"Jackie what the hell did you do?" Danny screamed when Jackie pulled up in her car to the Bay Ridge house where Danny had stood on the front porch, surprised his father had not woken up yet. He was not going to find out about this. Not if there was a chance Danny could catch his niece before she left the city.
"Danny she told me she was planning on leaving either way. It was either I helped her or she disappeared on her own." Jackie leaned back in her seat and pressed a few buttons on her phone. "I am trying to get her to text me back so I can track which tower it bounced off of and see how far she got."
"Jack..." Danny started but Jackie did not look up from her phone, still furiously tapping the screen.
"If we can get her location we can have your dad close off the area to find her." She said as if that were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Jack that's great... but Erin is going to kill me, then you, then me again. I was supposed to watch her all night and I could not even make it an hour!"
"Danny she's eighteen and a legal adult! She has the right to do what she wants without her parents bossing her around. I feel awful about this whole thing! She trusted me to help her get back to Chicago because she wanted to do it without the help of the Reagans and what did I do? Told her to go to the Reagans because I didn't think she should go alone..."
"Jackie she's my niece! She's just as much my kid as she is Erin's, whether or not she's biologically mine. And she needs to be here with her family. We are her family, not some couple she was sold off to in Chicago because my sister didn't want to deal with the problem."
"Reagan, she would've left either way. This is not your fault."
"Jack..." Danny's voice quivered. "We need to find her. Smith could already be on her trail. Slide over." Danny said, the realization that his eighteen year old niece had taken his car, that had a couple of his service weapons in the center console. "Jack she has my gun." Danny said, feeling a little more sick about the situation then he already did.
"Let's go..." Jackie slid over, letting Danny get in to drive. The two of them drove to the precinct to get a reading off of Lizzie's phone, soon finding out that she was still in the city. They were cruising down the streets when they saw a certain rookie cop walking with his partner, the Italian chewing on a donut. They seemed to be laughing, the rookie smiling his usual warm smile.
"Get in!" Danny said opening up the window. Jamie looked at his brother, shrugging before looking back at Renzulli. He shot his brother a look. "It's Lizzie." Danny rolled his eyes, if it wasn't obvious.
Jamie immediately understood, throwing himself in the back of the car. And the three of them drove off, leaving Renzulli sadly eating his donut in solitude, mumbling about that damn cult of Reagans.
"Dad, tell me the truth. Am I overworrying? That Ian is going to somehow find Lizzie and..." Erin looked down nervously. She hadn't gotten any sleep the previous night, worrying that somehow HE was going to find her. Baker had let her in the office, debating whether or not to ask if everything was alright with the Commissioner, but then decided against it.
"No. Erin. She's with Danny and Detective Curatola. I doubt either of them will let her out of their site." When Frank had gotten up that morning, Danny and Lizzie were already gone. Figuring they had went to the precinct or to get food before going, Frank figured everything was fine. He trusted his son with his granddaughter. Frank's office phone rang and Frank glared at it before picking it up off the receiver. Erin lounged back on the chair, trying to stop her hands from shaking. He worried a little about her. She looked massively pale and just a tad thinner.
Erin inched up in her seat. If Danny and Jackie were missing, then Lizzie...
"Thank you Sergeant. I will take care of it from here." Frank hung up.
"What happened? Are they okay? Where's Lizzie?" Erin jumped up, grabbing her purse before Frank grabbed her hand. He was about to calm her down when Frank's personal phone rang and he jumped a little when he saw that it was Jamie.
"Son, where are you?" His grip on Erin didn't release in the slightest.
"Lizzie fled last night. And she has a gun. Tell Erin to stay calm... we're taking care of this. Me and Danny and Jackie, we are going to find her."
"Are you sure you know what you're doing? This isn't protocol... as the police commissioner, I would warn you to..."
"She's my niece Dad. I would do anything for her even if it means giving up my badge. I gotta go."
Erin looked down at the ground. She felt the tears on her face. She was losing her daughter again. She looked at her father. The look in his face was solemn, yet sad. Erin felt helpless. That must be why she ended up in her father's arms, crying about the daughter she lost for what seemed like a thousandth time.
"Wait, so you're saying she just up and left?" Linda questioned when the remaining Reagans sat down for dinner. Erin absentmindedly pushed the food on her plate around with her fork. Linda noticed this and glared. The boys noticed the tension and excused themselves because they could tell they weren't suppose to be there.
"Yeah and Jamie, Danny and Jackie are following her because they think she might be trying to get back at the perp. She has Danny's gun."
"Isn't the perp her father?" Linda questioned to receive a glare from Erin back. "Sorry."
"I'm here!" Nicky called when the front door opened. She saw her aunt, mother, grandfather and great grandfather. She was certain some of her family members were missing from the equation.
"Where is everyone?"
"Your sister has decided to disappear. And take your Uncle Danny's gun with her."
"Is she okay?" Nicky asked, sitting down next to her mother. Her mother looked awful. Her eyes were swollen and her hands were shaking. She hadn't touched her food.
"Your Uncle Danny, Uncle Jamie and Detective Curatola followed her to make sure everything is okay."
"Are you okay Mom?" Nicky looked at her and felt scared. She hated seeing her mother upset. As much as she liked her sister, her mother was much more important to her.
