Captain: I definitely fudge some police procedures here intentionally for the sake of story flow. Sometimes being too realistic doesn't make for good writing. :D Might throw up another revised chap or two before bed so ya'll can start getting into this fic.

It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be. ~Anatole France

December 31, 4:03 am

"Blake," Darcy answered roughly, her voice thick with sleep. Her comforter dropped to her waist as she sat up; no use in staying comfortable, a call this early meant she was up for the day.

"It's Walter; we found one of your boys, he's being evac-ed to the hospital." It took a moment for his words to process and when they did they hit her like a train. They'd found one and he was alive. Finally.

"Detective," there was a weight to his voice that was her neon warning sign of what was coming next. "He's in rough shape."

Coming from a man who'd been doing Search and Rescue for over twenty years, 'rough shape' would probably be putting it mildly. Walter was not a man who gave that descriptor lightly. Almost tripping on the sheets tangled around her legs, Darcy kicked them off with a huff before finding her pants and tugging them on. "Which one is he?"

"I don't know." That meant that calling his condition rough was like calling a tornado a breezy afternoon. "He was unconscious when we found him and stayed out all the way down. We're heavily searching where we found him but so far there's been no sign of the other two."

"Roger that, keep me posted." Stuffing the phone in her pocket, Darcy hurriedly finished throwing on clothes, pulling her badge around her neck as she ducked out the door.

By some miracle she hit the hospital parking lot less than a second ahead of the ambulance.

The wounded man gasped as the stretcher brought him down, eyes wild and unseeing. His face was torn and unrecognizable, his clothes so soaked in blood their original color could not be guessed. A shredded hand reached out, latching onto Darcy's jacket. Strips of his inner arm showed twisting black lines under the blood. A medical alert tattoo.

"Andrew, can you hear me? What happened?" The man's eyes latched onto hers, so clouded in fear she doubted he was actually seeing her.

"Must….must…." his voice ragged and gurgling as he choked on his own blood. A coughing fit splattered them all. He was starting to hyperventilate, his grip strength pulsing back and forth. "Must….monst…."

He collapsed back on the gourney, eyes rolling back into his head, hand falling limp from her jacket.

"B.P.'s falling!" one of the nurses shouted, stepping between Darcy and the wounded man as the gurney passed through the emergency room doors and passed from sight.

Must monst? What the hell could that mean? Must save his friends from a monster? Those injuries didn't look like anything she'd ever seen from a predator attack, but what could have caused them? She didn't think Jake or Brian would be capable of doing such a thing to their friend, but their absence was either suspicious or cause for worry. They could be in similar condition out there, or they could be running from what they did.

The detective sighed, bringing a hand up to rub her temples, pausing the instant a flash of red caught her eye. Her hands were covered in Andrew's blood, as was her jacket. Her stomach rolled as she turned for the bathroom. Her town wasn't a single-stoplight kind of little, but it was small enough that violent crime was fairly rare. Hell, the only reason she'd made detective two years ago was so the department would be prepared for John to retire. There were more hunting accidents here than homicides. Andrew was the worst condition she'd ever seen a person in, and she'd seen what a rabid bear could do to a body.

Tearing off her jacket, she stuffed it into one of the sinks, blasting the cold water. The mirror revealed her tired visage, speckled with blood. Scrubbing her hands, she turned to her face once the water ran clear. It was a solid quarter of an hour before she was left resigned to the fact her jacket was as good as it was going to get.

Stepping out of the bathroom with her jacket rumpled into an empty garbage bag in her hand, she caught a nurse exiting the emergency room. "Is there a status on Andrew Wane?"

The nurse glanced down at the badge still hanging from its chain around her neck. "He's in critical condition; the doctors rushed him to surgery."

Darcy nodded, sighing as she returned to the lobby, tossing the soiled jacket in an empty chair. There were phone calls to be made and hours to wait.

Andrew's mother and Amy arrived twenty minutes later, shortly followed by Jake and Brian's wives who must have been alerted by the former. Darcy hated having no news for them and sat away from the group as they cried and held onto each other.

She itched to move, to be doing something. There was nothing for her to do though. Search and Rescue was looking for the two remaining men and her only lead was in surgery. So she sat, feeling the dread return as a surgeon stepped out to the lobby only an hour later.

"Here for Mr. Wane?" The cluster of women stood hopefully, Darcy following slower, hanging back. She knew that look. The surgeon looked at the women in sympathy. "I'm sorry, we did everything we could."

There was little else he could say as mother and wife burst into open sobs, joined by the other ladies as they felt their hope for their own husbands slipping away.

Pulling in a steadying breath, Darcy shifted back into business. She owed it to them to get answers. The surgeon followed her several steps away from the grieving women, but still she kept her voice low. "What happened to him, doc?"

