Manipulation part 10
By Ecri
AD Kraft hadn't gotten where he was by trusting the wrong people. That, even more than the implications of treason or greed that could be the root of it all, was what truly troubled him about the present situation. When Don had first come to him with news of Buchmann's blackmail, he'd been the one to suggest they keep it quiet at first. Don had readily agreed, insisting he'd prefer not to endanger his team.
Kraft had known that Eppes, for all his training, would take this personally and that was likely the reaction Buchmann had counted on. How could he not when his family was involved? It wasn't until Don had told him about the possibility of there being an informant in the department that Kraft had felt his control slipping. Deciding not to tell his people something was one thing. Being unable to do so because there was a chance you couldn't trust them was something else entirely.
Don's distrust of Pierce was not surprising. His almost immediate willingness to trust Kraft's opinion that Pierce could be trusted, could be brought in now, was shocking.
He replayed the last conversation he'd had with Don in his mind. He'd managed to pull the younger man aside after they'd filled David Sinclair in on what was going on.
"You're going to be okay working with Pierce?"
Don hadn't betrayed any emotion. Instead he seemed to consider the question seriously. "I'll never be his best friend, but if you think it's a good idea..." He shook his head, breaking the line of thought. "Look, it's not my first choice, but then I never would have thought that I'd be in this situation to begin with."
Kraft had seen a lot in his agent's eyes then. He recognized the desperation and fear of course, and, having already spent hours wondering what he would do if he'd found himself facing the deal Buchmann had given Don, he wasn't going to pretend that this was easy on the other man. What had surprised him, however, was a gleam of something else, something difficult for him to name.
Determination was part of it. Anger was there, too. He puzzled over it as he watched Don leave with Terry. They'd been gone for twenty minutes before he recognized what he'd seen, and he had seen it before. It was a look common in the eyes of men who had discovered how far they could be pushed and how hard they would push back.
David Sinclair hadn't understood it at all when Don canceled the clandestine investigating he and the other agents had been doing for Charlie's case, but he could tell something was going on. Don was by turns short-tempered, morose, and agitated.
He'd known Don and Terry for awhile, and, though he knew Don probably had very good reasons for putting an end to the investigation, he couldn't stop working on it. He'd grown to respect Charlie over the time the mathematician had been consulting with the FBI. He wouldn't just sit this one out.
David had been pleased with his work checking into Pierce's background, and he had checked the other people Pierce worked with. Terry had seemed intrigued when he'd taken it to her, but until she, Don, Kraft, and, surprisingly, Pierce had begun to spell things out for him, he hadn't been sure that she'd acted on it at all.
Reviewing his notes once more, he found that most of his questions centered around Pierce and Mason. Mason still seemed suspicious to him, but he wanted to do more digging. Now, involved in a clandestine conspiracy to release Charlie from jail in order to keep him from the hands of some manipulative psycho who was trying to buy himself a federal agent, David wondered if there would be enough time to investigate all of this properly.
David was still piecing together some details that he'd cobbled together, and Kraft's explanations, punctuated by Terry's interjections, had filled in the gaps. Now, they all sat in the one place that they were fairly certain couldn't have been bugged: a sort of sub office, a private room tucked behind Kraft's for which only Kraft held a key. Kraft hated using it because he thought it would seem suspicious if his own office was bugged, so it had taken them some time to get inside and set up. Kraft had insisted it be a one at a time thing, and several of them had had to take a long detour to hide their destination.
Now, as Don, still not entirely comfortable with Pierce's presence, explained that they needed to get Charlie out of prison ASAP, David nodded. Rifling through some paperwork, her held out a memo to Don, enjoying it when Don managed his first grin in hours.
"This is perfect." Don whispered, handing the memo to Kraft.
"What is it?" Terry looked from David to Don and back again.
David smiled. "The order came through while you all were in here. The courts want a psychological evaluation on Charlie. He's supposed to be transferred to the prison ward at LA County Psychiatric Hospital tomorrow morning."
Don nodded. "So all we have to do is forge a new order for tonight, and we have a way to get him out."
"By the time the official escort comes by tomorrow morning, we should have Charlie at the safe house." Terry patted David's shoulder. "Great idea."
"I might be able to rescind the official order, or maybe have the escort delayed a bit. If I can, that will buy us even more time." Kraft was jotting down notes in his personal notebook.
When Pierce and Kraft were ready to leave to pick up Charlie, David grabbed the files he'd been putting together. He had a lot to show Don, and he'd be able to do it very soon.
