New Family

Something To Know Him By

The next day.

"See you guys tomorrow!" Maddie called to her friends as she opened the door to Jays car. "Hey, I'm guessing you guys closed the case?" She asked shutting the door.

"Yep, Voight gave everyone the day off so I was clearing out your room a bit more and found this." Jay said, handing her the small necklace he had in his hand. 

"What is it?" Maddie asked, on the chain was a ring, it obviously belonged to a man.

"It's your brothers, I figured you would want something to know him by." Jay explained. "He rarely took it off."

"How did you end up with it?" Maddie asked.

"I'm not sure. He stayed at mine the night before he left so he must've left it then." Jay said, gently taking the necklace from her, unclasping it and reclasping it around her neck.

"Thank you." Maddie said, reaching up and twisting it between her fingers as Jays phone went off.

"I take that back, that's Voight we've got another case. You want to come?" He asked.

"Yeah." Maddie said.

"I'll drop you at the district on my way to the scene." Jay said.

----------

"Dawson!" Platt called as she came up the stairs into Intelligence. "I thought I saw him come up here?" She asked Maddie as she was met by an empty bullpen.

"They've all gone to a scene." Maddie said, looking up from her laptop. "I might be able to help?" She offered.

"Do you speak Spanish? There's a woman downstairs, doesn't speak a word of English and I can't get a translator." Platt explained. 

"I can try." Maddie said picking up her laptop and following Platt back down the stairs. Platt led her into one of the offices at the front of the precinct. "Hola, Como se llama?" Maddie said, praying her Spanish was still understandable.

"Maria." The woman said.

"Me llamo es Maddie." Maddie said as she loaded up a translation program on her laptop that was usually pretty accurate for helping with Spanish homework and turned it towards the woman who nodded then started typing.

"What is she saying?" Platt asked as the woman turned the laptop back to Maddie and the translation came up on the screen.

"She thinks her daughter is missing, they're from Mexico and her daughter came here about a month ago and she hasn't heard from her." Maddie explained what she was reading to Platt before typing in Why did she come here? and passing the laptop back to the woman. They sat in silence for a few moments before the woman handed the laptop back. "Her daughter met a guy online and came to Chicago to meet him."

"I'll call Voight." Platt said. "This sounds like human trafficking." She added as she left the room. Maddie quickly typed Do you have her laptop? Phone? Maria read the message and pulled a laptop from her bag. 

"Gracias." Maddie said, taking it and typing in a final message before picking up her laptop nad leaving, the message read. A detective will be in to talk to you soon, we will do everything we can to find your daughter. Maddie left and went back into Intelligence as her palm print had been added to the system. As soon as she was sat back at her desk Maddie pulled the appropriate wires from the draw and connected Maria's daughter's laptop to her own and began digging through her search history to find the conversations she had with the guy who possibly kidnapped her.

Brad - Hey, what's your name babe?

Sofia - Sofia.

Brad - Where are you from Sofia? Thats a very exotic name.

Sofia - Mexico, you?

Brad - Chicago.

Sofia - I've always wanted to go to America.

Brad - You should come to visit me sometime.

The messages continued across weeks, getting increasingly more romantic, 'Brad' taking the lead. Eventually, they began exchanging photos, Maddie took the photo of 'Brad''s face and ran it through an image search software, knowing how unlikely it was that it was his real face. And she was right, the image came back to a Michael living in England.

"Hey kid." Jay said, coming up the stairs followed by the rest of the unit, minus Dawson and Burgess. "Platt's filled us in, what've you got?" He asked looking at her laptop screen.

"Messages dating back a little over a month between Maria's daughter Sofia and some guy called Brad who says he lives here in Chicago. He sent a photo of his face but it was fake, unless his name is Michael and he lives in England." Maddie explained.

"That fit's with Platts theory of human trafficking." Upton said. 

"Is there any way of getting a location on this Brad?" Jay asked her.

"I can try and get his IP address." Maddie said, her fingers flying across the keyboard. "But don't get your hopes up, he'll probably be using a." Maddie paused as a map of the world popped up onto her screen with a white dot flying from country to country, city to city. "Proxy." She finished. 

"And there's no way of finding out where he really is?" Ruzek asked, Maddie shook her head.

"The best I can do is put a sort of tripwire on Brads account so we'll know when he next logs in." Maddie explained.

"Jay, go through the messages. Maddie, see if theres any way of finding this guys location. The rest of you check plane manifesto's, find out what plane Sofia came on, when it landed and where she went." Voight ordered.

"There you go." Maddie said, handing Sofias laptop to Jay.

"Don't you need it to find these guys?" Jay asked.

"Nah, I've got what I need on my laptop." Maddie said.

----------

"What's up Adam." Maddie said. Ruzek had been lingering next to the desk she was working on for a few minutes and it was getting on her nerves.

"Is there some program thing I can use to search through the manifesto and find Sofia's name?" He asked, Maddie looked up at him to make sure he was being serious.

"Yeah, its called control f." She said

"Oh yeah." Ruzek said before heading back to his desk.

Authors note: I'm so so so so sorry about how long its taken me to update this, I had exams, barely passed a few of them so my school is making the whole year resit all of them in a couple weeks. Hopefully I will be able to get a few more chapters up before then.