Uncommon Bond

Chapter 35

Rated – NC-17/MA

Author: Batistafan(given name, given on request)

THIS IS THE SEQUEL TO UNCOMMON SENSE – If you have not yet read the first story, doing so may better help you to piece together the events and characters of this fiction…enjoy!

Disclaimer: This is a mature fanfiction intended for mature readers. This story contains graphic violence, as well as explicit, mature, consensual sexual situations and these would not be deemed appropriate for all readers.

I do not own nor claim to have any affiliation with the WWE, its characters, wrestlers, staff or other affiliates. I do own any original characters that I have created, as well as scenarios that ensue throughout the course of this fiction. However, since both my characters and scenarios are inexorably intertwined with those of the WWE, my ownership of them is not autonomous.

I do not endorse nor do I discourage the use of any brand-name products that might be referenced in the fiction and have no claim to them as they are property of their respective companies of license. Thank you kindly for not suing.

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"Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real."

Iris Murdoch
British novelist (1919 - 1999)

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They were passing countless businesses as they neared the downtown district of Seattle, where they would soon stop at the YMCA and retrieve the singular cache of information that held all of them in desperate sway. Evan could scarcely concentrate on anything, save for the end result of what the entire culmination of events might mean. He wanted out. Maybe a month or two ago he wouldn't have cared that he'd be required to kill someone, because little more than a month ago he had killed and he hadn't cared. But that was before he had settled upon the appealing task of setting his life back to rights and doing it with a woman that he loved.

He glanced for a mere millisecond in the rearview mirror and that was enough for him to see the silent but angry set to the dainty jaw of the woman who had been dragged into the whole situation completely unawares. She had a family; children, a husband and probably a pet or two. I was easily considered complete taboo to kill her, but Sullivan would. Scarcely more than a month ago and Evan himself might have killed her with little or no remorse. My, how love and the span of time could change things. He didn't want to see the woman die; she had just barely become a mother if their sources were correct. He was pretty sure she deserved a chance to see her child grow up, but he doubted his cohorts would agree with his logic.

Truth be told, he didn't even actually wish to see Barren die, despite all of the trouble she'd caused for everyone thus far. It didn't really matter that killing Barren and her friend would solve the current problem and erase the trail that would lead law enforcement right to them; Evan simply had lost his once insatiable taste for blood. At least for her blood anyway. There still remained one person in the vehicle that he dearly wished to snuff out; Sullivan. Of course he would kill him…Sully had it coming and was long overdue in Evan's opinion. Tulley also would have to die, due to his simple association and loyalty to Sullivan and the certainty that he would step between the two, should a skirmish arise. And so as Evan weaved in and out of early morning traffic, he was setting in motion a plan to kill both men, dispose of the pertinent and damning evidence once Barren had it in hand…and then he would let the two women go. After that he would change his name and all of the identifying factors so he could not be caught, should one or both of the women decide to go to the authorities. And finally he would make his way back to Lynn…because without the prospect of being with her for the rest of his life, he may as well let it all end today.

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It was simply the saddest thing Angie Bautista had ever borne witness to; the incessant, panicked wailing of the boy who could not be soothed. This was most certainly evidenced by the quiver of his lower lip and the hopeless squint of his tiny eyes as he fairly screamed in his discontent. She had no sooner entered the home of her ex-husband, upon hearing the clamor. One child crying in hunger and great dissatisfaction and a teenager crying in desperation, because she simply hadn't the knowledge or the experience to comfort the baby who had been left in her care.

"Let me have him." Angie prompted calmly after bolting the door behind her and then dropping her purse and keys on the coffee table with a resounding 'plop'.

"I don't know what to do." Vanessa sobbed. "I tried to feed him and he won't stop crying. H-He's not wet…I don't know what's wrong!"

