The Soldier and The Spy: Jay Halstead- Episode 3

Chapter 1

Present Day

"This is disgusting." Kim murmured, and Jay had to agree.

Any crimes that involved kids always got under his skin but this?

He'd never worked a case quite like this before, where the children being taken were so young. The oldest hadn't even been three. They were practically babies, and from what they'd been able to tell eleven of them had been taken.

Voight let out a frustrated huff and his eyes flicked to where his Sergeant stood staring furiously at the whiteboard, like some new piece of information was going to pop out and give them the break they needed. But he wasn't so sure. They'd been at this for days now and every lead they got was either turning up dry or dead. Their biggest had been Becca Whitman, one of what they were just now learning was an established group posing as Child Protective Services; they conducted fake assessments in low-income neighbourhoods and when a family 'failed' would take the children and sell them on the black market. Intelligence had only found out because they'd begun targeting pregnant women, and four days ago had tried to take a newborn just hours after birth. Thank God it had been at Med and Natalie had been the family's doctor. She'd gotten a feeling something was wrong and had run with it, refusing to let the child be separated from their mother and when Goodwin called CPS to follow up they'd been informed there was no active case file on the family. Worse, Becca Whitman did not and had never worked for the agency.

Unfortunately they couldn't ask Becca about any of this because she was dead. Murdered when the group she worked for realized the police were closing in. They'd found the man who'd killed her last night, Brian Till, but now he was dead too. No one blamed Adam, Till had pointed a shotgun right at him but all of them were left feeling frustrated. They were running out of leads and with two more kids missing they were running out of time too.

"What about the site where they're selling these kids? There's gotta be something on there we can use."

"Tech guys say it's a bust. Whoever set it up knew what they were doing, and passed along their tricks to their customers. Trying to get through it would take too long, and who knows how much they'd even be able to get." Vanessa answered Voight with a shrug but it was obvious she was discouraged- even finding that out had been luck. Till's phone hadn't been password protected and he'd left the damn tab open on his browser, but apparently even that wasn't going to be enough.

"Yeah and while they're looking who knows how many more kids get snatched." Hailey continued, shaking her head as she stared at the board.

Jay couldn't help but watch her for a minute, his gut tightening as he looked her over. He wanted to check in with her, see how she was doing with the case, how she was doing in general but he didn't know what to say. It had been weeks now since they'd had a real conversation and anytime he tried to start one she found a way to extricate herself, usually before he'd gotten more than two sentences out. So he'd backed off. Just like he did now, forcing his attention off of her and back onto that board.

It was too blank.

Too damn blank and none of them had any ideas how to fill it.

None of them.

"So we get someone who can do what they can't."

Everyone looked his way but he only met Voight's stare, acceptance filling his Sergeants face far faster than he'd expected. That alone said how dire the situation was.

"Call her."

"You think she can do it in time?"

"If it takes her more than an hour I'll be amazed." Jay glanced over at Adam as he took out his phone and matched his friends raised brows before turning away, heading for a bit of privacy as Tess picked up.