Voight became aware of the sensation of his heart racing in his chest. The second thing he became aware of was that he was burning up. He felt like he was cooking in his own skin. He woke up with a startled gasp and shot up on the couch, kicking the blanket off of him. In the moment he was so disoriented the first thing that came to his mind to say was to call out, "Erin?"

The sun shining in the windows indicated it was sometime in the late afternoon. Voight realized he was on the couch and then came to the conclusion that his clothes were soaked with perspiration.

Olinsky entered the room and nonchalantly asked, "How're you feeling?"

Voight rubbed his eyes and looked around the room, "What's going on? What time is it?"

Al checked his watch and said, "It's going on 5 o' clock."

"What happened?" Voight asked.

"It's the strangest thing," Al said innocently, "You were talking to Trudy one minute and then you were out cold."

Voight looked up at him and quickly realized, "You drugged me."

"I prefer to think of it as assisting the sandman," Olinsky replied. "Sorry, friend, you weren't in any position to clock in today...and truth be told, I think you know it."

Voight still wasn't fully awake, and it showed. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed a hand against them as he tried to concentrate. "What'd you tell everyone?"

"I didn't tell them," Al said. "Trudy did."

"Trudy?" Voight looked at him. Then it started to come back to him. "Trudy was here."

"Yeah." Al picked up a glass of water off the dining room table and took it over to Voight and told him, "You better drink this, after sleeping for 12 hours I'd say dehydration is a safe bet."

Voight took the glass and eyed it skeptically.

"I didn't put anything in it," Al told him. "Besides, you know you can't lace plain water with anything."

"Right now I wouldn't put it past you," Voight said as he took a small sip, as if testing it. He was slowly starting to become more alert and he glared at his friend, "You crossed a line, Al."

"Yeah, I did," he responded simply. He added, "But you know I had a good reason for doing it. That dream might've scared you, but the way you were acting last night and this morning scared the hell out of me."

There was a knock at the front door.

"Now what?" Voight asked as he swung his feet onto the floor to get up.

"Stay there, I'll see," Al went to answer the door. He was definitely not expecting the person standing on the porch.

"Hi Al."

"Kim," Al tried not to let on how surprised he was at the woman carrying a vase of flowers. "What're you doing here?"

"I heard about Hank, is he here? How's he doing?"

"He's, uh, yeah, come see for yourself." Al wasn't sure what Kim had heard, but he knew it would be far less suspicious to let her see Voight for herself than to make up a reason why she couldn't see him.

Kim walked through the dining room and saw Voight laid on the couch and all but ran over to him and dropped on one knee to see him eye to eye. "Sarge, how're you doing? Are you feeling better?"

Voight looked at her with a puzzled expression and asked, "Huh?"

"We all heard what happened, and I decided to come and see how you were doing," Kim held up the vase awkwardly, "and to bring you some flowers, they're from everyone...well actually Hailey and I picked them out, the guys are just..." Kim looked to the ceiling and shook her head, "useless when it comes to flowers."

Cautiously, Voight asked, "What's going on?" His mind was racing, but for the life of him he couldn't remember anything that would clue him in. "What did Trudy tell you?"

Kim leaned in as if it was confidential and assured him, "It's okay, Trudy told us that you threw your back out," she nodded back towards Olinsky, "and that Al had to take you to the doctor. How bad is it?"

Voight still wasn't getting it, so Alvin jumped in. "The doctor gave him some top grade pain pills, he was out of it for a while."

That would work for Hank.

"And you must've had a fever," Kim said as she put the flowers down and felt his forehead, and noticed the sweat stains on his shirt, "you're completely soaked."

"Nah, it's drool, I slept hard," Voight joked.

"Are you feeling better now?" she asked.

"I'm feeling fine," he insisted, but decided not to push it. He leaned back against the pillow and told Burgess, "I'll be in tomorrow. How's the case going?"

"Uh," she shook her head, "we don't have a lot of leads yet, but we're working on it...so far it just looks like Woods was in the wrong place at the wrong time, we haven't been able to find any connection to him and anyone in that neighborhood."

"When's the funeral?"

"Nobody's said yet," Kim told him. "You're not actually going, are you?"

"I will," Voight answered. "Denny Brooks and I were partners, we were friends once...that all changed when he became a dirty cop. But he was still a cop and as such, he will receive a policeman's funeral with all the stops. His daughter will be there and I intend to be there for her sake...she doesn't know what her father's done. She never will know, it can't do any good now. All she'll have is the legacy left behind at the cemetery."

Kim looked at him in astonishment. "That's really nice, Hank..." there was an awkward pause before she equally awkwardly asked, "Can I...hug you or will that make your back worse?"

"Let's find out," Voight said with a small smile. He sat up slowly and Kim put her arms around his neck. Hank reciprocated and told her, "Thanks for the flowers. I'll see you tomorrow."

After a couple minutes, Kim left, leaving the two men to talk amongst themselves again. Voight stood up and hugged Olinsky.

"We're not going through this again, are we?" Al asked.

"Thank you for what you did," Voight told him. "Thank you for helping me two years ago."

