A/N: So, last time we had their first big fight. Now that's over and done with, what else are they going to spend their time doing...?
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Holly was a thinker; always had been and always would be. When she was a child, her mum used to say "Holly's my thinker, Kate's my dreamer!" and it was true. She liked to analyse everything, it was part of what drew her to the sciences. Kate on the other hand was more impulsive, more imaginative. Therefore ever since they were kids, she loved to tease her sister about her more cautious nature. And it was true that sometimes Holly would overthink things. So she knew damn well that if Kate could see her right now, she would be laughing her ass off.
"Are you going to get that done or what?" Gail asked, breaking into Holly's careful calculations from her spot up on the deck.
"You come down here and do it, if you're such an expert," the brunette suggested, frowning at the task at hand.
"You're the lesbian!" the cop laughed, "This is all yours!"
Holly shaded her eyes against the afternoon sun and stared up at the other woman. "I really don't remember this being an essential lesbian skill," she argued back, deciding not to query whether Gail too should be labelling herself like that.
"Of course it is! You all own plaid shirts and the boots. It's all part of that,"
The pathologist stuck her tongue out at Gail. "I'm just figuring out my technique," she replied. As she leaned on the axe handle she scrutinised the log that she had placed on the old tree trunk that was acting as a makeshift chopping block. This really shouldn't be that complicated. She was a smart, successful woman who was completely capable of splitting some firewood. She swung the axe up over her shoulder, adjusted her grip, took aim and brought it crashing down on the wood…chipping off a small chunk and leaving the majority intact as it went tumbling to the ground.
She heard the cackles from above her head and gritted her teeth.
"Keep working on that technique, Lunchbox!" Gail called out, her voice full of merriment.
Holly chose to ignore her and retrieved the log, setting it back on the chopping block. She lifted the axe once more and this time concentrated on her aim rather than force. Sure enough, the axe hit the log dead centre…but only went halfway through. She yanked back on the handle but the wood was stuck on the blade and all attempts to shake it free were in vain. Once again, the blonde howled with laughter. Holly bit her lip, trying not to giggle herself. It didn't happen very often, but the sound of Gail letting herself go in peals of genuine laughter was one of the most beautiful things she had ever heard.
"At least you hit it this time," the cop announced and Holly dropped the axe and whirled round, hands on hips.
"We can do without firewood you know. It's not that cold," she answered, giving Gail a hard look.
The blonde hurriedly wiped the grin off her face. "But I'm always cold," she said, giving the brunette her best puppy dog eyes.
"Wear another sweater. Use an extra blanket," Holly recommended with a shrug.
Gail scuttled across to the wooden steps and hopped down them two at a time. She jogged over to Holly and wrapped her arms around the doctor's waist, pressing her chest against her back. "But the fire is sooo romantic," she wheedled, kissing the shell of her ear. Holly dropped her head back onto her girlfriend's shoulder with a sigh. She couldn't argue with that. They had mainly been lighting the fire so they could curl up in front of it and make out, not actually to keep the cabin warm. Before she could get comfortable though, Gail let go and stepped around her to pick up the discarded axe.
"Once you've gone halfway through, just give it another whack," she said, demonstrating by thumping the blade and log against the chopping block, splitting the wood neatly in two.
"You've done this before!" Holly accused her. The cop had definitely not mentioned that earlier in the morning when they had played rock, paper, scissors to decide who picked up this particular chore today.
"Ah. Well, outdoor skills were a big part of Peck family training. If you think you can finally enjoy a holiday when you eventually find the cabin after being dropped off in the middle of nowhere, then think again. There's a fire to be built, hunting to do, radio codes to memorise, rafts to be built…" Gail rattled off, with a roll of her eyes.
"I tell you what," Holly said, sidling up to the blonde and kissing her gently on the lips. "You sort out the firewood and then later on when we're cuddled up in front of it, I'll let you be the little spoon,"
"And you'll make hot chocolate?" Gail demanded, trying to get a little more out of the deal.
"With marshmallows," the pathologist nodded.
"Fine," agreed the blonde, before she grabbed another log from the wood pile and set it on the chopping block.
