A/N: This chapter is where the drama begins for the final chapters... enjoy xx Mariah

Katie sipped her wine as she looked around the room. It had been nearly an hour since Mason had pushed his way into the house with her.

They'd made the dinner she'd wanted to eat with Ned and we're currently sitting across from each other. Well, Katie was tied to the chair. Her ankles were at least. Mason also had his gun leveled with her chest from where he was sitting as he took a bite of his steak with the other hand.

"This is just great, us sharing a meal together. Isn't it?" Mason said, nodding his head in agreement. He looked up at Katie, who hadn't touched her plate yet but had nearly finished her wine. "Why aren't you eating?"

She looked over at him and set her glass down. "I was just letting it cool," she lied. She knew there was no way she could tell him that she didn't want to have dinner with him. She didn't want to sit here across the table from him and she most definitely didn't want to pretend she loved him. She cut herself a bite and tossed it in her mouth. "Mmm, it's good, like you said."

Mason eyed her suspiciously, like he wanted to doubt her, but continued to eat.

Katie stared at him with a level, unblinking look. Honestly, despite the fact that she was well out-armed and was being held against her will, Katie wasn't very afraid anymore. Mason was actually kind of scrawny and was creepier than anything else. Katie frankly wasn't that intimidated by him physically, but mentally was a whole other story.

"What are you thinking about?" He asked.

"Nothing," she said, her eyes flicking to her food.

"Don't lie to me," he eyed her, pounding his fist into the table "I'm in charge here, Katie. Look me in the eyes and tell me what you were thinking about."

She smiled to herself, maybe this was her time to mess with him. She looked up at him dead on. "I was thinking about Ned." She quipped. It probably wasn't that bright of her to sass her captor, but she couldn't help it. She was terrified, tired, and incredibly annoyed. Katie firmly believed that she had the right to be sassy.

Mason chuckled and shared a look with her. "Do you want me to show you what happens when you think about him?" Mason jumped out of his chair and grasped the back of the chair Katie was currently tied to.

Bending down, he grabbed Katie's jaw and moved right into her face. His eyes were hard, cold, dead, and unlike anything that Katie had ever seen before. "Let's get one thing straight, sweetheart. All I care about is getting your jackass husband off of our backs, and if you keep this up I won't hesitate to get rid of you once I no longer want you."

Katie pressed her lips together and tried not to show the panic that was welling in her stomach. She wished that she could just spit in his face, but that probably wasn't the best idea.

"That's what I thought," he whispered, letting go of her jaw. "How hard is it to have one nice meal? ONE!" He threw his anger into tossing his wine glass against the floor and shattering it. "We can never have anything nice, can we?" Mason brought the butt of the gun down on Katie's face and all she remembered was darkness after that.

When Ned walked into the hospital room, the girl looked pretty battered, bruises lining her neck, her hand badly scraped, and she needed ten stitches on her thigh. But she told Ned and Jamison everything at the hospital. Her dad was an alcoholic, and she was living with her boyfriend when she was attacked from behind when entering her apartment.

A man knocked her out, took her to a cabin, and forced her to have sex with him for two days. One day, the man left for a few hours and Becca told Ned how she just pulled and pulled on the ropes on her wrists and after one pull, they came free off the bed. She fumbled. He understood.

He touched her arm. "It's okay."

"When I got free, I had to break a window with my hand to get out of the house. It fucked up my hand, but once I got outside. I ran." Becca whispered. "I just ran until eventually I saw the rest stop and called 9-1-1 as soon as I could."

"You did great, Becca." He nodded.

The teen smiled. "Yeah, I guess." She shrugged.

"Now Becca," Jamison spoke and Becca looked over at him. "I know you've had a long night." The girl nodded, almost blinking to stay awake. "But this is our last question. Did you get a good look at the man that did this to you?"

Becca shook her head slowly. "He always wore a mask when it was light out," she whispered. "And whenever the sunset, the room I was in would go pitch dark. I could never get a good look at him."

"Alright. That's fine. Did you get a good look at the cabin?" She nodded. "Good. We have a sketch artist here," Ned opened the curtain a little for the woman to enter and wave to Becca. "Do you think you can describe the cabin to her?"

It took a little while, but after an hour the sketch artist brought Jamison and Ned a sketch. The databases didn't recognize the cabin that Becca had described, but Ned couldn't stop staring at the picture.

He knew this cabin. He'd seen this once, maybe twice before in a report. But which one?

Jamison and Ned started to search through the papers, through everything, the crime scene photos, the files on the different shelters where girls disappeared from, and that's when they find it.

