Chapter 2
Location:Benji's living room
"Are you gonna drink that or fall asleep in it?" Brandt asked softly with a chuckle, as he saw Jane's head slowly tilt forward, now almost touching the half-empty glass of Ginger Ale in her hand.
"Wh-uh?" Jane quickly came awake again.
"Good morning…or should I say good night?" Brandt inquired jokingly.
"I guess it really was a long day," Jane admitted, before she glanced at her watch, "We should probably call it a night, huh?" Jane conceded with a smile.
Brandt glanced to his left, where Benji was already softly snoring on his sofa.
"I think that is a unanimous 'yes'." Brandt nodded with a muffled laugh, slowly rising off the comfy chair he'd been sitting in. It was time to wrap up this party.
On any other day, Ethan would have been right with them. In fact, they had waited for Ethan after the debriefing, as they often took the opportunity to regroup at one of their homes after a successful mission. Just a little nightcap in the safety of friends, so they could all come down from the strain of the mission, before they would then go on to their own homes.
But when they had left the debriefing earlier tonight, they had seen that Ethan had been caught up at the office, something about another meeting with the Secretary.
Ethan had already looked pretty tired at that point. He had spotted them waiting outside the briefing room, and the slight wave of his hand had told them that he wished them all a good night, which meant he would probably drive straight home after he was done. He certainly deserved a good night's sleep.
Their last mission, while not exactly high-risk, had been high-stress and most of it had landed right on Ethan's shoulders. How he had even remained focused by the end of the mission, was something they could only marvel at. They really hoped the Secretary would keep the extra meeting short – Ethan might appear invincible, but even he had to sleep at some point.
When Jane and Brandt finally called it a night at Benji's place, they took a moment to relocate the still snoring Benji to his bedroom, where he would be more comfortable. After putting their glasses into the sink and closing the lid on Benji's jar of self-baked cookies, they eventually locked the front door behind them, and wished each other a good night. Jane gave her colleague a last parting wave as Brandt drove past her with his car, just as she got into hers.
But before Jane started her own car to drive home, she decided to give Ethan another quick call, to see if he had also made it home yet. With Ethan, you never knew. If that new Secretary of theirs accidentally found the right words, it was entirely possible that Ethan was already being briefed on another mission. Sometimes, the man just didn't know when to say 'no'.
So she called him up.
He didn't answer his phone.
Alright. Maybe he was already home. If he had made it to bed, she wouldn't put it past him to have relocated his phone as far away from his bedroom as humanly possible. Alright, tactic number 2. She decided to send him a text message that he could read whenever he woke up tomorrow morning.
So she typed:
Stopped over at Benji's. The guy snores. Saved you some cookies. Can meet for team-breakfast in the morning. Night, boss.
She hit Send and then, looking forward to her own bed, she finally went on home.
-o-o-o-o-
He was dying. He could feel it. He's been swimming in and out of consciousness for the past ten minutes. He knew he was losing blood. Lots of it, if the wetness beneath his ribs was anything to go by. He barely felt it anymore. His vision was hazy. His ears were ringing, so badly it was bringing him back to the surface once more…
The ringing didn't stop. It hurt. It really made his head hurt…and the more it hurt, the louder it became… it got louder, because he was becoming more aware…
A phone. A phone was ringing.
'My phone' the thought flickered through his head, but it was hard to hold on to it, hard to think.
Slowly, painfully slow, his head moved…it rolled to the side, until he could see where the sound was coming from.
Inside his jacket.
The jacket that was drenched in something sticky, something….that he didn't even want to think about too much….but he forced himself to move his hand towards the sound.
The ringing stopped.
But his thoughts were a little clearer know.
He had to get to his phone. A phone equalled help.
His knuckles painfully scraped across the ground, as he reached with blood-slippery fingers inside his jacket, were he finally grasped the phone. In the end, it practically fell out of his pocket, because he could barely hold on to it. He tried to focus on the screen of the phone.
By the time his fingers began to move across the touch screen, he wasn't really sure what keys he was actually hitting. He could no longer see them clearly. All he had was his memory to go by, and that was fading fast. He tried to make it count, to move his fingers, establish a connection – but it got dark around him again before he ever found out whether he had actually succeeded.
