found and they needed to do something against it."

„They did..."

It didn't need any further words to understand what he was referring to. This whole situation – the trial, Beth's disappearance, their search was all connected to what had happened to Danny and being confronted with it every day didn't make the task of finding Elizabeth any easier.

Especially as they couldn't be sure if Elizabeth had given some useful information to him that would help them track her down.

She had considered him trustworthy enough to share her investigation results with him and she had asked for his help. Maybe she had told him more than that, had told him where she would go if the situation with the Chileans would get out of hand. Maybe he knew about her hiding place.

Still Jack had decided not to ask him about it. He simply wasn't willing to confront him with the fact of Elizabeth's disappearance. It didn't need much of a genius to understand that her vanishing and the trial against the Chileans were connected. He didn't want Danny to cope with that – he wasn't even sure he was, under given circumstances, in any condition to actually do so. Giving that information to him could cause serious trouble, aggravating his already fragile mental state and Jack wasn't willing to risk that...

„We won't find her, will we?"

Martin asked him, interrupting him in his thoughts about his decision. He had expected this question way earlier, for everybody around here working on that case, was aware of what had most definitely happened to Beth. She had been to much of a risk to the Chileans and that risk had been eliminated.

„At least not alive."