Arrow Lucas' file.

The original suspect, but he'd skipped town after they'd questioned him so they thought it wasn't him when the brutality resumed. Arrow Lucas. He'd gone right over everyone's heads. His first summer after high school, Arrow robbed a convenience store with a buddy of his and hid out in a cabin in the woods. The store owner didn't press any charges in the end, but Ned had still pulled a file on it. He didn't find anything at the time.

But he looked at the file now, and he found it, the picture of the cabin. It was exactly the way Becca described the cabin. A perfect match to the sketch.

By the time Ned was able to get a CSU team out to the cabin, it was nine o'clock.

Ned pulled up into an empty driveway and looked around. Katie usually parked in the driveway when it was nice out. He parked and took his keys out of the ignition. He hopped out and walked up the driveway to peek in the garage, surprisingly her car is parked in the garage and Ned goes to the side doors, trying to put his key in the door.

His key wouldn't go in the door. Not even a little bit.

He knocked on the door then and looked under the mat for another key, but there wasn't anything there. Ned ran around to the front door and tried his key again, but it still didn't work and he searched for a spare key somewhere, but still didn't find anything.

He began knocking on the front door now, but no one answered and he sat defeated on the porch. What was happening?

He fished his phone out of his pocket and dialed Jim's number, feeling his tears roll down his face. He was expecting the worst.

There was only one reason the locks would have changed. Mason had to be involved. There was no way Katie would do this.

"Hey, Jim? Yeah, it's Ned. We have a problem." Ned sighed, falling to sit against the front door. "I need you and Melinda to get over here now."

By the time Jamison and LeTrai arrived, Jim and Ned had kicked the front door in and went inside. Ned was pacing in the front hall, pinching his nose to stay calm. Jim was trying to console his wife by sitting with her on the stairs, but Melinda had tried so hard to keep it together for Katie during this whole process that she just couldn't anymore.

When Ned saw Jamison, he breathed a sigh of relief. "Good, we can go find this bastard."

"Ned," Jamison stopped him immediately. "CSU is on their way and so is IA, but you can't be involved in this investigation. I'm gonna need you to step back and let us process the scene."

"Okay," he nodded.

"Okay, now Ned, take me through what happened when you got home from work," Jamison asked.

"I got here around nine after we sent everyone out to the cabin. I had plans with Katie to have dinner at home with her to feel normal despite everything that's been going on," he sighed. "So I walked up to the door and it was locked. At first, I just knocked because Katie was supposed to be home and when she didn't answer I eventually tried my key, but it wouldn't work. So I called her parents and the met me over here and Jim and I eventually got inside." He motioned for Jamison to follow him into the kitchen where there was a letter sitting on the counter addressed to him. "I haven't opened it yet. I didn't want to ruin any evidence. But that's when we noticed this," he pointed to spread of evidence over the dining room table. It was set for two people and each plate still had warm food on it. Ned was careful to step over the glass. "I don't even know what to think happened here."

"Well, if you put some gloves on you should be okay. If you want to read it before IA gets here." Jamison explained, pulling a pair out of his back pocket. "I always keep a few pairs on me just in case."

He nodded, taking the gloves from him. Once they were on, Ned turned back to the letter and opened it. A folded piece of paper sat inside and as Ned began to read it, Melinda and Jim came over.

His tears fill up in his eyes and he wiped them away quickly. "She didn't write this. She couldn't have." He shook his head. "This isn't her," he said. "She wouldn't go with him. She just wouldn't!"

"I know," Jamison said. "This is probably forged. Does it look like her handwriting?"

"I haven't finished it yet," he sighed. "It kind of does, but it's really rushed. She never rushes her writing. Ever." He stopped then, reading the last line. "Wait. She wrote this, but he probably made her."

"Are you sure?" Jamison asked.

He nodded. "Yes. I know she wrote this," he whispered, touching that line. "Only she would say this to me. It's her way of telling me that she loves me. Mason wouldn't know what it meant."

"What does it mean?" Jamison asked.

"True love never dies," he whispered, feeling his head breath just a little more.

He had to find her. He just had to.

Ned,

This isn't going to work. It never was, but we always knew that, didn't we? It's just so hard. So damn hard Ned. It's too hard. I need something easier. Maybe even someone.

I need life to not be a constant battle. Love doesn't fix everything. Love isn't enough. Not every time. Not this time.

Just remember what we always talked about, okay? verus amori nunquam mori, Ned.

verus amori nunquam mori

Katie