Angie nodded as she took the baby boy in hand. "He senses you're upset and that's probably part of the reason he's upset." He wasn't her child, but he was a child and despite the fact that he belonged to her ex-husband's new wife, there was no animosity in Angie's heart for the boy. Angie had never been wired that way. Even if she hadn't been friends with the woman who could be considered her replacement, which was certainly not the case, she could never have transferred any harbored anger to a child. She quickly began speaking to the boy in soothing tones as she confidently paced the floor, with a gentle jostle, reassuring him that she understood little boys could have bad days just like adults. The cries of 'baby-bloody-murder' soon dissipated to a mere intermittent whimper of dissatisfaction, upon which he began to find himself lulled into sleep.

Angie, in her motherly experience soon had the boy out for the count, after which she quickly went to minister to her teenaged daughter who was still visibly distraught.

"I was so mean to her." Vanessa rasped, lost in her thoughts of failure. "I was mad at her for not remembering how things used to be. I treated her like it was all her fault."

Angie hooked her arm over the shoulders of her oldest child, who was apparently still just as vulnerable as her youngest one. "Everyone was frustrated with the situation, including Nancy. It's hard to know how to react when something like that happens."

"I practically ignored her when she came in my room today." Tears rolled over Vanessa's black lashes, sliding down her cheeks to land on the fabric of her pants as she sat cross legged on the sofa. "I was still mad at her even though we had made peace…I was just angry because I felt like she was still somehow robbing us of being a family."

"You had no way of knowing what was going to happen. You can't beat yourself up over this."

"She tried to tell me!" Vanessa insisted thumping her own chest with her forefinger. "And I had better things to do…I hardly even looked at her. What if she thinks I hate her?"

"Nancy knows you don't hate her."

Vanessa's face contorted into an expression of undeniable agony as the tears hit hard once more. She stared at the ceiling, her shoulders shaking as she wept. Finally she looked back at her mother. "What if something happens to her and the last thing she remembers was that I was mad at her? What if that's the last thing I remember about her, huh? What if I always remember the sad look on her face before she left, because she thought that I didn't care?"

"Even if you were mad at her, Vanessa," Angie began as she pulled both of Vanessa's hands into her own. "I can guarantee that's not the last thing she would remember…that thought would never even cross her mind."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I'm a mother and so I can promise you that any truly loving mother…even a stepmother, isn't selfish enough to think of her own hurt feelings." She tucked a stray hair behind her ear. "I can tell you what she will remember, though."

Vanessa wiped at her nose and waited for her mother to continue.

"She would remember the time the fan kicked on in the auditorium at your piano recital and it blew your sheet music in ten different directions. She'll recall how you panicked for a split-second and then you hitched up your chin and kept on playing; mistakes and all." Angie saw Vanessa crack a half-hearted smile. "I bet she would remember when we all got snowed in at Grandma Leticia's after Christmas dinner and you and Audrey and your cousins made up a theatrical production using Grandma's nightgowns, or she would remember when Audrey got lost at the pay-per-view in Madison Square Garden and you all had to call the police, but then found her in the sound truck hanging out with part of the crew."

"I think Vince McMahon pulled Dad into a pow-wow because of that one." Vanessa sniffed and let out a tiny laugh.

"See?" Angie encouraged. "Nancy would remember every good thing, or funny thing that you guys ever did or said, but never the bad…not in a time like this…she would never even think to dwell on the fact that you might have been mad at her, because she loves you. You'd be surprised what little sins love can override, especially in your children."

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"Why me?" Nancy asked timidly, her heart rapping furiously in her chest as she twisted the corner of her coat between two fingers. "I won't even know what I'm supposed to be looking for."

Barren, who had only moments ago, awoken from her elbow-induced stupor, had the temerity to cackle. "Knowing Duncan, like I do…we're on a scavenger hunt…and this is probably only the first leg of the journey." She rubbed her sore jaw and swallowed yet another small taste of blood. "You should definitely let me go in there."

"Why, so you can take off with whatever you find and leave me holding my nuts?" Sullivan inquired upon a slight air of sarcasm and then he turned once more to face Nancy. "Barren stays with me and you'll go inside with Tulley. He obviously can't follow you into the women's locker-room, but mark my words if you should decide to run, I can make it back to your house a lot faster in this car than you can on foot and I will most certainly do to your family exactly what I said I would."

