When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him. ~Euripides

Darcy's mind whirled frantically, a million worst-case scenarios mashing and jumbling into an almost incoherent pattern yet still managed to paint an image she had never wanted to see. Missing? John was missing? It didn't make sense, it was hardly believable. John was a cop, retired now but it was still in his blood. Cops just didn't go missing. Least of all John, who had to be the most reasonable and aware person out there.

"Why do you think he was abducted?" her mouth worked on autopilot as her mind struggled to grasp what was happening. Not John. Anyone but John. He knew how to handle himself, he wouldn't let himself be a victim.

"His car is in the driveway, keys still in it and his door is off!" Sobs choked the woman as her wavering control broke. Darcy hurriedly dressed, tripping out the door of her room as she shoved her boots on, John's wife continuing how he'd gone out to get coffee and breakfast for them before she'd gotten up, only he'd never come back in. That was thirty minutes ago.

With almost startling speed, Darcy was out the door with keys in hand. Thirty minutes, it wasn't much of a head start for whoever had taken him. It could be enough to get to him in time. It had to be enough.

She remembered Agent Row asleep in her guest room as she spotted his Charger neatly parked behind her SUV. Almost bumper-to-bumper, the muscle car effectively blocked her in; she'd have no choice but to go wake the agent.

But John's life could hang in the balance; seconds could be critical.

Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

There were only two options left, forcing her way out or borrowing the agent's car. Her mind was made before she'd finished crossing the driveway, she only hoped hotwiring the Charger wouldn't require completely destroying the paneling. Opening the blessedly unlocked door, however, revealed it wouldn't be necessary, the key was still in the ignition. God bless Row and his ballsy confidence that no one would dare touch his cruiser, this was saving crucial time.

The small part of her brain remarking this was not a good idea fully expected Row to come charging out of the house as the engine roared to life. But he didn't, and she wasn't about to wait for him.

Hundreds of horses rumbled as she peeled out of the driveway, spun onto the road, and sped down the street. The lightest touch sent the muscle car surging ahead. Lights and sirens wailed as she gave the horses their heads and let the Charger tear down the blacktop.

John lived across town from her and every second it took to get there felt like an eternity. Her mentor was missing, her partner, her friend, and she hadn't even gotten to apologize to him yet. Now she might have permanently lost her chance.

Cursing, she banged her fist on the steering wheel. Why did she have to be so stupid? Why did she have to let her temper and pride get the better of her again? He had warned her, had been trying to get her to see reason and she threw it in his face. It could be the last memory of her he had.

"No," she growled to herself, pushing the Charger fast, hitting speeds that were illegal in every country. That would not be the last memory he had of her, he would not be the next victim, he would not be her next notification. She refused to consider it a possibility. It wouldn't happen. It couldn't happen. She would find him, save him, and personally escort his abductor to hell.

There was something to be said for the record time she made it to John's, but whatever relief that gave her evaporated the moment she saw it.

Denial couldn't hold out against the evidence that lay in the Charger's headlights. John's Crown Victoria sat in the driveway; the driver's door wasn't open, it was gone. She sat in the muscle car, trying to process what the hell she was seeing.

Her mind stuttered as she slowly emerged from the safe ignorance of the agent's cruiser. A part of her still demanding that this couldn't be real with every step she took towards the red car.

Where the driver's door should have been hinged to the car's body was nothing but torn and shredded strips of metal, shining red and silver in the dim porch-light. Darcy's stomach twisted into a tight knot as the realization that not all of the red was the car's paint.

Spinning away from the car, she sucked in deep breaths as she tried to get her roiling emotions under control. John was out there somewhere, bleeding in the hands of a psychopath, and waiting for her to rescue him. She couldn't afford to not be in control.

Too-familiar dread overwhelmed her. Grabbing victims of opportunity was one thing, abducting a detective in his own driveway was intentional and methodical. The question nagged at her, was this the same people responsible for the dumping grounds, or something else?