He sighed, glancing at the charts in his hand. "Honestly, I was hoping you could tell me. Thirty-four broken bones, a punctured lung, thirteen lacerations, and some kind of burn on 27% of his body."

An animal didn't do damage like that, even ignoring the burns. Had he fallen into a campfire or something after taking a severe beating?

"Fire burns?" She looked at the page he offered her, indicating the location and type of each injury they had catalogued.

He shook his head, bafflement crossing his features. "Chemical, couldn't tell you what kind, but something that gives new meaning to 'corrosive'."

Chemical burns? In the middle of the National Forest? What the hell was going on out there?

With the chemical being so damaging, it was most likely one of the many that were tracked and regulated. This could finally be the breakthrough she needed. "I'll need a sample sent to the forensics lab in Pocatello."

The downside of being in a small town, they had no real forensics lab of their own. At least Pocatello wasn't too far, they could send a rookie to run it down when it was ready. The surgeon nodded. "Dr. Conners is already on it."

The resident M.E. was nothing if not on top of his work.

"Thank you, Doctor."

"Detective," he grimaced. "Whoever did this used a lot of force; find them. I don't want another patient like that on my table."

"I hope you don't get another," Darcy agreed, wishing she could promise to bring down whoever was responsible before they did this to another victim. The problem was she still had no idea what the hell was going on.

Trafficking rings were more common than most people thought in the open expanses near the border, but they relied on their victims being alive. Unless Andrew was one who got away. Though rare, she'd heard of rings who sold murder like others sold sex. It was possible Andrew had been presumed dead prematurely and he was able to crawl his way back towards the trail. The detective shook her head as she left the hospital, shivering in the cold with her jacket still soaked in the bag. Hiking trails made no sense for a hunting ground for a ring. Even the popular trails were too unpredictable for when people might be on them. They had to be victims of opportunity. She doubted a drug grow, the area people had vanished from was just too large.

So what was it?

She stewed it over as she drove back to the station and had nothing to show for it as she pulled into the lot. Sighing heavily and squaring her shoulders, she stepped out into the sharp cold. It was time for a conversation that would not be enjoyable in any way, but there was no point in delaying it any longer. People were going to keep getting hurt, people were going to keep dying unless something drastic was done.

"Chief?" She knocked on his open door, not entering his office until he waved her in while he finished his phone call. Despite the small size of the department, she really didn't have much personal experience with the man. It was an elected position in this town and despite him having once walked the beat himself, she couldn't help but worry he'd forgotten it and let himself slip more into the politician role. Especially since it was an election year.

"What do you need, Detective?" he asked, eyes tracking down to the various stacks of papers on his desk. He picked up a pen, mindlessly filling in one of the forms. .

"We found Andrew Wane beat to hell on the trail, his friends are still missing," she started as she approached his desk, taking the offered seat.

"So I heard, how is he?"

"He died on the table," she paused to chew her bottom lip, this was the hard part. "Sir, I think at this point we have no choice but to close the National Forest to the public. Issue a statement to the press."

The pen dropped from his fingers, hands steepling together on top of the pages as he finally turned his full and complete attention on his youngest detective. "What kind of statement are you talking about, Blake?"

His tone was a warning for her to tread and speak carefully. No one wanted to cause unnecessary panic, but they couldn't continue on pretending everything was fine. "No details, just an incident on the hiking trails that's prompted a preemptive closure until it can be dealt with. We've got to keep people out of the woods."

"And what proof do you have that a closure is necessary? What happened to Mr. Wane is unfortunate, but not unheard of. I know violent crime is limited in small towns, but it is hardly the first time I have seen best friends kill each other for some reason or another." He leaned back in his chair and Darcy saw her chances of getting through to him shrinking by the second.

"I don't believe what happened to Andrew was caused by his friends. I think they're in trouble too. Chief, thirty-two people have gone missing in the last eight months. Thirty-two that we haven't found. Andrew is the first and his condition isn't promising to the chances of the others." She tried to keep her voice even and steady, just relay the facts, don't let emotion get into it or he'd accuse her of chasing ghosts.

The chief sighed, "Blake, hikers go missing every day and if they wander off trail it isn't likely Search and Rescue will find them. Hardly a reason to close public land."

"People aren't just getting lost, they're dropping off the face of the planet! The Rangers and Search and Rescue agree they've never had so many missing in so small a period. We average sixteen lost hikers a year, Chief, and most of those are found in either condition within a month. We've had double that in almost half the time and found only one. Andrew was covered in chemical burns as well. Someone or some group is abducting hikers and torturing them. We have got to keep the public out until we figure out what is going on." Her confidence slipped as her frustration grew as the Chief remained sitting with a straight and almost sympathetic expression on his face. Why could he not see what she was saying?

