Disclaimer: If I owned a TV show, I doubt I'd go through the trouble of taking my A Levels.

A/N: I figured I might as well keep the writing skills in practise…

Warning: The bleep machine might come into use here every so often – basically, badass language coming through.

Roped In

She had never been more scared in her entire life.

Seriously.

Sure, sitting in the passenger seat of her boyfriend's car during her senior year when he decided to show off his mad driving skills probably wasn't a good idea in retrospect – especially when they had come this close to crashing straight into a wall because dear ol' Billy had lost control of the car. That had resulted in a momentary "Crap, mom's going to kill me if I die," thought milliseconds before the car had stopped just short of fatal impact, before she and her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend looked at each other and burst out laughing in petrified response to their near deaths.

And then there'd been the time when her greasy-food loving father had suddenly clutched his chest, complained of a pain in his left arm and promptly collapsed, leaving her the only one in the house with the ability to dial 911. That had been frightening of the "oh shit what the hell do I do?" variety but she hadn't feared for her own life and her father had survived.

But this… this was different.

She was fearing for her own life, and it was long drawn out. Stretched over a period of time lasting immensely longer than the seconds it takes for a car to come to a complete stop after brakes have been fully applied to a car going at 65mph. What made it worse was that she wasn't aware of how much time had passed, and how much was left to her. She was going to die if no one saved her - of that, she was certain. The kind of certain that gave every living thing that extra fight to live, the shot of adrenaline which maybe, just maybe, save your life.

However, lying prone on a mattress, duct tape covering almost every inch of her skin made sure she couldn't move a muscle. Dressed only in her slip, and she didn't even want to think how she'd managed to get undressed, the adhesive was irritating as it came into contact with her bare skin.

She vowed that if she survived, she was never going to a bar - ever. She was never going to drink again let alone accept a free drink from strangers at a seedy college bar who seemed interested in her.

In fact, right now it looked like it might be a good idea to join a convent – perhaps it would score brownie points with a God she hadn't ever really believed in if she swore to become a nun, giving her better odds of surviving this ordeal.

Yeah, becoming a nun sounded really good at the moment – no money spent on clothes, no man troubles, no drinking. And you're alive, which was the most appealing quality to Jenny at the moment.

The man responsible for all this – the boyishly handsome thirty-something who'd approached her as she stood alone, talked so nicely to her, been so charming, buying her a drink– had gone into the next room. When she'd woken up in the beginning, God knows how long ago – it felt like forever – he'd been standing there, to the side, looking at her, smiling at her in a way that didn't bode well, instantly making her conscious of her state of undress. She saw the word "lecherous" personified in the way that creep's expression.

Wasn't it enough that he was going to murder her, but he might rape her to?

Why was this happening to her?

Her first reaction on waking up had been fear, and that hadn't changed. She couldn't remember much after leaving the bar and going towards her car and she wondered if the weird taste in her mouth had something to do with her sudden amnesia. With her mouth covered with tape as it was, there was no way she could scream, plead, call for help, convince him to let her go, promising she wouldn't tell a soul about this if he'd only just let her go. Restricted as she was, her eyes conveyed how petrified she was, tears marking their path down her cheeks.

They'd long since dried, and she'd long since stopped struggling. The man wasn't in a hurry to come back and what was probably only half an hour felt like days to her. She could hear him moving around further into the house but she doubted there was anyone else. The little light that was coming through from the panes in the door and window was barely enough to notice much about the room she was being held, but she was thankful for the illumination, as little as it was.

She just laid there, the duct tape tightening uncomfortably around her hands as she tried once again to free herself – how she wished she had razor sharp nails with which she could have hoped to saw through the tape.

Suddenly, she heard what sounded like a twig breaking and she looked towards the semi-curtained window to her right – she had figured that she was in some suburban neighbourhood seeing as how it was very quite save a for a car passing by every once in a while. Through the glass panes in the door, she saw the pale face of a man who immediately put a finger to his lips, motioning to her to remain silent once he caught her eye. At the moment, he could have flipped her off for all she cared, she was just glad that perhaps, there was a chance she could be saved. The face disappeared from the window and reappeared a few moments later at the glass-paned door.

Seeing that the man was about to break a glass pane, her eyes flittered back to the corridor down which the asshole had disappeared, heart beating faster in fear that he would hear the noise and come back, killing her just as she was on the verge of being rescued.

Thankfully, that was not the case as the dark-haired man made a relatively smooth entrance. She immediately spotted the gun in his right hand and though his eyes flicked over to the corridor, his hand reached for something in his back pocket and her hopes went up a thousand fold as he displayed a shiny badge.

He was a cop. She wasn't going to die tonight after all.

The cop came to a crouch beside her as he put his badge back in his pocket. "I'm with the FBI," he whispered as he reached with his free hand and pulled the tape away from her mouth. She couldn't have cared less if he'd been a double 0 agent from MI6 coming all the way from England to save her, she just wanted to be saved, to go home alive. Her saviour could have been Quasimodo for all that it mattered, she wasn't going to be picky.

As the tape was pulled away, she relished the sting for it gave her feeling and freedom to talk. "He's here, he's in the house," she said as soon as she was able to. She'd seen the movies – good guy comes to save the damsel in distress, bad guy creeps up on good guy and knocks him while he's untying aforementioned damsel who then dies. No way was this happening to her, not if she could help it.

