A/N
My much longer chapter update, I reviewed it, edited it and re-uploaded, not much has changed. Just a few words etc.
Thanks for RR. X
Chapter 4 We're So Screwed
The first half hour in the old house consisted of pulling throngs of doped people away from one another enough to get through, in search of their "friends," and rescuing one another from groping admirers.
Hanson felt his stomach turn at the sight of so many teens out to completely ruin their lives before they were even twenty. There were older kids here too and as the detectives mingled, they noted very hefty security guards at all the doorways.
"Where are those guys, huh?" Penhall murmured just loud enough for Hanson to catch it. Another scantily clad blonde woman snaked her arm around Hanson's waist.
"Ah, get off him," Doug snapped giving her a shove, he received a frown from the younger.
"Doug, I'm fine."
"Just saying. Don't get very close to these kids... Get stuck with a needle or something."
Hanson let a half smile slip across his lips. His grins were a rarity these days. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah fine... I'm just tired of this... whole thing. I'm getting anzy. We've come close to death enough times in the last month."
"Doug," Hanson gave him a meaningful look. "With what we do, that's kinda expected, isn't it?"
"You know I used to think it was." Doug snagged two beers off a tray as it passed by, he opened both and handed one to Tommy. "But the more I come to...you know, trust and love my partners... it's different, you know. You guys are my family and you're all in peril a lot."
Hanson's large eyes lingered on Penhall for a few minutes, returning the unspoken words of their bond in just that glance alone. Hanson understood what he meant, he felt the same way, but now was not the time to get sentimental. He squeezed Doug's arm instead. "I know, I know. Let's just do what we do and get through this first."
"Hey guys," Jason appeared out of the crowd to their left. "How's the arm, Tommy?"
"It's fine, nothing a sling couldn't fix." Hanson held up his injured arm and smirked.
"Good, good. I'm sorry about that." Jason caressed Tommy's check before he took an extra long drag off a roll of weed. His look was intense enough Hanson shrank back a little, bumping into his brother.
"Where's the others, man?" Doug intervened, stepping between McQuaid younger and Jason.
"Follow me." Jason turned on his heel. Hanson gave Doug a side-glance as he did, that said, "what the hell?" But they followed obediently.
They went through several different rooms, smoke filled, people laid around like they were in an opium din. Hanson felt his chest tighten with contact high. The hallways narrowed and they went down two long flights of stairs.
"Where are we heading, buddy?" Doug inquired. Hanson wondered if he'd also picked up on how eerie this was making him feel.
"Have some people who want to meet you, the people actually."
The people became visible through the haze of the basement. There was two of them, one a man and one was a woman. If Doug and Hanson had been feeling stressed, they were suddenly sweating.
A rapid decision was approaching them. Break cover and see if they could escape the drug din with their skin, or hold on to their cover story and hope the adults weren't here because of them.
The second part of that hope withered, as the people they'd been brought to meet came fully into view. Both detectives knew the middle-aged couple in front of them immediately. How could they be detectives and not?
It was Lori and her husband, Alec Bark. Lori was a judge and Alec was the Mayor's aid.
Hanson almost had to close his own gaping mouth. Were they suspects in this case? Surely Captain Fuller would have told them, if he'd known they were involved. Or did it mean Alec and Lori Bark were also undercover? Perhaps so deep undercover, even Fuller hadn't been informed.
Something else tickled Hanson's mind, even in the thick of it. Why the fuck would a judge and mayor's aid be undercover, which led him back to his original thought. This wasn't a good thing, they weren't pretending. Tom knew Penhall had been going through the same thought process but had he arrived at the same conclusion?
"When our boys told us they'd met some new potentials for the group, at school, we never thought they'd be cops." Lori said, as if they were discussing potato salad at her backyard barbecue.
Well that was that, they did know and these two weren't on the side of truth, justice and the American way. As if by some sort of hidden theatre que, several of the large security men melted out of the shadows behind the two out-numbered detectives. Hanson felt his fingers itch to go for his back up piece.
Doug sighed. "Seriously. Mr. and Mrs. Bark, I've taken your daughter to the airport, even to school once, my uncle knows—"
"We didn't ask you to get involved in this, Doug!" Lori's voice had gone cold. She crossed her arms, her gaze oddly fixed on Hanson.
"We'll have to find something to do with them, Alec."
Hanson's fingers had curled around his backup piece, a 9x18 Makarov pistol, in the back of his pants. It was easy getting to it under his jacket, the dimness of the basement helped too. He didn't know what Doug was thinking for sure but in a instant he'd leveled it on Alec's head.
Unlike Doug, he didn't know much about either of these people except that Lori had flirted with him, after court on two different occasions. Leaving him effectively stunned. He'd bet she didn't want him to blow her husband away though, even if she did sleep around on him.
