Chapter Text
"What do you mean, you haven't seen him?", the franctic voice came out of the speaker.
"He wasn't here this week Gus, that's all." The blonde officer switched the phone to the other ear. "Didn't you say he meant to go on some kind of roadtrip?"
"Yeah, but he didn't call me to annoy me with excruciating details about some epic pineapple smoothie or with how he downed to many of those and got sick afterwards or just to tell me-"
"Gus, I'm sure he's fine", interrupted the officer, but she worried her lip as she said it. It was unusual for Shawn to disappear like that, nowadays. "Maybe he's with his father...?"
"Well...! If he were with his father, he would pester me with calls even more than usual!"
O'Hara couldn't deny that.
"Look, would you please just go over and check his apartment?"
"Maybe he lost his phone?"
"This is Shawn we're talking about, Juliet."
The blond officer sighed. "Okay, I'll check his place, but if he's there playing some kind of weird prank, you owe me."
"Me? I'm not the one who-"
"Gus, I'm worried too, alright? Detective Lassiter's been glad that he didn't have to put up with Shawn this week, but- it's just so weird..."
The line went quiet for a couple seconds.
"Just- call me when you have some news, okay? I'll be back in Santa Barbs tomorrow evening."
"Yeah, of course. Thanks for calling, Gus."
"Thank you."
The line went dead.
---
"Juliet?"
"He's not here."
"He's not- he's not there? At his place?"
"Ye-"
"Have you checked with his dad yet?" The voice had become franctic once more.
Naturally, Juliet knew. Gus was worried about his best friend of course. Nevertheless, she wished he was a bit calmer so she could follow through.
"No, but-"
"Would you please do that? -Nevermind, I'll just call him myself -No, I cannot possibly-"
"Gus."
"Oh my god, what if he's kidnapped -What if he's dead? I should absolutely call his father - but what would I say - what would I say? His son is dead, oh my god -oh my god-"
"Gus, he's not dead!"
Panicked breathing on the other side of the line.
"Yes, I know, he's fine. He's Shawn, he has to be fine, right? G- He can talk himself out of about anything."
Juliet chuckled. "Yeah, he's fine, I'm sure. His motorcycle's gone. He's probably lost his phone somewhere and is driving all across the state without a clue about our worries."
"If I have to cut my work trip short because of this, I'm gonna kill him."
---
Of course, Shawn wasn't with his father either. Juliet had come up to him with a very carefully crafted excuse, but of course the ex-cop had seen right though it and had promptly accompanied her to the station (against her protests), where they started calling even more people, including the barista of Shawn's favorite smoothie shop. As they worked through the contacts, of course informing Gus too, it quickly became clear that the barista was the last person to have seen the fake psychic - on Monday morning. It was Thursday morning now. No calls, no weird e-mails, no sign of life at all. This was so unusal that Juliet started openly worrying.
She went in to chief Vic to call it a case, and surprisingly, the chief was on board with calling out a search team.
They had started with the city's camera system to find out that he drove out on the interstate on Monday morning. He must have made a stop somewhere, and in the late afternoon that day they found the last life sign - no, Juliet refused to call it that - the last picture of Shawn's bike on another interstate further up in the North.
They had driven there and found no clues whatsoever. They had driven up and down the street and searched the adjacent, non-surveillanced paths. They had questioned the clerks at the nearest gas stations and somewhere along the line Juliet had even found the nearest smoothie shop, where she finally had to conclude that it was a too far stretch. Shawn hadn't been there. Hadn't been seen by anyone. He had just disappeared.
Gus had cut his work trip short as soon as they began the search and helped as much as he could, even driving miles upon miles with his company car to gather clues where they were none.
Now, they sat in the station in the late evening, huddling around some desks they pulled together, googling and searching databases for similar cases just in case that Shawn didn't disappear on his own volition like he had done in the past. They had already checked the cases that he'd worked on, the cases they were working in the moment, the people he'd had a hand in putting behind bars... but nothing had come up. Now, they were reaching for straws.
The barista had said Shawn had seemed happy on Monday, looking forward to his trip. Gus had said that Shawn had originally planned to return on Wednesday, but sadly that didn't narrow the time frame they had to work on at all.
"A consultant for the FBI went missing in LA this week", Lassiter offered.
They were a small team - just Juliet, Lassiter, Gus and Mr. Spencer - and they ran on coffee and adrenaline only.
"That seems like a coincidence", Henry gave back, consumed in his own work.
"Yeah, of course it does", Lassiter argued. "But the FBI is missing two high ranking consultants this week, the other one in New York."
"So someone is kidnapping consultants?", Juliet asked. "Lassiter, I'm sorry, but I have to side with Mr. Spencer on this one. It's... a stretch."
