~The Next Morning
Tony groaned in protest as a low, strangely hoarse voice edged its' way into his awareness, persistent but unfamiliar. The soft voice was laced with fear and something else; empathy for the frightened speaker coaxed Tony from unconsciousness. He lifted his head and blinked his eyes open a crack. A wave of dizziness sent his head spinning as he took in a glimpse of a dank room, dimly lit by a battery lantern on the floor. Nausea joined the party as a faint but recognizable smell of death filled his nostrils. He quickly squeezed his eyes closed again and lowered his aching head back to the dirty floor. But hey, congrats you're not dead.
The mystery voice droned again but was unintelligible over the ringing in his ears. The pain served to help dispel the fog in his mind and he took stock of his situation. He lay face down on a cold damp floor, hands cuffed behind him, there was a throbbing agony in the back of his head, and he'd definitely been drugged.
Better than the alternative, he thought morbidly. Recall began a grudging return, and his memory slowly gave him bits and pieces of the event that got him in his current predicament.
He'd been interviewing employees and patrons in a Georgetown bar called The Den, and was hopeful of a lead when the bartender confirmed their missing sailor was a regular. A hulking man drinking in a corner booth who turned out to be an off duty bouncer, recalled the young woman leaving with someone out the back door. He'd apologized when he couldn't remember what day it had been. There was something off about the outwardly helpful man, who'd proceeded to watch as Tony made his way around the room, showing the picture of Leigh Danford. There'd been a fleeting gleam in the man's eyes when he saw the photo of the missing woman. It struck Tony as predatory, and his instincts had told him the guy bore a closer look.
Tony pulled his phone out to call Gibbs and the others as he made his way to the back door. He stepped out into the alley to scope out whether or not there were surveillance cameras that could help their investigation, realizing too late that he'd been followed out by the bouncer.
No sooner had he dashed off a 911 text to Gibbs, than he'd been attacked. Tony managed to land a couple solid blows, but had quickly been overpowered by the sheer size and weight of the much larger man. He'd been slammed into the brick wall, striking his head with a sickening crack and the lights went out. The next thing he remembered was briefly waking up in the trunk of a moving car, then nothing until now.
He'd been kidnapped from a bar again. Gibbs was going to kill him, assuming he got out alive this time.
"Mister?" a hoarse voice called again. "Are you okay? Please talk to me…please.
The pleading voice was coming from behind him. He lifted his head again and turned it toward the voice, ignoring the pounding in his head that increased exponentially. He could feel a thick coating of dried blood on his face and back of his neck crack and flake as he turned his head to face the other way. He'd been here a while.
Tony blinked to clear his blurry vision and tried to focus on the woman huddled in the corner of the dim room. He was dismayed to see that she was naked, her knees drawn up tightly to her chest to try and cover herself as much as she was able. Tony forgot about his own pain and discomfort as he noted she was shackled to the wall by one wrist. Fury rose up when he saw the raw, abraded skin and blood streaked arms and legs. She'd tried hard, but futilely, to free herself. Her wavy dark hair was long and disheveled, hanging forward and hiding most of her face. Even so, he recognized her as their missing petty officer.
"Hi there," he croaked, wincing as his dry, parched throat protested.
The woman stifled a little sob and pushed hair out of her face with her free hand, revealing a mesmerizing pair of gray eyes fringed with dark lashes. "You were still for so long…I thought you were dead for a while."
"Not me," Tony said. "I've got more lives than a cat, so my friends and coworkers tell me."
"I hope you're not on number nine," she answered in that strangely hoarse voice. A dark expression he couldn't interpret crossed her features before settling into a broken and resigned look that he wanted to erase from the lovely face.
"You're Petty Officer Danford, right?" he asked, keeping his eyes on her face and ignoring her nudity.
The gray eyes widened fearfully before narrowing in suspicion.
"Hey…it's okay," he reassured her. "I'm with NCIS. Agent Anthony DiNozzo, at your service. We've been looking for you." She looked less than impressed.
