Hailey watches in horror through the window as the woman with the red hair sticks a needle in her mother's arm and lowers her to the grass. She pulls a gun from inside her black trenchcoat as Aunt Vanessa races back to the suburban.
"Daddy, you have to wake up, you have to," Hailey begs, shaking his shoulder again. But he remains unmoving, unconscious, and she rushes to dig in his jacket pocket until she finds his phone.
Her small fingers keep trembling, like tiny heartbeats exist in each tip, but she remembers the passcode, 100805, the day her parents met, and goes to the app the second the device unlocks.
"Don't worry, Daddy. You won't get lost again."
Hailey presses the button just as Vanessa wrenches the door open.
"Hailey, honey, we have to go," her aunt insists.
Hailey quickly buries the phone deep inside his jacket's inner pocket, the one he told her was like a secret compartment.
"That's why it's my favorite," he explained with a smile just a few nights ago, letting her explore all of the fabric's ins and outs. "Tons of places for surprises and secret weapons."
She hustles to climb from her booster seat towards Vanessa's outstreched hand, but as Hailey's fingers embrace the curl of her aunt's, a quieted shot, a strange phut, snaps through the air.
Hailey jumps, Vanessa gasps. It's hard to see in the darkness, but the bloom of red in the middle of her aunt's white shirt stands out in the glow of headlights.
Vanessa's fingers go loose in hers.
"No!" Hailey gasps, trying to hold onto Vanessa's hand. But the woman collapses to the ground. And Hailey has to let go.
"I'm so sorry you had to see that, sweetheart," a woman's voice sighs. Hailey scrambles backwards, pressing into the side of her dad's arm. "Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you," the lady coos, but her eyes are scary, her hair dark like the color of blood on her aunt's shirt.
No, this woman's gaze is like ice.
"You hurt my mom," Hailey argues, but the woman merely offers her a smile.
"I just made her go to sleep. Both of you are coming with me. Whether you want to or not. But you don't want me to have to give you a shot too, do you?"
Hailey glares at the evil woman's smile, but her skin prickles at the memory of the needle. It looked like it hurt going in her mommy's arm.
"My daddy," Hailey says, but the woman waves her off, like he isn't even there, and snaps her fingers.
"I have no use for him."
Hailey doesn't know if that's a good thing or not, but she slowly begins to crawl towards the bad lady even though she knows it's wrong; she has no choice.
"Good girl," the woman praises, like Hailey's some kind of baby, and wraps her long fingers too tight around her arms.
She hoists her out of the car, over Aunt Vanessa, and Hailey tries not to look, to cry. Not in front of this woman. Hailey's forced to wait at her side as the woman holds onto her by the collar of her blue jean jacket, keeping her eyes closed while she pulls out a cell phone from her coat pocket.
"I've got what I need, come get yours," she murmurs into the phone, nudging Hailey on ahead like a dog on a tight leash. "Okay. Yes, soon. Bye."
The woman lets her go as they reach Serena and Hailey drops to her knees, grabbing her mother's limp hand. She checks her pulse like Aunt Blair taught her, feeling the weak thud of life beneath her fingertips.
"Alright, sweetie, I'm going to put your mom in the car then you're going to get in after her," the woman says, nodding to a car parked amidst the bushes and trees, black and sleek and easy to hide in the dark. "If you try to run away or do anything bad..." The woman shows her the gun. "I don't want to shoot your mommy, but I will, got it?"
Hailey doesn't answer, but she nods, sticking close to her mom as the woman lifts Serena up by her underarms and drags her to the car. The door to the backseat is already open and after Serena is lying down across the seats, Hailey climbs in. She maneuvers over her to the spot where her mom's head rests, gently slipping beneath so Serena can sleep with her head in Hailey's lap.
"Don't worry, Momma," Hailey whispers when the woman slams the door shut on them. "Daddy will be okay. He'll find us."
The woman slides into the front seat, starts the car, and meets Hailey's eyes in the rearview mirror.
"My, my, you are your mother's daughter," she comments, easing the vehicle out of the trees, towards the road. "Such a fiery gaze."
"You killed my Aunt Vanessa," Hailey grinds out.
"She got in my way," the woman shrugs, driving the car in the opposite direction from where they were going with Aunt Vanessa and her FBI team.
"My mom's going to get you," Hailey states boldly. The woman only looks back at her with a raised eyebrow, a smile on her lips that makes Hailey's stomach flip.
She reminds her of one of the villains from her favorite Disney movies - Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, the stepmother from Cinderella, the evil queen from Snow White.
"You think so? Isn't she one of the good guys, though? Not a fan of the whole murder thing?"
