10 MINUTES AFTER
Jane still paces back and forth calling the same number at even intervals, which is every time the bell falls flat. She grumbles under her breath trying not to give away all measure of composure, but this is Maura. She can't rein in the pounding in her chest, or the fear gurgling just at the top of her throat. She should have known. It was her job to know. It is her job to protect. She knows the target was Maura; she doesn't have to wait to be told.
Her family sits around her. Waiting for something to happen, something to indicate what happens next. Angela doesn't say a word, but Jane can hear her loud and clear. "You need to do something, you need to do something now. How could you miss this?" It rings loud inside her head and she swallows the blame she is already tacking onto her chest. Korsak is trying to piece together what could have happened, but it's only been ten minutes so his fear is still held back by his logic, something Jane abandoned the moment the thought of Maura being in danger crossed her mind. He thinks that could easily be busy, her phone forgotten to a side. Frankie takes on the same approach, but a little more ready to jump at the first sign of trouble.
They all wait for Jane's cue. She dials a different number this time and the answer is almost instantaneous.
"Nina, I need a favor." Jane doesn't bother with pleasantries. Time is slipping away. Each moment is important. Later, when she is alone she will remember each second in painful detail. Another second when she didn't know where Maura was, another moment where she was failing. She will play it over in her head in an endless loop to see what she missed, how she missed it.
Nina nods, but Jane can't see. She continues anyway.
"Can you go down to see if Maura is there in her office?"
Step one. Make sure. She has to be there. She needs to be there. It will all be fine, Jane lies to herself. She probably just put it on silent and forgot about it. Maybe a body came in and she forgot the phone in her office. Maybe she forgot the phone in the morgue earlier. There are so many possibilities. The worst case doesn't have to be true. It can't be true.
"Sure, I'll call you when I have her."
15 MINUTES AFTER
"She isn't there, Detective."
"I need you to run a trace on her phone." Jane says without hesitation, "Nina, I need you to do it now and fast."
"Is everything alright?"
"No," Nothing is alright.
Jane is already out of the house and in her car. The others take her lead and follow leaving behind a worrying Angela.
1 HOUR AFTER
The place is setup like a crime scene, but there are no officers or detectives around. Only Maura's car, a lone squad car, some police tape blocking the entrance to where she finds Maura's phone on the ground and drag marks in running the opposite direction. Her heart jumps to her throat. She wants to scrub clean the image of a helpless, overpowered, afraid Maura that is forming in her head. She wants this to be a nightmare. But Jane is a detective and it doesn't take much for her to piece together an image of what happened here.
The call log on Maura's phone tells them she received a call from an unknown number just before she arrived at the scene of the crime. Only it wasn't officially a crime scene. Yet. The abductor made it that. She drove over expecting a crime scene. She walked in to find the body and he grabbed her.
Jane wonders if Maura was already taken by the time she realized. She wonders if Maura ever even saw her calls. She wonders if he put her in the trunk, how large that trunk was, if she could breathe in it, if he drugged her before he put her there, if he tied her up, if he gagged her, if she screamed, if she fought, if she struggled to get free, if she wondered why Jane was not there to save her, if she is still wondering how long it will take for Jane to come get her, why she isn't there already, if she is wondering how long it took for Jane to realize she was gone. Jane tries to close her mind to stop picturing the terror that Maura surely felt. But Jane cannot help but think if he will hurt her, or touch her, or... No Jane will not let herself think of that. Maura is alive. Jane will save her. She will hold her in her arms and never let go again. Maura will be fine. Jane will make sure of it.
6 HOURS AFTER
Jane paces back and forth at the precinct. There are pictures of the crime scene stuck to the board along with notes, but they may as well be pointless. There was nothing left there. No clue to tell her where Maura is. Nothing to divert her rage towards. So she paces. The place is mostly empty with the exception of Nina who is trying to run down the only lead they have: the number that called Maura's phone, Frankie who looks over the photos again and again almost making Jane want to throw something at him, except she knows he is only trying to help, and a few stray people who caught the night shift.
Her throat feels parched and raw. She wants to break down, but she cannot afford to waste time with tears when she does not know what is happening to Maura. She runs every inch of the crime scene in her head. She pictures Maura's face the last time she saw her. She replays their conversation. Jane clenches and unclenches her left hand to get it to stop trembling, but the tremors and the exhaustion of the past few hours and days reaches its toll and she has to settle down on her chair. She is no good to Maura passed out.
26 HOURS AFTER
When Nina tells them the phone that the call was made from was encrypted so sophisticatedly that she has never before seen anything like it Jane slams her fist onto her desk. Her eyes now linger on the faint lines that her anger has drawn onto the wood. She has been violently letting out her anger a lot in the past few hours. First the wall in the ladies room downstairs. Then the pencil that snapped in half. Then the copier that jammed.
She is sure that her T-shirt now stinks, as are Korsak and Frankie that urge her to go home. But Jane cannot leave. Leaving would mean they have nothing, and Jane can not accept that. The first 48 hours are the most important. If she does not find something now... no she will not allow her mind to wander off like that.
