The alarm shook them both out of a deep sleep. Once Michelle got her head straight and realized why she had to get up and what she was going to do she jumped out of bed and began getting ready. Tony got her a couple towels and then while she showered he made them both some sandwiches. He jumped into the shower after Michelle for 5 minutes and then pulled his clothes on. It was a rush but they were both ready and on the road by 10 to 4.

They shared a quick kiss in the car before they headed into CTU. Once inside the split to take care of their own duties. It felt like no time had passed at all when at 20 to 5 TJ came to take Michelle.

It was horribly hard for Michelle and Tony to say good-bye to each other and even more horrible that they had the whole office staring at them. Tony gave her a tight hug and they told each other they loved one another and then kissed quickly but sweetly on the lips. Tony watched her leave until she had completely vanished from his sight.

Michelle rounded the corner and made her way to the same spot. As she walked a car pulled up beside her and she realized it was Joe. He signaled for her to jump in, her legs were barely into the car when he took off giving her a huge fright. He just looked at her laughed.

"So what's your name doll face?"

"You can call me Lexi, that's what my friends call me."

He didn't respond and they spent the rest of the trip in complete silence. Michelle just stared straight out the front window, trying to work out where they were going but it was hard to concentrate when she could feel his eyes drilling into her. They pulled into a driveway that she did not recognize, and the house was huge. She had a feeling it would have been Dale's house just by the look of it. He gruffly told her to get out of the car, which she did and then preceded to follow him up the path to the front door.

Everyone left in the office at CTU was glued to the screen. Everybody sat with their headsets on ready to go. Tony was fidgety, clicking the pen and repeatedly taping his foot. He had Michelle's location pin pointed exactly and it turned out she was not too far from CTU. If this was Dale's house they had arrived at it made him sick to think how long they had been chasing him and for him to end up right under their nose was a real slap in the face.

Michelle followed Joe in the front door and down a hall to a living room. Her heart flipped as she walked in to find another 7 people in the room. She searched for Dale but couldn't see him, all of a sudden she felt hands on her shoulder making her jump. She spun around to find Dale. He smiled, pushed her against the wall and began kissing her. Michelle had to return the kiss, which repulsed her. She doubted he had actually showered or brushed his teeth since she had last seen him.

Tony's fists clenched and he grinded his teeth. He felt close to throwing the monitor across the room. It felt like forever before Dale pulled himself off Michelle. Tony watched intently to see what happened next. He could see that he had turned Michelle around so she was facing everyone in the room. He told his staff to see who or what they could find on the other people. Then one of the younger men of the group stood up right in front of Michelle and started screaming. Tony couldn't figure out what was going on. Everyone in the office jumped a million miles an hour when one of the girls, Jade, screamed and ran out of the room. Tony sent Casey after Jade to find out what it was all about.

Back on the screen Tony could now see Dale, the young man and someone else all facing Michelle and they were arguing. All of a sudden the view dropped down fast as is Michelle had been pushed over. Then the device linked to the camera started to beep and before he had time to do anything the entire monitor turned black – they had completely lost the image from Michelle. Tony started hollering at everyone to figure out what the hell was going on. Each department reported back to Tony that the problem wasn't on their end, it must have been from Michelle's end.

Tony sent back up in immediately, they all called in their positions - the closest would be at target destination in 4-5 minutes. As Tony was directing back up, the light on the tracking device turned off – just like that, they had completely lost all forms of contact with Michelle. He still had their address pin pointed so he continued to direct them there even though he knew no one would still be there by the time his team made it.

Michelle had turned with Dale to look at everyone else in the room. One of the younger guys had jumped up immediately screaming she was a cop. Michelle's stomach had dropped. She couldn't work out how this kid new anything about her. Dale asked the kid how he knew that and that's when Michelle's whole world came crashing down. It turns out the boy was the younger brother of one of her colleagues at work Jade. He had met Michelle when his sister had taken him into work one afternoon. The second he said it, Michelle remembered him. It was only a matter of minutes Michelle figured until they killed her.

One of Dale's men smashed Michelle over the back of her head. They searched her entire body for anything that could have been a tracking device. They ripped her earrings straight out of her ears instead of taking them out properly. Blood streamed down Michelle's neck to her shoulders. They tore all of her jewelry off her body and then threw everything including her shoes into the fire. She had then been flung over someone's shoulder as they all made their get-away.

