A/N: Thank you all for your reviews and support! I hope you enjoy this next chapter.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 18: Retrieve

Abandoned barn off the 405 near Kenmore. Hyde within sight. Ana tied up but unharmed

Sawyer had been able to text Taylor an update after he followed Hyde out to the highway. After about twenty minutes of driving down the 405, Hyde stopped at an old barn, and Sawyer parked his car a quarter mile away while Hyde yanked Ana from the trunk and forced her to walk into the barn by gunpoint. Sawyer then put on his bulletproof vest and made sure his bodycam was activated before getting out of the car and heading toward the barn on foot.

Sawyer had seriously debated with himself the whole drive there whether or not he should call other cops to follow him out here, but eventually decided against it. There was too much at risk, especially since Hyde was in cahoots with a lot of the police officers at the precinct. Sawyer didn't know who he could trust there, and he decided the best mode of action was to get footage of Hyde on his bodycam and prove beyond a doubt he was guilty before calling the police.

This better not backfire.

Gun in hand, Sawyer moved around the barn, searching for another access point. He managed to find one near the back: a metal gate leading to a stable, clearly meant for the cattle to come in and out of. Sawyer pushed open the gate slightly, careful not to make a sound, and managed to edge his way in, thankful for the hay scattered on the floor muffling his footsteps on the hardwood.

Sawyer tiptoed in and edged his way along the wall separating the stalls from the rest of the barn. He could see the light from a single lightbulb about twenty yards away, and he peeked out from behind the stall door to see Ana up against a wooden post, her hands tied behind it and her head hanging down. Hyde stood to the side, staring at her as if waiting for her to say something.

"You're lying," Ana finally said in a quiet voice, and Hyde let out a malicious chuckle. Sawyer listened intently.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Hyde sneered. "Did you really think Grey actually cared about anyone but himself? Or that you were helping an innocent man? Your ignorance is laughable."

"Christian is an innocent man," Ana said, still in that subdued voice. "You know nothing about him… what he's like, or what's in his heart."

"Do you want me to repeat what I just told you?" Hyde hissed, moving toward Ana quickly and grabbing her hair at the back of her head, pulling it so her head jolted back. Sawyer gripped his gun tighter. "Your little boyfriend is a sick bastard who beats women for pleasure! What's 'in his heart' is nothing more than sadistic fantasies of pain and humiliation!"

"He never murdered someone," Ana muttered, her teeth grit in pain.

Hyde looked homicidal, and Sawyer felt that Ana was being either incredibly stupid or incredibly brave. Thankfully, Hyde removed his hand from Ana's hair and stepped away, begrudgingly turning around and looking at his phone, which was apparently vibrating with an incoming call.

Sawyer double-checked that his bodycam was on before gripping his gun more tightly in his hand, ensuring he wouldn't hesitate to act the moment Ana's life was in danger.

I need to get his confession on camera.

Sawyer hated that he wasn't intervening, but he knew he needed to gather as much evidence as possible proving that Hyde had killed Elena. Ana, as terrified as she must have been right now, wasn't in any immediate danger since Hyde clearly didn't want to kill her.

"…What the fuck are you calling me for then? Get out of there!" Hyde had started yelling at the person he was talking to on the phone. He paused as he listened to their response. "Well, it was your own fucking fault for leading them to the hideout, wasn't it? Get out of there, and lead them away somewhere else… I don't care where you go, just don't fucking come here!"

Hyde hung up with an angry huff, and he made his way back over to Ana. Before anything else could happen, however, the audible crunch of footsteps on gravel sounded from beyond the barn door. In an instant, Hyde cocked his gun and pointed it toward the door, ready to shoot at whoever was there. Ana cowered against the post, clearly trying to shrink away from the potential gun fight about to ensue.

There were several lingering moments of silence, everyone waiting for something to happen, when suddenly the barn door burst open and two people rushed into the room, one of them pointing a gun straight at Hyde.

"Don't move," Taylor snapped, gun in hand, as Christian ran up beside him.

Sawyer's face paled and his stomach dropped upon seeing the two of them. "Shit," he hissed to himself.

~Ana~

Ana's heart plummeted in simultaneous relief and horror the moment she saw Christian and Taylor rush into the barn, Taylor with his gun in hand. She met Christian's gaze, and her happiness upon seeing him was unmitigated.