"Well Agent DiNozzo, you found me," she began a bit icily. "My situation isn't much improved though, is it? Neither is yours, for that matter."
She had a point, and it ate at him. "First off, you can call me Tony if you'd like. As for our situation, well I think it's time we did something about that, don't you, Petty Officer Danford?"
Tony gave her his best charming, reassuring smile, then he carefully rolled onto his side and sat up. Moving awakened a whole new host of aches and pains. He closed his eyes and took a minute to breathe as the dizziness returned with a vengeance. He hurt all over and felt like he'd beaten with hammers. The jackass bouncer that jumped him had most likely exacted some retribution while he was unconscious. Tony opened his eyes to see the young woman watching him warily, but also with some concern. It wasn't a leap to guess that she'd been assaulted; probably more than once given the amount of time she'd been missing. He couldn't begin to imagine what she'd been through.
"Tony," she repeated softly as their eyes met. "I'm Leigh. How is your head?"
He smiled again at the signs of the slight thaw. "I'm okay." His head still pounded relentlessly, but the dizziness seemed to be abating along with the drugged haze. "Right this very minute, Leigh, my team is looking for us. They are the very best at what they do and they're going to find us." Tony winked and added, "If we don't get ourselves out of here first, that is."
"They won't find you in time," Leigh said. She looked down, defeated, and curled even tighter into the corner. "It's too late for me, and they'll be back soon."
They? Tony thought. Did their attacker have an accomplice? He shelved that possibility for the moment.
"Hey now…I've read your service jacket. You don't strike me as the type to give up," he said, trying to buoy Leigh's spirits. "I certainly don't plan to."
Tony cringed as Leigh pulled on the shackle, causing fresh blood to well from around the injured wrist. "What do you plan to do about this? Especially since you're handcuffed."
"I have an idea about that, but I'm going to need your help. Can you do that?"
Leigh's resigned features sharpened and she looked over, regarding him with renewed interest.
"Yes."
"Is it alright with you if I move a little closer?" he asked, wanting to give the traumatized woman some control over their interaction.
At the small affirmative nod, Tony scooted closer to Leigh, moving awkwardly without the use of his hands. Leigh began trembling as he settled next to her, and he made sure they weren't touching. He could see his proximity made Leigh uncomfortable, so he started talking to distract her.
"I was a cop years ago, before I became a federal agent. I had a partner once who was always losing his handcuff key, so I got into the habit of carrying a spare," he said meaningfully. "I still do," he grinned.
Leigh shook her head. "He emptied your pockets; I saw him."
"Just my jeans and outside jacket pockets, right?"
She nodded, frowning as Tony smiled.
"It's in a small zipper pocket inside my jacket," he revealed, inclining his head down toward the right side of his leather jacket. . "I'd be willing to bet he didn't check there."
Leigh's eyes lit up with hope. "He didn't."
"Here's where your help comes in," he said, indicating his cuffed hands.
Leigh nodded in understanding, her discomfort forgotten for the moment. Tony leaned close so she could reach the right side of his leather jacket and waited while she fumbled one-handed to open the zipper on the inner pocket. She reached inside and inhaled sharply.
"I have it!"
Tony immediately shifted around so his back was to her, and after a couple seconds he felt her touch on his wrists as she struggled to insert and turn the key with one hand. Then there was the telltale click and one cuff popped open, followed by the other seconds later.
Tony turned and gave Leigh a triumphant grin. "Atta girl," he said, and was rewarded with a small smile in return. He picked up the key and cuffs and shoved them in a back pocket. With any luck, he'd be using them on Leigh's rapist very soon.
"Are you going to leave me now?" Leigh asked, as Tony stood and tried to shake some feeling back into his numb hands.
"Not a chance in hell," Tony replied fiercely as he shrugged out of his jacket.
He knelt next to Leigh and gently laid the jacket over her, noting a scattering of scratches and bruises on the parts of her body he could see. Leigh looked up in surprise as he'd placed the jacket over her body, clearly not expecting the kind gesture, and a vicious circle of bruising around her throat became visible. She'd been choked at some point, likely accounting for the odd, hoarse voice.
