Chapter Text
Lucy’s eyes cleared slowly, her head throbbed wildly as she moved her head to look forwards, with her quickly realising pretty soon after that pretty much everything else about her hurt. She tried to move her body to a more comfortable position against the hard surface, before realising that she was pressed against a radiator and her hands were tied. As she tried to move around to get a better look, pulling at her wrists to test the bindings she hissed as a searing pain ran through her body, feeling as though every single nerve had been struck by thunder and lightning. She recoiled slightly, pulling at her wrists but despite the heavy metal clanging, it just hurt and it was serving no benefit.
Her gaze shifted to the man parallel to her in the dimly lit room. It seemed to be some sort of basement or room without any windows. There was a cold air whistling through wherever this was the place was definitely draughty. It set her teeth on edge and if her predicament hadn’t already given her goosebumps, that would.
The man was pacing, she realised. He had messy hair, a tattoo that she couldn’t quite see running the full length of his arm and at the end of his arm… he was holding a gun. He looked unsettled and on edge, like he was on some sort of really bad trip.
“My name is Lucy Chen, I’m a police officer with the LAPD.” She explained calmly, clearly trying to muster her most grown-up voice. She wanted to sound authoritative, angry or maybe threatening. Just anything other than the unadulterated fear she felt right now.
“You’re a cop?” She quickly moved her head to her left; she hadn’t noticed the man in the beanie before now. Even when she tried to narrow her eyes to take in every detail of the room just as she’d been taught, it felt like the world was an ominous blur of things that were just too slightly out of focus for her to see.
“We have to kill her Carl.” The pacing man panicked.
It was a sobering thought and all at once everything came into view in an overwhelming way. She saw the damp at the edges of the walls, the peeling combination of paint and wallpaper. The room smelled damp and had a tinge of burning tar to it. It looked like it was some kind of office, maybe, if that’s what anything in this place could be described as. It had a desk and chair, if that counted as an office. There was a corkboard, with things pinned to it, but the room was too dark for her to make any of it out. He moved towards her, aiming his gun at her, his hand shuddering.
“Think about what you’re doing.” Lucy pleaded with him, pulling at her bindings just enough to shift to sitting on her knees. Carl raised her hand, the gun still in his grasp as he swiped at her, a blunt ache at her cheek and mouth. Her jaw hurt.
“We can’t just kill a cop, Joe, are you insane—?” His voice raised. Lucy shuddered, feeling a bitter metallic taste in her mouth she realised her lip was bleeding. The thought was there to kill her. Her mind threw back to Caleb and being forced into the barrel. The bleakness of suffocating, buried alive and feeling every ounce of life wrung from her. She worried if being shot to death would somehow feel different? She’d watched people die before, especially in her job. Was her death going to be like turning off a light, or would it be slow and drawn out like before?
“Would you just shut up. I’m trying to think.” Carl argued.
Joe sat down adjacent from Lucy on a shipping box, putting his head in his hands despairingly. “Shit, shit, shit. You kidnapped a cop. There’s no coming back from that, man. With my rap sheet and—.”
“You’re right. He’s right.” She looked to Carl. “You can’t kill a cop. Right now you’re looking at assault, kidnapping. But if you give me up now, maybe turn on your boss you could be looking at 20 years, good behaviour. You can still have a life. You don’t have to kill me.” She strained against her bindings against the piping, trying to gain some leverage or maybe loosen the pipe but she couldn’t free herself. Her hands were cuffed blisteringly tight above her head and she could bet they were probably even her own standard issue cuffs from work.
“I won’t see my kid grow—”
There was a bleeping, then a ringing. It was the Kim Possible theme. Lucy grimaced in horror, eye widening and fear curdling at the pit of her belly. Carl turned to her.
It was Bradford, she was certain. That was his personal ringtone, part of some dumb joke that seemed hilarious at the time but now made her blood run cold.
“You didn’t check if she was clear?” Goddammit Joe.” He exclaimed, handling her roughly in the seat, searching her pockets for the ringing sound. His hands were rough and she felt her flesh bruising under his touch as he pulled at her, she shifted uncomfortably against the cuffs. Joe was silent. Sure he’d patted her down, taken her gun from her belt, the knife at her ankle and the lot. It hadn’t crossed his mind to consider if she had a mobile phone tucked away, especially not in the heat of the moment.
“I-It’ll be my TO. If I don’t answer my mobile, he’ll know something’s wrong and he will come looking for me and he’s an arrogantly stubborn man who won’t stop.” She explained, trying to bargain with the man, her voice wavering slightly with a bead of something, maybe blood or sweat at her brow. She felt a rush of combined adrenaline and fear.
