Chapter Text
They have nothing. Nothing useful, not a thing that can give them a clue about what has happened to Hailey. Jay is frustrated, and even he notices that his mind is not working properly, he can’t think straight.
After going through a couple reports of old cases he finds himself fixated on her empty desk, missing her even more when instead of the frown she makes when she is focused on something he only sees the bullpen stairs.
She should be here with them.
Hailey shouldn’t be missing. And he can’t help but think that part of it is his fault.
He’s pulled from his thoughts when Adam stands up abruptly from his chair, “I have something!”
Adam motions for the team to join him in front of the board and asks Voight to get out of his office where he has been stuck since they found out about Hailey calling the DA’s office to get information on different closed cases Hailey had been involved in.
“She didn’t have her issued phone with her so I’ve been trying to track her personal one, but it was turned off. Thankfully I got an order for it and I’ve been able to get into her health app account and she had the location turned on so I’ve managed to trace her running route”, he explains and when he sticks a few pictures on the board he continues. “She started off at her house and went on a steady path for a while, then she slowed down around this area, where she eventually stopped, and then the phone was turned off. So whatever happened to her it was…”
“In Lincoln Park”. Jay answers for him, and before Voight can give them any orders, Jay is already putting on his jacket and determined to go there.
“Halstead, Ruzek and Rojas, we are going there. I’ll ask Trudy to lend us some patrol units to help. Burgess and Atwater keep working on the motive and suspects, you may get a call from the DA’s office”.
“Do we know the timeline?” Jay asks Adam when they get out of the car in front of the same entrance Hailey had used.
“Yes, but the app doesn’t give strict locations, looks like she ran quite fast for around forty minutes before stopping”.
Jay stops at the entrance and takes a look at his surroundings, if he remembers correctly Hailey’s house is at approximately a 40-minute distance while jogging slowly; so if she was running that morning it probably took her half that time.
“I need a map from the park”, Jay asks Vanessa, who had just arrived in Hank's car.
He opens it and spreads it out on the hood of his truck. While Voight, Vanessa and Adam join him, he starts drawing circles on it with a red pen.
Hank, trying to understand what was going through the detective’s mind, asks him what the marks mean.
“She used this entrance. According to the app her run lasted 40 minutes, it would have taken her 20 minutes give or take to get here from her house. So that leaves us 20 other minutes before she stops” Jay explains.
“But she could have gone anywhere” Adam interjects.
“Not anywhere. Hailey never carries a water bottle when she goes running, I asked you if she had one today just in case, but you said she didn’t” Vanessa nods in agreement. “These are all the fountains in the park” He clarifies pointing at them.
Then Voight starts seeing Jay’s point of view, “You think the stop she made before the phone was turned off was to rest and drink”.
“Yes. If we take out the ones that she couldn’t possibly reach in those 20 minutes and the ones that are too close to this entrance it gives us a smaller area to look at. She didn’t resume running after that stop, so my guess is that whoever did this took the stop as an opportunity. We need to look at these fountains”.
“Good job Halstead”, Hank tells him before turning to the patrol units with the map in his hands. “We’ve limited the area to these fountains and their close surroundings. Remember, anything you find can be important, but be on the look for a discarded phone”.
It is not until an hour later that one of the officers calls out for them, turns out there were a lot of fountains that Hailey could have gotten to.
“What do you have?” Voight asks.
“One of the patrol dogs got her trace and we followed it until that fountain, they are now looking for further evidence, but we found a phone thrown nearby, it’s turned off and the glass screen is broken, but it meets the description we were given”.
Jay takes the bag the officer hands them with the phone inside and asks her, “Blood?, footprints?”.
“It doesn’t look like it, the footprints are the same that you could find in the rest of the park, so I would guess that for whatever reason the victim didn’t or couldn’t fight back”.
Yeah, victim. They had told the officer in charge not to disclose who was the victim they were looking for, just in case.
When Jay closes the door of the truck to go back to the district, this time with Rojas with him, he takes a minute to take a breath. He is scared sh*tless. If he has learnt something from his therapist is that his body doesn’t react well when he doesn’t have control of the situation. And now he has no idea of what is going on, he just knows that Vanessa is sitting in the passenger seat instead of Hailey, his partner, and that they don’t know what happened to her.
“Jay”, Vanessa calls for him, taking him out of his reverie. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, just thinking, don’t worry” he brushes off and starts driving to keep his mind on something else.
Hailey has no idea for how long she has been here, but she is exhausted, she can feel her eyes closing over and over again and every second that passes is harder for her to stay awake. Amelia has remained asleep since they talked, or maybe she is actually unconscious.
Hailey doesn’t really know anymore.
The only thing she knows is that even though she is f*cking tired she won’t give up. She knows her team won’t give up; she knows Jay won’t give up; and somehow that gives her all the strength she needs to keep her eyes open for a bit longer.
