Thank you to everyone for the encouraging words! I'm so glad that you guys enjoy this story. I just hope it continues to get better as it goes along and doesn't drop off.
Hardison woke up to getting slapped in the face repeatedly. "Wake up, funny boy," said a voice near his ear.
Hardison groaned with pain and opened his eyes. Where the hell am I?
Glancing down, he saw that his entire shoulder was now caked with blood, and more was still leaking out. He couldn't bend his left hand at all due to the dried blood on it.
And did it ever hurt. It felt like there were millions of scalding hot knives inside his shoulder, cutting away, burning him.
The man tossed Hardison out of the van's door. "Out, now."
Hardison stumbled, nearly falling over as his feet touched the ground.
He glanced around as he was roughly shepherded into a small house. There seemed to be nothing around except a large lake and Oregon's usual trees. The road they had driven in on was gravel. Hardison still had no clue where they were.
He was shoved into the house, nearly falling over the filthy welcome mat. The man guided him into a small kitchen. He moved the also filthy rug, revealing a small trapdoor. Keeping a gun trained on Hardison, he opened it, revealing a rickety wooden ladder leading down to what Hardison assumed was a basement, although it was too dark to see anything. "Guests first," he leered, gesturing toward the ladder with his gun.
Hardison gingerly lowered his feet onto it, awkwardly climbing down one handed. The mysterious man followed directly above him, sighing impatiently as Hardison made slow process.
He stomped on Hardison's one good hand, causing him to lose his grip and fall down the remaining rungs. He twisted his ankle badly as he landed on the cold, unforgiving cement ground and inhaled sharply in pain.
"Hardison! What happened now?" Parker's voice floated over the comm, which luckily remained unnoticed in Hardison's ear.
"Ankle," Hardison whispered back.
"What'd you say?" asked the man loudly.
Deciding he couldn't pass it off like he said nothing this time, Hardison muttered, "I twisted my ankle."
"Oh boohoo. Get over it, that's the least of your worries," the man said with an ominous smile. He lightly kept off the bottom rung, flipping a switch that bathed the basement in light.
The basement was small and windowless, the only light sources being the naked bulb and the open trapdoor that would lead to freedom. The room had cement floor, cement walls and of course a cement ceiling. It was completely empty except for a white plastic lawn chair and an empty bookshelf right across from it.
"Sit." The man gestured toward the chair.
Hardison limped over and collapsed into the chair, breathing hard from the effort. The man walked over and handcuffed each of Hardison's wrists to each chair arm.
"Get him talking, Hardison. Find out anything you can about him," Parker said.
"Who are you?" Hardison asked.
The man turned to face him. After a moment in which he must have been pondering whether or not to answer he said, "Lucas. That's all you need to know."
"Alright, well what's your problem with Nate? I mean, seeing how I have been treated, I don't really think you two are best friends."
Lucas frowned at Hardison. "Well, I guess you won't be getting out alive, so there's no harm in telling you. He caught me for insurance fraud. That investigation led to other-ah private matters being discovered. I went to prison," he paused here, his large face growing redder. "I lost everything! My wife left me, taking my baby and all my most prized possessions! I was left $500 for when I got out. That was all I had. No wife, kid, money, friends, possessions, nothing! So I decided that since all I had was the anger that burned within, I would hunt down Nathan Ford and kill him with my bare hands. I've been tracking him. When I arrived in Boston, it was too late, but now I found him. I bet he thought Portland, Oregon was the perfect place to hide. Who in their right mind would want to live here? It's always cold and rainy. And there's hippies and hipsters everywhere! I mean you don't need to keep Portland that weird people!"
Hardison's first thought was that this man was indeed insane, and that scared him a bit. Judging by the little he knew about Lucas, he would indeed kill Hardison without a second thought.
"Why me?" Hardison asked desperately. "I have nothing to do with this, why am I here?"
Lucas gave a small smile. "You will provide...leverage. Nate will never let me just kill you. No, no, he will come playing the hero, and that will be his downfall."
"How do you know he will come? How will he know where we are?"
"I wouldn't worry about that." Lucas walked over to the bookcase, and backed away a second later. "You see that?" he gestured toward something sitting on the third shelf. Something with a bright red light. A webcam. "You know what that is, don't you? It is broadcasting back to your headquarters. That's right, they can see and hear everything right now. Would you like to wave to them? Oh, never mind." He smiled at Hardison's look of horror. "Now, we may begin."
He took a step forward, causing Hardison to flinch, and snapped his fingers. A door on the other side of the bookcase that had been previously unnoticed swung open and two people walked out.
Two huge people. They looked like linebackers. Hardison's eyes widened in horror as he stared at their muscles. They glared at him with identical faces.
"Meet my twins. I hired them just for you, how nice of me." Lucas turned back to the webcam. "Hello! I know you can hear me! Come say something so I know you are listening."
"What?" Eliot's voice said in Hardison's ear. Hardison frowned as Lucas out a hand to his ear and nodded. How could he hear this?
"Excellent, excellent. Well, as you can see, your precious hacker is with me, alive. He is handcuffed to the chair. It would be ah-unwise to attempt to get him out of here. I'm sure you know what I mean. It would also be unwise to tip off any law enforcement agency about our little situation. Believe me, I will know, and the last you'll se of your precious little hacker is him being shot in the face. In order to get him back, you will need to give up Nathan Ford. You may contact me by speaking near the monitor in which I am showing up on. I believe that is it. Sit back and enjoy."
"N-no! I don't want to enjoy!" Hardison stammered as the twins lumbered toward him.
Sorry about the cliff hanger. In my original plans, this and the coming chapter were supposed to be combined. Then I got a but carried away...anyway I hope you enjoyed this, and hopefully I will be able to continue cranking out these ridiculously long chapters. Well, long by my standards.