Grace's chest rose and fell with each breath she took, each one getting a tad louder as she woke up. She slowly opened her eyes and tiredly took in in her surroundings.
What happened? What day was it?
"Mmm..." she murmured, breathing in.
Adam, who was sitting in a chair beside her bed resting his eyes, shot up from his stiff hospital chair he'd spent the night sleeping on.
"Grace? Grace, you awake?...Do you know where you are?"
Grace frowned and squinted below, "The hospital...Chicago Med?"
"Do you remember what happened?" he asked softly.
She shook her head, "...I was at the cabin and then..." she trailed off and closed her eyes.
"You fell through the ice, but you're going to be alright."
"The ice...the ice," she processed. "That was after...he took me."
Adam immediately reacted by reaching out to hold his sister's hand and squeezing it, thankful that she was alive. He didn't want her to feel alone as the memories from the last 48 hours began to flood back and replay over and over in her head.
"He can't hurt you anymore, or ever again. He's dead, he's gone."
Strangely enough, Grace had no reaction to that piece of information. She gazed at the door and saw Voight standing in the hallway.
"How are you doing, Grace?" he asked while entering the room.
She shrugged and looked to Adam, not knowing how to answer, which Voight understood. There was a slight awkward silence that Grace then broke, before Voight could ask any more questions.
"Where's Dad? And Mom?" she asked, tucking her hair behind her ears. It was messy and had a dry texture to it.
"Dad left a few minutes ago to fill out some paperwork, he'll be back in a little while."
Grace stared blankly at him, still drowsy. "Ok, and my mom?"
"She's stuck at the hospital, but uh she said she would drive over as soon as she could." Adam lied.
Grace looked around nervously and felt as if there was something else he wasn't telling her. She read the time on the alarm clock beside her; it was morning. Adam could tell she was disappointed and perhaps a bit suspicious about her mother, but hoped she wouldn't dive into the subject.
"Did they find the other bodies? He...he told me there were others." she said slowly, still waking up. Whatever sedative they'd given her definitely worked its magic.
"The FBI has been on site digging up both properties since early this morning." Voight finally spoke.
"The FBI?" Grace was confused.
"Grace, we don't have to talk about this now." Adam tried protecting her.
"I want to know." she snapped.
Adam wasn't sure whether the whole being-on-national-news thing or the fact that Walton was a serial killer would freak her out more.
"It's been all over the—"
"You have to know that the man who took you—" Adam interrupted Voight. He knew his boss was trying to prepare his sister for what was happening outside, but Grace could go a few more hours without knowing she was the talk of the breaking news circuit, albeit her name was being left out. "—he was a serial killer, Grace."
"I mean, he bragged about doing it before." she tried to understand everything going through her head without picturing being back in that dark, cold, creepy space. She stretched her toes and snuggled deeper into the blankets. "Is that why the FBI is there? They found more didn't they?"
"Last we checked with them, the confirmed number of remains was twelve." Adam told her.
"Twelve bones?"
Maybe he'd been lying about how many he'd killed...
"Twelve bodies." Voight answered.
Adam stood up from the hospital bed. "I don't think she should hear this right now, boss."
"Adam, she needs to know. And when she's ready to talk, to us, the FBI...maybe he told her something about the victims."
Adam sighed and looked back to Grace. "Can you tell us what happened? If you can...only if you can."
Grace tucked the blanket closer to her and crossed her arms together tightly. "I went up to dad's cabin, like usual to check on it. There'd been a bad snowstorm..." she explained how the roof caved in and a few minutes later she heard a knock at the door. She thought it was Mr. Keller, so she opened it.
"I recognized him as the convenience store owner and he seemed friendly, wanting to help. He said he was driving by and saw the roof collapse. He said he could help so I let him in, but then I got a weird feeling like. I'd never felt before, so I made up some excuse to go to my car but then I forgot my phone. I remembered that Dad kept a gun in the glove compartment, so I took it with me, just in case."
