Every Waking Moment
CHAPTER 1
The first time she was kidnapped was bad because she'd been all-alone in that basement and blindfolded. This time was worse because they'd taken Crews too.
If she thought fear for herself was bad, fear for him was worse.
They'd both been beaten in a way that doesn't break bones but was still incredibly painful. Their captors used sections of garden hose to beat their bare feet, which hurt far worse than Reese could have imagined. When she issued the first screams, they'd surprised her. It seemed as if her body cried out against her will. She couldn't remember forming the desire or giving voice to her pain – it just happened. The tears had come blows ago shining streaks of salt down her face; the whimpering shortly after muted muffled grunts and expressions of discomfort, but her own screams? Those shocked her. Then they'd stopped beating her – once she'd broken – once she'd screamed - that instant.
But Crews? He made no sound, showed no affect, even some how managed not to wince. He simply peacefully closed his eyes and let the blows come. He accepted them as one would raindrops or a bath in warm water. For his insolence they'd shackled him to the ceiling and beaten his torso with the long lengths of hose, until he coughed up blood and still Crews made no outcry. While Dani considered herself stubborn she was fast realizing that she didn't hold a candle to her red haired partner.
When they let him down, Crews collapsed onto the floor unmoving. He lay face down on the cold concrete with his face turned towards her and his guileless blue eyes open. He didn't move, he didn't blink and for a moment she thought he'd stopped breathing. They left and closed the door. She couldn't move but tried and that was when he issued a deep shuddering sigh and blinked. She froze unable to tear herself away from his eyes. Then Crews did the unimaginable – he smiled at her.
Dani wanted to cry more then than during the beatings. How could this gentle man endure so much and still summon a smile to buoy her? She crossed the cold floor to him on her hands and knees and her hand shook as she reached to touch him. She brushed her palm across his cheek and stroked her thumb across the bronze sideburn under his bleeding ear, before sinking her fingers into his short red hair.
He was warmer than she expected. Something about the paleness of Crews' skin always made her expect him to be cold, but he was not. They stayed like that for what seemed a long time, but it was just a moment - before the door opened again and the real terror set in.
There were six, maybe eight men, in identical cheap suits, wearing ski masks and rubber gloves. They were built like professional football players and moved with the collectiveness knowledge of pack animals. Words – idle talk that might disclose something - was unnecessary to them – they communicated through nods, eye movements and gestures. She searched their faces for something she could recognize, a tattoo, a ring, something that she could use to identify them, but they were automatons and nothing about them revealed their identity, purpose or motive.
As she registered their approach, Charlie read immediate terror in her eyes. Her gaze switched from narrow and probing to wide eyed and panicked. Something worse than hoses, worse than a gun or a knife awaited them. Reese was not afraid of much, but what the men carried terrified in a way he'd only seen once on their very first case together. He raised his body off the floor on strength of will alone and was smashed back to the ground by a knee in his back.
Two men grabbed Dani under each arm and hauled her backwards pinning her to the far wall. That was when he saw it - a hypodermic needle dripping an amber liquid and the wildness in her eyes became rage and blind fear. Her panic was enough to break his silence. Crews begged the man grinding his knee into his back, "please don't." His single utterance drew their attention for a tiny fraction of a second before laughed and returned their attention to Dani.
She thrashed violently and tried unsuccessfully to stifle her pleas of "no, No, NO," as they reached a crescendo in an eerie keening wail as the man drove the needle home. It reminded Charlie for some crazy reason of a graveyard shift his rookie year with Bobby Stark in a radio car. Someone struck a deer once with a car, but didn't kill it. The animal lay unmoving in extreme distress emitting a high-pitched wail until Stark putting a bullet in it. The silence that followed the sharp retort of the pistol was heartbreaking. So too was his partners' silence on this day.
Tears formed in his eyes. What they could not summon from him with his own pain they had loosed with hers. They held her as the drug worked it's magic and as Crews watched her eyes glazed over, she passed out and slumped against the wall. Then the men left that same heartbreaking silence in their wake as the door slammed closed. They had done their job, breaking both strong willed detectives by using the other as the instrument of their torture.
Crews crawled to his young partner and pulled her still form into his lap. He curled his long fingers into the cool, darkness of her hair. The luxury of the simple act and the pleasure it gave him made Charlie feel guilty. He closed his eyes as tears slipped past them. The room had the silence of a tomb and for a fraction of a second before he gave himself over to the darkness – Charlie thought how easy it would be to meditate her with no other distractions. But that moment quickly passed and with adrenaline gone his tired body gave into the pain and shut down to heal itself. He hugged his tiny partner tightly as though someone might steal her from him.
The man in the room above watched on the closed circuit camera and smiled.