Chapter 24: Stolen

A/N: In a couple of (much) earlier chapters I mentioned two brands: Listerine and Digestives. Digestives are digestive biscuits, and Listerine is a type of mouth wash.

Yassen was used to sleeping short hours, but he felt the disrupted night when he woke up. He was aching too. The run was nothing he couldn't handle, but tension was tiring, and he knew he had been tense last night. His chest ached. He lay on his back for a moment, stretched as hard as he could and groaned, then rolled out of bed and made his way downstairs.

The living room was empty, with only a nest of rumpled blankets on the sofas showing where Josh and Taylor had spent the night. The boys must already have gone over to Clara's house. He could hear members of K Unit clunking about in the kitchen, but feeling in no mood to contend with them he slipped straight out of the house and round to Clara's. The sky was grey and clouded now, and the temperature had risen. A hard, greyish crust had formed on the snow, which was pocked with holes near the trees and beneath the hedge, where meltwater had dripped into it. When he knocked at the door, Jane answered it and greeted him with a rather terse, 'you-and-me-against-a-world-gone-mad' kind of smile.

'Morning, Yassen,' she said, then jerked her head towards the living room. 'It's a bit bonkers in there. Good luck.'

Yassen entered the room, bracing himself, but Roberta was nowhere to be seen. Alex and Clara, the only two people in the room, did not look as though they were about to set on him for ill treatment of their friend. In fact, they didn't look as though they knew anything was amiss at all. Clara was wearing an expression of extreme irritation, but it didn't seem to be directed at him, and Alex, lounging on the sofa beside her with a cushion clasped in his arms, looked positively smug.

'Morning, Yassen,' Clara greeted him. Alex thumped her hard over the head with the cushion. Clara said: 'ow!' and Yassen said: 'huh?'

'I'm conditioning her not to speak out of turn,' Alex explained with a smirk. 'It doesn't really seem to be working as of yet, but I'm sure we'll get there eventually.'

'Alex,' Clara said, 'I think you have been exposed to too many evil – oof!' She cut off with a splutter as Alex hit her again.

'Ya see what I mean?' Alex said, turning to Yassen. 'She is just physically incapable of shutting up.'

'I see.'

'Look,' Clara said wearily, rubbing her head, 'can you at least explain to me what kind of situation counts as "out of turn"? Just so I know?'

'It's out of turn whenever I think it's out of turn,' Alex replied. 'Oh yeah.' And he hit her with the cushion again.

'Alex...' Yassen began.

'If you're going to give me a lesson on tact and diplomacy, save your breath,' Alex interrupted. 'I don't take lectures from hypocritical assassins.'

'Assassins find use for tact and diplomacy from time to time, just like other people,' Yassen said.

'Oh, whatever,' Alex muttered, whacking Clara with the cushion.

'What?' she erupted. 'I did not speak!'

'Nah, I just felt like hitting you that time.'

Clara launched herself across the sofa and began to beat with her fists at Alex, who curled up into a ball and held the cushion over his head, laughing. Yassen was just thinking that his training hadn't prepared him for this and wondering whether he ought to try separating them when Taylor appeared at his shoulder, hauled Clara away, removed the cushion from Alex's grasp and disappeared off to the piano to work on a sheaf of music, all without saying a word.

'Wow,' Clara said after a short pause. 'That boy should be a global force for peace.'

'I suppose it was a lost cause, really. The whole getting you to shut up thing,' Alex sighed, stretching out on his back and extending his legs until Clara was squished up to the very end of the sofa.

'Alex, why are you in such an annoying mood today?' she asked. 'You're not your usual sweet self at all.'

Alex shot a conspiratorial look at Yassen from beneath his lashes and then stared innocently at Clara. 'I don't know. Maybe because I'm happy?'

'Happy? That's random.'

'Isn't it just? I reckon I've descended into the well of despair and come out the other side. I appreciate little things...' He traced a hand in a slow arc through the air, then let it fall back and began to shake. It took the other two a few seconds to realise that he was laughing his head off.

'Poor hysterical Rider-frog,' Clara said affectionately, ruffling his hair and standing up. 'Where's Rob? She ought to be down by now.'

'Has she not been up?' Yassen asked.

'Nuh-uh, I haven't seen her yet this morning. She should be up, it's not like she was out drinking last night or anything...in case there's something she hasn't told me about.'

She vanished and they heard her yelling up the stairs:

'RoBERta! If you don't get up now I'm not making your breakfast.'

'The sad thing,' Jane said as Clara returned to the living room, 'is that she knows you will. Because she doesn't normally bother with breakfast, but she knows you don't approve of skipping it and will get her some to make sure she eats it.'

'Ugh, I know, but what can you say,' Clara groaned, flopping onto the sofa and sitting on Alex's feet. 'Am I squishing you, Rider-frog? Tough. You shouldn't hog room like that.'

'What are you all yelling about over there?' Taylor called from the piano. I'm trying to work was the subtext.

'Roberta won't get up,' Clara answered.

'She'll be up like a shot if I go and jump on her,' Taylor said, getting up and exiting the room. They heard him pounding up the stairs, followed by the sound of a door creaking open.

'Oh, she'll be mad,' Clara murmured. 'Three, two, one...'

Silence.

And then footsteps, thundering along the landing, jumping every other stair and landing heavily in the hall. The door flew open and Taylor burst in.

'Rob's not there!' he yelled.

