"Where are Nick and Peter now?" Callen said gruffly. Sorting out what Joelle had told him, her connection with Janvier, the lies, the CIA involvement… it would all have to wait for now.
"They're here, on this ship. They've been here since Saturday. They're unharmed for now, but I have to keep doing what Janvier wants, Callen, or he'll kill them!" Joelle's voice rose in distress and Callen bowed his head. He stretched his fingers towards Joelle's hands on his leg, straining against the ropes. She clutched his hand, making eye contact with him at last, and he could see the raw emotion in her face. "I'm sorry, Callen," she said, squeezing his hand tightly. "I'm sorry that whatever Janvier wants you for, it probably isn't good… but it's my family. I had to protect them."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Callen played his conversation with Joelle over and over in his head the following few hours, but it still didn't make it any more palatable. He felt only a small sense of relief that Joelle's betrayal this time was not calculated; that she was not willingly working against him, but the feeling was overshadowed by the enormity of the situation they were all in. Of course, he had known this mission carried a high risk, and they had already lost Paul Ruddings. Joelle had glossed over that part, but it was clear his death had been at her hands, under the instruction of Janvier, at the bus crash site.
And Callen knew it had to have been Joelle who had hit him, had knocked him out after he had pinned Janvier up against the bus. He had been careful, hadn't turned his back on anyone. Except her. He'd trusted her. Hadn't considered the possibility Janvier was controlling her.
To now also know that innocents, in the form of Joelle's husband and son, were involved was a huge weight for Callen. It wasn't helped by being left alone restrained in the dark feeling utterly helpless, and knowing that he had messed up. Trust no one… He'd broken that one. His stupidity, his oversight, had cost him his freedom, and probably cost him the mission, as well as the safety of all Americans if he was now unable to stop Janvier going through with whatever deal he was making and selling the Incognito technology. Joelle couldn't stop Janvier on her own, especially not while he had her family as leverage.
Callen had made Joelle promise to try and come back, hating that in doing so he was putting both her and her family at risk but knowing also that it was likely the only chance for them to escape. He knew escape was the only way they would all get out of this. Joelle was clinging to a belief that if she did everything Janvier wanted, he would keep his word and leave her and her family unharmed, but Callen did not share the same faith. Joelle and her family were loose ends, just like Paul Ruddings, and moreover Janvier would know that killing them would hurt Callen deeply… so he had no faith at all in Janvier's mercy. The man lived for one thing and one thing only – revenge. This time, he'd had many solitary hours to plan it, and Callen had no doubt that his revenge would be taken slowly and systematically by any means. He didn't just have to fear Janvier killing him – and he knew ultimately that was the final move in the game – but before that Janvier would hurt or kill everyone close to him that he could possibly get to, just to see him suffer.
Thanking his lucky stars he'd had the good sense to persuade Vance it was absolutely necessary to put Alex and Jake into special protection before he committed to this mission, Callen hoped he had done enough to ensure they stayed safe. Janvier shouldn't know about them – but then he shouldn't have known about the top-secret Incognito technology either.
He could tell Joelle was doubtful that an escape attempt was even worth trying, but she had promised, albeit reluctantly. Callen didn't know whether he could expect to see her again or not. He understood her reservations – after all they didn't even know whereabouts in the world they were, although it couldn't be too far from Los Angeles as there simply hadn't been time while he had been unconscious to have travelled far. As far as he could tell, they had remained anchored the entire time he had been on board, and that surely meant they weren't too far out to sea. That meant swimming to the nearest shore, wherever that may be, was a possibility. On land, they had a chance. If they stayed on the boat, surrounded and controlled by Janvier and however many men he had working for him, there was none.
It was a slim chance – but one thing Callen did know for sure was that if they all stayed on the boat, eventually they would, one way or another, end up dead. Even a slim chance of escape was worth taking.
He must have dozed off, for the soft click of the door opening woke him with a start. He recognised Joelle's footsteps, barely audible, as she crept over to him in the dark.
"How's your leg?" she whispered.
"What are you doing here?"
"Your leg…" she pressed. "Can you walk? If I untie you, can you help me? Can you help Nick and Peter?"
It was with unsteady hands that Joelle worked through the ropes with a knife.
"Hurry, hurry," she muttered to herself, forcing her small folding knife back and forth against the thick rope.
"We'll get them out," Callen said quietly, and Joelle lifted her head from her task to meet his eyes. In the dim light of her torch, he could see her eyes were wide, and tears glistened as she blinked and tried not to let them fall.
