DISCLAIMER: Don't own 'em. Willing to stage a coup.

FEEDBACK: Welcomed and appreciated

A/N: One down…uh… I've actually lost track of how many stories I'm working on. But I am working on them, I promise!

DEMANDS: Part Three

Present…

Allie had been gone seven hours. Jordan had once thought she knew what it felt like when time stopped. She'd seen her murdered mother's body on the floor of her own home. She'd been buried alive and willingly gone into a bomb-shattered building to comfort a trapped man. She'd seen the man she loved more than she'd been able to admit lying on a gurney, being wheeled into a surgery that could have paralyzed him – or worse – and she'd sat in a hospital waiting room praying to a God she hadn't thought she needed. She'd weathered that same man's erratic behavior and, near the end, his rejection. None of it meant anything. She'd asked Haley how much longer until the kidnappers called again. He could have said three hours, three days or three minutes to never and it would have felt the same. The only thing proving to her that the seconds did indeed pass was the rhythm of his heart, thudding, while she rested her head on his chest.

She'd gone to pick Allie up from Kindergarten at twelve-thirty, only to find that she'd been picked up. Knowing Drew was stuck in a paper-pushing meeting, she'd been instantly alarmed. She'd managed to remain calm when they told her Garret Macy had taken Allie home with him. Bells had gone off in her head. Garret was in Tokyo, visiting Abby. Once upon a time, she would have gone off on them, lambasting them for their idiocy, threatening them with anything she could think of and calling the police, but her own experiences after Pollack's death had generally lowered her opinion of the Boston P.D. and her years of involvement with Haley had brought a new circumspection. He wasn't exactly a stranger to death threats. Which was why Allie was in a very expensive, supposedly secure private school. It had all been to no avail. She pushed aside the niggling thought that if she and Drew had managed to keep their marriage together, not juggle custody – no matter how amicably – this might not have happened. Still, she'd known that was a waste of time; they'd tried – it had ended. Enough said.

Without revealing her deepest fear, Jordan had managed to coax a description of "Garret Macy" from the teacher and found out what kind of car had spirited away her child. Just as she'd been walking back to her car, her cell had gone off. They'd called Drew and made their first set of demands. He had an hour to get to a specific downtown hotel and request a specific suite. He'd been instructed to have Jordan join him. He'd also been told if either of them let on anything about the situation, they'd get proof of the seriousness of the threat – proof in the form of one of Allie's fingers. They'd both made it in half an hour. The hotel clerk had given them knowing glances, smiling at their eagerness to be alone. Jordan could have cheerfully strangled the woman.

"Oh!" She'd said as they'd turned to head for the bank of elevators. "Mr. Haley? We found this for you." She'd held out an envelope.

Smiling as if everything was utterly normal, Drew had thanked her and taken the small packet. Jordan had to bite back a scream when she saw what was in it – Allie's long, dark braid, still tied just as she liked it, with matching bows at the top of the weave and the bottom.

Haley had gone white for a moment, but had regained his composure far more quickly than his ex. He'd questioned the clerk, who said it had been really weird. There'd been a scuffle in the lobby about an hour earlier. She'd left the front desk to use a private phone to call for house security. When she'd come back, the envelope had been there.

So now they stood in the hotel suite, facing each other across their worst nightmare. Haley held in his phone a cell phone that had been lying on the bed. It had rung about five minutes after they got off the elevator. Haley had held the phone so that Jordan could hear the distorted voice coming through the device. The instructions were specific, the consequences, horrifyingly repeated. They were to stay in the suite, turn off their respective cell phones, make no outgoing calls on the hotel phone and simply wait. They would call back in two hundred minutes. The time in between was a test; if Allie's parents could follow directions, the next call would tell Drew where to meet them.

Drew held her, stroked her back.

Quietly, she murmured, "Who-?"

"Shh." He looked down into her face as she raised her eyes to question him. His mouth dipped to her ear. "The room might be bugged."

She nodded, that thought having flashed across her mind, while her heart had hoped he wouldn't say it. His arms folded her against him as his fingers ran through the tangled silk of her hair. For a long time, she simply stood in the circle of his arms before shifting to pull him closer to her. As the minutes ticked by – two hundred minutes that seemed intent on making every last second count – fear seeped ever deeper in Jordan's brain; her body grew colder, even as she and Haley clung to each other, their grips tightening without volition from time to time. She laid her head against his shoulder as the tears she'd been choking back broke free in quiet streams.

She shook against him, unnerving him, breaking his resolve to hide his own desperation from her. Tears in his own eyes, he tilted her chin up, his fingers brushing already damp locks of dark hair from her face, his thumbs wiping away the moisture from her cheeks. When that failed, he acted without thought, leaning down to kiss her. Just a soft, gentle caress of her lips with his full ones. Just something to reassure her, to drive back the utter blackness of the situation, even if only for a bare moment or two. Just….