Al put his arm around Voight's back in return and said, "Yeah well, that's what friends do."

"Hey," Voight pulled away from him, "you up for dinner?"

"I could eat," he answered.

"I'll go shower and change, we're going to take a guest with us."

"So how're you doing, Hank?" Trudy asked when he called her that evening.

Voight held his cell phone in one hand as he stood before his bedroom mirror and looked at his reflection as he got dressed.

"I'm doing fine, Trudy. I want to thank you for covering for me."

"Yeah well don't thank me too much," she replied. "To really sell it, I told everybody that your back went out in the shower and Al had to help you get dressed."

Voight threw his head back and laughed. That would explain Burgess's behavior earlier.

"So what're your plans tonight?" she asked.

"Al and me are gonna take Brianna Woods out to dinner," Voight answered. "She's a good kid, she can't help what her father was, and I don't think she should be alone through all of this."

"You're a good man, Voight," Trudy said.

"Don't spread it around, people will talk," he replied. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Okay, bye, Hank."

"Bye, Trudy."

Four days after Denny Woods' murder, Intelligence tracked down the gunman. He was known to his associates as Spyder, a thin, wiry man with half his body covered in tattoos. He had been sought out by one gang and paid $1,000 to open fire on members of a rival gang to send a message, but as it turned out, he'd gotten the wrong address. As he sat in the cage at the 21st District, the door opened and Voight entered the room. Spyder hadn't yet had the privilege of meeting Hank Voight, all the same when he saw the cop entering the room, Spyder jumped to his feet.

Voight stood in front of the cage and looked at him for a moment, then he said to the shooter, "A thousand bucks for a life, was it worth it? I don't mean the cop you shot, your life, for a thousand bucks, and now you're going to die behind bars. Ballistics just sent over a report on the gun you used to shoot that cop and those two kids...tied a dozen more murders to it. So when you're in maximum security for the next 70 years, I want you to know something. Officially, that jury's going to convict you because you killed a cop. And his daughter is going to take some minor comfort in the fact that you are going to rot for killing him. Unofficially, he was a dirty cop whose life wasn't worth anything, but she doesn't know that, but every day you spend locked up isn't going to be for him, it'll be for the 14 innocent lives you took."

The man inside the cage just looked at Voight and didn't say anything.

"Well, you're smarter than most of the people who have been in your position," Voight told him. "No excuses, no victim blaming, not even shifting blame to the people who hired you. To be honest, I gotta respect that. It takes a real man to take the full consequences of his actions and keep his mouth shut, even if it means he dies for it. If this state had the death penalty, believe me, you'd get it, and I would be there, front row seat, and I'd watch them push the plungers, and I'd watch your body starting to shut down, and watch the expression on your face as you realize it's happening and it's real and there's nothing you can do. And I'd watch them check your vitals to make sure, and I'd watch them wheel your body out on a gurney, and dump you in an unmarked grave. Instead, I'm just going to take comfort in knowing my tax dollars are going towards your housing at MCC for the rest of your unnatural life. As a professional courtesy though, I want to thank you for what you've done for the rest of us in the CPD."

And with that, Voight walked away.

Denny Woods' funeral was the next day. Voight attended, as did the rest of the police officers, in full dress uniform. He escorted Brianna to the funeral, and once his professional obligations were fulfilled for the service, he sat beside her as the eulogy began and offered a professional shoulder for her to cry on when it all became too much for her.

Voight still remained long after the funeral was over. Everybody else had gone home hours ago, only he remained, and he stared at the grave that Woods' coffin had been lowered in and the dirt had been recently laid over.

Trudy made her way down the aisles to where Voight sat up front. She'd attended as a professional courtesy but left with the others earlier in the day. She'd returned when she realized that Hank was still at the cemetery and decided to find out what was going on. She sat down in the seat next to Voight and looked at him. Sometime after the service had ended, he'd taken out his black glasses and put them on, but from the angle where Trudy sat, she was able to see a tear slowly making its way down his otherwise stone face.

"What's the matter, Hank?" Trudy asked.

His voice was solid when he answered, whatever he was feeling now was nothing compared to what she'd seen five days earlier.

"I hated him, Trudy," Voight answered as he continued to stare straight ahead at the burial plot. "I don't hate him for what he was, but what he became, and what he forced me to do. He knew I couldn't just look the other way while he framed an innocent man, and he resented me for it. To his dying day he resented me for not backing him up." Voight slowly shook his head. "I hate to say it, Trudy, but I'm glad that he's dead. So help me, I feel better knowing he's dead."

Trudy reached over and rubbed his back. "It's alright, Hank, we understand."

Before Voight could ask 'We?', he heard footsteps behind them, and heard Alvin sit down in the row behind them. Through a reflection on his sunglasses, Voight saw without turning around, that Al had changed out of his dress uniform and was back in his regular blue jeans, black shirt and cap.

"Ready to go?" Al asked. After a short pause he asked Voight, "You wanna dig him up and make sure he's dead?"

Voight chuckled in spite of himself. It wasn't something they hadn't done before, granted for different reasons.

"Nah, I'm good," Hank said as he got up from his seat. "Let's get out of here. It's over."