Holly grinned and sat down on the cabin steps, stretching out in the sunshine and watching Gail deftly split the wood into two before repeating the action. The task would be done in no time at this rate…which Holly couldn't help thinking was kind of a shame, as watching the police officer chop wood was a lot more fun than doing it herself.
"I hate manual labour," Gail grouched as she brought the axe down on another log.
"Yeah, but you look good doing it," the doctor consoled her, unashamedly ogling as the blonde bent over to collect more wood. Gail may have had a skinny frame but she was toned and fit and when she lifted the axe above her head, her t-shirt would ride up at the waist, giving Holly a glimpse of her bare stomach and hips.
"Right, so this is why you're still out here – not to help, but to watch me sweat?"
"Kind of, yeah," the brunette admitted, winking as Gail huffed at her.
"How very Neanderthal of you," she said, as witheringly as she could given her slightly elevated breathing and the fact that she had been standing on the deck waiting for Holly to start work for that exact same reason.
Holly grinned as the other woman went back to her task. Maybe it was a bit caveman to sit back and stare at her girlfriend like this but she decided she didn't really care. Besides she knew Gail had been planning the same thing earlier, given the blonde's slightly odd obsession with her arms.
"So, who's the corrupt cop?" Gail grunted as she raised the blade once more.
However, the brunette missed the question as her attention was stolen by that strip of skin on show again. "Hmm?" she asked, her eyes fixed on Gail's smooth abdomen and the shape of her body as she stretched her arms out.
"Who is it, nerd? Chen or McGregor?" repeated the police officer, before bringing the axe down with a large thud.
Holly rolled her eyes. They had been over this conversation so many times, and hadn't gotten much further since their first day at the cabin. "I don't know," she answered.
"We're missing something," Gail told her, taking a breather and spinning the handle of the axe round in her hands before poking the tip of the blade into one of the crevices on the tree trunk.
The brunette nodded, knowing that was true. She had experienced cases like this at work where all the options seemed to be exhausted. The only answer was to start again but she liked to do things in a slightly different order if possible and found mixing it up sometimes helped.
"So let's not look at this like detectives," she suggested, trying to think of a way of turning their thinking upside down. "Let's do it my way and be pathologists,"
"What do you mean?" Gail asked, curiously.
"You guys always start with the 'who'. That's your goal as cops right; who did it? Who is the murderer, who is the thief? But in forensics, we examine the 'how'….how did this person die, how does this evidence prove our theory? So how did this happen to us? How did they attack me?" Holly explained slowly, very much thinking on her feet.
The blonde shrugged. It couldn't hurt to approach this from a different angle.
"So, the first incident was at the courthouse. That guy was watching you and following you round the building," she offered.
"Right. So how did he know I was there?" asked the doctor.
"He either followed you from home, he checked the court records and found your name in the witness list or someone told him," Gail ticked off the options on her fingers and Holly smothered a smile. Ticking points off on her fingers was a quirky habit of her girlfriend's and she couldn't help wonder what would happen if Gail ever got a list longer than ten items.
She realised the blonde was waiting for her to speak, so she hurriedly carried on the conversation. "Andy or Jake would have spotted it if we had been followed, wouldn't they?"
"They should have. But if Chen was on the take, he may have deliberately not noticed. Who drove that day?" asked the cop.
Holly frowned and cast her mind back. "Andy did, I think,"
"Okay. Well it's usually the driver who spots tails because they automatically have eyes on the traffic. So let's assume that McNally would have seen something if you had been followed from home,"
"But for the other two options, the guy would have needed inside help, right? So who knew I would be at the courthouse?" Holly queried.
"All of us. We discussed it at changeover that morning. And there would be a thousand other people you could bribe to see if your name was on the witness list at the court in any given week," Gail pulled a face, knowing that wasn't going to help them narrow it down. "
"Fine, then what was next? The attack in the street when we went running," the brunette said. "How did that happen?"
Gail carefully set down another block of wood and split it into two whilst she thought about that.
"Again, either they followed you from home or somebody told them. At least with that one there's no public notice they could check. I only planned it the night before and it was completely off record, obviously,"
"And you and Scott were the only ones that knew?" Holly clarified.
