A/N: Still nervous. Heh. Was thoroughly bolstered by the reviews, though; you guys are awesome and you make me irrationally joyful and so full of loooove. Hey, actually managing to generate some interest is pretty great. Who would have thought! Thank you guys so much, for all of the reviews, and story alerts. They really do brighten my days! Sorry it took so long to post this. Been a heck of a few days, here. Death in the family. I'll try to be more timely from here out~.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything! This is unbeta'd!

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Trembling fingers did not do so well for dialing a phone. Irritably steadying herself after mis-typing in the numbers four times, Annie glared at the screen, took a deep breath, and continued dialing. Finally, she got it correct. Sucking in a breath of cold, sharp night air tingued with rain and tree sap, she closed her eyes and lifted the phone to her ear.

Bbrrriiiiing. Brriiiiiiing. Brriiiii -

"Annie?"

Feeling a little bit off-kilter and close to tears, Annie blinked, wildly wondering exactly why she had called somebody who was on the other side of the world rather than the police. Or the FBI. One of her friends from college who had plenty of guns for hunting. "Annie?" Auggie repeated, now sounding more concerned, and she fought for control. She was a CIA agent: she shouldn't get choked up under stress. "Auggie. I need to get in contact with Joan." She said the first thing that came to mind, and paused, wondering why the hell she thought she needed to speak with Joan. Her boss was the Director of the DPD, she wasn't the sheriff. If she didn't report the kidnapping to the police, she would most likely be in some sort of trouble.

Aug was quiet for a moment; a muffled noise could have been him excusing himself or the hot African winds on the phone as he tried to figure out what the hell she was smoking. "Annie. Tell me what's wrong." His tone brooked no argument, and she hugged herself around the middle, glancing back into the house, where Danielle and Michael were sitting on the couch looking blank. They trusted her. In spite of the pain still sending bright-hot jolts directly to her brain with every movement of pretty much the entirety of her body, she steeled herself as best she could, determined not to let that trust be for nothing. "Somebody took Chloe and Katia. Aug, I think it was my last mission. He gave me the slip and he - I think he was smarter than I gave him credit for."

The silence on the other end was very brief, this time. He swore quietly, and some of her resolve crumbled; but just as quickly, the calm was back. "Okay. You haven't contacted the police?" Somewhere between a question and a statement, he at least didn't wait for her to answer before he continued. "Don't. Joan won't want it getting out, if it's part of one of our missions. I'll contact her. Sit tight, Walker. Don't do anything stupid." Click. Soon enough, she would be able to forgive his shortness for surprise and worry, but the last bit of advice set Annie's teeth on edge as she smashed the 'end' button with more force than was entirely necessary and turned to stalk - limp - back into the house.

Michael looked up from the couch when she came into view, while Danielle stared ahead, as catatonic as she had been for the last ten minutes. "I can't call the police." She informed her sister's husband as calmly as she could manage, pacing back and forth a few steps at the end of the couch. He didn't know what she was, and she wasn't keen on letting him into the circle, so she explained with the first excuse she could come up with. "I called - some of my dad's friends. Army buddies. They're quicker, quieter than the cops." She sent a silent prayer to the Universe that he would buy it; honestly, she wasn't sure if she could think up a better cover. Danielle didn't even look up.

At least Michael looked moderately convinced, his face pale, slack, his mouth set in a grim line. "Can I do anything?" He asked, pale eyes sharp as he stared at her, but she shook her head. "Watch Danielle. I...have to go. I have to go meet them. Um. Stay by the phone." Her Calm And Rational voice was failing her, so she took a deep breath and handed him the handset, glancing towards the window. "Don't let anybody in here unless I call you and tell you to."

Not really cognizant of her appearance, or of the fact that she really didn't need to be driving, she started towards the door. "I'm gonna find them." Annie wasn't sure if she spoke loudly enough for Michael to hear her, but he at least looked mildly mollified as she set off.

. . . . . . . .

After having been interrupted in the middle of what had been a fairly great round of make-up sex with her husband, and never mind having left work only three hours ago, Joan Campbell strode back into the DPD at 1:35 AM. The night shift bats stared at her with wide eyes, and she eyed them back levelly, striding with confidence up to her office.