Nancy nodded, consenting because she had no other earthly alternative. Barren had all of a sudden become uncharacteristically insubordinate, so Nancy couldn't count on the woman's unpredictability to save them both from disaster. If anything, that very fickleness on Barren's part was liable to land them both right in the middle of a ton of trouble.

Tulley reached over Nancy's lap and grasped the door handle, giving a gruff order for Nancy to step out and remain by the side of the car until he was able to get out himself to stand beside her. She could have bolted and run…she knew not a single one of those men would be fast enough to catch her if she did. Hell, even Dave couldn't catch her when she was at a dead sprint, unless there happened to be some sort of obstacle in her way. But running, she knew would only make things worse. Sullivan was right, even if she was able to get away and call home in time to warn her family, there might already be someone stationed at the house watching, waiting for Sullivan to give the order to kill them. Though he had not told her that there was someone there, it would not have been unheard of to think that he had employed some such individual. It was better not to risk it at all…or at least not to risk it this soon in the game.

Their walk was brisk but nonchalant, drawing no outward attention to the pair, as Tulley guided Nancy by force of a firm grip on her elbow, through the line of parked cars in front of the YMCA and then through the glass doors inside the building. The rush of warm air hitting Nancy in the face only added to the sense of nausea that she was already feeling, but a swift touch of her fingers to the metal key that dangled around her neck just beneath her shirt brought a sober reality in once more and the sickness fled instantly.

A petite woman in a baggy pair of khaki pants topped by a royal blue shirt with her name and title embroidered above her left breast, greeted them with a smile and inquired as to the nature of their visit.

"My wife and I are interested in a membership." Tulley answered with a suave ease that contradicted his outward rough and rugged appearance.

The woman gave a sharp nod, another smile and with a sweep of her hand she gestured toward the expansive building that spread out behind her. "Well we certainly have a number of programs, many of which I am certain should be able to fulfill any need you have. Aerobic, pilate and kickboxing classes everyday if you're interested."

Tulley gifted the woman with a knowing grin and then he turned to rake his eyes down the front of Nancy's body. "As you can see, my wife is in much better shape than I am." His voice held a sensuous nuance that sent a chill up Nancy's spine. "She certainly needs less work than I do."

"I'll be happy to show you all of our weight equipment." The woman announced, proudly. "We also just recently purchased five new elliptical trainers, as well as a few new treadmills and we have a new cycling class that's enrolling for the spring term."

"Honey, why don't you head to the locker-room and see if it meets your expectations." Tulley said as he gave a slight squeeze to Nancy's inner elbow, meant to be a subtle warning.

She nodded and took the woman's instructions as to where she could find the locker-room and then she turned to make her way there as quickly as she could. The cinder-block walls inside of the locker-room were painted a garish shade of high-gloss purple, which reminded Nancy of a tube of grape flavored lip-gloss that Audrey had once owned. But that was before Audrey had decided that it tasted better than it looked and chosen to eat it one afternoon. The memory sliced into the already battered exterior of her emotional shell and she felt tears as they formed; hot and moist behind her eyelids.

The locker-room also served as the ladies restroom and housed the whirlpool and sauna, so heavy in the air, hung the scent of chlorine and antibacterial soap. There was the sluicing of water and the loud whirring of the pump that sent the water into an over-chlorinated froth as she passed the first row of lockers, next to the whirlpool. None in this section of lockers happened to be the one she was seeking and so she passed them, along with a woman who was stuffing her laces into a pair of boxing shoes before tucking them away into her bag. Vanessa had a bag like that…a generic duffel that she had used just last year to house all of her scrap fabric when she'd had the idea of making a quilt. Nancy remembered how frustrated Vanessa had been with that project, but how satisfied she's become upon its completion. True enough the quilt was only large enough for a doll, but it was something that had required hours of work and they'd both had a blast with the trial and error of that quilt.