His heart broke a little when Leigh touched pale, icy fingers to his hand briefly in thanks. She pulled his jacket closer to her body, her free hand clutching it as though it were a lifeline and she were drowning.
"I have no intention of leaving here without you, Leigh Danford," Tony asserted, sitting next to her, cross legged on the floor. Leigh didn't look totally convinced as her eyes flicked to the shackle and back to his face. "I promise you that. And whoever did this to you? I promise you that they'll pay."
Gray eyes studied green as Leigh weighed his words against what she saw there. Her voice wavered, but she nodded bravely and accepted his word. "I believe you, Tony."
"Good." Tony studied the shackle and realized there was no getting her out without the key or something to pry the chain from the concrete wall. "Can you tell me anything that might help about where we are, or what happened the night you disappeared?"
"We're in an old warehouse basement; the door to the stairs is over there," Leigh began, pointing at a door in a dark corner on the far side of the room. "Wherever it is, there mustn't be anything nearby because they weren't worried about me screaming."
Leigh paused and took a steadying breath. "I'm pretty sure it was the bouncer at The Den, Don Miller. He moonlights at a couple other places in Georgetown. We'd flirt back and forth on the nights I saw him working, but it was never serious. Once in a while on Fridays he'd let me in the back door so I didn't have to pay the club's cover charge. That night Don asked me out, but I turned him down. He didn't seem upset at all; he even said no hard feelings…" Leigh stopped and looked down, her cheeks pinking. "I was so stupid."
Tony had a pretty good idea of what happened next, but he had to ask. "Anything after that?"
"He was about to go off shift and asked to buy me a drink. I accepted and things got fuzzy after that. I remember snatches of someone walking me to my car. I'd parked off the alley behind the bar because I knew he'd let me in the back door that night. Then nothing really until I woke up here."
"Sounds like you were roofied by the same guy who jumped me," Tony said. "Two times earlier, you said they."
Leigh nodded. "There's two of them, but they only come in one at a time and they always wear a full stocking face mask. They force me to drink water then leave. There's always something in the water; I pass out and when I wake up…," Leigh pressed her lips together grimly and averted her eyes.
"Leigh?" he prompted gently.
"I don't remember what happens next. Maybe that's better, because my body is telling me things I can't process right now."
"I'm so sorry, Leigh."
She shrugged, obviously detaching herself consciously from that part of her ordeal. "It's not your fault. They took you and drugged you too…all because you were looking for me," she said guiltily. "For a while I thought they gave you too much."
"This isn't your fault either," Tony told her. "None of it."
"There's something else you need to know," Leigh said. "I'm not the first."
"There are others here?" Tony recalled the other women reported missing and realized the cases might all be connected.
"There are five women in the room down the corridor," Leigh said in a miserable voice.
"Are they still alive?"
Leigh's eyes were haunted and her gravelly voice dropped to a low whisper. "Not anymore. There's a reason for that smell."
Tony was horrified at the implications. Leigh's nightmarish ordeal was even worse than he'd imagined. She had been held captive here and repeatedly assaulted, knowing all the while that her attacker's previous victims were somewhere nearby, dead and decaying. That she would be joining them. He wasn't wired to be a vigilante, but if he were, this would be enough to tempt him to shoot the murdering monsters rather than arrest them.
"They argued about killing you too, but said they were scared because you're a Fed. One of them wants to, one doesn't."
Suddenly the quiet was broken by a metallic screeching noise from somewhere above them.
Tony jumped at the unexpected noise as Leigh looked up and stiffened, her eyes widening in fright.
"That's the warehouse door being slid open." That despairing and hopeless voice was back. "Your friends are too late…now neither one of us will get out of this room alive."
~.~
AN: Longer chapter for you this time :) Sorry about that little cliffie, but I hope you're enjoying following along. The story is largely complete, so another update coming soon.