A/N: Thanks for the follow :)
Admiral Hackett was preparing to leave his quarters for a very early breakfast meeting with his officers when his terminal beeped with an incoming vid-comm hail. He was almost tempted to ignore it, until he saw the ident information: St. Luke's Hospital, Solana Beach.
He quickly hit the button to answer; after a tense few moments, the screen flickered to reveal his seventeen-year-old nephew, looking extremely pale and very worried.
"Ryan? What are you doing at the hospital? Is everything all right?" Hackett mentally slapped himself. Of course everything isn't all right, Steven; it's barely 0600 and Ryan is at a hospital.
"No, not even slightly," Ryan said. "I got home really late from my date with Sarah and found cops at the Argo. They said the silent alarm had been triggered, by the button under the counter, not by someone breaking in. When they got there, they found Dad behind the bar... he'd been shot."
"Christ... is he...?"
Ryan shook his head. "Too soon to tell, is what the doctors said. I called as soon as he came out of surgery. I'm waiting to go see him." He sighed heavily. "That's not all, Uncle Steven."
"There's more?"
"Katie's... missing."
Hackett's eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "What do you mean missing?"
"I mean she wasn't at the house or the bar before I left for the hospital and she hasn't answered a single one of my vid-chat hails or e-mails." He looked away for a moment before he said, "I think Marcus took her, after he shot Dad."
Hackett pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why would he... what makes you think Katie or Marcus were even there last night?"
"Because he usually helps Dad close on the weekends, especially during the summer when it's crazy busy, and when I'm out, she always goes to the bar after closing."
"Why?"
"Dunno. Just started doing it this summer."
"And those are your only reasons for –"
"The picture of Mom and Aunt Lara, the one that's been on the wall since Dad opened the bar, was smashed on the floor."
"That still doesn't prove Marcus had anything to do with anything."
"Please, Uncle Steven. Just... fine, forget everything else. But when's the last time Katie didn't answer a vid-chat hail?"
"You... may have a point," Hackett finally conceded. "Especially if it was from one of us. And she certainly wouldn't ignore multiple hails."
"Exactly."
"But that only proves that something happened to her, not that Marcus –"
"Who else could it have been? The only people who are ever there after closing are family. Period. If the alarm wasn't triggered by a break-in, it had to have been Marcus." Ryan narrowed his eyes. "Unless you're suggesting Katie –"
"Don't be ridiculous," Hackett snapped. He sighed. "Fine. You just worry about your dad, all right? I'm going to call a friend who's good at tracking people. With any luck, he'll be able to figure out where Katie is."
From: Zaeed Massani
To: Steven Hackett
Subj: Found Them
Yes, Steven, I said them. They're on the Citadel. It was just a little too bloody easy to find them, so either Marcus is a bigger fucking moron than I'd always taken him for or he's expecting you to come find Katie yourself.
Attaching the coordinates to his "hideout."
Good luck and let me know if you need any more help.
-ZM
PS: Not that you asked for my opinion, but I'm giving it anyway. You are a bloody idiot for not seeing how much of a bastard Marcus has always been. And yes, I'll say the same damn thing to Jason when he's out of the hospital.
By the time Hackett made it to the Citadel, two days had passed since Ryan's call. And now, he was positive something had happened to Katie. Normally, they chatted at least once a day every day that either of them was away, but she hadn't responded to any of his messages or hails.
It didn't take long before he was standing in front of the apartment in the lower wards that Massani had indicated. A look of genuine surprise passed over Marcus' face when he opened the door, quickly replaced by a sneer.
"Something I can help you with, Steven?"
"Ryan called me a couple of days ago, said Jason had been shot."
"I see. And this has what to do with me?"
Hackett rolled his eyes. "Your lack of caring about your brother is very telling, Marcus. And according to Ryan, it has everything to do with you."
"You've never believed a word Ryan has ever said about me. Why start now?"
"Katie. You know damn well that she was there for her summer visit, had been since the beginning of May. I haven't heard from her since the day before Ryan called me."
Marcus scoffed. "So? She's a fifteen-year-old girl. She's probably been busy with her friends. She –"
"She calls me every single day when she's staying with Jason, without fail," Hackett said as he pushed his way past Marcus into the apartment. "The fact that she hasn't called me in two days means something is very wrong. And now that I think of it, the very fact that she wasn't the one who called me about Jason tells me she's in trouble." The Admiral regarded his former brother-in-law suspiciously. "Where'd you get those bruises, Marcus?"
The man's answer of "bar fight... last night... two turians" came just a little too readily for Hackett's liking.