Swallowing back her sorrow and fear, Nancy made her way around the whirlpool to the back of the locker-room where the sauna was. That section of lockers seemed to be cordoned off by a half wall, of cinderblocks in the same high-gloss purple paint. She knew she had to be fast, needed to hurry so that whatever she found, she could still spare a moment or two to leave behind a clue. Not only that, she had to hurry or she ran the risk of angering the man she was with and she wasn't altogether sure that that was a good idea.

There it was; the locker, that belonged to the key…the key that had given her so damn much trouble for the past two and a half months. She had thought she'd ridden herself of it, this morning when she'd tossed it into the trashcan. No such luck. But now as she stood in front of the locker, tugging the key from around her neck, she found she was almost more fearful of not knowing what was in there, than actually knowing.

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Flying down the highway at a speed far too unsafe for him to be traveling, didn't bother Dave Batista. What was bothering him at present was the fact that the GPS locator for Vanessa's phone was so slow and inaccurate that it had spun him around in a damn near complete circle. Randy was manning the laptop and Dave drove, but the time delay was putting a kibosh on tracking the phone and thus keeping his wife just out of arm's length.

"Where the fuck is it now?" Dave muttered in a near growl as he jammed past a Nissan at a crawl in the passing lane.

"Off here—here…" Randy pointed toward the downtown exit and held onto the laptop for dear life as Dave swerved off of the highway onto the exit ramp narrowly missing the front end of a Ford Escort. "Jesus…" Was Randy's grumbled response, as the angry driver honked in protest.

"Down Furmor Street." Randy guided as Dave swung the massive Navigator through spaces between cars with surprising ease and determined accuracy. "This shows the last place the phone was. The YMCA?" His brow rose in question.

A blare of the horn, as Dave's hand jammed down into the center of the steering wheel. "Move Dammit!" He tore into the parking lot over the curb and slammed to a screeching halt in front of the building, heedless of the fact that he took up a good portion of the fire-lane.

Both men jumped from the vehicle and dashed into the building. Randy's eyes were scanning the interior, even as he weaved quickly between the machinery, hoping for a sign of either woman. Dave however hunted down the very first staff member he could find and swung her around to face him, by her elbow. She was surprised and somewhat afraid, that much he could tell from her expression. Likely he shouldn't have been so abrupt in his greeting, but he was less concerned with cordiality than he was with finding his wife. "A woman—" He blurted. "She's short, has long dark hair, wearing a pair of tan Capri pants—was she here?"

The woman took a step back, rubbing her elbow. "I see more than thirty or forty women in here a day. How do you expect me to remem—"

"Less than an hour ago, she would have been in here!" He began in a clearly irritated tone, jamming a copy of his wedding photo into her hand. "Think!"

"I have a responsibility to keep some level of confidentiality for our clients, potential or current." The woman snapped, still rubbing her elbow as she studied the photo.

Dave gritted his teeth and addressed the woman in his most serious manner. "If she was even contemplating becoming a member, I assure you it'll never happen if I don't get to her pretty quick." He pointed a finger toward the woman's chest for emphasis. "Because she'll be dead, and your sense of confidentiality puts her blood on your hands."

The woman lowered her gaze to the photo as if she was contemplating whether she should tell him what he wished and then she lifted her eyes. "This woman was in here…" Her voice seemed to waver. "She was with a man…a big man, stocky…"

"I need you to be specific about why they were here." Dave palmed the photo as she passed it back to him and then tucked it into his wallet

"The man was inquiring about a membership. He said they were married and I noticed that his wife didn't speak; they seemed like a very odd match." She shook her head and let out a tiny laugh. "But you know you never can tell with people…sometimes you get the occasional odd couple in here and you—"

"Did they come in here for something specific?" He pressed, cutting into her ramblings. "Did they leave with anything?"

"Well the woman went into the locker room…and the man allowed me a tour, which was cut short when she came back, but—"

Dave and Randy turned simultaneously in a beeline for the women's locker-room ignoring the rest of the staff member's explanation.

"Sir! You can't go in there!" She shouted out toward the both of them, but received no response.

