Disclaimer: I don't own Sleepy Hollow, or any of its characters.

The title of the story comes from a song by Delta Rae (you should listen to it! It goes with the theme really well!)

ONE

Ichabod Crane disappears without a trace some time between the hours of 10:45 PM, May 20th, and 3:35 AM, May 21st. Abbie knows because these are their last two points of contact.

At 10:45 PM, Abbie drops Crane off at his cabin, says, "Goodnight," and watches him shut the door.

At 3:33 AM, Abbie wakes in a cold sweat, her t-shirt pasted to her body, and frantically calls Crane. He does not answer. She knows it's 3:33 precisely because the green LED glow of her alarm clock seared the numbers into her retinas. By the time she gets the call out, it's 3:34 (she remembers from the top of her cell) and when Crane doesn't answer, it's 3:35.

The thing is, he always answers, no matter the time.

So Abbie races to the cabin, parks her police cruiser sideways in the driveway, and rattles on the door. Again, no answer, so she breaks it open.

Crane is nowhere to be found. There is no sign of a struggle, nothing to indicate that he left the house, even of his own accord. Everything is precisely as it was at 10:45 PM – Crane is just not there.

Roughly five hours. That's the window of time that's unaccounted for. A lot can happen in five hours.

She spends twenty minutes of searching before she resorts to calling his name into the dead, musty air. The only response she is met with is that of the chirping crickets, their roaring clearly audible through the screen door. The sound is so thunderous she briefly considers the possibility that they swallowed him up in some biblical plague.

Abbie sinks into Corbin's favorite leather armchair, scrubbing at her forehead. "Think, Mills," she orders, unreasonably shocked when the words are uttered aloud. This is your job, she reminds herself. This is what you do.

Assess the crime scene.

There's nothing to assess. Everything is the same.

There has to be something.

She stands again, wobbling at bit, and narrows her eyes to scour the premises. Don't be biased, she coaches, Look at this objectively. Don't let your emotions cloud your judgment.

All the doors were locked. That means one of two things: either he left and locked the door behind him, or he let someone in, they took him, and then they locked the door behind them.

But why would Crane leave in the dead of night? And without his phone? She can see it sitting innocently atop a stack of files, she can see her own missed calls (the first at 3:34 AM, just as it should be) lighting a banner across the top of the screen.

Conversely, though, who would Crane trust enough to let into his home at such an hour? The number is certainly in the single-digits: Jenny, Irving, Katrina, possibly Hawley, but that might be stretching it. And it sure as hell wasn't her he was letting in.

Since Irving and Katrina are both shut-up in their own personal lockdowns, that narrows the options significantly.

Abbie quickly fishes her phone out of her back pocket and dials her sister's number.

"Mmm hello?" comes Jenny's groggy voice.

"Is Crane with you?" she barks, leaving no room for pleasantries.

She can hear the rustle of sheets crackle through the earpiece. "What? No?" Her voice sounds suddenly more alert.

" 'cause he's not here," she tells her urgently.

"Whaddyou mean 'here'?"

"He's not at the cabin," she clarifies. "If he's not with you and he's not with me, where the hell is he?"

"You're at the cabin right now? It's four in the morning."

"I-" she falters, not knowing if she should tell her sister the reason she tried to contact Crane in the first place. "I know. I called him and when he didn't answer I got worried."

"Well, is there any sign of a struggle?"

"No. Nothing. It's like he just up and left and locked the door behind him."

"Weird… Did you try calling him?"

"His phone is here."

"Did you check it? Did he make any calls?"

Good idea.

"No, hold on," says Abbie. She cradles the phone between her cheek and her collarbone and paces over to the table. Sliding her thumb across the screen, she checks his call-log and sees that there were no outgoing calls and the only incoming ones were from her. "Nothing," she informs Jenny, not that she expected to find anything anyway.

"He couldn't have gone far," Jenny reasons. "It's not like he has a car."

"Yeah, but what worries me is that it's a few miles into town and I didn't see any trace of him on my drive over here. The only other direction he could have gone is into the woods."

"Okay, well, at least it's warm out – no chance of him freezing to death. And one of the perks of being a cop is that you don't have to pay attention to that forty-eight hour rule, right? If he doesn't turn up by morning, you can always send a team out."

"Yeah," Abbie mutters absently. The world is vast, but Ichabod's world is tiny. For him not to be in it…

There's a pause on the other end of the line, during which time Abbie assumes Jenny is scrambling to come up with something to say. "This is Crane we're talking about," she replies eventually. "He can hold his own."

"I hope you're right," is all she says before hanging up abruptly.

. . .

It is 8:30 AM on Wednesday, May 21, 2014, and Abbie feels worry promulgating through her body like a cancer. Her eyes are sore from lack of sleep, but the adrenaline twining through her bloodstream is keeping her awake – that, and the dangerous amount of caffeine she has ingested. "No Tom Hiddleston today?" the barista had asked. "No," Abbie had replied, smiling without showing her teeth. She can never go back to Starbucks again.

Her fingers drum hollowly on her desk at the precinct.

"Listen, Mills," drones Reyes, "I appreciate that you're worried about your boyfriend, I do. But this force just doesn't have the resources to go on a wild goose chase through the woods when it hasn't even been forty-eight hours, especially not with everything else that's going on around here."

