Well this certainly took longer than expected. But I get a break from work so the updates should be way more frequent. I hope people are still interested in this…

Thank you to Lauraa-x: Your reviews always make me smile. At least someone is enjoying the story! I have some pretty bad things still in store but at least we have the gang back for a while! Haha. And soon here...Ariadne and Arthur will be reunited. Sort of…ish…. ;) Guest: Idk if you're the same guest as last time but thanks for dropping a line! I'm glad it was horribly brilliant for you. My cousin and I came up with the drowning in oil part together. (weird family quality time…I know.) Grace-xox: Thank you! That makes me so happy! And I loooooooooove that you took the time to tell me that. Huge thanks to: WriterForever24 for following!

Chapter 9: Crossword Crossroad

Present day.

Arthur jotted down the numbers she'd given before she'd hung up. Cobb worriedly inquired, "That was Ariadne?" Paying half a mind to the rest of the men Arthur clipped, "Yes. And the Hoods took her against her will. She's been held captive for the past four months." He looked up from his paper and glowered at Cobb, "I was right." As he should, Cobb returned his gaze apologetically.

Eames leaned over his shoulder and read the numbers aloud, "Two, six, seven, one, four. What on earth is that?"

"Second, sixth, seventh, first, fourth. Those were the last words she said." Since Cobb had begun fiddling with his laptop and trying to redial the payphone, Arthur opened the internet on his cell and searched the series of numbers. Yusuf ran the words through his brain by muttering them to himself over and over. Maybe he thought their order would spring an idea or pattern into his mind. The new guy, John, had noticed this excitable meeting going on at Arthur's desk. (Or it seemed excitable to him.) He was never one to be left out so he sauntered over in time to hear the numbers being read off. Always one for games, he came up with something first, "Is it a zip code?"

Eames continued looking over Arthur's shoulder as he surfed the worldwide web for answers and spoke before Arthur could, "If it is…It would put her at Rio Hills Estate Rd in Delray, West Virginia."

"Her. Who's her?" John asked the air.

"Cobb move," Arthur ordered and pushed his friend from the screen in order to do work on it himself. United Airways' page came up and Arthur clicked for one ways.

Again John reasoned with himself since no one else couldn't find the time to, "Are we talking about that Adiarne chick again?"

"Shit. The closest airport to that is in Hagerstown, Maryland." He pulled up another tab, "I'll have to reserve a rental car…"

"Wait. Now," the Point was paused by Dom, "Don't you think it's premature to hop on a flight and trek to Delray?"

John agreed. Looked at Arthur like he was the biggest idiot, "You don't even know if that number is a zip code and you're fixing to travel across the country."

With two pennies, Yusuf added, "Those numbers could be anything."

The Forger ripped a piece of yellow line paper from the notepad closest and dug for the pen in his pocket, "Let's think of all the possibilities, shall we?" He jotted down 'zip code' and then looked expectantly at his team. "A safe code?" Cobb offered. And then came a suggestion from Yusuf, "What about GPS coordinates?"

John scoffed, "A five number coordinate?" He may not know what was going on but he was going to best them at it.

"Well yes, it wouldn't be the whole coordinate but the WGS84 format values out to five decimal places, preceded by a whole number—representing the cartographic value—for exact coordinates. For example: 50.19228. So she could've given us the last half of them."

Staring unintelligibly at the Chemist, "All I got from that gibberish was that we don't have the full coordinate …so—wouldn't that make that idea moot anyways?" spouted Eames. After Yusuf squinted and shrugged, the Forger scratched that bullet point off of his poorly organized list. Arthur let his attention drift from the team's brainstorm back to his original plan and started filling out flight information just in case.

"The 5 digit End-Use Code!" Again, Yusuf had a submission. Cobb was quick to ask for explanation. "When we export goods to other countries we keep track of them on the US census by form of five-digit identification codes."

Sarcastic Mr. Eames wasn't too held back with his condescension, "And that would help us find Ari how? Unless she was shipped to China with sugarcane or something."