"I know, I know." Lassiter rubbed his eyes. "This is like looking for a needle in a haystack. We just have no grounds to operate on."
Juliet regarded him more closely. He was worried, she realized. He wouldn't admit it, but Shawn was important to him too.
"What kind of consultants were they?", Gus asked. "Were they... psychic too?"
Juliet had to surpress a smile. She was sure the FBI wouldn't hire somebody like Shawn. He was... a special case.
But Lassiter, surprisingly, took him at face value this time. "No, one of them was a... con artist and the other one a mathematician."
At this, Mr. Spencer's head popped up. "This genius mathematician consultant they talked about on tv?"
Lassiter raised his eyebrows. "Yeah, I saw that show too. Isn't it crazy how they invented those techniques to-"
"Isn't that guy a genius?", Gus interrupted, having also seen whatever show apparently. Juliet felt kind of left out as he and Mr. Spencer shared a look she couldn't quite interpret.
"What do you have on this con artist you talked about?", inquired the older Spencer as the telephone rang.
Juliet furrowed her brows. Who would call directly to the offices at this time of night?
"If this is Shawn, I'm gonna drive over his pineapple plushie", threatened Gus. "Multiple times."
"Shawn has a pineapple plushie?" Lassiter seemed to be barely able to contain his slightly malicious laughter as Juliet got up to get the telephone. She tried not to get her hopes up, but it was a futile effort.
"Santa Barbara police department, officer O'Hara", she voiced mechanically.
"Ugh, hi there - sorry, just realized the time - sorry", a very British sounding voice answered. "This is detective Lestrade from Scotland Yard. England. I - sorry. I've seen this disappearance case pop up in our databanks - Shawn Spencer I believe. Are you - are you currently familiar with that case?"
Juliet furrowed her brows. "Why does an unsolved U.S. case from today turn up in your databanks this fast?"
A slightly nervous sigh.
"Oh, well - I've pulled some strings to be honest. I just - this is going to sound so weird. We have a case here that has certain similarities to yours. A consultant of ours went missing on Monday and I'm grabbing at straws here. There haven't been any clues. Call me too involved but I'm getting desperate. We've been cross-referencing pretty much every case we could get our hands on and I'm calling everywhere day and night and making a fool of myself. Sorry, I just - I haven't slept in three days. I'm on, what, my eleventh coffee. Oh my - I know it's very unlikely that there's a connection, seeing as we're on different continents. I'm just - I'm grabbing at straws", the raspy voice repeated itself.
Somewhere along these lines Juliet had put the phone on speaker, and the others had gathered around it.
"We have more cases like that here", Mr. Spencer spoke up. "Three of them this week including ours."
"Are you-", Lestrade started, then faltered. "We need to talk about this. It might just be a coincidence, but - I can't let that slide. Honest, I don't have anything else right now."
"We neither", Juliet admitted, and then they were talking.
They talked for hours, exchanging information, somewhere along the line setting up a video conference call and trying to reach the respective New York and LA FBI offices to clue them in as well, even though Lassiter started worrying the name of the Santa Barbara Police Department would suffer because of how much of a stretch they were making. Surely these all-around-the-world-cases wouldn't really be connected? But the similarities were striking - the sudden disappearance without any clues, the time, the occupation of all "victims". Though Juliet struggled with this term. She hoped Shawn would just walk through the department doors any minute now and be very amused about their efforts. Then scared of his father's reaction, who wouldn't take a stunt like that well at all. She could picture the screaming match, it distracted her from what they had to do right now - dig for clues where they could barely see the case.
They only stopped for coffee, even though Lestrade looked like he might either die from exhaustion or from adrenaline rush in the next half hour. He didn't take the advice they gave him though and sipped his way through his twelfth coffee with shadows under his eyes that could rival the pitch black outside of the office windows.
In the morning, when that same pitch black slowly got lighter, they had successfully reached both FBI offices, put them into the video conference... and had still not gathered more clues other than the striking similarities between the cases.
In both FBI frames, a small team was gathered battling the night, and they all looked equally worried and determined, as well as more frustrated as the hours passed by.
Then, as the morning sunlight made the Santa Barbara team close the shades to be able to see the screen better, a fifth caller entered the video conference.
"Did somebody find another case?", an FBI-agent from New York asked. He had introduced himself as Burke.
Lassiter was about to answer when the video finished loading, and he cut off whatever it was he had wanted to say.
Juliet paled.
The video showed a cell from above that was painted black but lit well. It looked like a big glass cube. And in this cube, four people were laying on the ground, seemingly unconscious, one in each corner. Juliet vaguely recognized three of them from the pictures the teams had exchanged as she pulled the video to fullscreen on another desktop.
And the fourth one was Shawn.