Goodbyes hurt the most when the story was not finished.

-Unknown

***

Namjoon was sitting at Lisa's desk when she got there. "Any progress?" he immediately asked. He'd gotten good at hiding the catch in his voice and the lurch in his throat. 5 years had made him good at a lot of things, parenting not being one of them.

Lisa gave him a sympathetic frown. "I'm afraid not. We've sent search teams down along the rivers, though, so we might get something from that."

"Along the rivers?" Namjoon asked, blinking. "You think there are cottages or something? You think that's where he is?"

Lisa opened her mouth but couldn't force herself to say the words.

Thankfully, Jaebum had been walking by and had heard the tail end of their conversation. He'd been working on the case on the side ever since Lisa had called him in for backup so he was up-to-date on all the pertinent details. "What she means is that, in cases like these, our unsub may do a body drop during the winter so the body is obscured by snow and remains unfound and preserved by the cold, tampering with the time of death, but once spring is on its way and the temperature starts getting warmer, there's a lot of snow melt, and the camouflage, so to speak, disappears. The bodies often wind up in rivers and get carried out of our jurisdiction." Jaebum sighed sadly. "We get one every few years. It's just a possibility."

Namjoon stared at Jaebum. "No no no, that's all wrong. Why are you wasting resources looking for a body? Jimin, he's- he's alive somewhere, not- not lying under a foot of snow waiting to get swept up in the current-"

"It's just a possibility," Jaebum said with a gentle tone, holding his hands up defensively. "Just something to cross off the list."

Namjoon nodded, looking down, but he was rocking back and forth slightly.

Jaebum gave Lisa an apologetic shrug before returning to his own desk to work on a homicide.

Namjoon, meanwhile, rocked for a moment before standing up and pacing in front of Lisa's desk.

"Namjoon, sit do-"

"You all think he's dead." Namjoon looked at Lisa, but she couldn't maintain eye contact. "Don't you?"

"Namjoon, we're just looking at the odds-"

"The odds? You want to talk to me about odds? Let's talk about odds, Lisa. 24 hours, Lisa. What are the odds that your wild goose chase wasted any shot of us getting Jimin back? What are the odds that Jimin is still missing because of you? What are the odds that-"

"Enough," Lisa snapped, standing up. "I haven't kept this case because I enjoy being derided by you. You think I don't do it to myself enough?" She forced herself to calm down with a deep breath. "Go home, Namjoon. I'll let you know if something comes up."

Namjoon paused as though considering an apology before he turned without saying anything and left.

Lisa flopped back down in her chair, sighing.

"It's that crazy dad again," one of the rookie cops muttered to another. "He's in here all the time. Still thinks his kid is going to come back home." The pair sighed, shaking their heads at Namjoon's naivete.

Lisa turned back to the paperwork on her desk and tried to focus on her actual case load, since her boss had warned her repeatedly over the years about wasting time on a cold case with no new evidence, but she wasn't able to focus.

All she could think about was what Namjoon had said.

Was she wrong? Was Jimin somehow still alive?

Was he in a house?

Or was he in the snow by the river?

Lisa was ready to bang her skull against the desk when her phone rang.

Startled, she picked it up. "Officer Lisa."

"The Kim Jimin abduction."

Lisa jolted. Who is this? Why are they bringing this up? "What about it?" Lisa asked, trying to play it cool, but her heart was beating too fast and her breaths were coming faster.

"I think I know something."

"It happened 5 years ago. Why are you calling now?"

"Because I only was made aware of it recently."

Lisa's eyes widened. "Well- can you come into the station? I'll need to take down your statement."

"Tomorrow, noon. I'll be there."

The person on the other end hung up, leaving Lisa to stare at the phone.

What just happened?

Is this a lucky break?

Or another wild goose chase?