Antonio grabbed a pillow and shoved it over his head trying to block out the noise, he groaned and threw the pillow across the room. Climbing out of bed he pulled on a t-shirt and headed towards the bathroom. "Give him to me." He lifted Elias up and held him to his chest, "Okay buddy you need to stop crying and sleep." He pretended to lecture his screaming son. He looked at Sylvie, she looked exhausted and she had obviously been crying, the tear stains and puffy face gave her away. He held his hand out and she took it and just sat there holding it. He tugged on it and she stood as he pulled her into him. "Go back to bed and sleep, you need it." He whispered as he held her tight and kissed her on the forehead.
"No, you have to work in the morning, I'm okay." She protested as she laid her head against him. "I can handle him for a couple hours while you sleep, now go lay down, I mean it." He pushed her toward the door.
Elias was a month old and hadn't slept more than two hours at a time and seemed to cry nonstop all the hours in between. He was driving everyone in the house crazy, Sylvie was taking the brunt of the responsibility with Antonio returning to work just a week after he was born. He felt bad but there wasn't much he could do, Gabby and his mom had offered to help but Sylvie was determined to handle it all on her own.
Antonio headed toward the living room with Elias and made himself comfortable on the couch with the baby in this lap. Elias was still crying but settled as soon as Antonio put the bottle in his mouth. "Listen little man, you need to ease up on your mom." Elias was staring at Antonio with big brown eyes as he sucked his bottle down at an impressive rate. "She likes to prove that she can do everything and doesn't know when to ask for help, so I need your help to make sure she doesn't over do it. That means I need you to stop crying all the time and just give her a little break during the day or night."
Antonio felt someone shaking him and opened his eyes, the last thing he remembered was burping the baby and laying down to watch TV. "You're going to be late for work dad." Diego was trying to wake him up and picked Elias up. "I'm up, I've got him, I'll take him to Sylvie." Antonio sat up and Diego handed him back to his dad. Antonio grabbed his phone and checked the time, he groaned, it was eight thirty and he was already late. He texted Voight and headed upstairs.
"Dude you look like shit." Jay teased as Antonio threw his jacket over the back of his chair. "I wanna see what you look like after no sleep and a screaming baby all night because I can loan you one." Antonio snapped back, not in the mood to deal with anyone's bullshit. "Joking Tony." Jay held his hands up in mock surrender.
The day had been rough, it was only one and Antonio was on his umpteenth cup of coffee trying to keep himself awake. "Has Eli stopped crying at all?" Kim asked from across her desk. Antonio quietly shook his head, "How's Sylvie holding up?" she asked. "She's not but she's stubborn and wont ask for help." Antonio explained wishing she would just accept the help from their friends.
Antonio's phone buzzed, it was Sylvie, "Hey honey." He answered and heard nothing but Sylvie crying and screaming on the other end. Antonio jumped up and headed for Voight's office. "Sylvie! Calm down." He yelled, trying to get her attention. He couldn't understand what she was saying. "Is this Mrs. Dawson' s husband?" A males voice was all of a sudden on the phone. Antonio was panicking and Voight was looking at him confused. "Yes, who is this?" he demanded.
"This is Officer Tillman with CPD, we've had an incident and need you to come to the grocery store on Milwaukee." The officer stated calmly. "What is going on?" Antonio yelled into the phone. "I will explain..." Antonio cut the officer off, "This is Detective Dawson and Sergeant Voight with the Intelligence Unit and you will explain to me right now." Antonio screamed into the phone as him and Voight ran through the building towards Voight's car.
The officer stammered, "Umm, your son is missing, we believe he was kidnapped." Antonio's heart stopped, there was no way this was happening again. "What the fuck do you mean my son is missing?" He was yelling at the top of his lungs. "We believe he was taken out of the cart while your wife was shopping, we're pulling the video right now."