Adam and Voight glanced at each other and had a feeling they knew where the story was going. Grace continued on that once she got outside her car, he popped out and grabbed her. The two of them fought and Grace tried getting out of his grip and screamed. That's when she snatched the keys from her jacket and attempted to stab him— which she did, but he got a hold of them and threw them into the snow. Then he pushed her down, took the gun, tied her hands, and threw her in his trunk. He also sedated her with something, Grace didn't know what.
"It was cold, grimy, damp...my mind was racing the whole time. It's like my brain couldn't rest for a second." Grace described the cottage basement. "He would come downstairs and...just look at me...touch my shoulders and my neck. Sometimes he would stand behind me, but I don't know what he was doing, I really don't. I would just keep my eyes shut and hope he didn't kill me..." she ran her own fingers from her neck, down to her collarbone, while she felt a shiver go down her spine. She missed her cozy, soft pyjamas and wished she was dressed in anything other than the scratchy hospital gown she had on.
"It wasn't his first time doing this, he made sure I knew that. Maybe it was to make me more scared or think there was no way anyone was ever going to find me. One time, he took out a knife and pretended he was going to slice my neck right then and there" Grace stated the last one like a question. The part didn't feel real. "It was funny to him. Right after doing that, he took a polaroid of me...did you find it?" Grace wasn't sure if she wanted to know the answer. She never wanted to see it again.
Voight nodded. "We did."
Adam took a deep breath and asked a question. "Did he ever try to..." He knew Dr. Halstead said there weren't any signs, but he had to be sure.
Grace looked up at him, alarmed. She thought back to that cold, musty cottage basement and the times she thought he'd been about to. It made her skin crawl. Voight glanced at her, then to the floor.
"No," she replied. "I think he planned on keeping me alive for a few days and then killing me. He talked about the others a lot. He made sure I knew I wasn't getting out of there alive. Even if I had, there was nowhere to go in that snowstorm," she shivered, remembering the feeling of being chilled to the bone.
"Once he saw you guys pull up, he ran downstairs and grabbed me and put me in the truck. I tried getting out, but the doors were locked and by the time I figured out what was going on, he was speeding down the highway."
Grace told them that once Walton realized he was driving south, he freaked out. His new plan was to find another cottage close by, kill the occupants and then kill her, that's what he told me. Then she spotted the screwdriver sitting on the floor of the truck, near the door. Once they slowed down at Fox Lake, she took her chance and stabbed him with it, then used it to break the truck window. She ran out to the first sight of open space she saw, which happened to be the lake. That was when she noticed all the police around them.
"I heard Antonio yelling, and then Hank. Then gunshots and the ice cracked beneath me. All I remember is Antonio pulling me out of there. He saved me," she raised her eyebrows to show her seriousness.
A moment passed while Adam and Voight went through everything in their heads that Grace told them. It all added up with their timeline as well.
"Can you try calling my mom again please? Or the hospital?" Grace pleaded. "My phone..." she said. "Is that evidence now or can I get that back?"
Voight nodded to her, "I'll get it back for you. It's at the lab."
"Thanks, Hank." Grace replied as he took that as his cue to leave.
Adam didn't know how to break the news about Colleen, so he just came out and said it. "Grace, your mother isn't coming. I called her more times than I can count and even had the police go to her house."
Grace began to look more confused and worried. "Why would you do that? What happened?"
"They found her lying on the sofa, passed out. She's a drunk, Grace. And an addict." he told her.
Grace breathed a sigh of relief and closed her eyes. She thought something terrible had happened.
"Why do you look relieved?"
Grace forgot that Adam didn't know. "I'm relieved that she's not dead. And I know she's an addict is. She's had a problem for pretty much my whole life, but she had it under control up until a few months ago. Remember the Christmas party? That afternoon, I went to McHenry to check on her because she'd been dodging my texts and calls. I got there and she was super out of it."
"Why didn't you tell me that night?"
"The night you were drunk before the party at Molly's started? That would have gone over great." she said sarcastically.
