Hi all! Here's the next chapter, let me know what you think!
Angela was awake when they pulled up to the safe house. No one had talked much on the ride there and she wasn't much looking forward to the questions she knew were waiting for her inside. Walker parked the truck and turned it off. "Are you okay?"
Angela smiled. "I'm fine." She said softly. "Just tired."
"I'll get the wheelchair out of the back." Sydney said, reaching for the door handle.
Angela started to shake her head but stopped when it made her dizzy. The hospital had pumped her full of liquid nutrients, but her head was still fuzzy. "I'm not using that. I don't want it."
"Okay. That's fine Angel." Walker said gently. "You don't have to. Are you ready to go in?"
She took a steadying breath. "Yeah, I'm ready."
Alex was watching from the window as Sydney and Walker helped Angela out of the truck. She was wearing one of Walker's old sweatshirts and a pair of scrubs the hospital had given her. Her hair was still damp after the shower Sydney had helped her take. Walker wrapped an arm around her waist, supporting most of her weight. Alex forced her face into an expression that hid her shock at the sight of Angela's battered face and the raw skin on her neck. She moved to the front door, holding back tears when Walker, Sydney, and Angela made their way through.
"Hi Mom." Angela said tentatively.
"Hi sweetie." Alex said. She held out her arms and wrapped Angela in them, holding her gently and supporting most of her weight. She felt so light and it took all of Alex's self-control to not break down again. Angela hugged her back, burying her face in Alex's neck. When they pulled apart minutes later, Alex helped her sit down on the couch. Alex sat on one side of her, Sydney on the other. Walker and Trivette sat in chairs across from them. Gage acted as though he was going to sit as well, but a sharp glance from Walker kept him standing across the room. There was an awkward silence for a minute or so.
"You guys can stop looking at me like I'm going to fall apart." Angela finally said, smiling at them. "I'm fine." She didn't like the way they were looking at her, like a victim. She didn't want to be a victim, she wanted to be normal. She wanted to get over what she'd been through and the way to do that was not to go on being treated with kid gloves. "Really." She emphasized. "I'm fine." Her words were underscored by the slight look of discomfort that crossed her face when she moved. She reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and the over-long sleeve of the sweatshirt slipped back, revealing the bright-white bandage around her wrist. She could feel their eyes on it, and shook the sleeve back into place.
"Angel, are you up for some questions?" Walker asked.
"Walker, not now." Alex chastised. "She's been through enough."
"No, Mom, it's fine. I'd rather get it out now. What do you want to know?"
"Did you get a good look at him?"
Angela started to shake her head, forgetting the effect it would have on her. She steadied herself and felt her mom's hand squeeze her own. "He wore a mask the whole time. He disguised his voice. From what I could see, I think he was white."
"How tall was he? How much did he weigh?" Walker asked.
"I don't know. I was sitting down the whole time; I had nothing to compare his height to. And I don't know how much he weighed, but he was strong, muscular."
"What happened the night he took you?" Trivette spoke up.
"I'd gone out with the team earlier, and when I got back I crashed. He jumped on top of me and I managed to get him off, but then he hit me from behind and I blacked out. I must have hit my head on something."
"Your bookshelf." Alex told her.
Angela nodded. "When I woke up, I was there, with him. And I couldn't get away." Her voice grew fainter as her mind took her back to where she didn't want to be. "I remember thinking that his eyes looked familiar, but I couldn't place them." She sighed. "This isn't helpful at all." Sydney stole a furtive glance at Gage before turning her attention back to Angela.
"You're doing fine." Sydney prompted her. "Anything you remember is good."
"There's really nothing else to say. I saw him maybe once a day, I think he must work during the day because he was only there at night."
"Did he say anything to you?"
"He talked about our future. He was convinced that we were going to live together and be happy for the rest of our lives. And then things changed one night, the night before he talked to you. He started talking to himself, sometimes yelling. I heard him say something about 'making them pay' but I don't know who he was talking about. Then, after he told mom to come meet him, he got excited and told me what he had planned. It was disgusting." She closed her eyes and when she opened them, they were wet. "The next day, he was angry that you hadn't come and he taunted me about it. Then he said that he'd come up with a new plan, one that would make things harder for him but that would have a huge reward once it was finished." She looked at each of them in turn. "That's really all I remember, I'm sorry." She whispered.