"He's not my boyfriend," is all Abbie says, her voice sounding far away to her own ears. Her heart-rate picks up – maybe from the coffee, but probably not. Her eyes are fixed on the clock behind Reyes' head, counting the seconds she goes without Crane.

A bit more sympathetically, the police chief adds, "Come find me again once it's been forty-eight hours."

"We may not have forty-eight hours," she hisses, suddenly locking eyes with her in fierce determination.

Reyes holds her stare unflappably. "If there is something specific you are concerned about, Lieutenant Mills, you'd do well to enlighten me."

Abbie flicks her gaze to the clock once more, and her fingers recommence drumming in accordance with each tick. "It's nothing," she murmurs. "Just a feeling."

That day, she calls each hospital within a 50-mile radius fifteen times at least.

. . .

That night, Abbie and Jenny go out into the woods and search and search but come up with nothing. No trail, not even a footprint.

Falling onto the cushy forest floor, Abbie turns her eyes to the stars and demands, "Where is he?!" Those goddamn crickets are still screeching, screeching over her, drowning her out. If it were just quiet, maybe someone would hear her, maybe someone would answer.

Jenny, observing her sister with pity, says, "We should talk to Katrina."

They can't go there at night – not with the Horseman lurking about.

"Where could he have gone?" she demands, as though she hadn't heard her, and Jenny only shakes her head dismally.

Nowhere good.

. . .

It's May 22nd, again at 8:30 AM, and Abbie stands in front of Sheriff Reyes' desk. She announces, "It's been forty-eight hours."

Reyes spares her a cursory glance. "Still no sign of your boyfriend?"

"He's not my boyfriend…" Abbie mumbles inaudibly. Hiking up her volume, she states, "I'd like to lead a search team into the woods. If we could just get the dogs in there, I think-"

"Wait just a second, Mills," she cuts her off. "Now, as far as I can tell, your Mr. Crane is well above being considered a minor, after which time Amber Alert protocol would, indeed, be applicable. But a man of Crane's age and means? It's entirely possible that he just left. Unless you can give me any evidence of foul play-"

"He didn't leave!" she bursts out, unable to control herself. To add insult to injury, she even slams her hand on Reyes' desk.

The other woman's brows raise and her expression turns deadly. "Lieutenant Mills-"

"He didn't leave," she repeats more softly, trying to prove she's reined in her temper.

"Lieutenant Mills," Reyes warns sternly, "you are obviously distraught, and in dire need of a good night's sleep. I suggest you head home and compose yourself, before you do something rash."

Abbie feels frustration and outrage clawing at her esophagus, but she forces the heat down. He didn't leave, he didn't leave, he didn't leave! He wouldn't. He would never leave. He would never leave her.

Irving would never do this. Irving would've listened. Even before he knew about all the supernatural shit in Sleepy Hollow, he would have listened.

Reyes is condemning her. Just like she condemned her mom, she's condemning her. She thinks she's nothing more than some needy, pathetic jilted lover, and Crane is going to die for it.

Abbie's jaw tightens. "Okay," she says. Or maybe, she thinks, she's trying to smoke me out. Withhold help until she figures out what's really going on. Reyes has seemed suspicious of her all along. Nevertheless, she's not going to bend to this bitch's will.

She storms out of the precinct, turning more than a few heads in her wake.

At 2:12 PM, with the sun at its full height, she and Jenny head to see Katrina.

Abbie hates talking to that woman, hates seeing her shiny, jade-colored eyes. She's supposed to be strong – a witch – but something about her just makes Abbie feel like she needs to take care of her. It must be the very thing that drew Crane to her in the first place. Her fragility.

Abbie had never been fragile.

"I haven't heard either Jeremy or Abraham mention anything about Ichabod," Katrina informs them worriedly through the window, referring to each party by a different name than they are familiar with.

"Okay, well, is there anything you can do to help find him? A spell or something?" Abbie presses impatiently. There has to be some reason they came here, some reason they've wasted precious time.

"This house is designed to hinder my magic, but I may be able to attempt something as simple as a locating spell. Just a moment…"

Katrina retreats further into the house, until the shadows hide her from the Mills sisters' view.

"What's the next step after this?" Jenny mutters as they wait in the overgrown grass outside the home.

Sighing, she weakly replies, "Research? I dunno, Jen…"

Jenny's eyes dart back and forth as they read her sister's face, and her brows draw together. "I know you're worried," she attempts to console, "but we'll find him." A bit awkwardly, she lays her hand on Abbie's narrow shoulder.

"I could not locate my husband," Katrina's voice jars them from above.

"What does that mean?" Abbie demands.

"Either whoever or whatever has taken him is using magic to conceal him, or…" she falters.

"Or?" prods Jenny.

"Or he is… dead."

"He's not dead," Abbie says suddenly. "He can't be."

Katrina stares at her with an inscrutable expression, waiting a beat before replying, "I share your faith, Abigail. Please… find him?"

"I will."

A/N: I know you probably have a lot of questions, but don't worry, they will be answered. I hope I've piqued your interest. Please let me know what you think! :)