She doubted it was unrelated, but either way the chief wouldn't allow her anywhere near this investigation when it was her own ex-partner. No way was she going to just walk away and leave a rookie to it; she would handle this one, quietly if she had to. Pulling a steadying breath, she knew she couldn't do it alone and almost regretted leaving Row at the house.

Metal glistened in the grass some twenty yards away. Holy...it was the door! Or what was once the door, the bundled mass was hardly recognizable as anything, but the broken glass and bits of interior were a clear enough sign of what it had been.

A hum buzzed in the air behind her, almost imperceptible if not for the dead silence of the still-dark morning. She turned, freezing as a blue light ghosted along John's car, running over every dip and crevice it passed over. Almost lazily it ran over the trunk, the hum louder as it...well, she was exactly sure what it was doing. Following the thin tendrils to its source gave her a start. It was coming from the Charger. And suddenly she understood what the blue light was.

Agent Row's car was scanning the damaged vehicle. How was as baffling as why. The engine wasn't even running, how the hell was it scanning the other car? Just what kind of division of the FBI was Row in that his car was straight out of a James Bond movie?

Her eyes traced back to the blue scanners as they moved up to the roof, the light revealing far more damaged than she'd originally seen. The back windows were broken in, tiny pieces of glass sparkling on the backseats, but it was the roof that stole her attention. Her breath sucked out of her as she looked closer. Above the back seat, the metal was bent, buckled, and torn in a way that was almost eerily familiar. While more extensive in damage, the pattern was identical to that on Tom's truck.

From the main damage, three thick indents expanded outwards across the roof, slightly angled away from each other. As the blue light traced over it further, she could make out a fourth dent splayed out from the original, running along the edge of the roof. It was such a strange and damn-it-all familiar pattern that it made a pit of fear creep up her spine, setting nerves on edge and hair on end. It was irrational, she couldn't explain what she was suddenly afraid of, but her heart pounded in her chest nonetheless, and her instincts were screaming for her to run.

Backing away from the car, she tried to calm her suddenly erratic breathing. Bringing a shaking hand up to shove her hair back, she froze, staring at the limb. Turning her palm away from her, she dropped her pinkie down and studied the general shape it created. The scanner light had reached the front of the car, but she could still clearly make out the mangled indent on the roof.

Whatever improvements her heart had made in returning to a regular rhythm were rendered obsolete when she held her hand up to line over the indent. It was an almost identical match, albeit at least five times the size.

It was a damned handprint.

Cold, paralyzing fear struck the breath from her lungs. Bending, she braced herself on her knees, gasping for air as she struggled to shove the fear away. There was nothing there, why the hell was she so terrified? The indent had to be from whatever was braced against the car that tore the door off. Whoever did this just made it look like a handprint to freak people out. That had to be it; it was the only rational answer, because the hulk didn't exist and he certainly didn't go around abducting retired detectives.

The blue scanners reached the front end of the car and disappeared. Almost instantly they reappeared at the bottom of her feet, moderately tracing their way up. She knew she couldn't actually feel the light, but her skin prickled anyway, like a ghost of a touch. It felt exposing and she was only grateful when it finished and vanished again. She was not going to spend any time wondering why the damn car had chosen to scan her.

Dawn began to brighten the sky despite the fog that just refused to let go. Dimly, she could make out skid marks on the road in front of the driveway, directing the way John's abductors had gone.

A large part of her screamed to follow the marks immediately, but the rational side cautioned against going in guns blazing without backup. They had managed to take John without raising the alarm of his wife or neighbors despite literally ripping the door clean off of his car. She'd be no good to him if she got caught as well because she was too impatient to get help.

Sirens wailed in the distance, gaining volume as they drew closer. Darcy silently cursed as she returned to the Charger. Of course Juliet would call the rest of the department as well; the chief would give her the boot the second he found out she was here. He couldn't find out she was already involved, couldn't know she had ever been there.

