Something to read if you're melting on a sofa or you need a distraction from the world out there. Thank you as always for the lovely feedback. I hope you enjoy this chapter with Harry.

Chas looked at Harry. "I think you need to get some sleep. I don't want to have to leave you here too."

His joke fell flat as Harry glared at him. "I'll tell you when I'm through."

"When we find Dempsey." Chas muttered.

"Then there's no need for idle threats." She said in a tone that would tick Demspey off and rile him in a way that she liked. Chas merely sighed and asked where she wanted to go as they left the hospital car park.

"There's so little to go on." She glanced down at the scant description of the attacker that a subdued Spikings had given them from his hospital bed.

Their boss was still fragile, not entirely out of the woods. At some point they had to make this more official, and face the realisation that the walls of SI-10 wouldn't reverberate to the sound of a Welsh chorus anytime soon. Privately, Harry hoped that they'd make Chas a temporary boss if they earned their stripes and she could focus on Dempsey. She didn't want to think of any other scenario.

"I'll run it past the team, maybe somebody will have a spark." Chas commented with not much hope.

"Can you drop me off at Dempsey's place." She asked, just to give Chas a break. She thought she'd like a break from herself too and wondered how people coped out there. At least she knew they were working all their resources to find her partner. She wished she could talk to Chas about it, but the secrets were not hers alone to tell. Chas wasn't just her friend.

Once inside Dempsey's front door, Harry said his name to simply say it in a tone that was more like a 'honey I'm home' feel. His name had felt like the name of a victim anywhere else lately. She'd never seen him like that. A scapegoat for others inactions or fears as he was with Coltrane, Edwards and Simmons, maybe but never a victim. Perhaps this killer saw that in him too.

She tried not to sink to the floor when she realised he hadn't made good on a harebrained escape plan. Instead she made toast, aware she had to eat. Had a shower and pulled on his t-shirt from the night before he'd been taken. She walked around the flat, then left a message for Freddy to say where she was, and on a random whim, called her own number in case Dempsey was there. It rang to her voicemail and she left herself, or him, a hopeless message.

She woke from a chaotic sleep in his bed, nauseous and as tired as the night before. The sheets beside her were cold and the flat had the empty feeling that come with loneliness.

Dammit Dempsey. Harry laid back on the bed. This was the fear she'd held tight inside her, from the moment her decree absolute dropped on the doormat about the same time he'd shed the past and all its secrets, along with Lupino. Feelings affect perception, and she'd laughed then because until that point, she had only seen what he allowed. In the aftermath of Coltrane she understood him better and her past perception was meaningless. He had upended her with his authenticity.

In the cold light, alone, she found herself facing another day in a powerless state, wondering if it was possible to 'know' if he was dead or alive. She remembered visiting partners, lovers and newly widowed who all said that they 'knew' that their loved one had passed away, a feeling in their gut, or a vision. She had neither, did that mean anything? If she told Chas, he'd worry even more but the absence of a ghostly Dempsey or a sense of death gave her hope. She would not give up on him, he didn't give up on her.

Hauling herself from the bed, Harry looked again at the description of the attacker and pulled her copy of the list she had compiled. She had missed something. She just knew it but who was it. Frantically she tore through the pages and cursed at her inability to find it.

It wasn't any good, not like this. Harry sunk into the bath and sat quietly, thinking back over the past weeks. When he first arrived into her life, the very worse thing she could imagine was being more like Dempsey but now, in the quiet of his home, surrounded by his things, she closed her eyes and did just that.

Her eyes opened with a start - dammit! She grabbed a towel, not bothering to dry off as she sped to the phone and dialled.

"Chas…"