She may have been wearing jeans and Arthur's old college shirt, but she was still their boss, and she had every right to be confident. Of course, she was also a few thousand miles away from strangling August Anderson for having the gall to call her at home in the middle of the night, and considerably closer to strangling Annie Walker for letting this happen in the first place, but that was neither here nor there. This mess had to be sorted out swiftly and quietly, with any luck without anybody knowing about it except for those who absolutely had to. Did it make her a bad person to hope that the kidnapper was not, in fact, Santiago Ramirez, international gun smuggler and CIA target?

No. It made her smart. It would be much easier for all involved if it were Joe Schmuck, who could be wrapped up nicely and handed to the local police, since really, they didn't have any jurisdiction.

Resisting the urge to stomp childishly, she threw herself behind her desk, quickly rifling through various stacks of reports until she found the Ramirez folder. It didn't take much later, beyond that, for the head of Night Ops to descend upon her office, looking like nothing so much as an over-caffeinated chihuahua. The large-eyed woman blinked owlishly at her, clutching a cup of coffee in one hand and a pair of headphones in the other, and after a short stand-off, Joan figured she ought to be the one to begin. "Yes, Celine?" She put as much composure into her words as she could, pausing briefly in her examination of the documents. Celine blinked again. "Director Campbell! Uh - are you here for Operation Salamander? Because, well, it's going as planned. We are go for 0900, nothing in the way, just monitoring the airwaves in case."

Patiently, she sighed, putting the folder down and summoning her best Boss Face. "No, Celine. I was called back in by another operative for assistance. If you need me..." Trailing off with composure, she watched the techie fidget a little, turn a vague shade of green. Before she could suggest that the woman lay off on the coffee, she nodded, and fled without another word. Joan sighed. Without Auggie to keep them running, her tech ops staff were woefully lacking in any sort of decorum. Keeping them in line was like herding genius kittens on a week-long caffeine and sugar binge.

The night watch was even worse; something about having to be up from midnight to six attracted either night owls with people issues or insomniacs who she wasn't entirely sure she trusted. Sure, she had to have somebody here - but the bags under their eyes did not give her warm fuzzy feelings of safety. At least they were mostly only translating and monitoring potential threats on US soil. Without Anderson and Walker in the office in the middle of the night, it was almost peaceful.

...well, until Walker was. Looking through her expansive windows contemplatively into the bullpen as she was, it was kind of hard for Joan to miss her operative's entrance.

She looked like she'd been chewed up by a lawnmower. Blood made a sticky track down one side of her head and over her ear, and bruises were already starting to show up around her eyes and cheeks. As she got closer, Joan could easily see blood seeping through various parts of her clothing in small splatters. The other agents cleared a wide path for Annie as she limped towards her office; Joan met her at the bottom of the stairs, not entirely sure how she'd gotten there, righteously angry.

"Walk with me." She growled, modulating her voice in the last moment from the angry hiss that had been forming. That the idiot girl would show up looking like she'd been in a bar fight - that she'd show up at all - was astonishing. Was more than a little bit annoying, since now she also had Walker to deal with while she sorted through the mess and figured out the correct way to proceed.

Just another day - night - in the life of a CIA agent.

. . . . . . . .

Drip. Drip. Plonk.

Wrinkling her nose against the splash of water that came from somewhere above, Katia sighed, squirming a little bit. It was really uncomfortable, being shoved into the trunk of a car with your sister. Chloe was crying, but quietly, and she was feeling like crying wasn't such a bad idea. There was something digging into her leg, and she was scared, and now it was raining inside of the trunk and really, she just wanted to go home.

She didn't think she was going to, though.

Not unless they got away from the big man who'd taken them. They'd tried, at home, but then he'd hit them and told them he would kill aunt Annie if they didn't behave, and she didn't want aunt Annie to die. She looked kind of dead when he was carrying them to the car, but Katia knew that Annie was tough. She'd been training them to fight like they did in the movies, too.