181 HOURS AFTER
Jane sits on the counter in Maura's house with a cup of coffee waiting in front of her. Her shoulders hang low, the craters under her eyes dark, her throat scratchy. Constance settles down besides her with a cup clutched in her own hands and takes a sip. Jane cannot understand how the coffee manages to make it down her throat when Maura could be thirsty, starved. How many days could a person survive without food and water? How many days could Maura survive? How many days could Jane survive without Maura and this crushing guilt eating away at her insides? Everything that Jane is forced to swallow down by nagging loved ones usually comes back up almost instantly. Even the taste of coffee isn't palatable anymore.
Angela serves up breakfast, but Jane gets up and walks out of the front door. She spends most nights there now, at least the ones where she isn't out searching or in the office trying to find something, anything that can help.
How Maura must hate her for taking this long. 7 days. 181 hours. Her hope dwindling, she wonders if she will ever see that smile again. She wonders if Maura will ever forgive her for taking this long. 181 hours alone, afraid. 181 hours of not knowing if she will ever come back home. 181 hours of losing hope, losing faith in Jane. 181 hours and each tick of the clock adding another moment where Jane is failing Maura.
368 HOURS AFTER
Jane hurtles the paperweight sitting on her desk across the room. It crashes against the wall drawing all eyes on her. When she glares at them everyone quickly turns their attention back to their work. Korsak comes over and drapes an arm over her shoulder, but she shrugs it away.
"I can't do this anymore, Vince." Jane cries.
"We will find her, Jane."
Will we? Jane doesn't say out loud, because saying it out loud makes it real and it cannot be real.
Nina works day and night on cracking the encryption, deciphering things that are beyond Jane's understanding. Jane does not do well with feeling helpless. She spends her time scouring the establishments around the area looking for suspects, footage, witnesses, anything that can give her more than this not knowing, anything that can make her feel less helpless. She pesters them to the point where one of them threatens to file a harassment suit against her at which point Korsak intervenes and stops her with the threat of removing her from the case.
Jane goes home to Maura's house. She lies down on the couch that has now become her bed, but like most of the nights in past weeks the night turns to day but sleep still evades her. And rightfully so. Perhaps Maura does not have a bed. Will she have slept in all these days? Will she have given up all hope yet?
1000 HOURS AFTER
It has been 41 days. 41 days of going home without the woman she cannot live without.
Jane counts the hours. 1000.
Almost 1001.
People cannot survive 1000 hours without food or water, that much she knows. So Maura has to have eaten something at this point. She has to.
Jane takes a deep breath and places both hands on the table in Maura's office, now the office of the interim Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She regrets nothing about the first time she met the man. She glared at him and threatened him with physical harm if anything in the office was changed. He took the warning to heart and rarely ever used to office, instead Jane had made her hideaway for times like these where she could not breathe and no matter how hard she tried the air would not reach her lungs.
She breaks down in a fit of something caught between laughter and crying when she remembers the first time one of those African decorative masks arrived and Maura hung it up on the wall. Jane had gone overboard with a whole act of being terrified to the point where Maura could not control her giggling and even offered to take it down. It was the funny looking one with the long nose, although they are all quite odd looking. Jane wonders if people ever used these for anything other than putting them up as frightening pieces of decorations.
She stays there on the floor crying for some time until her tears run dry, but her chest still feels like it is empty. Perhaps it will stay that way until she sets eyes on Maura again. Perhaps it will stay this way forever, reminding her of how she failed, is failing still, to keep her best friend safe.
Maura's idiosyncrasies are growing fainter inside her head. It has been 41 days since Maura has been in this office, yet Jane can still catch her scent lingering in the air, perhaps because no one besides her ventures there much. No one would want to face the wrath of a grieving, guilt-ridden Jane Rizzoli.
1608 HOURS AFTER
Jane takes a deep breath. This could be it.
Over two months of sleepless nights have further thinned down Jane's already skeletal structure. Her eyes are bloodshot. Her hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail. She cannot remember the last time she closed her eyes and nightmares of Maura alone and afraid did not plague her. She has tried to close her eyes as little as possible.
The leader of rescue team with them breaks down the door, but it is Jane who is first to charge in with her determination set on her face. Korsak has her back and the rest follow behind. It is a normal looking house. There is nothing that stands out. They found their way to it when a new lead showed up on her desk miraculously. Korsak warned her that tips are often misleading but Jane could not let go of any chance, no matter how slight, to save Maura. Not after 67 days of continuously failing. 67 days of not being able to take any other case and not allowing anyone else to take this one away from her, because it has already taken over her life, it is her life.
"Clear," a voice calls out from the room at the end of the hall.
"Clear," another voice.
"Clear,"
Jane climbs the stairs and turns to the room on her left. She twists open the door knob to find a figure sitting on a rolling chair turn around to face her just as the door opens. He chuckles.
"Welcome, Detective Rizzoli."