It was the longest ride of his life, Hank pulled into the parking lot and Antonio took off out the door before the car even came to a stop. He tore through the crowd pushing people out of the way not giving a single care who he was hitting. He saw her blonde hair and made a mad dash for her, wrapping her and Sophia in his arms. She was hysterical, "What happened?" he held her face in his hands looking in her eyes. Sylvie kept shaking her head and held onto Antonio as tight as she could. "He was there and I turned around for only a minute and when I turned back around he wasn't in his carseat." She sobbed into his chest.
Antonio felt a hand on his back and was surprised to find Adam when he turned around. The team must of followed when him and Voight tore out of the bullpen. "Voight is getting command of the scene, Kev's pulling the surveillance footage now." Adam explained to them. Antonio nodded at him and returned his attention to Sylvie.
"I'm sorry." Sylvie kept repeating as she sobbed. "You didn't do anything wrong, we'll get him back." He whispered as he held her as tight as he could. He saw Trudy heading towards them. "I'm going to leave you with Trudy and I'm going to help the team find Elias." He put his forehead to hers, "I'm going to find him, I promise." He pulled back and kissed her on the head.
Antonio headed toward the office where the team was watching the video. "Did it catch anything?" he asked desperately. Kevin moved out of the way to show him what they caught, "We can see Sylvie here, pushing the cart with Elias in his carseat and Sophia in the back but here she goes around the corner and we can't see anything after that." Kev turned to look at Antonio who was staring intensely at the screen. "Play it back." He demanded. Kev backed it up and hit play, "There!" Antonio pointed at the screen, "A shadow, see that? It's moving out of frame like there's a door or something." Antonio spun around and ran for that area of the store.
He stood there staring at the row of refrigerator doors in the milk section, none of which could be used to escape. He started to examine each more carefully when he noticed a small door hidden behind a post that could be used for employees to access the refrigerator, it was easily missed by anyone who wasn't looking for it. "Over here!" He yelled to the others.
"What is it?" Kevin asked as Antonio pulled the door open as far as it would go and squeezed through. "I found this access door, I'm pretty sure whoever took Elias used this." He drew his gun as he pushed the rest of the way in, Kev right behind him.
"There's a dock off this refrigerated section for the trucks to unload, the perp could've easily slipped out the back. Hailey, Kim go find video either from here or in the alley." Voight explained and instructed the two women. "On it." Kim nodded her head at Antonio and spun around headed out the door with Hailey trailing behind her.
Antonio stood on the dock staring at all the different ways the kidnapper could have headed with the baby, "With the intersection right there, they could have headed anywhere." Antonio sighed. "We'll find him but you know someone had to have been watching and following her for a while to know when she would be at the store and to know about that access door? This wasn't a grab and run, I bet she knows this person from somewhere." Voight placed his hand on Antonio's shoulder trying to comfort him.
"How the hell are we going to find him, we've got nothing except a shadow." Antonio was pissed, "It's been almost an hour and we've only made it to the docks." He was starting to let his anger take over and let it drive him, crying and wallowing would do no good and wouldn't bring his son back any faster. Voight grabbed both of Antonio's shoulders and looked him square in the eyes, "We will find him, I made a promise to Sylvie when she was pregnant with Sophia that I would always take care of you and your kids and I don't plan on letting her down today." Voight was not going to default on that promise.
"Hey Sarge, Tonio, we've got something from the pharmacy camera on the corner." Kim's voice broke through on the walkie-talkie. Antonio looked at Voight and tore off in a sprint towards Kim's location.
"So this camera faces the exit for the alley, now right here we see this blue truck exit about two minutes after we see the shadow moving off camera on the store video." Hailey was moving the camera frame by frame explaining to Voight and Antonio what they had found.
Hailey spun around and looked at Antonio. "We're already running the partial plate and it appears it's two females inside the truck and Jay's running down traffic camera's to see if we can track them."
Antonio stood silent for a moment just staring at the truck on the screen, "We need to check the security cameras at my house, I have them facing up and down the block." He turned to leave and Kim grabbed his arm, "Go get Sylvie, she needs you and Hailey and I will come and help go through footage." She looked at Voight and he nodded his head in agreeance.
