Folks, thank you all so much for the faves, follows and reviews. Thanks to Bailey for being beta though all mistakes and questionable decisions are mine. I'm nothing if not stubborn. As always, please let me know what you think good or bad. I love feedback and hearing what is working and what doesn't.

Also, some of you may have noticed how I spell Perik. Honestly, that's not how I'd spell it if I got to name the character but that's how it appears in IMDB and in the closed captioning of Rookie Blue. It's a surname that most commonly appears in the Netherlands. I think that this is a sign that I've gone down the rabbit hole in my writing research. Still I hope you enjoy it!

By noon the next day Gail thought even Price, relentless optimist that she was, would have had to admit that they were going to get nothing by sitting on the "crash pad" any longer. Ryan's tech minions had found out that Stapleton had taken a temporary personal leave of absence three weeks ago. So she was not surprised when they got the go ahead to move on the apartment. She was, however, surprised that she was ordered to stay behind.

"What the fuck?!"

"Gail, be reasonable," Oliver said in a calm tone.

"Oliver, I'm going in there. I need to see if there's something. Maybe something meant for me," Gail responded.

"Gail, I can't let you go in there. It's too dangerous. You being there might put someone else in danger. You have to know, I can't let you go."

"You owe me," Gail said as she crossed her arms and glared at him.

"Not gonna work."

"You lied to me, Oliver. Lied to me for months."

"Gail…"

"Ollie, please. Let me do my job. Nobody knows Perik like me. What if there's something there that I would see but someone else would miss? Do you wanna take that chance?"

"Okay. But you're in the second wave. You don't go in until everything is secure. I want you in the back of the surveillance van until we give the all clear," Oliver said and Gail snarled slightly. "That's the best offer you're gonna get, Peck. Take it or leave it. We're on the move in 10."

"Alright, fine, but I resent you treating me like a child."

"Gail, you're not a child. You're a damn fine detective and my favorite partner ever. I'm not doing this because I don't think you can take care of yourself. I'm doing it because you shouldn't have to. We take care of our own here at 15, like family, and you Peck, are my first born." Gail's eyes clouded with unshed tears. Oliver Shaw was her favorite human. Oliver noticed and squeezed her shoulder. "I know, Darlin', I know."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Traci and Luke stood in the hallway a few doors down from Megan Stapleton's Toronto apartment guns drawn. Traci took a deep breath and whispered, "You know, Jer used to not want me to get out of the van."

"Really?" Luke asked.

"Yeah," Traci answered.

"You know I can hear you losers through your radio mikes. Right?" Gail said from the safety of van.

"Sorry, Puddin' Peck," Traci grinned as she said it. Luke smiled back. "On three, ok?"

"Like 1, 2, 3, then go, or actually on 3?" Luke asked.

"Jesus! Kick the door in already!" Gail yelled at them.

"On 3," Traci said as they, and the ETF team made their way to the door.

They counted in unison quietly, "1, 2, 3!" and kicked the door in together. It swung wildly on its hinges and banged against the wall. "Police! Freeze!" Later, Traci wouldn't be able to say who was more surprised, the naked brunette woman on her knees on the floor, the naked redheaded woman sitting on the couch with her legs wrapped around the brunette on the floor, or Luke. The women managed to get themselves covered before the majority of the tactical team filed into the apartment clearing the rooms.

"Ladies, is Megan Stapleton here?" Traci asked. They shook their heads vehemently, eyes wide. "Why don't you put on some clothes." It was a statement, not a question. "We need to search the apartment and ask you a few questions about Megan." They slowly nodded their heads in agreement.

"Clear," the tactical leader spoke into his radio.

"Thanks guys. We can take it from here," Traci said to him. He motioned for his guys to follow him out the door.

After they left, Luke spoke. "I'll just go and have a look at Megan's room. Which one is it?"

"We don't really have rooms exactly. We just share with the person with the schedule most opposite from our own. She spends the most time in the last room on the left," the brunette said in a slightly accented voice from her new perch on the couch. Luke nodded and left the room.

The women finished putting on their clothes while Traci walked through the living room looking around. She was about to start questioning them when Gail walked in. "Ho-ly Shit!" The redhead exclaimed. "You're Gail!"

Gail looked at Traci and then back to the women, "I am. How do you know that?"

"I've…seen…well…you should see," the redhead responded.

"Nash! Get in here!"