"Ahh Hanson, brother. I like where you're going with this but..." A quick glance revealed the problem, one of the men had pulled a long knife on Penhall, the blade had already drew blood.
Hanson's grip on the Makarov immediately weakened and Alec took advantage of the moment of uncertainty. Ripping it from his hand, within the next second he found himself on the floor, a buzzing in his ears and his vision blurry. After being coldcocked by the butt of his own firearm, he wanted to curse and punch the asshole out but all he did manage was groan and roll onto his side.
"Whoa, whoa no need for that," He heard Doug saying. "Look here's my gun too, there's no need for anyone to get hurt, please."
That plead echoed strangely in Hanson's head, he tried to see his partner past his tangle of brown curls, they weren't just brown. There was... blood, he realized. It was burning his eye, trickling warmly around his jaw.
That was the last thing he seen before everything got fuzzy and distant.
…...
Clang, clang, clang...
Hanson lurched awake, hitting his head on something hard. His ears were ringing but the clanging noise he was hearing was louder still.
Clang, clang, clang...
He found the strength to slowly push himself back up, conscientious of whatever was above his head. Everything felt amalgamated for a few minutes, he thought he was under a blanket. He felt around, trying to find Jackie, before he understood he was actually freezing cold. No girlfriend. No blanket. No Jacket, the floor he was groping was cement. And his head...
His head throbbed, gently he felt through the hair to the lump and blood. Hopefully it wasn't to bad, he might have a concussion. But from the shadowy look of whatever this place was, he could only hope it was a light concussion. He wasn't going to a hospital anytime soon.
Doug! Where was Doug? Hanson hurriedly glanced around. As if expecting to see him.
No Doug. That couldn't be a good thing...
His thoughts were interrupted by the clang, clang, clang again. Then complete silence, umbrageous, dead silence.
Hanson sighed, frustrated that he couldn't even pace his...cell. Suddenly he was conscious of something else strange, he didn't know how he'd missed it. His hands were burning, across each palm was a deep, aggravated slash, he examined his own wounds as best he could in such terrible lighting.
His entire palm was bloody, the skin hung apart oddly. It hurt, worse now that he knew it was there, but it didn't look infected, he was fairly certain the wounds were inflicted by a sharp blade, why did someone do this to him? Why had they stuffed him in this coffin? He was left with more unanswered questions.
"Hello?" He finally tried, in a small voice, after what must have been another thirty minutes of complete anxiety and boredom. Then he waited...
Clang, clang, clang...
"God, would you stop that." Hanson bit his lip, who knew how long he was going to be pinned here, in this make shift cell, unable to sit up. The noise could be some sort of breaking technique their captors were using, Hanson had read about things like that. He needed to be patient, had to be patient.
But where was Doug? Why did they dump him down here? Where the hell was here? Was he even still in the party building?
"Doug? Hello! Doug?! Anyone?!"
Utter silence... Hanson decided to see what else he could discern, he rotated himself, with effort, end-for-end. There was some sort of pipping over his head, and a small barred window in front of him now. He couldn't see very far out, but it led to a crude hallway, if he strained his ears he could just make out water dripping, the hall itself looked damp, wherever he was it was still a basement of some type.
Two other things caught his eye, vulgar barred windows on the opposite side of the hallway. Many of them.
But with the second, Hanson's breath caught in his throat. The window directly across from him... a decomposing hand was reaching between the narrow bars, there was no doubt that the hand belonged to a corpse.
Hanson quickly adverted his gaze. His heart had fallen through somewhere to his stomach. He'd been through a lot, dangerous situations were the name of the game with the Jump Street program. He'd been drugged, kidnapped, put in prison and beat up on a near-regular business.
This looked bleak compared to those situations. Fear lurked in his mind, this was not the same house as the party house. Their captors, Hanson had to think for a minute to recapture their names. Lori and Alec were to smart for that, which meant the address they'd given the Captain would be of no use to them, when they did decide to investigate the missing detectives. No one would have the slightest clue that the gang's "employers" were a dirty judge and the Governor's aid.
Hanson's eyes drifted closed, nothing to do but wait. God, he hoped Doug was ok. They'd both known something was up with this case, just not enough to figure it out and not in time.
…...
Hanson had no way of knowing how much time had passed, it had to be to the night of the next day? The clanging continually rang out every so often, waking him from his very uneasy sleep. He woke several times, feeling like hours and hours had went by, he just laid there, helplessly staring up at the pipes, a foot or two above his head. His wrist and fingers ached dully from the rooftop fall. His palms throbbed steadily worse.
Claustrophobia was his greatest enemy at the moment, the more he moved around, the more constrained he felt, and the more he struggled. Fits of kicking, elbowing the bars in front of his head and even screaming. His voice didn't echo well in the heavy dampness of the hall and he didn't know what he was screaming about, it sounded pitiful to him. But his heart was beating erratically with the fear of dying here..