"You don't have anything to be sorry for." Walker told her firmly. "You did fine. Why don't you go upstairs and rest?"
"Can I stay down here? Please? I don't want to be alone right now." Her voice broke, her strength wavered.
"Of course you can." Alex told her. Sydney got up so that Angela could stretch her legs out on the couch; she rested the non-injured side of her face on Alex's thigh.
"Wake me up if I start snoring." She joked, embarrassed by her moment of vulnerability earlier. Within seconds, she appeared to be asleep. Alex placed a hand on her head, absentmindedly stroking her hair while she listened to the conversation going on around her.
"The RV is completely gone?" Gage asked
"Incinerated. We barely got out." Sydney said.
"Did you see the bomb anywhere in there?"
Sydney shook her head. "It must have been underneath."
"This doesn't make any sense." Trivette said. "At first, this was a typical stalker case: the camera in the bedroom, the initial kidnapping, even the part about the kidnapper talking about their future together. There was no evidence at all. Then, he makes contact and demands that Alex turn herself over to him. When she doesn't, he lets Angela go?" He shook his head. "I don't get it."
"Plus, the kidnapper had to have made the call to Alex on Angela's phone. There's no way Angela could have made that call." Walker said. "The phone was on the table when we got there."
"Do you think it was a trap?" Trivette asked. "Designed to lure you there and kill you?"
"That's an awfully risky trap." Sydney said. "If the bomb had been on a timer, he had no way of knowing how long it would take us to get to the RV, or how long we would be inside. There was no guarantee that he would have killed anyone."
"Then the bomb couldn't have been on a timer." Walker said. "It had to be activated by remote."
"That doesn't make sense either." Trivette countered. "Why didn't he blow it while you were inside?"
"Because Angela was still there." Trivette said. "He didn't want to kill her."
"He's not finished with her." Sydney agreed. "So why let her go? Why make contact at all? We had nothing to go on, he was free and clear."
Walker was deep in thought. "The things he said on the video, those were personal. This may not have been about Angela at all. What if he wanted Alex because he was trying to get to me?" he asked. "The best way to hurt someone is to take away what they love. Maybe he thought that by taking Angela, he would hurt me. Then somewhere along the way, that wasn't enough and he wanted to go after Alex."
"And when Alex didn't go along with it, he needed to come up with a new plan." Gage said, speaking up for the first time since Angela had arrived.
"By letting her go, he pretty much guaranteed that Angela and Alex would be together. And that Walker would be with them." Trivette said.
"He's not just targeting Angela. He's targeting all three of us." Alex said, terrified. "He's going to come back after her again, isn't he?"
The fact that no one would meet her gaze answered her question loud and clear. And the sudden silence in the room told Angela all she needed to know as she kept her eyes firmly shut.
He chuckled to himself, sitting in his car at the top of a hill over a thousand yards away from the so-called safe house. With his binoculars, it was as if he was there in the room with his prey. It hadn't been hard to find the house; it was all a matter of not being seen.
He'd hidden in the woods after he'd used Angela's phone to call Alex. He'd watched Walker and the brunette Ranger search the RV and his finger twitched over the detonator. It would be so easy to take Walker out; just the flip of a switch would end the man forever. How poetic that would be, to blow Walker up, to take him completely off guard, but he didn't. Angela was still in there and even though he was temporarily setting her free, he knew they would be together again soon. So he'd waited until the three were a safe distance away from the RV before he blew it, effectively eliminating any possible evidence he'd left. He knew they would take Angela to the nearest hospital, and he was there waiting in the Emergency Room parking lot by the time they arrived. He'd waited patiently for hours while she was being examined and his patience paid off when they wheeled her out of the hospital. Walker drove her away in his truck, unaware of the tracking device that was now in the right rear tire well. The kidnapper noted with satisfaction that the signal was transmitting loud and clear. It was merely a matter of staying out of sight as Walker led him right to the safe house. The kidnapper had scoped out a spot on the hill and had been there ever since. Now, he waited. The next phase of his plan required an extensive amount of planning, and it also required him to do the thing he hated most: rely on other people.
He'd already contacted several candidates that he wanted to make up his new team. They were an integral, but disposable, part of what needed to happen. Once everything was in place, he would execute his plan and be reunited with Angela, this time for good. But the best part, the very best part of all, was that he would take Walker and Alex down for good too.