This was supposed to be simple Gail thought, as she huddled closer to the air vent and tried to stay out of sight of the men below. The brick wall around the edge of the roof provided her with some cover but despite dropping down to her knees and only poking the top of her head over the barrier to see what was happening, she still felt dreadfully exposed. There were at least twelve thugs standing in a loose semi -circle in the parking lot of the diner across from her and she knew there were still a couple more roaming around the town.

She had picked this place hours earlier because the setup had seemed perfect. The town wasn't too far from the main road and had a couple of ways in and out of it. Although it was pretty small, there was a diner, a few shops, a school and even a church hall of some kind; plus the building where she was currently camped out on - a tiny library. She had left their cabin at the crack of dawn and drove through a few places before settling on this one to test their 'phone tap theory'. The town was far enough away to not give the corrupt IT tech any clue of where she and Holly were really hiding and its close proximity to the main road would make it look like they were perhaps travelling elsewhere had stopped off for food.

Gail had tucked Chris' Jeep away on one of the side roads before strolling down to the diner where she bought herself two milkshakes and two orders of fries. She then purposely asked the teenage boy behind the counter plenty of questions about the Greyhound bus stop further down the road; what time the next one would arrive and where it was headed. Gail was hoping that when the gangsters did show up and asked questions, they would assume she and Holly had both been here but had both caught a bus out of town.

After polishing off both cartons of fries – because tossing one would have been a waste – Gail put Holly's phone back together and made a quick call from the parking lot of the diner to the front desk of Fifteen. She had spent a minute confusing the desk clerk by asking him to take down completely random messages for the likes of Chris and Andy. If Kolarov's gang could still listen to the calls made from this phone, she assumed they would have lots of fun trying to work out the meaning behind "The reign of the Ice Queen is coming to an end; she has joined the red bandit and travels in a southerly direction." However she hoped that if Chris did get the message, even though he wouldn't understand it, he would at least figure out it was from her and know she was okay. Of course, if all went to plan and her theory was proven, she would be seeing him soon anyway.

Gail had only stayed on the line long enough for the call to be traced before hanging up and making herself comfortable on the top floor of the library. She dragged an armchair over to one of the front windows of the two storey building and grabbed a book to pretend she was here for a reason. She then spent the next hour or so staring at the diner to see if anyone showed up.

Sure enough, eventually two cars had roared into town and screeched to a stop at the diner. Gail was an experienced enough cop to know that whilst stereotypes were often wrong, they were also often completely right too and the guys that spilled out from the vehicles simply looked like gangsters. Most of them were dark, wiry, hard looking men and they didn't hesitate in bursting into the diner and checking the place out. Gail observed them talking to the staff behind the counter and was pleased when they had a lengthy chat with the kid she had laid a false trail with earlier. She sat in the window, hidden from sight by the sunlight reflecting off the glass, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. She and Holly were right. Kolarov's gang had been chasing them through the phone and the dirty cop therefore had to be Niall the technician.

Once the goons fell for the suggestion that she had taken a bus out of town, she expected that to be the end of it - that they would leave as well. However, the men had regrouped in the car park and started to fan out in different directions across the town. She had watched them enter nearby shops and deduced that they were under order to check everywhere. But when two of them made their way towards the entrance of the library, she knew she had to make herself scarce. She had abandoned her book and hightailed it through a door marked 'staff only'. The room she found herself in was clearly a storeroom of some kind, packed with boxes of books and old shelving. But when she saw the steps to access the roof, she decided that would be a far better hiding place as it would still give her a vantage point. She was pleased to note there was also a metal fire escape that she could use if she needed another exit plan.

Even though she felt safer in her new hiding spot, she was worried that the old busy body who had been manning the front desk, would rat her out. The librarian had insisted on checking on her a few times in the last hour, asking if she needed help in finding anything in particular. Gail had sent her away with a polite "no thank you," every time, yet she knew the woman was curious about the out of town stranger who had settled down in her library. If the gang members asked the librarian whether she had seen Gail, there was no way of stopping her from confirming that she had spent an hour or so sitting there. However, the bus out of town had left ten minutes ago and so with a bit of luck they would assume she was killing time before boarding. Maybe the librarian would just think she had missed Gail leaving.

Whatever the old lady told them, the heavies quickly exited the library within a couple of minutes. Though Gail didn't hear them check the store room below she opted to stay perched on the roof to watch the men scour the town for her. She saw reinforcements arrive in the shape of two more cars and she couldn't help but worry about how serious these guys were. Sending this much man power clearly showed how badly they wanted to get to Holly. She guessed that with only four days until the trial started and all of the Stewart family completely off the grid, they thought this was their last chance. She really hoped they weren't going to spend all day searching the town. If they checked the library again and saw the 'staff only' door, she would be in serious trouble if they came up to the roof. She really didn't want to get into another fight with these guys – her luck could only last so long.

