"You sick or something, Janko?"

Eddie let out a snort at the comment. "Why? You're not partnered with me for a week and automatically I'm sick?"

Badillo gave her a look as they shifted to let some other customers into the bodega while they were waiting for their drinks. "No, but you weren't even at the house for almost two weeks, and I've been getting partnered up with Ferguson instead. The man has no sense of humor, he's incredibly slow, and he smells terrible. You know that I hate when I have to ride with him. But I'm more concerned about the fact that you weren't even on roll call for two weeks. And now instead of a double espresso, you're getting a smoothie? You sure you're fine?"

Thankfully, the clerk chose that moment to lean over the counter with their drinks. "I've got a small strawberry smoothie and a medium dark coffee with two sugars?"

Eddie stepped forward to grab their drinks, thankful for the distraction, but knowing that Badillo wasn't likely to let it go. She felt a ripple of unease run through her at his probing. She had thought she'd been doing a pretty good job keeping things quiet and not raising suspicions with anyone, but she supposed a two week absence from the house was something that would catch someone's attention. Hopefully, Badillo had only noticed because they were partners (and because he had spent most of those two weeks with Ferguson) and no one else had picked up on her absence. Danny had told her in the past that she had a terrible poker face, as had Captain McNichols. She gave the clerk a smile as she took their drinks and handed her partner his. "Thank you. And for the record, I'm trying to cut down on caffeine, plus it's only another hour until midnight and the end of tour. Maybe you have big plans for the rest of the night, but I personally want to crawl into bed as soon as possible and a double shot of espresso is certainly not going to help me fall asleep in an hour."

They stepped outside into the sticky August heat to continue their beat, Badillo waving goodbye to the bodega owner as they departed. They stopped in most tours to get something to drink and they knew the owner appreciated the business.

Badillo took a sip of his coffee before responding. "Okay, first, maybe I was planning on grabbing a drink with a couple of guys at the bar after this, but then I was planning on going to bed. These night tours suck. But also, every time we've had late tours in the past, you've gotten caffeine to keep you going. As a recall, it had something to do with the crash from the caffeine high hitting you right around the time you were falling asleep?"

Eddie let out a snort at that. He had a point. "Okay, well that hasn't been working recently and I've wound up awake until 4 am." She decided it might be best to leave out the fact that she hadn't had a lot of caffeine for the past few months, since it would only trigger more probing questions she wasn't ready to answer yet. "And for the record, I haven't been completely MIA the past two weeks. I've had to be in court for at least three of those days and we were off others anyway."

Her partner cocked his eyebrow at her as they made their way down the block from the bodega and Eddie took a long sip of her smoothie. "Okay, but that doesn't explain the rest of it Janko. Look, I'm not trying to be nosy or all up in your business, cause that's the last place I want to be. But if something's wrong or I'm going to catch something from you, I'd like to know ahead of time so I can be prepared."

Eddie let out a sigh at his comment. Badillo did have a point, he was her partner and in order to trust each other, they both needed to be honest and up front. It wasn't that she didn't trust him necessarily, but more that she was afraid if anyone other than Jamie knew what was going on, it would all end up going sideways. That's the way it always happened when most things were finally going right in her life. "Okay fine, look, this just stays between us, okay?"

Badillo nodded his head. "Fine, works for me."

"Cromwell from Special Victims is retiring soon and since all of their detectives need to go through special training, I've been getting vetted and interviewing for the position. Someone put my name in for detective and specifically mentioned that I've worked with a lot of trafficking and sex crime cases here and when I was over in the 12th Precinct, so they've been interviewing me and kind of vetting slash training me the past couple of weeks when I was originally supposed to be on tour here. I didn't want to say anything because I don't want to jinx it. It's a great opportunity." Eddie felt as though a portion of the weight that had been sitting on her chest for the past month had been lifted. She took a long drag on her smoothie as they continued down the street.

