A/N: I know I should be finishing up my other stories but I've had this idea for a while. Don't worry, I've got the rest of Our Best Friend's Wedding on the update editing block and another chapter for the Private Escapades coming up as well, but I figured I'd get this out and see what people thought or if there would be any interest in yet another AU story from me. Might as well, right? It may be total crap, and you all will have to let me know if I should continue or not, but I thought it could be...interesting. Thanks for reading.
ONE
"What a day," Quinn groaned to herself as she tossed her briefcase and suit jacket into the passenger seat of her car, smoothing the back of her skirt before taking a seat behind the wheel of her SUV. She sifted through her purse for her phone, dialing her home number to no avail before calling her sixteen year old daughter's cell phone number, groaning once again as her daughter's voicemail message filled her ears for the third time that day.
"Hey Beth, it's mom…again. I've called a few times today and you haven't answered or called back so I'm going to assume you've been at volleyball practice. I know it's a little later than I promised and I'm so sorry I wasn't there afterwards to take you out to dinner and visit your dad like I promised, but I'm just now leaving work so I should be home in about twenty minutes," she offered after the beep, pausing for a moment before adding, "I love you, sweetheart."
She had really screwed up this time.
It was the three and a half year anniversary of Puck's death and both she and Beth had a ritual of visiting his gravesite every six months on a regular basis. And she felt terrible missing the occasion. She hated to make excuses and knew Beth could care less about her reason for missing their annual trip to the cemetery that afternoon, but it really wasn't her fault.
The past few months had been beyond stressful, as her team at the State Department had seen an increased influx of terrorist activity within their sphere of surveillance in Europe. They had been watching this particular group for over a year but it seemed as though they had gotten even bolder over the past several months since they began trafficking out of some of Europe's major hubs in London's Heathrow Airport and the main train depot out of Berlin, Germany.
It had been a stressful five months but she thought she finally might be making some pretty substantial progress toward apprehending these international criminals and warlords, the US Army and State Department officials inching closer and closer to apprehending the big names behind the syndicates that were trafficking everything from weapons to drugs across the continents. They were so close to nabbing these guys, and once they did, Quinn vowed that she and Beth were taking a long and much deserved vacation on some island somewhere.
She let out a deep sigh before backing out of her space in the parking garage and driving away from the glass building where she reported for work day in and day out.
She took a few cleansing breaths as she pulled onto the freeway and made her way toward their suburban Virginian home. She used to love her job, but nowadays it just seemed like it would be far more productive to bang her head against the wall repeatedly instead of research and fill out the reports she was required to file over the years.
She used to be full of hope and dreams of making a change in the world, but after seeing the real ins-and-outs of government work, Quinn wished she could go back in time and re-evaluate her life plans.
After graduation from high school and upon acceptance into the prestigious Ivy League Yale University, Quinn had been full of grandiose ideas of double-majoring in both theater and English. She even took several classes in each discipline before a professor emeritus in one of her modern languages classes suggested a different route for her, introducing her to several people he knew that worked for the United States government.
She began taking more classes in foreign policy and international relations, taking the opportunity to study abroad in Spain and France during her summer after her freshman year. She even found an internship working for the Defense Intelligence Agency during her sophomore and junior years of college. She was truly on the up and up from there and with the encouragement of some of the faculty, she had started to see a life in government service and politics in her future.
That was until summer after her junior year of college, when she got a phone call that changed her entire life. The conversation had her reeling and most of the information the man on the phone had tried to explain fell on deaf ears with the exception of a few key phrases. Shelby passed away in a tragic car accident. No discernible guardian for five-year old Beth. Shelby left instructions to contact her and Puck in the instance of her death… It was a lot to take in.
As soon as she was finally able to wrap her head around things, she contacted Puck. After milling around Los Angeles and Lima, Ohio for the year after high school graduation, he finally decided to do something with his life, enlisting in the Air Force and surprisingly qualifying for a position within their intelligence department. He spent a year in Texas before being reassigned to one of the intel units out of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Quinn could not have been more proud of him for his accomplishments.
