Disclaimer: I own nothing associated with "Without a Trace". I make no money from this!

A/N: Thanks, once again, to Newlands for the beta and the words of encouragement.

Chapter Fifteen

Home of Adam and Laura Walker, Hempstead, NY.

2.03pm

Exchanging a quick glance with Samantha, Jack stood and reached out to carefully grasp the phone from Laura Walker's shaking hand. Concerned, he watched as she slowly lowered herself back into the chair opposite, before he spoke.

"Jack Malone."

The voice on the other end of the line was formal but breathless and Jack found himself straining in order to hear it.

"Er. Hello. This is Jennifer Antidormi. Um, I spoke with two of your agents earlier today."

Jack's tone was civil and professional. "We thank you for your assistance, Ms. Antidormi. Now, Mrs. Walker said you had something you needed to tell us?"

There was a pause on the line as he heard the woman's voice hitch. It was a couple of seconds before she could force her next words out.

"It's… I… I don't know what your colleagues told you about my cell phone but… er… my partner got back from her trip and I just managed to check my messages and," she paused as if collecting herself, "I just found a message that Adam left me. On Monday night."

She breathed deeply, her tension palpable even over the long distance connection.

"What did it say? Do you still have it?" Jack enquired, now fully alert.

The sense of urgency in his voice caused Sam to look up. His eyes were focused and intense. She looked over at Laura Walker who was sitting upright on the edge of her chair, her face strained and pale.

This time her tone was solemn but firm. "Yes I have my cell right here. I can play it for you now."

Jack exhaled. Although he had no idea as yet what the message might say, from the woman's tone, and Laura Walker's ashen complexion, he had a sinking feeling that it wasn't going to be good.

"Okay," he replied steadily. "I'm probably still going to have to get a copy of it, but that would be helpful. Thank you."

There was a slight crackle as he heard the two instruments being placed closer together. It wasn't exactly ideal, and he'd still have to get the tech guys on it, but if this was the last time that anyone had heard from Adam Walker, then they had to take what they could get. Right now, all that mattered was the content of that message, and what it might mean.

He waited with a sense of trepidation for Adam's voice to filter through. No matter how many times he performed this clinical dissection of a stranger's life, reducing it to its most intimate components, he would never get used to the occasions where he was able to hear the lost voice first-hand. It always felt eerily akin to convening with a ghost. Despite himself, he felt the pull of anticipation as the message tone sounded. Everything else around him seemed to fade, as the tinny echo of Adam Walker reached out to him across the invisible void of the last three days.

"Hello? Jenn? Okay, so you're not answering. Well it's me, Adam."

The voice was deeper than Jack had somehow imagined, almost lilting. As he listened, he absently toyed with his tie, subconsciously pulling it away from his collar as he might do at the end of a particularly long day. In the recesses of his mind, he acknowledged the symmetry behind this action. As he absorbed the sound, he found himself crafting his own personal recreation of this singular moment in Adam Walker's life – his body-language, his facial expressions, his purpose. It was the incomplete sum of his day's work, Jack considered, to have built up such a detailed portrait of a person's life, and still have no real idea where they could be, or maybe more importantly, why they were there.

"Okay, so I guess you don't have your cell turned on. Big surprise, huh?"

Adam paused, as a noise sounded in the background, a monotone pre-recorded announcement. As the details slowly shaded themselves in, Jack relaxed into them. He was at the airport.

As the broadcast ended, his voice picked up again.

"So, I know this is kind of unexpected, but… I'm going to be in Boston tonight and… um… well, I just thought that…"

Again the message broke off, but this time there was only silence. When Adam continued, there was a distinct shift in his tenor. The muscles in Jack's shoulders tensed imperceptibly at the change.

"Oh God, Jenn. I really wish you'd pick up because I really need to… I really need to talk to someone and… I don't know what I'm… Shit. I'm really just messing all this up… But I…"

There was another pause, this one longer. The bustle of the airport could still be heard in the background but, like Adam, Jack was barely conscious of it. All he could hear was the silence, permeated intermittently by deep unsteady breaths. When this stillness was broken, maybe thirty seconds later, Jack was unaware he'd been holding his own breath. He exhaled softly, as Adam's words flew out in a disjointed stream.

