I know, it's posting day! I really do try to keep the posting regular, it's just that my schedule isn't always the same and you know, life and such.

New Guest: welcome! What an amazing review, it really captured pretty much everything I wanted to express. Yes, Cal was Cal but he was also trying to explain to her first; and yes, they need closure together!

Before we on, just a reminder that I previously warned you this story was going to get tough here and there with strong content: I guess this a good time to remind you all of that.

Then, I just wanted to officially welcome a few people I've seen following/favouring this story and others: welcome and looking forward to hear your voice soon Carichi, morningstarwolf, Emill7, kathyhide, & Bunpath.

Gillian didn't like feeling like a guest in her own office, in the company she had built, around people she cared for and considered like family. But when they came back from Clinton, she went straight to her own office ignoring Loker's apologetical look, swimming through a sea of FBI labelled jackets and barely registering the presence of some additional members of their staff.

Once there, she closed the door behind her and kicked off her shoes, hiding away in a corner where nobody could see her despite the glass doors. She closed her eyes and leaned on the wall, taking deep breaths and trying to convince herself that no, she wasn't hyperventilating or having a full on panic attack. The power of persuasion, for someone like her who knew how to use it, could do wonders when self-inflicted. Slowly, very slowly, she started to regain control and when she opened her eyes the room around her had stopped spinning.

There were no tears, she wasn't going to cry until she'd had an unquestionable reason to, but at least when she was on her own she wasn't going to deny how utterly desperate she was. For hours she had worried about what Cal could do if he'd crossed paths with Warton again, about his injuries, terrified that he could take extreme measures to get rid of their problem or just make his conditions worse. She had left him behind thinking he'd be safe, bored out of his mind but safe from any risk she could think of, and now he was gone, taken by a maniac who had pretty much declared he was going to have some fun with him. If that wasn't cause for a bit of despair, Gillian couldn't tell what else would be.

Then a new, terrible thought occurred to her: she wasn't the only one affected by Cal's disappearance. The only difference was that she already knew about it.

Feeling nauseous for a moment, Gillian sighed and grabbed her bag, looking for the phone and then sitting on the couch. She stared down at the device for a while, wondering what to say exactly while browsing through her contacts, vainly hoping that Zoe's number had somehow disappeared from the list. It was there alright: she remembered joking with Cal about keeping that number on hand for emergencies, 'in case you get tired of me and want to vent to someone who knows what it feels like' he had said. She had called it once or twice when they had been forced to work together, but she had never placed a call like the one she was about to make.

Gillian took some time to think of how to go about it, and mostly calm down and make sure she could pull it off. Then she sighed and called, nearly hoping she wouldn't pick up. Of course she did, and Gillian started a delicate dance of half-truths and big, monumental lies. Zoe was immediately on alert because she was the one calling, bracing herself for bad news about Cal: that was exactly what Gillian had to share, but she wasn't going to. What she did was to play on that sense of alert and alarm, using the fact that Zoe already expected the worst to provide a less disastrous alternative that would make her feel a lot better. The story Gillian gave her, sounding as casual as possible, nearly amused, was that Cal was working with Reynolds on a high profile case, in a secure facility where cellphones were not allowed for security reasons. As someone who knew how to spot lies in the way people talked, Gillian was extremely well placed to tell them without being detected. She measured every word, every inflection of her voice knowing when to push and when to hold back. She knew how to sound annoyed when she explained how Cal had taken the job without checking with her first, something so likely to happen that it scored major points on the credibility scale with Zoe, and casually threw away the final part about the fact that he was probably going to be out of reach for a while and she'd had wanted them to know in case Emily would call and get worried for the lack of response.

It was a simple and open lie that worked wonders, getting even better when she repeated it all to Emily and once again engaged in some 'I know, right?' conversation as the girl commented on her father's lack of sensibility and planning. With that taken care of, at the usually high personal cost of lying to Emily, Gillian decided that she had to get back into the game. She checked and adjusted herself into the mirror, knowing there was not enough of that she could that would keep people's eyes away from her, then she took a deep breath and walked out of her office.

First thing first, she ran into a couple of staffers and found their presence there only mildly weird. She knew the situation in Clinton had been on the news, she had seen some TV crews arriving at the house before they left and she knew enough about the media circus to imagine that eventually Cal's name would have found its way to a journalist. It was all speculation on her part, theories she wasn't going to investigate for lack of time, but she figured that someone might have seen the news or heard something and took it upon themselves to check. She didn't care much for it, they had told the staff to stay away from the office due to safety concerns and with the FBI swarming the place that was hardly something she had to worry about anymore.