"I'm scared. I think he's gonna kill us." She could hear Chloe, behind her, and she squirmed a little to try and find her sister's hand. It was hard, with her hands taped together, but eventually she found Chloe's arm. Squeezing it, Katia frowned, burrowing her face into the stinky, itchy stuff on the trunk's floor instead of getting the splash of water on her nose again. "He's not," She argued, voice muffled. "Remember that show?" Mom didn't know they watched it, but sometimes, late at night, they would watch detective shows. They were cool. "The bad guy always wants money, an' he can't get money if we're dead."

That seemed reasonable enough, to her at least. Chloe didn't sound really convinced, but Katia was already thinking hard, trying to remember what else the show had said. Something about codes, like how you blink your eyes, but she couldn't really remember that.

Thinking hard, she almost missed the sound of the car slowing, but then her sister was clinging to her arm and she froze, trying to scoot as far back from the latch as she could. She knew it wasn't gonna do any good, but it was all she could do. They shook a little when it stopped all the way, and Chloe stopped crying, shaking as the door slammed and shoes made crunchy noises on...gravel. "Yeah," It was kind of weird, how clearly she could hear the guy talking, though they were in the trunk and he wasn't. Curious, she strained her ears, eyes closing. "No, she ain't dead, stupid. I grabbed the - eh - brats. Why you leave me with them, man? Just 'cause she's a spy don't mean she can do anything about kidnapping. I saw it on TV, man, they got no power."

The man with bad grammar and a funny accent was crazy. Aunt Annie, a spy? She worked for a museum. Maybe if she told him that, he'd let them go. Before she had the chance, though, his voice got further away. Was he leaving them in the trunk? Katia shivered, now. She didn't want to be stuck in a trunk with a crazy guy outside of it.

. . . . . . . .

Annie remembered, now, why she hated doctors.

Not because they had needles, or too much power, or anything else reasonable like that.

No, she hated doctors because they thought they knew everything.

Glaring heatedly at the scowling doctor who faced her with a syringe and a cotton ball dipped in something reddish, she held her ground, arms over her chest. "I'm fine, doctor Kelley. I don't need that. I don't need any stitches. I just need -" For the third time, she began, only to be cut off once more by an imperious flap of his hand. "Sit. Down. Agent. Walker. Or I will be forced t'make you sit down, young lady." He had a quiet, menacing kind of drawl that brought out two warring sides in her: one, that wanted to do whatever he told her before he pounced on her and stuck her with that needle out of spite, and another, that felt a little like a rebellious teenager.

The first one won.

Plunking her ass irritably onto Headquarters' one emergency triage bed, she scowled, glaring angrily at him as he stalked over and jabbed the sanitizing ball at the cut above her ear. It stung like a bitch, but she kept her face blank, ignoring the sting and the subsequent jab of local anesthetic. She'd faced worse, and after being stitched up in the field by a handsome Israeli, this wasn't even going to come close to the top of her surreal medical experiences. She didn't want to be here, though. She was fine. The cut was scabbing over, and never mind the various others she'd gotten, none were bleeding profusely. She needed to hunt somebody down who could find Chloe and Katia for her.

The cranky doctor busily worked on stitching up her head, and Annie sat stoically, ignoring him for the most part in lieu of mentally cataloguing all of the places that her smuggler had been. Where would he have gone back to? Would he have gone somewhere he may have been watched, or would he have gone somewhere random? Maybe she could try and track him from her desktop...but then again, she never had been that amazing with computers. That was Tech Ops' job. Grinding her teeth just a little against the mental blockade (and the fact that Dr. Kelley wasn't exactly being gentle with that stabbing suture set, and the local anesthetic wasn't really working), she was busily glaring at the door when Joan ambled back in, looking as confident as ever for it being close to three AM.