Casey came out screaming for Tony. He rushed to meet up with her along with Hammond.

"They know Michelle is from CTU, they know!" Casey was hysterical.

Hammond kept calm. "How do you know this Casey?"

"Because one of the guys we just watched on the monitor is actually Jade's brother. He met Michelle a little while ago when he came in with Jade one day."

Tony finally talked, he directed his attention to the men. "Before the camera shut off, we saw a young man stand up and start yelling at Michelle, then it looked like a lot of them were yelling. Michelle's camera view then dropped to the floor before it completely shut off. As soon as they realized she was an agent they would have stripped her completely looking for wires or devices."

Matthews yelled over to Tony and Hammond that back up had arrived and was entering the house. Tony ran back to his station and put his head set on so he could communicate with Tray, the man leading CTU and local police in back up. Tray had some agents go through the back, some through the sides and the rest through the front. Tony held his breath as he waited for Tray to tell him what they had found.

"Ummm Tony, the house is empty, no one is here. I am so sorry Tony."

Tony couldn't comprehend what he had heard. He shouted so loudly anyone in a 2-block radius would have heard him. "CHECK AGAIN. IT CANT BE EMPTY, IT CAN'T BE. LOOK AGAIN.....NOW!!" Tony felt like his entire world had just come crashing down. He still tried to wait in hope for Tray to come back and say they had found her.

"I am just so sorry Tony. We have gone through the place over and over, nobody is here. What do you want us to do?"

"Just come back to the office."

Tony dropped to the ground. He thought he was going to vomit. They now had no way of communicating with Michelle. She could be anywhere. Matthews and Hammond approached Tony. Hammond put his hand on Tony's shoulder.

"We are sorry Tony. We need you now though Tony.....we have to start looking for Michelle, the more time we waste, the further away they will get with her...."

Tony stood up and looked Hammond squarely in the eye. "This is your fault, if you hadn't threatened her with her job she wouldn't have gone. Barely half an hour into the operation we lost her, how the fuck did this happen?"

"I know you are frightened and upset Tony...."

"UPSET?! UPSET?! Don't you dare tell me how I am feeling. You just think for a moment what they would be doing right now to Michelle. We were supposed to protect her. She trusted us Hammond and we completely let her down."

"We didn't let her down. She understood that it was hard for us to protect her in the first 2 hours. Come on Tony, lets start looking for them – screaming at each other is not going to help us find Michelle."

Tony pushed pass Matthews and Hammond and headed to the tech rooms. He had agents sort through all locations and information they had on everyone involved to see if they could come up with any ideas they may have gone. He had all local enforcements as well as 2 of his teams head out looking for the car the matched the number plate Michelle had gotten the night before. He also called immigration and sent them ID's so that they could alert their staff at the border for Canada and Mexico not to let anyone in Paults gang leave the country. He also had the same information sent to the airports with strict instructions not to let them onto any flight, not just international but also domestic.

He had Jade brought into his office so that he could talk to her about her brother. She still had tears streaming down her face. Tony understood she had just been through a huge shock too and so he needed to be gentle with her. She began weeping to Tony.

"God Tony I am so sorry. You have to believe me I had no idea Jason was mixed up in any kind of trouble. I never knew I swear...."

Tony cut her off and put his hand on her shoulder. "Hey hey, Jade it's ok – of course I believe you. You are not responsible for your brother's actions."

"But Tony, I should have known. How could I not have known? Now Michelle is missing.... probably dead..."

Tony felt like he had been punched in the stomach. He took his hand off her shoulder and backed off. "Don't say that, she's not d..d.....she can't be....she's n..." He couldn't even bring himself to say the word.

Jade stood up and started talking over Tony. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Michelle will be ok, she is such a good agent."

"It's alright." Tony sat in his chair and sunk his head. He really didn't think he could handle any of this.

"I know you like her Tony, everyone in the office always thought you would be such a good couple."

Tony looked up at Jade. "I am in love with her. We just got together today. Can you believe that? I've barley had her for a day and this happens." Tears started welling in his eyes. "I mean, I've just wanted to hold her in my arms for like a year and I finally got that chance today and it was better than anything I could have ever imagined. How could this happen to us?"

"I don't know Tony, but you can't give up – you know how good Michelle is, she will be ok. You have to stay strong so you can direct the operation to find her.....we need you."

"I am trying. I think the best place for us to start is seeing what we can find out through your brother. Where does he live? Does he have a cell phone?"

