Held Down by the Past

Disclaimers: The characters are the property of Spelling/Goldberg Entertainment. No copyright infringement is intended. The story is the property of the author and her often very twisted imagination.

Title: Held Down by the Past – Chapter 1

Summary: A shell-shocked Jill tries to come to terms with the tragic consequences of attempting to help a friend in trouble.

Author's Notes: First off, I have to thank Regina Gabrielle. She hates it when I call her my muse for my Mike and Jill stories, but sometimes I feel that without her horrifying stories of her past, I'd have nothing to write about. This story comes back to one basic theme: safety. Regina has told me on several occasions that when she escaped her ex-boyfriend, all she wanted was to feel safe. She said that it took several years for her to completely believe that she was safe. That's what this story all boils down to.

The second thing is trying to help someone when no one had been there to help you. That's the second theme of this story.

This story is rated M for some future chapters, which are marked accordingly.

Chapter 1

"Why couldn't you have just butted out? I didn't want to hurt her! I didn't want to hurt any of them!"

Jill Danko watched the irate man pacing back and forth from her vantage point on the living room sofa. This same tirade had been going on for the past six hours and it showed no signs of letting up anytime soon. The police as well as a tactical team had been in place trying to talk the man into letting his hostage go, but so far, he was refusing.

Jill was tired. She hadn't slept more than an hour or two a night in the two weeks since this nightmare had started. For almost three days after it had happened, she hadn't uttered a word at all. Lt. Ryker and one of the detectives had told her that they'd found her huddled in the bathtub when they found the bodies of the victims, but she didn't remember that. She just remembered screams and gunshots. Everything after that was a total blank.

Jill jumped when the phone rang. The man glared at her with eyes that were black with rage. "If you don't answer it, Bobby, they're going to come in here," she warned him.

He angrily stomped over and snatched the phone off of the kitchen wall. "What?" He shouted into it.

"Mr. Sanchez, this is Lt. Ryker."

"I told you people to stop calling me!"

"Sanchez, let me talk to Mrs. Danko. I want to make sure that she's okay."

"I haven't hurt her."

"Then, let me talk to her. You're going to have to work with me here, Sanchez. Let me talk to her," Ryker repeated.

"The cop on the phone wants to talk to you," Bobby Sanchez snarled as he held the receiver out toward Jill.

Jill walked over to the phone on legs that were barely holding her up. "Hello?" She answered in a hoarse voice.

"Mrs. Danko, this is Lt. Ryker. Are you okay?"

"I'm okay. Can I talk to Mike?" She looked over at Bobby, who was once again pacing the floor, waving a gun around.

"Keep it short, Danko," Ryker told Mike, as he held the receiver of the field phone out toward him.

"Baby, are you okay?" Mike asked.

"Mike, get me out of here. He's going to kill me," she said as she fought back tears of fear and anger.

"Baby, we're working on it," he tried to assure her.

"Hang up!" Bobby shouted. "You got proof that she's all right. Give me the damn phone!"

Mike was about to say something when the line went dead. "He took the phone away from her," he said as he looked at his boss. "How are we going to get her out of there? He's been holding her for six hours now!"

"We're working on it, Officer Danko," Mike turned toward the voice. The man was dressed completely in black. His name tag on his uniform said 'Daniels' and he was the head of the tactical unit, which had been trained to respond in hostage situations.

"You're 'working on it?' From what I've seen, all you and your men have been doing since you got here is sitting around with your thumbs up your ass!"

"Officer Danko, I understand how you feel. But, if we storm the apartment, Sanchez is going to kill your wife."

"If you don't do something, he's going to kill her anyway!" Mike reminded them. "Thanks to the damn press, he knows he left a witness to his wife and her family's murders."

Back in the apartment, Bobby walked over to the what-knot shelf where Jill had hers' and Mike's mementos on display, including several photographs of the two of them. "I didn't want it to be like this," he turned toward her. "I liked you. I even liked Officer Mike, even though he's a cop. He's a good guy. Why did you tell Tina to leave me?"

"I didn't tell her to leave you, Bobby. The only thing I told her was that she shouldn't stay with you if you were hurting her. She didn't deserve that. She made the decision to leave."

"But, you were helping her! You were at my house that day! The papers said that you heard her scream out my name!"

"I don't remember any of that," she stammered.

"How can you not remember? It was in the fucking newspaper!"

"Bobby, I was in shock. I still am. I remember being at the house, but that's all that I remember. I swear to it."

"I wasn't hurting her," he paced a couple of feet in front of her. "The Bible says that wives should cleave to their husbands. She was supposed to honor me. You know about that. You're married."

"Mike doesn't hit me."

"Never?"

"No."

"The Bible says that I have the right to keep my wife in line. My old man did it, and so did my grandfather and all of my uncles."

"My uncles were that way, too, Bobby, but it doesn't mean that it's right."

"Officer Mike doesn't hit you?" He asked again, his expression one of disbelief.

"No," Jill repeated, although she remembered early on when she'd tried to goad him into striking her. Before Mike, physical violence was all she'd ever known. Instead of lashing out at her, Mike would just walk away from her. "Bobby, I'm sorry about all of this. Please just let me go."

"I can't let you go. If I walk out of that door, they're going to kill me."

"They're not going to kill you."

"How do you know that? I killed six people. If I'd found you, it would've been seven," he said as Jill visibly shuddered. "You were a witness. You shouldn't have gone to my house."

"Mike tried to tell me that, too."

