Chapter 3

[October 2015]

She dials the number from memory, tapping the screen of the cell phone she stole on her way out the door with shaking fingers. She doesn't know if this is his number any more, but she needs to talk to Rick. It's only a matter of time before they realize she's escaped, and she has no doubt that they'll go after her husband and daughter.

The voice that answers is groggy and rough, torn from sleep by the ringing of a phone at 3:47am.

"Rick."

His first response is a sharp gasp, followed by the broken, hesitant call of her name.

"It's me."

"You're alive," he practically chokes. Shock, doubt, and disbelief all crowd his throat, stealing the air from his lungs and rendering his tongue a useless dead weight. "Oh my God. Where are you?"

"I don't know, and I can't talk now," she breathes, careful to keep her voice down against the eerie backdrop of the forest at night. It's cool enough that she can see her breath, watches the cloud of water droplets fade into the darkness. She wants to yell and scream for help, wants to shout with joy, never wants to hang up the phone now that she's hearing her husband's voice for the first time in years. But she doesn't have a choice; they don't have a choice. "I have to ditch this phone and you have to take Lily and your mom and my dad and hide before they realize I'm gone. Leave your phones behind."

"Kate."

"Go," she urges. "Now."

"Okay," he promises, and she can hear the rustle of sheets, the soft thump of his feet hitting the floor. "I love you."

"Love you too," she breathes. Kate hangs up before he can say more, dials 911, and tosses the phone deeper into the woods. She can't stay, but at least it will give the cops a general idea of where to look. Someone will find her.

In the meantime, Kate has no idea where she is or where she's going, only that she needs to put as much distance as possible between herself and that cabin.

So she runs, and never looks back.

[...]

Rick has no idea where they are anymore.

He'd called the Twelfth immediately after waking his mother – she'd been living at the loft for the past few years, initially because her ex-husband had stolen all her money, but he knows she stayed because she'd been worried about him – instructing her to wake Lily while he figured out a plan.

It was all a flurry of activity after that. Ryan showed up at the door with an entourage of FBI agents while Esposito knocked on Jim Beckett's door with a second group of agents. Rick, Martha, Jim, and a confused, groggy, scared Lily were escorted to the FBI headquarters; the building is a maze, and Rick quickly lost all sense of direction as they rode elevators and wound through corridors into a windowless room.

He isn't clear on the details of Kate's whereabouts or the status of her kidnappers and, quite frankly, he doesn't care. He just needs her to be okay.

[...]

Kate wakes in a room with no windows; if not for the white walls and bright lights, she'd fear she was back in the cabin basement. But this room is clean and she's surrounded by a doctor, a nurse, a uniformed cop, and men in black suits.

"Detective Beckett," one of the men greets, raising an FBI badge into her line of sight. "Welcome back. I'm special agent Brent Simmons."

"Where's Rick?" she rasps, voice rough with disuse.

"Your family is safe, Detective," he assures her. "And your kidnappers are in custody."

She makes a failed attempt to push herself up onto her elbows, falls back into the pillows when her arms won't hold her weight. She doesn't remember being found, has no idea how she's ended up here, but she does recall pushing her body to the limits as she fled the cabin.

"You found them?"

"NYPD tracked the phone number you called your husband from and New Hampshire State Troopers found one of the men in the woods with a gun, searching for you and the phone. The other was in the cabin, sleeping off the aftereffects of a seizure."

Kate has so many questions, but the one that manages to escape first is, "I was in New Hampshire?"

"Still are."

She looks around, not that there's anything to see.

"You were in a cabin, in the basement," Simmons informs her, "in Pittsburg, New Hampshire. State Troopers picked you up a few hours ago about three miles away, collapsed in a campground off Route 3."

Right. She does vaguely remember wading through a river and then stumbling upon a collection of fire rings and picnic tables. Everything else is still shrouded in fog.

"You're recovering from a moderate case of hypothermia," the doctor adds. "Also, a sprained ankle," – She furrows her brow. When did that happen? – "and there are some signs of malnutrition. Few days in here and you should make a full recovery."

"They didn't… feed me much," she offers uselessly. Obviously the doctor has already figured that out.

"When you're up for it, my agents need to ask you some questions, take your statement."

Kate nods absently. She feels detached, so far away from everything that's happening right now. But at the same time, she already feels light years away from the cabin in the woods. She was there for almost six years, she knows, based on the date she'd glimpsed on the cell phone screen.

As the FBI agents begin questioning her later that day, she almost feels as though she's on the outside of someone else's life, looking in. She'd stolen a pen on her second day in captivity and she'd been taking notes ever since on the underside of her mattress. Names, events, conversations, newspaper clippings, dates on the rare occasion that they didn't black them out. Anything she'd been able to overhear, she'd written down. The bottom of the mattress was almost entirely covered.

And yet, there are full sentences of text that, when read aloud by the agents, elicit no memories from her. It's as though most of the last six years are just… gone. Six years of her life spent in a dark basement, and yet suddenly she can hardly remember it. She doesn't remember what happened to her, doesn't understand how that much time could possibly have passed.

She's in some weird limbo between victim, survivor, cop, wife, daughter, and mother, and she doesn't know how it all fits together, has no idea who she is anymore or what her future holds.

How does she even begin to move forward from this trauma that she scarcely remembers?

[...]