Taking note of the direction the skid marks pointed towards, she climbed into the stupidly advanced muscle car, determined to pick up Row and go after John.

The interior was still the perfect temperature to get feeling back into her fingertips. Even the damn steering wheel was heated. This car, with all its quirks, was an honest-to-God blessing.

Pulling out, she sped down the road, ducking around the corner just as the cavalry slid into John's driveway. Hopefully there would be a way for Row to access the car's scanner history. She doubted he'd believe her about the handprint dent without seeing it for himself.

While the adrenaline slowly faded, the urgency did not. Every moment John got further and further out of reach. He couldn't afford delays. Half a block from his home, she blasted lights and sirens again, letting the Charger surge ahead.

Dawn had fully encroached by the time she made it to her street, the sun dimly fighting its way through the thickening bank of clouds. The fog was slowly burning away, but it only made her curse. It meant snow was on the way and that would make everything that much harder.

She expected to find Row waiting for her in the driveway when she pulled in next to her SUV, eager to rip her a new one for stealing his car, but he was nowhere. Perhaps he was stewing inside, or still asleep. Leaving the engine running, Darcy jumped out and jogged towards the door. Whatever Row had to say to her could be said on the move and she would just ask double forgiveness later.

She winced to herself as she pushed through the door and moved straight for the spare room; she was racking up apologies faster than bills. Row was not in the living room or the kitchen, nor did he reveal himself in the spare room, whose bed looked as if no one had slept in it. Brows pinching, she checked hers, just to be sure.

"Row?" she called and was met with silence. The FBI agent was nowhere to be found.

This was exactly the kind of delay John could not afford right now. Just where the hell had the fed gone? It wasn't as if he'd taken her SUV anywhere and this town didn't exactly have a hopping Uber service.

Darcy growled to herself with a sharp curse. If he wasn't here then he wasn't here and it was a wasted time looking for her.

Slinging the door shut behind her as she breezed back out into the cold, her step stuttered as she saw him, stance rigid as he waited for her next to his Charger. How in the hell had he gotten by her? No way had he been outside when she pulled in; his face certainly lacked the pink tint the below-freezing temperatures would have stained it with had he been out longer than five minutes, but where could he possibly have hidden and why would he?

Taking note of his growing scowl, she blinked, realizing he looked more like Karl Urban than anyone but Karl Urban had a right to. The resemblance was uncanny.

And unimportant right now.

Mentally shaking herself from that train of thought, she knew the level of emotion he was actively expressing definitely meant he was pissed. He had every right to be, but he could express it later; her limited head start on John was slipping away with every passing second.

"My retired partner was abducted and it was a targeted attack. It's got to be the same people responsible for the other abductions and murders. I've got a heading that might be useful if we hurry," Darcy recapped for him, bypassing the agent completely and heading for the driver's door of the still-running Charger. She could give him the full run-down once their tires were turning. Tugging on the door, she rationalized that while it was his car, she was the one who knew which way to go, it only made sense for her to drive. The door stayed firmly shut. Agent Row had yet to move from his position at the front of the car.

"You did well to bring this case to my attention, but I shall be taking care of it from here on," he stated, his tone authoritative and flat despite the pinch of his brows.

"Excuse me?" Why wouldn't the damn door open already? She knew she hadn't locked it when she got out.

His next statement, however, pulled all of her attention away from the stubborn door. "I am relieving you of duty from this case and all those related to it."

The hell he was.

Every speck of positive emotions for him vaporized in an instant. This was typical FBI, swooping in and taking over. Well, that wasn't about to fly this time.

"What the hell gives you the right?" It didn't matter if he was bureau, it didn't matter how big this case was or what politics were going on between him and the chief, this was her case. She had called him in for his help. As of yet there was no evidence of this crime crossing state lines or being terror related, he had no right or grounds to take it from her.

He didn't physically respond to her, his scowl disappearing into the familiar stoic expression. "You have been emotionally compromised by the case at hand. You are now personally invested and standard procedure is to remove officers connected in such a way to the victim."

