AN: Updating a day early, just for kicks. Plus it's my husband's birthday. He doesn't read my stuff, but happy birthday to him all the same! Next planned update 8/8/16

CHAPTER 2

Seeing as several bystanders had called 911 during the robbery and abduction, the uniformed cops were already on the scene taking witness statements when Carter and Reece arrived. They had missed the whole thing by approximately 5 minutes, not arriving quick enough to save Finch from whatever fate awaited him now. Reece made a phone call to Fusco, alerting him to the situation, and having him search for any camera feeds he could access as soon as possible.

"All your gadgets and doohickies and you don't have a way to track your friend down? Even after his Root abduction?" Carter asked.

Reece looked at her with a sly smile, "Actually I've been tracking him since we left the diner. They seem to be driving randomly around town, maybe trying to shake an imaginary tail? We'll catch up to them when they stop, but until then, I'd like to gather as much information about these guys, so we don't walk into anything blind."

"Of course. I'm going to go talk to the officers."

Reece walked around the corner to where the car had been parked and found Finch's phone on the ground. The bullet through it was a concern. It meant that at least one of the men was violent. He pocketed the damaged phone and started his walk back to Carter. He took a moment from monitoring the tracking app to check if Finch had blue jacked Escobares' phone before the attack had happened.

When anyone on the team blue jacked a phone, the information was sent to the others, plus Finch's system at the library. Reece examined the contacts and recent calls and found nothing suspicious until he got to the text messages. There, sent shortly before the robbery, was a text message sent to an unknown number:

He's here, without the dog.

He swore under his breath. The machine had known. There had been a conspiracy against Finch, and Reece had let him walk right into it. His anger flashed white against his vision, and he stormed over to where Carter was talking to Escobares. She was handing him one of her cards and asking him to contact her if he remembered any more information.

"Or you could just tell us now who those men were and what they wanted with the man they kidnapped!" he closed the gap between himself and the number.

"John?" she tried to put her hand on his elbow to stop him, but he shrugged her off.

"I know the robbery was a ruse!" he was stepping ever closer to Escobares as the other man back away until his back found the nearby wall. "I know that you alerted the kidnappers that their man was here before they showed up. So now you're going to tell me who they are, because that man they took? That man is my friend, and he is a good man. He doesn't deserve whatever is happening to him right now."

Jamie's eyes went wide as he realized he couldn't lie anymore, and then he hung his head in shame. "Yes, okay. I will tell you. I was just trying to protect my family and my business. These two men, Russians, I don't know their names, they've been coming by for about two or three months now, trying to shake me down for protection money, but I hadn't given in. Then, about two weeks or so, they changed tactics. They promised me they would leave me alone for good, and all I had to do was let them know when this man, Harold, came to the kiosk. They had his picture, I'm not sure where it was taken, outside some sort of big building. I continued to resist, but they assured me they just wanted to ask him a question or two.

"So, ten days ago Harold came by, with Bear, and I let the Russians know. When they got here, the dog growled at them and they couldn't get near, and so they left. I hoped that was the end of it, but they returned to my kiosk and informed me I had to let them know when he was here without the dog. I told them no, that I wanted no part in it, but they threatened to torch my kiosk, and then my apartment. I had to agree. I didn't know they were going to kidnap him, or hurt anyone, or rob me! I wish I had just called the police, but I can be so stubborn sometimes."

So, Escobares had been a victim after all. If he had just handled this himself, instead of getting Finch involved, he could have taken care of this easily and the Russians would simply be in jail. He quickly banished those thoughts until later. Now they needed to know exactly who these Russians were. They weren't working for the government, too sloppy, and he doubt they were working for Root for the same reasons. No, she certainly didn't need men asking questions when she was usually the one with all the answers.

So it must be one of their other enemies. They had amassed quite a few in the last year. The Yogorovs were a good bet, although it could be any of the crime families still around. HR was another safe choice. It was even a possibly that Elias's organization was after them, even though they seemed to be at a truce for the moment. There was just not enough information yet to know who had taken Finch.

Escobares had no other information for them. Starting right at square one, Reece called Fusco back to see if he had tracked down any cameras from the scene. Fusco had been busy, he had found several cameras and had gotten decent face shots of their perpetrators and their vehicle. He texted these to Reece, but wisely avoided texting him the footage of the actual abduction. Fusco was pretty sure that if tall, dark and scary could see the frightened look on their mutual friend's face in the video, there'd be no stopping his wrathful vengeance.

While on the phone with Fusco, the tracker pinged that Finch's movement had stopped. Oddly it seemed he was in a lot for out-of-service taxi cabs. Sensing that something was amiss with this, he sent Fusco to check it out. Carter, meanwhile had decided to see if she could identify the Russians with Szymanski over in Organized Crime. There was nothing left he could do at his current location, Escobares seemed to be out of trouble and remorseful for his part, so Reece headed back to the library. He hoped that with the picture of the car Fusco had provided, and with the GPS history from the tracker in Finch's glasses, he could hopefully recover his partner before nothing worse happened to him.

(SCENE BREAK)

Finch had been driving for the last 15 minutes. The handcuff around his wrist chafed every time he turned the wheel. The seriousness of the situation was causing sweat to trickle down his back and into his eyes. After a calculated number of turns, he was finally told to turn into a garage off a busy street. Once parked, the man at his left unlocked the cuff around the steering wheel, while the man previously in the back seat opened the driver's side door and practically lifted him to a standing position, cuffing both hands together in front of him.