The chemist defended himself, "I'm just trying to think of things that have five digits!"

"There are five digit text numbers…" came from John who hadn't spoken in a while.

Cobb sighed and nudged Arthur, "What exactly did she say? Did she say anything before or after?"

First, Arthur stood from his position hunched over the computer and then closed his eyes to think. He mouthed a few things before he came up with, "Before the numbers she said she had to go. And then after she said…" The Point's head shook back and forth like he didn't think he heard it right, "down not across." The Extractor's eyebrows furrowed further than they already had, "That makes less sense than the numbers." John and Yusuf watched Eames as he wrote the numbers in a row—top to bottom.

Then Arthur had a spark of cleverness, "It sounds like a crossword puzzle. What if the numbers coincide with letters?" He took the pad from Eames and the team gathered while he wrote the first letter of every number on top of each other: TSSOF. "No…" he corrected himself, "She didn't say numbers she said places. Second, sixth…" He wrote another column: SSSFF.

"Any weird correlations for that Yusy?" Eames made fun or tried to because his comment backfired when Yusuf in fact found something to match it to. "Well actually the SSS could stand for the Selective Service—"

"System." Arthur finished for him and Yusuf glared and mouthed 'asshole' at the Forger, "But that's for drafting men into the military. What would that have to do with Ariadne and the Hoods?" And John made the comment that Ariadne wouldn't have had to specify whether to write it down or across because the initials were the same either way plus the fact that they had nothing to stand for FF (Yusuf may have pointed out that it could stand for FanFiction but the group found that was irrelevant to what was happening)…and aside from all that? It would've been faster for her to just give him the acronym. So they narrowed it down that whatever it was it was not an acronym.

"What about the alphabet?" Cunning Mr. Cobb took the pen from Arthur and tried out the theory. "B for two, F for six…No, that must not be right."

Arthur buried his head in his hands and grunted in frustration. "I just need to get on a plane to Delray. It's the only thing that makes sense."

"What?!" The new architect was not happy about that, "We've got to complete this job in two weeks!" His index and middle finger emphasized by poking the desk, "You can't just leave."

The Point would not be told what he couldn't do. He glared at John, "I can if Ariadne needs me. Sitting around on my ass paying attention to everything else for another two weeks isn't going to help her."

"But neither would abandoning us before a job and hiking to West Virginia just because the numbers match," intervened Yusuf.

Cobb stepped in like the leader he was and put his hands up to calm everyone down. He signaled to John to step away from Arthur and take a seat before he put a comforting hand on Arthur's back and entreated, "Look, there's only two weeks left to this job." But his friend wouldn't listen, "I can't let them hurt her for another two weeks. I can't just turn my head and ignore this for the sake of some stupid economic bill in California."

"I understand but—"

"Think if it was Mal." Cobb stilled and softened. "Think if she had called you scared to death, weeping about how these men had taken her and abused her in every way imaginable. Wouldn't you hop on a plane to the first place remotely close?"

"I'm not asking you to overlook this. I am asking you to put your feelings aside and look at this logically, like you normally would. I want to get her out of there too but we still don't know enough…" Arthur ran his hand through his hair and nodded begrudgingly. "We've nearly got this job in the bag. We don't need two more weeks of drills. I'll talk to the governor and see if we can't perform this thing this weekend. Just finish out the week here Arthur. Two days. Let us really study this before you rush out somewhere. And once the job is over—I don't know about everyone else but I'll be right there next to you to hunt these guys down. I'll send Miles, Penelope and the kids to the safe house and go with you."