Traci and Gail walked toward the sound of Luke's voice. He was in one of the bedrooms. "What is it, Callahan?" Gail asked as they entered. Luke was standing next to a desk, holding up a picture of Gail smiling and laughing. There were others behind him on the desk each more candid and personal than the next. When Gail got to the desk she carefully looked at the framed pictures. She recognized a selfie as one she'd taken with Holly, but Holly's face had been replaced by Megan Stapleton. She gestured to a now gloved Luke to rifle through the snapshots he had taken out of a desk drawer. Most of them were of her smiling and happy, uncharacteristic of her, but innocuous for the most part. She gasped when she saw the one Holly had taken in her bed the night before they broke up at the Penny. Gail was naked from the waist up, a look of complete adoration on her face. She looked happy. She looked sated. She looked like she'd just had her brains fucked out and she had. Gail remembered the night in vivid detail. A tidal wave of embarrassment washed over her.

Luke cleared his throat, "Uh, so, yeah. It looks like she's collected pics of you." Gail didn't look at him. She couldn't. "Can you identify when and where these were taken?"

"A lot of them. Not all," Gail responded.

"Okay. We're going to have to get some techs in here to collect these," he looked at her apologetically.

Traci walked up and put her hand on Gail's shoulder, "Gail, do you need a minute?"

"No. I'm fine. I want to be with you when you interview them," Gail gestured toward the living room and the two women in there.

Traci searched her face and whatever she saw there must have been good enough, "Okay."

While Luke supervised the crime scene techs in the bedroom, Traci made her apologies to the two women telling them that the delicate nature of the investigation necessitated the no-knock warrant. She explained that Megan Stapleton was the prime suspect in five murders and that if they were contacted by her that they were to notify the police immediately. She suggested after they finished with their questions that the women pack their belongings and stay in a hotel until Megan was arrested.

Gail allowed Traci to lead the interrogation. She did her best to sit still and not draw any more attention to herself. Well, any more attention than the small photographic shrine to her in the bedroom was already. The two women were Emma Rogers and Marianne Baptiste. Emma, the redhead, was definitely the more verbal of the two. Traci began leading them through the standard questions. No they didn't really know Megan all that well. They were occasional roommates. They hadn't known anything about her really, except that she seemed to be at least mildly obsessed with her "ex-girlfriend" Gail and had the photos of Gail since they met her about six months ago. Traci got the names of four other flight attendants who stayed in the apartment part time. She'd have other law enforcement agencies in their home towns track them down.

"So she said Gail was her ex-girlfriend?" Traci asked.

"Yes. She said that Gail had wanted to adopt a little girl back home and that when she had to move for work, Gail stayed behind," Emma answered.

Gail didn't respond to that, though she felt like something broke inside her. Traci asked, "How did she say she felt about Gail?"

"She was the love of her life. Absolute," Marianne responded in her accented English.

"Did she say if she kept in contact with Gail?" Traci asked.

"No. She said it was too painful but that she was trying to figure out how to…how did she put it? It wasn't win her back. That's not what she said. She said…" Emma snapped the fingers of her right hand rapidly. "She said, 'anyone who'd leave Gail without a fight deserved to be punished.' That's what she said. It sounded weird, but, honestly, not much weirder than the rest of the things she said."

Gail and Traci shared a look. "How would you characterize her demeanor?"

"Contained crazy. Like one of those really hot chicks who you can tell would be fantastic in bed but you know it comes with a side of crazy," Emma responded without hesitation. At a look from Marianne she said, "What? You know it's true. How would you describe it?"

"I would not have addressed it that crudely, but yes. Like that," Marianne smiled indulgently at her lover.

Traci had a feeling that in a moment it wasn't going to matter if she and Gail were in here or not. Gail broke the spell, "Did she ever mention anyone she disliked? Anyone in my life?" Traci frowned at her. Gail didn't care.

"Oh yeah. She hated your new girlfriend. Said she didn't deserve you. Said she didn't appreciate you. Holly, right?" Emma said.

Gail stood and began pacing back and forth. "Tell me you both know that, that there's no way I actually dated cuckoo for cocoa puffs."

"If you say so," Marianne responded in a blasé tone.

"I didn't! I…"

"Gail!" Traci yelled, "Go check on Luke and the techs." Gail looked like she wanted to argue but she walked from the room.

"Holly is her love, yes?" Marianne asked Traci.

Traci was still focused where Gail had last been in the hallway when she answered, "Yes."

"She needs to tell her to be careful then. I'm not sure there is a limit to what Megan would do to someone that she thought Gail loved more than her," Emma said.

"Yeah, we have Holly covered. Now we just have to…"

"Cherchez la femme?" Marianne asked.