"She puts the bad guys behind bars." Because if this woman is the villain, that makes her mom and dad the heroes. And the heroes always win, they have to. "Like you."
Her gaze fails to become any less scary, but Hailey refuses to look away until the evil woman finally redirects her gaze to the road.
"Mm, I'll guess we'll just have to see, won't we?"
Hailey leans back in the seat and glances down at her mother. This Maleficent is so sure that she's won, that she can get away with killing Aunt Vanessa, with kidnapping them. But Hailey knows Milo will find their dad and together, they'll find Hailey and her mom.
Because she was there when her older brother was explaining a special feature on their dad's new phone to Serena and she remembers what Milo said to do in an emergency.
She pushed the panic button.
When Dan feels the edges of consciousness tugging him out of the darkness, he can tell he's been out for a while, his mouth dry like cotton, his head like a brick. But as he tries to draw his hands forward, he's met with resistance, cords around his wrists that he knows without having to see.
The lids of his eyes protest, but he forces them to open. The crust of blood along his left eye sticks to his lashes, weighs them down, but he fights to pull of sleep, blinks until his vision focuses. The first thing he notices is that Serena isn't here, neither is Hailey, and that this isn't his old cell of a room in that deserted cabin in the woods. Neither of those absences is reassuring.
No, this place is different, more lived in, and he's tied to a chair. If he was back at the old location, he has no doubt Tripp would have him strung up like a ragdoll already.
"Ah, look who's awake."
Dan's gaze flies towards the sound of his worst nightmare personified, strolling into the room with his hands tucked into the pockets of his suit, that hint of a sadistic smile that still haunts Dan's dreams.
"You know, Dan, I have to say," Tripp begins, venturing further into the room with an intrigued tilt of his head. "You amaze me."
Dan curls his hands into fists at his back, flexes his fingers and tests his bindings, feeling the wire cut into his skin.
"Six years we kept you locked up in that room, barely ever letting you even see daylight, and you're still kicking it. I gotta tell ya, I wasn't planning on keeping you half that long," Tripp muses, as if they're reminiscing over a fond memory, one that has Dan's stomach churning. "I thought two would probably be the max, that you'd break for sure, and then I could go through with the original plan. Kill you and send your body to Serena van der Woodsen's doorstep."
Dan jerks in the seat at the sound of her name in Tripp's mouth, earning a twisted smirk as the other man sits against the adjacent table to face him.
"But Maureen... that woman is a sociopath with a more sadistic mind than even mine and I love her for it," he chuckles, lacing his fingers between his knees. "She wanted to physically and mentally destroy you, mostly to destroy Serena, and then send you back into society. Of course, you caught onto this plan since - apparently - the experimental drugs she was testing on you didn't do their job well enough, and you broke out before we could wipe your memory. The stamina you've got, though. I can't help but be impressed."
"Stamina?" Dan repeats on a rasp, glowering at Tripp despite the weakness of his voice. The other man nods.
"Like I said, six years. And you still had the will to break out of there, never gave up or begged us to kill you. And while we're giving out praise here, I have to hand it to Serena too," he acclaims, shaking his head as if in disbelief. "She keept looking for you like a dog with a bone for years, finally caves and marries some other guy - Carter Baizen, by the way, a real catch - and then dumps him for you. It's barely been a month since you got away. If I'm remembering correctly from when I bugged your place all those years ago, you guys had quite the healthy sex life. How long did it take her to drag you to bed? And - oh, tell me, what does she think of my handiwork?"
The legs of the chair screech against the floor at the revolt of Dan's body straining forward and Tripp chuckles.
"You know, I never found the whole blood and gore thing very satisfying, but Maureen does, and watching you suffer, finally paying your penance for all of you guys trying to ruin my life; my political career, back then... it was worth every crack of that whip to your back."
"Then why do you still need me?" he gets out. "Can't you just live your psychotic happily ever after without me in the picture?"
"That's just the thing, Dan. You've proven that as long as you're alive, you'll always pose a problem for me, always be in the picture whether I want you there or not. So, at least, I'm going to make you disappear for real this time. Meanwhile..." Tripp reaches beside him for a laptop, flips the screen open.
Dan's heart goes still, threatens to shatter.
Serena lies strapped to a metal table, squirming against her restraints, while Hailey sits tied to a chair against the wall. Her glare is fierce and trained on Maureen, who stands in front of a large computer screen with... Serena's face and what is unmistakably the outline of a surgical procedure to remove it.
"Maureen will take care of her. And well, as for the little brat, I'm obviously not a fan of kids, but she thinks the rugrat will make a good mentee."
