Chapter Eighteen: If a Broken Heart Could Kill

He waited anxiously for the young man to awaken, knowing that the lawyer might be able to tell him something vital in the case of Martin's disappearance. Even if it was just the location of a building he'd been held in before being moved to some other place. At least they'd have a chance of finding trace evidence and they could go from there. He sat in the chair behind his desk, his eyes never straying from the young lawyer. After blacking out in the lobby Jack had him carried up in the elevator and laid on his couch where two medics looked him over. Eventually he would have to go to the hospital for some x-rays. Jack had told the two men that he would drive him there in a little while. They left after giving Danny a dose of a pain medication, saying that he would be fine for a while but there was a chance that his wrist was broken, his ankle sprained and he might have had a broken rib or two.

But Jack was reluctant to let the lawyer out of his sight for a minute without having a chance to talk with him.

He had to find Martin…

Without losing Martin's boyfriend.

Boyfriend.

The word still didn't sound quiet right to him. He knew that there was something lurking within Martin, some inner conflict but he'd never pegged it as this; a same-sex relationship. Unfortunately he understood all too well why the younger Fitzgerald would want to keep such a thing a secret. His father wasn't going to like finding out about it. Jack just hoped that he could keep Victor from finding out before they located his son. Martin had to be the one to break the news to him, preferably with Danny at his side. The lawyer did have a clean, respectable record going for him. And Jack had to admit that he wasn't a bad looking guy once the medics had washed away all the blood and bandaged the cut along his hairline.

Jack hoped he kept Martin happy. He really needed it.

The lawyer began to stir. Jack waited patiently as he came to, fighting through the fog of the pain medication and the effects of whatever his captors had done to him; the toll unknown at the moment. He managed to sit up on the couch, bringing a hand to his head. Before he could ask Jack was up and out of his seat, walking across the room with a bottle of water. Danny took it with something that looked like gratitude in his eyes. Instantly Jack began to wonder how long the younger man had been without water, without food. What had they done to him?

He waited. That's all he could do. He wanted to start questioning Danny to keep from losing anymore valuable time but he knew that it wouldn't do either one of them any good. He'd only get upset when the lawyer couldn't remember a vital piece of evidence because his head hadn't been given enough time to clear. There was no telling what sort of things he'd been made to endure, no telling how he would react to certain questions. This was a delicate situation…a rather important delicate situation.

"Where's Martin?" were the first words out of Danny's mouth.

Jack debated internally whether or not he should tell him the truth. In the long run he figured that he should skirt the revelation for a few minutes longer, get some information out of the lawyer before he fell apart. "Can you remember anything about what has happened in the last couple of hours?"

He shook his head. "I woke up in an alley…I remember that much…then I cam here…"

"Why did you ask for me instead of Martin?"

"I didn't want to risk getting the wrong Fitzgerald."

Jack saw the understanding behind that. "Okay. Tell me what happened, everything that you can remember."

"It won't be much," he replied. He went on to give his best description of the two guys that had been keeping him captive but it wasn't much since they were always wearing ski masks to hide their features. He talked about the dilapidated building, the room that he'd been kept in there with the peeling wallpaper and the broken window. Then he told Jack about the move to a new place, somewhere cool and damp with concrete all around. He recalled the dark. Then everything began to get blurry. He didn't go into any details about what they might have done to him but Jack had been present at enough interrogations to know that most of the trauma was physical. Aside from a few blows here and there he didn't think they'd done much to him. After all, their main target had been Martin. But what did they want with him?

It had to be something to do with Victor Fitzgerald.

"Excuse me a moment," he said, standing and heading out of his office.

He found the three girls waiting for him to make an appearance. The four of them had looked so rundown and tired just hours ago. Now it was like they'd all been blessed with a second wind, the sleep gone from their eyes and their moves no longer sluggish. There was a chance that they could get somewhere in the case now that they had Danny. Jack was already trying to think of place where the building might be that Danny spoke of. He would be able to send a few teams to check the places out. Victor could pull a lot of strings and he was more than willing to in order to get his son back. Jack wondered if he would be so willing if he knew that his son was dating a man. Victor didn't seem like the kind of guy to be okay with the relationship.

But that was something to worry about later.

Like when they had Martin back.

He wanted to brief the girls on what he'd gotten but before he could open his mouth he heard Danny's voice. "Where's Martin?"

He looked back over his shoulder. "You shouldn't be up and walking."

"Where is Martin? Why isn't he here?" Danny asked, taking an unsteady step forward.

Sam got up and walked over to him, taking him by the arm and directing him to the nearest chair. She seemed to be completely at ease around the new guy even though she knew that he was dating Martin; the same guy she had dated not too long ago. Jack was amazed, wondering how she could do it.

"Why aren't you telling me where he is?"

Jack sighed. "Because we don't know where he is."

"You don't…" Danny looked confused.

"The men that took you, they used you as bait to get to him. Only we didn't figure it out fast enough because Martin kept a few key things to himself; like the fact that you're his boyfriend. He got himself put on suspension so that he could covert around the seedy parts of the city with your brother in hopes of finding you, without us to back him up."

Danny looked even more confused. "My brother…Rafi….he never met Rafi."

"We interviewed him when you disappeared," Jack admitted. "There was a chance that you had been taken because of him. Right now he's in the hospital. Apparently he was at a bar with Martin when he followed someone he thought he could trust and they were jumped. He has no idea what happened to Martin. Neither do we."

Danny turned his brown eyes to Jack. "You have to find him. You…please…"

It was Sam that put her hand on his shoulder. "We'll find him. We always find who we're looking for." What she didn't add was that sometimes they found them after they'd passed away. She could already tell that he was falling apart, why make it worse?