"Shit!" she murmured as her knife slipped, and she caught Callen's arm. "Sorry."
"Keep going," Callen said gruffly as he pulled his wrists as wide as he could to put strain on the rope and give Joelle room to work. His wrists were already raw from straining against his bindings for the past several hours anyway. After what seemed like an eternity the rope finally frayed enough for Callen to pull his hands apart. Quickly he grabbed the knife from her and began to saw at the ropes securing his body to the pillar.
Minutes felt like hours, but eventually he was free. He moved stiffly, using his hands on the pillar to pull himself up. Experimentally, he took some weight, and then a tentative step on his injured leg. It hurt, but not too badly. Not badly enough to stop him doing what needed to be done. Win now, pay later, he thought to himself. The shot had been designed to hurt, not maim. The small bullet had caught the outside of his thigh, well above the knee, not life-threatening or even life-limiting once it healed: a momentary loss of control from Janvier when he had noticed Callen attempting to send a secret message to Ops on the live video. Well worth the pain – just as long as Eric noticed what he had done.
"Come on!" he whispered urgently. "Show me where they are."
Moving quickly but silently, the two of them hurried across the hold. With more difficulty than he allowed to show, Callen made it up the steps to the door. Joelle switched the torch off and pocketed it along with her knife as Callen gingerly opened the door a crack and peered out. It was mid-day. Dim safety lights still lit the corridor, helped along by the bright daylight filtering in through dirty portholes just above the water-line along the run of the passage. Callen's mind automatically clocked the potential hazards – plenty of those, with metal lips every so often along the walkway, very little cover, and no way to turn the safety lights off to enable them to move in darkness.
"Two doors down on the left," Joelle whispered. "The door's locked. He let me in to see them last night. They're scared, Callen…"
Slipping out through the door and starting to creep along the edge of the passage, Callen felt into the secret pocket in the waistband of his jeans for his lock-picking set. Janvier's men had missed it when they had patted him down, but that and the bobby pin on his belt would have been useless against the ropes used to tie him anyway. Closing one hand round the leather pouch, he automatically reached to the small of his back for his gun and felt naked when he remembered of course it wasn't there.
"Quickly..!" Joelle couldn't stop herself as he bent down to pick the lock. He bit his tongue, understanding her words were driven by fear, and worked the lock as fast as he could while Joelle watched nervously up and down the passage. The door opened with barely a sound and stepping into the room, Callen saw the frightened faces of Joelle's husband and son. "It's okay!" Joelle reassured them as she moved in behind Callen. Peter ran to her.
"We need to get you out of here fast," Callen spoke urgently, grabbing Peter's hand. "Stick with me, okay?"
"What's going on?" Joelle's husband demanded. "Beth?" Joelle tugged at his sleeve.
"There's no time now. You remember Callen? I'll explain everything, I promise, but we need to get out of here!"
"Shhh!" Callen motioned with his free hand to quieten them. Once again he peered through a small opening in the door. He took the briefest of seconds to get his bearings before turning to the boy beside him. "Can you swim?" he asked. Peter nodded.
"Of course he can… but Callen! The nearest land must be a mile or more!" Joelle exclaimed. "It's too far."
"Can you think of another way?" Callen demanded, his voice carrying weight despite being little more than a whisper. "We don't know how many crew are on board. If we waste time searching for a lifeboat – and there might not even BE one – we'll lose this advantage. And it would be an easy target on the water anyway. The bow is only fifty yards that way," he nodded to his left, "we can slip quietly into the water, and hopefully get far enough from the ship to not be spotted before anyone notices we're gone. I'll help Peter. Okay?" He raised his eyebrows at Joelle, and wide-eyed, she nodded. "Come on, then. Let's get out of here."
With his back to the wall, Callen crept down the passage towards the bow of the ship, clutching Peter's hand firmly. Nick was close behind, and Joelle brought up the rear, scanning anxiously for Janvier or any of his men as they went.
There were plenty of crates littering the bow area and Callen sighed with relief – they could stay relatively hidden. Moving as quickly as he could, he crossed a short open space and hunkered down with Peter behind a large pile of crates close to the edge of the ship. The water was only a few feet below them, the gentle waves making it hard to hear much else. Nick slithered into the small space next to them, and Callen looked back for Joelle. She was still taking cover at the end of the passage, watching and listening for any signs of movement from Janvier's crew, and she made a hurrying motion with her hands towards Callen.