"Hardly an indication that the cases are connected. It's been a colder year, more hikers are flocking here; more people in the woods to get lost in early snowpacks. You and I both know most everyone who disappears in winter gets found during the spring thaw." He really wasn't getting it. He really didn't see that this wasn't just people getting lost. Her instincts screamed that it wasn't that simple, that people were going to continue getting hurt and vanishing until the culprit was caught or the mountains were closed.

And he wasn't about to help her with either.

"They are connected, Chief. All of the M.O.'s have been the same. One group or person is responsible for all of this, I know it. We have to close the forest." Her last ditch, but she could already see the pity in his eyes and knew he was going to deny her.

"Look, detective," he leaned forward in his seat, "you're young. You've got a rise in missing persons cases and you want a big case that wraps it all up nice and neat. It doesn't work that way. Sometimes we get those cases we just have to let go. There is no need to cause panic or economic disruption by shutting down the forest."

She barely knew him personally, but she'd expected better; she'd expected him to at least have a little faith in his officers. "I know the difference between looking for a big case and having one. Something is going on up there and people are dying because of it!"

He cut her off before she could continue, his voice gaining a sharp edge. "People disappear in the mountains all the time, especially in winter."

"Not twenty people in two months!" Slamming her hands on his desk, she stood, her incredulous fury as his blatant dismissal of her assessment temporarily winning out over the respect for his role as her boss. "We just need to keep the people out of the woods, get more resources…"

"Detective!" he barked hard and she knew she had come very close to crossing a line. "I've heard enough! It's been a bad winter; people are losing themselves in the snow. You've had your search teams for the allotted times, accept that you can't find everyone and work on the cases you can solve. I will not have snipe hunts."

"But Chief…"

"Not another word about it, Detective."

One last ditch effort. "If I could just call other departments, compare their numbers to ours…"

"Contacting other departments gets leaked to the press and causes panic. You are a detective, not a conspiracy theorist. You will work your cases by the book and keep those ridiculous theories to yourself or you may just find yourself writing speeding tickets for the foreseeable future. Do I make myself clear?"

The urge to argue was almost overwhelming; she wanted to tell him he was an idiot for ignoring the obvious, but the hard set of his eyes told her his threat had been serious. Clenching her jaw, she gave a single nod. "Crystal, Sir."

Turning on her heel, she left his office, her temper barely held under the surface. People were going to keep dying under his orders, of that she had no doubt.

Dropping into her chair with an aggravated huff, Darcy was at a loss for what to do. She'd been denied the most basic requests to get the numbers down and he hadn't wanted to hear a word of contacting other departments. It didn't make sense to just continue as she had been, hoping for a new lead. Andrew was supposed to be that lead and it'd taken eight months. There was no way she could just sit around chasing ghosts of people already vanished.

John looked up at her from his desk, masking any signs of pity with a look of understanding. "Look Darcy, I know you want to find these people, I do too, but you can't take them all personally. It'll eat you up if you invest too much of yourself into them. This job is hard enough, you don't need that biting you in the ass."

Darcy threw an accusing glare his way. "Are you suggesting I should stop caring?"

"I'm not saying that and you know it," he snapped back, reminding her of who she was talking to. John had trained her, in some ways, he knew her better than she knew herself.

Blowing out a breath, she dropped her head into her hands, shoulders slumping. "I'm sorry John. It's just….those people are counting on me to find them and every lead has been a dead end. I know something is going on up there that we need to stop; I know people will keep disappearing until we do, but damn it all, I don't know how to do it!"

More than anything she wanted him to just tell her what she needed to do, but that was impossible. He was as confounded by it as she was and he'd been at this job for a lifetime. John was quiet for a moment as he carefully regarded her, only speaking once she looked up at him. "Your problem is that you have no actual evidence that proves something is happening out there, other than a string of missing people in an area prone to people disappearing and one deceased victim that took your biggest clue with him."

"Isn't that evidence enough?" She pulled herself from her drooped position to rest her arms on her desk. "I can't find anything else out there without more manpower, but no one seems to believe me. You do, don't you?"

If he didn't, if he doubted her theories as strongly as the Chief did, then maybe this wasn't the job for her after all. If he said she was wrong, she just might believe him, and then she'd never be able to trust her own instincts.

He didn't say anything for several moments before answering with a question of his own. "What does your gut tell you?"

She didn't hesitate. "That something far bigger than we've ever dealt with is going on in those mountains."

He nodded once. "Always follow your gut."

