Author's Note: I want to apologize for the delay in getting this chapter posted. I was having a hard time with it, not to mention finding the time to update/fix it. I appreciate your patience in waiting for me to get my act together. :)
Mac nearly attacked the phone when it rang the next morning. He was ready for the call, had been for at least an hour before it actually rang, but he still felt the anxiety racing through him as he picked up the receiver.
"O'Neill," he said.
"Do you have the translations?" asked the voice on the other end.
"Yeah, they're being worked on even as we speak."
"Good," the man said. "What about the alien devices?"
"I'm working on it," Mac replied. "I want to speak with the girl."
"Not until I get the translations and the devices. She is alright. For now, that is. You have 24 hours to get those devices and the translations ready for the drop off. I will contact you to give you the location and the drop off time."
"You won't get anything if I don't talk to her right now," Mac insisted. "You may have already killed her for all I know." He glared at Lanie when she gasped at his words. He put his finger to his lips to remind her to be quiet.
"She's not dead, O'Neill," the man replied. "I'll call you tomorrow."
"No deal," Mac said, closing his eyes as he waited for the response. He opened them after a few seconds of silence to stare at his wife, her fear evident in the tears that were spilling down her cheeks.
The silence on the other end of the line scared Mac. Would he get to hear Lindsay's voice? What if the man didn't buy his bluff? He was playing with Lindsay's life and he couldn't bear to lose his daughter, but he knew he had to convince these people that he was serious about this game they wanted him to play.
"You'd risk this little girl's life?" the man finally asked. "We were told that she was your niece. I have to tell you that I'd thought you'd have at least a little concern for your own niece."
Mac's mind was racing, trying to think who would have told anybody that he and Jack were brothers. The only people who were aware of the possibility were the people he and Lanie had contacted to do some digging into their births. Mac trusted those people with his life; they wouldn't have sold him out.
"Whoever told you that lied to you," Mac growled.
"I don't think so, O'Neill," the man said with confidence. "You have twenty-four hours."
"I've told you, no deal," Mac said again. "Prove to me the girl is still alive and unhurt."
A few more seconds of silence, then Mac heard some scuffling and his daughter crying through the receiver. "Hello?" she said through her tears.
"Lindsay," Mac said into the phone, relief surging through him at the sound of his daughter's voice. "Are you okay? Did they hurt you?" he asked, as he pulled away from Lanie, who was trying to grab the phone away from him.
"Daddy? I want to come home," she cried. "Please…"
"Are you satisfied?" asked the guy who was going to get his face smashed in when Mac got his hands on him.
"It's going to take more than 24 hours to get the devices. I'm going to need more time," Mac said.
"We'll talk tomorrow," the man insisted. "Have a great day!" he added pleasantly before hanging up.
"Yeah, you do the same," Mac snarled at the phone in his hands. He looked up to see his wife leaning against the wall, her arms hugging herself as the tears streamed down her face. He went to her and pulled her into his own arms, hugging her tightly. "She's fine," he assured her, as he stared into her eyes, willing her to believe him. She nodded and he let her go to look at the laptop computer he had sitting on the table the phone was on. The phone call came from the southern part of Colorado Springs, he noted, although the tracer he had put on Jack's phone line didn't tell him exactly where the call came from. This was a start, he thought.
He looked over at Lanie when he heard her sob, and was shocked to see that she had slid down the wall and was sitting on the floor sobbing into her arms. He went over to her and sat down beside her to pull her back into his arms, trying to soothe her with his words and caresses. He had never seen her like this, although he should have expected it. The stress, worry and the fact that she hadn't slept well the night before, all factored into this breakdown and he wasn't sure if he would be able to help her through it. But he tried anyway, holding her while she cried, talking to her softly, telling her of his love for her and that everything was going to work out. She hugged him back with her face buried in his shirt, taking what comfort she could get from him. They sat there for a long time, Lanie crying and Mac talking to her. Pete came over and tried to help Mac in comforting his mother, but ended up sitting next to her rubbing her back.
She finally sat up and looked at Mac, her eyes red and puffy, and she smiled at him through the few remaining tears to let him know she was back to being the brave, hardy soul she always had appeared to be. "Go get my baby back," she said to him.