"We'll need to get over the railing and slip straight down into the water as quickly as possible," Callen whispered loud enough for them all to hear. "Nick, you go first, then Peter, okay?" He turned to Peter. "I'll help your mum down, and then I'll come and help you swim, okay? You need to stay under water for as long as possible, keep hold of your dad's hand, and swim towards the shore over there." Nick and Peter squinted into the distance, where the shoreline could just be seen as an indistinct grey-ish hump. More like two miles, Callen privately thought, and he hoped Peter was up to it. It looked a long way and beside him Peter swallowed nervously, but nodded bravely as Callen spoke. "Good boy. It's gonna be okay, you hear me?" Peter nodded again, and Callen turned to Joelle. "This is it then. We need to be quick. You ready?"
With erratic, urgent movements, Nick took the lead, quickly climbing over the railing and lowering himself into the ocean. Before there was any time to think about it, Callen was ushering Peter to do the same, and he sighed with relief as he saw Peter grasp his dad's hand and start to swim away. He turned back to Joelle, beckoning her to hurry, but as she left the cover of the passage Callen felt a bullet whistle past his ear and heard a voice yelling. The voice was too far away to make out who it was, or what was being said. What was clear was that they were out of time.
"Hurry!" he yelled at Joelle, and wide-eyed she began to run, but she misjudged her footing and tripped on one of the metal lips. Callen cursed, and left the cover of the crates to go and help her. The wound on his leg throbbed distractingly as he grabbed Joelle's arm, aware of another bullet passing again much too close for comfort. He thanked his lucky stars whoever was shooting didn't have a great angle, but as Joelle scrambled to her feet, Callen glanced along the passageway and Janvier was stood square in the corridor, gun raised.
"Get down!" Callen yelled again – but he was too late. Janvier fired, and the bullet went straight into Joelle, who collapsed against Callen. His injured leg buckled: he couldn't take the weight of both of them and they fell hard to the deck.
"Callen!" Joelle gasped. The bullet had hit her centrally in the chest, and already the colour was draining out of her. "Callen, I…" Blood foamed out of the corner of her mouth, and Callen squirmed underneath her, flipping round so that he could hold her in his arms. His eyes involuntarily filled with tears, a kaleidoscope of innocent memories of her flashing across his brain so fast that he felt dizzy. The first time they met, mutual attraction overcoming the awkwardness of realising they had been set up by Sam and Michelle… the look on her face when she came out of the garage after he had tackled Billy Rex… the way she turned up at the ice rink to meet his 'family'… the worry in her eyes when he dropped her off at her school after his time undercover with the white supremacists… The following Christmas when they broke up, but spent it together anyway… The last time he'd seen her, with Anna, in Cuba, after she'd put together the operation that helped him get his father back… Callen forgot her betrayal, forgot the pain he'd felt when he discovered their time together had been a ruse and she had only been sent to keep tabs on him by the CIA, forgot the lies and deceit. All he remembered was that this was one of just a small handful of people he had gotten close to, had trusted… had loved.
"Jo…" he whispered, stroking her hair back from her face. Her eyes were already closing as she faded away. "Stay with me. Stay with me!"
"Get up, Agent Callen!" Janvier stood above him, gun still raised. "There is nothing you can do for her now."
"You son of a…." Callen swore angrily as two men approached from behind. One of them pulsed a taser into the back of his neck, and then in the moments he was incapacitated they both grabbed hold of his upper arms and hauled him roughly to his feet. He fought violently but his movements were weak and uncoordinated both from the effects of the taser and the shock of Joelle dying in his arms. Stricken with grief, Callen was unable to break his gaze from her body as the men dragged him away down the passage. He kicked and yelled and struggled ineffectively, his head turned back, his eyes only seeing the quiet shape left alone on the deck.
A/N: Ah Callen - he came so close to escaping didn't he? Now what...? (PS. Next chapter you'll get to find out what he did on the video!)
The plot bunnies are going a bit mad... last night they had a cool idea whilst working on what was supposed to be the winding down part of the story... Problem is, this change of direction would mean a fairly large re-write would be needed of quite a few of the upcoming chapters, and I am struggling for the time to edit and upload them as it is :( So I think the bunnies will have to be disappointed because I don't want a big delay in the story now it's heating up! (I have tried telling them they could put their efforts to thinking of ideas for *new* stories instead - but so far between us we've only come up with one line and it might take me a bit of time to grow a whole story around that lol! Anyway this one needs finishing first and we're only about a quarter of the way in! If you're still reading please let me know what you think because I love your reviews and thoughts - also they help me edit and shape the story better for you! :D )