The man that had previously occupied the passenger seat then came around and started waving some sort of scanning device around Finch. They started at his shoes and worked upwards. Finch wasn't sure what they were looking for, he had no weapons or other devices on his person, now that they had disposed of his phone. He was sure that their efforts were in vain, until they came to his glasses, and the device started to beep. The glasses were forcibly removed from his face, and his vision became swampy. In the dim lighting he could just make out the two men. He heard a snapping noise, and then the glasses were shoved back into his cuffed hands, sans the right ear piece. The next noise he heard was departing footsteps. Thinking that he would prefer to have his glasses not suffer any more damage, lest he need them to escape somehow, he tucked them into the breast pocket of his dress shirt, under his vest.

A moment later, this decision turned out to be wise because the second man, the larger, more physical of the two, blindfolded Finch. He spun him around a bit, partly to disorient the already blinded man, partly for sadistic fun, then frog walked his captive to another vehicle and forced him into the back. It was some sort of van or SUV; Finch couldn't be sure anymore. He could hear the two men open the front doors of the vehicle and climb in, and a moment later they were driving again.

(SCENE BREAK)

"Fusco, you find something?"

"I can tell you what I didn't find, 'glasses' isn't here at the taxi company, but part of his glasses is."

"The part with the tracker in it, right?"

"Yeah, I found it in the back of one of the taxis."
"Well, did you question the driver?"
"Of course, I ain't no rookie. Driver said he hasn't seen our four-eyed friend, but some Russian guy flagged him down outside a parking garage. He went to get in, then changed his mind, and handed the driver a hundred for his troubles. Our perp must have hidden the tracker in the backseat to throw us off."

"Do you have a location of the parking garage?"
"I have a general idea. I'm texting it to you."
"I'll check it against the GPS data I have, and maybe we can figure out exactly when and where we lost Finch."

It took only a moment or two to sync up the GPS data and find the parking garage where Finch had been and text that information to Detective Carter. Reece hoped she'd could find a camera or two at the garage that could help him locate where they had gone. His whole body buzzed with adrenaline, and he knew he wouldn't be able to sit at the library and wait for Carter or Fusco to find something. His next step would be to go to the parking garage and canvas it himself. Maybe he'd find a clue to where Finch was now. The sooner Reece found them, the sooner he could bring Finch back where he belonged.

(SCENE BREAK)

Finch was unsure how long he had been in the back of this vehicle. Both of his wrists were now raw under the handcuffs from trying to stop himself from being thrown around every time they took a turn. They had driven for what seemed like an endless amount of time in his blinded state, and then, when they finally did stop, he had not been immediately retrieved from his prison. He had been left in the dark, the vehicle muffled any sound from where it had been parked.

He dared not take off the blindfold, but strained to use his other senses to guess where he may be. The air was stale and hot, and there were no sounds from wildlife. Finch hoped that this meant they were still within city limits. As long as they were still in New York, Finch was confident that Mr. Reece would find him soon enough.

If only he could figure out why these men had abducted him in the first place. His first concern was they had somehow become aware of the Machine and the irrelevant list. It seemed unlikely that this was the scenario in play, since they were obviously not part of any government agency. They did seem a lower class of criminal, but they must know that he worked with someone, having the presence to check him for the tracker or bug that Mr. Reece had installed on his glasses. He could only hope that Mr. Reece had the information he needed before the tracker had been removed.

The thought that anyone else had invade his privacy was too concerning to entertain. They certainly had made a laundry list of enemies in recent months. After his return to the library, Finch had made upgrades to the systems on his computers and the security of his buildings. Not that it had done him any good, as evidenced by his current situation. It was getting harder to concentrate, cuffed up wherever he was. His mouth was dry, and he was feeling lightheaded and tired. He adjusted his back and relaxed his eyes under the blindfold.

Finally, the two men returned to retrieve him. The blindfold was removed, but his vision was still impaired by his lack of eyewear. He was lead to a bathroom, where he was given a moment to freshen up. He could hear one of the men keeping watch just outside the bathroom door. He did as best he could with his hands still cuffed in front of him. He looked at himself in the dirty mirror of the bathroom. This was certainly not where he had expected to be at the end of the day when he woke up this morning, he splashed some water on his face and then his best to perch his broken glasses back on his nose.

After he was finished, and now that he could see again, he found out he was in an abandoned office building. It had an open floor plan, possibly some sort of cubical farm had once resided within the walls, but it was now bare of almost all furniture, except for a lonely hard back chair and a desk, to which he was brought. His left wrist was then released, and he was chained to the handle of one of the desk drawers. The two men stood across the desk from him, staring expectantly, as if Finch would simply reveal what they needed to know.

Finch stared back in stubborn silence. He didn't know why he was there, but he certainly wasn't going to be the first to share any information. This silent standoff didn't last long before the smaller of the bulky men spoke.

"You don't look like much. Soft and pampered, but you're certainly more resilient than we expected," he jabbed his them towards the other man, "Anton was sure you'd be crying for mercy before we even reached the first parking garage."

"Dimitri," the second man growled.

"Nevertheless, you'll forgive us introducing ourselves this way. It was necessary not to reveal our intentions before we were ready."
"Reveal to whom?" Finch finally spoke.

"You already know who," Dimitri answered, but Finch was still at a loss. Reveal to Reece? Or maybe it was one of their detective friends. His mind raced through all the numbers they had helped recently that he had directly contacted, but no one seemed to have been connected to the two men in front of him.

Dimitri walked behind him and placed his hands on Finch's shoulders, "We have questions, I know you have the answers. All you have to do is give us the information we request, and we can let you out of here, no sweat. Mess with us, refuse to answer us, disobey us? Then Anton will get angry, and you don't want him to be angry. Do you understand, Harold?"

So they knew his name, and now he knew theirs, which means it was unlikely that they were planning on letting him out of here alive. Without knowing which surname they had, he was unable to know why they had grabbed him in the first place. It was a certainty that he was about to make Anton very angry. The situation was becoming quite dire, and Finch calculations of his survival were quite low.