Monday morning comes around faster than Jay would like, but at the same time, he was never good at having spare time on his hands.
Waking up earlier than normal, Jay decides he has enough time to take Casper on a quick walk before he has to be in. Jay changes and then grabs his sneakers and Casper's leash. Making sure that he has his phone and keys he clips the leash onto Casper's collar.
Once outside, Jay leads Casper around his neighborhood keeping an eye on the time. After going four blocks, Jay turns around not wanting to go too far for Casper. Getting back into his apartment Jay makes sure that Casper has fresh water in his bowl before feeding him and hoping in the shower himself.
After getting out of the shower and changing for work, Jay makes himself a quick breakfast and coffee. Surprisingly, Jay is able to eat his breakfast without being called to a scene. When Jay goes to leave, he tells Casper to be good.
Buzzing himself up to the intelligence bullpen, Jay hears the voices of his teammates talking about how bad crowd control was for the four officers of the unit. Once he reaches the bullpen, he sees that he is the last one to arrive.
Hailey is the only one to look at him when he becomes visible to the rest of the unit. "Everything okay?" she asks, ignoring the others' conversation about being an office during the holidays is terrible.
"Yeah, fine. Why?" he answers while asking a question if his own.
"You're not usually the last one here," Hailey answers.
"Running a little behind I guess," Jay answers. "I was up a little earlier than normal, so I took Casper on a walk."
Hailey gives him a silent look.
"I slept fine. I guess I was starting to go a little crazy since we've been off since Thursday," Jay answers her unvoiced question.
Before Hailey can respond, Voight comes out of his office announcing that they have a case, effectively getting the others to stop complaining.
"Over the course of the last four months, several service members have been going missing. We have three bodies now. This went from a serial kidnapper to serial killer," Voight tells the group.
When she hears this Hailey looks over to Jay to see his reaction, but can't find anything as his face is emotionless. "Check with your CIs, we need to put a stop to this before another one goes missing or before another body shows up." Voight pairs up his unit, dismissing them all but Jay and Hailey.
Once the others leave, Voight asks, "Are you able to be objective?" he asks pointedly at Jay.
"Yes," Jay answers robotically.
Voight nods, dismissing them, but not before giving Hailey a knowing look.
Hailey gives her own look, meaning she will before the two detectives leave the bullpen.
"What did Will say?" Hailey asks as they get into his truck.
"He said that he would be late, but he would be there," Jay answers while putting his truck into drive.
"Are you okay, really?" Hailey asks wanting to know what is going on in Jay's head.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Jay tells her dismissively.
"I know these cases are personal to you, it's okay if you're not. You can talk to me," Hailey reminds him.
"I know, but I have Casper now too," Jay tells her.
Hailey internally smiles, happy to know that if Jay isn't opening up to her, he is at least talking to Casper.
The rest of the drive is quiet as Hailey doesn't want to push Jay because it doesn't seem like he needs to be pushed right now.
"Do you think the others got anything?" Hailey asks on the way back to the station.
"I hope. There's something about this case that doesn't make sense," Jay answers tightly while clutching the steering wheel.
Sensing that Jay is getting worked up about the case, Hailey has an idea. "Hey, do you want to stop and check on Casper?"
"We don't have time," Jay responds.
"Jay, I can tell that this case is getting to you. Casper can help," Hailey tries.
"We don't have time. Besides I'm going to use my lunch to let him out."
"I don't think that we're going to have time for lunch with this case. It's not like no one ever took a detour on the way back to the district."
Jay thinks this over for a moment before he heads towards his apartment. Noticing the direction that they are now going Hailey takes it as a win.
When Jay opens the door to his apartment, Casper comes to the door to greet his human. "Hey, boy," Jay gives the puppy his own greeting. "Come on, let's go out," Jay continues as he grabs the leash.
As Hailey stays by the two, she watches as the tension leaves Jay with Casper by his side. Jay lets the growing puppy stretch out some before taking him back inside.
After spending around ten minutes with Casper, Jay makes sure that he has water before leaving to go back to the district.
"Feeling better?" Hailey asks as they make their way back to the 21st.
"Yeah," Jay sighs. "This case… it just doesn't make sense. Who would go after service members?"
"Maybe someone with a grudge. Are you going to be okay with this case?" Hailey questions.
"Did Voight put you up to this?" Jay answers the question with one of his own.
"No. I know you aren't going to believe this, but people do care about you."
"Sorry."
"Jay, I didn't say that to make you feel bad-"
"I know- I just…"
"I know. We can talk about it later."
"Okay," Jay answers as they pull up to the district.
"What do you have?" Voight asks his team once everyone is back in the intelligence bullpen.
Ruzek is the first one to speak, "Not anything that's useful. They literally have no connections other than being service members."
"And they all served different branches," Kim adds.
"So, if they're from different branches, it couldn't be a personal grudge. Could it?" Vanessa asks.
"It could be against the military in general," Kevin suggests.
"There's five branches- which one is missing?" Jay questions.
"Um, victim one was Navy, victim two Marine Corps, victim three Air Force, and our missing man is Coast Guard," Kim lists.
"So, the only one that's missing is Army?" Jay confirms.
"Looks like it."
"Can I see the files?" Jay asks causing Kim to pass the folders to him.
"Do you see something?" Hailey asks.
"There is something in common. It's just not obvious."
"Well, what is it, Halstead?" Voight asks.
"A SEAL, a Raider, a PJ, and a TACLET," Jay answers.
"What's that mean?" Ruzek voices the question that everyone is wondering.