She growled, he sounded like a damn computer. "You can't tell me with this many people you aren't invested as well."

He was so emotionally distant and factual that it royally infuriated her. "No, I am not invested in such a way."

That bastard. Though his tone remained indifferent, the underlying feeling to his words was that any sort of emotional connection to the case was foolish and beneath him. For a flash, she regretted calling the bureau in the first place.

"Don't forget it was me who called for you assistance, buddy," she snapped, marching up to him and jabbing her finger into his chest. Damn his body had no give to it. "I brought you in on this local case, you have no authority to take me off it."

An eyebrow twitched upward as he glanced down at the digit assaulting him before he responded smoothly, "On the contrary, I have the government's authority to remove whomever I deem unfit. As you are emotionally unstable from the most recent victim, you are unfit to continue with the investigation. I shall handle it from here and update you when the need arises."

When the need arises? Unstable and unfit? Her fists clenched, every ounce of willpower going towards not decking the man. He moved before she could come up with a response that would not be an outraged slew of curses, stepping around her and opening his car door with ease.

Panic struck. After fighting the chief to be able to finish the case that had cost her her job, the man she'd lost it for was going to just take it from her? She grasped for something, anything, to make him realize he needed her as much as she had needed him. "You don't even know what way the abductors were going!"

It was pathetic, but she was desperate. She had to stay on, she had to save John. She owed him so much, more than could ever be put into words, she couldn't just leave his life in the hands of a fed who didn't even know him.

"He was headed northwest." Agent Row disappeared into his car and pulled away, leaving Darcy speechless in her driveway, watching his taillights fade.

Her job was over, her only true friend missing, and now she'd lost her chance of getting him back. Keys jingled as she numbly shoved her cold hands into her jacket pockets. Pulling them out in a daze, she wondered what she'd done in a past life to have earned all this.

The silver metal jangled cheerfully, shining in the morning light; a mass of swaying color until Darcy's mind cleared enough to recognize just what they were. The keys to her department-issued SUV.

Spine stiffening and jaw clenching, Darcy vowed that no one was going to sideline her while her partner was in trouble. Throwing herself into the front seat, she jammed the key into the ignition and turned, ready to chase down the bastards responsible for all of this. The engine choked on the cold before firing up, a delay just long enough for straight thinking to barrel its way back to the forefront. It would be foolish to go racing off in the direction the abductors went. The department and Row were following that particular lead. The agent probably knew her rig enough to recognize it on sight and after the stunt he'd just pulled, she couldn't say she knew how he might respond to that.

There was a different route to helping John that she would have to take. She doubted he'd been taken by anyone but the group responsible for the dumping grounds, which meant whatever leads that had dug up could point towards him. Leads Row wouldn't have.

As much as her frantic emotions tried telling her to follow the path of the Charger, Darcy turned and headed the opposite direction. Row could follow the obvious lead in his supercharged car; she would follow the one even the killers didn't know they had left.

She may not have actively been chasing anyone, but she still blared the sirens all the way to the hospital.

The morgue was packed near to bursting, the temperature dropped to keep the overflow from rotting further. Despite the heavy use of medical-grade cleaning agents, the smell was still horrendous.

Every coroner within four counties had been called in to work on the bodies that were distributed between five hospitals and even then they'd been pulling double shifts and napping in the breakroom.

Her county's mortician was almost asleep at his computer, inputting notes from the file next to him but struggling to keep his eyes open. Darcy dropped a fresh coffee from the cafeteria upstairs in front of him. "What do you have for me, Doc?"

He sighed, pausing his languid typing to rub his eyes under his glasses and sip gratefully from the cup. "Total count now is sixty-five, but they're estimating at least seven more in the pile of the bones they're separating."

He gestured over towards the two examiners who were working on turning a table of bones into identifiable bodies. Seven skulls sat apart. "We've managed to identify some of the more recent victims, but the oldest bones are at least fourteen months old. It'll take time to get back results on dental impressions."

