Got your back

Chapter 13

"CPD!"

"Hands in the air!"

"On the ground! Now!"

As soon as the money and drugs exchanged hands, the rest of the team rushed in, guns drawn. Patrol was pulling up behind them as they yelled orders at the dealers and the undercovers. There were only so many undercover officers in the city, and they couldn't very well blow their cover with every op. So today they were under arrest as well, at least until patrol could haul away the real criminals.

Jay shoved Caden against the hood of his car, more forcefully than needed even to keep his cover. Caden let out a grunt of pain that Jay suspected, not unhappily, was not just for show. As Jay tightened the cuffs on his wrists, he could see Kevin doing the same to Adam, although significantly less harshly. Voight was taking care of the dealers with a few guys from patrol.

Jay moved over to Hailey, cuffing her as well. He squeezed her hand lightly, out of sight from the others. "You good?" he asked under his breath as he pretended to adjust her cuffs.

"Yeah, I'm good," she replied, equally quietly, as she squeezed his hand back.

Jay led her over to sit with Kim and then headed to stand with Kevin and Voight as they pretended to wait for more squad cars to show up to transport these four. The two dealers were quickly loaded into the back of the two cars on scene and within minutes they were being transported back to the district for processing.

As soon as they were out of sight, the team abandoned their undercover personas. Jay went back over to Hailey to uncuff her while Kevin did the same to Adam and Voight did the same to Caden. As soon as he was uncuffed, Adam did the same for Kim.

Hailey had just finished taking off her cuffs and tossing them back to Jay when Caden started to approach him.

"What the heck was that?" He snapped.

"Part of the job," Jay snapped back. He had no sympathy for the other officer. "Just 'making us look realistic,'" he added, his anger barely hidden.

If Caden recognized his own words, he gave no indication. Instead he just walked back to wait by his car, muttering angrily under his breath and rubbing his wrists.

By the time Voight dismissed them back to the district, Caden seemed to have gotten over the rough arrest, instead happily focusing on the completion of his first full undercover operation.

———

The team walked up the stairs to the bullpen, everyone in relatively high spirits thanks to their successful bust. The celebratory atmosphere only thinly covered the tension and discomfort that had increasingly become a constant among the unit. But for now, they were able to pretend, if only for a few minutes, that they were okay and that the hostilities that had become commonplace were a memory of the past.

Within seconds though, that facade came crumbling down.

"Upton, my office. Now," the sergeant barked, standing in his doorway.

Hailey, who had momentarily been able to forget the horrors of her week, felt her stomach drop, a sense of dread washing over her. Whatever this conversation was, she knew it was not going to be enjoyable.

As Jay put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, he felt her instantly flinch before relaxing under his touch. She set her jaw and wiped any sign of emotion from her face. Taking an almost imperceptible deep breath, she headed into Voight's office, the sergeant shutting the door behind her.

The veteran members of Intelligence exchanged concerned looks, any traces of their smiles instantly gone. Kim placed a hand on Jay's shoulder, copying his gesture of reassurance from moments earlier, but he just shrugged her off. He walked over to his desk and sat down, doing his best to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach.

———

As the minutes ticked by, Jay was growing more and more concerned. Hailey shouldn't be the one in Voight's office right now. She shouldn't be the one in trouble. Not that this meeting necessarily meant that she was in trouble, but nothing about it seemed right. Perhaps the most worrisome part was that Jay hadn't been able to eavesdrop a single word. Given the proximity of his desk to the office and the almost complete silence of the bullpen, interrupted only by Caden's occasional excited chatter or hushed whispers between Kim and Adam, he should have been able to hear something. But he hadn't. And that was worrying him.

Because he didn't know what it meant for Voight to be this quiet. He was used to him yelling and threatening and being generally kind of terrifying. But silence? That was a new one. And Jay didn't know what to expect. He didn't know what was going on behind that closed door. He didn't know what words were being said, what questions were being asked, and what memories were being dredged up. And the part that pained him the most was that he had no way of knowing how Hailey was doing or what was going through her mind right now.

Because at least when Voight was angry, the whole team knew what to expect. Perhaps Hailey most of all. She was the only one who could sit there and be screamed at and not even flinch. Not even Jay could say the same. Because she had been trained to, from years of horrible experiences. But as terrible as it was, at least Jay knew that when she was being yelled at she could handle it like a pro, even though she deserved a million times better and even though it brought up memories that she would much rather had stayed buried forever.

But Jay didn't know what she was going through in the silence. He knew she could handle it; he knew she could handle anything. But he wished that she didn't have to be handling it alone. They were only a few feet apart, separated by just a few measly inches, but it might as well have been thousands of miles. Because he couldn't be there for her and it was killing him.