Gail shuffled uncomfortably as the cold concrete behind her back brought her attention back to the present. She patted the second phone in her jeans pocket; the one that wasn't dismantled. She had finally succumbed to temptation yesterday and bought a couple of cheap burner phones. She knew they would be apart for most of the day and she wanted a way to keep in touch with Holly. It was partly selfish; she knew she would be able to focus on her job better if she knew Holly was okay. But more importantly it would stop the brunette from worrying if Gail could send her frequent updates on what was happening. She had already fired off a couple of quick text messages to inform her girlfriend that the gang had showed up but she was absolutely fine.

She decided to send another short message to let Holly know she was waiting for the coast to clear so she could return to their cabin and hoped the pathologist wasn't too stressed out. Gail had been worried about leaving her girlfriend all alone but had finally decided it was safer not to bring her closer to the people hunting her down. And she knew the pathologist was terrified about Gail being in that sort of danger. They had spent all yesterday talking it through; really talking this time, not arguing. It seemed the fight they had earlier in the week about trying to separate Gail's job from their relationship had done some good because they had actually managed to listen to one another and agree on a plan of action. The cop didn't have to order Holly to stay behind; they had agreed to it. However, judging by the long and fierce embrace Holly had given her before she left, the way the brunette had been chewing on her lip and how she had made Gail promise to stay safe, Holly was clearly terrified something was going to happen. And so she knew that regardless of the number of text messages she sent to ease Holly's fear, it wouldn't change the fact that her girlfriend would still be worried to death.

Nevertheless, there was nothing Gail could do now except wait it out. They surely couldn't have many more places in this small town to check out? However, a shout from below made her jump and she raised her head once more to check out the scene below. Two guys were running back toward the diner and yelling towards the tall, thickset man that Gail had already figured out was in charge.

"Boss!" one of them called in an accented voice. "There's a car parked up round the corner. It belongs to Diaz!"

"Shit," Gail swore under her breath. That was going to complicate things. She briefly wondered whether they had already known she was in Chris' Jeep or whether they had just gathered info on all of her friends. Either way, now that they knew the Jeep was here they wouldn't believe she and Holly had skipped town on the bus. And they would continue to pull the place apart looking for her…

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Two hours later and it was starting to get chilly on the exposed roof. After the flurry of activity that commenced when the gang found Chris's Jeep, not much else had happened. They continued to search through the town and from what Gail could see from her vantage point, they had been back into the diner to speak to the boy again. Surprisingly though, nobody returned to the library to confirm the librarian's story. Gail had expected them to make a more thorough search of the building and that she would have to make a run for it down the fire escape. She desperately tried to figure out how she could get out of town without going back to the Jeep and eventually settled on the idea of pulling her badge and gun on a local civilian and making them give up their vehicle. But that was a plan fraught with potential pit falls and she had no idea how to do it quickly and quietly.

However, as nobody had come back to the library, she was sticking with the 'watch and wait' plan. In an interesting development, two local police officers had showed up fifteen minutes ago and had spent a long time deep in conversation with the leader of the crew. Gail couldn't hear the conversation from where she sat watching, but she guessed that the cops were asking him to move on. It was likely that one of the locals would have called in to report the fact there was a dozen strange men stomping around the town. Although it wasn't illegal to park up and ask questions, the local cops would know something was amiss and would be keen to get the shifty looking men off their turf. Sure enough, not long afterwards, the thugs piled into their vehicles and drove away, watched carefully by both the officers in the parked cruiser and the blonde cop secretly perched on the roof above their heads.

Gail's relief was cut short however when she realised one car lingered in the diner's parking lot. Two guys remained standing alongside it and she also knew there was at least two more out there in the town somewhere, having not counted enough men leave. It seemed that although the local cops had managed to get the majority of the thugs to leave, they couldn't stop some of them from hanging around and that the final few guys had been left behind to watch out for Gail or Holly. Still, four was a far easier number to deal with than a dozen. Gail was already formulating a new plan when the two men entered the diner once again. She watched as they ordered food and sat down near the window. Even from a distance she could tell that their burgers were mainly been ignored in favour of watching the comings and goings of the car park.

Gail knew that now was the best time to move. If she could get down the fire escape whilst the pair were still perched in the diner, then she would only have two thugs unaccounted for as she made her way through town. She assumed that they were watching the Jeep, so as long as she avoided that area then she should be okay. But the longer she stayed where she was, the greater the chance that more gangsters would slip back into town. As she thought about it, a gust of wind blew across the roof making her shiver. She flexed her fingers which were slightly numb from the cold; yep, time to go before she turned into a human popsicle. Gail shuffled across the roof, keeping low just in case the guys happened to look upwards. She squeezed herself back through the door and was halfway down the metal staircase when the storeroom door began to slowly creak open. She froze, completely exposed on the steps. There was only one thing she could do but as she whipped her hand towards the gun holstered under her arm, a voice stopped her in her tracks.

