CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ordinarily, Callen was a strong swimmer. Okay, maybe not in the same league as Sam, but two miles wouldn't normally have presented that much of a problem. Now though, two miles was starting to feel like two hundred, and it didn't seem to matter that he felt like he'd been swimming for hours, the damn shoreline still wasn't getting any closer.

The adrenaline from the fight with Janvier's men and his subsequent flight had waned rapidly. Every part of him hurt. Pain signals from his right arm and hand began again to take over all conscious thought, so that it seemed as though his entire body had morphed from identifiable parts into one giant pain-ridden hand. The light was almost gone, disorientating him further. He began not so much to swim as to simply exist in the water, moving his body feebly just enough to keep him afloat.

Every so often a super-size wave crashed over him, pushing him down into the depths of the ocean, tumbling, spinning, eventually popping up again through the surface like a cork from a bottle, but each time it happened it was like the bottle had less air to propel him upwards. He was growing ever weaker and less able to fight. He began to forget what he was fighting for. Let the ocean claim him. There had to be worse ways to go.

Callen was so close to being unconscious he didn't at first register the feeling of his legs dragging not against the ever-moving water, but against something more tangible and solid. In one final surging moment of mental clarity, he realised the waves were washing him in to shore. He had felt his feet brushing on the seabed momentarily, before the swell sucked him back out. The next wave, it was his knees, and digging deep for one last ounce of strength, Callen began to kick weakly with the waves, using the last of his ebbing muscle power to ride the surge further, up onto the beach. He got far enough for his chest to rest on the sand, like a beached whale, and there, finally fatigued beyond anything he had ever experienced before, he collapsed.

He must have passed out, because eventually the waves started to splash over him again, wetting his legs, then his hips, trying their damnest on each return swell to pull him back out into the ocean. As the water rippled up over his head, Callen began to gasp and cough, retching up sea water, and sluggishly he realised that if he didn't move further up the beach soon, the incoming tide would re-claim him, dragging him back out to sea when he had no reserves left for another battle with the waves.

Coughing hard, sharply awakened by the pain it caused in his ribs, he managed to push himself up onto his elbows, and he began to crawl up the sand, inches at a time. Not enough, not enough… he willed his weary body to comply.

A long shadow loomed over him in the moonlight and he froze. The figure moved closer, standing over him, and Callen didn't even have the strength to lift his head. Friend or foe, it didn't make any difference right now.

"Can I give you a hand?" A man's voice addressed him uncertainly, bending low over Callen's head as he spoke in little more than a whisper. Such was his exhaustion, it took Callen a few moments to realise that the voice belonged to Joelle's husband, Nick.

"Yeah," he coughed, unable to say any more, and Nick wasn't strong but he put his hands firmly under Callen's arms, lifting, dragging, and somehow they made it an extra twenty yards up the beach onto dry sand, safe from the water's clutches. Callen rolled over onto his back and lay there, panting hard, while Nick stood silently above him with his arms now around Peter's shoulders. Both of them continued to look nervously back and forth between Callen and the sea.

"Thanks," Callen choked, once he was able to speak.

"Where's Beth?" Nick asked anxiously, still scanning the moonlit waves. Even in the dim light, the look on Callen's face and his heavy silence answered the question without any words needing to be spoken aloud.

"I'm sorry," Callen whispered.

"Where's Mum?" Peter demanded. "Why isn't she with you, why isn't she here yet? We've been here ages… waiting…"

"Your mum… she didn't make it. I'm sorry Pea." Nick spoke softly to his son.

"No!" Peter yelled. "No! That can't be true, it isn't true! She must still be swimming…" Peter began to move agitatedly towards the ocean.

"She didn't make it off the ship," Callen said quietly, but his words were lost in the darkness as the boy ran towards the water.

"Peter!" Nick called out frantically, running after him. With no strength to do anything but watch, Callen drew himself carefully up to a sitting position. Keeping his right arm gingerly close to his body he hugged his left arm around his bent up knees for stability, and dropped his head in weariness. Exhausted, his emotions once again threatened to overwhelm him, and he was in no hurry for Nick to return with Peter, but of course eventually he did. Callen wiped his face on his sleeve and looked up as Nick spoke in a hushed voice.

"What do we do now?"

