"I feel like I haven't seen you in the longest time," Felix comments as Nash pulls out of the precinct.

"Probably because we've been all over the place," I comment as I turn back to look at him.

"It's been a while since we've done a search like this," he adds as he looks down at his phone.

"Yeah it has," I say quietly before turning back in my seat. "Since we've got the warrant to look through Aurora's things, if anyone tries to give us trouble I'm counting on you to deal with it," I tell Nash as I look over at him. 

"I'm the muscle for you," he says jokingly as he flexes his arms and I roll my eyes. I'd rather not have someone give us shit in looking through her things, they'll be arrested on the spot and I'd prefer not to have to do that because someone was an idiot.

"I never asked but are you okay Natalia, you and the kid? I heard what happened the other day," Felix voices and I nod my head as I turn to face him again.

"We're both fine, there's no way I would have let that bitch take me out or hurt Jade and besides, it's one thing for her not to like me but she now made it personal and I'm going to make sure that I'm the one who arrests her," I say with conviction and he goes back to looking at his screen.

"Well when that day comes be sure to let me know if you need help," he tells me and I let out a bark of laughter, Nash's own chuckles joining mine.

"That's coming from the last person that would rather not do anything physical," Nash comments as he turns into the building's lot.

"I'm pretty sure if we sparred I'd kick your ass but the sentiment is nice," I tell Felix as he glowers at me and Nash parks the car near the front entrance.

"Very funny," he comments in a dry tone. "But I'm glad to hear you two are alright." We get out going straight to the building and we go in the direction towards Georgia's office. I gave her a heads up right before we left that we were coming to go through Aurora's office.

"Natalia," Georgia calls out as she waves her hand at us. "Did something happen with Aurora? Why do you need to go to her office?" 

"I can't say right now but she's gotten herself into some trouble," I tell her as she leads us away from her office.

"I see, I hope that you'll be able to help her. She's such a nice girl," she tells me. As if I'm going to help her, I want to destroy her and put her in prison. It's good to see you again Nash and I don't think we've met before," she says greeting both men.

"I'm Felix Hayes," Felix tells her as she unlocks a door with a card key.

"It's nice to meet you Felix," she says acknowledging him before turning back to face me. "Text me if you need me, I'll probably be in the labs working on a separate case from the current one though with how exhausted I am I'd rather be taking a break from work."

"It does look like you've been ageing more than normal," I say poking fun of her as she flicks my forehead.

"I may be old but I'm not that old," she scolds me as I chuckle. "I'll leave you all to your work."

"Alright men, let's get to work," I tell them once Georgia is out of the vicinity. Nash steps inside flicking on the lights and it's just like any standard office, file cabinets, two desktop computers. I glance up at the ceiling but unlike the bar, it doesn't have any tiles where things could be hidden.

"I'll leave you two to go through her computers and I'll check her cabinets to see if she left any type of paper trail," Nash tells us and we nod our heads in agreement as we take our spots in the room. I take off my jacket draping it on the back of the chair before powering on the computer. It's silent for the next fifteen minutes as Felix and I work on first getting past the passcode and then getting inside the computer.

The first place I go to is her email since there's a high chance she wasn't using her personal email when she got that request to come to my building. Even before going through her emails, I go change the password so she doesn't try logging in remotely. There's a pop-up on the screen when it says it's sending a notification to a phone number and the only thing that comes out of my mouth is FUCK.

"You say something Natalia?" Nash questions as he glances up from the papers he's reading.

"No, everything is fine," I answer with my most reassuring smile though I'm cursing myself in my head for my stupidity. If she gets that notification she'll know that someone is trying to hack into her account and she can stop it from wherever she is. My thought process is broken when I hear a beeping sound coming from her desk drawer and when I pull it open I find a cell phone inside.

I turn on the screen checking the notifications and the email for the password reset is staring back at me. It's just my luck that she had a secondary phone that she left at work and the bonus is that this phone has no passcode on it. I quickly type in a new password when I'm on the reset page and as soon as it's accepted I'm scrolling through her emails.

"Okay, it's not in her primary emails," I mutter to myself as I open new windows for any emails she highlighted as important or deleted. "Okay, nothing highlighted that she might need so let's see the trash, hopefully she didn't use her head and empty it." I go to the next window and the first mail I see is blank with no subject title so I open it.

The first thing that catches my attention is the sender's username, n8fgt54sa. Just reading that username it's like a red flag right in front of my face and I'd be an idiot to not take note of it.  I go reading the contents of the email and it's right there I find the hit request. It was sent on Monday, the same day I was at the bar when I found the laptop.

Aurora McAdam, we know of your past when you worked in the field of assassination. Although you've changed and gone into a life of solving crime instead of causing it, we have a proposal for you. The payout for this job is one million dollars in cash.

We're aware you're currently working on investigating the case of the new drugs that have hit the streets. One of your associates Natalia Sanchez has come across information that we want back. The job, get the laptop that's currently in her possession. We don't care how you do it, if need be, kill her. You will find a burner phone for you at your favourite hideout so we can contact you on the day of the job, yes, we know about those too.

"You found something? You have the look on your face," Nash points out as stands up and walks over to lean over my shoulder to look at the screen. 

"This is the order she got," I tell him as I look at my name, address and apartment number. 

"Damn, you're lucky you figured out a way to get away since Jade was with you, she got direct orders to kill you. Not saying you might not have had a chance in getting out of the situation, you just never know with these things," he 

 "I can only guess two things with this, either whoever sent this is a pro at stalking people to find information or they personally know me," I tell him.

"Which one are you leaning towards right now?" he asks looking at me.

"I don't know, I can't say right now which hunch is more right, I need something more, something concrete," I say glancing up at him as he inclines his head in agreement.