"Yep. Therefore nobody could have told Kolarov's people. They must have been watching your place and we should've noticed. Sanderson went out and did a perimeter check that morning to make sure nobody was hanging around," the blonde replied.
"But if he was the snitch, he could have faked that?" was the brunette's suggestion.
Gail shrugged. "Easily. But we know it's not him, is it? He must have just missed something,"
Holly had to shake her head, knowing they had exhausted all possibilities when it came to Sanderson. "So are we saying that my house must have been under constant surveillance and they followed us that day?"
The police officer slammed the axe down for a final time, half the log tumbling away on each side to join the others that now were now scattered across the ground. "I think so, yes. But they can't have been nearby because we were constantly checking the immediate blocks. They must have been parked up a few streets away. But we ran past them or something,"
"Right. Okay then – that's just dumb luck. You're saying that I happened to leave the house that morning with only one bodyguard - unlike any other day - and I happened to go past where they were camped out so they took their chance? That doesn't indicate a mole," argued the brunette.
"Fine, I'll give you that one. But then there's the safe house," Gail countered and the pathologist gestured at her to expand on that. "Well the fact that they found the place is a clincher in itself. That house is a secret. I didn't even know where it was until we landed there,"
"They could have followed us from my place again? Or from work?" interrupted Holly, trying to play devil's advocate.
"No way. We were so careful on every transition. Unless whoever is on the take deliberately skipped some of the tail avoidance tactics…but if they were going to do that, they could just tell the bad guys the location," the blonde theorised.
"Okay, so someone told them. But all five of you knew, so that doesn't tell us much,"
"The panic button didn't work when Sanderson slammed it. Someone must have disabled that. The gang that turned up that night knew there was a security system and where to cut the power. They knew the doors were strong so targeted the windows instead. Basically they knew too much, Hols. They had help," Gail stated. She began to collect up the firewood she had chopped, tossing it into the box Holly had brought out from beside the fireplace. The pathologist got up to help out, trying to slot the logs in neatly rather than carry on Gail's haphazard method.
"So how did it go wrong? If they knew so much, they should have succeeded. Or was it just that the three of you did a great job? I suppose that would be another tick on the list of reasons we know Scott and Andy aren't corrupt though," Holly suggested.
The blonde stretched out her back and thought about that. "We caught them on camera before they cut the power. When they came over the back fence they triggered a sensor…" she said, screwing up her brow as she thought about that. There was something important she was missing here, she could feel it dancing around the edge of her mind, frustratingly close but out of reach.
"Why did they do that? If they had help from the inside, surely they would have been told about the cameras and sensors?" asked the brunette as she placed the last of the logs in the box, dusting her hands off on the back of her jeans. She grabbed the handle on one side and waited for Gail to get the other but when the blonde merely stood there, she tried to prompt her by asking her directly; "Help me carry this inside?"
The cop didn't react, her gaze was on a faraway point as her mind worked furiously. "They thought it was safe," she muttered, almost to herself rather than Holly. She shuffled back and forth in front of where the brunette was crouched, scuffing her boots into the dusty ground. "On my first shift at the safe house, the sensor and camera fields were slightly off. Chen or McGregor must have tampered with them during the day shift; it wasn't a mistake like we thought. We only found out because a fox triggered them. So then Sanderson corrected it…but nobody knew. Whoever the dirty cop is either didn't realise or didn't have time to tell his gangster pals that there was no blind spot anymore!" she turned back to face the pathologist, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
Holly abandoned the box of wood and adjusted her glasses, thinking that one over. "Well apart from again confirming that Sanderson isn't guilty, as he wouldn't have bothered fixing the sensor if he was, how does that help us?" she asked. "It doesn't narrow it down between McGregor and Chen,"
Gail visibly deflated. She kicked the tree stump with the toe of her boot and furrowed her brow. "Yeah well don't ask me how it helps. You're the one who said we should be pathologists. Don't blame me if your method doesn't work. We can know 'how' and still not know 'who," she said grumpily.
"I suppose it's good to absolutely discount Scott though," the pathologist could only offer a mild defence of her theory.
