Hostage

His ears were ringing and his head hurt so he left it hanging towards his chest for the moment. Shifting position, he could feel that he was zip tied to a wooden chair with his hands also bound by zip ties behind him. With nothing to pick, he was going to be in trouble if he couldn't get something to cut the binds.

Lifting his head, he started taking in his surroundings.

The room was barren except for his chair, a light, and the door. Looking at the walls, they had a gray color with darker areas of mold and mildew. Above him the ceiling contained the piping and wiring for the rest of the building with parts covered and others open due to gaps in the ceiling material. Flickering caught the corner of his eye so he focused on the light. It was one of those basic ones with a pull string like you see in closets or basements. Based on the evidence, it looked like he was in some kind of basement.

Studying the door next, he looked to see what he would be up against should he manage to escape his bonds. It appeared to be built of solid material, perhaps a heavy wood reinforced with some metal in order to keep it from being forced with weight. Then there were no obvious ways of opening the door from the inside as there was nothing to pick. Finally, the hinges were outside which also removed the idea of taking the door off.

When he finished taking in the surroundings there wasn't much for him to do but wait for his captors to show up. While he waited, he decided to reflect back on how he was taken and what had transpired since to look for clues as to what was going on.

He was walking home from the gym when he turned the corner and was tasered into unconsciousness. Then later he woke up to the hum of the road beneath his ear as he lay in the back of a van. Expanding the range of his focus, he caught some words from his captors.

"Do you think his parents will pay for his safe return?"

"Of course they will. But if they don't, then we have some friends who will pay highly for the opportunity to kill him themselves. Either way, we get what we want." The two men fell into raucous laughter as they decided that it didn't matter how the situation went as they would succeed either way.

Their conversation drifted into silence without revealing any more helpful information.

Arriving at their destination, they tasered him unconscious again before removing him from the van.

Reflecting back on the important details, he was being held hostage for ransom, if that ransom wasn't paid then he would be turned over to some enemy, and his parents were being targeted. That at least gave him some details to think about, but it still didn't make sense for a series of reasons.

First, his parents weren't together since his Mom was held captive by severe depression and his dad had abandoned them years ago. Second, they never had much in the way of money which was why his father became a thief. Finally, his records were sealed and buried so no one should be able to connect the details to who he really was.

Had they gotten the wrong person by accident?

Peter had been settled on the couch with Elizabeth while Satchmo snoozed on the floor beside them. They were enjoying a movie and some quiet time together after a series of difficult cases and events had kept them apart.

When Peter's phone went off he was tempted to ignore it, but a glance at the caller ID had his focus changing. The Marshals were calling him and that was never a good sign, especially since he had his CI to think about.

As expected, the agent on the other end was the bearer of bad news and Neal was off anklet.

He told Elizabeth not to wait up for him while he grabbed his keys and other belongings. It was a wasted effort on his part as they both knew she would be waiting for his return to know what was going on and that all were safe.

Heading out the door, he called Jones and requested him to get Diana and meet him at the location where Neal's signal was cut.

Driving down the road, he realized that he was heading for a street corner between Neal's gym and June's mansion. Thinking back to when he dropped Neal off at home, he recalled his CI's plans for the evening. Neal was going to work out at the gym to use up his adrenaline before heading home to sleep. Taking that into account, he must have been heading home when something happened.

Hopefully it was just a glitch in the anklet and they could laugh it off when Neal made his usual jokes about "big brother watching."

Arriving first on the scene, he didn't see anything but an empty corner. Checking in the nearest ally he poked around the surface of one of the dumpsters. To his dismay, he found Neal's gym bag disposed of amidst the rubbish. Marking its location for evidence, he continued to check around the dark crannies to see if anything came up. Beneath the back corner of the dumpster he found Neal's anklet had indeed been cut. Was he on the run, or had some enemy caught up with him?

Calling in more back up, he had a team come in to sweep for prints and any other evidence that might be found between the alley and the corner.

While the Marshals and other agents continued to gather evidence, Peter stood in view of the ally and the corner waiting for his team. Jones approached him first.

The agent had taken some time to stop by June's. He had asked her what Neal had been doing for the evening and some back questions to see if there were any recent patterns beyond his usual. Her answers were that Neal had gone to the gym two hours prior, just shortly after Peter had dropped him off from work, and she hadn't seen him since. As for previous patterns, he had been so occupied with work that she hardly saw him over the last few weeks.

Unless Neal had been planning something for an extended period of time and this was his first opportunity to carry it out, it looked like someone else had been involved with his disappearance. Neither one was a good scenario.

Then Diana arrived on the scene with the result of her investigation.

She had been to the gym. It was the last likely place that Neal would have been seen so she decided to ask around. The consensus was that Neal had arrived nearly two hours prior which followed the time line of him leaving June's and walking to the gym. While he was there, he pretty much kept to himself, which was apparently normal for him. He only interacted with others when necessary and seemed to prefer to exercise alone. When she asked if there had been any suspicious patrons, no one had seen anything, so it didn't look like Neal was being watched. Then she asked into when he had left and the time coincided with what it would take for him to walk to the corner and when the Marshals recorded his tracking signal going dark.

Peter was dismayed and relieved. The evidence was pointing to Neal having been abducted, but that meant that he probably hadn't run.

In an effort to get their consultant back, the team exhausted the scene looking for evidence, the Marshals took precautions just in case it was set up to look like an abduction, and Peter contacted Mozzie to see what he could find on the streets.

It was a long night. The Marshal's man hunt didn't get anything, Mozzie didn't hear anything about Neal or anyone targeting him, and the team only found his bag and anklet. Things weren't looking good.

It was the middle of the night when the phone rang. Muttering to herself, the woman worked her way out of the comfort of her bed to reach for her phone vibrating acrossed the night stand. Picking it up, the caller was blocked to disguise their identity, so she activated a recorder before answering.

"We have your son. If you want to see him alive again, you and his father will place the ransom in amounts and locations that you will receive in one hour." With that the line ended leaving her listening to the dial tone.

Thinking, she realized that someone had connected the details she had worked so hard to hide, they didn't want her to know who they were, and they were threatening her son.

Picking up the phone again, she selected a number and placed a call.

"He's been taken. I just got a ransom call saying that I will receive further instruction in one hour." She was silent while she listened to the person on the other end of the line. "Yes, that is the recording." Then she was silent again. "In one hour." With that she hung up and moved to get dressed. Her day was starting again early.

Groaning, the man was awakened by the irritating sound of his phone ringing. Reaching out from under the bed, he wondered how he got into such a position, but couldn't focus on it. Slowly making his way out, he caught the phone just after it had gone to voicemail. Rubbing his eyes, he tried to regain his focus before listening to the recording. After a moment he was able to focus his eyes enough to access his voicemail.

"We have your son. If you want to see him alive again, you and his mother will place the ransom in amounts and locations that you will receive in one hour."

Suddenly wide awake, he looked through his phone for a special number. Before he could find it he saw that she was calling him.

She started the conversation and he threw in what the message had been. They realized that they had gotten the same call and agreed to see what would happen in an hour. In the meanwhile, they would get dressed and begin a means of investigation to see what they could do to help their son.

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