Callen looked around. He must have passed out for some time because it was clearly now the middle of the night. The beach they had washed up on was deserted, mile upon mile of empty sand stretching into blackness in both directions with not a hint of life to be seen. But in the distance there were lights, and gazing at them, finally orientating himself, Callen recognised where they were, and where they could go.

"I know someplace safe, not too far from here," he said. He hadn't phrased it as a question, but Nick looked to Peter and then back at Callen and nodded his consent. He bent down to help Callen to his feet. "This way, then," Callen coughed, and began to lead them unsteadily across the sand.

Their journey was slow, for Callen made them take the hard route, along the coast, so that they were not easily seen by anyone on the roads or paths that led to his destination. Weakened by lack of food and drink, and both physically and mentally drained from Janvier's attentions over the past two days and his gruelling swim to escape, Callen fared the worst. He did his best to hide his struggles from Nick and Peter, but his unsteady gait and laboured breathing gave him away. Nick alternated between helping him and helping Peter. Even then, they had to stop several times for increasingly lengthy rests, and Callen fought deeply to retain consciousness as pain and exhaustion threatened to overcome him.

"Isn't there any place closer we could go?" Nick asked eventually, the third time they stopped, and Callen once again stumbled wearily to his knees.

"Nowhere safe," Callen responded softly, and alarmed, Nick crouched down in front of him.

"What do you mean, safe?" he whispered tersely, trying to keep their conversation private from Peter, who had got used to the repetitive pattern of walk/rest and curled up into a ball in a sandy hollow nearby. After many hours of waiting, of walking up and down combing the beaches for Callen and Joelle in a search that seemed increasingly hopeless the more darkness set in, he too was tired now almost to the point of collapse.

"I don't know how much you know…." Callen started. "Joelle…" his voice cracked. "Beth… I don't know how much she was able to tell you…"

"We thought she was dead, for heavens sake," Nick whispered angrily. "Pea and I… All those years, we thought she was dead! And we'd got used to living on our own. We were doing okay. Then that madman got a hold of us, broke into our house…" Nick's voice was angry as well as anguished: full of torment that he had not been able to protect his son even in his own home.

"He's a ruthless sociopath," Callen said, referencing Janvier. "There was nothing you could have done. He plays the long game, he'll have been ten steps ahead from the start."

"And where are we now?" Nick demanded crossly. "Still ten steps behind?"

"If he figures out you're still alive, then as good as dead," Callen said bluntly. He kept his voice low so as not to scare Peter, but his intensity left no bounds, and Nick recoiled slightly. "You and Peter… you're loose ends… That's why I'm taking you someplace safe," Callen continued in a gentler tone. He paused, taking some deep breaths as he tried to speak coherently. "He doesn't know for sure you're still alive… Hopefully he doesn't know if I'm still alive either. That should give us some breathing space. When we get… where we're going… I can contact my team. We can put a plan in place to end this once and for all. I know it's a big ask, but you have to trust me."

In the dim light, Nick looked Callen up and down. Putting the lives of himself and his son in the hands of a man he hardly knew and who right now could barely stand was indeed a big ask. And yet, despite what they'd all been through, despite their abduction and imprisonment, despite the rollercoaster re-discovery and then subsequent loss of his wife, and despite Callen's obvious physical weakness, Nick somehow did feel protected in the agent's presence.

"Beth said we could trust you absolutely," he said slowly. "She said… she said she got mixed up in this, but she promised it would be okay because you were working with her."

"That's not… exactly…" Callen shook his head. He didn't have the energy to discuss the complicated nuances of the operation with Nick of all people when he wasn't sure he had fully grasped them all himself. All that mattered now was getting someplace safe, and working out a way to salvage the Incognito technology before Janvier could sell it to enemy hands. Not to mention taking care of Janvier himself. Piece of cake, Callen thought wryly, reluctantly accepting Nick's help to pull himself unsteadily to his feet once more.

A/N - Callen made it safely to shore, yay! Where's he taking them though, can he keep them all safe?

Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter. Always hard to write torture scenes - not least (you'll be pleased to know!) it's not something I have any experience of lol! I shy away from writing anything too gruesome, but equally hope I was able to indicate just some of the nastiness Callen suffered from a psychopathic character who we know has absolutely no morals at all... Don't worry, I'll restore him to his original condition by the end :D