As they neared their destination, the trio rode in silence. Pierce glanced sidelong at David, and tried to remember what it had been like when he had been as young as the other man. Special Agent David Sinclair didn't have the years on the job that Pierce did. He hadn't lost his partner and best friend. He hadn't lost the drive that had brought him to the attention of the FBI recruiters.
Pierce wondered how long ago he'd lost that drive. When had he gotten so poor at his job that he would arrest a man like Dr. Charles Eppes without checking the evidence? Why had he so cavalierly assumed that Eppes must be the killer merely because he'd been given the order to make the arrest? He could see now that he and Kraft had been duped, but why hadn't he asked more questions?
Kraft had given Mason an order, but Mason hadn't passed it on verbatim. He'd learned this from Kraft. He'd told Mason to check it all out and make the arrest if it seemed warranted. If it seemed warranted. Four words that Mason had chosen to ignore. It might have meant nothing. Perhaps Mason hadn't seen any urgency to it all.
Of course, it might mean everything. He didn't know if he'd have been more careful if he'd heard those words. He liked to think he would have been, but some little voice inside of him told him things would have gone down the same way. He had lost his passion for his job. He had lost his edge, and it was Dr. Charles Eppes–and his family–who was paying the price.
Pierce had felt burned out on the job for a long time, and he'd made a minimum number of calls, verified a few superficial leads, but, in the end, he'd assumed the physical evidence was irrefutable. He'd never known–or maybe he'd never cared enough to find out–that Kraft had wanted it checked out much more carefully.
Kraft took the last turn toward the jail, just as Pierce sensed rather than saw that Sinclair seemed jittery. "What?"
Sinclair looked at him. "What what?"
"What's got you shaking like that?"
Sinclair stared at him and went still. "You know, Charlie's a good guy. He's done a lot to help a lot of people. He didn't deserve this."
Pierce sighed and whispered under his breath. "Hallelujah Noel be it Heaven or Hell, The Christmas you get you deserve."
"What?"
"Greg Lake. I Believe in Father Christmas,"
"We're going to spring a man out of jail whom you wrongfully imprisoned and you're spouting lyrics to Christmas songs?"
Pierce shrugged. "What can I tell you? Those lyrics always stuck with me. It's not a hopeful song. It's about disappointment, about being sold a bill of goods that has little to do with reality, about believing blindly in something that cannot exist…yet…wishing…" He stopped himself, swallowing his words around the lump in his throat. "Forget it."
"Yeah, no problem." Sinclair stared out the window, and was silent for the rest of the journey.
Pierce cursed himself for his lapse. He and Sinclair weren't friends. He shouldn't have said anything at all. If there had ever been a chance of friendship between them, and Pierce wasn't sure there was–it had evaporated when he'd arrested Charlie Eppes. The same was true of the other agents on Don's team. Pierce let out a low sigh. He'd alienated the best team in the LA office because he'd been too blind and stupid to do his job.
He knew that Sinclair had been working hard, albeit without orders, on clearing Charlie. He'd been doing the work Pierce should have done. He knew because he'd taken a peek at the files when David wasn't looking. It was a series of leads and surmises on Mason and on Pierce himself.
He couldn't help but think that, if he'd been a slightly better agent, if he'd taken more care, he might have found some of the things that David Sinclair had discovered. Mason was most likely one of their leaks. Sinclair was still working a few leads, tracking down a few contacts, but all signs pointed to Mason being something other than what he seemed. Whether by choice or by coercion, he was not taking seriously the role he had taken as a law enforcement officer.
Charlie wasn't sure how long he'd been in solitary confinement, but he was thinking only about the equations. He'd continued to work on them in his head when he realized he'd be here for some time. Now, he didn't think he could stop. He sat in the middle of the bed, staring at the wall, but seeing only the equations in his mind. Numbers formed and coalesced and only to be scratched out, reformed and reconsidered. Buchmann's threats replayed again and again whenever his tired brain wandered, and for the first time in his life, he found that he had to force his thoughts back to the numbers.
He didn't hear the door open. He didn't hear the guards calling his name. He didn't feel them pull him to his feet and drag him down the hall. He heard a familiar voice call his name, but he didn't dare stop.
He heard voices speaking to each other, but he couldn't allow it to distract him. His father's, and his brother's lives depended on it.