"We already knew it wasn't him!" Gail threw her hands up in frustration. "But he's the one with the most opportunities, because he knew about the morning run!"
Holly shook her head, not willing to go back around that circle again. "Come on, let's take this inside," she said, grabbing one side of the wood box again. The cop grumbled under her breath, but lifted the other side and they carried the bulky load up the steps and into the cabin. After they set it down by the fire, Holly flopped down on the sofa.
"It's got to be key, hasn't it?" she muttered, not even knowing if Gail was listening. The blonde was standing by the kitchen table, flipping through the pages of notes she had made over the past few days, all covering this same topic. "It's the only time where we can't really figure out how exactly it happened. Nobody told them we would be on the street, that it was just the two of us so we were vulnerable to attack. And we don't think they were watching the house. So how did they know where we would be?"
Gail grunted. "I don't know," she answered, scrawling down the question on her messy ream of notes. "It's not even like they tackled us outside your front door. We were a few streets away. It's a bit of a coincidence that we ran towards them," she pointed out.
Holly rolled over onto her stomach to watch the cop poring over her notebook. "How would you do it?" she idly asked. "As a cop, if you were trying to track someone down and nobody could tell you where they were, then how do you find your man?"
"Lots of ways. License plates, bank records, surveillance…but I guess firstly we'd try through their phone…" Gail softly replied, freezing stock still as she said it. "That was why I made you dismantle yours on the way here, so nobody could track it," Her cop brain went into overdrive as the answers suddenly hit her. She moved her lips ineffectually, the thoughts firing too quickly for her to recount verbally.
The brunette also saw it; "Shit! My phone was tapped right from the start. Was that to listen to my conversations or was it to keep tabs on where I was? Who ordered that?" she asked. If her phone was constantly being tracked, it would be easy for the gangsters to attack whenever they sensed a chance.
"McGregor did. He was in charge of that. He got us set up with all the technology; the listening device in your phone and five new ones for the team," the police officer began to explain, as she frantically scribbled it all down in an attempt to join the dots of the evidence. It was suddenly so clear and she didn't know how she had missed it for so long. She couldn't believe it was him. No wonder this hadn't made sense.
The pathologist hadn't seen the same link though and continued to muse out loud. "But McGregor knew where I was most of the time anyway. He didn't need to track my phone," she said.
"No, he didn't," Gail agreed absently, already two steps ahead of that. As she stared down at her scribbled notes, she replayed her last sentence in her mind and something else jumped out at her. Five new ones…
"Fuck! He sorted out new phones for all five of us! All of them!" she yelled, her eyes wide with understanding.
"What? McGregor?" Holly asked, not sure where the blonde was going.
Gail paced furiously across the room, turning near the window and retracing her steps over to the kitchenette. "All of them, Holly! All of them were bugged and tracked! That's why those goons attacked when they did, do you see?" she asked as she feverishly flipped through the pages. "They came at you when they thought your protection was light. At the court, they thought it was just you and Chen because McNally's phone was broken. I actually was the only one there when we went running. And at the safe house…well they must have known me and Sanderson were there, but not McNally. Because she left her phone in Chen's car! But maybe they thought they could take two of us, with proper force. Fuck! They were watching all of us!" Gail's pacing stopped suddenly and she stared at Holly in disbelief. They had been spied on all along. In that moment, she understood exactly how the pathologist had felt when the two of them had argued about this earlier in the week.
The brunette was staring straight back, thinking hard. "But he would have known. He knew Andy's phone was broken. And he knew where we all were! Why track the phones, I don't understand?" she asked.
"What? Who?" the cop replied, completely confused. She had thought Holly had followed the same train of thought that she had and come to the same conclusion - but clearly not.
"McGregor!" Holly cried out. Who the hell did Gail think she was talking about?
"No. It's not him," answered the blonde, finally realising where Holly had gone wrong. "We got it wrong. Nobody was feeding Kolarov's gang information all the way through; the sell out was right at the start of this. There were trackers in everyone's phone and his gang had access so they just followed the information they got from that. Every attack was opportunistic…until the safe house," she explained. Holly shook her head, still not seeing it.
