"Babe?" Alex yelled out when she heard the door to her apartment unlock. It was close to four in the morning, but she hadn't been able to sleep at all without knowing if Maggie was alright. The detective had promised to text her, but she hadn't received anything.

"Yeah." Maggie yelled back, putting her keys and gun down on the counter. She knew that Alex was in the bedroom, and decided to spare her the trouble of getting up. Instead, she walked into Alex's line of vision, and smiled weakly. "I'm home."

"I…" Alex cut herself off immediately, not knowing where to start. She didn't want to overstep once again, she didn't want to pressure Maggie into telling her anything. It was work: Alex didn't intervene with Maggie's work, and Maggie didn't intervene with hers. That was an established rule between the two of them.

And Maggie – though tired – looked physically unharmed anyway. She took comfort in that fact.

The detective moved to sit down on the bed, looking her fiancée in the eyes. "Did you get any sleep?"

"I was worried about you." Alex answered. It gave Maggie what she needed to deduce that Alex'd had another restless night.

She put her hand in Alex's, interlacing their fingers, and sighed. "A colleague of mine was found dead a few hours ago. It has to do with a cold case of a few years back."

Alex nodded quietly, giving Maggie the space to continue. But when it was clear that that had been all Maggie wanted to tell, she cleared her throat. "So… He got disposed of?"

"That's what it looks like, yeah."

"But if it's a homicide, why did they call you in the middle of the night? I thought you only handled alien cases?"

Maggie smiled weakly. "Yeah. They re-opened the case about a year ago because they thought there may have been an alien involved, and I helped out, but we didn't have any evidence. So now, they want me to lead the investigation."

"So they think it's an alien?"

"It's a possibility." Maggie bit her tongue as soon as she'd said the words. She didn't mean to lie to Alex. She didn't want to keep secrets from her at all. If anything, she wanted nothing more than to let out all of her frustrations, guilt and sadness by screaming into her shoulder, crying into her chest. But she knew better. She couldn't worry Alex, not when the other woman was still so traumatized.

She'd do her best to stay out of danger. But nobody could know about it. If she could be one step ahead of Holmes and his investigative team, she could work without the NCPD. She didn't need them, she'd handled plenty of cases on her own.

And the last thing she wanted to do was show off that she could handle it. She needed justice.

Truth be told, she hadn't even come home for Alex. She'd come home for her notebook, in her bedside drawer.

The District Attorney had sent people to Ian's house, to tell his family. They would ask to take a look around, and get permission without a warrant. Maggie knew how it worked. Anything relevant to the case would be brought in as possible evidence.

But Maggie knew better.

Ian Hayes never took work home with him, because he didn't want to confront his wife and children with the horrors. He'd never want one of his kids to find pictures of a crime scene on his desk.

So Ian had a small boat, in the harbor. He liked to cruise around on the river, and had invited Maggie over more than once. And more than once, she'd respectfully declined,because she was not made for a life on sea, she knew from experience.

But the boat was his baby. And she knew that all of Ian's work, if he did have a lead, would be on it. Far away from his kids and wife, so that it couldn't hurt them.

She was well aware that Ian's wife would probably tell them about the boat. But if she could get a head start, and figure out things before the cavalry got there – then she would leave Holmes biting the dust.

While she stroked Alex's hand with her own, and kissed it gently as she saw that the agent's eyes were closing now that she knew that Maggie was safe, she reached into the bedside drawer and fished out her notebook, tucking it in her back pocket.

When she was sure that Alex was at least not awake enough to ask questions, she slipped off the bed and took a seat on the couch.

She knew the harbor, but she didn't know where the boat was docked. He had mentioned it once though, and Maggie remembered writing it down for future reference. So now, she flipped through the pages, finally finding the new location of the boat.

Then, she hesitated. She knew she needed to be fast to be ahead of Holmes. But leaving Alex now without an explanation would mean worrying her even further.

Instead, she settled on leaving a note.

'Need to go back to do some paperwork. Love you.'

At least if Alex woke up to an empty bed, she'd know not to bother calling. They both knew how boring paperwork was, so Maggie considered it the perfect lie. Alex wouldn't ask questions, and she'd have the rest of the night.

And if something happened, well. At least Alex would know how she felt.

She took her keys and her gun from the counter again, and closed the door behind her, heading to her Triumph in the parking lot.

Maggie sincerely hoped her gut feeling was right. That there wasn't going to be an entire wall of evidence in his garage as she'd previously feared. That Ian was still the man she thought he was; a cop that made sure his family was never endangered or bothered by his work.

Because if he wasn't – that meant she was getting fired for sure.

Maybe, in the end, that's what the killer wanted all along. Retiring her from the force. Getting her fired, blacklisted. Maybe he was playing the long game.

As she neared the harbor, a strange feeling began to settle in her stomach again. The same weird anticipation she'd felt earlier, at the crime scene. Her body screaming at her that this wasn't right, that she should get back-up. Just in case it was a trap.

But she ignored the protests, bit through the fear, and reached for her gun the second she'd jumped off her bike.

The harbor was completely quiet and deserted, except for the single beam of the flashlight of the guard on duty. She checked her notebook again for the exact location. She had to go into the guard's direction.

Great.

She considered her options. She could come out, showing off her badge and asking to search the boat, but knowing the harbor, the guard was probably trained and would ask her for a warrant that she didn't have.

The only other option she had was to sneak to the dock and onto the boat. If she would get in trouble she'd wing it, maybe bluff her way out of it.

After all, there was truth to what Holmes had said. She got results, but more often than not did she spend an afternoon after a case in the Lieutenant's office, explaining herself and getting reprimanded.