David Sinclair stared at Charlie as the guards brought him out to them. "Charlie?" He called the man's name, but he saw the glazed look in the eyes. Charlie wasn't going to be hearing him anytime soon.
"Good thing you're taking him for a psych exam. He's loony."
"What?" David asked, forgetting his desire to avoid any small talk and get out quickly.
The guard chuckled. "Crazy, nutty, any word you want to use. Sits around all day mumbling numbers."
Swallowing any visible concerns so as not to tip the guards that he was truly worried for the genius, David returned to Charlie and Pierce noting that Pierce was staring at Charlie. Charlie was moving from side to side, mumbling numbers and words that David recognized as mathematical terminology only because of his recent association with the math professor. He herded Charlie between himself and Pierce. Desperate to keep some physical distance between Charlie and this place, he had to fight with himself not to run.
"Charlie, come on, man, we need you with us." He whispered the words, hoping Charlie would come around.
He turned to Pierce. "You got his stuff?"
"Yeah, but I don't see why you want it."
David shook his head. "I don't. He will."
"He doesn't even know we're here." Pierce didn't hide his impatience.
David scowled. "Yeah, and if it's not temporary, you get to answer to Don for that." He saw Pierce shudder at that concept and felt a surge of pleasure. He turned his attention back to Charlie. "Come on, Charlie. Let's go." He led CalSci's resident genius out to the car. He would try to snap Charlie out of this, whatever this was, but he had a feeling it wouldn't help. He tried to think of the right words to break this to Don.
The drive to the safe house was uneventful, once they got Charlie in the car, though at one point, hearing sirens behind them, David had thought that they'd been found out. He was about to tell Kraft to step on it, when the cars sped by on the cross street following a late model sedan being driven by a teenager with purple hair.
He heard Pierce laugh at his unease, but he ignored it.
"Charlie, we're almost there. We're taking you to see Don." He'd kept up a litany of words to Don's brother, but he wasn't sure if Charlie had heard any of it.
Pierce had stopped laughing, but his words weren't welcome. "He can't hear you. You're wasting your breath."
David opened his mouth to say something about that, but Pierce waved him off. "Oh, I know. I'm in trouble with everyone who ever knew the kid. Look, I'm sorry. I did what I thought was right, but…well, it wasn't. I guess I probably knew that all along, but there isn't anything I can do about it now. I'm trying to make up for it."
David didn't reply. They rode in silence except for Charlie's mumbling. Number after number slipped from his mouth, only now, when he didn't like what he was thinking, he was beginning to hit himself. The first loud slap to his leg, David let ride, but the second worried him. He tried to get Charlie to stop, and when he hit himself in the head, David grabbed him by the wrist to keep him from hurting himself. "Charlie! Stop it!"
The strength in Charlie's blows, and in his struggles, surprised David. Sure, Charlie rode a bike everywhere and was, by any definition, healthy, but this...he knew there was strength in desperation, but Charlie's seemed superhuman somehow. Of course, David reasoned, it was likely that it seemed that way because Charlie wasn't afraid of hurting David. How could he be when he didn't even seem aware that David was there? David on the other hand, was struggling to avoid inflicting any damage at all on his friend, and that was only partially because of what he thought Don would do to him if he did.
"Charlie!" David called again as Charlie managed to smack himself in the head once more.
Charlie still didn't acknowledge him, but David could see desperation and fear in the other man's eyes. The one thing he wanted to see, recognition, was frighteningly absent.
Just as Charlie was becoming too much of a handful for him, David saw a house up ahead and squinted at the numbers on the front. "That's it."
Kraft nodded and turned into the driveway and on into the garage. As soon as he had the car inside, the door slid closed, and Don and Terry appeared.
Don stared out the window of the safe house. He shook his head. "I should have told my dad."
"We couldn't do that. It would have put him in jeopardy, and besides, it's not the most relaxing way to spend a day, worrying if his sons are on the run or safe at some location he can't know about." Terry insisted. She placed a hand on his arm. "Buchmann is trying to control you. You don't think he's ignoring something as obvious as your father, do you?"
"I still should have." He pulled something from his pocket and stared at it, and Terry smiled when she saw what it was. "I wondered where that went."
Don smiled, too, though it was a melancholy smile. "I took it out of its frame so I could carry it with me." He turned the photo–the one Terry had noticed was missing from his desk–so they could both look at it. "He's so happy here."
"So are you." Terry reminded him.