'I will," Mac assured her, looking deep into her eyes trying to see the depth of her anguish. "Are you going to be okay?" he asked, as he wiped a stray tear from her cheek.
She nodded, staring back at him. Mac gave her a small smile, then brought up the subject that had been troubling him. "They knew that Lindsay was Jack's niece," he said. "Who knows that Jack and I may be brothers, and more importantly, that we were heading for Colorado?"
"The only people that I mentioned it to were Jesse, Theresa and my family," she said, scrunching up her face up she tried to think who else. "Oh, and I did mention it to Linda when I asked her to keep an eye on our house."
Mac felt the anger rising in him as he thought about Linda's husband, Bob. He now knew why he had been dealing with the paranoia the other day, why it had been so strong when his neighbor stood there on the porch, staring at him. That jerk had handed Lindsay over on a silver platter! Mac got up and walked over to the fireplace, putting his hands on the mantle as he lowered his head, then kicked the wall of the hearth as hard as he could, while at the same time uttering an oath that was normally a foreign word to him.
"Son of a bitch!" he growled, adding to the word he had already used before turning to face his family. It wasn't until that moment that he realized how strange he had been acting, as Lanie and Pete both stared at him with wide eyes and fear evident on their faces. He turned away, running his hands through his hair before looking sheepishly at them, still breathing hard from his efforts of trying to destroy Jack's fireplace.
"Look, I'm sorry …," he said just as Lanie said, "Mac, I'm sorry."
They both stopped and stared at each other. Mac shook his head at her, then told her, "Don't worry about it. I couldn't stand that guy from the minute he first moved in next door. I should have known not to trust him."
He watched the guilt settle in on her face as the implications of what he'd said sank in. "Oh my God!" she said, tears welling back up into her eyes. "I gave her to them…"
"No! Lanie, this is not your fault. None of it is," Mac rushed to tell her. He went to her then and grabbed her by the shoulders to give her a little shake, to make her hear his words. "You couldn't have known they would do this. How could you have known?"
"How can you be sure Linda and Bob even know the people who took Lindsay?" she asked, her eyes pleading with him, for what he wasn't sure.
"I'm not," he told her truthfully. "It makes sense, though," he continued as memories of the past few years passed through his mind. "I've learned over the years to rely on my instincts and Bob just brought out the worst of them. He's a part of this Lanie, I know he is. I just can't figure out why."
"I should have listened to you when you were telling me what a jerk he was. All these years, I just thought you were being… well, you know, a snob," she said.
"A snob?" he asked her, then smiled broadly at her. "I'll have you know that I am not a snob," he said with false indignity. He winked at her, then walked over to pick up the phone. "I guess I'd better let Jack know what's going on," he said.
A half hour later, Mac was on Jack's roof looking out over the neighborhood. The view was definitely different in the daylight, he thought, as he stared out at the mountains in the distance. He had come up here to find peace and quiet, to think and to plan. His first order of business was to find Lindsay, to get her back safe and sound. Despite Jack's insistence that she wouldn't be harmed, Mac couldn't help but worry about his daughter's safety.
He found himself sorting through everything that had happened and that he'd been told, trying to develop a scenario to follow. Things were not progressing fast enough for him and he wasn't used to being dependent on anyone, yet here he was sitting back waiting for Jack to make a move. Mac wasn't the type to let someone else do his dirty work. It was time for him to take action.
He thought back to the phone call with Jack. It had not been very productive, at least not as far as he was concerned. Jack didn't shed much in terms of information. Because of this, Mac only told Jack the bare details of his conversation with the kidnapper. If Jack wasn't going to cooperate with him, he would just have to take matters into his own hands.
His options were thin at this point, though. He thought about going to the area where the phone call came from to see if he could find anything, but he worried that if he did that without the information and 'devices' the kidnapper wanted, he could inadvertently cause his daughter to get hurt. Or he could leave it all up to Jack and sit back and wait until he gets Lindsay back, if he gets her back. This was definitely not something Mac was going to settle for - he needed to be a part of the solution.
No, he was going to have to figure out a way to get the translations from Jack and Dr. Jackson. That shouldn't be too hard, though. After all, he was the man's identical twin, he thought with a grin as a plan began to formulate in his head.