"Then why didn't you listen to him? Don't you read the Bible? Honor your husband. It's one of the commandments."

"I think you need to re-read your Bible," Jill stared at him defiantly.

"Don't backtalk me!" He screamed at her as the phone rang again. "Son of a bitch! Answer it and tell that lieutenant to leave me alone!"

Jill walked over and picked up the phone. "Lieutenant, he wants you to stop calling here."

"Mrs. Danko, we're trying to keep communications open with him. We want this to end."

"And, you think that I don't? He's a ticking time bomb."

"Please put him on the phone."

"He wants to talk to you," Jill looked at her captor.

"Lieutenant, leave us alone," Bobby snapped when he took the phone.

"Bobby, we want to end this. Is there anybody you want to talk to?"

"Anybody? Yeah, bring my mother down here. I want to talk to my mother."

"Bobby . . . "

"You asked me who I want to talk to, Lieutenant, and I told you. Bring my mother down here and I'll let Mrs. Danko go."

"Let me see what I can do," Ryker sighed as he ended the call. "He wants to talk to his mother."

"His mother? She's the one who started this whole mess," Terry said as he looked at his boss.

"I know that, Webster, but right now she's all that we have. You and Gillis go to the jail and get her."

Back in the apartment, Jill wondered if Bobby Sanchez was really going to let her go if he was able to talk to his mother. "Are you really going to let me go?" She asked.

"I told that cop that I would. I'm a man of my word."

Jill knew that much to be true. In many conversations with Tina, her friend had told her over and over that Bobby had told her that he'd kill her if she ever left him. Jill had just wanted to help her because no one had been there to help her when she needed it. Trap and the bikers had tried, but they'd been as trapped as she had been.

For the next hour, things remained in a standoff state. Terry had radioed in to Lt. Ryker that he and Willie had Sanchez's mother and were on their way to the apartment with her. Ryker had relayed that information to Bobby Sanchez, but at the moment, all was quiet.

"What if Sanchez doesn't let Jill go after he talks to his mother?" Mike asked.

"Then, we'll have no choice but to go in," Daniels told him.

"It's only taken you eight hours to decide this?"

"We can't let this go on indefinitely, Officer Danko."

Just then, Terry pulled his patrol car into the complex and parked. Willie got out and opened the back door, removing a handcuffed woman in her mid-50's. "Did you have any trouble getting her out?" Ryker asked.

"No, sir. We told her that we needed her for a while."

"Mrs. Sanchez, your son is holding Jill Danko hostage. He's requested to talk to you before he lets her go," Ryker told her as he dialed the apartment number and held the phone toward her.

"Uncuff me," she asked in a heavy Spanish accent.

"Not a chance," Ryker told her as the phone started to ring.

Mike looked up the stairs to where several of Daniels' men were stationed outside of the apartment. They'd been there since this had all begun that morning. He knew they'd move in at the first word from their commander. One part of his brain wanted them to go in, but the other part was scared for Jill's safety.

Inside of the apartment, the phone began to ring. "Get it," Bobby ordered Jill.

Jill walked over to the phone. "Hello?"

"Mrs. Danko, this is Lt. Ryker. Tell Sanchez that we have his mother on the phone."

"Bobby, your mother's on the phone," Jill told him.

"Mama?" Bobby whispered into the phone.

"Bobby, they told me that you wanted to talk to me," she said in Spanish.

Mike's ears perked at the use of Spanish. "Mrs. Sanchez, speak English," Ryker warned her as Mike tried to get his attention. "What is it, Danko?"

"Lieutenant, I know Spanish. I can let you know what she's saying."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. All she's said so far is we told him that he wanted to talk to her."

"Get closer so that you can translate if we need you to. Let us know if she says anything we need to be concerned about."

"What are you doing, Roberto?" Mrs. Sanchez asked.

"Mama, she's the one who told the police that it was me that shot Tina and her brothers."

"Then, you know what you have to do. Kill her."

"Get in there!" Mike shouted. "She just told Sanchez to kill Jill!"

Everything after that was total chaos. Mrs. Sanchez was brought to the ground as Ryker dropped the phone. Inside of the apartment, gunshots rang out as the tactical team burst into the apartment.

Ryker tried to stop Mike as he raced up the stairs to the apartment. "Danko!" Ryker shouted as he ran after him. "Get her out of here!" He shouted as Terry and Willie wrenched Mrs. Sanchez to her feet and took her back to the patrol car before they too ran up the stairs to the apartment.

Inside of the apartment, Jill was huddled on the floor by the couch with her arms over her head as the room suddenly filled with police officers. "He's dead," she heard one of the officers announce as more cops entered the room.

"Jill!" She heard Mike's voice, but she was too afraid to look up. "Jill!" His already pounding heart began pounding more loudly at the sight of his wife covered in blood. "Baby, are you okay?"

"The suspect's dead, Officer Danko. He shot himself as we were entering the apartment."

Mike was carefully looking Jill over for injuries as she stared past him to where the tactical team was standing over Sanchez. "Baby, don't look at him," he put his finger under her chin, forcing her to look at him. "Are you okay? Did he hurt you?" She didn't say anything, except to burst into deep, gulping sobs as Mike pulled her against him. "You're okay now. You're safe now."

As Mike held her tightly, she began to wonder if she truly was safe. For a long time he'd made her feel that way, but since moving back in with him, that feeling had begun to slip away. She wanted to regain that feeling of safety. She felt as if she'd go insane without it.