"Hey, check this out you two," Felix calls out to us and he turns the screen towards us as we move to where he is and all we see is a map of the province with some areas highlighted in green sections.

"What do they mean?" I ask looking down at him.

"Considering her previous job, my guess is safe house locations," he answers and from my count, there are ten places of interest. "But there's something else I found, a list of some wealthy people, four in total. I searched them all and they've all been reported missing in the last couple of years, their cases unsolved." This is no coincidence considering she admitted to doing assassinations in the past.

"Download that now and send it to Jason, he can work out who's going to those places," I tell him as I shoot a text to Jason. "You find anything yet?" I ask Nash and he shakes his head. 

"You two are the only ones so far. I'm guessing that she did everything on her computers so she wouldn't leave papers behind," he answers as he hands me a file to look at and I just see it's just a bunch of scientific words I don't understand. I pivot on my feet going back to where I was sitting before and level each man with a serious stare.

"Okay, keep looking because I don't care how long it takes, we're not leaving until we've searched through everything."

✘✘

"Are my eyes red?" Nash leans close to my face, taking off my glasses before gently rubbing the bags underneath them.

"Yeah, they're definitely red and you're getting shadows. You didn't sleep well last night? I didn't notice," he murmurs as he places my glasses back on my face before wrapping his arms around my waist. We're at the hospital coming to pick up Jade after Jason brought her here earlier but we're both still standing in the parking lot. 

It might be cold and dark since it's already night but just for a moment, it feels good to cuddle.  It's pretty empty but if anybody passes by they'll just see Nash leaning against my car with me in his arms. 

"Mmh, not really. I stayed awake for quite a bit," I tell him as I tilt my head up resting my chin on his chest.

"I'll make sure you get some rest tonight," he tells me as he leans down to kiss me. My hand goes to his cheek, the kiss is chaste and soft, just the familiar pressure of his lips against mine. I break the kiss looking up at him before standing a little higher so I could kiss his cheek.

"As much as I wouldn't mind continuing this, we have a kid to pick up plus her mom to see," I tell him as I stand back down. 

"Later," he says before giving me one final kiss and unwrapping his arms. "Where are your gloves?" he questions when he looks down at my pale hands and I won't lie and say they're not feeling frozen right now.

"Left them at your place but it's okay, here's an easy fix," I tell him as one of my arms wraps around his and I stuff my hand into his jacket pocket. My other hand goes into my pocket as I look up at him with a cheeky grin. "Told you." He lets out a huff of laughter as he starts walking us out of the lot.

"Yeah, an easy fix," he comments as his hand goes into his pocket to hold onto mine. It's silent between us as we walk through the lot and into the hospital. We go straight up to the recovery ward, nurses and doctors greet us when we pass by. They've gotten used to seeing our faces with the two of us bringing Jade her daily. 

"Knock knock," I say as my knuckles hit the wall getting their attention.

"Natalia, Nash!" Jade exclaims when she sees us and she runs over to hug us. "Were you guys really busy with work?"

"Yeah, sorry Jade. We had a really busy day today," I tell her as I pat her head. I move to her vacated seat as she continues to talk to Nash while I talk to her mom.

"It's good to see you're okay Natalia, of course I was also relieved to see Jade unharmed when she was brought by earlier," she tells me and the relief is clear on her face. "I'm guessing since you two couldn't bring Jade here you were busy with the case that brought trouble for you guys?"

"You got it, we're just hoping we can get closed soon," I say to her as I lean back in the chair. "How's recovery going?"

"I'm slowly getting there but one of the areas where my stitches are got infected so they've hooked me up on some more i.v's," she tells me as she holds up her hand showing me the needle. "They said it was to be expected with how bad I was injured and how many stitches I still have."

"That sucks but I hope it passes soon and there are no more hiccups in your healing," I voice sympathetically. 

"But it's not all that bad. I've had the company of Haruto and Victoria and even Jade's teacher stops by sometimes," she says with a cheerful smile.

"Camryn stops by too? I haven't heard this from Victoria," I muse as she grins.

"I'll be honest it's strange being acquainted with my daughter's teacher but right now it doesn't even phase me," she says with a chuckle. "I think she mentioned bringing Jade's previous teacher along with her as well the next time she comes."

"Charlotte you mean?" I ask and she looks at me in surprise but then breaks into more laughter.

"At this point I'm not even surprised you know her too," she says with a wry smile.

"Girl, you're officially part of our group, just wait until you're fully healed and out of here and we can meet outside of the hospital; we could even bring all the kids too," I say enthusiastically and she brightens a bit when she hears that.

"Sure, I'm looking forward to that," she tells me as Jade moves to sit on the bed beside her, done with interrogating Nash.  

"Hey, check this out," Nash says to me as he passes me his phone before turning to talk to Julia. I read the text messages between him and Jason. My eyebrow raises when I read the contents of it and I nudge him, my face reading 'are you for real?' He doesn't answer but a small smirk plays on his lips before turning back to the mother-daughter duo. I power off the screen but I don't even have to think that he'll enjoy what's going down tomorrow. 

✘✘

A/N What's up everyone!! It's been a while since I updated, I'll be honest, I'm questioning how much more chapters I can make this story, I'm hoping I can get it as long as The Officer so fingers crossed. I've been listening to Black Swan on repeat while I wrote this; I noticed having something good to jam to really makes productivity go much faster 😂

I'm loving this chapter so far. Enough detective work, the right amount of sweet between Natalia and Nash, and Julia being brought into our main girl's group. Question for the readers: What's your favourite part of the story so far? Anything you'd like to see in future chapters? Be sure to leave your thoughts of the chapter in the comments!!

One other thing, thank you all for the 12k views, a new milestone! Your support means so much❤