"You can come down now. But I don't want any trouble, you hear?"

The storeroom door finally swung fully open to reveal the librarian who had been hassling Gail earlier. The grey haired woman was maybe in her mid-sixties, but she held herself ramrod straight and Gail could see there was a steely strength in her hazel eyes. The hands which were gripping what looked like a heavy ornate paperweight were rock steady and there was no trace of fear in the low voice.

"Are you planning on hitting me with that thing?" Gail asked, eyeing up the glass globe the other woman held at shoulder height.

"If I have to," came the determined reply. "But I think it would be better for both of us if you just left now, don't you? Like I said, I don't want trouble,"

Gail relaxed a little and took a few more steps down the stairs, pausing when the librarian rocked back on her heels. This woman may have balls but the cop knew she was frightened nonetheless.

"I'm not going to give you any trouble. I'm a cop, see?" the blonde announced. She slowly reached into her back pocket and pulled out her badge, displaying it to the nervous woman in the doorway.

"Throw that over here," was the only reaction she got, so Gail gently tossed her badge over and the librarian caught it deftly with her free hand. She examined it carefully before Gail could see the tension leave her shoulders. She let the door click shut behind her as she walked over towards Gail and gave her the badge back.

"Officer Peck," she said, as she handed it over.

"Hi," answered Gail. "You can put that down now," she suggested, nodding at the paperweight as she was still somewhat nervous about getting her brains bashed in with what looked like a crystal ball containing an ugly plastic dolphin.

The librarian shrugged and placed the globe on a nearby shelf. "So you're a cop. But you're from the city, not from around here," she said, still sounding a little suspicious.

"Gail Peck, 15th Division, Toronto Police Service. And you are, ma'am?"

"Lillian Walker. I'm the head librarian here. Well, I'm really the only librarian, I have a couple of high school kids who do some hours and there's Mr Peterson who retired from the school last year but they're not the ones who run the place…"

"Ms Walker…" Gail said, trying to interrupt the rather unnecessary explanation of the workings of this small town book archive.

However, the other woman butted right back in; "You can call me Lil, everybody does. Apart from the little ones who call me Ms Lil, but you're a smidge too old for that,"

"Right. Well ma'am….Lil….you're right. I do need to be going. Is there a back way out of here?" she asked hopefully.

"Wait, as you've spent hours on my roof you should at least tell me what's going on!" Lillian protested. "Now I'm glad you're one of the good guys, I truly am. I thought as much but you never really know. But that bunch who were skulking round earlier – who are they? Are they criminals? Were you watching them?" she fired the questions out one after the other, fast enough to make Gail's head spin.

Not wanting to get into the story, the blonde ignored the questions and asked one of her own, wondering if her cover had been blown after all; "How did you know I was up on the roof?"

Lillian laughed. "I was watching you of course! I've never seen you round these parts before yet you spent an hour sitting over by the window without once glancing at the book in your hand – which by the way is a classic and should be read cover to cover with a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates. Then you suddenly raced through the 'staff only' door like your hair had caught fire! What sort of custodian would I be if I wasn't suspicious?"

Gail blinked in surprise at hearing her surveillance wasn't as subtle as she'd thought but before she could respond, the older woman was off again.

"I was going to follow you, but then I thought you might be stealing something so I was going to ring the police. Before I could, those men burst through the door asking if I had seen any strange women in here today," she explained.

"What did you tell them?" the cop asked urgently, although as nobody had come marching up to the roof after her, she already knew the answer to that.

"That nobody had been in of course!" Lillian answered smartly.

"Thanks," Gail said slowly. "I appreciate that,"

"So why are they looking for you? You're the police, shouldn't it be the opposite way round? You hunt down the criminals, they don't hunt you?"

"I'm watching them," Gail told her, settling for the simplest and half true explanation. "But it seems like they knew I was watching, so then they tried to find me,"

"They asked about you and another woman. A tall, dark haired girl with glasses they said. Is that your partner?" asked Lillian.

"Yeah…" Gail agreed, although she didn't mean it in the way it had been asked. "She's not here though, it's just me,"

"Well I told them I hadn't seen anyone who didn't live in this town for weeks," Lillian said, sounding rather proud of herself.

Gail nodded her thanks once more but couldn't help asking; "Why? I'm grateful, I really am but why did you lie for me?"