"Yes and yes. I could try and phone him with some kind of excuse to meet me. He knows I've been having trouble with my boyfriend lately, maybe I could say we split up and I really need him."

Tony felt relieved that they had such a close contact into Paults group through Jade. It gave him a little bit of hope. "That's a good idea Jade. Once you have him we can press him for as much information as possible. Can we do this now?"

"Ok sure. I'll be back in a few minutes."

While he waited for Jade he did the rounds of all his staff to get an update on how they were going. Not one person had a good lead. He sent a few more agents into the house they had raided to sort through everything and try and find anything that would help them.

Jade reported back to Tony that she had gotten a hold of her brother and although he had been extremely hesitant he had agreed to meet her at her apartment. Tony had a couple agents follow Jade, he wasn't taking chances on anything.

One of the men dropped Michelle's body on the floor and handcuffed her to the bed both with her arm and then another one on her ankle. Dale and Joe stood over her discussing how bad things could have been if they had taken her to the dinner. It was 6:30 now and Dale had to leave for his meeting. He wanted Joe to keep an eye on Lexi (Michelle) but no matter what happened, she wasn't to be killed – Dale was going to use her as a bargaining tool. He had let Jason go see his sister, Jason figured she hadn't been into work today so she had no idea of what was happening. Either way she wouldn't know he was involved and maybe he could use her to find out what was happening at CTU. Before Jason had told him his sister worked at CTU with Michelle, Dale had never even heard of the Counter Terrorist Unit. He went to his meeting.

As soon as Jason arrived at Jade's apartment she had the 2 agents that she had with her help her take him into CTU. Once he realized what was going on he started screaming and swearing at Jade. He fought with the agents but they were both too powerful for him. Jade followed them back to CTU. She cried the entire way back, she was so close to her brother it was hard for her to believe she didn't know he was mixed up in such a horrible crowd.

Matthews interrogated Jason while Tony, Hammond, Casey and Jade watched through the 2-way mirror. Usually it would be Tony who interrogated Jason but everyone felt Tony would show too much emotion at this point. Tony's chest felt so tight he could barely breath. He felt so much anger towards Hammond and Matthews for making Michelle do the mission, it was hard to look at them and not throw a punch. More than anything though he was angry at himself – he should never have let her go, they could have left CTU together. They may have been unemployed but at least they would have been safe and happy together.

Unfortunately Jason was very new to the gang and had only ever been to the house the police had raided. At least that's what he said. Jason lied to Hammond saying that when they all evacuated the house he had left them and gone home. They all felt like he was holding more information back so they kept him in holding.

It was 7am and CTU had not heard or found anything. Everyone kept telling Tony to go home and get some sleep but he refused. The thought of going back to the bed he and Michelle had just slept in together was too hard to even comprehend. He felt so lonely and like there was a huge hole in his heart. He was wearing the leather jacket she had bought him and he had carried her card on him all night. He took her organizer and laid on one of the beds at CTU. Everyone kept one of these organizers at work, they could detail each project they worked on and track it all by dates. He flipped through the book to find today's date. He stared at yesterday's page for his birthday. She had drawn little love hearts around his name and had written in where she wanted to take him to lunch. She had doodled his name a few times over the page. For a brief moment his heart felt warm looking at it all. It showed that she really cared for him. He felt like such a fool, he had wasted all this time – he could have asked her out months ago. He curled his body up into a ball and closed his eyes. He spent hours lying there completely awake unable to fall asleep because he couldn't stop thinking about what was happening, eventually out of sheer exhaustion he drifted into light sleep for a couple of hours.

By 2pm Hammond and Matthews were back from going home for some sleep and a lot of Tony's staff had chosen to work over-time because they cared about Michelle and wanted her back. Every hour that passed though the hope of finding Michelle alive become smaller and smaller. Although Tony had never been more devastated in his life, he had the smallest feeling in his gut that Michelle was still alive. He couldn't work out if the feeling meant something and was true or if it was hope. He had walked into an office without knocking that Matthews and Hammond were in and before the noticed Tony he heard them discussing that they both believed Michelle was dead. Tony yelled at them and told them to use the energy they had to talk that way about Michelle into finding her. It made him so mad that people had given up hope so quickly.

