Chapter 7

Gabe had disappeared and everyone was nervously waiting to see what he would do next. JT was trying to reverse engineer both the antidote and the serum that Sam had made. Catherine and Vincent were having a little bit of an argument….

"Vincent I have to get back to work on actual NYPD cases. It's not fair to ask Tess to cover for me. I understand that you are worried about me but I can take care of myself."

"Catherine, I can't protect you at work, people will think you have a stalker if I hang around you all day."

"I don't want you hanging around following me all day; you need to work on finding Gabe."

"How am I supposed to do that and keep an eye on you at the same time, do you really expect me just to kiss you good bye, pack you a lunch and say 'Have a great day Honey?"

Catherine stands there silent looking at Vincent; her hands are clenched by her side. She takes a deep breath, "You are going to pack me a lunch?"

Vincent laughs, "What am I going to do with you?" "I don't know but you can spend the rest of the day thinking about it." Catherine says smiling.

She turns serious, "Look, I know you are afraid for me, but you have to trust me, I will be careful. We all have things we need to do. You and I can't stay hold up in here forever; the outside world does not come to a standstill just because we are dealing with some jeopardy."

Vincent knows when he has been beaten; he sighs and pulls Catherine into him. "First I am going to kiss you"….And he does… the kind of kiss where the tingle starts in your mouth but ends in a delicious swirl in your stomach. "Then I am going to remind you to eat lunch." Next he leans down and whispers in her ear, his warm breath tickling her. "Have a great day, Honey."

Catherine is weak in the knees; Vincent's arms are the only thing holding her up. She opens her eyes and looks at Vincent, "Well played."

Gabe watched as Catherine arrived at the precinct. She was finally away from Vincent, now he just needed to get her alone. He had grabbed Catherine once before and got Vincent to come to him, hopefully lightening does strike twice.

Tess was happy to see Cat "I have a fraud case here that is driving me crazy. This old guy got taken for $33,000 dollars, looks like some sort of reverse mortgage fraud. You are so much better talking to the elderly than I am." Tess said. Catherine smiled, "Its cause you're so intimidating, you scare them."

Tess explained to Cat. "The guy is in a nursing home recovering from a fall, I think the suspect might be someone from the nursing home, we need to talk to him and get a search warrant for his bank records."

Cat volunteered to go to the nursing him to talk to the victim while Tess started drafting the SW. "Vincent has kept me cooped up for days; some fresh (nursing home) air is just what I need. I will touch base with you after I get done, I should be able to meet you at the courthouse to get the SW signed."

Cat left the precinct and Gabe followed, just waiting for an opportunity. It presented itself faster than he thought it would. Instead of driving right to the nursing home, Cat pulled up just down the street from her favorite coffee shop. She got out of the car and walked down the street to the café. Gabe could not believe his luck.

He drove down the street, parked and went into the coffee shop via the back entrance. Once inside he slipped a $20 to one of the bus boys along with a note that said "coffee shop roof" He knew that Catherine thinking it was Vincent would come up.

Vincent meantime was trying to track Gabe from the lab, which was the last place they knew Gabe had been. Vincent tracked Gabe all over the city; it appeared that he had gotten a room at some flea bag flop house as his scent was concentrated there. Unfortunately he was not there now and it was difficult to track from there because he must have come and gone from here a few times in the last few days. His scent went off in multiple directions. Vincent decided to find a good place to keep an eye on the flop house for when Gabe did come back.

Catherine smiled as she read the note, even if she was a little frustrated that Vincent had followed her from the precinct. Given all they had been through neither one of them was prepared to lose the other one ever again. So she decided to give him some slack instead of a piece of her mind. As she opened the door to the roof, her eyes took a minute to adjust to the bright light and she was shocked to see Gabe standing there, pointing a gun at her.

"What in the…." Catherine was interrupted by Gabe. "I'd like to say I'm sorry for this, but considering what you have put me through these last few weeks, I'm really not." "Gabe" Catherine says as she raises her hands, "You don't have to do this. You have come so far, I am sorry that I couldn't love you, but this is not you. You are better than this."

Gabe still pointing the gun at her said "take out your weapon and lay it on the ground." Catherine did as he asked. "Now what?" "Now we take a little ride and wait for Vincent." Gabe fails to notice that Catherine has dropped the note he tricked her with.

Vincent was waiting near the flop house when his phone rang, it was Tess. Vincent's stomach dropped even before he answered. "What is wrong, where is Catherine?" Tess did not waste any time, "I don't know, she was supposed to follow up on a case we are working and meet me at the courthouse, she never showed and when I call her cell, I just get her voicemail and I called the nursing home she was headed to and she never made it.

"Where was the last place you saw her?" Vincent asks as if he didn't already know. "Here at the precinct." "Sit tight Tess, I am on my way."

Vincent starts to track Catherine from the precinct. Tess is with him, feeling guilty for letting Catherine go off alone. "Don't worry Tess we will find her and then I am going to wring her neck for going off on her own. You know as well as I do that there is nothing you could have done." Tess acknowledge the truth in that, "Your right but that doesn't mean I am not going to kick her ass, after I give her a huge hug once we find her!"

Vincent tracks Catherine to the coffee shop. Tess talks to the staff and finds the bus boy who gave Catherine the note. He describes Gabe to a T. "At least we know that Gabe has her and not the "Agency" says Tess. They go up to the roof and Vincent spots the note where Catherine left it. "Dammit, no wonder she came up here, she thought she was meeting me."

Vincent held the note, his eyes turned golden and he growled, "If he hurts her, there won't be anywhere he can hide that I won't find him."

"Can you tell if she is hurt at all?" asks Tess. Vincent explains that he does not smell any blood and really can't even smell fear so he is pretty sure she is probably pissed off more than anything else. "Let's keep tracking them."

Gabe has taken Catherine to the abandoned Murfield farmhouse, the one they searched last year while looking for her Mom. "Don't get too comfortable," Gabe tells Catherine, "I don't think it will take Vincent too long to track you down." Gabe ties Catherine to a chair and rigs up a shotgun to a dead man rig.

"Gabe, what are you going to do, Vincent is going to come for me and he is going to kill you, how does this help you?" "Vincent is not going to kill me, if the tension in this wire lets go, even for an instant you will take a shotgun blast to the head. Not even Vincent is that fast. He is going to get me the Gem, I am then going to give it to the "Agency" and they will give me the same upgrades that Vincent has. Beast power with control."

"That is what this is all about? You want to be a beast again? Why?"

"Why? Are you serious? Do you have any idea what it is like to just be human again after tasting that power?" Catherine trying to understand said "But all this time you have been trying to save beasts with your flat lining theory, you wanted to save Vincent, when did that change?"

"Catherine, it was never about saving Vincent, it was about taking away his beast, if he had died in the process…. Once he came back supercharged, I realized that there was a way to have all the benefits of being a beast with none of the negative side effects. I knew that as long as he was a beast he would never let me go back to being a beast. I can't be worried about him tracking me down and taking me out." "Then you shouldn't have taken Catherine." Vincent says as he walks in the front door.