The light pressure deepened as neither sought an end to the intimate touch. His tongue teased her lips and she opened them, letting him taste and explore her mouth as she did the same. Gently, softly, still a kiss of little but comfort and familiarity. Then his hand caged her head, the fingers splayed against her skull, pressing her to him more closely, more insistently. She shifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck and the fire between them swept them up in its back draft.

They pulled apart, looking into the other's eyes, reading the face in front of each of them, pleading, seeking assurance and absolution. He drew the back of his hand down her face, sighing softly. As she closed her eyes and inclined her face into the cradle of his hand, she murmured his name. They were both lost at that moment.

What might have been hasty, desperation setting their pace, was not. Instead they fought the terror holding them tightly in its net with love, making love to each other with a gentle, sweet, thorough tenderness, an act as ardent and loving as any from their marriage. When she climaxed in his arms, sighing his name so softly, he watched her beautiful face, eyes closed, jaw clenched as spasms ripped through her and he felt the evidence of her pleasure to his own core. His own release came moments later, her name falling quietly from his lips this time.

They lay without talking for nearly a quarter of an hour, simply holding each other. Finally Haley reached for the inevitable pad of hotel paper sitting next to the phone. He wrote swiftly.

We're both realists. We know this can't end well.

She read his words, her eyes darkening. She simply nodded in miserable agreement.

He wrote again. It didn't take long.

I will always love you, Jordan. Hold on to that – and to this, to our love-making here.

Her brows knit down as she read his statement. She grabbed the pen and hastily scribbled her own words.

What are you talking about?

He closed his eyes for a moment as a ragged sigh escaped his lips. You know the pen supplied as she now read as he wrote.

She shook her head.

Jordan, I've figured out who it has to be, who has Allie.

What? Who?

Before he could write a response, the phone rang. He listened, mute, which was apparently how he'd been told to respond. He'd also been warned not to let Jordan listen in as she had last time. He could explain it when the call ended and, the caller promised, that would be soon. Less than thirty seconds later, Haley snapped the phone shut and took a deep breath. "We need to get dressed," was all he said.

"What did they say?"

"Jordan…." His voice faltered. "Please."

"Tell me what they said!" Her tone rang with that slight edge of hysteria that she reserved for the infrequent crises in Allie's life – tonsillitis, unexplainable fevers, Technicolor, projectile vomiting after she ate a box of crayons.

He ran his hand over the crown of her head. "I will. All of it. We need to get dressed first though."

His promise soothed her enough and she assented. When they were both clothed again, the moments of love and passion already seeming like a dream, he guided her out of the suite. As they walked to the elevators, he relayed the contents of the phone call. In plainest terms someone – an old enemy – had taken their daughter. The demand was far greater than any sum of money. The demand was blood and a pound of flesh. And Haley was planning on giving it to them.

"You can't do this!" Jordan's voice shook they stepped into the elevator car, which they had, mercifully, to themselves.

Drew took her by the shoulders, staring into her red-rimmed eyes. "I don't have a choice."

"Yes, you do. You have to. You. Have. To." She pounded on his chest with balled fists.

He caught her hands and stilled them, pulling her tightly to him. One hand held her closely while the other smoothed her hair. He murmured soothing syllables. When she calmed enough to listen again, he spoke. "Jordan, I have to do this. It's the only way. This is my fault."

"We don't know that," she muttered.

He kissed the top of her head. "Honey, we do know that."

"I've pissed a few people off, you know."

He pulled away and looked down at her. "You want to argue about who has more enemies?" The disbelief in his voice angered her.

She wrenched free. "No! Yes! God, I don't know, Drew. I just – I…." She swallowed helplessly. She laid her head against his chest once more. "I'm sorry. This is – It's – God…."

"Yeah, it is." He pulled away and searched her face again. "But I'm going to fix it."

"Drew…."

"Don't, Jo. Don't." He took her face in his hands, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. Her eyes fluttered shut. He kissed her softly. Pulling away, he rested his forehead on hers. "God, why couldn't we make everything work like this always has?"

She smiled wryly.

He brushed her cheeks again, wiping at the tears falling from her eyes. "We did one really great thing together, Jo."

She nodded. "Allie."

"Allie. She's been worth everything. All of it."

The car came to a soft stop as it reached the lobby, the doors opening, disgorging its anxiety-ridden passengers. Looking straight ahead, Haley grasped Jordan's hand in his own as he strode through the lobby toward the hotel's entrance. He slowed only when they reached the sidewalk, scanning the street in front of them.

He turned to her and pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. His eyes stormed with a violent welter of emotions. Comprehension dawned on Jordan too late as he kissed her quickly and then pulled away. In a few strides he was pulling open the door of a nondescript sedan. Even as Jordan called his name, he slammed the door. The car pulled away smoothly. Too stunned to do more than gape at the car's receding tail lights, she didn't even take notice of the driver or the plate number. She was reaching for her cell phone, switching into an automatic mode, when her hand froze.

"Mommy! Mommy!"

Jordan turned and Allie was sprinting down the sidewalk toward her.

END Part Three