"I didn't like the way he looked, or his tone. He was rude. At least when you arrived, you said hello and you were very polite when I asked if I could help you. He just marched in with his musclebound friend and barked questions at me. And so loud too! Didn't he read the rules on the front door? I'm not having people come into my library and be rude to me! Anyway, I thought maybe he was an abusive ex-lover you were hiding from, or you had escaped a cult, or ran away from your mafia connected family in order to avoid an arranged marriage…" Lillian's speech sped up as she listed all the different possibilities for Gail hiding out on the library roof and the cop's eyed widened. She thought Holly could babble, but this woman was something else entirely.

"That's quite an active imagination you have," she deadpanned, stopping the shorter woman in her tracks.

"I work in a library. I'm surrounded by stories every day. What do you expect? But never mind that. When I looked out front and saw a whole gang of them, I knew they were real trouble. I called the police and asked Hal Epping to deal with them. He's a good boy you know, he often volunteers to read for the children's hour on Friday. Does an excellent Cat in the Hat…" the elderly woman smiled, warming to her topic despite going completely off tangent.

"You called the cops? Did you tell them I was here?" Gail asked, not really wanting to have to explain the situation to some small town cop who was probably more used to stopping the local kids shooting airguns at road signs than dealing with East European gangsters.

"Well apparently Tom from the grocery and Mandy at the drugstore had already reported it but yes, I called them. I didn't tell them about you though. Come on then, what did they do? There were a lot of them. It must be something big? Are you putting them under surveillance so you can arrest them?" Lillian's questions were unrelenting.

"How do you work in a library when you talk this much?" Gail wondered out loud before the frosty stare she was subjected to made her gulp.

"I won't have any cheek from you young lady, police officer or not!" Lillian reprimanded her.

"Sorry," the blonde apologised quickly. "Look, it's sort of an undercover operation, so I really can't tell you. But thank you for covering for me and I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone I was ever here," she suggested, hoping that she wouldn't be the talk of the town by the time she had even made it past the boundary.

"You can rely on me, Officer Peck!" the grey haired lady assured her, puffing up with importance.

"Great. Thanks," Gail replied, desperately fighting the urge to roll her eyes. Civilians, honestly. Still, now was not the time to piss off the local busybody. "So, is there a back way out of here? Because I need to avoid those idiots that are still hanging round,"

"Of course. There's a back door. Where have you parked your car?" Lillian opened the store room door again and motioned for Gail to follow her.

The blonde started to do so, nervously checking around her as she left the room. "Um, no car," she said distractedly as she tried to catch a glimpse of the front entrance. She turned back around just in time to avoid bumping into the librarian who had stopped in her tracks between two book shelves. Gail adjusted her assessment of the woman's age as she got a closer look at her, under the bright lights. Ms Lil was closer to seventy, if not past that age.

"You don't have your police car?" she queried, sounding shocked.

"Yeah, not today. No car. It's a long story," answered the cop.

"So how exactly are you planning on leaving then?" Lillian asked, arching an eyebrow.

Gail frowned. She didn't really know the answer to that, unless she resorted to her initial plan of commandeering a vehicle. She remembered joking about that with Holly when they had made their escape from the safe house. It seemed so long ago…and she still didn't know whether she was actually allowed to do that or not. "Do you have a car?" she asked, with what she hoped was a winning smile.

"Yes,"

"Can I borrow it please?"

"No!"

"What?" Gail asked, shocked at the refusal.

"No, you may not borrow my car. I need that car to get home tonight! Are you really going to leave an elderly lady in a town full of dangerous criminals with no method of transport?" rebuked the librarian, shaking her head in disappointment.

"As an officer of the law, I am able to legally commandeer your vehicle, ma'am. Please hand over the keys. I will make sure it's returned as soon as possible and your local force gets you home safely," Gail brazened.

"No, you're not. There is no law enabling you to do that. I don't have to hand over my vehicle. Under Section 129 of the Canadian Criminal Code you could arrest me for omitting to assist an officer in executing his or her duty, if you believe I have no reasonable excuse. But that's quite tenuous to be honest. My defence would of course revolve around the fact that I do have an acceptable excuse, and also you must give reasonable notice. I believe asking me just before you bolt out the door is not reasonable," Lillian explained.

"Why are you saying all these words?" Gail groaned, having yet another Holly flashback, this time to the day they first met. Lillian simply flashed her own sweet smile. "Fine. I'll arrest you for that then," snapped the cop.

"No, dear. You'll notice that the article refers to 'omitting to assist'. And I am not refusing to assist you, I'm just refusing to lend you my car. Of course I will assist you as best I can in other ways," came the reply.