"I pulled Agent Davis from monitoring Russia to track down Santiago. When you are finished here, Annie, please report to him." The older blonde murmured, appearing oddly demure, and Annie eyed her curiously. She'd been in a righteous rage a few minutes ago; was there a reason she'd changed her mind on her mood? "Doctor Kelley, does Agent Walker require any sort of medical observation?" A more professional turn of voice was offered to the doctor, who finished his task and stepped back, sharp eyes focusing briefly on the director. His lips twisted briefly into a frown, then a wary look was offered in her direction as he snapped off his gloves and crossed his arms. "Probably not, Joan. I'll come up in a few hours to check on her, all the same. She may have internal bleeding, but gettin' her to any sort of equipment -"

"No way!" Deciding that it was high time to put her foot down, Annie glared angrily, flailing a hand to get the point across and leaping off of the crinkling cot. "I'm going to find Santiago, now, if you'll excuse me." Ignoring the doctor's protests and Joan's shocked frown, she flounced out of the triage unit with a little bit more energy than she really felt. It would get the point across, at least, that she was serious and wasn't going to play games. She wasn't about to give the doctor - or Joan, through the doc - the chance to keep her for hours and hours while somebody else did the work, and got her nieces killed while trying to protect the CIA's ass. Did she trust Joan (well; Arthur, really) not to do that?

No. Not really.

She didn't trust anybody currently in this building further than she could throw them. However, as had once been pointed out to her, she could find a use for them. Maybe now wasn't the time to start taking Jai's advice, but he was effective. Maybe he had a point, after all.

She stormed - okay, limped and slouched - into the DPD and the tech ops' office, rounding on Davis swiftly. "What have you got?"

He had better pray that it was good, or she wasn't sure what she was going to do.

. . . . . . . .

Annie and Davis didn't even look up from their conference when she trailed up the stairs to her office, but Joan didn't so much care - she had other things to worry about. Namely, that it was nearing four AM and she wasn't so used to all-nighters. Actually, she was enjoying this one about as much as her last trip to the Dentist. Pushing that out of her mind (there were two children on the line), she sat, scanning through all of their intel once more; just in case. With any luck, somebody would bring her coffee soon, so she didn't have to interrupt her train of thought in order to do so herself.

It was not to be. She had only finished reading the fifth page detailing Ramirez's toilet habits when her phone began ringing stridently. Frowning, she glanced towards the door; well, with no secretary to warn her, they must have patched the caller through for messaging purposes. Nonetheless, she picked up - and didn't have time to demand to know who was on the other line, since he was already speaking. "- believe she let him get the jump on her! You let her take on somebody like that? You know she doesn't trust Kingston!" The last time somebody had used that tone of voice (shouting! At her!), they had bled, but she knew August Anderson. She knew that tone of voice, for him, even.

He was afraid.

That didn't entirely mean that she was disposed to giving him any slack, but...well, Auggie had always taken up a lot of her soft spot. Damn it. "Did he hurt Annie? Do you have word on the girls, yet?" The bitten-off words were snarled, snapped at her as if he was holding more back. He probably was. Joan scowled faintly, leaning back a little in her chair to glare at the ceiling. "Yes, and no. Annie's fine. Her nieces will be. We are working on it, Auggie. It is in the Agency's best interest to find Ramirez." She knew he would catch on the unsaid nobody's going to let him get away with anything, it's convenient to our goals, and knew he had when he was quiet for a moment.

As patiently as she could, she waited for him to conclude the conversation; she had business to attend to, and as much as she usually had time to talk with Anderson, this was not one of those circumstances. Far from it. "I'm in Barcelona," Eventually, the voice on the other line spoke up, and Joan blinked, leaning forward once more and eyeing the phone sidelong. "I was in Cadiz...well, now I'm not. I booked a flight home. I'll be at Dulles at five PM, if there aren't any delays. Will you send somebody to pick me up?"

The last she had checked, both Cadiz and Barcelona were in Spain, which, while close to Africa, were not anywhere near where August had informed her he was going. Count that as a ball dropped by the East Africa desk. She scowled, and sighed, shaking her head at the futility of it all. "Yes. I am going to return to my work, now. Goodbye." Grimly, she hung up, carefully depositing the phone back on its' cradle and turning back to her files.

What was it they said about the futility of trying to herd cats? She wasn't a collie. She wasn't even caffeinated enough to be functioning at top level, not that she would ever admit that. To anybody.

Never mind: She had work to do.