"Let them go," Dan growls, his blood beginning to boil, his skin feverish, but Tripp merely clucks his tongue.
"You see, I would, but again, Serena presents the same problem as you do and the kid is just collateral. Always was. You know, you're lucky that buddy of Serena's dad was killed in prison before he learned about that one," Tripp informs him, nodding to Hailey on the screen. "Giving me the idea to take you, break her, was one thing, but boy, if he would have known you guys had a bun in the oven-"
"William? What buddy?" Dan echoes in a moment of confusion, fearing the concussion he surely has from the crash is interfering with his clear thinking, but Tripp exhales a long sigh.
"Max was his name, I think. You know, big old Willy made some bad enemies over the years. And without Serena's knowledge, she helped her father put Max away, even humiliated him in the process. Let's just say he wasn't too happy about that. He wanted revenge, managed to contact me, and the master plan was born," Tripp says with a shrug. "He knew losing you on her wedding day would make her snap. He was almost right. But in the end, he died thinking he got what he wanted, Maureen's about to slice your girl's face off and take your kid, and then I'm going to kill you. So we all win. You know what I'm most excited for, though?"
Dan squares his jaw as Tripp leans in closer.
"I can't wait to see your face while you watch her die."
Dan thrusts his head forward, slams it into Tripp's nose.
"You son of a bitch," he hisses, stumbling back with a snarl, cupping his bleeding nose with his hand. "You never learn, do you? Fine, you know what? I remember where practically every scar on that back of yours is."
Tripp yanks open a drawer and withdraws a knife. Dan only glares back, his face throbbing and thick with blood. But he's done being afraid.
"You know, I've written characters like you, Tripp," Dan mutters, even as Tripp approaches with the hunting knife, circling Dan's chair. "Cunning psychopaths so narcissistic they believe they can't be caught, but it always ends the same. You always lose."
Dan grits his teeth against the slash of the blade through his shirt, through one of his deeper scars, and squeezes his eyes shut as the pain surges outwards from the opened wound and spills through his back.
"Yeah?" Tripp says, tearing through another strip of scar tissue, and Dan struggles to stay conscious, to focus on anything other than the pain sending black spots spiraling through his vision. "Well, not this time."
She wakes up groggy, her body too heavy and her head clouded with confusion and bad dreams. The gag in her mouth making it hard to breathe-
Serena's eyes flash open, the glare of fluorescents harsh, but she blinks past the blinding light, flexes her legs, her arms. Both are bound, her body laid flat and strapped down to a cool surface.
"Mommy."
The whisper of her daughter's voice has her head jerking to the right, where Hailey sits on a tall stool, her small wrists bound together with zipties and her face pinched with terror. Serena yanks at her bindings, and the table she's on rattles with the movement.
"Ah, Serena, you're awake. Good, we can get started," Maureen's cool voice spills through the room. Plastic on the walls, construction materials pushed into the corner near the door, but the computers against the front of the space and the camera overhead are all new and in use.
She's in Maureen's temporary lair, that much is immediately apparent, and her daughter has been dragged into this hell with her.
"Despite the situation," Maureen states, coming to stand beside the head of the table Serena is strapped to. She places her hand on a metal stand beside her, her fingers dancing over a bag of tools that gleam beneath the lights.
Not just a lair then. A makeshift surgical suite.
"I admire you, I always have. Even when you fucked my husband," she continues, reaching out to brush her fingers along Serena's cheek. Serena lurches away from the touch, flexes her wrists beneath the bindings once more. "Such a perfect face. I wonder if Hailey will inherit the same lovely features. Too soon to tell right now."
Serena grunts, flicking her eyes to Hailey, who's watching with her knees pulled up to her chest.
"I didn't want to tie her up," Maureen sighs, casting a long-suffering look over to Hailey. Serena's heart picks up speed, rage and panic overtaking her chest. She has to grit her teeth, bite her tongue before she growls at Maureen for even looking at her daughter. "She did so well on the drive over and I was going to allow her to remain free, help me even, but then she tried to bite me on the way in here."
Good girl.
"As I've told your child, there's no point in resisting," Maureen continues. "In fact, if you accept that, I can remove the gag."
Serena coils her fingers around the railing of the table, along the opposite side and out of Maureen's view. She finds a bolt beneath her fingertips that moves at her touch and subtly tests the restraint, the strength of it. If she can just buy them some time...
She nods and Maureen adopts a pleased half-smile, what Serena assumes is all she can physically manage, and begins to ease the gag down to Serena's chin.