"As will I." Eames added and Yusuf agreed, "Anything I can do." John hadn't said anything. It might've been awkward for him. He didn't know either Arthur or Ariadne that well and he had another job waiting on him in Germany. The rest of the team hadn't expected him to jump on the chance though and neither did they think any worse of him for staying silent. Arthur finally agreed not to hurry himself to West Virginia but made it clear that if they managed to uncover the meaning of those words before Saturday that he was gone.
xxxxxx

The day after the job (which went down without a hitch if you were wondering), Penelope—Mile's wife and Cobb's mother in law—took James and Philippa to the park and for some frozen yogurt so that the team could congregate at Cobb's house and figure something out about Ariadne. Dom turned the tv down when they'd arrived and the lot of them surrounded the coffee table. Each had brought their own laptop and Arthur had printed out a list of the possibilities they hadn't refuted yet. Something they hadn't yet delved into was that maybe Ariadne was talking about the chronological order of things.

So first they found every company attack on record by hooded individuals and copied down the name of the city attacked. Perhaps there was a pattern. Second was Beijing, sixth was San Francisco, seventh was Cannes, first was Juno and fourth was Kenya. And the records were from a few years ago when the Hooded Organization was in its early stages of formation and their attacks subtle and disorganized. The team abandoned that theory. "What about Ariadne's jobs in that order?" Eames spurted randomly.

Arthur wrote down: Frederic Sevcik, Carlene Garner, Oliver Miner, Robert Fischer, Elyse Whiting. "Can you guys google search and see if there are any connections between those people? Their initials aren't spelling out anything." He also wrote: Nikolai Czesak, Allan Hoag, Christopher Pinney, Ichiro Saito and Klaus Mackintosh. "These initials mean nothing either. No matter which order they're in…" Arthur's normally neat handwriting was reduced to chicken scratch while he hurriedly rearranged letters on top of each other. Time was running out. It was like leaving someone in a dream and waiting for them to wake from limbo. Every moment counted because an eternity of horrible could happen in sixty seconds.

"How about this: Eames looks up the Marks for consistencies and Yusuf looks up the Clients." Eames saluted and Yusuf gave a thumbs up before submerging into their computer screens.

Arthur briefly looked up at the television and saw the headline, "Company Attacked for Eighth Time by Anarchists." His hand snatched the remote off the end table and turned it up. Everyone looked at him confused. "And this is the damage caused by the individuals…" The camera showed the building half caved in on itself. Black and still smoking from the recently watered down fire. "Tell us Kathryn, this isn't the first time Gatu-Geaux Oils has been attacked, am I right?"

"Gatu-Geaux…" Why did that sound familiar? Gatu. Geaux. 'I've got to. Go.' Got to. Go….She must have repeated that phrase over and over. But she wasn't saying she had to go, she was saying the name of the company: Gatu-Geaux…"that's it! She was telling me over and over! It has to do with this Company…this was done by the Hoods." He turned the tv up louder and the news lady recited, "You're absolutely right, Bob. What many people don't know is that Gatu-Geaux is an oil drilling chain that sells to the big wig gas companies not only in America but all over. They're kind of the unsung heroes in our fuel economy, the middle man you might say. But they've been getting backlash in several of their establishments the globe over in the past year and a half since their company's involvement in the Mississippi River Leak. In the past six months alone their first, second, fourth, sixth and seventh branches have been targeted." Eames shouted, "Those are the numbers!"

Yusuf had already looked the Company up and found where each branch was located and wrote them down in the order they were established in a column, then he rearranged them per Ariadne's request. "Arthur…I certainly hope this isn't coincidence…" The Point turned from the tv and looked at the notebook held out in front of him:

Madrid, Spain.
A
msterdam, Netherlands.
I
ndianapolis, Indiana, USA.
N
ew York, NY, USA
E
dinburgh, UK.

"Maine? She's in Maine?" Arthur had trouble believing it. "The zip codes seemed more probable. This seems far-fetched."

Yusuf swiveled his computer to face the rest of the group and scrolled down to the lists of Company Locations, "There isn't a GG Oils establishment in Maine so it's not a hint about the next one to be attacked."