-o-o-o-o-o-
As Jane opened the door to her house, the first thing she did was to throw the keys on the sideboard behind the door, adding her phone to the keys as she slipped out of her jacket. Dropping her shoes as she went, she headed on into the living room, where she switched on the TV. Only half listening to it, she then went on to get ready for bed, as she disappeared in the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
She never heard her phone ring.
-o-o-o-o-o-
The phone fell from his fingers, landing on the concrete with a small, clattering sound. Then, there was only silence.
-o-o-o-o-o-
She was looking forward to putting her head on the pillow. But on the way from the bathroom to the bedroom, Jane remembered that, unlike Ethan, she had wanted to bring her phone into the bedroom with her. In case Ethan decided to call her in the morning, she wanted to have it nearby.
Switching off the TV as she walked across the living room once more, she picked up her phone from the sideboard without even looking at, and was about to just carry it into the bedroom, when she noticed she had one missed call. It was a message. So she called up the text.
It was one word.
'Help'
At firsts she thought she read it wrong, that this was a joke. Then she felt a weary feeling grab her. This was no joke. The call had come from Ethan's number.
And for Ethan to give a call for help – shit, something had to be seriously wrong.
Immediately she tried calling Ethan's number again. Again, there was no answer. She quickly hung up to make another call. This time she was answered with a sleepy voice.
"Benji Dunn."
"Benji, I need you to get on your computer and track Ethan's phone down, now!"
"Wh-a..?" Benji clearly wasn't awake, "Why d' ya wamme me t' …?" he slurred.
"Benji, I think Ethan is in trouble. I need you to track him, NOW!"
That woke Benji up.
"Uh-o-okay. I'm up, I'm up, I'm on it..I'm…."
"Benji, just do it!"
"Doing it…am doing it…" She could now hear clicking sounds.
She remembered she had once said in joke that he probably slept with one of those laptops under his pillow. Well, if he managed to help her with this now, she would never hassle him about it ever again.
"Okay, uhm…he's…there's uhm…okay, I think I got him…..he's at… at 4th and Brunswick Road, that's about three miles away from the IMF headquarters." Then Benji seemed to realize what he had just said. "Wait a minute; did they call him back there? I thought he wanted to go ho-"
"Benji, he just called me, it was a one-word message. He wrote 'help'. So whatever happened, I don't think he ever made it home. You gotta call Brandt and then you two get to these coordinates yesterday. I'm on my way, as well.'
She didn't wait for Benji to acknowledge her orders; instead she simply hung up and grabbed the nearest pair of jeans from the arm of her couch, threw on a shirt and her shoes. She then grabbed her gun and keys, the phone still in her hand, and raced out the door.
She drove straight in the direction of the IMF. About three miles away from it, she took a turn onto another road, which intercrossed with the one that Ethan must have taken on his way home from the IMF. She was aware that Ethan's route went through an area that she usually didn't travel through at night. Not that she was scared, and she was pretty sure that Ethan didn't think twice about this either – but still, it was a part of the city where you could easily get mugged and nobody would look at you twice.
'Help'
The message still in her mind, she wondered if Ethan had perhaps somehow gotten involved in some sort of hold-up, maybe he had been trying to help someone. Or perhaps he'd seen something go down, a drug deal or something. Maybe his call for help had merely been a request for backup before he went to check it out. Another other option was that he had perhaps gotten in the way of a gang dispute, and now needed help to get out of whatever tight spot he had maneuvered himself into.
She just didn't know. But with every mile she got closer, her imagination got worse.
Still, it didn't prepare her for what she saw when she finally spotted Ethan's car in the distance. It was parked in a deserted side street, pulled over at the curb, the driver's door was open.
From her angle, she couldn't see more yet. But when she drove closer, she saw that there was something lying next to the open door.
No. Not something.
Someone.
And whoever it was, he was lying with his head down, half on his side and half with his face on the ground.
As she got closer, she felt her heart stop, when she saw the familiar outline of a jacket she knew.
The man on the ground… that was Ethan.
-o-
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
-o-
To be continued…
Up Next: Let's find out how Ethan is doing. And once we get the whole team out there, I have a feeling they will also want to know who's responsible for this whole mess.
