Puck sat there with his head in his hands, crying. Quinn and Mercedes felt uncomfortable, but about five minutes later Quinn came over and put her head in his hands.
"Everything I love I end up losing!" he whispered, looking up at Quinn with a sad look that would destroy the coldest hearted bitch on Earth.
"It's alright," Quinn told him. "You don't lose everything."
He shook his head. "Yes I do. I… I loved my dad, and then he left. All the girls that stick by me just stand by me for the sex, and they're all sluts. Mercedes broke up with me. Quinn, you… You don't want anything to do with me now that you gave Beth up! And now, Rachel, she's gone and been kidnapped and I'll never see her again… And the last time I saw her I was grumbling because she wouldn't let me get past 2nd base!"
"Puck, everything's going to be okay. We'll find Rachel. We've got a search party going on right now!"
"I want to help!" he demanded, jumping up from the couch.
Quinn laughed. "Oh, I knew you would, silly!" Puck loved seeing Quinn laugh. She would get all carefree and would step down from her role of HBIC. She would throw her head back, and her ponytail would bounce happily or her loose hair would cascade freely down her back. It was a very happy sight.
"Here," she told him. "You can partner up with Finn. We have everyone partnering up so whoever took Rachel won't take one of us too."
"No!" Puck said. "I'm… I'm not going with that stupid lump. He's gonna beat the crap out of me! I made out with one of his girlfriends and got the other pregnant!"
"I think he's forgiven you," Quinn told him. "And it's either you go with him or we all sit here and Rachel never gets found."
"Alright, I'll… I'll go with Finn!" he said quickly.
"And we'll help too," she said, smiling as she set her crocheting down. "Me and Sarah will partner up. Right, Sarah?"
"I guess," the little girl mumbled, pouting that she would have to abandon her dolls.
"Good!" Quinn said. "Come on, let's go!"
Mercedes and Quinn searched and searched. For five days, they searched for Rachel, only stopping to eat a little and get a little shut eye. They didn't even go to school. The others in the search party did the exact thing. School was put off in honor of Rachel.
Quinn and Mercedes were zipping through the suburbs in Quinn's Porsche, the windows down, when they heard something coming from inside one of the houses. Quinn parked on the sidewalk. It sounded just like a familiar diva's high F screams.
"Oh, stop it! Stop! LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!"
"Shut up, you little slut!" a man's voice boomed. Quinn looked around. "Come on!" she said, tugging on Mercedes's arm, and they crawled out of the car and ran down the immaculate lawn, looking up at the huge grand home.
Quinn ran to one of the windows which undoubtley was the basement. "Alright!" Quinn said. "We're gonna get one of the windows open and I'm going to drop down into the basement, ok. If I tell you it's ok to come down, you can follow me. If I get hurt, you run and save yourself!"
"Look, I can't…" Mercedes began to say.
"Just do it!" Quinn interjected. Mercedes bit her bottom lip but nodded.
Quinn leaned down and took a bobby pin out of her hair. She began fiddling with the latch of the window, and after several tedious minutes, she was allowed to open up the window with a loud creak.
"Alright," Quinn said, putting one of her black high topped shoes on the edge of the window.
"1... 2... 3...!" She whispered quietly, and on 3, she slid through the open window into the basement. She landed on something cushiony. She realized it was a bean bag chair.
She got up, and then yelled, "Ok, Mercedes, all clear! You'll land on a bean bag chair!"
She slid through the window and onto the chair, but Mercedes had a rougher landing, because she was heavier than Quinn.
"Quinn? Mercedes?" a little voice piped up. Quinn walked around and found one Rachel Berry on a couch, her face wet with tears.
"Thank goodness you're here!" she said. "I've been trapped down here for nearly a week in the dark all alone, and all I had to eat was dirty water and moldy bread!"
"What happened to your leg?" asked Quinn, staring at the blanket that Rachel had wrapped around her leg. Quinn realized it was a badly made splint.