Cobb scratched his head, focusing on the ticker across the bottom of the tv screen. "It seems right, Art. You said—phonetically the name matches the phrase she repeated, the numbers match, when we arrange them in the order she requested it makes sense…"

"Well where in Maine?" Eames complained, then directed his next comment to the absent girl, "I love you darling but that doesn't help us at all…"

Arthur pulled up flights again, "It's close enough for now. The capitol should be a good place to start." The other men pulled it up on their computers to follow.

Xxxxxx

The team of men opted on splitting the largest suite they could find. Eames and Yusuf had to share a room with double beds, Arthur got the other bedroom and Cobb was left with the pull out couch. Using the Yellow Pages they were able to break each county down into numbered sections and looked for any name or string of numbers with a correlation. There were a few house addresses that matched, some phone numbers, all which they called and all which they drove to to investigate. Everything was turning up to be coincidence. There was no reduction in the amount of possibilities. No narrowing of the list. Ariadne could be hidden right under their noses in the capitol or out in plain sight on the coast and they wouldn't be the wiser. In fact, they were starting to wonder if they had even been correct in assuming she was in Maine. Maybe the men were in the wrong state or wrong country all together. Following a lengthy day in Westbrook, hunting down a name that looked eerily like an alias Ariadne could use and coming up dry, The Point came back discouraged. His briefcase was tossed to the floor at the doorway and his jacket was off and tie loosened before he plopped onto the couch.

They'd picked up a bucket of chicken and sides on the way back. Yusuf and Eames were starving by the time they got to the hotel. They rushed to heat the food up in the microwave. Arthur was rubbing his face in his hands when Cobb brought him a plate. "I'm not hungry."

Dom took a deep breath. He knew how stressed Arthur was getting. He could always tell…Arthur was normally a very healthy eater. Salads, meat and potatoes, never skipped a meal. He ate heartily and made room for his portion of vegetables. When he got stressed he ate nothing. "You gotta get something in you. You know you don't think straight when you're starving."

"I told you I'm not hungry. I'll eat a bar later." Foregoing a pause, he reached for the phonebook and picked up where they left off this morning, scanning through the T's. Cobb watched Arthur's finger trail down the page, his eyes flicker back and forth, the grit in his jaw when he turned the page. The Extractor tried his best to uplift his friend's mood, "Don't worry. We'll find her, Arthur."

It wasn't amusing when he snorted, "Oh, I know we will…locating people like needles in a haystack is what I do. I'll find her or kill myself trying." Arthur highlighted the name he was on and then allowed his attention to linger on the conversation, "I'm just worried about how we find her. Or if we'll find her in time."

"It's only been three days—"

"Exactly. Three days. That's 72 hours. You remember that job in Beirut. It took 64 hours for someone to crack us out of there…and those guys did a world of torment to us in that time."

Cobb's face soured at the memory. It was six years ago. Their Chemist didn't go into the field with them and a forger wasn't needed so it was Arthur, Dom and a fellow named Cam as the Architect. The job went South when the projections swarmed and the Mark ended up waking before they did. Somehow Cam had woken, escaped and abandoned the pair of them on a train leading to Beirut. Being Americans, they were given special attention when tortured. They were given water but no bread. Cobb had been whipped but Arthur had been water boarded. Needless to say, they looked worse for wear when their architect ended up returning with reinforcements to break them out. "You don't understand the guilt I feel over this," admitted Arthur, pulling Cobb out of his less then savory reverie. Dom didn't use sarcasm often but there was need here, "Oh, I don't?"

The Point shrugged, halfway taking it back, "It's different. If I hadn't left—"

"She would've gone anyway." The older man pointed out.

"Yeah but—I could've gone with her. I could've shot that man in the balls the second I saw him look at her. I would've gotten her out by now."

There was no point in dwelling on what was already done. The milk was spilled. They could mourn it and think of all the ways they couldn't prevented it or they could clean it up. So Cobb tried expressing this, "Should've, would've, could've. None of that helps. What's done is done. I'm sure she's fine. We'll find her when we find her."

It hit a wrong nerve. Arthur definitely took it in a way Cobb didn't mean. He thumped the phonebook closed, "Would you stop minimizing this? Quit trying to make this a lesser deal than it is. This is important. She is important to me."

