Hailey Upton had sworn that she would never let herself get in this situation again, and yet it was almost the exact same situation she was in right now.
It was early Wednesday morning, Hailey found herself on the bathroom floor of her apartment. Her head was throbbing and she tasted blood in her mouth. She might have bitten her lip on impact. After checking her body of other injuries Hailey tried to stand up, noticing her entire body was shaking. Taking a few deep breaths do calm down, when looking in the mirror she indeed saw that her lip was bleeding and a bit swollen. A visible reminder of what had just happened.
Looking on her phone, she knew she had to be at the office in a little les than one hour. The bloody taste in her mouth made her stomach twist and she decided against breakfast. Instead she put some ice on her face, set a timer on her phone and laid down on the couch, hoping her headache would ease a bit.
One hour later Hailey met Jay in the break room, where he was making coffee. "Hey, can I have some?" "Sure... what happened to your face?" Jay asked while turning around to face Hailey. "Stupid accident, not even sure how it happened exactly, tripped and bit my lip." She answered, trying to wave it off, not wanting to talk about what actually happened. "Are you sure you are okay?" He asked before leaving the conversation for now. He knew better then to push for answers right now. "Yeah, thanks for the coffee"
The team had been working on a case with multiple drugs involved homicides. Bodies were dropping all over the city. At first it looked like these deaths were random, caused by bad dope out on the streets. But yesterday they were able to figure out how the deceased were connected to each other and it started to look like they were targeted. They had some suspects in mind but all runners, from the bottom of the organization. They knew the hits had to be ordered from higher up, which meant they had to collect as much information as they could to build a case. Jay and Adam would be on stake-out today, Kevin and Vanessa were talking to some witnesses, leaving Hailey and Kim at the bullpen doing desk research. For once Hailey didn't mind being at her desk all day, there was plenty of work and barely any time to think about anything but work.
Adam and Jay had been sitting in the car for at least three hours by now, and it would take at least another hour before the next shift showed up. Both men had a lot on their mind and kept mostly to themselves. Knowing Adam and Hailey had been dating for a while, Jay hoped they still talked to each other, since he was starting to get a little worried about his partner. "Have you talked to Hailey lately? Trying to get more information about what was going on in her life. "Not much, why?" "Hmm, I am getting worried, she is keeping more and more to herself, barely eats and then this morning... I just wish she would talk to me" before Adam got the change to answer, they were interrupted by movement around the building, quickly picking up their camera's and shoot some photo's.
"Earth to Hailey" Kim waved in front of her face, apparently Haileys mind had gotten a change to drift off. "Oh, what's up?" Hailey asked looking towards her coworker. "Are you okay? You don't look so good." Kim asked before continuing. "Have been better, but will get through it." she answered in all honesty, her head was still throbbing. "Okay, do you want to talk about it?" Hailey shook no, wanting to get back at her work when Kim started speaking again. "I found something, might be nothing but all of our victims have been in contact with this person, Leah Jones, no priors for possession, but she did time for armed robberies." Hailey vaguely remembered that name, not being able to place it right away. "Do we have enough on her to let Atwater and Rojas bring her in? While we continue to dig into her connections in all of this?" Kim was surprised by her response, usually Hailey was first to the door to leave. "Sure" she said as she pulled out her phone to get Atwater up to speed. At the same time Haileys phone went off, when she saw who it was she decided to decline, immediately after it rang again. "Ughh, not now.." she said before checking, but it was not who she expected, it was the morgue they had an update on their victims.
"You are sure they couldn't tell us over the phone?" Kim asked while she and Hailey walked into the morgue. "I wish, but they said there was something we needed to see.". They were greeted by Chase Tyler the pathologist that had called them earlier "Thank you both for coming. We have almost finished the autopsies on all seven of the victims, all had basically the same results. We found traces of the drugs in their system, which is the cause of death in six of these cases.
The seventh victim is the one I want to talk to you about. Jane Doe, approximately 30 years old. Cause of death unsure. We did find some traces of drugs on her and in her system, except not enough to be lethal. We even suspect that the drugs in her system are not the same as found on the other victims, but we are still running tests on that." Chase told them. "So you are telling, our Jane Doe is not connected to the other victims?" Hailey asked confused. Chase continued "Well, that is the thing, even though her cause of death is most definitely not the same as the other victims, she is connected. We have found the same traces of DNA on her body as on the other bodies, as well as this.." he showed the women a mark on her wrist. "She was branded?" Kim asked in disgust. "Yes, all of them were. It might be something you guys can work with. There is something else, Jane Doe's body shows signs of abuse, it must have happened over a longer period of time, I hope you guys can find out who she is and what happened to her. I expect to finish up the autopsies today, you will have the full report on your desk tomorrow morning. "Thank you" both women said before leaving the morgue.
"This case is getting more complicated every day." Hailey said on their way back to the precinct. "Let's hope the rest of the unit has found something useful, I feel lost right now." Kim answered. Hailey could only agree. Back at the precinct everyone was at their desk, putting the pieces together of that day, before they would update the team on their findings. Besides the discovery at the morgue and their new suspect, whom they hadn't been able to locate yet, they had not get much more out of today.
That was until Jay abruptly stood up an started rearranging the board. "I think I got an idea of how this organization works. We have the head of the organization, he or she has two accomplices, all three unknown for now. They stay out of sight pretty well. I suspect they give orders to one person, this might be where Leah Jones comes in, hopefully we will get more information on this when we find her. This person, probably Leah, hands out the assignments, who does what, runs which drugs where. They all report back to that one person. We have put tabs on all her known whereabouts and I have requested some files. Hopefully they will be here by Morning." Jay concluded. "Okay, lets finish up for today, and get back at it fresh in the morning" Voight stated. Not long after the bullpen was vacated as everyone was heading home.
Hailey was glad the day was over, she had just entered her apartment and kicked her shoes off, looking forward to a warm bath and planned to get to bed early. While getting her phone out she saw a text from Jay "Molly's tonight?" He asked her, she responded that she had an headache and told hem she would get some extra sleep tonight, but that next time she would join.
The bath really helped Hailey relax a little and she felt much better after. When she was about to get ready to get in bed, she heard a knock on the door. Letting out a breath and even though she really wanted to go to bed, she went to the door and opened it. "Hey you.", "Hey, we need to talk about what happened this morning." He said. Giving Hailey no time to respond before he walked by Hailey and got comfortable on the couch
What happened to Hailey on Wednesday morning? And who is at her door? Let me know what you think.