When they had first contacted her about having potential interest in transferring over to Special Victims, she'd been shocked. Sure, she had almost 10 years on the job and plenty of good arrests to her name, but typically a superior officer had to put your name in for a promotion to detective and SVU wasn't just any unit. It wasn't your run of the mill precinct detective squad or something like Major Case where Danny was, where they typically pulled from people they'd already been in contact with. Special Victims only took the best and most promising officers, and she knew she had a reputation for being hotheaded at times. Not to mention Captain McNichols and she weren't exactly besties either and Eddie was pretty sure that the fact she was a Reagan now had not been helping her case to climb the ladder out of patrol to detective. She still had no idea who had put her up for the potential promotion, but she was extremely glad they had. It was something she had always wanted but had put on the backburner in recent years when she had realized that none of her superiors in the 29 were exactly fond of her, especially when she kept pissing off a variety of detectives by pursuing cases after they left her hands.

Badillo almost choked on his coffee at this new information. "You've been up for consideration to work in SVU, and you didn't tell me?!"

Eddie felt a brief flash of annoyance, but it was gone in an instant. "Well, like I said, I didn't want to jinx it and besides, if I don't get the spot, I doubt I'll end up going anywhere. McNichols didn't put my name in, don't know who did actually, but there's no way they'd move me up to detective in this house. Besides, I don't know if I would even want to transfer houses again if I didn't get the SVU opening, so I figured if it was a swing and a miss, no harm no foul and if it actually wound up happening, I would cross that bridge when I came to it." She flashed him a smile as they crossed the street onto the next block. "You aren't that terrible that I would just ditch you and go running for the hills, you know that right? We've been partners for a while now, I wouldn't just leave with no notice."

Her comment seemed to ease him a little bit. "Well, I guess that's a fair point, what with Seargent Straight Lace being here as well. Does anyone else know that you've been doing this at all?" His question was intended to be nonchalant, but Eddie could see right through it to his need to reassure himself of their partnership.

She rolled her eyes as they continued down the block past a row of brownstones, leaving the shops and bodegas behind. "Okay, first off, I've told you that he isn't always strictly by the book, we've had this conversation a thousand times. Secondly, no, besides you now the only people I'm aware of that know I've been under consideration for the opening besides SVU are Jamie and the captain." Eddie took another long drink of her smoothie, nearly draining it while they passed an older gentleman who was walking his dog.

"See, now that makes me feel a lot better. Good to know where I stand." Badillo gave her a smirk over the lid of his half empty coffee cup.

Eddie rolled her eyes at his cockiness. Their playful banter was something she enjoyed about patrol and would be something she missed if she actually did get the spot in SVU, but that wasn't going to hold her back from going after a hell of an opportunity. "Great, good to know that your ego has been stroked back into its proper place. And just for the record, I also got this smoothie because I've been craving one all tour, so stop making mountains out of molehills."

Her partner clutched at his chest as though she had mortally wounded him. "Wow, Eddie, that hurts. Truly, you cut me deep with that one." They both laughed at his antics as they continued on with tour.

As they reached the corner, the radio crackled to life. Two Nine-David, we've got a 10-34, report of an assault occurring in an alley off Newel Street. Caller reported seeing several subjects assaulting another subject in the alleyway from their window inside apartment building. Alleyway is between 150 and 152.

Eddie felt her smile drop, the same as Badillo's. "That address is less than two blocks away."

Her partner nodded, a grim look on his face as he reached up to respond to the radio. "Two-nine David, show us responding."

They both tossed their mostly empty drinks in a nearby trash can as they took off towards the incident.

As they came upon the alleyway, Eddie could hear the sounds of a scuffle and instantly went on high alert. She exchanged a glance with her partner and they both silently agreed to draw their weapons. She could hear the sounds of insults being thrown at the victim, although they were somewhat muffled, almost like the perps were wearing masks.

Badillo gave her a silent countdown before they burst into the alley. "Police, don't move!"