There were several gasps from half naked women as the two hulking wrestlers entered the locker-room and began a methodic search, for what, neither man could say. Any clue as to Nancy and Barren's whereabouts could be found in the locker-room…or none at all. It was a crapshoot at best, but it was all he had.

Through the rows of lockers he stalked, half believing he might find her face down in the whirlpool. His heart was pounding thick and intensely in his chest as if a bass drum had taken up residence behind his ribcage. It was then that he saw the locker, slightly ajar, as if someone had merely left it open while walking away for a moment. Hanging out of it—was the corner of Nancy's blue fleece jacket.

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Sullivan was fuming as the BMW screamed down the road. "And you're certain there was no package? Nothing of any sort? No envelope?" He asked succinctly. His eyeballs felt like they were boiling in his head.

"No, just the numbers I wrote on my hand." Nancy responded meekly. "If there was a package I promise I would have given it to you." She rubbed her wrist to abate the sting of where Tulley's fingers had bitten into the flesh there when he'd thrown her into the car.

Barren's only response was a throaty laugh soon enough stifled by the sharp tug of hair as Tulley grasped a handful. "I told you people…Duncan was smarter than all of you…He's set us on a wild goose chase."

"Geese get shot." Sully reminded. "Just like Duncan did." He held the paper up and surveyed the numbers he'd copied from Nancy's hand. No earthly idea what they could mean, he growled his frustration. "Any idea about these numbers?" He turned to Barren and asked.

"How the hell would I know? I'm just as clueless as all of you."

The ride for the next 25 miles was as silent as a wake for the dead as Nancy lifted her left hand, examining her sore wrist and then turning it over to glance at the numbers on her palm. If they couldn't determine where the next step of the chase would begin, then the chances of her staying alive long enough to make it home to her family, where whittling away to nothing. The numbers in the locker had been written in permanent marker but they'd been on the ceiling of the locker. She might never have found them if she hadn't been so desperate to find anything, when she'd thought she had stumbled upon nothing. So in desperation, she'd stuck her head into the locker as if the action would somehow force anything to materialize, and that was when she'd noticed the numbers. So far, the gridlocked trio of enforcers had not yet noticed that she'd left the fleece sweater behind and she would be hard pressed to come up with a reason should they ask about it. It was hard enough to think in this car, squeezed between Tulley and the car door, let alone formulate a plan of escape for herself, but she had to do something. Knowing that the more value she attached to her own life, the bigger the chances of her survival, she set her mind to cracking what must surely be some sort of code and that was when it struck her.

If Dave had been savvy enough to remember to track her from Vanessa's phone, he would be using coordinates—Longitude and Latitude. It had to be. "I know what they mean." Nancy said in a small timid voice.

Sullivan snorted. "How in the bloody hell would you know? You're not even involved in the specifics." He turned to face forward again, dismissing her claim as part of a desperate attempt to add value to her own life.

"She said Duncan was smart, right." Nancy reminded them, only slightly afraid that she might end up pushing the wrong buttons on his temper. "Maybe it was all about specifics…so much about specifics that any idiot could figure it out…the best way to hide something from someone is to make so obvious that you overlook it."

"Oh is that how you managed to hide the key from me?" Barren asked.

Nancy rewarded her with a scowl. "You really don't know when to shut up do you?"

"Enough!" Sullivan put a stop to the argument before it could become explosive. "Well…" He pinned Nancy with an icy stare and rolled his hand as if to hurry her explanation.

"It's latitude and longitude." Nancy announced, a bit more courageously. "I bet if we enter that into the GPS on your dash, we'll find your package…and then you can let us go."

A pensive sigh fluttered through Sullivan's lips and then he entered the numbers into the GPS and was rewarded with a location in the Oregon woods, very near the Hood River area. He turned to face Nancy. "Well, Sweetheart…let's hope your hunch is right, because you're betting your life on it."