Still, when she made it to the lab, Loker was still the only member of the group among the FBI agents, and she preferred it that way. He was talking to Reynolds and another agent, probably one of those responsible for hooking up their system with surveillance equipment, likely getting an update on what had been going on at the house. The two men stopped talking when she came in and she wasn't surprised, ignoring their grave looks of guilt and concern. She wanted to walk up to them and tell them to knock it off, that they all had reasons to feel bad and blaming themselves for what had happened to Cal and that making a big deal about how she felt wasn't going to help. But she didn't want to create what might have been considered a scene, at least by her standards, so she relied on her very stern gaze and silently warned them before coming any closer.

"I called Zoe and Emily, made up some excuse for Cal not getting in touch," she explained, not expecting any further questions from them on that, then she looked around. "You sure did get some backups."

"We are connected to your system, all the phones and your cells, to tap into incoming calls." Reynolds explained, rolling with her clear intention to ignore talking about what had happened in Clinton. "If Warton reaches out we should be able to track him down."

"Will he?" Loker cautiously asked, thinking, and wisely not saying, that now that Warton had one of them in his grasp he might decide he was done playing.

"Oh, he will," Foster stated, hearing in her head Warton's voice saying that Cal would make do. "It fits his profile, taking pleasure in what he does. Getting his hands on Cal is only the beginning."

"I'm afraid I agree with Foster," Reynolds huffed. "Everything we know and have seen about this guy says that he's gonna keep toying with them for as long as he can."

"I don't expect him to call to make any requests, we don't have anything to offer in exchange for Cal that he might want," Gillian painfully stated, although they all knew the only thing they could swap was likely herself. "But he will call. He can't help it."

They all seemed to silently agree, which meant there was some idle waiting ahead for them. There was, of course, a lot going on outside of the lab. An ABP for Warton was out on a major scale, along with Cal's description. They didn't have a description of the car Warton had at the house nor the plate, but they were checking traffic cameras in the area and local airports, bus and train stations were under control. One thing they had to their advantage was that pretty much any law enforcement and government agencies within three states knew Cal, which might have helped in case his face popped up on any security cameras or tips. However, Warton had gone mostly undetected for days, leaving no trace at the hospital and seemingly coming and going from their offices without being noticed, and even though he had made a couple of mistakes, dropping hints about someone from the Pentagon being involved and choosing the Wagners' house as base, there wasn't much in his history suggesting he might slip again now that he had Cal.

"Do you think it was planned?" She asked then, finding a chair to sit down as the thought travelled from her brain to her mouth. "That he baited us, knowing we'd find out where he had been?"

"It's possible," Reynolds huffed, and she appreciated the fact that he wasn't trying to sugarcoat it for her. "I guess he couldn't stay at the house forever, and he must have had a long term plan besides coming here."

"You don't think he was trying to kill them?" Loker dared to ask, thinking that to anybody who had seen the video it should have been pretty obvious that was exactly what had happened.

Reynolds opened his mouth to respond but then stopped, realising what he had been about to say might have been a bit hard to hear for her. But Gillian shook her head and rolled her eyes, growing tired of being treated like she was made of glass.

"He could have tried harder," she said then. "He could have killed Cal at his place and me at the hospital. If he had come here with a gun instead of a knife things would have gone differently. He had something else in mind, he was probably waiting to be able to get his hands on one of us."

All of a sudden, to everyone's surprise, Loker whined absently and left the room. Gillian and Reynolds looked at each other and bit confused then she stood up and went after him. She saw him pace away down the hallway, probably looking for a quiet place which was extremely hard to find with all the extra people around. Somehow Gillian caught up with him, grabbing his arm and understanding when he pulled away hastily. She let him have that one, but she was soon at it again resting a hand on his shoulder and giving him a reassuring nod, eventually motioning him to follow her. He did, silent and tense, until they made it to her office. Without saying a word, Gillian sat him down on the chair in front of her desk then walked around it, retrieving a bottle and a glass from one of the drawers.

Loker looked a little puzzled, he was used to seeing the bosses indulge on a drink every now and then and as far as he was concerned the occasion certainly called for one, but he was surprised by the fact that it was tequila and not the usual scotch. Gillian shrugged in response to his silent enquiry, she had secrets of her own after all, then poured some liquor into the glass and passed it on to him. She watched as he took it and downed it down, his hand a little shaky when he put the empty glass on the desk, noticing how hard it seemed for him to look at her.