All three perps looked up and instantly scattered, leaving whoever their unfortunate victim had been curled up in a ball between two dumpsters about ten feet in. Eddie knew this area like the back of her hand, as did Badillo, which meant they both knew that there were two other exits from where they stood. Thankfully, they could see a garbage truck blocking the far end of the alley, which meant their perps were likely to take the only other way out, a side alley off of this one that came out just around the corner.

Eddie instantly dropped her weapon to her side and took off. "I'll cut them off!"

She vaguely heard Badillo's shout of agreement as she turned the corner of the building back out to the street and raced down the block and around the corner. She internally cursed her bad luck, of course they would catch something that looked like it was going to be a felony collar less than an hour before end of tour and of course the perps would take off running. This was one thing that she was not going to miss once she put in for modified assignment next week, although Badillo was probably going to get pissed with her again for a little bit.

She whipped around the corner into the side alley, weapon once again drawn, and froze. There was no sign of their fleeing perps and she knew that they hadn't already exited the alley because she would have seen them running down the street.

Eddie slowly advanced into the alley, senses on high alert and the hairs on the back of her neck tingling. This didn't feel right, and she was starting to think it might have been a trap. She quickly cleared either side of the two trash piles that were near the entrance and advanced further in.

"Badillo?" She called out hesitantly, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end when her partner failed to respond. The distance between where she had left him and where she stood in the adjacent alley wasn't that far and he should have been right around the corner. Even if he had stopped to help the victim in the alleyway, he still should have been able to hear her and respond.

Eddie was about halfway between the entrance of her alley and the place where it intersected with the other one when she heard the sound of someone running up behind her. Before she had a chance to turn around, there was a sharp prick of pain in her neck, followed by the cool sensation of something being injected under her skin, and the feeling of an arm wrapping around her from behind.

She instantly started to struggle, stomping on the foot of whoever her attacker was and attempting to free herself from their grip. She had dropped her gun when they had first stuck her with whatever that needle was and she could feel it already working through her body. Despite the adrenaline rushing through her and her brain telling her that she couldn't lose this fight, the rest of her body was failing to agree. Her movements were starting to become slow and sluggish as she clawed at the arm around her neck and her vision was starting to blur.

There must have been someone else with her initial attacker and she must have been starting to gain the upper hand in her fight back, because all of a sudden the right side of her head exploded in pain as something heavy collided with it. Eddie felt herself go limp at the shock of the sudden impact and her body refused to cooperate further.

The arm that had been holding her hostage dropped her like a sack of potatoes and she distantly heard her attackers exchanging hushed words through the ringing in her head.

"What the hell did you have to go and whack her in the head for? I had the situation under control," came the hiss from one of them, most likely the one that had stuck her and had Eddie in a headlock.

"Well, it didn't look like everything was going great there genius, you looked like you were about to let her go and I told you before we started it can take that sedative two minutes minimum to kick in." Whoever the second attacker was obviously wasn't thrilled about the capabilities of their counterpart.

"Yeah, well, I thought we agreed not to leave any DNA evidence and whacking her in the head is gonna leave some blood. What are we supposed to do about that? You know he isn't going to be happy with that."

The second person let out a hiss. "There's been a change of plans. We're leaving a message for whenever someone decides to come looking for them. I'll clean up the blood that isn't supposed to be here, you get her to the van."

Through her jumbled brain, Eddie was distantly aware that whatever was going on was obviously planned and, given the fact that Badillo still hadn't appeared, even after the noise she would have caused in her struggle with the first attacker, they had most likely dealt with him as well.

There was the sound of footsteps approaching her and she forced open her eyes with a suppressed groan at how much effort it took. It didn't help much; everything was so blurry all she could make out were vague shapes and the outlines of her two attackers.

"Now now Officer Janko, it's time to take a little nap. We're going to have so much fun later and you want to be prepared, don't you?"

The last thing that went through Eddie's mind as everything faded away was that this was going to absolutely kill Jamie. They'd been through so much crap over the last few years, and it was finally going their way. It would crush him.

Then everything went dark.