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It wasn't as if Barren truly felt or meant the obstinacy she was currently exhibiting. There was simply no other way to mask her vulnerability than to appear nonchalant and uncaring. The fact that everyone in the vehicle including Nancy, was buying the charade told her that she was accomplishing her goal. And what exactly was her goal? Even she couldn't answer that fully, being as it was likely that accomplishing any facet of any goal would endanger the lives of the friends she had made. Yet to save those friends meant that she would have to sacrifice the very thing she had been sent to accomplish. It was very apparent that she would have to choose. Choose between Nancy's existence and her own, between taking down the IRP and restoring the bonds she'd shattered the moment she'd inserted herself into the picture.

One thing she knew for sure was the tension between she and Nancy had to be stoked as one would a dying flame. Because it was that very tension that was putting the current dynamic off balance. Sully and his men had to believe that a fist fight was a mere breath away. Barren likened the theory to a mother attempting to wrangle two fighting siblings in a grocery store. Much as that self same mother might forget half of her shopping list amidst the chaos, Barren was banking on Sully's men forgetting one detail of their well-laid-out plan, making one small mistake upon which Barren could capitalize and then turn the tables in her favor.

Barren was reluctant to start a major battle inside the confines of the vehicle not only because it could cause a wreck, but also because she was leery about being on the receiving end of another one of Tulley's elbows. It couldn't hurt to cause a little verbal scuffle however and so she leaned forward and glanced sidelong at Nancy, who she witnessed was staring out the window, most likely wishing she was home.

"So…" Barren piped up. "What makes you think that she's right about the numbers, Sully? The only calculations she deals with lately are how many square-feet of distance she can put between herself and her husband."

Nancy's head whipped around, much as Barren had known it would, but she hadn't been prepared for the jade glitter of Nancy's eyes, as they lanced through her. "You really are a class act…" She hissed. "If you hadn't been in the road in the first place, we never would have that wreck! None of this would have happened if not for you."

"You're right, if I hadn't been in the middle of the road…you'd have just kept on driving to whatever hotel it was that the two of you reserved for your—" A sharp slap to her cheek, as Nancy fairly dove over Tulley's lap, cut off any further vocal accusations from Barren.

"Don't ever accuse me of something like that, again." Nancy seethed, her palm stinging from the contact with Barren's cheek.

"That's quite enough now…" Tulley chuckled, obviously enjoying the raging battle between the two women. He tugged Nancy back into position beside him, but his attempt at keeping the peace didn't last for long.

Nancy nearly exploded once more when Barren had the audacity to laugh out loud. "I'm telling you, you'd better keep your mouth shut or I'll kill you myself and save them the trouble!" Nancy warned with an uncharacteristic hardness in her voice, mirrored by her angry countenance. "I'm not gonna let your bullshit, cost me my life."

Barren's laugh transformed to an amused snort and she replied. "Honey, if you actually think they're gonna let either of us live once they have what they're after, then your dumber than Randy said you were."

This comment was apparently amusing to more than just Barren, for it brought forth a round of laughter from all but the driver of the car and Nancy herself, who used the split second distraction to discreetly slide the cell phone between the seat-cushion on her left side. In the event that they did kill her, at least the police would have someway of tracking the vehicle and catching the men, even if they didn't come across her body straightaway. At least she was hoping that her plan would work, life had proven itself very unpredictable in the past, so she wasn't banking on it changing anytime soon.

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With his hands shaking, Dave pulled the sweater gently from the locker, lifting it up to check for signs of blood. Satisfied that there was no visible evidence that she had been hurt, he fished inside of the pockets hoping for a clue of sorts, but found nothing more than a long forgotten receipt for gasoline.

"What are you trying to tell me, Nancy?" He muttered the inquiry on a frustrated sigh, as he tucked the sweater beneath his arm and leaned down to peer inside of the locker.

It was empty, save for a layer of dust, recently disturbed by the sweater that had been thrust inside and then upon closer inspection he spied a tiny piece of toilet paper that had been wedged between the back wall and upper ceiling of the locker. Dave's eye caught it and with the glimpse of it, his eye noticed something else. Far too large a man to force his head and torso inside of the tiny locker, he resorted to spinning around and shoving the sweater in Randy's hand, his eyes flitting in all directions in search of a solution.