Alex shot upright. 'She's what?'

'Nothing there but bedclothes. Completely cold.'

'Were her clothes still there?' Alex asked, in a tone that didn't exactly chill Yassen, but struck him just the same. It was the voice of the agent, cool, cutting, authoritative. Not the kind of voice a child his age should have.

'I didn't look.'

'Right.' Alex stood. 'Where's Josh?'

'Outside,' Jane said in a cowed voice.

'Someone get him. We should tell K Unit –'

'Wait,' Yassen cut in. 'There is no need to panic yet.'

'What is it?' Alex's voice was terse. He sat poised on the edge of the couch, straining for action.

'Last night,' Yassen said evenly, 'I was walking in the snow by myself. I met Roberta outside, and we talked. I think I may have upset her. So I would guess that she simply wished to be alone for a while, and that that is why we cannot find her now.'

There was a silence as the others digested this statement. Yassen could guess that they were grappling with the idea of him and Roberta walking on their own in itself, trying to make their minds put it aside until they had sorted out the issue of where their friend was. Finally Clara sat back with a shaky laugh.

'Well, I guess...that explains it then, probably, though really! Disappearing off like that without telling us where she's going, when we're all so tense and strung up anyway. Typical.' She pushed herself off the sofa and made her way into the hall. 'I'm going to ring her up anyway, just to make sure, you know, that...' She tailed off. None of them wanted to voice that.

Yassen got up as well.

'Where are you going?' Alex demanded.

'Outside for some air,' he returned shortly.

'Could you take Josh his coat then, please?' Jane asked. 'He's been out there since we got up, drawing, and I'm worried he'll freeze. It's the big black one on the pegs in the hall.'

There were in fact three black coats on the pegs, one for each of the boys. Teenage boys didn't seem to wear anything apart from black. Yassen chose the one that looked best fitted to Josh's short, broad-chested build and carried it out with him.

Josh was standing at the edge of the lawn with his sketchbook, deeply absorbed in some withered heads of lilac blossom, capped with greyish, melting snow. Watching him, Yassen was no longer sorry that he had left him out of the brilliant moonscape of the night before. Josh would probably get more enjoyment out of capturing these dismal flowers. Yassen could imagine exactly how he would mutter: 'Christmas cards. It'll turn into a Christmas card scene no matter what I do with it.

Or words to that effect, anyway. Yassen amused himself by creeping up behind him as quietly as he could, planting his feet in the small patches where green grass was showing through the snow. When he was an arm's length away, he reached out and touched Josh on the shoulder. Josh greeted him nonchalantly enough, but Yassen knew it for an act. He had felt the boy jump, and violently too.

'Jane asked me to bring you your coat,' he said, holding out the garment.

'Oh, thanks,' Josh replied, taking it. 'Could you hold this while I put it on?' He handed Yassen his sketch pad.

'I think you ought to darken the lines here,' Yassen said, pointing at the sketch as Josh shrugged his way into his coat. 'It will help to bring these flower heads into the foreground.'

'Hey, do I tell you how to do your job?' Josh murmured.

Yassen looked up sharply. Josh's silver eyes held his for a moment, and then Josh grinned.

'Good advice,' he said, taking back the pad. He was wearing a grey metal stud through his eyebrow this morning, and it winked dully as he turned back to the bushes, sucking meditatively on the tip of his pencil as he considered their shape. There was a little grey line on his lower lip where the lead had rubbed.

Yassen watched over his shoulder for a moment and then walked slowly back across the lawn, until he came to the path that led up to the front door. The snow was half-melted, and the boys had trampled it as they made their way up the path in the morning, but he could still make out the prints Roberta had left, returning to the house after their walk. He recognised the pattern on the soles of her boots, a grid of little squares stamped into the snow. He didn't recall paying any particular attention to it the night before, but some part of his brain must have noted it and stored it away, to be remembered now. It was good to know that his instincts were still sharp.

He set his foot carefully in her first print and walked in them, all the way up the path to where the roof of the porch jutted out, and the ground was clear. Then he stopped, staring down at his shoes, thinking.

The front door opened.

'Guys!' Clara called. She was standing on the front step, her mobile phone clasped in her hand, face white as chalk. 'I can't get hold of her. I've called her landline and her mobile, and it just keeps saying: "signal not found."

'What!' Alex barked, stock-still behind her. Sounds came from inside the house, clatters, footsteps, cries of shock.

Yassen stood perfectly still, letting it all flow around him. His eyes were still on the footprints in the snow. As he walked he had noted the distance between him, and the gap between the last print and the point where the snow stopped was longer than Roberta's stride.

There was no suggestion of a struggle in the snow around, no mark but the footprints. And yet she had clearly never finished that walk up the path. It was as though she had been plucked straight up into the air.

A/N: Aaaaand CLIFFHANGER! I actually only thought of this as I wrote the end of the last chapter, so go me!

I owe you all an apology. I'm not majorly inspired for this at the moment. I'm trying to keep a trickle of updates going anyway, but I know that I'm writing horribly. He said this and she said that. Yuck.

But bear with me, guys. I'm close to finishing another couple of fics, which will free up my schedule, and as you can see things are going to start happening now.

True

i: Thanks a lot for your time. That's useful feedback. If I make Yassen fall in love, I'll try to show a realistic development of his character.

Happy!: Thanks a lot! That's really encouraging, it makes me think that you like my OC, which is wonderful to hear.