"Christian," Ana sobbed, leaning toward him, but was stopped by the zip ties binding her wrists.

"Ana," Christian made a move toward her, but Jack pointed his gun at him.

"Don't fucking move," Jack growled, and Christian stopped. Jack then walked backward until he was behind the post Ana was tied to, and in a moment she felt his arm snake around her waist and the cool metal of his gun tip press against her temple. Ana whimpered in fear, trying to control her erratic heartbeat and labored breathing.

"I'd hoped you'd find us here," Jack said in a low voice, pushing the tip of his gun to Ana's head hard enough to make her cringe. "Though this is a little sooner than I expected. Make one wrong move and she's dead."

The expression of fear and desperation on Christian's face was apparent. "Please," he said to Jack in a broken voice. "Please don't hurt her."

Jack ignored his request as he clicked his gun, readying it to pull the trigger. Ana began to shake in fear, several tears slipping down her cheeks as she closed her eyes.

Don't let it end like this.

"The cops are on their way, Hyde," Taylor said, and Ana opened her eyes to see his gun was still steadily pointed at Jack. "Don't do something you might regret."

"You're lying," Jack spat immediately. "No one's coming."

"I'm not lying," Taylor said firmly, still speaking in a calm and steady voice. "The police know you're here, Hyde."

"Bullshit. I have friends on the police force," Jack countered. "If the cops were coming for me, I would know. I haven't heard anything which means you're full of shit. Who the fuck do you think you're dealing with?"

Taylor didn't answer, and Ana felt her stomach twist when she realized he had been bluffing. No police officers were coming for them.

"Shoot me instead," Christian suddenly said, and Ana looked at him. "Ana has nothing to do with this. Please… it's me you want. Put me in her place."

Ana felt her throat lock up. "No, Christian…" she began to say, but was cut off by Jack's malicious laughter.

"Well isn't this sweet?" he taunted, glancing between her and Christian. "No wonder Anastasia here thinks you're such a good guy, Grey. Have you been hitting that all week? I should've known… it's a real shame what I'm about to do to her."

Jack pressed the gun more firmly against Ana's temple, and Christian took half a step forward, looking more desperate than ever. "Please," he said quietly. "Tell me why you're doing this. I don't understand - you and I were in the same foster home as children. Is that really the only reason you're doing this?"

"You really don't fucking get it," Jack snapped angrily, glaring at Christian as if he were the most wretched scum he'd ever laid eyes on. "We weren't just in the same foster home - we were the same fucking person! Shitty upbringing, drugged-out single mother who killed herself, and people beating on us like fucking punching bags. But while you got to go live with wealthy socialites out on the West coast with silver spoons shoved up their asses, I got tossed into a new foster home of uber-Catholic alcoholics who liked to beat the fear of God into me every chance they got!"

Jack was breathing heavily now, clearly working himself up to spit out the vitriolic resentment he'd built up against Christian over the years.

"My circumstances didn't even matter to you though, did they? I and all the other foster kids who came from shitty circumstances didn't even cross your mind as your kind, loving adoptive parents brought you into the lap of luxury and took you on lavish vacations while feeding you three-course meals and paying your way through prep school. Five years ago I came across an article about you in Business Insider, and that was when I started following everything I could find about you. Your company, your business practices, your success… and eventually, I stumbled upon your secret BDSM lifestyle."

Jack gave an evil smile, and Christian's face paled. "Oh yes, I know all about that Mr. Grey. Imagine how I felt when I learned that little bit of information… I was still stuck in Detroit, a struggling telemarketer at a failing agency, while you were out creating a billion-dollar company and gaining the adoration of every schmoozer and shaker in the country. And yet none of them knew the truth of who you really were. The truth that would ruin your pristine reputation and demolish everything you'd ever accomplished, and make you into the lowlife shithead you deserve to be.

"And so I moved to Seattle, started working at a publishing company, and set to work on my plan to take you down. I soon learned your old friend Elena Lincoln was involved in the lifestyle too, and I put two-and-two together that she was the one who had introduced you to it. It took awhile for her to trust me, but she was finally convinced of my good intentions when I showed her a picture of us when we were kids. After that, she opened up to me about you… and she told me everything."

