Compass
Disclaimer: I don't own National Treasure
A/N: starts just after Book of Secrets (Pardon the inaccuracies, but apparently the movies are riddled with them, so yeah...)
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Chapter One
"Riley Poole?" the redhead he didn't know the name of asked, and Riley looked up and smiled.
He got to his feet, held out his hand, and asked, "Wanna dance?"
"Sure."
"Hey, uh, what's your name?"
"Andy Jones." Riley and Andy danced through song after song, exchanging small talk in whispers and giggling over what they said to each other, and when he finally led her off the dance floor, her phone rang. "Hold on, I need to take this." She fished her phone out of her purse and walked out to the fringes of the party, not even checking the caller ID before answering. "Hello?"
Riley hung back as Andy said, "Yeah...uh-huh..." and there was a pause then, long enough for him to wonder if she had an American accent or a British one when she spoke to the man on the other end of the line, given the distance she placed between them when she walked over to answer the phone. Riley thought the phone would slip right out of her hand and fall to the floor, her grip on it was that loose. "Did you just say he was in a prison riot?" She paused again, and her worry was becoming more apparent. "And now he's in the hospital? How bad is it?"
She struggled to maintain the tone of her voice as the doctor on the other end described her brother's condition, how he was a bystander who got caught in the violence, and anything else she asked about. Finally, after all the explaining was done, she said, "Thank you," and hung up.
Riley was waiting patiently right at the fringes of the party when Andy turned to face him. "It's my brother," she said. "I really need to go, but if you give me your number, I'll let you know if everything's okay."
"Uh...yeah, okay." He gave her a series of digits, which she typed into her phone and saved under the name 'Riley Poole'. "Do you need a ride?"
"No, thanks. I need to go alone."
Andy wove her way through the croud and out to the parking lot. She pulled her keys out of her purse and unlocked the silver sedan in the third row in the slot closest to the lamp post. She pulled out and drove down several blocks, took a few turns, drove down a few more blocks, and pulled into the parking lot of the Washington, D.C., Mercy Hospital. She climbed out of the sedan, locked it behind her and walked into the waiting room.
"May I help you?" the blond, female receptionist asked.
She dropped the name Andy Jones and the accompanying American accent altogether when she replied. "I'm Tanya Howe. I just got word my brother has been admitted, so I came here to see him."
"Do you have any ID?" Tanya produced a passport and a UK identification card and handed them to the receptionist, who looked them both over carefully before adding, "He's on the third floor, in room three eighty."
"Thank you." She took her passport and ID card back, put them back in her purse, and made her way up to room three hundred eighty. A doctor met her outside the door, and she asked, "Do you know how he is?"
"Just fine," the doctor replied. "Still asleep, but just fine."
"May I?" she asked, gesturing toward the door. The doctor nodded, and she walked through the door.
The blond man in the hospital gown lying unconscious on the hospital bed with an IV linking his blood stream to an unknown, though clear, fluid was almost unidentifiable, a John Doe. Half of his face and most of his neck were covered by a giant dark purple bruise, she could tell his breathing was strained, as if it were restricted by something, and as she took a few steps toward him, she could see that he had several cuts on his face and arms.
But she did recognize him, and she could identify him. "Ian," she whispered.
Another man walked into the room. He was dressed up in a nice suit and looked like any other man with a stable job that one would see in a business district talking on a cell phone on his way to work. "Agent Peter Sadusky, of the FBI," he said, holding his hand out to her.
For a second, Tanya paused, wondering which identity to use. He didn't seem like someone who would betray her, but then, so did a lot of peope she remembered from her past. After the moment was over, she shook his hand and said, "Tanya Howe." After all, she thought, what use was it lying to police?
Sadusky didn't seem to notice her hesitation and instead asked, "Can you think of any reason why he'd be attacked this brutally?"
"Well, he wrote me a letter once from prison telling me he thought the guards hated him for a reason he couldn't identify. If that's not enough, then perhaps it has something to do with Nathaniel."
"Nathaniel?"
"He...was, I should say...our father."
"Did he disown you?"
"More like we don't speak with him anymore." Sadusky nodded and took a seat on one side of Ian. Tanya stared down at her unconscious brother and asked, "When did this happen?"
"About ten thirty last night. Still haven't figured out who caused the riot or why, or how Ian got involved."
"Wasn't he just an innocent bystander?"
"We actually have reason to suspect otherwise, but that theory hasn't checked out."
She nodded and chewed her lip. "Did anyone else end up like this?"
"He's the only one, and if we didn't get there when we did, he could've died."
"Was it that bad?"
Sadusky stared at the tube dripping clear fluid into Ian's body and sighed. Tanya finally tore her eyes off her brother and directeded them toward the investigator. "That's part of the reason we have reason to suspect that he was more than an innocent bystander," Sadusky finally said. "He got the worst beating, an intentional one."
"So what side was he on?"
"I haven't the slightest idea."
She nodded again and eventually took a seat in the only remaining chair, uncomfortably close to Sadusky. She watched Ian's breathing, listened to the machines monitoring his vital signs, anything she could think of in hopes that soon, he would leave.
Sadusky got to his feet and said, "Well, I better go," and he left, leaving Tanya alone with her brother.