Rachel took a shuddering breath as she looked up at the detention center. Daniel was right inside those walls waiting to see her. Or well, he was waiting to see someone, she had no idea if he had actually been told who was coming to visit today. Leroy and Santana each stood next to Rachel looking at the building with as much distaste as Rachel felt. They could see Sue standing in the lobby through the glass front doors. She was looking out at the parking lot waiting on them to come in. When she saw that they still weren't moving she motioned them towards her with her hand, they really needed to get this show on the road or Rachel wasn't going to be able to see Daniel.
"Are you ready to do this?" Santana asked as she reached out and grabbed Rachel's hand giving it a firm squeeze. She knew that Rachel had been feeling uneasy all morning. She had refused every bite of breakfast that Santana had offered and only drunk a cup of black coffee.
"No...yes...I don't know." This visit had been all that Rachel could think about since she was told that she would be coming. There were little distractions here and there which made it a little more bearable, but now that she was standing here, she wondered how fast she could run away.
Sue looked through the front doors again after checking the time. She pointed to her watch and motioned for them to come in again. Finally Rachel seemed to be moving, her legs were walking her towards the door, however her mind was still standing next to the car. Leroy rested his hand on her back, he wasn't trying to push her. He was just letting her know that he was still there and that he wasn't going anywhere.
When they walked into the lobby Rachel kept looking around like she expected to see Daniel just sitting there. Stop panicking, she told herself as she walked over to where Sue was standing next to a sign in book.
"Sign in, you almost missed the sign in time for an 11 AM visit."
Rachel nodded and wrote her name, she tried to give a smile to the desk clerk that was sitting behind a large window. The woman just kept a scowl on her face as she glanced at the book. Her eyes widened when she spotted the name that had been written on the book. Sue cleared her throat and nodded to the door that led to the office exit.
"What was that about?" Rachel asked as they walked over to wear Leroy and Santana were sitting against the wall.
"She's going to get an officer to escort Daniel to the phone booths."Sue handed Rachel a visitors pass to clip onto her shirt. Rachel sucked in a breath as she started backing up down the hallway towards the doors. She couldn't breathe, she had just gotten here and signed in, why were they going to get him already? She stopped suddenly when she felt a hand on her arm, looking down she saw that her father was looking at her with worried eyes.
"Breathe honey, you're going to pass out." Leroy nodded his head as he continued to speak to Rachel trying to get her to calm down. "Whether or not you still want to do this doesn't matter unless you calm down."
Nodding her head furiously Rachel finally found her voice. "I want to do this, I have to do this." She gave one more determined final nod to her father. Sue had walked to the end of the hallway and was peaking around the corner when she saw the officer escorting Daniel in the phone booth room. He held up the number three, indicating that that was the booth he was placing Daniel in.
"Let's go if you're ready." Sue said as she walked back towards Rachel. "You go to booth three from the door."
Rachel took a deep breath as she willed her feet to move in the direction of a heavy looking white door with the words VISITING BOOTHS written in bright red paint.
Stepping into the room, Rachel could see that there were other people here visiting family or friends. Despite the security guard standing against the wall, other people there made her feel a bit better. She silently counted the booths off in her head as she approached the chair for booth number three. Holding her breath she placed her hand on the back of the chair and slowly sat down. She wasn't sure when she had closed her eyes, but she needed to open them.
She heard a barely audible gasp and slowly opened her eyes. There he was. She was face to face with the man who had helped kidnap her, yet set her free at the same time.
Daniel Porter really was a handsome man. Thirty-three years old, large muscular frame, shaved head and eyes so blue they almost looked silver. He stared at Rachel through the glass. Why was she here? No one had told him that this visit was with Rachel Berry, he just assumed his lawyer had came back for some reason or another. He motioned towards the telephone receiver on Rachel's side as he picked up his side and placed it to his ear.
"What are you doing here Rachel? How did you get them to let you in anyway?" Daniel spoke lowly, he didn't need the guards overhearing his conversation. Hell, they were probably listening anyway, it kind of was their job after all.
"I um..I came here to talk to you. Chief Sylvester pulled some strings and got me in." Rachel could feel her whole body shaking. She knew she was safe, yet she hadn't been this scared since the night she found Santana's cabin. She watched as Daniel scratched his head, keeping his eyes locked onto hers.
"Why are you here?"
"I have questions that only you can answer."
"Who said I have any answers?" Daniel slid back in chair crossing his left arm underneath his right that was holding the phone receiver.
Rachel rolled her eyes. She should have known that this was going to be harder than simply asking. "I said you do. Why did you tell me to run?" If he refused to answer any other questions, she needed this answer first and foremost.
"I don't know what you're talking about." Rachel could see it in his eyes that he knew exactly what she was talking about.
"Don't lie to me Daniel Porter, you told me to run that day in the bedroom when Marcus caught you." Sneered at him as she leaned closer to the glass. His eyes had went wide, he didn't think she was awake enough to remember all of that. Rachel didn't know where that had come from, maybe the anger from all of this was finally bubbling to the surface now that she was in the presence of one of her attackers.