A few names, a few families could finally get some semblance of closure, but it wasn't necessarily a lead she could use just yet.

"What about COD?" Similar cause-of-death would make it easier in the end to link every victim to the same suspect and might reveal a clue to motive.

The coroner sighed again, leaning back in his chair and dropping his glasses on the keyboard. "I've never seen anything like this before. COD's are all over the place. We've all been combining and comparing our notes and we're at a range of blood loss to broken spines to impalement and crushing. Some of the earlier victims went to St. Mary's and Dr. Powell is reporting their COD's are more towards starvation, dehydration, and exposure."

Darcy frowned, rocking back on her heels. Dr. Conners' findings were definitely spot-on for making a solid case against whatever perp was behind this, but…. "Starvation, dehydration, and exposure all sound like natural causes, Doc, is there anything else you can say about them?"

There was no doubt in her mind that every victim in that field had died before their time, but natural causes would be harder to pin to someone in court.

Dr. Conners' computer chimed with an incoming email that he ignored in favor of answering, "Natural causes to the body, yes, in timeline, no. Dr. Powell says they died too quickly, the process took half the time it should have."

Conners shook his head, mindlessly taking a file being passed to him from one of the assistants and unceremoniously dropping it onto the rather large pile taking up half his desk. "He also found a large number of bruises, cuts, and breaks to the bones, especially in the older ones. Whatever natural death finally ended their suffering was the primary cause, but there was a lot going on that sped up the process."

Darcy blew out a breath, wondering not for the first time just what she'd stumbled into up there. "What was the most common injury?"

He grimaced, "Blunt-force trauma."

Chewing her lip, she contemplated what it all could mean and who it could point to. Whatever the case, John was in a lot more trouble than even she'd initially known. The revelation only strengthened her resolve to find him.

"The reports are already in your email," he stated before she could ask for them.

"Thanks, Doc." At least some questions were being answered, even if those answers were bringing more questions with them.

He nodded, turning back to his computer and probably the ignored email as Darcy approached the other examiners working on the bodies. They said much of the same, the older remains consistently sported signs of advanced natural causes while the newer victims had varying brutal ends. The detective paused as she looked at one of the bodies being autopsied. What was left of the corpse was burned beyond recognition and flattened into a barely humanoid shape. The bowls generally used for holding organs contained only bits and pieces.

"Most of the burns were done ante-mortem by some sort of corrosive chemical the lab is still working on identifying," the examiner responded when she questioned him. "The crushing is what ended this poor woman. I can't even guess what it was, but it weighed a ton, literally."

The image of the ruined door to John's car flashed before her eyes. Was it whatever machine that had done that that fell and flattened this woman? It was a high possibility.

Turning away from the mangled remains, she made for the door. The new reports waiting for her were going to take all day to go through. The sooner she got started, the sooner she might gleen a lead from it.

There were still notifications to give out as well. It never got easier, telling someone their loved one was never coming home.

"Detective," Conners' voice stopped her in the doorway. He was still at his computer, a grimace present on his face.

Darcy returned to his side, glancing at the screen and the email he was looking at. "Lab results just came in for the stomach contents of the most recents victims. Jake Baxter and Brian Spellman had the standard eggs and bacon, but most of the rest appear to have been fed some sort of bad bread. The number of vics with water-borne bacteria in their gut suggests water probably isn't being treated. It's like your culprits don't know how to keep people alive."

"Or don't care," Darcy corrected, knowing that whoever was doing this definitely did not care one way or the other. The bodies would have been disposed of like that if there was any sort of remorse.

"Or both," he suggested, tapping his fingers on his stack of files. "Look at CODs. What we've seen of the oldest remains is mostly dehydration, then exposure, then starvation. Yet none of our victims that died within the last six months passed from those causes, and none in the last five have died of heart failure. It's like the traffickers are learning how to keep their victims longer, though it obviously still means very little to them if their victims live or die in the long run."

