Chapter Seven

'Hey.' Gail had the look of a deer caught in the headlights. She was wearing her black silk bathrobe, and looking thoroughly mussed. Traci wasn't sure whether the bags under her eyes were the result of lack of sleep, or just a hangover.

'…Hey.' Gail eyed her suspiciously. 'What are you doing here?'

'Well, Chris let me in,' she said, purposefully avoiding the crux of the question.

'I—' Gail was interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming from the hallway. She turned sharply, and Traci saw Holly, the tall, dark-haired woman as the forensic pathologist that had accompanied Gail to Frank and Noelle's wedding. She grinned. Evidently, someone else had decided that the night wasn't quite finished after they left the Penny.

'As much as I'd love to stick around and do the Laid Parade, I have to go.' Holly pressed a kiss to a surprised Gail's lips, and then walked straight to the door. 'Call me later?'

Gail blanked, and she shot a quick glance towards Traci before responding. 'Um…sure.'

'So did you have a good night?' Traci couldn't help but grin.

'Oh you know. It was alright, I guess.' Gail said, evasively. She sat down beside Traci, and started picking at the bacon that was probably cold by now.

'Uh huh. Is that why you can't stop smiling?'

'You're delusional, Nash.' Gail attempted to give what Traci assumed was a dirty look, but it didn't last very long. Her lips quirked at the edges, and her smile quickly spread to a grin. 'Okay, it was good.'

'Did you eat all the bacon already?' came Dov's voice, as he entered the kitchen, Chloe following close behind him. 'Oh, hey Traci.'

'There's still like…ten pieces here,' Gail said, pushing the plate towards him. 'Chris is overcompensating again.'

'Oh, you mean like he did when—' Gail threw a piece of toast at him.

'Morning,' said Chloe, brightly, sitting down next to Traci.

'Morning,' Traci replied, and Gail gave grunt that was apparently supposed to mean "hello."

'Did anyone hear anything weird around midnight? I could've sworn I heard something scrounging around in the bushes.' Dov slumped into the last available seat, and scraped about a quarter of the bacon onto his own plate.

'Maybe it was just a squirrel Dov, geez,' Gail said, her body tensing. If they hadn't been suspicious before, they were now. If there was one thing that Gail definitely sucked at, it was trying to pretend like nothing was going on.

Dov stared at her, his eyebrows starting to knit in realisation. Before he could say anything, though, Chris had stepped in, and Gail suddenly looked even more uncomfortable.

'What's going on?' Chris asked, yawning as he stepped into the kitchen. He looked around, apparently noticing that there was nowhere left for him to sit.

'What's going on is that there are way too many people in this kitchen. Come on,' Gail said, grabbing Traci by the arm. 'Let's get rid of the losers and go grab brunch.'

…

'I didn't realise you were a "brunch" person,' Traci commented conversationally. She had that raised eyebrow look, and Gail was not going to take the bait.

'I'm not. I wanted mimosas, and I am very much a "food and alcohol at any time of day" person.'

'Aren't you hungover?'

'Hair of the dog,' Gail shrugged. She'd ordered bacon and waffles, which wasn't really "brunch" food, but the fact that she was slightly hungover meant that fruit wasn't really all that appetising. 'So why the early morning "catching the aftermath of my lesbian booty-call" wake-up?'

Okay, maybe mimosas weren't such a great idea.

'I should probably tell you that after we left the Penny last night I might have gone to see your brother.'

Gail immediately put her hands over her ears, fork still caught between her fingers. 'I really do not want to hear about whatever you two got up to last night. I live in blissful ignorance.'

'Well, if you'd rather talk about what you did last night…'

Gail glared daggers at her. 'You did that on purpose.' She dropped the fork, and pouted. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk about last night. There was a small part of her that just wanted to non-stop gush about last night. The problem was that every damn word she said felt like a jinx. Things with Holly had gone so…undramatic so far, that she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

'If you don't want to talk about it, we don't have to talk about it.' Traci said, and Gail could tell she was doing the "try and get Gail to open up of her own accord" thing that she used so often. What was sad was that even when Gail could see it coming, it usually worked. Maybe it was because Traci was the only person (besides Holly) who seemed to care what she had to say.

It hadn't always been like that.

At first, she had loathed them, because they refused to see past the façade of trying to keep her parents happy. Not that she gave them any reason to. It was simpler to put up that impenetrable barrier, than it was for her to have them ostracise her anyway.

Gail knew that she'd grown a lot in the last five years, but she also knew that she had a very, very long way to go. For the first time in a long time, she felt as though her life was moving forward.

Holly pushed her to do things that were just that little bit outside her comfort zone. It was challenging, but at the same time, it was easy. Holly wasn't judgemental, or apathetic. She made things that Gail would normally find boring, fun.

It was more than what she could put into words, more than she could explain to Traci. When the right phrase did come, the truth of it surprised even Gail.

'I feel like…my life is finally moving in the right direction,' she said, sincerely.

She just had to hope like hell that she wasn't going to fuck things up.