"Good. And please, don't scream. It's tedious and as your daughter knows, no one can hear you." Maureen stands to dim the lights and reaches for a remote beside the table that causes it to tilt forward. "Besides, this won't take very long, will all be over very soon."
"You can still save yourself," Serena tries to reason, her throat dry and protesting the words. She glances back to Hailey, forces a swallow to coax her larynx into working, to keep going. She has to keep going. "Kidnapping and murder are crimes, but if you plead guilty, as an unwilling accomplice to Tripp-"
Maureen chuckles and activates the green light that shines directly onto Serena's face.
"I've already been saved," Maureen explains simply, retrieving another device from the floor, scanning it along Serena's face, and eventually causing a graphic to appear on one of the computer screens. "I used to be ashamed of who I was inside, the things I dreamt of doing, but then I met Tripp and it was like... coming home. I would never turn on him. I would think that you of all people would understand that."
"What are you talking about?" The image of her face on the screen becomes more defined, contours and features steadily beginning to integrate onto the graphic. "And what are you doing?"
"One question at a time, please." Maureen replies, admiring the detailed image on the monitor. "What I meant is that you spent six years pining after Dan Humphrey, seemingly certain he was alive, despite the odds, and you took him back despite the circumstances. Why? Because he's your great love and you would do anything for him. Just as I would for Tripp."
Serena scoffs, scrapes her nails along the stitching of the restraint. "You can't honestly believe that he won't kill you once you're no longer useful to him." Maureen rolls her eyes. "Have you not seen what he's done in the past? I can help you, Maureen."
"You are helping me, which leads to your next question - with all the police attention, I'll need a new face. Thank God for that one semester of biology I took in college. And your father has been a great help as well. Though, I guess if he would've known what I would do to his daughter, he wouldn't have let me watch him perform his work for so long." Maureen returns to stand beside her, running her fingers along Serena's cheek once more, even as Serena turns her head away. "Because there is no other face I would rather have than yours."
Hailey gasps and Serena struggles against the instinctive panic continuing to fill her lungs, closing her fingertips around the loosening bolt alongside the table that's keeping the strap of her restraint in place.
Maureen smiles, turns back towards the computer screen.
"You can't have my mommy's face!" Hailey protests, jumping down from the stool. "You said you weren't going to hurt her!"
"That was then," Maureen answers without sparing a glance in Hailey's direction. "Now, please get back in your seat before I tie you to it."
"It doesn't matter what kind of face you have, you'll always be ugly on the inside," Hailey snaps and Maureen rises from her chair, faces the girl with ice in her eyes. Hailey only glares back at her, all feisty and brimming with attitude.
Serena has never been more proud. And terrified.
"Your daughter has quite the mouth on her," Maureen states tersely. Serena ignores her, gritting her teeth as the table lowers back to its horizontal position.
"Hailey, come here," she calls, earning the obedient pivot of her daughter's body towards her, the rush of footsteps to her side. "It's going to be okay, baby. I promise, just-"
"Momma, she killed Aunt Vanessa," Hailey tells her, the words starting to melt into a whimper, her bound hands ascending to prop on the edge of the table near Serena's shoulder. "And she made me leave Daddy."
"Your daddy is in good hands," Maureen interjects, walking up behind Hailey.
"Don't touch her," Serena snarls, shaking the table with the jerk of her body.
But Maureen draws Hailey back by the collar, nudges her towards the stool against the wall once more.
"Tripp's always taken such good care of him."
Something inside of her threatens to finally snap. The dark horror in Dan's eyes every time he awoke from a nightmare, the demolished plains of his back and the barely healed gunshot wound on his side, all flash behind her eyes. Serena jerks harder against her restraints, scratches furiously at the slackening strap, feeling the skin of her fingertips going raw, starting to bleed.
"Let him go," she demands, struggling against Maureen's touch as the other woman draws the gag back up to cover her mouth. "Don't you dare hurt him. Don't you dare-"
Her words go muffled and she tries not to scream beneath the gag, solely for Hailey's sake. She waits for Maureen to turn back around instead, to resume her twisting of the bolt beneath her hand, and rotates her head to catch Hailey's gaze as she does. She holds her daughter's petrified blue eyes, but when Serena attempts her most reassuring nod, Hailey swallows hard and nods back.
She wonders if this is at all similar to how her mom felt when she was a little girl, adamantly refusing a nightlight even though she was still afraid, choosing to stare down the dark instead. Only this was worse than a dark room at bedtime.
This is the kind of darkness that could swallow them whole.
A/N: Thank you for all the reviews! You'll hear more from me in my Author's Note soon. I just want to let you enjoy these chapters in peace without my personal ramblings getting in the way. Xx