Thank you so much for all your great reviews. Makes it a real Pleasure to go on! So here is the next chapter. Let me know what you think.
edited 6-28-05 with thanks to jbird!
Jack approaches the bundle of black cloth wearily. It has been raining and the coat looks soaked. Two black boots are nearby. One of the heels is broken. Everything has already been photographed and a crime scene investigator is approaching with an evidence bag. Jack touches the coat. He picks it up, unfolding it, planning to search through the pockets. His hands come away wet with rain and blood.
"Jack," Vivien says. Her voice is right beside him, her steadying hand on his arm.
The color has drained from his face. He stands frozen.
He will never know how he managed to get through the rest of the day. He is functioning but he feels like an automaton, doing what he knows has to be done. Most clearly he remembers Vivien's concerned face, looking at him. She is staying right there at his side all the rest of the nightmarish day and the following night.
Soon it is confirmed that the blood is in fact Sam's. But that is the only thing they turn up for a long time.
Sam lies in a dark place. She is cold, miserable and hurt. The memories of what happened to her are sketchy. She knows she has been attacked and abducted not far from her home. She tries to remember what she had been doing, what time of day it was, but she is not able to. Her hand comes away wet and sticky when she touches her hurting head. She knows it is blood. The dizziness comes and goes and sitting up makes her nauseous, so she is just laying there on that cold, hard floor.
Scared and helpless as she is her mind keeps coming back to one thought:
Did I manage to push the flower from the windowsill? Jack will know when he sees the flower is gone.
Part of the time she realizes that happened months ago, then again it seems absolutely real. And while she is drifting in and out of reality, she is always keeping the thought of Jack in her mind. She can see him clearly behind her closed lids. People might not call him handsome but to her he has always been beautiful. She takes pleasure in every trait of his personality. She desires him. She has done so from the first time she laid eyes on him. But she also discovered soon enough that the attraction goes far deeper. They work well together. They have an instinctive knowledge of what the other one is going for and hinting at. They enjoy the understanding, the glances, the jokes that pass between them.
Sometimes we still have that, she thinks. Sometimes we still look at each other that way.
She remembers the first dawning realization that it is over between them. It is when he tells her that he actually moved out, left his wife – three months ago! Sam is so hurt, she can hardly speak. She does not understand why he did not tell her, why he did not confide in her. Months later when she is in hospital after being shot, after he has saved her life by risking his, he visits her. He is moving back in with his family he tells her. He has made his choices. The pain she feels is intense and for a long time she tries to pretend that she has never really been in love with him. She even tries to fall in love with Martin. Poor Martin. He sure deserved something better than that.
Her mind wanders to the "Table of Contents". She hears Jack's voice again, booming across the empty street:
"I want Samantha!"
He is unstoppable. He is coming in and he is so absolutely convincingly sure of himself that no one can stop him.
Sam is terrified. He is sacrificing himself for her and cold fear grips her. The hours she spends in the hospital not knowing what is happening, not knowing if he is safe are the worst, most unbearable moments in her life.
After a while a door opens and light floods the room. Before her eyes can adjust a blindfold is put around them. She tries to struggle but her hands get tied behind her back. The nausea is coming back in waves and she tries desperately not to throw up. When her stomach settles down again she talks to her captor but there is no reaction. He washes some of the blood from her face and she can feel the stinging of a disinfectant in the wound. Then she is left alone again. She is horribly uncomfortable, trying to find a position she can rest in but failing.
She thinks about Jack. That makes everything bearable.
Sam feels clearly in that moment that she has lied to herself for too long – she does love him and part of her will always love him no matter what the future brings.
There are only two things that keep Jack going in the long succession of days that follow. One of them is the thought of his daughters. He knows that they need him and he forces himself to find the time to fly to Chicago and be with them for at least a couple of hours - dragging himself away from his work, from a case that has no leads to go on and is growing colder by the minute and from the constant fear that Sam is gone forever. Those hours he spends with Kate and Hanna are precious. Both pick up on the state he is in and treat him with a tenderness he has not been used to in a long time.
The other thing that keeps him going is the resolve never to give up on Sam. He will never stop looking for her.
Never.
TBC