Gail gave the shorter woman a hard stare which was returned openly. This one's a smart cookie, she thought suspiciously. She could imagine Holly behaving exactly like this in thirty or forty years and had to fight back a smile at that thought in order to maintain her questionable authority over this situation. There wasn't really time to carry on arguing the point of legality – particularly when she was losing. "You read too much," she told the grey haired fire cracker in front of her.

Lillian shrugged. "I taught law at UOT for thirty years before I retired and came back to my home town,"

Brilliant, thought Gail. But before she could reply, Lillian was talking again. "So, do you want a ride out of town then, or not?"

The cop considered the offer for all of five seconds. "Yes please ma'am," she said.

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Cold, wet and fatigued, Gail finally turned down the track leading to Oliver's cabin around four hours later. It was dark now and her legs were starting to tire so she stumbled over the loose rocks and slipped around on the clay like mud. Lillian Walker had smuggled her out the rear of the library, into the back seat of her car and driven straight past the thugs that were camped in her small town. The librarian had then agreed to drive her another hour out of town and towards the cabin. This journey had given her time to use her new phone to make a quick phone call to Chris Diaz. She was worried that as Kolarov's people knew his car and Holly's phone had been in the same location, they might be sending some of their boys round to ask questions. She hoped that they only knew the details of the Jeep because it was registered to her home address, and not because they were checking up on all of her known associates. Because if the latter was the case, then they might stumble across the record of Oliver's cabin too. However, as they had not seen any signs of danger at the cabin, it seemed likely the gangsters had only known about the Jeep and had noticed it was missing, putting two and two together.

As soon as he heard her voice Chris had been desperate to know where Gail was. However, she had cut off all of his questions and explained that the guys she was hunting down knew she had his Jeep. She advised him to keep low for the rest of today and not to stay at the apartment. Chris had promised to do so and also told her that sure enough, he and Dov had spotted some men watching their place but neither of them had been approached. He also said that the whole division knew what work she had been doing for the past month or so now and that she had gone missing with a witness. Everyone had been told to look out for her and report any contact immediately. Steve had been going crazy, fighting against his superiors when they suggested Gail should be treated as a suspect. Mindful of Lillian being beside her, the blonde didn't give out too many details before she hung up but she asked him to keep quiet for now and promised to call again soon.

She had then made a slightly longer call to Holly, reassuring her that she was on the way home and everything was okay. The relief in the brunette's voice had been palpable and Gail had wanted nothing more than to fly over the miles to get home right away and wrap herself in her girlfriend's arms. The soft tone in her voice didn't go unnoticed by the librarian who had asked her about her "someone special". Gail had hesitated; still a little shy about her feelings for Holly. But for some reason, telling a stranger seemed easier than sharing them with the people she knew. And being apart from the gorgeous pathologist for the day meant she had spent most of her time thinking about her and she couldn't help those thoughts spilling over and bursting out. So in a move that was completely out of character, Gail had poured out everything. She couldn't be entirely truthful about how they had met or what they were doing now without letting slip the Kolarov story. So instead she explained how she had been surprised to have this crush on the doctor and how she had fought her feelings. Then she told Lillian about how smart Holly is, and how beautiful, and how funny. She told her about how Holly likes to fold her potato chip bags into little triangles after she had emptied them, and how she would sing softly in the kitchen when she thought no one could hear, and how she always drank her coffee with both hands wrapped round the mug to warm them up, and how she never, ever managed to button a shirt all the way up.

Even Ms Lil was quiet in the face of Gail's rambling so those forty five minutes flew by. That was until Lillian pulled over to drop her off at a convenient point.

"You should drop by the library again, Officer Peck. Bring your Holly with you, because if she's amazing as you say, I'd like to meet her," the older woman had said.

"She is," Gail smiled. "I'll ask her. But things are a little crazy right now," she answered, trying to let Lil down gently. Although she now knew for certain who had sold them out and she could get it dealt with, they were still in trouble. The trial was coming up and then they would go back to work…Gail wasn't sure what that would mean for them. They may have made their relationship official, but there was still that nagging doubt that real life would somehow ruin things.

"Oh, it doesn't have to be any time soon! Next week, next month…next year if you'd like. You'll have time, dear. You have all the time in the world when you're in love," Lillian had replied.

Gail's eyes had nearly popped out of her head at that one. "Er…yeah. We're not…you know…it's not…" she flapped inarticulately, feeling the blush rise through her cheeks.

"Not what?"

"Well we haven't known each other long. I'm not…she's not," she had stumbled over her words again, not knowing how to tell the librarian that she was way, way off base with that statement.

"Don't be silly, Gail. Of course you are," Lil had said in a matter of fact tone.

"No, I'm not!" the cop had argued, starting to panic a little.