"Something like that," Traci answered.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The ride to the lab had been silent thus far. Traci thought that after Gail had insisted that they go maybe she'd open up and talk. That was not to be the case. "Gail, do you want to talk?"

"Nope."

"I know this has to be hard."

"Do you know, Trace? Do you really? Tell me how hard this is," Gail yelled.

"I'm not the enemy here, Gail."

"Fine, but you have no idea how I'm feeling here. I just got to look through pictures of me. Intimate pictures of me that no one should see. No one but…" she started but caught herself in time. "And now everyone has seen. They'll be entered into evidence. My parents…"

"Know that you're a consenting adult."

"That's never stopped them before. This whole thing makes me a…victim again."

"Stop. It does not. You're a survivor, Gail. A woman who's clawed her way back. So am I. I wasn't abducted but Perik took Jerry from me. He took away what I thought was my one chance at love. I still miss Jer. I miss him every day. But I love your brother. He's helped me put my life back together. There's life after this."

"Not for me it seems. Even in my worst nightmares, I could wake up. There's no waking up from this."

"We're going to catch her. We're going to catch them."

"You know what those photographs mean? It means someone has been close enough to Holly to copy the photos off her phone." Gail rubbed her thumb against her lips and mumbled to herself, "Why would she keep them?"

"Stapleton? Because she's fixated on you romantically it seems."

Gail looked up, surprised that Traci answered, and surprised she had spoken the question aloud at all. "No," Gail responded softly.

"Do you really not know?" Traci asked and Gail shook her head. "She loves you, Gail. Those pictures of you show a Gail that I've only seen a few times. You were happy and unguarded and the one you seem so worried about? You look like you're completely in love with whoever took it. Did you ever tell her?" Gail shook her head again. "Well, if she had that photograph, she knew. That's probably why she kept it. Maybe…maybe you should let me take the lead on this though."

"Whatever."

When they walked into the lab, Ryan met them at the door. "I called Luke. He filled me in about the apartment and the pictures. I told Holly. She's…in the ladies room…gathering her thoughts. I…I don't know if she's ready to face Gail yet."

Gail looked in the corner to the smashed beaker there. "She throw that?" Ryan barely nodded in agreement. "Then we're good. She's as pissed off as I am." At Ryan's furrowed brow reaction, Gail said, "I'm not mad at Holly."

"Well, that makes one of us," Holly said as she entered the room. Gail could tell she had splashed water on her face. Her eyes were slightly puffy but when she looked at Gail, they were clear. "Gail, you have to know I had no idea that those images had been copied, that she had anything of you."

"She doesn't have anything of me, Holly. They're only pictures." Gail could tell by the look on Holly's face that she'd said something wrong. For the life of her, she couldn't figure out what. She pushed it aside for now. "Holly, we brought some digital copies of the photos from the scene. Do you think you can identify them or at least maybe when someone could have copied them? I can't identify them all."

"Yeah, yeah. Of course," Holly said as she took the tablet from Traci. She began to flip through them her face turning grayer with each pass of her hand. When she got to the one of Gail in bed her eyes sought out Gail immediately. "I…Gail…I…"

"It's okay, Lunchbox."

"Goddammit! There's nothing okay about this. The only person that was ever supposed to see that picture….I never meant for anyone to see it. I'm sorry," Holly finished her complexion doing nothing to hide the blush on her face.

"So how long were these on your phone, Holly?"

"What do you mean?"

"We're trying to get an idea of a timeframe when she could have gotten them," Traci clarified.

"As far as I know they are still on my phone," Holly answered as she flushed even more.

"Can we see?" Traci asked.

"Yeah. Of course," Holly handed over her phone.

Traci and Gail spent the next few minutes flipping through pictures on Holly's phone. Once they had finished, Ryan spoke up, "The boys can check the phone to see if and when it's been cloned. I just got finished texting with Brandon."

"Good," Gail said. Then to Holly, "Watch your back. The roommates said that Megan hated you; said they didn't think that there was a limit to what she would do to you. Ryan, you'll keep her safe, right?"

"Absolutely," Ryan said.

Traci's phone rang. "Nash. Oliver, slow down. Yes, she's here. They're both here in the lab with me. What?! Okay. Okay. No. Luke is still with the techs processing the apartment. I'll go. Okay. I'll bring them. No, I think it's best. Because they're the most qualified. Is the location secure? Where is it? Fine. We'll be there in thirty." She hung up and took a deep breath. "There's a body. She's naked and has been carved on, then it appears dumped in Grange Park."

"Hooray. More dead women who look like me," Gail said sarcastically.

"No. According to Oliver, this one matches Holly's description."