"Yeah." Don's smile grew. "He was excited about the case. My dad insists he's been trying to impress me all his life." He bit his lip for a moment before speaking again as if that would hold in his emotions. It seemed to work. He got himself under control, and turned to look Terry squarely in the eye. "How can he not know how much he impresses me?"
Terry shrugged. "I can't tell you how Charlie's mind works."
"Yeah, but after all this time, you'd think I would be able to tell you that." His gaze fell to the floor, and he considered how he'd failed Charlie. He should have been able to keep his brother safe. He should have been able to protect him from whatever maniacs touched his own life. He said a silent prayer for his brother's safety and vowed that, as far as his brother's safety was concerned, he would never fail again.
Don was about to say something else, when he broke off and squinted into the distance. "They're here." He hit a button on a key ring he was holding in his hand and the garage door opened. He led the way out to the garage even as hit the button a second time closing the door.
"Charlie!" Don called as he neared the car.
David got out first. "Don, hang on. Don't overwhelm him."
"What? What do you mean?"
"Look, he's been sort of…lost in an equation or something since we picked him up. The guard said they had to drag him all the way from solitary…"
"Wait! Solitary? Solitary confinement? Why was he…" He reached past David and into the back seat. "Charlie?"
His eyes wide, his heart breaking, he stared at his genius brother. He saw every new bruise, every new cut. The still bleeding wounds on his wrist and hand seemed odd, somehow, like the product of torture. He could think of nothing that could cause wounds like that accidentally, but it was the chains around his wrists and his ankles that stopped him cold.
He pulled himself out of the car leaving Charlie talking to himself as he glared at David and Pierce. "Why the chains?"
David slowly exhaled. "I was going to take them off in the car, but he was struggling too much. I couldn't get the key close to the lock."
"Struggling?" He turned back to his brother. "Charlie?" He whispered now, awed by what he was seeing.
His brother's face was bruised, and the pallor, a sickly white, seemed to accentuate it. The cast, as well as the skin of his other arm, were smeared with blood and...numbers? Equations written in red ink...no, not ink. Blood? He swallowed and turned his attention to David, fury tainting his words. "What the hell happened?"
"He was in solitary. I don't know why. Discipline was all they said." David held up his hand to forestall Don's questions. "The thing is, he's been mumbling equations since we picked him up…and…"
It was his hesitation that galvanized Don.
"And what?" Don's eyes were wide, his tone demanding.
"He's been hitting himself…"
Don made a sound in the back of his throat halfway between a groan and a sob. He turned to Charlie and leaned into the car taking hold of his brother's arm and leading him gently out of the back seat. He spoke a never-ending series of soft words pitched so only Charlie could hear him as he led his brother, broken and bruised, into the house.
Once they were all inside, Don eased Charlie into a chair and knelt before him, his eyes scanning his brother's body and automatically assessing his injuries. He wanted to rip open the hideous orange jumpsuit to check for more injuries, but he had to reach Charlie first.
"Charlie? Come on, now. I need you to snap out of it." Frantically, he searched his brother's eyes for some cue that he was still in there.
Charlie's lips had not stopped moving, but Don could only hear a word or two every few minutes. His brother whispered a series of numbers more hurriedly than the others, and then brought his hand up and smacked himself in the head violently enough that the others in the room jumped back.
Don immediately took Charlie's arm, thankful that it hadn't been the arm with the cast. Charlie could have given himself a concussion. Don spoke louder. "That's enough, Charlie! Snap out of it! Come on." Don saw a slight tremor course through Charlie's body, and he tightened his grip on his brother's wrist. "That's it, come on, Charlie." He coaxed his brother back from whatever abyss was staring back at him.
Charlie blinked. "Donny?" The voice was little more than a croak, so painfully dry was that throat. He moved slowly, but he raised his head and saw–actually saw–his brother. "Donny!" He threw himself at Don and hugged tight.
Don slipped his arms around his brother's shoulders, returning the embrace and laughing in relief. "How are you doing, Charlie? You had me scared."
"How did I get here? I was alone…"
"Why were you in solitary confinement?"
"The guard took my notebook. I was in the middle of something…it was after lights out…I think he thought I was fighting…" Panic suddenly settled in Charlie's brown eyes. "Wait a minute! I can't be here! Where am I? I have to go back! If I don't have the equations by the deadline, Buchmann will…" He stopped speaking, his mouth falling open in apparent horror at what he'd said.
Don's eyes narrowed and his grip on his brother's shoulders tightened. "Buchmann? How do you know Buchmann?" Don continued to squeeze his brother's shoulders in his anxiety over hearing Charlie speak the name of their tormentor.