"Yes you are. Maybe you don't know it yet and that's fine. But when you figure it out, you come visit me so I can say I told you so," and with that, Ms Lil clicked the door shut behind Gail and left her standing by the side of the road as she span the car round and headed back to her home town.

Gail stood there open mouthed before giving Lil a wave that was a little too late. "Thank you!" she yelled after the retreating car, knowing she would have been in trouble without the other woman's help.

Soon afterwards, she hitched a ride for another hour down the road before getting dropped off five miles from the cabin. Although she knew exactly what the threat was now, she still didn't want anyone coming too close to their hideout. As dusk began to sweep in, she used the first mile of the walk to call Steve to explain everything. She told him about Niall the IT guy and he promised to action it immediately. She didn't know what his plan was, but she knew she could trust her brother to deal with the corrupt tech. Despite trusting him completely however, she still didn't tell Steve where she and Holly were staying. She simply promised to call him later so they could catch up again and if everything was sorted out then she would come back to the city.

Gail didn't know why she hadn't told her brother. He could have arranged for them to be picked up and whisked away somewhere within a couple of hours. But the cabin still felt safe. More than that; it felt like home. She knew that was silly…they had only been there for a week. But a lot had happened in that week. The two of them had grown impossibly close and had cemented their relationship into official status. It was where Holly had become her girlfriend and it was where she had completely and irrevocably fallen for the beautiful brunette. So if she was honest with herself, she just wanted to spend a few more hours on her own with Holly, before she invited half of Fifteen Division and an entire Vancouver protection team invade the cosy nest they had built for themselves.

So after hanging up with the elder Peck and turning the phone off, she picked up the pace and tried to hurry home to her girl, which was around the same point that the Gods decided to intervene. The clouds rolled in, the heavens opened and the rain came down in a torrential deluge that had her soaked to the skin within ten minutes. She half walked, half jogged those last miles, struggling to see through the rain and feeling her steps get heavier with every stride. The rain hammered against her body for an hour, cold and sharp, and she slowly lost feeling in her fingers, toes and face. As she finally trudged round the corner onto the track that led to the cabin her teeth started to chatter and the icy water in her boots squelched uncomfortably. Yet none of that mattered upon seeing the warm glow of the cabin and the door fly open before Holly launched herself down the track and into Gail's arms.

"Hey," the blonde said as she caught Holly and pulled her in tight.

"You're back," she mumbled into Gail's neck as the rain teemed down upon them.

"No shit, Sherlock," deadpanned the cop, her cheek earning her a swat on the arm although if her skin wasn't so damn cold then she would have also felt Holly grin slightly.

"Are you okay?" the pathologist asked.

Gail rolled her eyes. "I told you on the phone, Hols. I'm fine, they didn't come near me,"

"Just checking, Hedgehog," Holly replied and she pulled back to look the blonde straight in the eye to make sure she was okay. "It's raining!" she suddenly exclaimed as if she had only just noticed the water lashing against Gail's jacket and soaking through her own thin sweater.

"No shit, Sherlock!" Gail repeated, trying to put a sarcastic tone on but the shiver that ran through her body kind of ruined the effect.

The brunette grabbed Gail's hand. "God, you're freezing! Come inside," she said, pulling the police officer after her. They splashed through the rainwater and Holly slammed the wooden door shut behind them. She pushed Gail's leather jacket off her shoulders, leaving it in a sodden pool by the front door before dragging the blonde closer to the fire burning merrily in the hearth.

The police officer shuddered, inching further towards the warmth but not feeling it penetrate her frozen limbs yet.

"How far did you walk?" Holly asked, as Gail dropped to her knees directly in front of the fire and put her hands out towards the flames to try and warm them.

"Bout five miles. It wasn't raining when I ditched my ride," muttered the blonde, trying to control the shakes coursing through her.

"You should have called me! I could have met you halfway," chastised the doctor. She took a blanket from the couch and draped it round Gail's shoulders, rubbing her upper arms to dry her off and warm her up.

"Then you would have gotten wet too, Nerd!"

"I could have brought out some better clothes," Holly replied, justifying the idea and Gail had to nod at that. She hadn't thought of the raincoats that were tucked away in one of the storage boxes in the cabin.

"Yeah well," she muttered, rubbing her hands together. The heat from the fire wasn't really helping…if anything, she was getting colder.

Holly wrapped the blanket tighter. "But you were right, eh? It's the phone? And so it has to be the IT guy?"

"Yeah. They showed up an hour after I made the call. They must have had a trace on your phone and it lit up like a Christmas tree, so they drove straight to me,"

"Did you recognise them? Were they the guys from the jog, or the safe house?" the pathologist replied.

"I don't know, I didn't really see the safe house guys. But there were a lot of them. They really wanted to find you," Gail told her.