However, she owed it to him to let him in on what was going on, even if it meant possibly capsizing his entire life he had built for himself. This was their daughter, after all.
After explaining the bits and pieces she remembered from the conversation with the executor of Shelby's estate, the two of them had a very frank discussion about their lives and their futures. Neither one of them had planned on anything like this happening and neither thought they were particularly ready for the responsibility, but they both quickly agreed that there was no way they could give Beth up again, especially if it meant putting her into the state system for an indeterminate amount of time.
The two of them made arrangements to immediately travel to New York, Puck and Quinn reuniting briefly with their friends that lived in the city and their mothers before the entire entourage accompanied the duo down to the city's child services office. They petitioned for custody and guardianship, each of their friends and family members acting as character witnesses on their behalf. Despite their age, income and respective occupations, the court found the original parents to be more suitable as parents than the foster system, granting them custody over their daughter.
Despite the distance, tough times and hard work by both she and Puck, their dedication and devotion to their daughter brought them closer together, the two of them falling back in love and marrying not long after Quinn graduated. Even though things hadn't been easy and their lives hadn't gone entirely as planned, they both made the most of it. After plenty of long hours and hard work, Quinn finally landed her dream job at the US State Department while Puck earned himself a transfer to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington D.C., the family settling in nicely into their suburban lifestyle.
When she first started working at the State Department, she found it to be quite fulfilling and she loved how she had a chance to truly affect the world and foreign policy. But over the years it had become a bit taxing, especially once her husband Puck began getting deployed with the Air Force, his tours of duty taking him into the heart of danger in the Middle East while she was left to parent Beth on her own.
Don't get her wrong, she loved being a parent and yearned for all the time in the world to spend with her daughter. It was just hard feeling like you were on your own, especially when that daughter began to grow from the loquacious, happy-go-lucky little girl into a more quiet and moody pre-teen.
However, three and a half years ago, their entire world was disrupted in a major way yet again. Puck had been deployed for the third time to Afghanistan, and word came back that he had been killed in an ambush on the Army convoy he was traveling with. The news was a devastating blow, the family reeling from the sudden loss of their patriarch. Quinn lost her best friend and her lover while Beth had lost her father at the tender age of 13. She was a total daddy's girl and the news came as a huge shock to her system, the girl becoming a bit despondent and depressed until Quinn and her best friend Santana convinced Beth to take up a sport or activity, the now sophomore in high school enjoying a variety of activities from volleyball to show choir.
Quinn was beyond proud of her daughter and her accomplishments, wanting nothing more to see her daughter happy and successful. However, she was a teenage girl who no longer had a strong male figure in her life and Quinn found herself struggling to balance work with raising a sixteen-year old daughter.
Beth was a straight-A student but she was still a bit rebellious though, and as of late, had been sneaking off and hanging out with her friends and boyfriend more and more leaving Quinn more than a bit worried. She often found herself wondering what their life would be like if Puck were still around, and often smiled at the thought that he probably would have threatened to shoot any boy that came near Beth. Yet, Quinn had tried to be a bit more sympathetic as she had been sixteen once and she should truly be thankful Beth hadn't gone down the same path she had when she was a sophomore but it was still frustrating and disconcerting at times. After all, Beth was a high school girl with a boyfriend, so anything Quinn said or told her, Beth seemed to ignore, especially when Quinn had started spending more time at the office.
But work was work and she was onto a huge break, almost guaranteed a promotion if this went through well, and they could definitely use the money as things had been a bit tight after Puck's death, but Quinn was determined to make life good for her daughter. It had been hard enough to give her up in the first place and after telling her about her story as a baby, Beth had withdrawn even more from Quinn, if that was even possible. It was her fault and she knew she needed to make more of an effort with her daughter. She knew she owed it to Beth, and she was planning on at least making a start to making it up to her as soon as she got home.