At 8pm all the shifts changed again and the nighttime agents came in. One of the agents bought in with him a package that had been left out the front. It was simply addressed to the director CTU. Upon opening it Tony found a videotape was a small typed note stuck to the side:

To the director,

I'm sure you miss your agent. I have Michelle Dessler and if you want her back then we need to negotiate.

Tony put the videotape into the machine and turned the volume up very high. Everybody had gathered around to watch it. The note had given Tony a new ray of hope. She must be alive if they want to do a swap with her. He promised himself whatever it was, he would make it happen – no matter what he would be taking her home with him.

The video started out with a shot of Michelle lying on the ground handcuffed. Her eyes were closed and she did look dead. Her ears were both bloody and she had a very bad black eye. Tony's heart broke a little more. He was in actual real physical pain because he was so distraught over Michelle.

Then Dale Pault came onto the picture. It was a close-up from his upper chest to the top of his head. He looked directly down the camera as he spoke.

"My brother Mason is in jail for murder. He has already served 12 years but he still has another 11 years to serve before he is eligible for parole. This is all very simple, you have Mason released and we will return Michelle. If Mason is not released I can assure you Michelle will die a very slow and painful death. If my demand is not met by 5pm tomorrow night she will die. I will be contact with you in the morning to advise on drop off and pick up locations.

The video then cut to Michelle. They had her sitting up now leaning back against the wall. Her arms were bloody and dirty along with her ears and cheeks. She was extremely pale and they could actually tell that she was shaking. She was an absolute mess and Tony could see the sheer terror in her eyes. He wanted to dive through the screen and hold her. Michelle spoke a few words in the quietest shakiest voice they had ever heard. "I'm ok, I am so sorry."

That was the end of the tape. Casey said exactly what Tony was just thinking. "So typical Michelle – trying to tell us she is alright so we don't worry even though it is obvious she is not. I am not surprised at all that she apologized – Michelle would never point the finger, rather she would just take the blame herself."

Everybody agreed with Casey, but then everyone started to disagree once they began discussing what they were going to do. Tony told everyone to calm down and then he sent everyone out of the room that didn't have to be there. Once that was done they were left with Hammond, Matthews, Alberta green and Chappelle who had arrived from division a couple hours ago to help out. "Hammond, who would I need to ask to speak to at the jail?"

"Hang on a minute Tony, we don't know what we are going to do yet."

"What do you mean Brad?"

Hammond used his hand as he spoke to motion Tony to sit back down again. "Tony it is going to be near impossible to have this guy released. I can't see the President allowing a pardon because that would be negotiating, something the American government doesn't do."

"I know Brad but surely this is different being that Michelle is a government agent. We need to speak to the jail and get more information on his brother and then we can go to the President."

"I'm not quite sure I completely agree with having this man released...."

Tony was beginning to lose his patience with Hammond. "How the hell can you say that?"

Brad cut Tony off. "He is in jail for murder Tony, we need to think about how many people we would be putting in danger by having him released. We need to put all the facts we have together and then we can work on our solution."

Michelle heard the footsteps leave the room giving her some short-lived relief. She allowed her body to relax for a few moments. Her body was very tight and tense making it difficult to loosen up at all. She was surprised with herself but she hadn't actually cried once since she had been taken, she couldn't. It was like she was passed being able to do that. She started moving her arms around and bending her legs up and down. She didn't want her muscles to start disintegrating or become too relaxed because when she needed to make a run for it her whole body really needed to be ready. She had decided her best and only chance would be when they took the handcuffs off to let her go to the bathroom.

She had no idea of the time or what day it was. She had been trying to remember as much of everything as she could but she had given up now. She was too tired and sore to dealing with anything. She could feel the huge lump on her head and also on her neck from where they had hit her twice with the gun to knock her out. They had her lying on her back and so she had to tilt her head to the side so that she wasn't leaning on the lump on her head. Her whole body stung and her head and right side were pounding. Every few hours they would come in and start screaming at her for information from CTU. When she said no then they would proceed to beat her. She knew they were going to kill her, she had heard them talking before. She didn't pick up what they were using her for but whatever it was they had already decided either way they would kill her when it was over. She imagined it would be some kind of deal with CTU.

She couldn't believe how alone and terrified she felt. It felt like it was weeks ago that Tony had his arms around her. She would give anything in the world to be back with him right now. She missed him so much and it was so impossible to even imagine that she probably would never see him again. She loved him so much. She regretted falling asleep rather than spending every second she had with him. She wondered if he thought she was already dead.