"That's scary," Holly frowned, thankful that her girlfriend didn't have to get mixed up with the gangsters today. "I'm glad your librarian friend helped you get out of there," she said.

"Me too. Guess I'm all about charming the librarian types these days!" laughed Gail, before another violent shudder rattled through her.

The brunette rolled her eyes. "And did you speak to your brother?" she asked.

"Yep. He's going to make sure Liam gets dealt with tonight. I'll call him in a few hours and see what's happening. If everything is okay, I can tell him where to find us and then the police will put us somewhere safe," Gail trailed off her explanation as her hands began to shake.

Holly noticed the tremors and knitted her eyebrows together as she ran her gaze over Gail, not bothering to correct her about the technician's name. "I'm going to make you a hot drink," she said. "You need to warm up. Stay there and get those boots and jeans off, I'll be right back,"

The blonde wanted to make a smart comment about Holly asking more nicely if she wanted to get her undressed, but the shivering was getting worse, so she simply nodded.

The pathologist got up and spent a couple of minutes making hot chocolate but when she came back to the living area, she immediately noticed that Gail had worsened. Her skin had turned a paler tone, she was shivering uncontrollably and her movements were sluggish as she fumbled ineffectually with the laces on her boots. Holly left the mugs on the side table and knelt down in front of her girlfriend.

"Okay, let's get you out of these," she said, pushing Gail's frozen fingers aside and untying the knots herself. As she pulled the first boot off, cold water sloshed out onto the floor, the icy temperature surprising Holly. Her own clothes were damp from her brief exposure to the weather but she hadn't realised quite how bad it was.

She looked up and saw the trembling blonde had her eyes closed. She was breathing slightly slower than usual and there was a distinct blue tinge to her lips. "Gail!" she yelled, grabbing the cop's knee and shaking it firmly.

Gail's eyes flew open, but she took a couple of seconds to focus on the concerned face in front of her.

"Right, we need to get you warmed up," Holly said firmly, worried that the blonde might be settling into mild hypothermia. "Come on, get up," she instructed, pulling her girlfriend to her feet. She manhandled Gail into the bathroom, and turned the shower on as high as it would go, filling the room with steam as she sat Gail down on the toilet. She yanked the blonde's saturated socks and jeans off, before pulling her t-shirt over her head.

"You're all steamed up," Gail said through her chattering teeth as she lifted an uncoordinated finger up to try and poke at the lenses of Holly's glasses. The brunette pulled the spectacles from her face and dropped them unceremoniously into the sink.

"Come on," she said. She turned the water temperature down so that it wasn't scalding before helping the blonde get into the shower, underwear and all. Gail gasped as the warm water hit her cold skin causing pins and needles to shoot through her. Her knees buckled and she would have fallen if Holly hadn't quickly stepped into the shower fully clothed and caught her in strong arms.

Gail felt cold rainwater run out of her long, blonde hair and down her back, making her flinch before it was replaced with warm water. She let the heat envelop her; the pins and needles diminishing as she got used to the warmth.

As Gail started to thaw out, Holly raised the water temperature and noticed that it had the desired effect – the blonde had stopped shivering and her normal skin tone was slowly returning. Upon realising her girlfriend was now supporting her own weight, Holly loosened her grip and plucked at her own sweater which was soaked straight through and now stuck to her body.

"Feeling better?" she asked and Gail nodded in response.

"Yeah. Hot water's nice,"

"Much nicer than walking five miles in a cold rain shower I imagine," replied the brunette, rubbing her hands up and down Gail's upper arms trying to judge if she had warmed up enough.

"I hope Chris's Jeep is okay," frowned the cop. She had asked Lillian to get her cop friends to tow the car, thinking Chris would rather pick it up from the pound than have Kolarov's gang get into it. It was debatable whether the cops would have good enough reason to but if anyone could persuade them, it would be Ms Lil.

"I hope Chris is okay!" Holly countered. "Are you sure they won't go looking for him now they think you've been in his car?"

The cop smoothed her hair back under the cascading water. "I warned him. He and Dov will stay at Price's tonight. And he said that people have been watching the apartment, but nobody had approached them. I think they only knew about his car because it's registered to our address. If they were looking into the backgrounds of all my friends, they would have found this place already," she explained.

Holly continued to run her fingers across Gail's skin, but this time the blonde stilled. When she gazed into blue eyes she saw that they were now clear and steady and looking straight at her. The doctor suddenly became acutely aware of how little Gail was wearing and as the water ran over their bodies, she couldn't help lower her eyes and give her girlfriend the once over. She swallowed and looked away trying desperately not to stare at Gail's smooth legs, flat stomach and glorious chest. Yet when she met the cop's eyes again she couldn't help leaning forward to crash their lips together.