Charlie wouldn't meet his brother's gaze, and he began to fidget slightly. Don's tightening grip couldn't avoid the bruises for very long.
"Ow…" Charlie's voice sounded small, almost child-like, as it had at the Koi pond during the P versus NP fiasco when Don needed answers Charlie couldn't provide.
Don loosened his grip, but he lowered his head until he forced his brother to look him in the eye. "Tell me how you know him."
"He…Buchmann…came to me. He took me from the infirmary…"
Don listened in rapt attention as Charlie told his tale of meeting Buchmann, of the deal that had been made, of the work he had been doing.
"Are you saying he spoke to you privately in the prison?"
Charlie shook his head. "They said something about transportation, so I think they drugged me and took me somewhere."
Don nodded filing away the information. They'd have to investigate the involvement of prison employees carefully. It might even go up as high as the warden.
He looked at Charlie, who was now looking around himself in agitation. "I had notes...where are my notes? Donny! Where are my notes!"
David stepped forward holding the books he'd forced Pierce to retrieve from Charlie's cell. "It's okay, Charlie. We got you covered."
Charlie was visibly relieved. "He said," Charlie continued, clutching his notebook to him as though it contained the meaning of life, the cure for cancer, and the answer to every unsolvable equation that had ever existed. "He said that if I didn't work for him, he'd hurt you and dad…and even Larry and Amita."
Don nodded. "He was running the same scam on me. Said he'd make sure you and Dad were hurt, or that you'd be convicted if I didn't help and released if I did."
Don saw then that Charlie's hands were shaking. The tremors raced up his arms, and down his back, and before his eyes, he saw his little brother trembling so violently that the chair he was sitting in was shaking. Don took Charlie's hands and found them ice cold. He turned to Terry. "Get a blanket. I think he's going into shock."
In another minute, Charlie, with a blanket draped around his shoulders and a cup of coffee in his hands, was again insisting that he was fine.
Don nodded, but wasn't sure if he believed it. He saw that Charlie was still and silent and deep in thought. It worried him because Don recognized that look. "What? What are you thinking?"
"Buchmann…he was never…he was using us…"
"We know that…"
"But maybe it wasn't just to play us off of each other. Maybe he was using us against someone else. The only other person who would be hurt by our..." he shrugged before finishing helplessly. "...predicament."
"Dad?"
"I don't know why, but I'd bet Buchmann has him."
Don tried to reason through that theory. He shook his head as though the physical action would allow him to dismiss the thought. "Why would Buchmann be after Dad?"
Charlie shrugged, but Don could see the look in his eyes. It was the look his brother wore when he was close to solving an equation but didn't like what the answer was telling him.
"Charlie, your work on the murder investigation...what were you learning?"
Charlie blinked a few times and Don could see that genius brain trying to halt in its tracks and consider Don's seemingly unrelated question.
"You know most of it. The victims were likely to be similar in background and general description to people we...or rather I know, since I was the intended suspect."
Don shook his head. "There's more, isn't there?"
Charlie looked away, and Don all but groaned. He had nothing but sympathy for his brother, wanted nothing but to have Charlie safe and happy, but he didn't have time to coax the information he needed out of him. He inhaled hoping he'd find the words to do just that, when Charlie surprised him.
To Don's surprise, Charlie shook off the frightened look in his eyes, straightened the stoop of his shoulders, and looked Don squarely in the eye. "There were a series of mathematical...I guess you could call them phrases...they were code. There was a message hidden in the clues, a message that spelled out Bucmann's name. I'm sure there would have been more if he'd had the time to keep killing. He seemed a little disappointed that he hadn't had the time to finish his message..."
Charlie took a step closer to his brother. "I'm fairly certain he was beginning to spell out a name...our name. Dad's name." He swallowed and the fear was momentarily back before being swept away, locked behind a door Don was sure would need to be torn down when this ended...if this ended.
Don nodded taking this all in. "Charlie, how easy would it be for someone to look at your notes and see how close you had come to working out this code?"
"A mathematician?"
"No."
Charlie shook his head. "I don't see how anyone not used to working seriously with higher mathematics could do it at all."
Don nodded. That's what he'd expected. It also made him wonder how Jeff Mason had managed to understand enough to know that Charlie was 'getting too close'. Mason had to be more than he appeared, but was he a mathematician? A genius? Even Larry hadn't found this code, and Larry was no dunce. So...what did that make Mason?