"What is it, Eli?" She asked after a while, immediately hearing him scoff and sniff.

"I'm sorry," he managed to say with a broken voice, barely glancing at her as he took short breaths in, possibly fighting back some strong emotions. "You asked me to keep him here, to make sure he was ok… I let you down, I didn't pay attention and he got away and now he's-"

"It's Cal, Loker." Gillian cut him off gently, preparing another glass for him. "I shouldn't have put on you the impossible task to keep Cal Lightman grounded. And it's Cal, short of tying him down there's hardly anything you could have done."

"You're just trying to make me feel better," he mumbled after the second glass.

"I'm trying to make myself feel better," she confessed, walking around the desk to sit by him. "You don't think I've been asking myself what I could have done differently? That I haven't been wondering if he hadn't been safer coming with me and Reynolds instead, or blaming myself for not listening to him the moment he started thinking the house might be important?"

No, as strange as it might have been, Loker didn't seem to have thought of that. It was all the best for Gillian and her attempt to ease his guilt, although it didn't make her own any better. She let him some time to settle, glad to see that he declined the offer for shot number three, then gently patted his shoulder and told him to take his time and that she was going to need him.

He was nodding away, the alcohol giving him some strength to realise he could do something to fix his mistake, when they heard a knock on the door. Gillian turned around, seeing Reynolds standing there with an expression that meant only one thing: troubles. More big ugly troubles are coming their way.

"What?" She asked, going from worried to terrified when Reynolds seemed to be unable to respond. "Ben, what is it?"

"There's-" He babbled, honestly not knowing what to say. "We have incoming communications."

It was too little for her to go on but way more than enough to throw her into sheer panic, and she was up on her feet dashing past Reynolds in the blink of an eye. Gillian was well aware that she was running to the lab and getting a lot of attention but frankly didn't care, knowing she was likely rushing her way into something she'd rather not see.

And she couldn't have been more right.

When she entered the lab the first thing she saw was a wall of FBI agents blocking one of the monitors, two more on the tracking equipment and scrambling with it. Then the men in front of the monitor parted as Reynolds and Loker arrived, silently and respectfully stepping away, revealing what they had been looking at. It was Cal, tied wrists and ankles to a chair in what looked like a dark and dirty room. He wasn't blindfolded nor gagged, and Gillian immediately noticed that he had fresh wounds and blood on his face and forehead. That was when her legs started to give in but she fought back, managing a few steps forward to get closer to the screen and see that Cal was unconscious but breathing regularly.

Around and behind her, conversations were going on: people asking where that was coming from, if they were getting a signal and how they could track it, but she didn't pay attention to any of it. Instead she found a chair to sit and rolled closer to the screen, her eyes wandering around trying to get as much as possible out of the image without expecting much useful to come out of it.

"Cal?"

She heard herself calling his name, giving in to the need to hear his voice even though she didn't think it was going to happen. And it didn't, there was no reaction of sort from him and he just sat there, his head bobbing up and down a little, and Gillian stopped herself from trying a second time sparing herself the pain of another failure.

Then Warton came into the frame, boldly showing his face without any sign of hesitation. He stared into the camera, stared at her for what felt like forever, then smiled the smile of an unhinged man who had just been given free reins. Warton then approached Cal and took his chin in his hand, immediately waking him up. The moment he opened his eyes, Cal took a second to recognise the man in front of him and Gillian could clearly see the terror on his face, the unconditional fear taking over the moment Warton smirked down at him. Then the first blow came, a punch to the pit of his stomach that made him gasp for air. The second hit, square on his nose, was the one that brought the audible explosion of pain and drew fresh blood.

Gillian gasped but didn't move a muscle, unable to really, not even registering Loker and Reynolds standing at her side. The only thing she was aware of was the beating she was looking at, with Cal sitting there unable to fight back. Part of her brain shut down and she lost track of time, not knowing how long after it had all started Warton stopped, but only to grab hold of Cal's hair and pull his head back, making sure the view favoured the camera pointed at him. Gillian thought that could be it, the moment she would give up and crash for the first time in the face of the nightmare, and then, when she thought things couldn't get any worse, they just did.

Keeping hold of Cal's head, Warton looked down at the results of his handwork with an almost dreamy expression, admiring the results, then gave one last look at the camera before stomping as hard as he could on Cal's right ankle. Before that, through the screen Gillian had heard the noises made by Warton's hands impacting on Cal's body, she had heard grunts and muffled whines, but with that last strike Cal exploded in a cry of pain that echoed from the speakers and filled the room, shaking Gillian to her core.