He sighed as he looked over her shoulder at the guard who had moved a little closer to Rachel. "I knew your father didn't kill my mother. I tried to talk them out of it, but they just wouldn't listen. They were going to go after Hiram but then he died and so you became the new game."
"If you knew all of this why didn't you go the police on your own?"
Daniel shrugged his shoulders. "They're my brothers. I don't turn my back on family. I should have though."
Rachel was confused, he should have turned his back, was there something else going on that no one had told her about? "What do you mean, you should have? Why did you lower the dosage on the sleeping medicine you kept giving me? Why did you tell me to run?!"
Daniel sat up in his chair quickly causing it to squeak across the floor. Rachel watched as the guard walked over and put his hand on Daniel's shoulder giving it a firm squeeze, silently telling him to cool it. He looked at the guard and nodded his head.
"I was not going to go down alone in all of this. They kept trying to push it all off on me after they were arrested, then they were showed the picture of James, our lawyer went over your statement with each of us, listing the accusations. They keep changing their story now because of the evidence that the police keep finding. They called me after James shot that officer and told me that you were alive. They were going to find you and give you an overdose. The police would find the medicine in your system. The medicine bottles with my name on them had been packed in your bag that was at Woodland Cabins. The police would have come after me either way." Daniel's face had gone red, he was so angry at everything that was going on.
"So you told everything you knew before they could blame you."
"Of course I did. I thought we could all trust each other but they wanted me out since the beginning, I've never done everything they wanted me too. I was always the loner my best friend for the longest time was my mother. My mother was so tired Rachel, you know. She had fought so hard and we thought she was getting better until that last test before Hiram stepped in came through. He was that last glimmer of hope, I only found out about the test after treatment with Hiram started."
"If you had proof why didn't you show it to them?" Rachel was sitting on the edge of her seat rocking the chair forward on it's front legs. The guard had just told her that she only had five minutes left. Where had the time gone so quickly?
"I tried to show it to them during a family meeting, but they thought I changed the date and that it was an old test." Wow, Rachel had forgotten that when she first met Daniel he was working as an intern at a hospital in the city. "I got them to trust me with the sleeping medicine by letting them think I had drugged you at the bar."
"I lowered the dosage to keep them from accidentally killing you in the apartment and so that the sleeping medicine would look as if you had been taking an average dosage. Hard working Broadway star so stressed she's taking sleeping medicine just to rest properly, she goes to a cabin retreat for a little R&R and goes hiking, getting lost in the snow storm. It was a perfect plan to them." His voice sounded hollow now as if he was speaking from memory. He probably was, he knew the ins and outs of the plans that Marcus had cooked up.
"You were at the bar? You still didn't tell me why you told me to run." So now it was confirmed that Daniel was the one who drugged her in the bar. She hadn't heard anything about the security tapes yet, maybe they still hadn't seen it, or he was just good at avoiding the camera.
"I was, you were already blitzed when I got there. I let Marcus think I had done it, but I didn't drug you at the bar. I never gave you anything until you started coming out of whatever you were on at the apartment. I told him I already knew how much I had given you and that if he tried it and gave you too much he would kill you. He also would have made you look like a pin cushion. They needed me. So that and look out became my job until you left. " Rachel was shocked, she thought for sure that Daniel had been the one to drug her. If he hadn't done, then who in the hell had?
Daniel smiled as he sat closer to the glass. "Telling you to run, though? That was my revenge on them. I knew they were going to burn me if something went wrong, so I had to burn them first." That was the last thing he said as the guard said that their time was up. Rachel sat there for a moment as Daniel hung up the phone receiver and stood up waiting to be escorted back to his cell.
The door was already closing as Rachel jumped up out of her seat and sprinted out of the room. She ran past everyone that was standing there headed toward the hallway that she knew Daniel would most likely be walking down.
"Wait!" Rachel yelled, startling everyone around her. The guard that was escorting Daniel stopped and looked behind him at the woman who was standing at the metal gate. "Daniel...thank you...for telling me to run." Daniel simply nodded his head and turned back around to be led to his cell.
"Are you crazy?!" Sue bellowed as she followed Leroy, Rachel and Santana to their car. "You don't just take off running like that in a detention center. You could have been arrested or started some kind of riot in there!"
Santana rolled her eyes at Sue. She had been going on and on about this since Rachel had watched Daniel walk away. "Really? A riot? There was no one around except for us and a few guards coming onto shift."
"That's my point! You're lucky that gate was closed and those guards didn't have their belts on yet. You are not allowed back in there anymore." Rachel was just standing there, running through everything that she had found out during the visit.
"I don't plan on going back in there anymore. I got the answers I needed today, from him at least." Rachel looked up at the building. Her and Daniel were alike in some ways, he was always the outcast and so was she. However, drugging someone to prove herself wasn't in her repertoire.