Chapter 13: Special Connection
Disclaimer: I don't own Alias, nor do I want it. Unlike JJ Abrams, I fear for my life!
A/N: Thanks to my loyal readers that have made it this far!
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Sydney stepped out of her back door, fully expecting to find a dog or some other small animal around to have made the noise she'd heard. She chided herself for allowing her heart to beat harder and faster, and felt again that someone was watching her.
Suddenly something moved in the tall shrub to her right. She turned her head, already knowing instinctively what she'd see.
Everything seemed to happen at once. Sydney opened her mouth to scream. Derevko opened lunged toward her, dragging Lorrie, who'd been gagged. Sydney's scream turned into a gasp. Derevko came within inches of grabbing Sydney's arm, but Lorrie jerked against her in the opposite direction. Sydney took a step backwards, raising her arms as if to ward off some evil, and let out a shriek. Derevko kicked Lorrie's legs out from under her and she hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of her. Without Lorrie hindering her, it took Derevko all of two seconds to grab Sydney and gag her.
Sydney and Lorrie must have both experienced hysteria, or may be they simply blocked it out, because they didn't remember how they reached the new silver sedan with no door handles on the inside of the back doors. Some sounds filtered into Sydney's mind; Lorrie's muffled crying, her own shrieks that seemed to choke her.
The next thing Sydney knew, she was in the car, and Michael was barreling toward them. Her first instinct was to mouth a plea, but the gag effectively nixed that idea. Forcing her foggy brain to sort through the few signs she'd learned from the special ed teacher at school, she frantically signed "Help" repeatedly, not knowing whether Michael would understand and knowing at he same time that it was him job to protect her and he'd try to help even if he didn't understand her.
Somehow, Sydney wasn't truly scared until the car sped away and she lost sight of Michael, and Lorrie stared up at her in utter terror.
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Even while Michael reacted to Sydney's scream, an unfamiliar feeling had torn through him. His fear had become very real when he'd seem Sydney signing hysterically, and he was unable to translate any of it. Where did she learn that? he'd wondered ridiculously. He'd read the message in her eyes, though. She'd been begging him to get them out of the predicament she and Lorrie were in.
All this ran through his mind as he sat in the Hechts' living room, waiting for the investigative team to arrive.
Suddenly, he stood up resolutely and headed toward Lorrie's house. He knew Derevko had Lorrie; it was only fair to tell Taylor Miller before a team came busting into his house. It wouldn't be right to let the man find Lorrie gone and get mad at her before he knew what had happened. He'd go tell Miller what had happened, nothing more. He'd leave the investigation to the team. The one he wasn't part of, because it had been his assignment to keep them from needing that very team…
Michael almost went to the Millers' back door, but decided to go around to the front. It just seemed more official that way.
Miller's expression was distracted, but his face hardened when he recognized Michael.
"What?" Miller asked suspiciously.
"Is…Do you know where Lorrie is?" Michael asked, not sure why this was so hard when he'd been in much harder places before.
"Of course I know where my daughter is," Miller said in annoyance.
Michael shook his head. "No, you don't." He waited for that to register. "Mr. Miller, Lorrie has been kidnapped along with…another woman in this neighborhood."
Taylor Miller looked dangerously close to shutting the door in his face. Chiding himself for being stupid, Michael pulled out his CIA ID and showed it to Miller.
"Lorrie's been in her room since she came home from school," Miller said flatly, a dubious tone creeping into his voice.
Michael tried a new strategy. "As soon as you close this door, you're going to go check on your daughter. Let me come in and look in her room, just for a few minutes," Michael added when Miller looked ready to refuse outright.
Miller shrugged and stepped back, becoming anxious at his persistence. "If she's in there, you're gonna have to have a pretty good explanation, or I'm calling the cops," he warned, all of his confidence gone.
Michael followed as Miller meekly led him to Lorrie's closed door. Taylor knocked; there was no answer.
"Lorrie?" he said loudly, alarm evident. He knocked again. "Lorrie?!?"
Michael stepped forward and pushed the door open wide; the room, of course, sat empty. Taylor stared to bound into the room, but Michael held him back.
"What the hell are you doing?" Miller yelled.
"Evidence," Michael said calmly. "I have an investigative team en route, they'll need to search her room. You might disturb something."
Miller visibly calmed as the logic sank in.
"My little girl…do you know who has her? And who's the other woman?" He clearly had a lot of questions he wanted answers to, and Michael knew the answers would only lead to more questions.
"Mr. Miller, give me five minutes in your daughter's room and then I'll answer any of your questions that I can," Michael promised.