"Mom can I talk to you?" Nicky gently grabbed her mother's hand and pulled her up from the table into the living room.
"What is it Nicky?" Her mother said rubbing her temples.
"Uhhh... I love you Mom." She blurted out. Her mother looked up in question.
"Lizzie asked me what you were like, and I said you were cold. But it's eating me alive that you're feeling awful about this situation and I'm not helpful in the least. It kills me to see you like this."
"Nicky... I'm fine. I'm worried about Lizzie... that's all." Nicky suspected there was more to that story that was not being said out loud but she let it slide.
"I know that she's your daughter and you lost her and got her back and all this... but you've known her for two days... this is not good for your health!"
"Nicky sit down." Her mother pulled her down next to her and put an arm around her. "I'm fine. I just don't want to see my daughter get hurt. I would be doing the exact same thing if it were you. And this doesn't mean I care about you any less ever. Do you understand that? You're the greatest thing that ever happened to me. You and Lizzie. But I was lucky enough to watch you grow, and I missed that opportunity with Lizzie. I don't want her to screw up or get hurt because of my mistakes."
"I know, and I get that. I just don't want you to get sick. I really do love you Mom."
"I love you too Nick." Erin let Nicky readjust, putting her head on Erin's stomach. Erin automatically started running her hands through Nicky's hair. But it was Erin that fell asleep first, with Nicky's arms wrapped around her.
"We were able to get a bouncer off her cell phone. It tapped into this cell tower."Jackie pointed up once they had parked and gotten out of the car. She didn't know how she felt about having to look for Erin's daughter with two of her brothers. She was a toughie, yet she feared for herself in more ways than one.
"So... how do we pinpoint the location?"
"Wait a minute..." Jackie started. Both Jamie and Danny turned around to look at her. "The signal hasn't moved. When we checked it three hours ago, it was in the exact same spot."
"Which means she isn't moving, or it's a trap." Jamie realized and ran down the street. The partners looked at each other, confused at what was going on, and jumped in their car before following him, making his way down the street.
"Oh that brother of yours..."
"I don't know what he is thinking." Danny responded, not at all knowing what his baby brother was thinking. Since he was older, he usually could gauge where he was coming from. And he had absolutely no clue at that point.
"Why is he running into an alley?" Jackie questioned as Danny turned the car into the alley. Suddenly Danny understood what his brother was thinking. And then so did Jackie. They drove down the alley, still behind Jamie's running form, until he suddenly stopped and turned around before pointing at something. Danny slammed on the brakes and the two of them jumped out to see what he was looking at.
"Oh my god," Jackie put her hand on her mouth. Danny looked at his beautiful Jeep, now sitting with a side impact on the driver's side, and shattered glass on all sides. Opening the door he saw that Lizzie's phone sat on the passenger's seat and that his guns were exactly where he left them.
"Guys..." Danny started, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. "She was abducted."
Lizzie woke up.
Well, at least she wasn't dead, right?
Her head hurt a little, and there were several bandages across her body, presumably where the airbags had hit her. Her left leg felt a little weird and was badly bruised, but other than that she was fine.
Agent Anderson stood in front of the bed where she laid. She was actually really confused. Was she with the good guys or the bad guys? She wasn't tied down, so technically she wasn't a prisoner. Maybe they were going to torture her for information like in the movies! She wasn't really sure what kind of information she could give. The only thing she could possibly have information on was the Reagans. On the other hand, she watched as someone handed her a chocolate milkshake.
She was really confused.
"Lizzie, we need to explain this to you. You were in a car crash. Yes, that car crash was inflicted by me and my team. But you said you wanted to do this, go undercover and catch this guy. So, we needed to throw the Reagans off your trail."
"What exactly did you do?" Lizzie questioned, still confused about the whole thing.
"Made it look like you were abducted."
" Won't they be able to track you down?" Lizzie asked, feeling dumb that she didn't really know what this process entailed.
"This is the FBI you are working with, honey. These people made the tracking-down system! They know how to beat out some New York cops! There is not a single trace of us touching that car or calling you on that phone. It simply looked like someone took you from your car.
"So in theory you're saying that they're going to obsess over trying to find me and my abductor, when there really is no clues or anything to go off of. What about city cameras? Haven't you ever watched Person of Interest? How do you know that they will ever stop obsessing if they think there is a possibly that I am still alive?"
"Cameras blocked off." She said as if it were obvious. "And another thing, is that if you really want to shake them off your trail, we cut off any possibility that you are still alive."
"And how is that?"
"Give them a body."
"And all that grief?" Lizzie mumbled, hoping the agent wouldn't hear her. Now she had the thin, pale face of her mother in her mind, holding the hand of her crying daughter on one side and her father on the other side. This would be their third loss.
Jamie said that her coming out of nowhere was like cancelling out of those losses, and now they were back to three. What about Jackie? She had seemed so nice, and genuinely cared about her well-being. Yes, Lizzie knew she had been a brat about going back to Chicago, but she wanted to close out that part of her life.
"Yes, your family will be affected. But you agreed to my rules. And now you are apart of this. Either you join up, or we kill you."
Lizzie shrunk back, feeling really out of place of this whole situation. "Well then I guess you better get me to Chicago then."
The agent smiled, "Good girl."