…

Monday morning found a slightly grumpy Gail sitting at the back of the parade room. Sunday night had found Holly having to take care of some last-minute business at the morgue, which had left Gail home alone (okay, home with Chris, but that didn't really count), watching Night of the Living Dead, and staring at her phone. By the time they started playing text tag, it was late, and sleep had been the last thing on Gail's agenda.

Parade was sort of a haze, ending with the usual "serve, protect, and whatever the hell it was that Frank said today."

'So, um…it looks like we're riding together.' Gail frowned at the sound of Andy's voice, and moved to look at the board.

1507: Peck/McNally.

Fuck.

Whichever sadist had decided it would be a good idea to saddle her with McNally for the day was going to burn in a very exclusive circle of hell. She would be perfectly happy with them dating, so long as the universe didn't try to throw it in her face every second of every day. It made it difficult to move on, to give her heart to someone else, knowing all the horrible things that could go wrong.

'Yeah.' Gail didn't meet her eyes. 'Sounds like a party.' She got the hell out of there, and out to the squad cars, before Andy could say anything else. At the very least, if she had to suffer through this, she wanted to be the one driving.

Once they were out on the road, they managed about fifteen minutes of stony, awkward silence, before McNally just had to talk.

'Gail—'

'No.'

'Listen, Gail, I know you're pissed with me, but I just think we should—'

'You want to know why I'm pissed, McNally? I'm pissed because all Nick ever did was leave me, and when I finally thought things were starting to go okay, I find out he never even loved me anyway, because he was too busy falling head over heels for you.'

It was a slight exaggeration; she had no idea whether or not Nick had ever really loved her, but she wanted her words to hurt. She wanted them to be a fucking dagger in McNally's chest, so that the other woman felt it every time she so much as thought of breathing. She wanted Andy to feel that raw, unbridled pain that Gail had felt, when she saw them together. A dark, unforgiving stain that wouldn't wash free no matter how hard she tried.

'Gail, I'm so—'

'McNally, I don't want your sympathy. I couldn't give a shit how sorry you are. Because you knew how it made me feel, and you decided that you didn't care. I just want to get this shift over with, so I don't have to care about whatever the hell is going on in your life. So please. I don't want to talk about it.'

Gail kept her eyes forward. She didn't want to see the look on Andy's face. She didn't want to see that confused, puppy-dog hurt. She didn't want to be here.

She wanted to be at home, or even better, at Holly's place. Holly, with her shiny dark hair, and ridiculous glasses, and…qualifications.

Moving on sometimes meant leaving people in the dust.

Andy, thankfully, got the picture pretty quickly. They drove around in stony silence for almost half an hour, by which point Gail was almost praying for a call. Anything to make the day go by just a fraction faster. When the radio finally crackled, Gail could have kissed it.

It was a "suspicious smell" call, which, on the scheme of things, was pretty boring. Suspicious smells could run the gambit from "dead cat" to "clandestine meth lab." The selfish part of Gail was hoping for something on the higher end of the spectrum, because at least that would give her something of an "Andy buffer."

The area was a little off the beaten track, and it didn't take long for either of them to notice that "suspicious smell" didn't really seem to cover it. It smelt like someone had set fire to a garbage dump full of rotting corpses. It was so pungent, it was hard to tell exactly where it was coming from.

'Split up?' Andy suggested, almost hesitantly. Gail thought on it for a few seconds. Really, it wasn't the best idea; bad things happened when you split up with your partner. But they had a fair chunk of ground to cover, and really, she kind of preferred the idea of looking on her own.

'Yeah,' she agreed.

There was blood on the tree. Not old, dried blood, but something that seemed a little more recent. Cautiously, Gail drew her weapon. It was eerily quiet, and it would be just her luck if "potential body hunt" turned into gunfight.

Another ten minutes of searching didn't yield any more blood (or the bodies that it came from), but there were other signs of suspicious activity. Fragments of frayed rope, half a shackle, a couple of shell casings. Gail mentally stored away each location, knowing that when the Suits got here, they'd need to know. It wasn't worth calling in, though, until they knew exactly what they were calling in.

'Gail.' As if on cue, Gail heard Andy's voice. It wasn't a cry for help or anything, but there was an edge of urgency to it. Gail resisted the urge to snap in reply. Clearly a sign of good personal growth. Andy was standing by the edge of a slope about fifty metres away, staring down at something.

With a barely concealed sigh (well she couldn't spend the whole day growing) Gail lowered her gun slightly, and made her way over to where the other woman was standing.

Andy gestured down to the bottom of the slope. There was a tarp there, but that wasn't what Andy was pointing at. Andy was pointing at the couple of bodies that were half poking out from under the tarp. Gail could see bone poking through skin. The flesh was starting to rot. She was pretty sure she could even see a few maggots.

She swore.

It had started off as such a good day.

A brief note: I just want to duck in here with a caveat saying that I'm not trying to villainise Andy. At this stage, Gail is still feeling a lot of vitriolic hatred towards both Andy and Nick, which will start to simmer down over the course of the story as she comes to terms with the events of the past and works towards a better future. Peace.