Her warning turned out to be worthless as her kidnapper showed up anyway at that moment, slamming the door behind him to hinder the cop who suddenly left her side without a backwards glance and pursued the creep, yelling "Gates" or "Yates" or something like that.

Still bound to the mattress, she could do nothing more than listen intently. She could hear the cop yelling "Yates, it's the FBI in here," but that was mostly it. They seemed to be moving further and further away from where she was and she prayed there wasn't a second path to her room that her would-be-killer could take to come and finish her off before the FBI agent could come and get her.

As she listened, she heard something that reminded her of her sister Julia's husband – he was a photographer with his own studio, and she could have sworn she heard the "swoosh" sound reminiscent of lights flashing when a picture had been taken.

Her heart stopped as two sounds were heard in quick succession: something crashing and breaking, followed almost immediately by a man's wordless yell.

She hoped dearly that it was her kidnapper yelling and not the cop because that wouldn't bode well for the good guys. As she held her breath, trying to see through the walls with only her ears to guide her, she heard a sound most unwelcome:

Gunshots being fired in quick succession from within.

If she had to guess, she would have gussed five or six of 'em, followed immediately by a loud thump, her imagination coming up with the sickening explanation that it was a (dead) body hitting the floor.

She really couldn't tell who had yelled, or who'd been shot. A struggle must have taken place between the two, of that she was almost certain. Now all that remained to be seen was who remained standing.

Moments passed. Oh God. Why wasn't the dark-haired man coming back to free her?

If he was the one who'd been shot, that meant the fucker who'd drugged her, brought her here –Yates, as he was supposedly called – was going to come back to finish the job. He couldn't leave a witness to his killing a cop.

Sobs broke free of her as her fear increased with each passing second that the cop didn't appear in the doorway. She was going to die already, and now a cop had to die because of her too? Did he have a family, the cop, like she did? Was her stupidity in letting the man drug her going to kill both of them?

After what seemed like hours when in reality it had only been minutes, her fear lessened. Yeah, the cop wasn't coming back, probably couldn't come back, but neither was the would-be killer. She wondered if it made her a bad person to find this alternative not so bad – after all, she was still alive.

Besides, where was the cop's back-up? Weren't they supposed to travel in pairs? Partner up? Where was the Danny Glover to the first cop's Mel Gibson? The Hutch to his Starsky? The Martin Lawrence to this guy's Will Smith?

Fuck. It was just her luck to be saved by the Lone Ranger, the Dirty Harry of the FBI. She wondered if anybody knew where he was, if anybody was coming to look for him and in turn, find her…

She was genuinely surprised, however, when she saw red and blue lights flash through the gap in the curtains, she had expected the cavalry to take longer, if they were coming at all – she assumed they'd cut the siren so Yates wouldn't be aware of their approach. She wished they'd hurry – she didn't want their friend to die while they waited outside.

She needn't have worried – in what seemed like a blink of an eye, the door was pushed forward more and two more cops entered the house, the bald man heading directly for her while his partner went down the corridor she'd seen the first cop take, followed by a woman, also a cop.

"We're the FBI, it's okay, you're safe now," reassured her second rescuer of the evening as he took out a small knife and began cutting through the mass of tape tying her down. "My name's David Sinclair, are you hurt?"

At the mention of hurt, she found her voice. Shaking her head, she spoke up: "The first cop, he didn't come back. He followed the person who took me, I heard someone scream, and then, and then there were some shots and the cop, he didn't come back!" She spoke in a rush, words merging into one another. She didn't have to worry about being understood because the expression on the man's face in front of her spoke volumes and he glanced quickly towards the corridor his friends had disappeared.

"It's okay, Agent Eppes had called for back-up before entering, and he managed to report himself as an agent down," Agent Sinclair informed her. He sounded calm and in-control but she was perceptive enough to know that he cared for the well-being of this 'Agent Eppes' and the only reason he was here with her now, and not checking up on his friend, was out of professional duty.

Having finally cut away all the duct tape, he helped her sit up and as he rubbed her hands, trying to get the blood flowing again, he took off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. She smiled briefly in thanks but joined him in peering towards the corridor. She could see a transparent comm.-device, just like the cops on TV, in his ear and she wondered if he knew how his friend was doing, whether he was even alive. Before she could confirm this theory, she saw two uniformed men –medics- enter through the door and go where Agent Sinclair pointed.

Another medic followed behind the other two but this one made her way towards her.

Things became hazy for Jenny after that: she barely remembered what questions were being asked of her, the lights being shined into her eyes, a thumb pressed into the inside of her wrist. Her eyes were fixed on the doorway and after what seemed like ages, she saw the dark-haired man being rushed away from the house in a stretcher, lines of worry deeply etched into the faces of his friends who had followed the medic's dash to the ambulance. She hadn't been able to catch much of a glimpse of her rescuer, considering how fast they'd moved him, but it gave her some relief that she couldn't see blood coating him anywhere. At least he hadn't been shot.

She hoped the man who'd saved her was okay, that for her to be saved hadn't resulted in another man dying, that the Agent's family wouldn't find a reason to grieve tonight in her family's stead.

Khatum (The End)