Chapter Text
"I have a job that I think needs your group's... special touch," Copley said as the four of them lounged around his living room, drinking his coffee and eating the cookies that he seemed to bake only for them since none of them ever saw him eating them. "But there's a complication."
"There always is," Andy said with a grunt of annoyance when she realized the tray of cookies was just out of her reach. Joe had to admit that it was a little funny to see Nile slide the tray down to her without even being asked. He had a bet with Nicky to see if they were going to figure out that they were dancing around each other or if the two men were going to have to draw them a map. Glancing at Copley, he saw the way he was studying the two women, and wondered if he should see if Copley wanted in on the bet.
"Well, this complication is a little different than usual," Copley said. "This time, the job is in Chicago, and not too far from Nile's old neighborhood."
Nile's face fell, biting her lip as she clearly tried to hold back her grief. Nicky reached out without hesitation to take her hand, squeezing it tightly, as Andy did the same from the other side. They knew she was still mourning her family, though every day she seemed a bit lighter. This, though, this would be tough for her to handle. And making sure that no one who knew her would see her could prove to be impossible.
"No," Andy said. "We're not going to Chicago."
"Well, actually, this is a job that I think just Joe and Nicky can handle," Copley said. He smiled at Nile, and Joe could see the sympathy it was masking. "The local police have already started investigating the gang, but if we wait for them to get all the evidence they need to get the appropriate warrants, then the cargo will have already been moved."
Something twisted in Joe's gut. "Cargo?" he asked.
"Kids," Copley said, bluntly. "They're brought in from other countries to be 'adopted' out. The families doing the adoption don't know that they're breaking any laws, but these kids aren't orphans and they haven't willingly been given up. They have families that want them back. I think the least we can do is help them."
Kids were a weak point for all of them. Joe and Nile had had beloved younger siblings, Nicky had wished many times for older siblings to protect him, and Andy just hated to see the small and the weak hurt. So this had suddenly jumped to something that they needed to do, the question was what Nile and Andy were going to do while Joe and Nicky went to the U.S.
"I do have some tasks for you two to do while Joe and Nicky break the kids out," Copley said. Joe couldn't help squinting at him - sometimes it seemed like the other man was almost able to read his mind. "I have a list of the children's names and their countries of origin. We're going to have to do some digging to see which of them have missing persons reports filed so we can get them back where they belong."
Nile looked relieved that she wasn't just going to be sitting around doing nothing. "Yeah, okay," she said.
The look on Andy's face was resigned. "I hate computer work," she groaned.
"If you wore those reading glasses we got you - " Nile started.
Andy made a talking motion with her hand, and Nile just laughed. This was a point of debate that had been going on for months and wasn't going to end any time soon, Joe was sure. Andy hated admitting to any of the weaknesses that came with being mortal now, but that was one that got under her skin even more than most.
The rest of the afternoon was spent planning and then making back up plans while Copley arranged for the alternate identities for Joe and Nicky. By the time the sun had started to set and Nicky had gone to the kitchen to poke around for dinner ingredients, things were as set as they were possible to be. Joe and Nicky would fly out early in the morning, and then the real work would begin.
"We need a warrant to even consider going inside. I know that you know this, Fraser," Ray said, even as he double checked the clip on his gun. Fraser was leaning up close to the wall of the warehouse that they'd been watching for three days, a look of intense focus on his face. Dief was sitting next to his leg, his upper lip pulled up in a silent growl.
All they'd been able to see as they watched were delivery trucks pulling in and out, but they were never unloaded with the gate to the property up, so they hadn't been able to actually see anything suspicious. And while Ray had an informant who insisted that the warehouse was being used to store stolen goods, he hadn't been able to get any more information than that, so it hadn't even been able to get past the Captain, much less in front of a judge.
So Ray was going to once again let Fraser do something stupid and heroic, going in without immediate back up in the hopes that he'd be able to find something, anything that they could take to a judge. There had been another delivery just that afternoon, so hopefully there was still some sort of illegal substance to be found. And hopefully the judge would accept, "The Mountie happened to be walking by and saw it," as evidence for about the forty-second time.