"Where's my daughter, Marcus?" he growled.
"I don't know where the bitch is," Marcus said. "And if I did, I don't know why I would tell you."
Hackett chose to ignore, for the moment, the bitch comment. "So if I sent her a hail right now, I wouldn't hear her omni-tool beeping?"
Marcus looked around for a moment before answering. "Nope."
"That's as good as a goddamn confession in blood," Hackett said as he raised his arm to bring up his omni-tool.
"That's far enough, Steven," Marcus snarled, reaching for the gun in the belt of his pants.
Before Marcus could do more than raise the weapon, Hackett's other hand came up with his own pistol. He fired a shot straight at Marcus' chest.
As Marcus crashed to the floor, Hackett holstered his gun, stepping around the body and into the hallway. He checked each room of the apartment, calling out to his daughter but heard no response.
He opened the last door and his heart stopped.
His beloved Katie, covered in cuts and bruises from head to foot, was gagged and shackled at her wrists and ankles to the metal headboard of the small bed on the other side of the room. As he walked towards her, she shrank back, cowering into the very corner of the mattress, trying to get as far away from him… Hackett shook his head in thought. He wasn't the one she was afraid of, not really, though he definitely wasn't her favorite person by a long shot. No, she was still trying to get away from Marcus. It looked as if the bastard had beat the hell out of her and done only God knew what else to her. However, Hackett knew Marcus' bruises hadn't come from any bar fight with turians. That would have landed him in the hospital or the morgue. They'd been from Katie, fighting back... at least at first.
Hackett knelt beside the bed, looking at her with concern as he said, "Sweetheart, I'm not going to hurt you." She stared at him for a moment, as if she was wondering if she could trust him, before slowly nodding. He took this as consent and sat on the edge of the bed; he gently tugged the gag out of her mouth and set about hacking the locks on the shackles.
As soon as her hands were free, she hauled back and punched him square in the jaw. Her fear of Marcus had obviously ebbed away, leaving only the anger he knew she had been holding onto for the last twelve years.
Though the hit was hard (no one had ever claimed Katie hit like a girl, and come away unscathed), Hackett didn't flinch. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her and gently pulled her onto his lap as she collapsed against him and dissolved into tears, her anger finally giving way to sheer exhaustion.
"I more than deserved that," he said quietly. "I know I will never be able to make up for everything I've done wrong all these years, Katie, but I am sorry I ever doubted you about Marcus, and for all the hell he put you through because of that."
Katie whispered something against his chest that sounded suspiciously like "it's my fault."
Hackett pulled back and gently lifted her face with one hand so that he was looking into her eyes, the same clear ice blue as his own. "You can't tell me you blame yourself for this."
She nodded. "I-I provoked him. I just wanted him tell someone the truth, finally. And he did. He told Uncle Jason. A-and now he's dead because of me," she sobbed.
"He's not dead," he said soothingly. "I've been talking to Ryan every couple of hours the last couple of days since he called to tell me what happened. Jason will be in the hospital for awhile, but he's going to be fine. He hasn't been able to talk yet though, so we didn't know exactly what happened beyond him getting shot. But Ryan was completely convinced it was because of Marcus. He's a large part of the reason I found you."
Katie threw her arms around Hackett's neck and hugged him. "Daddy, I'm sorry," she said tearfully as she laid her head on his shoulder. They stayed that way for several minutes, Hackett gently stroking her hair as she cried.
Finally, she took a deep shuddering breath and started telling him everything that had taken place at the Argo two days earlier.
"As soon as Uncle Jason was down, Marcus dragged me back to his place," she said when she was done, her voice trembling slightly. "We came here a couple of hours later."
Hackett didn't say anything for a few minutes. On the outside, he was maintaining control of his emotions, for Katie's benefit, but inside, he was shaking with fury at the thought of what his little girl had been put through.
He swept a lock of her dark red hair from her face and gently kissed her forehead. "I'm just glad you're alive, sweetheart. And that I finally found you."
"Well at least next time, there won't be anyone left to find her," said a weak but cold voice, startling both of them. They looked around to see Marcus leaning against the doorway, one hand clutching his pistol, the other pressed against the wound where Hackett's bullet had struck, higher than he'd intended. "I'm going to go back to California to finish off my brother and his meddling son and then I'll be able to keep Katie as my plaything forever."
Hackett got up, pushing Katie behind him as he drew his gun. "No, Marcus. You're never laying a hand on my daughter ever again," he growled. "This ends here and now."
Marcus shrugged. "Whatever. Your funeral, Steven."
Two shots rang out followed moments later by a third.