“You idiot.” He declared tossing her mobile to Joe catching it from where he was sat, walking towards her. A questioning look in his eye; they were really going to let a cop take a call from her superior?” Lucy saw the look.
“Hey Boot, how’s it going?” Joe held the phone up to her on speakerphone, the threat of a gun held up to her at less than arm’s distance.
Mustering everything she had in her; everything he had every taught her about deception, all of those off the cuff survival tactics, the bargaining she’d tried with Caleb, experiences of being a cop on the beat of the LA asphalt.
“Officer Bradford. Hey, I’m good. It’s my day off— is there something wrong at work?” Her lips pursed, feeling the man press the barrel of the gun tighter against her forehead, she tried to supress a shuddered breath.
Tim sat up sharply at his desk. He was only calling in passing, he’d had one hell of day and he could fancy grabbing a beer on the way home from work. He furrowed his brow slightly, narrowing his eyes to focus on her words. Months ago after her kidnapping, they had arranged a secret code for whenever the called, something that was only ever expected to be the cradle of a safety net for Lucy in the aftermath of her trauma but had now become second nature. She’d responded in the affirmative to his question. It felt like his heart has skipped a beat, feeling that flurry of fear for her, followed swiftly by anger. He started recording the call.
“Mm, yeah. Sort of… Something panned out with the D’Agastino case, the Captain is calling us all in for a safety briefing.” He lied while trying to find some kind of response on the fly to keep her talking or to somehow engage whomever else was listening in to their conversation. Her heard that controlled flatness in her tone that only he could recognise after hours together, driving the streets of LA in the shop, he knew her like he knew the back of his own hand.
“My dad’s sick again. Can you let the dog out for me?”
“Sure. Where—.” He heard a bleep, then nothing. She’d hung up. He took a moment, looking at his mobile just in case she called back, his mind rushing through everything she’d said already and everything he’d heard.
“Lopez.” Tim called to a desk not too far from his own, she seemed pretty engrossed in whatever she was doing, her face was screwed tightly as she flicked through a file with a stack of papers in it; photos mostly but the odd transcript and handwritten note.
“Yeah?” She replied, glancing up at him, grateful from the break from her work. Her back was aching, she realised placing her hand at the nape of her neck and massaging tense muscles. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Chen, I think she’s in some kind of trouble. Can you take a look at this call?”
“Sure.” She answered, holding her hand out to him for his mobile, seeing the concern plastered across his face, she arched an eyebrow. “You okay?”
He tossed the mobile to her, making his way over to her desk. “I was just calling to check in. It’s sort of, uh, a thing we do. That doesn’t matter. She’s telling me something’s wrong; we have this code where I ask how she is and if she tells me to stand down then she’s fine. If she says anything else, she’s compromised somehow.” She put her headphones in, playing the part of the conversation Tim recorded.
“She said her dad’s sick, maybe she’s just got some stuff on her mind and forgot?” Lopez offered, trying to reassure her friend and colleague.
“I tried calling back, but her phone’s off. I don’t know, something about this just doesn’t sit right with me.”
“When have you ever not trusted your instinct?” She asked.
“You’re right.” He conceded.
“Call it in. I’ll see if I can get some friends of mine to enhance the audio. See if there’s anything more we can get from it.”
Joe tossed her mobile across the room, with it shattering against the wall. Damn it. The cops were definitely onto them now and it was all just going to be a matter of time. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Shut up.” Carl warned Lucy, with a swift punch to the ribs before she had the opportunity to say anything. She inhaled deeply with a cough, curling into a defensive position as best as she could, straining her tied hands to block another hit.
“They’re onto us. They know we have one of theirs. They’re going to put us away for life. I won’t see my kid.”
“Think of all our brothers and sisters on the frontline they’ve taken from us, huh? So what if we take one of theirs? They deserve it for what they’ve done to our crew.” Carl retorted.
“This isn’t your crew, these aren’t your people you’re running with Carl. This is your dad’s people yeah? I never asked to be a part of this. You dragged me into this.” Joe put his head in his hands as Lucy still spluttered in the background, every breath only bringing pain. He was pacing again, waving the gun around as he gesticulated. “I was fresh out of prison, a new life. Good behaviour and all that.”
“Yeah and you had no friends, no status and no money. Some gangbangers would’ve killed you walking to get your groceries and that’s if you didn’t OD on your couch before that.”
“I had a life and a kid! That was enough.” Joe retorted, tears streaming freely down his face. Lucy saw him grind his jaw, his pacing becoming more erratic. He pointed the gun at her; she flinched placing her hands in front of her as well as she could.