Eventually she was going to get tired of it, Ray was sure, but so far it hadn't happened.
Suddenly Fraser stiffened, going even more still as if that was possible. Ray squinted at him. "What the - "
"Shh, listen!" Fraser demanded, and after a second Ray heard it - the sound of a gun being fired with a silencer in place. He could barely hear it, but the screaming that started immediately afterwards left little doubt. And better yet, it gave him exigent circumstances to jump the fence, even without the warrant.
Fraser had barely hesitated, and Ray went over right behind him. The shipping door to the warehouse was closed, but light was shining out of the windows, and that was where the screaming was coming from. He didn't want to spare the time to find an easier entrance to the building, so when Fraser swung himself up onto the loading dock, Ray followed again.
The rolling door was locked when Fraser yanked on the handle, and Ray shouldered him out of the way, shooting out the lock so that they could roll it up, only to be staring at what looked like about a thousand children, five very wounded men being tied to a pipe running along the wall, and two very startled unwounded men who were doing the tying.
Well, this was where Ray came into play. "Chicago PD! Put your hands up and step away from those men," he ordered.
The lighter haired man, the one with a beaky looking nose, immediately raised his hands and stepped to the side, not so incidentally putting himself between Ray and the darker looking fella who had the rope in his hand. "Hello," the man said, as if they had just met at the park and not where there were a bunch of screaming and crying children. "We were just getting ready to call you." There was a distinct Italian accent, but it was a little different than what Ray heard bandied about in little Italy or even the Vecchio household.
Ray blinked at that. They had been getting ready to call Ray? Why? It took him a second to realize that he meant the police in general, and then the other man behind him grunted a word in a foreign language.
Beak answered in what sounded like the same language, only to swing around in surprise when Fraser responded as well. "English!" Ray reminded Fraser. He knew he couldn't force the other two men to speak it. For all he knew, the dark haired man didn't even know English. But Fraser damn well knew better.
Before he could say more than that, Italian guy looked over his shoulder at the other man, nodded, and then the two of them started to run, straight at Ray and Fraser. There wasn't time to think, and so Ray just acted, taking aim at center mass and shooting both men.
The darker man stumbled a bit, but recovered after a second. The blond didn't even slow down. They weren't trying to attack Fraser or Ray, though - they ran straight past the two of them and jumped off the loading dock.
Ray aimed at the men again, but knew the optics of shooting the men in the back, especially when they appeared to have done the work of taking out the bad guys, would put the precinct back on the front page, and not in a good way. Instead, he said to Fraser, "See if you can calm those kids down," before he turned his attention to where the five bleeding men were sitting on the floor. Time to figure out what the hell was going on.
It didn't take long to get the men to talk, though a lot of what they said made little to no sense. They all went on about how the two men had been repeatedly shot but even when they fell they got right back up - like the "Terminator" one man said. One of the men had even been hit in the head, and the mess they were shown certainly supported that, but those men had clearly been alive and well.
The kids were a mess. There weren't actually a thousand of them, but there were eighty-three, and while CPS had gotten involved, finding foster homes to take in so many children, many of whom spoke no English, was proving to be a challenge. That wasn't a problem for Ray or Fraser to deal with, though.
The five men were taken to the hospital to have their wounds treated. Ray had to admire the handiwork - none of the wounds were life-threatening, but they were going to be long-term reminders of this fight. Two men had had a knee blown out, one man lost his arm below his elbow, the fourth had his shoulder absolutely shattered, and the fifth was probably going to be paralyzed from the waist down. If it wasn't for the fact that Ray had absolutely no idea who those two men were, he would have had to thank them for taking scum like this off the street.
But the worst - the absolute worst - was that Fraser was acting even more squirrelly than usual, and given his normal level of crazy that was saying something. He'd abandoned Ray at the hospital once they knew the men were going to survive, muttering about something not being possible, and this was one mystery Ray was going to get to the bottom of.