"I participated in the BDSM lifestyle," Christian said, staring directly at Jack. Ana couldn't be sure, but it seemed like he was avoiding her gaze. "So what? Thousands of people all over the country participate too. That sort of information going public would likely cause some controversy, sure, but it wouldn't ruin my entire company."

"Which is why I knew I needed to go a step further," Jack went on, unrelenting. "I knew I had to connect you to something far worse than a kinky fetish lifestyle in order to expose your sadism to the world. So I decided to get rid of the one person I knew was linked to the darkest part of your sexual history. Once that was done, everything else would fall into place, and the truth would finally come out into the light."

"You killed Elena," Christian stated, his voice low. "And you used Elizabeth to frame me so the police would investigate, and then the world would know about my past in the lifestyle."

"And it all would have been executed perfectly if not for this nosy little bitch," Jack hissed, his grip on Ana's waist getting tighter. "I had to get creative trying to clean up her fucking mess, but it'll be worth it in the end. I'll just have to kill both of you, and make it look like a murder-suicide." Jack looked over at Taylor before pointing his gun at him. "Make that a double murder-suicide."

"If you shoot, I shoot," Taylor threatened, his own gun still pointed directly at Jack.

"You sure you want to risk precious Annie's life here?" Jack taunted, making sure Ana's body was directly in front of him. "You might want to rethink that strategy."

"And you might want to rethink murdering three people and believing you can actually get away with it," Christian stated.

"I murdered Elena without anyone even suspecting me. And my buddies at the police station will make sure I have an alibi," Jack taunted. "Don't fucking question me, Grey - I know what the fuck I'm doing."

Before Christian could say anything, however, a sound came from the right side of the barn. Everyone turned in that direction, and Ana was shocked to see Sawyer suddenly walk out from behind a wall, a walkie-talkie to his mouth and his other hand holding a gun pointed right at Jack.

"Dispatch, we have a two-oh-seven situation. I'm going to need backup at my location ASAP," Sawyer spoke into his walkie-talkie, his eyes fixed on Jack. "Smile for the camera, Hyde."

Ana looked at Sawyer's chest and noticed a small black box with a red light clipped to his bulletproof vest. She suddenly realized Sawyer had been recording everything on his bodycam, meaning they had irrefutable proof of Jack's crime.

Before Ana could react, Jack suddenly let out a yell of anger, and in an instant he moved away from Ana and aggressively approached Sawyer, his gun pointed directly at him.

BANG!

A gunshot suddenly went off, causing Ana to scream and turn away. For a split second, she wasn't sure if she had been shot, but then she heard Jack let out an agonizing scream of pain as he collapsed to the ground several feet away from her, dropping his gun and clutching his knee as it bled profusely.

Taylor, whose gun was smoking slightly, kept it trained on Jack as he stepped closer to him and kicked Jack's gun away.

"Don't fucking move," Taylor demanded, but Jack ignored him as he pulled himself up halfway to try to lunge at Taylor. There was another loud bang, and Jack fell back to the ground with a pained yell, clutching his shoulder as it bled all over the place.

"I warned you," Taylor said, finally bringing his gun down.

Sawyer moved toward Jack, staring down at him writhing on the ground in agony. "Cops are on their way, asshole. Good luck trying to talk your way out of this one."

Christian hurried over to Ana. "Do either of you have a knife?" he asked Taylor and Sawyer, tugging at the hard zip ties binding her wrists together.

"Here," Sawyer walked over to them, pulling a pocket knife out of his front pocket.

Christian took it and began cutting through the zip ties. There were several of them bunched together, and they were all made of tough plastic, but he managed to cut through all of them in about thirty seconds. Once they were off, Ana brought her newly-freed wrists back to her front and rubbed them.

"Ana," Christian gazed at her, a whole plethora of emotions crossing his features - fear, relief, and worry all shining in his gray eyes, and Ana felt herself start to break down.

With a sob, she immediately launched herself into Christian's arms. He held her protectively, bringing a hand up to cup the back of her head, and he pressed his face into the crook of her neck.

"You're okay," he whispered to her comfortingly. "Everything's okay now, baby. It's over."

Ana didn't say anything as she continued to cry into his chest, and in the distance she heard the faint sounds of police sirens coming closer.

A/N: And the day is saved! Next chapter, Ana and the others deal with the aftermath.

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