"What are you doing?" Randy asked, confused as to why his friend was interested in an empty locker when time was slipping away from beneath them both.

"There's something written in here and I can't see it." His response was both irritated and dismissive as he turned and then without asking, snatched a make-up mirror from the hand of a young lady who was sitting on the bench in obvious fear for her life. The abrupt action elicited a slight whimper of fright from the woman yet she made no move to run and hide, finding herself just the least bit interested in what he was doing.

Dave thrust the mirror into the locker, tilting it so that the numbers he'd glimpsed, written on the upper ceiling of the locker were completely visible. They were backward in their reflection and since he didn't want to take the chance of forgetting them once he committed them to memory, he turned his head to Randy and demanded in a clipped voice. "Pen."

Randy, who was scrambling through his pockets, could not produce one and so he turned to the frightened woman, noticing her make-up bag wide open on the bench. He reached inside snatching up some womanly implement which he deduced to be eyeliner. Another frightened, over-embellished squeal from the female victim on the bench and Randy furrowed his brow, addressing her. "Relax, would you? No one's gonna hurt you." He then turned, holding the eyeliner poised above the skin of his wrist where he jotted down the numbers as Dave read them off.

"I'm not sure how much help these will be, but there's a reason she led us to this locker." Dave said absently as he handed the woman her mirror. He noticed that she hugged it to her chest protectively as if she thought he might wish to keep it.

Randy tossed the eyeliner back into the woman's bag and both men headed for the door, amidst rude comments from the suddenly, much braver group of females. He even 'took one for the team', in the form of a toilet-paper roll in the dead center of his back as he reached the door. It bounced off harmlessly and he ignored it as they both strode through the door into the main area, met by the petite staffer and two over-inflated security guards.

Randy and Dave walking side by side at a swift pace apparently served as a deterrent and the guards both stood aside to let them pass in wordless haste. Both men were back in the Navigator, checking the status of the GPS and voicing their summations of what they'd found, when it suddenly hit Randy as to what the numbers on his wrist might be.

"That's latitude and longitude, Dave." Randy blurted, hopefully. "Look at the computer—the last reading that it gives of their location. They're obviously still moving, but look…Same type of numbers as these." He pointed out.

"These are on the same grid and if this is actually where they're headed, then we have a hell of a drive and they already have a hell of head start." Dave concurred, turning the key in the ignition and peeling away from the curb, leaving Randy to grasp the laptop in haste to prevent its sudden fall to the floorboard.

"Maybe we should get the cops involved." Randy suggested, swallowing a lump of regret.

Dave arched an eyebrow in a momentary sidelong glance before speaking. "And what would you suggest I tell them?" He asked, squeezing the large vehicle in between a semi and a school bus. "That my wife and your future fiancé were kidnapped from my home and we know where their going, based solely on numbers scribbled in eyeliner, on your arm and a fleece jacket my wife left in a locker?" Dave shook his head in incredulous fury. "The amount of time it would take to entertain questions that we don't have the answers to, is not time we can spare."

Randy nodded as if he agreed but his statement contradicted his action. "Suppose we just call 911 and report a murder about to take place…you know like when someone calls in a bomb threat? It might get their attention." He reasoned. "What if we give them the coordinates and then hang up and let them send someone from another county out there?"

"Are you a fuckin' idiot?" Dave asked calmly as if he expected an answer, even though his face indicated an explosion of rage boiling beneath the surface. "That's asking for more trouble than we can deal with. Suppose we do call and suppose the police catch up to us before they find them? What do you think the charges might be for something like that? For phoning in what they would term as a bogus threat?" His voice had risen measurably.

Randy's face screwed into an irritated scowl and he finally lost his cool. "I'm grasping at straws, man!" He admitted. "I don't have any better ideas, but doing something! Anything besides sitting in here and following a stone-aged GPS signal seems a little on the passive side!"

"Well if I had known I was going to have to mount a search and rescue mission this morning, I'd have had the forethought to charter a fucking plane!" Dave snapped.

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