Writer's Note: Since I actually wrote chapter 15 before I wrote chapter...something like chapter 10 or 11...I'm posting it right along with chapter 14. So many updates in so few days! I'm such a bad writer, ignoring my original fiction this way. o.o Oh well. Once I get my fandom fix satisfied, I'll probably go back to normal. xD Meanwhile, the story must go on...!
The first thing I'm aware of is the jolting. My shoulder is being jolted back and forth, as if being…shaken. Shaken. That's it. Then I hear the voices. They sound far away and dreamlike – or am I just dreaming?
"Renee!"
That last one did it. I jerk awake, gasping, and look up. Stephen straightens – I guess it was him bent over me, shaking me – and he's standing next to Jack. "Jack?" I whisper hoarsely. Jack's not supposed to be here for hours. Wait…oh god. The memory floods me, and nothing makes sense anymore. I look around, and it's the sight of a comfortable living room that greets me, and not that of a dark warehouse or closet, or a thousand other places abductors should have taken me. Why am I still here, in Kim's house? "What's…what's going on?" I ask, rubbing my forehead. My stomach twists nauseatingly. Jesus, what did they use on me?
"Renee, where's Teri?"
I blink at him. "What?" Teri? Oh…shit. Dread rises in my stomach like bile.
"Think, Renee," Jack presses. "Were you playing hide and seek? What?"
"Hide and seek? No, Jack, she was asleep in bed. She's sick." Oh god. My worst fears are multiplying themselves. There was an attempt on Jack's family, and I didn't stop it, and little Teri, the most gentle and innocent of all of us, is missing.
"She has to be somewhere," Stephen says. "I'm going to check Carol's – maybe she went over to play with their daughter."
"You do that. This is getting us nowhere," Jack says. He pulls me up, off the couch and toward the door. "Go back to the hotel, Renee."
"But Jack, you need to hear –"
"Go back!"
"Jack, I can help –"
My words commit suicide in my mouth when he flashes me the most withering look I've ever received. "Haven't you done enough?"
I'm back at the hotel, pacing. God knows I should have made them listen, should have insisted upon it, but there's no reasoning with Jack when he's in this state. When he comes back to the room, he'll probably be calmer. At least, enough for me to tell him what happened.
The door swings open and I look up from my pacing. Jack strides into the room, his face stony as he shrugs off his jacket. "You didn't find her," I say quietly.
"No, we haven't. But we will." He levels a stare at me. "You know, it isn't that uncommon. Parents do it all the time – they look away for half a second and the kid's gone."
"She was asleep, Jack. I just went into the kitchen to pour her some water!"
"I believe you. But Renee…" He shakes his head. "We'll find her." He sighs. "I just… I hate to think of her. Alone and afraid, in the cold night."
"She's probably afraid, all right, but she's not alone in the cold night," I say. "Someone has her, Jack."
"No one has her, Renee. She ran off. She's a kid. It happens."
"No, these things don't just happen. Especially not to us."
"Shut up, Renee."
"Think about it, Jack! Teri was sick this afternoon. Sick and tired and upset! She wouldn't have run off!"
"Renee, you're obviously embarrassed about falling asleep on her, but stop making up stories."
I stare at Jack, and my jaw drops open slightly. Making up stories? Since when the hell do I make up stories? "Jack, I'm not making this up! Somebody grabbed me from behind while I was at the kitchen counter and put something over my mouth – some sort of chloroform."
Something in Jack's eye sparks and I flinch as I watch his temper break. He lunges at me and grabs my neck, slamming me against a wall. I gasp. His fingers press into my neck painfully. "Then explain why there's no chloroform on your breath," he hisses. "Explain why you were sleeping peacefully on the couch when we found you, instead of passed out on the floor!"
"I…don't…know…" I choke out. He releases me, and my knees barely catch me. I lean back against the wall, coughing. I swallow against the soreness in my throat, and I say, "Think about it. You just exposed that the Russians supported the terrorist acts at the highest level of their government. Is it really that hard to believe that someone might be pissed off at you?"
"Teri is just a little girl. Besides, no one would dare hurt my family. Everyone knows I'll rip apart anyone that does. Keeping you here was just convenient."
I try to ignore the sting that last bit gives me. "Jack, terrorists don't care that she's just a little girl!" I say, and I want to sob at the truth of it. "They don't play by the rules of law or decency. You of all people should know that." Again, I see that flash in his eyes, and his fist flies too quickly for me to duck. He catches me high on the cheekbone. The force of it is enough to knock me to the floor. I stay there, braced on one arm, looking up at him. He stands before me in a kind of furious excellence, every muscle and sinew taut and rippling. If the situation weren't so distressing, I would find him so hot right now. As it is, the sweetest little girl I've ever met has been kidnapped, and Jack has inflicted more pain on me than he ever has – excepting, perhaps, the time he had to shoot me, in order to fake my execution. And there's nothing attractive about being smacked around. My gut twitches as I remember the punches, slaps, and pinches Vladimir had regularly doled out, with increasing violence and frequency.
"You bitch," he breathes.
"Jack!" I say, my eyes widening. I look down and push myself to my feet, and then meet his eyes.
"Get out."
Taken aback, I whisper, "What?"
"Get out of my room."
"But Jack, what about Teri?" Whatever happens between me and Jack, even if it breaks me, I still need to know that little girl will be all right.
"We'll find her."
"I can't believe this," I say. "Who are you? I've never known Jack Bauer to ignore evidence."
"Evidence? What evidence? The only evidence I have is finally finding you at Kim's house, asleep on her couch, with my granddaughter missing. There was no sign of forced entry, nothing broken, or missing – except Teri. No, what I can't believe is that you're too cowardly to admit when you made a mistake."
My only mistake was not watching my back. I have to remember that, remember it and know it as surely as Jack made me believe that I'd done nothing wrong in stabbing Vladimir to death…because I think the feeling of being responsible for Teri's abduction could kill me inside. "Jack, I'm telling you the truth," I say. I hate how pleading I sound.
He just stares at me. "Get out," he repeats.
"Jack –"
"Get out!"
The fury in those words made me flinch, but his next words knocked the breath from my lungs:
"I can't believe I ever loved you."
"I can't believe I ever loved you."
"I can't believe I ever loved you."
The words ring in my mind, endlessly. I walk numbly from the room, the hotel, the street… I'm frozen both from the cold and from the realization that everything I believed was a lie. I watch the sun set behind towering buildings, and I think about how I feel. That sounds conceited, but in a way, I'm kind of a miracle right now. I'm walking and functioning, when inside, my entire being feels devastated. Devastated by Hurricane Bauer. Hurricane Bauer. That would be funny if I could comprehend past the pain.
I'm at least two blocks away from the hotel before I grab the side of a building, sinking to my knees into heavy, body-shaking sobs I never knew I was capable of sobbing.