Hailey’s resting her forehead on the cold metal pole to try and alleviate her pounding headache, when she hears the door open. She turns to look at Amelia, who has apparently woken up with the sound; and she has trouble keeping the tears from falling when the girl looks at her, utterly exhausted and terrified.
“Who are you?” she spats at the mystery man, trying to get his attention.
But he completely ignores her, like he is pretending she’s not there. All his attention is focused on Amelia, whose eyes are closed again. He moves to the other side of the room to pick a bucket and fills it with water.
“What do you want from us?” Hailey asks again.
He turns to look at her and smiles before throwing the water at Amelia to startle her and fully wake her up. She can’t get that smile out of her head, the combination with his shinny eyes being nothing else but disturbing at the very least.
But Amelia barely wakes up, she’s too drained, too weak. Hailey can sense the frustration and anger radiating from the mysterious man. But for some strange reason that she still doesn’t understand, the man turns back and climbs the stairs, locking the door behind him and leaving both of them there.
And Hailey does the only thing she can at that moment, maintain her focus on the hope that her team is looking for her and that every second that goes on, they are closer to finding her.
“Anything new?” Voight asks Burgess and Atwater when they get back to the bullpen.
Kim gets up from her chair to write some things on the board that looks they’ve been filling with the little information they have. “Actually yes, the DA office called. No one from our recent cases has been in contact from the prison apparently”.
“So we went through our files and found the case of Marcus DiAngelo, Hailey was the one to make the detention and he literally said ‘You’ll see what happens when people mess up with me’ but we called Cook County, he’s been in protective custody since he got in because some inmate tried to kill him, turns out he had a lot of enemies that had nothing else to lose. Long story short, he hasn’t gotten any visitors since then and no contact with anyone except his lawyer; we called him and confirmed that he is isolated. Now we are calling our CI’s to see if anyone heard anything useful” Kevin explains to them, finishing writing that information with Burgess.
“If anyone gets any idea or remembers some case or someone that could be involved, write it down on the board and start making calls, we have no time to lose” Voight tells the team before closing his office’s door.
When everyone gets back to their seats Jay is left standing in the middle of the bullpen looking at the board, trying to clear his mind. He can’t stop his eyes from wandering to Hailey’s empty desk, and decides to sit there instead of using his own; a weird habit they’ve both acquired when the other goes undercover, their way of feeling closer he guesses.
He turns on the computer and starts going through some of the cases that come to his mind, but he can’t find anything important, and some of the most important ones that could be responsible for this are people that didn’t even see Hailey face to face.
He is lost, probably desperate too. Hailey occupies his entire mind, but he can’t keep at bay the different outcomes to this situation that he has witnessed through the years. Himself getting shot and on the verge of death could be a good example of one of them.
Out of frustration he starts ruffling his hands through his hair, but when the right one lingers on his forehead a new name comes to his mind and he quickly pushes back his chair and goes to Hank’s office, getting in without even knocking and closing the door behind him.
“What’s wrong?” Voight asks immediately.
“Booth”.
“Booth what? Please explain”.
Jay’s frustration is clearly evident to the Sergeant when he moves to sit in one of the chairs, “What if Ronald Booth is behind this?”
“You think? That was a couple years ago, he’s still locked up” Voight answers.
“But Sarge, he and Hailey have history” Jay tells him looking at him directly, trying to make him understand something he’s not sure he’s ready to explain.
“Jay… I have a feeling that with history you don’t mean that she was undercover in his gang and betrayed him, right?”.
“I…” Jay hesitates, feeling like he was betraying Hailey.
Hank easily feels the detective’s uneasiness gets up from his chair and sits on the table in front of him, “Hey, I know this is something you two hid from me, I’ll admit I didn’t run a thorough background check on the first case because I trusted Hailey, but whatever is going through your mind is eating you. She trusted you with that for a reason, but now, Jay… Now it’s Hailey’s life that is on the line, believe me when I tell you she will understand”.
“The first time she was undercover, Booth got drunk at a New Year’s party, Hailey made the decision to push him to get information, but things went sideways. He beat her, Hailey’s partner got there in time, but she ended in the ER. I’m not gonna say what almost happened, but you can guess. When we got him last time, he drove Hailey over the edge talking about Garrett, she almost gave in and killed him right there. Hailey always knew Booth had killed Garrett, and Booth knew that Hailey ummm… that Hailey had loved him”.
Voight was petrified, he knew something had happened between Upton and Booth, but he hadn’t thought of that option at all.
“Okay, you get back and talk to your CI’s, I’m going to make some calls, if that bastard is somehow involved in this, believe me that I’ll find out” Hank concludes.
Jay nods and gets up and moves to open the door, “Halstead, thank you for telling me this. We’re gonna get her back”.
“I… it’s just that…”.
“Jay, Hailey is one of the strongest women I’ve known, hell, she’s one of the strongest cops I’ve ever seen, you can’t forget that”.
“I will” he answers and goes back to Hailey’s desk to start calling his CI’s, trusting Voight to handle the possible Booth implication.