Miller nodded. "I'll be in the kitchen," he said, numbness taking over now.
Michael did a quick once over of the room, and found no trace of a suitcase or knapsack, or anything a kid might pack in. So Derevko caught her after she left the house, he thought.
He walked into the kitchen to see a very broken, forlorn man sitting hunched over the table, his elbows propped on the edge of the table and his forehead resting on his hands.
Miller looked up expectantly when Michael walked in and sat down.
Seeing the look in the man's eyes, Michael thought he might have misjudged him; may be he wasn't a bad person, just having a hard time with his…wife problem. He launched straight into the question he needed answered before he could begin to explain much.
"What do you know about Lorrie's mother?"
Miller looked at him suspiciously again, but decided that he knew something, or he wouldn't know to ask. "That she's alive. That's it."
Michael nodded. "She faked her death once before. She had a six-year-old daughter at the time. The daughter's name was Sydney Bristow, now Hecht."
"Hecht? Lorrie's teacher's name is Hecht…" Miller said speculatively.
Michael nodded. "Lorrie's teacher is her half-sister."
Miller looked shocked for a moment but, "What does this have to do with my daughter right now? I want to know who had my daughter!" he insisted.
"Irina Derevko has her, and…"
"Who the hell is Irina Derevko?" Miller interrupted.
"Two of her aliases would be Laura Bristow and Angela Miller. And the other woman Derevko kidnapped is Sydney Hecht," Michael added, wishing to get this over with as soon as possible.
"What the…she kidnapped her daughters!?!" Miller exploded, seeming close to a breakdown and very red in the face.
Michael nodded. "It seems she's contacted Sydney several times recently, and Lorrie just last night." He glanced at the clock hanging on the wall. Almost 6:00. He wanted to head off Danny before he figured out something was wrong. "Mr. Miller, you'll have to talk to the investigators when they arrive if you have any more questions. The CIA is doing everything possible to find Lorrie."
Michael was headed out of the kitchen when Miller spoke.
"Hey…how did the CIA get involved in this?"
Michael froze. He'd be sorry later, but he turned and said, "The other guy Derevko was with was a CIA agent. You target an agent's family, the CIA gets involved. Quick."
Then he disappeared.
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Taylor Miller sat alone in his kitchen for a long time, not moving, not even thinking much. But when the pounding on his back door started, he knew it was time to face the truth. His daughter had been kidnapped.
He reluctantly opened his door to find six men, all wielding CIA identification, waiting to search Lorrie's room. In his haste to find something other than an image of them tearing Lorrie's room apart to focus his thoughts on, he noticed one man hung back and seemed to be inconspicuously observing him. The man's hair way completely gray, and his face was harsh, hardened probably by many years in the CIA. He stood tall, over six feet, possibly, and his presence would be intimidating to many people. His eyes were a cold stone color.
"Is there a reason you're in here, and not in there with the rest of the team?" Taylor asked curiously.
The man stared at him, surprised.
"I have a special connection to this case. I'm not an investigator on the team," he finally answered.
As the information sank in, an idea occurred to Taylor. "Are you the woman's father?" Taylor looked hard at the man, who returned the stare.
"What do you know about he woman?"
"She's Sydney Hecht, a teacher. My former wife's child. Her father is CIA," Taylor listed carefully.
He stared at Taylor, evaluating him. Finally he nodded. "I don't know how you came to that conclusion, and it's none of your damn business, but I'm Jack Bristow." his cold eyes seemed to challenge Taylor to ask anything else; Taylor was never known for backing away from challenges.
"What's going to be done to help…our daughters?" Taylor asked, wanting to gauge Bristow's reaction to the connection of Lorrie and Sydney as well as wanting to hear the answer.
"It depends," Jack answered, too surprised that his attempt at intimidation had failed to not answer the man. "We'll follow up on what's found here." His expression softened almost imperceptibly, and the mask dropped enough for the pain to show on his face. "We'll find them. Derevko left, that's one ting. She can't have my daughter." The old anger had awakened.
"Nor mine," Taylor added. "I want to help any way I can. Whatever it means." Taylor set his mouth in a grim line, fully prepared to risk everything for the daughter he realized he'd neglected fro four years.
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Ooooh, Jack and Taylor understand each other…that can only lead to trouble for poor Taylor…
Just so you know, with Lorrie's mother being criminal and everything, I just can't abide by making her dad a truly bad person. I hope everyone will look at it as this progresses as he was just having a bad time of it, and he really loves Lorrie…if I don't get that message across, let me know…I'll fix something!