"How the hell did this happen?" Buchmann demanded as he threw the bottle of vodka he'd been holding across the room. It shattered sending its expensive, imported contents all over the carpet and even onto the wall.
"Sir, we…"
"I will not listen to your excuses!" He fumed. His team had let him down. Both Don Eppes and Charlie Eppes were missing. He could find not a clue to their whereabouts.
He called Mason, but got no answer. He called a few others of the agents and officers he owned, but none knew where either of the Eppes brothers had gone.
"Fine." He spoke the word more to himself than to his lackeys. "I will just move up the time table. "Prepare the car."
The sleek, black limousine had been parked across the street for awhile. Alan had seen it pull up, and had assumed someone in the neighborhood had hired it for a special occasion. Realizing it hadn't moved, and that no one had gotten into or out of it, made him suspicious. He waited, watching it, feeling like an idiot. He had never wanted to become one of those conspiracy-minded people who mistrusted everything. But his youngest son was in prison, framed for crimes he could never have committed, and his oldest son was a tight-lipped FBI agent unwilling or unable to let his father know if there was any further investigation going on. With all of that, and, having lost the one person in his life who helped him to keep things in perspective, it was becoming increasingly difficult to deny the feeling that the world plotted against him.
The car was just sitting there. There was no crime in that, yet, the longer it did, the more uncomfortable Alan became. He couldn't report it. There was nothing to report. He couldn't even call Don. He'd feel like an idiot trying to explain his unease. He couldn't march over there and demand to know what was going on. Most likely, the driver was early or was killing time before picking up a client.
He'd stared out the window, trying to avoid being seen watching the car by hiding behind the curtain for some time before, disgusted with himself, he turned on his heel and retreated inside the house. There was plenty he could do inside the house to keep his mind occupied, so he did it. Laundry, dusting, vacuuming, loading the dishwasher, myriad tasks kept him, physically occupied. His mind, however, remained on the limousine across the street.
Furious with himself, he stopped dusting, checked his wallet, grabbed his keys, and headed out to his car. He would take a drive, find somewhere else to be, and when he returned, the car would be gone. Resolved to this plan, he drove away. His tendency not to put faith in conspiracy theory, no matter how suspicious he was of that car, never allowed him to contemplate that his leaving was what the occupants of the car were waiting for.
Alan drove around for half the day, returning to his home just after sundown. He was happy to see the black limo was gone, and chided himself for being ridiculous. He'd spent the day with Art and the friendly banter was enough to drive the fear away. He knew his eldest son's paranoia was rubbing off on him, and he didn't like it.
He hadn't dared to mention to Art that he was trying to escape a sinister stretch limo that had been parked on his block. He felt silly just thinking about it.
He pulled his car into the driveway and happily walked to his front door. It wasn't until he had hung up his coat that he realized he wasn't alone. Two men appeared from the shadows, and Alan, still standing near the open closet door, grabbed an umbrella and came out swinging. The first man was taken by surprise and went down, winded by the blow. The second was prepared and caught the umbrella, twisting it down and tearing it from Alan's grasp. Alan was looking around for another weapon when he felt the cold kiss of steel at the base of his neck and heard the sound of a gun's safety being pulled back.
"Don't move again or it will be the last time you do."
Alan froze in his tracks, his arms slightly away from his body.
"Good."
Alan felt the man shift and the other man came forward, taking Alan's wrists and roughly tying them together. Before Alan could think of a question it was worth risking his life to ask, the second placed a cloth over his nose and mouth. The chemical odor of the rag was enough to force Alan to struggle, but it was a short-lived attempt as he slumped, unconscious, in the arms of his captors.
Alan became aware of several things at once. He was incredibly thirsty, he could see nothing, and his head was ringing. He put a hand to his head, but there were no bumps or bloody patches, so he presumed the headache must the aftereffects of whatever chemical had knocked him out. A movie, he thought. This was just like a movie. He'd been abducted from his home. He tried to make out the room, but it was pitch black.
He'd barely had the chance to go through his recent memories in an attempt to piece together what had happened, when he heard the creak of a door and the sound of several sets of footsteps. Then a loud click followed almost instantly by the lights coming on forced Alan to blink rapidly at the sudden change.
He heard a voice before he could quite focus.
"Good, you're awake. We have a lot to discuss."
Alan stared at the man, surprise plain on his face. "Jeff? Jeff Mason?"
To Be Continued