"I feel like we're being punished." Sylvie said sadly from the passenger seat. Antonio looked at her confused, "Why would we be being punished?" he asked. "I don't know but it always feels like bad stuff is happening to us and now look Elias was kidnapped." Sylvie started crying. Antonio reached over and grabbed her hand pulling it up to his chest and just held it there while he drove towards home.
The house was full, Eva and Diego returned home as soon as they heard what had happened and Antonio parents, Matt and Gabby, and Laura had made their ways there also. But for as many people who were there the house was a quiet as a mouse, no one knew what to do or what to say, Sylvie had taken Sophia up to their bedroom and shut herself in.
Antonio opened the door and sat on the edge of the bed, Sophia was asleep and Sylvie was curled up staring blankly at the wall. "You know it's not your fault right?" Antonio asked her. "It is, I shouldn't have taken my eyes off him." She said flatly, her voice void of any emotion. "You can't watch him every second of everyday and you're exhausted. This is on whoever took him, not you." He tried to reassure her. "I'm going to go down and help Kim and Hailey go through the footage, do you need anything?" Sylvie shook her head and continued to stare at the wall, "Okay, I'll be downstairs." He kissed her on the head and shut the door behind him.
"Fuck, we're getting nowhere!" Antonio shouted, frustrated that they had reviewed two weeks' worth of footage and hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary. Kim watched Antonio as he paced the small basement room, she knew he was starting to lose it and probably wouldn't be able to keep his emotions together much longer. "Hey Hailey, can you go upstairs and check in with Voight, let him know that we haven't found anything yet?" Kim wanted to give Antonio a chance to fall apart without anyone around to witness. Hailey looked from Kim to Antonio and understood, "Yeah, I'll probably be a bit, I want a full update."
Kim watched Hailey disappear up the stairs, she went to Antonio and wrapped him in a hug, both just stood there silently hanging onto each other. "We'll find him." Kim spoke after several minutes, Antonio nodded his head into her shoulder. "He so little and defenseless, when Diego was taken at least he was nine, he could fight back, he could scream. God, I would give anything just to hear him crying again." Antonio squeezed her a little tighter.
"Sylvie's blaming herself, she hasn't said it but I know she thinks everyone blames her." He sighed and pulled away from Kim, "What if we don't find him?" Kim could see the tears in Antonio's eyes starting to pool. "Don't think like that, we will. This is what we do and we're the best at it, you know that." She grabbed his hand but he pulled away. "But we fail too, you know that, so what if this is one of the times we do?" Kim didn't know what to say, she could give him all the promises in the world but there were no guarantees when it came to their line of work and she knew that. He was right they absolutely could fail.
"Listen," She grabbed his wrist and pulled him back to her, tears streaming down his face. "IF, and I mean, IF as in very slight half a percent chance, we don't find him, we will NEVER stop looking, I will spend the rest of my life searching and so would every other person in this unit. This negative shit isn't going to help us find him any faster, I need you to know that you will find him so I know that your whole head is in the game, do you understand?"
Antonio wiped his hands down his face and turned his attention back to the screen wanting to avoid any more emotional crap with Kim, "Let's go through the last couple of days again and see if we might have missed anything." He looked back at her and nodded his head, "Thanks" was all he said and Kim knew they were done discussing it.
Antonio pushed the door open to their room and peeked in, he could see Sylvie curled up on the bed, he didn't say anything and pulled the door shut and headed back down the stairs. "She won't leave the room, the only person she'll talk to is Sophia, she hardly eats, I don't know what to do, I don't know how to help her." He shrugged his shoulders and just stared at Gabby begging her to give him the answers he needed to help his wife. Gabby sighed, she knew they were both having a hard time but Antonio was trying to hold himself together for the kids and Sylvie, "Elias has been missing for a month Antonio, there is no helping her, she's never going to be okay until you can put him back in her arms."