She settled on the latter, moving in the direction of the boat. He'd name it the Hayden, after his oldest son, whom Maggie had met a few times at precinct barbecues and receptions. Ian's kids were all in their mid-twenties to thirties, and had careers and families of their own that Maggie barely knew anything about. Though Ian had told her he was a grandfather and had shown the pictures, she blanked on specifics and details.

As she approached the boat in the slip she'd written down, she saw to her relief that the word Hayden was painted in gold letters along the side.

She stepped onto the deck, and crouched to stay out of sight of the flashlight beam. Crawling towards the hatch, she cursed to herself as she found it locked.

Shit. Well, of course he'd lock his boat if there was something valuable inside. It just confirmed her theory.

Though she didn't have a key at all.

But Ian should have had a spare key somewhere. Perhaps even on the boat itself.

And if Holmes made it to the boat to search it, someone had to open the hatch anyway. Whether by force or not.

Maggie took a deep breath, and started crouching around the boat, searching every hole and crack for the spare key. But without any light source, it was hard to see any shapes in the pitch black night. The deck wasn't all that big, and soon enough, the search came up empty-handed.

Plan B. She was running out of time.

Ian liked fishing. She remembered seeing fishing supplies stacked underneath a tarp on the other side of the deck. She turned around and sped towards it, sliding her hand underneath the tarp and touching around. Finally, her hand came into contact with a small box, and she pulled it towards her.

As she opened the box, she heard the unmistakable sound of a car pulling up close by. It was the middle of the night, so Maggie knew that it wasn't a coincidence.

They had discovered the boat. But she was also victorious; the box was filled with fishing hooks.

She grabbed two of them, bent them to the shape she needed, and got to work on the padlock. Granted; picking locks was a thing of the past for her, as she now usually had the law on her side to open doors for her. But she was grateful for the skills, as the padlock clicked open in less than a minute.

Shouts and more flashlight beams appeared, and Maggie whispered another curse as she opened the hatch and dropped down below the deck, and into the cabin.

Now finally out of sight, she grabbed her phone and used the flashlight to look around. The cabin was deserted, but it looked like Ian had been here before his death. There were still dishes on the table, and as Maggie headed into the small bedroom, the bed looked like it had been slept upon recently.

Which only fueled Maggie's assumption that Ian had spent time here in the last three days, trying to figure something out.

She started rummaging through the drawers, trying to find anything that concerned police work. But once again, she was stumped.

As she looked around, hands on her hips and flashlight shining at the floor, it was hard not to get disappointed. But Maggie knew she had to find something fast. So she did an entire sweep of the bedroom, as the only room she hadn't touched.

She opened the cupboard, and smirked instantly at the sight of a safe greeting her on the lowest shelf. She kneeled down next to it, and saw the numerical panel.

With another weak smile, she realized what Ian had done.

He had anticipated her knowing about the boat, and had left a message for her to get there first.

Because she'd only need two tries to get the code right.

1802 or 0015. The two other codes on the paper he'd left her.

On the first try, the safe unlocked itself. 1802. She made a mental note to remember the code, and to try and see if something was connected to the number. But then she shoved the thought into the back of her mind, as she focused on the contents in front of her.

Case files. She opened them quickly, only reading the headers to know what they concerned.

Four of them were the murders of the women that he'd talked about. Left in dumpsters on Friday nights. The fifth one was a Narcotics case she didn't recognize.

She ran out of time to see the last one.

As she heard voices nearing, and loud thuds on the piers surrounding her, she knew it was time to move.

She grabbed the six folders, and a small box in the back that she didn't know the contents of, and shut the safe again.

Her mind racing, she ran towards the kitchenette and reached into the cupboards, hoping to find anything that could help.

To her relief, she found a roll of trash bags. She quickly ripped one off, shoved the rest back into the cupboard, and made her way up to the hatch, already putting the files and box into the black bag.

Just in time to see a flashlight almost shining in her eyes.

Maggie dodged out of the way, running to the stern of the ship. She ran, jumping off the boat, and landing less-than-elegantly in the water.

It was freezing. She screamed as the cold made spikes of pain shoot through her head, her headache from earlier coming back with a vengeance.

The air in the bag in her hands dragged her upwards, so she had to resurface, her head leaning against the back of the boat.

The voices above her now made it to the deck.

"…you hear that?" It sounded like Holmes.

"Nah, was probably just a bird. There's a lot of them splashing around at night." She didn't recognize that voice, but it was probably either another detective, or the security guard.

"You search below deck, I'll do the boathouse."

"…It's actually called a cockpit." A third voice.

"Who gives a fuck what it's called, Johnson? Get the fuck to work."

Maggie waited until she was certain that both detectives and the guard were occupied and moving around to take a deep breath and dive back underneath the surface, swimming towards a ladder on the other side of the pier.

She managed to slip away undetected and ran to her bike, still dripping water. The encounter had been close – too close.

But now at least she was one step ahead of Holmes.

She pulled her bike into the street, started it, and sped off through the night. Her first thought was to go back to Alex's apartment, but coming home drenched and holding a trashbag filled with evidence and case files didn't seem like an inconspicuous act.

But her phone was completely soaked, so there was no way that she could send out a text to indicate that she was fine, and spending the night at her own apartment.

Both options meant trouble.

But she had to review those files, so her own apartment seemed much more appealing.

If that meant another fight with Alex and her damn worried eyes, so be it.

At least she made it home tonight. Hayes never had that luck.

Without a second thought, she revved her bike's engine, and sped off into the street towards her apartment.