No one answered his outcry...
He was wet and cold, they'd taken his jacket, leaving him in his black tee and jeans, which were of course soaked. How long until he caught pneumonia?
He lulled his head enough to look outside his tiny window, upside down, nothing … but the decaying hand, reaching for freedom that had never come.
"Doug," he said aloud for the hundredth time, hoping somehow, by some miracle his best friend would answer.
What were they doing to him? The questions and the claustrophobia were going to drive him completely insane. The more hours that drug by, the more fear latched onto his mind. Hanson fought it, trying to control the beads of sweat across his forehead, his jagged breathing. He wanted to freak completely out—kick and scream, claw at the ceiling—he wanted out of this fucking coffin!
So did the life, once belonging to the dead person across from him. It hadn't done them any good.
Was that to be his fate as well?
Clang, clang clang...
…...
They were screwed, up shit creek without a paddle, hell he would settle for a stick. Worse still there wasn't even an 'us' in his current situation. There was just him, bloody and tied down to a chair, his hands had gone numb from how tight the restraints were but Doug hardly noticed.
Past the pain inflicted by some beefy man's fists, he was mostly sick with worry over what they'd done with Hanson. Was he tied down to a chair similarly? His brother, partner was a great detective—he'd been the one sensing something was off about the gang at Peterson's High, while Doug was complacently munching french fries at the school cafeteria.
He could still see the moment replaying in his mind. It was last week and Hanson had overheard Fred Farrow on the phone, he'd caught something about a big exchange coming up, but that wasn't what had Hanson's dark brows pinched in concern, sitting cross-legged on the table, while they ate lunch. Well, Doug ate, Hanson talked. It was the voice he'd heard over the phone that bugged him.
A woman's voice, adult and Hanson swore he recognized it. Doug cringed, now. He'd done nothing to investigate the link, instead, he'd soothed his friend, telling him there was no way he could recognize a voice from that distance... maybe if he'd listened, if he'd done his job, Hanson wouldn't be being tortured and neither would he.
The voice must have been Lori's. Doug had been with Hanson on at least one of the occasions when she'd "flirted" with him, he'd even told Penhall that she made him extremely uncomfortable. And Doug had known the Bark family for years. Why hadn't he been more inquisitive?
It was too easy sometimes to be complacent in the Jump Street program. Senior kids weren't usually employed by their parents, by judges! It was ludicrous!
But it was also reality and if anything happened to Hanson as a result of his inability, he would never forgive himself. Ever.
The door to the tiny room creaked open on rusty hinges, sparking another query. Where had they been moved? After they'd bashed Hanson in the head, it'd taken two of them to restrain Doug. Eventually he was wrestled to the floor, his hands were wrenched behind his back. It was the last time he'd seen his partner's ashen face, blood dripping from his hairline. He was hauled to his feet, and drug from the room. They'd put a bag over his head and a gag in his mouth; Next he'd been moved outside and into a truck. The journey was two hours at least, with multiple turns.
The bag was finally removed in here. This small, crummy room, the walls were damp, the ceiling looked as if it would collapse at a moment's notice. Doug had been freed, given some water and some grotty rations that made hospital food look gourmet.
That was somewhere about a day ago, he'd seen no one, heard no one, although he did listen, trying to tell if they were giving Hanson the rough up first. Then the security men from the party house had showed back up. And brought a chair, which they'd screwed to the floor and forced him into it, bound his hands to the arms and continued by beating the shit out of him, they didn't say anything but past the pummeling Doug noticed they didn't hit his face.
Then they'd left and he'd heard nothing else for hours, until just now...
The door swung open, revealing Lori and Alec Bark. So this was the main event. Earlier had just been softening up, how sweet of them.
Doug spit in front of the couple. "Where the hell is Tommy? Do either of you realize how much trouble you're in?"
"I think the better question, Penhall is, do you understand how much trouble you boys are in?"
Doug fell silent. They had a point. His fault.
"If you're wondering about your pale, scrawny partner..." Lori licked her lips. "Don't skip pages, Penhall. All in due time."
Doug sheltered a gag. He tried to keep his outward appearance strong but for some reason his mind took him to a dark place. He imagined Tommy hanging by his wrists again, this time by a chain. Being turned into a punching bag. He was angry Lori got to him so easily.
"At first, we weren't sure what to do with the two of you." Alec smiled. "Such a surprise you boys were to our humble operation."
"Then it came to us," Lori snapped her fingers. "You're a detective."
"Yeah and so is Hanson, so what? We've been missing for at least two days. Which means the entire precinct is soon to be looking for us if they're not already."
Alec smiled again. "Oh they are are searching, they just reached the party house, they won't find much. Our kids know how to lead them on, when they're questioned. One thing they will find, is Hanson's blood. We took the liberty of taking some more from him, just to ensure they're not dumb enough to miss it."