Adam understood why she didn't tell him then, but it didn't change the fact that Colleen didn't care to get in the car and drive to her daughter who had just been through a terrible ordeal. "I don't want you to see her again, while she's like this."
Grace seemed hurt but tried to put on a brave face for no one other than herself. "That makes two of us."
Later in the day, Grace lay in her bed and watched the drama of the hospital wing unfold. One patient was set to lose their leg if the sepsis got worse, and another one who was recovering from a car accident had some family drama going on that the nurses were gossiping about. At one point, the nurses stationed at the desk turned to her and said something about security dealing with something in the lobby.
That evening, Dr Halstead came in to check in on Grace and brought a visitor: Jay. He was bearing gifts, though they were not from him. They were a familiar leather duffle filled with some of Grace's clothes and flowers with a simple, yet meaningful note attached:
Love you,
Becca, Emma, Audrey
Grace slipped a grin. Adam mentioned to her earlier that Becca had waited around at the 21st District for hours waiting on an update from Sgt. Platt. Jay set the flowers down on the side table and the bag on one of the chairs.
"Where's your dad?" he asked.
"He went to get some food, not the hospital junk," Grace replied. "No offense."
Dr. Halstead smiled and looked at her chart, "Your numbers are looking good. I'll bet you're tired of everyone asking you this, but how're you feeling?"
"Physically, weak, sore, and I have a headache that won't go away." Grace said tiredly as she flopped her head to the left to directly face the two Halstead's.
"And mentally?" Jay asked, visibly concerned.
Suddenly there was a commotion that sounded from down the hall. It had to have been people yelling or something.
"What was that?" Grace asked.
"Oh, just a patient..."
Grace didn't believe Dr. Halstead. "Your brother's not a very good liar," she said to Jay. "Really, what's going on?" she sat up straighter in bed as Dr. Halstead checked her heart rate.
"You really do have the cop gene, don't you?" he joked.
He reluctantly explained the situation. "It was a journalist, someone from the news trying to get onto your floor. But don't worry, security is getting beefed up around here as we speak."
"A journalist? Why?"
Will and Jay exchanged glances, and Grace sighed.
"I've had enough of people keeping things from me and then proceeding to knowingly look at one another. What is going on?" She tried to sound more stable to prove her point, but her voice was cracking as she spoke.
"No one's told you, have they?" Dr. Halstead asked, and Grace shook her head.
"Not really," she said.
Dr. Halstead left it for his brother to tell her.
Jay stepped forward and told her that the story had received a lot of attention over the past 24 hours. Grace remembered the scene from the night prior— all the police presence and getting airlifted by a helicopter. Grace assumed there was an alert about her being missing that had been sent out. It wasn't the whole "missing" thing that was garnering the attention, Jay told her. It was that she was the only known victim to escape Walton, a serial killer. He reassured her that the public didn't know her name, only as "the 17 year old kidnapping victim". He mentioned that the missing persons alert was only sent out to police in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
"This isn't going away quietly, is it? What's left for them to talk about? There won't be a day spent in court— he's dead," she swallowed. "It's over for him, and I get to live with it."
"You're not alone in this, Grace. We're all here." Jay sat down and comforted her by laying his hand on her shoulder.
It was nice of him to say so, but really Grace was the one who was dealing with it all inside. Also, not everyone that mattered to her was there, physically or through thought. As terrible as her mother was being lately, Grace still wished for at least a phone call.
"I think my dad should be back soon with food...Thanks for coming by, Jay."
He nodded in acknowledgement and sat up from beside her.
"If you need anything, have the nurses page me, alright?" Dr. Halstead said.
After the two of them left, Grace tried to shake the national headlines her brain decided to come up with. There was only one way to find out what people were really saying, so she took the remote from the side table and turned the tv on to one of the big news stations.
No longer than a minute later, she turned the TV off and tossed the remote down. Her heart was beating fast and she felt warm. Grace decided she wouldn't be watching the news again anytime soon.