"It's the IT guy, Hols. Liam; he's the one who sold us out. He set up the phones and he bugged them. He knew he wasn't going to be around after that first day, so he set it all up and then helped them monitor us from whatever shithole he crawled into back in Vancouver,"
Understanding dawned across the doctor's face. She knew who Gail meant…though she wasn't sure where the name Liam came from. "Niall! His name was Niall. And that's how they knew where the safe house was; they would have seen all our phones there and drew the sensible conclusion," she deduced.
"I don't care what his name is. He's a fucking dirty cop," Gail yelled, stomping around the kitchen with her arms flailing about as everything fell into place. Holly watched her, slightly in awe. The blonde was usually so still and composed. It was unusual to see her agitated enough for her body language to become so expressive.
Gail tossed her notes back onto the table as she continued her rant; "But yeah, either they watched the phones or he told them. Because he had already been to the safe house too. The blind spot in the security system wasn't just sloppy, it was deliberate. And I bet he sabotaged the panic button,"
"It was planned from the start. He did all that before he went back to Vancouver, right? He wanted me to end up at the safe house because he had rigged up weak defences," Holly said, aghast at how carefully this had been orchestrated.
The cop came over and collapsed down onto the sofa next to Holly. "I don't know if that was the plan or if it was a backup in case they couldn't get to you before that," she shook her head. It all seemed so clear now, although there were certain holes in the theory that she couldn't quite explain. But they were right, she knew it; it must be Niall the IT guy. There was no other explanation that made sense. In fact, she couldn't believe that she hadn't worked it out before. "We're so stupid," she whispered not realising she was speaking her thoughts out loud.
"You're not stupid," Holly corrected her. "You figured it out!"
Gail grimaced. "It shouldn't have taken this long!" she replied. She replayed the theory in her head, worried that she could still be missing something because it had fallen into place so neatly.
"But we got there in the end. We know who it is now,"
"Talk me through it again," Gail suddenly said, turning towards the pathologist. "Tell me how it all happened, tell me how he did it. We need to be sure." She wanted Holly to run through it, knowing that when the evidence was recited out loud she would be more likely to see the holes. When she thought it through in her own head, she would plug them with her own logic but if she was going to accuse a serving police officer of corruption, then she needed to be one hundred per cent sure.
The brunette obliged, repeating Gail's conclusions, detailing the sequence of events and pointing out where the technician could have set them up. The cop nodded along, only interjecting a couple of times but it all seemed to make sense. It had to be him. He had bugged all their phones, given the tracking info to Kolarov's gang who then had the inside knowledge they needed to dive in when they saw their chance. And he had deliberately messed up the security at the safe house, providing a sure fire final opportunity to get at the doctor if things went that far. She clenched her fists, white hot anger coursing through her as she thought about how a fellow cop could set someone up like that. Holly could have been killed. Any of the protection officers could have been killed. Gail felt a momentary twist of guilt as she realised she had been convinced McGregor was the guilty party, but actually he had been just as much in danger as the rest of them.
"What if we're wrong?" she asked suddenly, as the brunette came to the end of her explanation. It had only occurred to her just then that if she had been mistaken about McGregor, she might still be messing this up. It seemed too obvious to not be true but if it had been that obvious, surely she would have seen it sooner?
"It has to be him," Holly answered, with a shake of her head. She turned round on the sofa to face Gail, truly believing that they had the answer they had been seeking for days.
"It makes sense…." The blonde started, breaking off when the idea came to her. There was a way of proving their conclusion. Once they had done that, she could report the corrupt tech officer with a completely clear conscience, no doubt in her mind. And he would deserve everything he had coming to him.
"We could test the theory," she told Holly slowly, not sure how dangerous it would be.
"Do we need to?" shot back the pathologist.
"If I'm wrong and I report this Liam idiot, then all it will do is tip off the cop who is actually corrupt to everything. Where we are, what we know…it could put you in more danger," Gail explained, caution seeping into her mind even as she thought that one through. She needed to be certain or else things would be even worse for Holly. And Gail couldn't stand it if that was because of her. She wouldn't put Holly in that position; she couldn't put Holly in that position.