"Traffickers? What makes you think we're dealing with those?" Darcy raised a questioning brow. He was probably right, considering the sheer quantity of victims they had found compared to the number of people missing from her county, but M.E.s were generally supposed to try not making connections or conjecture.

"Because two of the vics we've identified went missing in Indiana and many of the bodies contained insect larvae which couldn't have existed in the temperatures we've had," he explained, tapping away at his computer to bring up a photograph of the larvae.

"Where is it native to?" As much as a nuisance as bugs could be to the living, they were invaluable as forensic evidence. She'd cracked more than one case thanks to bugs.

Conners shrugged, "The lab is working on it. The cold preserved them pretty well, best guess at this point is anywhere it's been warmer, maybe wetter. I'd bet west coast but we'll know for sure when they finish."

"Got an ETA on when that will be?" There really was no telling sometimes how long the labs would take, but she hoped with such a big case every piece of it would be top priority. Dr. Conners' cousin was the lead forensic tech for the big lab, so it was possible he might have some inside information on the schedule. After the rather...dramatic break up a few years ago, Darcy was more than happy to let the M.E. play mediator between them.

With no desire to relive those particular memories, she mentally shook herself and focused on what Conners was saying and figuring out what she was going to do next, now that she had neither department nor federal help to back her up. There was little doubt in her mind that Row wouldn't bother to keep her updated as he said, so there was no relying on that either.

"...there really is no telling," conners finished, turning back to his computer as it pinged again. After a moment of quiet, he added, "On a positive note, four more victims were just identified."

More closure for more families, just not the kind she'd been hoping to bring. "Thanks Dr. Conners."

"Darcy, we were almost family. How many times do I have to tell you to call me Allan?"

She turned away to hide her wince, heading for the door and tossing over her shoulder, "At least once more, Doc."

Her phone buzzed as she stepped out of the hospital and into the fresh and freezing air, saving her from the trip down memory lane her mind was attempting to traipse down. Snow drifted lazily, sticking to her jacket as she crossed the parking lot and pulled out her phone. It wasn't a number she recognized. A spark of hope lit in her chest, perhaps it was Row, realizing what a colossal mistake he'd made in kicking her out.

It wasn't.

In fact, the garbled 'Detective Blake?' that made it through the static wasn't a voice she recognized at all.

"You better get up here as fast as possible," the voice cleared some, familiar monotone just underlying the initial emotion of urgency.

"Get up where?" She narrowed her eyes at her SUV, mentally checking every person she could think of to see if the voice matched. It didn't.

"To the pit where those bodies were found. You need to see this." The static didn't help the male voice sound anymore familiar, but the roar of a powerful engine in the background had her thinking of a muscle car.

"Who is this?" she asked as she climbed into her car and fired up the engine. Pulling out of the lot, she turned towards the mountain highway. She would head up there regardless, but she wasn't about to be careless and charge in blind.

There was a silent pause, as if he debated answering.

"Officer Cade." The line cut out.

Well, that was weird. Most likely he just lost service-that he found any at all up there was a miracle in and of itself-but the timing was a little too uncanny. And Officer Cade? She'd never heard of him. There had recently been a decent batch of rookies from the academy, so it wasn't too surprising it was someone she didn't know. But Cade? She could have sworn it was Davis who was watching the crime scene while the last of the evidence was getting packed out. Or was it last night that he was on duty?

Honestly, the last few days were such a blur that she couldn't even say for sure what day it was anymore. No wonder she had no idea who was on dump-site duty.

Glancing at the phone in her hand, she debated calling Row. He may have had luck finding John. If not, then it was always beneficial to share leads in case something crazy happened. No, he was the one who took the case from her. She wasn't about to just give him the opportunity to take over again. Tossing the phone over to the passengers seat, she hit the gas, surging towards the looming mountains all dusted in white.