Chapter Text
Night is falling, the sky darkening above her head as she strides across the street, her heels click-clacking on the sidewalk as she walks down the street a little way before entering the parking garage. Repair work being done on the parking at the one-six has forced her (and everyone else in the building) to park here, in this multi-storey parking structure a block away.
Even at close to midnight, it’s oddly chilly for May and she tucks her jacket tighter around her as she walks across to the stairwell, pulling the door open with one hand, tugging her cell phone from her pocket with the other.
It’s been a long week; her squad had stumbled across an international sex-trafficking ring entirely on accident, and the ensuing inter-departmental chaos that had resulted from that had been migraine inducing to say the least. Add to that her team being a member short after Mike’s death, and Chief Dodds being out on bereavement leave leaving her to face the brass alone with no backup, no buffer for CompStat…
God, I need that vacation Ed was talking about, she thinks, scrolling through her contacts to his number. Glancing at the clock, four little numbers at the top of her iPhone screen informing her that it is 11:59PM, she wonders if he’ll be awake or if he’ll have fallen asleep waiting on her. I need to get away from all of this.
Deciding to see if her boyfriend (which sounds ridiculous to say, she’s forty-eight for Christ’s sake) is awake or not, she taps his name, climbing the stairs to level two of the parking garage as she raises the phone to her ear.
It rings.
Once.
Twice.
Five times…
On the sixth, it cuts over to voicemail and she sighs. “Hey Ed,” she says after his voice in her ear tells her to leave a message after the beep. “It’s me. I guess you’re asleep… I hope Noah didn’t give you much trouble. Thank you, for uh… for giving Lucy a break. I can’t remember if I said that to you earlier. I’m sorry, it’s been a day. A week… you know how it is. Um, I’m rambling,” she chuckles to herself, opening the door and exiting the stairwell onto the second level. Hurry up Benson, she tells herself. You’ll get cut off. “Anyway,” she forces herself to talk fast. “I’m on my way home now, just headed to my car,” she says, spotting her SUV up ahead. “The case is all wrapped up, and I’m pretty sure I can use the goodwill from this to get those vacation days, so Paris here we come.” She swallows. “Love you,” she says quickly, knowing she’s almost out of time. “Bye.”
She hangs up, sliding her phone back into her pocket and winces at the lie she’d just told. The case wasn’t as wrapped up as she’d said on the phone; the New York branch of the trafficking organisation may be shut down, the main players either dead or in jail awaiting trial, but as she’s learned from her many, many dealings with both the FBI and Interpol over the last week, the tendrils of this stretch far, far beyond her domain.
Most people would tell her that she’s done her part; she and her squad saved the girls that they could, the girls that wound up in New York. That she’s done what she can, and now it’s time to move on, but…
She’s never been able to just… switch off like that. The fate of those other girls weighs heavily on her mind as she keeps walking towards her car (why did she park so far away from the damn stairwell?), and she wonders if her newfound friend at the FBI would be willing to keep her in the loop about what happens next. Maybe if I give him a call in the morning… yeah, she thinks, making a mental note to do just that.
She’s so distracted, digging in her bag for her keys as she makes the final approach to her car that she doesn’t hear the soft footsteps coming up behind her. So distracted in fact that she doesn’t, despite being a cop - albeit an exhausted one after working all hours for the last week - even realise that she’s not alone until the whiff of aftershave hits her nostrils.
But then… then it’s too late.
Arms close around her from behind, an iron grip around her at waist height, pinning her arms to her sides, one hand closing around her right elbow, gripping hard and fast, clamping her arm, taking control even as she struggles, fight mode kicking in automatically as she tries to get her gun from where it is holstered at her hip.
She tries to kick out but her assailant is fast and seems to know all of her moves, dodging her feet easily as she tries to stomp them. Pinned and all but helpless, she opens her mouth to scream as a last resort, even knowing that in this deserted parking garage, at this late hour it’s unlikely she will be heard. I have to try, she knows.
But it’s fruitless; a cloth covers her mouth moments later, the slightly sweet smell of chloroform invading her senses, smothering her scream. Panic bubbles up, her instinct to fight lost as the cloth is held tightly over her mouth and nose. She tries, of course she tries not to breathe it in but…
I’m sure I recognise that aftershave, is the last thing she thinks before losing consciousness.