Life without Puck wasn't easy and she missed him terribly every damn day, even the simplest thought of him crossing her mind often brought tears to her eyes. He was such a good husband and a fantastic father and she couldn't help but think that he would know what to do when it came to Beth. Quinn had felt so lost since he died and found herself "talking" to him every night, often wondering where she was going wrong with Beth and how she could fix things, never forgetting to tell him how much she loved and missed him. He was a natural at everything he did (when he decided to actually apply himself) and had always been there for her during the thick and the thin, finding a way around adversity whenever it arose.
She shook her head and wiped away the tears that began to fall upon thinking about him, taking a deep breath and collecting herself as she pulled off of the beltway and onto the residential streets of Alexandria, Virginia the Puckerman family called home.
It was close to 7:30 pm when she finally turned down their street, Quinn scrunching her brown into a frown when she saw her home at the end of the block, the entire house dark as she pulled up onto the drive. She dialed Beth's number once again and groaned again as it went straight to her voicemail. Beth's car was parked in the drive so she should be home by now, but there was always the possibility that someone came to pick her up. It was a school night and Quinn was going to be beyond pissed if she decided to go out with her friends or hang out with her boyfriend when it was only a Tuesday night.
She wracked her brain for a few minutes to try and figure out if Beth had any events or games that night, but they had planned to visit Puck's grave in Arlington that afternoon so she didn't think she was missing anything.
Frustrated and grumpy already, she grabbed her briefcase and suit jacket and made her way into the house, tossing both articles onto the countertop before venturing to the far wall and flipping on the light switch.
Immediately her senses were assaulted by the absolute chaos and disaster that ensconced her entire home. Dishes lay shattered on the ground and the kitchen chairs had been tossed aside, decorations and picture frames smashed as it looked like a tornado swept through the house. The living room didn't look much better, furniture overturned as books and DVDs lie scattered across the floor.
Had they been robbed?
Quinn quickly grasped for her sidearm in her briefcase, hoisting it in front of her as she briskly and methodically made her way through every room on the lower level of her home, each room looking equally as upturned as the next. She couldn't imagine what the upstairs looked like.
At the thought, she felt her heartbeat race as the panic began to set in, terror filling her whole body as she thought of her daughter. What if she was here when this happened? What would the intruders have done if they found her here?
The bile began to rise in her throat as she thought of the possibilities, Quinn making a mad dash up the stairs as she frantically searched each room for any sign of Beth, her hopes sinking with every empty and equally destroyed room.
"Beth!" she screamed out as she ran room to room before heading back down the stairs, "BETH?"
However, the sight of a white envelope taped to the front door stopped her dead in her tracks, her voice caught in her throat as she saw the scroll on the front.
Puckerman
She swallowed hard, fear bubbling up as she grasped the letter and pulled it off of the door. With trembling fingers she opened the envelope, taking a deep breath before reading the few lines on the page.
You took something very important to me and I want it back. So until then, I took something very important of yours… your daughter. Think of her as collateral.
You know what I want. Bring it to the National Docks by midnight or you'll never see your precious little girl ever again. You think I'm bluffing, just try me. Guaranteed, you won't like the outcome if you choose to ignore this request.
See you soon.
Quinn fought the urge to vomit as the words finally registered in her brain.
She had been taken.
Beth had been kidnapped.
And she didn't have a fucking clue what to do.
She had no idea what they were talking about in the letter! She didn't know what they thought she had taken from them or what they were wanting! She was a goddamn analyst, not a spook! She hadn't been anywhere outside of her office or her house for the last three years, so she couldn't possibly have taken anything of consequence from these people!
Her head began to spin as she thought of the possibilities, her entire body shaking at the thought that one of the heads of the crime syndicates she had been investigating had somehow caught wind of what they were doing and decided to strike first or extract revenge for any of the smaller counterintelligence operations her team had already run in the past.
This was all her fault, and now her baby girl was in trouble because she felt her job and devotion to her country was more important than her family.
Beth was innocent and Quinn had placed her danger…and now she was gone.
Taken.
From their own home, none the less.
Abducted.