"I… I just don't know what to do about this… It doesn't matter what I say, I just… I don't think I can watch this happen… not again… When you've been afraid of something for so long and then… I can't talk to Laura because… well, you know… There was so much anger… God… and it just scared me and… and I didn't know what to do and… It's like there's this cycle and it doesn't matter that I know about it…I try to do the right thing, but it's like sometimes I don't even know what that is anymore… I just need to make it stop…and I don't know any other way to do it."

His voice broke off again as more seconds slowly ticked by. Jack waited. He knew there was more.

In the background, another announcement bell chimed. This time Adam didn't seem to acknowledge it. When he spoke again, there was a calm despondence to his tone, which caused something deep inside Jack to constrict; the stirrings of a memory becoming dislodged. There was a quality to Adam's voice that he couldn't help but recognise. It was helplessness.

"I'm sorry. I just had to talk to someone… someone who knows us and… and I know you'll probably call Laura the minute you get this. And maybe you should… But then she'll worry and… I just needed to do this on my own. I shouldn't have called. I'm sorry, okay. I'm sorry."

A deep sigh emitted down the line.

"So, er… bye."

As the slow beep set in, a gasp of air escaped Jack's lips and he found himself back in Adam's living room sharing a sorrowful stare with Laura Walker.

When neither of them spoke, Sam rose from her own chair and came to stand hesitantly next to Jack. Instinctively she reached out and laid a gentle hand on his forearm, which was still clutching the phone. The comforting sensation of her familiar touch snapped him back to the present, as he slowly lifted the receiver back to his ear.

He was met once again by the shaky greeting of Jennifer Antidormi.

"You have to find him. Please?"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

2.15pm

"Jack? Talk to me. Please?"

Laura Walker had once more taken refuge in the kitchen, leaving the two agents alone in her living room.

After Adam's wife had left the room, Jack had quietly sunk down onto the sofa behind them. Several minutes had now passed and he had yet to speak. There was something about the look in his eyes that worried Sam more than she could articulate. Sighing quietly she dropped into the seat beside him, turning her head to watch him. Not until she felt their shoulders softly grazing, did she fully realise their proximity.

Reacting to the contact, Jack turned toward her. From her anxious expression, he drew an understanding of the look which haunted his own face. When their eyes met, she smiled almost shyly as they both drew strength from the unexpected intimacy of the moment.

Without breaking the contact, she tilted her head.

Her voice was low and gentle. "You need to tell me what happened."

Looking away, Jack ran a hand through his hair. Sitting here on a sofa like this, allowing his mind to travel this particular dark path, he'd found another memory had been stirred – this one barely a year old. Only this new memory wasn't quite real. Or maybe the memory was real, just some of the details had been replaced? It was odd, the results that wishful thinking could produce. He couldn't help wonder where he'd be now, if Samantha had been the one sitting next to him on his couch the night that Spaulding had died. So, there it was again. Just one more layer of guilt to add to the mix.

He looked down, dimly aware of her hand hovering above his knee. It quivered slightly before she swiftly diverted it back to the safety of her own lap. He couldn't help but feel disappointed.

"I'm not so sure we're going to find him, Sam."

Samantha studied his profile. The investigator in her had a list of unanswered questions. Yet, personally, Jack's body language told her everything she needed to know. Fighting the emotional impulse to reach out to him, an action that she knew intellectually to be inappropriate on so many levels, she settled with re-positioning herself so their shoulders once again nudged.

"Should I start contacting the Boston morgues?"

Jack sighed, his body weight instinctively transferring to prolong the slight physical contact.

As he did so, he felt the familiar vibration in his jacket pocket and reached in to pluck out his cell phone.

"Danny?" he muttered wearily into the device.

He listened distractedly as Danny rapidly filled him in on the details of the taxi driver and Adam's choice of motel. About to interrupt with the bare details of their own latest development, Jack stopped suddenly. Sam turned in confusion as she saw him bolt upright in the chair until he was on his feet.

His features transformed as everything about him became sharp.

"Danny? Hang on… What did you just say about the psychiatrist?... No. What did you just call her? A kiddie…"

His despondence from just seconds earlier forgotten, one look in his eyes told Samantha that for whatever reason, Jack was back in the game.

"Okay, I want you and Martin to check every inch of that motel. If Adam Walker left anything else there, you are going to find it." He paused as Danny affirmed his order. "I need to know exactly what happened between that motel room and the doctor's office."

This time not waiting for a response, he focused suddenly in the direction of the kitchen as a revelation seemed to wash over his face.

"I'm gonna have to call you back."

TBC