They kissed under the cascading shower, tussling to avoid being directly under the water but occasionally having to break for air when they did get a face full. Holly rested one palm against Gail's cheek, guiding her to the exact angle she needed and ran the other one straight down the blonde's back. Gail shivered again, but this time for an entirely different reason. She moved her hands off Holly's hips and fisted them in the hem of her sweater. They pulled apart for a moment and the brunette took the chance to ask the question; "Are you still cold?"

"No. Definitely not," replied the cop. If anything she was altogether too hot now; the sensation of her bare skin pressed against Holly was doing all kinds of things to her and she wanted more.

"Are you sure?" Holly asked again, running one finger along the goosebumps she could see on Gail's shoulder, tracing the skin towards her neck and then down one collarbone.

The blonde groaned. Her goosebumps had nothing to do with her body temperature and everything to do with the heightened sense of awareness caused by Holly's touch. She didn't reply, instead she pulled at the sweater she still had grasped in both hands, yanking it upwards and over Holly's head. She tossed it aside where it hit the tiled floor with a wet slap. She caught a brief glimpse of the black bra and bare torso she had uncovered before the brunette was on her again, claiming her lips and pushing her back under the water. Gail couldn't say how long they spent there, lips locked together and hands roaming; all she knew was that the water was getting colder and when they broke apart, her hands had dipped into the waistband at the back of Holly's sweatpants and the doctor was cupping her breast, running her thumb over the most sensitive part.

"Water's getting cold," Gail gasped, before dropping another kiss on her girlfriend's inviting lips.

As she kissed Gail's jawline Holly smiled at the moan her actions elicited. "Yeah," she agreed, although she hadn't actually noticed, the fire inside her cancelling out the temperature of the water. But now that the cop had mentioned it she found she couldn't concentrate on what she wanted to do to her girlfriend, worried that she would get cold again. "We should stop," she said, reluctantly pulling back.

"We should," the blonde murmured her agreement but continued to kiss Holly and knead the smooth flesh under her fingers.

The pathologist let out a hiss of her own but managed to lean past Gail to shut off the water. They stood there, breathing hard and staring straight into one another's eyes; their bodies pressed together and both women loving the sensation of bare skin on skin as their hands explored one another.

"I should get out of these wet clothes. Go find us something warm to wear," Holly suggested, dark eyes betraying her - the last thing she wanted to do was put more clothes on.

Gail tried to be responsible as well, but her tone was so half hearted that she didn't even convince herself, let alone her girlfriend. "I should call my brother. Find out what's going on."

They paused for a beat before both of them surged forward to meet for another burning kiss.

The blonde finally wrenched her lips away to look at her girlfriend once more and the desire she saw written across the doctor's face made up her mind. She wanted this. She didn't want to wait any longer. She wanted to be with Holly, in every way possible.

"You could get out of those clothes here. And we could keep each other warm," she proposed.

"You could call Steve in the morning," Holly countered and Gail didn't bother to reply. She simply pushed at her girlfriend's sweatpants, easing them down until they fell and pooled at Holly's ankles. However as she pushed forward once more, the brunette laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, halting her for a moment.

"Are you sure?" she asked urgently. They had said they were going to take it slow and not rush the physical side of their relationship. She wanted to; God how she wanted to. But she didn't want to push Gail. And if they went any further, stopping would damn near kill her.

"Yes," was the simple reply from the cop, her voice full of certainty and desire.

Holly breathed a sigh of relief and felt her arousal course through her. "Good. Because I really want this. I want one night where it's just me and you," she explained, hoping Gail knew what she meant.

"Before half of Toronto and Vancouver's police forces descend on us, and we get thrown back into all the mayhem," Gail replied, knowing exactly what Holly was saying because she felt it too. "Just us, for a little bit longer?"

"Yeah. Sounds good," whispered the doctor.

"Then take me to bed, Holly," Gail commanded. And so the brunette did exactly that.

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A/N: Minds into the gutter this time people, minds into the gutter! Feel free to use your imagination to fill in what happens next. :)

Thank you for all the reviews and comments you've sent me, I really enjoy reading them and hearing people's thoughts. Kudos to Saz, Charlie and the guest who picked out Niall the IT guy as the mole; well played folks, well played. Thanks again to Kravn too, who had the soul destroying task of picking though the tenses used in this chapter. Anything that is still out of whack is my fault, messing about with what she fixed! This one's a bit longer as well, to make up for the slightly shorter chapter I posted last time out!

Hope you liked Ms Lil...I think she might pop up again somewhere, someday. Her character comes in no small part from the librarian at my old school. A proper firecracker! I changed her name though...the woman was a judge too at some point, I don't want to mess with her!

Take it easy all, cheers,

Sam