"What are you thinking?" asked the brunette as she reached out a hand and gripped Gail's knee, startling the cop a little.
"We could turn your phone back on. Make a call or two. Then see if anyone shows up to check it out. That way we know that it's the phone data they are using to keep track of you. And if it is, then it can only be that guy," she suggested.
Holly clutched her leg a little tighter. "Isn't that kind of risky?" she asked, nervously.
"I'll go a long way from here. I won't actually guide them to where you are. And then once we know for certain, it'll be safe to bring in the cops," Gail explained.
However, the pathologist shook her head. "I don't just mean risky for me, I mean for you as well! I don't want you using yourself as bait, Gail!" she argued.
The blonde grabbed Holly's hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "I'm not going to. I'll stay out the way and just watch, I'm not going to tackle anyone on my own," she promised.
"All because you want to double check what you already know?" the doctor asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I have to be sure. Get this wrong again and we're in real trouble,"
"What if nobody shows up?" Holly enquired, making the blonde sit back and pause for a second.
"Then it's not the phones and therefore maybe not the IT guy. So then we just have to go back to our original plan and sit tight until the trial starts. Once your sister takes the stand then Kolarov has nothing left to protect. It should be safe to go back, I think," Gail explained.
She noticed how Holly was chewing her lip, nervous at the plan and the fact that Gail could only say that she 'should' be safe. The cop wanted to give her better assurances than that, but if they were wrong about this and someone else had sold them out then she really wasn't sure how they could fix this. She would have to blow everything wide open and bring in Internal Affairs to find the corrupt cop. Whilst they were doing their job, she didn't know what would happen to Holly. It seemed unlikely she would be able to just get on with life as normal; but police protection couldn't last forever. And then there was the outcome of Kolarov's trial to worry about. It was all well and good if they achieved their original goal of protecting the Stewart family long enough to ensure Kate's testimony…but then what? There was still the possibility Kolarov might not be found guilty. Steve had seemed pretty sure they had everything they needed to convict him but Gail knew from experience that trials didn't always go as planned. Would the gangster be looking for revenge if he was freed? Or even if he was jailed; would his followers seek to retaliate? The blonde pinched the bridge of her nose. All these 'what ifs' were giving her a headache. The only thing she could do right now was take it one step at a time and do what she could to keep Holly safe. And the first thing was to get rid of the gang's mole in the police force.
Holly tugged at her lightly, making Gail realise she still had a grip on the brunette's hand and distracting her from her worried thoughts.
"If we just stay hidden, then they're going to turn their attention back to my family, aren't they?" Holly quietly asked. "They will put more pressure on this Niall guy to go poking around the systems to find where they are,"
The cop pondered that as she rubbed her thumb over the back of Holly's hand. "Maybe," she conceded. "We're easier to find though. Like I said, it's virtually impossible for normal cops to get access to the official Witness Protection Programme,"
"But this guy isn't just a normal cop. He's an IT specialist, right? So he doesn't just set up phones and cameras - it's his job to hack into systems and crack codes, isn't it?" the brunette persisted.
Gail's eyes widened, abruptly seeing what the pathologist meant. If they were right and the tech guy was the one then actually, everyone was more at risk. She still thought it was unlikely the Stewarts could be found…but there were half a dozen more ways that she and Holly could be tracked if this guy had a free run at the records system. What was to stop him looking up Gail's friends; finding Oliver's cabin or Chris's truck? Suddenly, she felt far more vulnerable than she had in the last few days.
"Yeah. You're right – it does give us more to worry about," she admitted, still holding Holly's hand tightly.
The brunette looked straight back at her and although Gail caught her swallowing hard, her gaze was steadfast. "We'd better do it then. Test the theory and see if we can catch this guy. So what's the plan?" she asked in a matter of fact tone and Gail grinned at her. This woman never ceased to amaze her.
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A/N 2: ...figuring out who the bent cop is of course? How else did you think they'd spend their time?! Minds out the gutter people, minds out the gutter.
As ever, thanks again to Kravn for a superb job beta reading this.