"She's important to all—"

The Point's voice raised so suddenly and drastically that Yusuf and Eames' own conversation was interrupted in favor of listening in on the ruckus, "You know if this was your precious Mal—"

"—Hey! Now—"

"-then I bet you'd be acting the same way. If it were the woman you were in love with then this would be a different story-you'd be off the wall! It wouldn't be all ho-hum, 'she'll turn up eventually, let's order pizza' would it?" He knew. The Extractor knew this was the pressure and the anxiety talking. But it still made him angry because he was trying to help. Cobb swallowed down the agitation and calmly requested Arthur's listening ear, "Arthur—"

"I dealt with your should've, could've, would've's for over a year. I was there for you, Cobb. I helped in every way I knew how because I knew you were devastated. I knew how much of you she took with her…maybe Ariadne and I haven't been together as long as you were, maybe she's not my wife, maybe we don't have children, maybe we're not even together anymore but she's my Mal. And it's like she's already jumped out the window and I'm running down flights of stairs trying to find where in the air she is. And I know I'm bound to see her somewhere, I'm just praying it's before she ends up dead on the ground."

Now Cobb's eyes were filled with water. The Point Man had been there for Cobb through everything surrounding Mal's death. He put up with a lot of shit during Cobb's grief and guilt. His sympathy overflowed for his best friend more than he realized, "I wasn't trying to make this seem like a minor problem. It came out different than I meant- It was an attempt at making you feel better. You know I'm here for you too. I put my family in a safe house and followed you out here because I owe it you. Because I owe it to Ariadne. I care about the two of you more than it might seem."

Arthur sighed, "I appreciate that but sugarcoating doesn't work for me. Believe me, I've tried. And maybe I can convince myself that she's alright for the moment but when I go to sleep tonight it'll be in a luxurious hotel bed and I'll be safe and warm under the covers. Where will she be? In the dirt? On the concrete floor of a cell? Being—" His head fell back onto the back of the sofa, unable to finish the sentence.

Cobb reached over Arthur and grabbed the phonebook then scooped up one of their notebooks off the table and began more research. Quietly behind them, Yusuf started putting away the leftovers and Eames came to sit in front of the coffee table and pulled up Google Maps on his computer. In a matter of minutes they were all back to work and continued that way into the wee hours of the morning.

The night was one of the longest Dominic had known. Arthur had thanked them and insisted they go to bed and get some sleep when the clock neared 3 am but if not for Ariadne, than for Arthur, they all persisted. It was seven thirty in the morning. Just after the sun peeked out from the horizon. Yusuf had fallen asleep on his keyboard, Eames was on his second (more like eighth) wind as he investigated tirelessly the next set of prospective clues, Arthur was on the phone with one of his contacts (Jeremy Shugart—formerly a CSI agent. A real one, not from the tv show) and Cobb was brewing some coffee for the next round of crashes and calling Miles to check in.

The team's laptops let out a symphony of automatic voices. The abrupt litany of notifications roused Yusuf from his nap. "You've got mail. You've got mail. You've-You've-You've got mail. You've got-You've got mail."

The Point asked his contact to hold. "Arthur, I have a creeping feeling we shouldn't open these emails…" declared Eames. Quickly, Cobb jumped to tell Miles he'd call back and walked into the living area. Gawking at his computer screen, Yusuf retorted, "I don't think we have a choice." On each of their laptops several posters popped up one after the other. All identical. A plain blank background with bold black capital letters reading: THE RED COATS ARE COMING. Get out.

Not fifteen seconds later the ground shook, the windows blew out and a crack ran along the wall and the ceiling. "Get out!" directed Arthur.
xxxxxx

Uh oh. I'm sensing a confrontation coming on. You guys like having Arthur and the gang back? What do you think the message means? Review, review and I'll try to update tomorrow or Wednesday!

Lots of shit goes down next chappie. Jussayin.