"They're specialized units within each branch."
"So, that means if we don't get this guy soon, the next person to go missing will be an Army Ranger?" Hailey asks concerned looking at Jay.
The rest of the unit also looks at the former Army Ranger.
"Not necessarily. Besides Rangers, the Army also has Night Stalkers and Green Berets."
"We're getting this son of a bitch before someone from the Army goes missing. And we're getting him before the fourth victim's body shows up," Voight tells his team, the familiar look of 'even if we have to tear the city apart' is in his eye.
Now that Jay was able to make the connection, the team has something to work with even if it isn't much.
"This can't be personal can it?" Hailey asks. "If it was the targets would be from one branch and from one type of specialized unit, right?"
"Maybe, it still could be. Just maybe not in the sense of being rejected from the military."
"Do you have any CIs that would be useful for this? This is such a strange case," Hailey mumbles.
"Most of my CIs tend to be the other side of military characters."
It's nine o'clock by the time that Voight lets them leave for the night, wanting them to be back at seven in the morning.
All of the members of the unit leave quickly before Voight is able to change his mind. The officers of the unit go their separate ways knowing that they have to be in early the next day. Hailey hangs back for a minute wanting to talk to Jay.
"What do you want to do about training?"
"I don't want to bother you. We need to be in early tomorrow," Jay answers in a roundabout way.
"We can work with Casper for an hour instead of the normal two," Hailey offers.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. Is Will still coming?"
"I told him we caught a case."
"Okay, let him know that we're doing a short session if he wants to come," Hailey orders him.
Jay nods but doesn't actually intend on doing what he is told.
"I'll meet you at your place," Hailey tells him as they get into their respective vehicles.
"What are you doing here?" Jay asks, surprised to see his brother outside of his apartment unit when he and Hailey arrive.
"Hailey texted me because she knew you wouldn't," Will answers.
"Hailey," Jay looks at her.
"Sorry, but this is part of learning that people care about you."
Jay sighs as he opens the door to his apartment to let them in.
"So, are we starting the next task?" Will asks.
"We were going to, but because of the shortened training session, we'll start then new task next time," Hailey answers.
"Bad case?"
"The connection that we have is not helping us on a motive."
"You'll figure it out," Will states as they get to work.
The three of them work on the grounding technique for the next hour before calling it a night. Before leaving Casper is able to con belly and head rubs out of Hailey and Will.
A/N: WOW! I am so sorry for going MIA on this story for almost three months. The long explanation is in an author's note in my other story, but the short one is that distance learning is harder than I thought and it is not how I want to learn.
If you follow my other story disregard any timeline that I stated for the Deaf Fic, and for future chapters on this story. What I can say is that I have five more chapters to write of "A to Z" and once I finish that, I will mostly be working on this and a prompt that I was given by floppdeedoopdee. I am still on chapter 3 of deaf Jay and am putting the prompt ahead of that because that is a short five-chapter story while the deaf fic has no definite chapter count. For this story, the case that they are working on is not finished and there defiantly will be more Will in the coming chapters. If you are ever wondering about what's going on with any of my stories, check out my bio. I have a list of both my published and unpublished works; I believe that I do a pretty good job of keeping it up to date, maybe 95% of the time it is accurate.
I will try to get back to the schedule that I had created of this being updated on Wednesdays and "A to Z" on Saturdays.
I have changed my penname to match my AO3 name (Otter_Love_ASL) that I recently joined and am slowly adding my stories to that website as well. I only post here and on AO3. I have edited and added conversions (F to C) in both "It's Just the Flu" and up to letter Q of "A to Z" and plan on doing the same to this at some point.
Regarding this Chapter:
A PJ is a para-jumper- they are the people who go in to rescue stranded aircrews from the most extreme conditions.
TACLET- TACtical Law enforcement Teams. Provide maritime drug interdiction and well as maritime interception domestically as well as where requested by the Department of Defense. Also they conduct training for foreign Navy and foreign Coast Guard.
I also know that as of December 2019 there are 6 branches of the military. But personally don't believe that the Space Force should be considered part of the military as it just makes no sense unless we are going to war against Aliens, which under the current "president" is totally possible.
Questions & Comments:
LostCause789- Chapter 25- Yes! I cannot believe that he actually said that. I fear for the future of this country. Lol. It's so embarrassing. I loved getting an update on this story. I like seeing Vanessa and Hailey interacting. That's always fun. I look forward to reading more.
Yes, this country is not handling anything going on at the moment or in the last six months well. I'm glad you loved getting the update and am sorry it took so long. Writing Hailey and Vanessa together is fun, I get to experiment since we don't see much of their off-duty/roommate relationship.
KaraWalker2008- Chapter 25- I know it hasn't been too long but are you continuing with this story because I would really like to see more especially jay revealing why he got Casper and him finishing the tasks. Btw it's really good so far keep up the good work :)
Thank you! Yes, I'm not that person to make a chapter an author's note only, so the updates that I gave were in author's notes in my other story. I don't have everything down but I have a skeleton of what I want to happen. Casper will be completing the tasks and the others will find out. If I do not have a note about a hiatus from the story in the summary or overview, I am currently working on it, it just might not be steady updates like I want.
Stay safe and Healthy! If you are a fellow American please be careful, this country does not have the virus under control and added problems of other social justice issues that are at a peak now is not helping the containment. I am not trying to be political, this is not the place for it, but just look at the numbers as of July 8, of the almost 12 million cases, the US has 3 million- that's 1/4.