So after everyone was out of surgery, handcuffed to their hospital beds with their own sets of police guards, he went to the consulate. He knew he should knock or ring the doorbell since it was after hours, but the last thing he wanted to do was give Fraser a chance to get his walls back up. So he picked the lock, which only took about three seconds since he'd done it at least a dozen times before.
Dief met him on the other side of the door, and Ray wondered once again just how deaf the damn wolf was. Holding his finger to his lips, he waited to make sure that Dief wasn't going to bark, before jogging to the back where Fraser's cot was.
Fraser had stripped out of his jacket, which made him look strangely naked. One of his suspenders was sliding down his arm, and he was jerking at it in agitation as he made "Uh huh" noises on the phone. The level of frustration rolling off of him was actually filling the air around him, and Ray couldn't help but wonder what had knocked the man so off kilter that all of this was showing.
Finally with a request that someone fax him pictures as soon as they were found, he hung up the phone. Fraser was facing the wall, and he took three deep slow breaths before turning to face Ray. He looked like his normal unflappable self, but Ray knew him too well to be fooled. He was flapped, seriously, seriously flapped. "Who were you talking to?" he asked. "Someone at home?"
"Sergeant Frobisher," Fraser said, still breathing deeply.
Ray understood why. Frobisher was an annoying pain in the ass normally, with his highly circular way of speaking, but Fraser was used to it and the Sergeant never got to him like this. "Okay," he said slowly. "What were you talking to him about? Seemed like it was a pretty involved conversation."
"A case he and my father worked on," Fraser said, and he was hedging. He was a goddamn hedger.
"Why is that so important now?" Ray asked, but just then the fax machine that sat across from Fraser's cot whirred to life as a call came in.
"It may be nothing," Fraser said. "It'll depend on these pictures. So give me just a minute?"
Ray held up his finger. "One minute and then you're going to explain why you're being so goddamn weird." He thought about that sentence and then corrected it. "Why you're being weird even for you."
The fax machine was spitting out paper, and Fraser took the three steps necessary to go to it and pick up the sheet of paper. He stared at it for so long that Ray actually was already moving to shake him when he thrust the paper at Ray. "Look at this."
Ray took the paper without thinking but he continued to stare at Fraser until Fraser nudged him in the shoulder, and then he looked down. But what he saw didn't make any god damn sense. It was the same two men they'd seen earlier - the Italian had shorter hair, almost a high and tight, and the darker fellow's beard was missing, but there was no question that they were the same men.
Except they were standing next to a man Ray was pretty sure was Fraser's father, only very young, and a young Frobisher on the men's other side. The two men looked surprised and a little annoyed about the picture, but Frobisher was practically grinning ear to ear. The headline was something about them interrupting a trafficking ring found in Toronto, and that didn't make any sense. As far as Ray knew, Fraser's father had always been stationed in East Bumfuck, just like Fraser himself.
"When was this picture taken?" he asked, staring at the photo, trying to see if there was something he was missing or misunderstanding.
"The year before I was born," Fraser said quietly. "Before my father managed to get away from the city. This case is the reason he didn't want his wife or his baby anywhere near Toronto."
Slowly, Ray raised his gaze to meet Fraser's eyes. "Maybe they're the fathers of the men we saw tonight?" he said, but he knew he sounded as doubtful as he felt.
Fraser just rolled his eyes. "Aren't you always saying that you trust the things you can see?" he asked. "Look at that picture again and tell me that those aren't the same men we saw tonight."
Ray didn't need to look again. He knew just what he'd see and it wasn't something that he wanted to think about. "What do you want us to do about it?" he demanded instead. "They were long gone by the time we got clear to look for them."
"I can find them," Fraser said simply, and the worst of it was that Ray knew that he could. God only knew what kind of fire that would bring raining down on their heads, but Ray knew he was going to do this with or without Ray's cooperation. "You know I can."
Taking a deep breath, Ray rolled his shoulders and his neck, loosening himself up for whatever was going to come their way. "Fine. How do we start?"