Doug couldn't find his voice to respond. What the hell did that mean? They already had some twisted plan in place, that Jump Street was playing right into? What did any of this mean. They'd... killed Hanson? Was that the sick hidden message they were letting soak in.
Finally Lori put him out of his misery. "He's not dead, Penhall. We just sliced him up a bit."
"What the fuck is the point of this? What do you want from us?" Hanson wasn't dead. Though relief flooded him, anger quickly filled the void.
"We want," Lori encircled Doug, draping a petite arm across his shoulders. "Your cooperation."
Somehow he knew it was coming to that. Of course, what else made sense, if they didn't want anything from him and his partner, there'd certainly be no need to keep two kids around who knew their dirty little—or not so little—secret.
"My cooperation?"
"The FBI has something temporarily sitting in the police evidence facility. We want it."
Doug's moment of happiness about his best friend's life plummeted. A flame light extinguished. He instantly knew the "something" the Bark's were most likely referring to, a shipment of coke was waiting in their evidence lock up until it could be moved to a safer FBI facility. The coke was evidence in a huge state-wide investigation. The location had been kept very hushed up, apparently not enough, but then again Lori was a judge, hard telling what kind of contraband she had already got her hands on. Sitting behind the pulpit listening to lawful men and women and criminals alike, tell their stories.
Fingers were snapped a centimeter from his nose. "Focus Penhall, we know it's been a stressful couple days but stay on point."
"Hanson's life depends on it."
Doug drew a shaky breath, his heart thudding dully in its' cage. "You guys understand what you're doing here. When you get caught and this isn't an 'if,' you're going to prison forever. You've assaulted two detectives. Kidnapped, tortured. God only knows what else. Now you wanna get in a police evidence locker, steal appropriated merchandise from the Government, which is also evidence?"
"We've been in the lockup many times, Penhall." Lori said her voice casual and flip. "But this is different. Bigger things are at stake... I assume you know what we want?"
Penhall ground his teeth. "The FBI has only one thing sitting in evidence. Cocaine."
Lori snickered. "And you're going to get it out for us."
"Oh I am, am I." It wasn't a question. A hundred different problems boiled around his head. Of course they were going to use Hanson against him, or him against Hanson. "Even if I decided to try to help you get what you want, we've been missing to long, and … his blood you left at the crime scene, that's not going to help the situation any. How would I explain that, or any of this?"
"Relax Doug, we have that all worked out for you. You'll make your way back to your shitty, little, church station. Disoriented, injured—we'll help you with that too—where you'll explain you and little Tommy were discovered by the school gang. They blindsided you, beat you both up, injected you with drugs, for fun. Hanson didn't go down as easy, Fred hit him in the head, hard. Real hard."
Doug swallowed arduously but didn't say anything.
Lori took over the conversation. "Then the seniors panicked, they hauled you out east, the backside of the trash pit and dumped you both. But that wasn't the end," she ran a sharp nail along his jawline. "They're smart kids, they don't want to go down for murder. So they pumped you both full of more drugs, trying to make it look accidental... But maybe they're not that smart, say they accidentally didn't give you a large enough dosage," Lori's gaze traveled promiscuously down his body, "You're a big boy. But they gave Hanson an extra milligram. He dies from an OD, as they planned. Either way, they don't hang around to find out if you both OD, they just ditch the bodies, and you wake up later..."
Doug was going to be sick for sure, he felt his stomach give an ugly twist. Listening to these monsters talk about his friend like he was nothing, like his life force was so purposeless, God, it made him angry...
"When you wake up, you're still doped and reeling, You see Hanson once, check his pulse, find out he's gone and then you... you panic—run around trying to figure out where you are. By the time you understand it's the trash dump, you've lost Hanson's body... Are you seeing the pattern here, Penhall?"
"You should be very glad I'm restrained, you piece of shit!" Doug swore.
"Think of this as your new case. Stay focused," Alec went on like nothing had happened. "If you don't, we will kill your... what is he to you, McQuaid? Oh yes, brother."
"You think I would trust you with Hanson's life, while I'm off collecting coke for you? Your plan is riddled with holes! Captain Fuller would never fall for this shit." Doug thundered. He pulled helplessly on the cords holding his numb hands in place.
Lori laughed, cruelly. "You'd better make your Captain believe Hanson is dead and you're traumatized. If not, you're going to find out just what his untimely death feels like."
"You see," Alec leaned closer in and Doug seriously entertained the notion of head butting the bastard. "Hanson's health will be on a time table, once you leave here."
"Where is he?!" Doug's voice cracked like a frozen pond, his heart felt like it'd been stabbed with the shards. "I'm not doing shit, till I see him and know he's alive."
"Calm down, detective man," Lori motioned for the security men from outside to come in. "We're taking you to be reunited. However brief it may be."
…...