The sound of the gunshot barely registered in her mind, before Carl dropped to the ground right in front of her. Lucy pulled again, trying to move towards him to see if he was still alive; maybe there was something she could do to help. She didn’t have any of her kit but— It was no use. He was dead.
“Just let me go and we can talk about this. Please, just let me go.”
“And arrest me? Nah, I’m not going back to jail.” Lucy hesitated. She was trapped at a sticky crossroad; she couldn’t promise he wouldn’t be arrested. She was also staring death in the face and it wasn’t getting any easier the second time around.
“Talk to me.” She pleaded, panic and desperation now seeping into her voice. “Joe, talk to me. I know you’ve been to prison once already, that you’ve got a kid. You’ve got so much life still to live and I don’t know what you’re going through, but I can tell you’ve been through a lot that I could never understand, but I’ve been to a really dark place too and it’s hard when you’re alone.” She watched as his interest waned, trying to reel him back in. “Joe… Joe, listen to me. You’ve got a kid, right? That’s the biggest thing. You’ve got a whole life you created.” She was hanging on to anything she could.
“Don’t psychoanalyse me, lady.” He retorted and she nodded.
She was suffocating in her own words and her fight for survival. All her senses assaulting her at once, it was like Caleb was in the room, like he was holding the gun to her himself. Tears brimmed at her eyes. She could promise he wouldn’t be arrested, maybe if she could just get him to free her or to run away. But damn it, it wasn’t the way she’d been taught or trained; she hadn’t expected to love being a cop so damn much but just as much she had grown to respect the role and the responsibilities that came with it. It was like it just wasn’t in her DNA to lie to people, no matter the circumstances or consequences.
“I don’t want to die.” She blurted out as a tear rolled down her cheek. “I’m really scared too, but maybe there’s a way out of this. He lowered the gun for a moment, thinking, trying to figure a way out.
“Shut up.” He warned, making his way over to her, releasing one had from the cuffs against the radiator, tightening the other with a vice-like grip. She wriggled in his grasp, trying to fight against him but his single hand wrapped around her wrists easily, wrenching her arms behind her back. “We’ve got to move.”
“Please— Please, just—” She begged. He cut her off, wrapping a dirty cloth tightly around her head, between her teeth, forcing her to her knees as he tied it.
“I told you to shut up.” He yanked her back to her feet, pressing the gun to her back. “Walk.”
“I want every officer in this precinct on this thing, call in the off-duty teams for a briefing.” Grey barked. “What do we have already?” He asked, looming over Lopez’ desk, Tim at his side.
“A little bit of audio. Not much. We do know the last call she made was around the Arts District Downtown at 19:04 last night. We found her car abandoned there.” Angela explained, holding her earphones out to Grey to listen to the incomplete conversation.
“Who was the call to?”
“Still waiting for the judge to grant the warrant on her call history. I checked in with Wes and Judge Walters is the duty Judge for today, but he’s tied up with an emergency child protection placement.”
“Damn it.” Grey hissed angrily. “Who’s second on call? We need to hurry this thing along.”
“She could already be dead by now.” Tim chimed in bleakly, they both turned to look at him. “She said to let the dog out, but she doesn’t have a dog.”
“What about Kujo?”
“But why let him out? The dog runs around more in a day than me. Especially with his—.” He stopped abruptly.
“With his what?” Lopez asked, confused.
“His stomach. He’s got allergies; loads of allergies, like who knew a dog could have allergies? But the vet prescribed him this special diet, we’ve been picking it up from Downtown, it takes weeks to get it delivered.”
“Hang on, Wes just messaged to say the warrant came through.” She tapped at her keyboard sharply, narrowing her eyes. “The last dialled number was 911.”
“I already checked in with Dispatch, they haven’t heard from her.” Grey added.
“They wouldn’t have, the call lasted 4 seconds.” Tim pointed out on the screen.
“So she was interrupted?” Lopez asked.
“Or she interrupted them.” Bradford replied. “Damn it.” He ran the postcode for the dog food supplier through his laptop. “No break-ins or anything suspicious in the area last night.”
“Don’t you think that’s kinda suspicious for central Arts District on a Tuesday night?”
“West and Nolan are on their way to Downtown; get them to search the nearby area. Anyone with a criminal background, I want to know about it. I don’t care if they have to run every car in the district.”
“You don’t think this is another of Rosalind Dyer’s people, trying to get even?” Lopez asked standing from her desk.
“Not her MO, not her area… but not out of question. Let’s hope for the best and plan for the worst and follow the few leads we’ve got so far.”
“Yes sir.”