It only takes a couple days for her kidnappers to break and roll on Bracken. They're put into protective custody in exchange for the information they've provided and will be eligible for a reduced sentence.

Kate has no idea how she feels about this turn of events. She wants everyone involved to pay for what they've done to her mother, Montgomery, Raglan, McCallister, and who knows how many others. She wants them to pay for what they've done to her, the six years of her life she spent locked in a basement while her family was forced to go on without her. She wants them to pay for shooting her husband as he searched for the truth. But she also wants to take down Bracken, and the information provided by the kidnappers is all they currently have.

Bracken confesses to nothing, of course, answering every question with the glib over-preparedness that only a politician would possess. Or a sociopath. Or maybe both.

But between the NYPD and the FBI, they gradually manage to link him to the other murders. They interview Evelyn Montgomery and look through case files still on Roy's old laptop and in a filing cabinet in their home office. There isn't much of use in the case files, but the day they stumble upon a blackmail file is the day that Kate realizes it's finally almost over.

They never find the cassette tape that started it all, but it doesn't matter anymore. They have what they need. They have enough to take him down.

And that means she gets to go home.

She gets to see her family again.

[...]

They transport her back to New York where her family is already waiting for her at the loft, released from their secure location now that Bracken and his associates are in custody.

Kate pauses outside the door, takes a few deep breaths and wills her hands to stop shaking. She's excited, nervous, terrified, exhausted, unsure. It's been six years; a lot has changed since she disappeared. Rick and Lily have established their new normal, and she's not sure how or where she fits into their life. Into her own life.

Is there even still a place for her here?

But then the door swings open and Rick is there with Lily – seven year old Lily who looks so much like a younger version of herself that Kate feels as though she's looking through a doorway into the past – and her father is there and Rick's mother, and it's all too much. She's crying before she even realizes it, overwhelmed by the sight before her and all the smiling faces gazing at her with bright eyes shining with unshed tears.

"Mommy?" her daughter says tentatively, breaking the spell.

"Lily," she murmurs, voice caught in her throat. Kate crouches down, but her daughter isn't so little anymore. "You're so grown up," she whispers.

She tries to keep the bitterness out of her voice, but it will be a long time before she comes to grips with the fact that she's missed some of the most formative years of her daughter's childhood. Six years of Lily's memories that she will never be a part of. Six years of memories she doesn't have.

"You came back," Lily states.

Kate nods, extends an arm towards her daughter, but the girl doesn't move, still clinging tightly to Rick's hand and regarding her mother with wary eyes. A fresh batch of tears spill onto her cheeks as she rises, feels a wave of dizziness wash over her. She's still weak from her time in captivity, still recovering.

Her eyes catch her father's next and he strides forward without hesitation, wraps her in a strong, loving embrace. There's no hint of alcohol on him and she feels a weight lift from her shoulders, a weight she didn't even realize she'd been carrying.

Martha steps forward next, wrapping her in a hug and whispering words of comfort and love into her ear.

Rick's mother pulls away and then he's there, gazing at her with bright blue eyes swimming with so many emotions. She feels a similar jumble of feelings herself, all of them threatening to overwhelm her; relief, doubt, joy, pain, elation, regret, love.

Part of her wants to be angry with him, too. She knows he moved on, read the articles linking him with his agent Paula and later with Gina, his publisher. There was an actress once, too, a redhead from California that he'd met on his trip to promote his first novel in more than five years.

Kate doesn't know anything about the book, but she's glad to learn he's finally managed to write again. The thought of the world never again reading his words was too much to bear.

Rick reaches for her as he steps forward. She feels herself hesitate ever so briefly and he sees it; his reaction, the pain in his eyes, is unmistakable. But then she's throwing her arms around him before any of her other emotions can bubble up and talk her out of it, and he's hugging her back, and they're both sobbing; and despite the six years that stand between them, everything temporarily feels right with the world.

Kate knows the months that lie ahead will be difficult. She has so much to sort through on her own, not to mention the fact that she has to figure out how to bridge the immense gap between herself and her family. How does she even begin to explain to her daughter why she's been absent for the past six years? How does she come to terms with the fact that her husband slept with other women in her absence? How do they reassemble their marriage, their family after six years?

They all have a lot to talk about, and there's a mountain of emotions to work through.

But she can't find the words to express any of this at present; everything she might want to say is lodged in her throat. So she focuses instead on the familiarity of being in Rick's arms, even after six years; his strong embrace, the curve of his biceps, his hands spanning her back, his nose buried in her neck. The comforting, familiar scent of his deodorant and cologne.

She feels a tear drip onto the skin of her neck, feels it roll down to settle in the hollow above her collarbone. It's almost healing, like the tears of a phoenix, and it gives her the strength she knows she'll need to make it through the next few months. Everything might have burned to the ground around them all those years ago but she has faith that, with time, they'll rise from the ashes, stronger than ever before.

A lot has changed in the past six years, but Kate's love for her family remains true. And that love is a foundation upon which to begin reassembling her life. It will take blood, sweat, and tears, and probably every ounce of strength she has left, but Kate is determined. Bracken took her mother, her captain, and six years of her life. She won't let him take anything more from her or her family.

She refuses to let her past define her future.

A future that begins today.

END

Thank you everyone for your support and lovely comments. This was a very difficult scenario to write and I had to get into a weird mindset to do so. Thank you for coming along on this journey with me and for trusting me to put their broken hearts (and yours) back together again.