Prowl was a fan of procedures. He liked them and he liked them followed to the letter. When they made sense, at least. This procedure was ridiculous, useless, and wasted his precious time. All Prowl wanted to do was leave the island for the mainland to look into the rise in human crime rates in the United States. All he needed was Prime's approval and a ride off. He had the former, it was securing the latter, which required human approval, that was becoming a difficulty. They demanded he go through their chain-of-command and for that he had to provide viable evidence and reason to warrant flying him across the oceans. It had to be 'cost effective', they said. He rumbled to himself as he marched out of the Command Center. Not only was the paperwork involved tedious and useless (and decidedly not cost effective), but it also delayed everything for unreasonable lengths of time.

He concluded that the only reason the humans hadn't started World War III yet was because the idea was tied up in all the bureaucratic red tape. Did they really not realize that while the Decepticons were not actively showing themselves, the war was not over? And in war soldiers and commanders had to be prepared to act at a moment's notice, not sit down and fill out the proper paperwork before taking any sort of action.

Prowl continued to rev his engine irritably. Optimus had given him the go-ahead as long as NEST officials cleared it, but the commanders had refused his request, claiming there wasn't enough evidence to support a need for Autobot backup for a problem humans had been dealing with for 'far longer than he'd been on Earth'. It wasn't worth the fuel, they said, not when Ironhide had been stationed at the Hoover Dam to assist in converting it into a base.

Ironhide was no tactician or enforcer. His specialty was in weapons, decidedly not criminal investigations. No, unless a Decepticon came charging in, Ironhide was of little use to human law enforcement, and in extent, to Prowl at the time being.

So he was stuck on this wretched island until the human commanders deemed it necessary for Autobot intervention, in which it would already be too late to do much good.

Sometimes he disliked being right all the time.

Blue optics glanced skyward as a plane blasted overhead towards the runway. Yet another reason he had been denied leave, the incoming Galloway could have nothing to cite as unwarranted wastes of money.

Prowl revved to himself. They refused him a ride off because loss of human life didn't necessitate the funds to fly him out and yet the prick politician came in on a whim in a jet that cost more than it would for the C-17 to shuttle him off and return. It truly was a wonder the human governments ever accomplished anything.

It showed up on every law enforcement frequency and headline in the world; Interpol, with the assistance of the United States FBI and CIA, had discovered and raided an international human trafficking ring. Eighty-seven people were arrested in simultaneous hits on eighteen locations around the western hemisphere. Over three hundred victims were rescued; starving, dehydrated, and more than a little worse-for-wear, but alive. According to the survivors, a combined one hundred-seventeen were not so lucky, their bodies in shallow graves only a few miles from the main holding compounds. All of those people would be on their way homes soon as well, to bring closure to grieving families.

Darcy flipped through the report that had been sent to every department in the countries involved, looking through the painfully long list of names of those found, rescued, and arrested, searching for one she recognized.

There were none. Not a single one.

Sighing, she scrolled back to the top of the page and started going through the list a third time, hoping that maybe she was just...missing them. Or one, a single one so she could have news for one family.

Interpol claimed they'd gotten the whole operation, that every victim had been identified. If that was true, then how was it possible that not one of her missing was on that list?

"Any luck?" John asked as he passed to sit at his desk, a hot coffee in hand.

Irritated, she harshly slammed on the mouse to exit out of the report. "None whatsoever."

He frowned. "That can't be right. Three hundred and twenty-six identified and not one is yours? You sure you checked every name?"

"Twice and once more for good measure. I even checked the eighty-seven perps, not one of mine turned up."

The frown fell away to a shrug. "Could be all yours were in a sub-ring, or different group all together."

He was trying to be helpful, but it wasn't doing anything for her morale. "Interpol claims they got the whole thing."

"Interpol claims a lot of things these days." He had a point there, but it wasn't enough.

"Rings don't compete with each other, they work together to keep business booming. If it's a ring, it's one that's managed to stay off the grid, which means they aren't actively trading." Her lips pursed as her brows furrowed. "What if it's not a trafficking ring?"

John raised a brow in turn. "Go on."

"Andrew had chemical burns on him, so what if these people are being taken by some in-house terrorist group that's experimenting with chemical weapons?" Alright, that one sounded more reasonable in her head than it did outloud, but she was grasping at straws at this point.

"This is Idaho, Blake, not New York."

"I know," she groaned, dropping her head into her hands again. The sheer lack of anything concrete was destroying every fiber of patience she had left. "I need help. More resources to search the mountains or something, anything."

"You know the rules, Darce. Contacting outside sources requires Chief's sign off and he's not about to give it to you without some real evidence to back your theories." He was her voice of reason in all of this, but she wasn't sure how much longer even John could talk her down.

"I know, I know." Following the book was getting her nowhere though, but she was a good cop, damn it. She knew the rules, she knew the right way to do this.

But she was a good cop nearing the end of her proverbial rope.