"I… I broke my leg!" Rachel whispered.
"We have to get you to the hospital!" Mercedes exclaimed.
"But first we need to find some identity of who lives here." Quinn began to look around. "Their must be a light switch somewhere around here." She finally found one and stepped on her toes to reach it. She pulled the cord and a dim light enveloped the underground room.
"Mercedes, find a way for us to get out of here," Quinn told Mercedes as she looked around. While Mercedes looked for a way for her and Quinn to scale the walls while holding Rachel, Quinn zipped through the room, going through everything, and, in frustration, throwing them down onto the ground.
She opened a large drawer and began sifting through the numerous papers and other documents. Finally, she found something.
"Hey, guys, I found something!" she called, pulling it out of the drawer. It appeared to be a marriage liscence, where a guy named Mikey Rios married a girl named Maria Desbomb. The captain of the Cheerios searched further and found a yellowing newspaper clipping in the bottom of the drawer. The date read 15 years ago, when Quinn and the rest of their grade was only 1. Quinn began to scan the article.
Missing Child
Abagail Rios, daughter of Mikey and Maria Rios, disappeared from the grocery store last night.
"I took my Abby with me to the store to get some carrots to cut up for dinner!" Maria sobbed. 1 minute, she was bobbing at my side, helping me to pick out the brand of carrots I should get, and the next she was gone!"
The Rios's are devastated as Abby was their only child and earlier this year they received the unfortunate news that they could no longer bear any more children.
Mikey was unavailable for interview.
"This is horrible!" Quinn gasped, wishing she could shove the clipping back in the drawer and forget the whole thing. Apparently, that was too loud for Mikey and Maria however, and they had noticed that the light had been switched on, because they opened the door and began to come downstairs.
"What the hell!" Mikey yelled as he and Maria came downstairs. "Mar, sweetheart, people have broken in!"
"We don't want any of your grand possessions!" Quinn said boldly. "We've come to rescue our friend Rachel! Why'd you kidnap her?"
They paused. "We had a daughter, Abby," they said. "She would have been your age if she hadn't been kidnapped and killed."
"They killed her?" Quinn asked. Marie nodded.
"She looked exactly like this girl," Mikey growled. "And why do so many parents get to be happy with their children when we can't?"
"I'm sorry," Quinn said. "Look, we won't… Tell anyone about you guys if you just let us go, ok. I know, what happened to Abby sucks. It just completely and totally does! But the same thing has happened to so many other parents. Why don't you form a support group?"
"Those don't help," Mikey scoffed. "And I'm afraid that I'm not letting you guys go free, because you two girls wandered into our trap, and now we'll get to make more parents suffer! You all die!"
Quinn gasped as Mikey and Marie retrieved big butcher knives from their pockets.
"Please don't!" she pleaded.
"Yes."
They ran at her. She flashed a look to Mercedes, who nodded. They managed to grab Rachel, Mercedes getting the feet and legs while Quinn got everything else. Rachel wrapped her arms protectively around Quinn's neck, and they began running up the concrete steps, Mikey and Marie following. Quinn knew what they were doing was risky, that these steps were hard and very steep, and that if they fell backwards they would be stabbed by the knives, but this was there best chance of survival.
They ran through the kitchen and ran outside to Quinn's car.
They drove to the police station, and while Quinn drove, Mercedes called everyone else in the search party and instructed them to go to the police station.
All three girls gave their story to the police officer, and then Quinn told them the names. The officer nodded and said that they would go to trial next week.
The three girls were wrapped in big quilts and forced to drink jasmine tea to get over the shock.
"Quinn!" Salm yelled. He ran to her and gave her a big hug, and Puck did the same to Rachel.
"I missed you so much!" he murmured into her ear.
"Quinn, I have a confession, and I feared that I would never be able to tell you…"
"What?" Quinn asked, turning to face Rachel.
"I'm… I'm in love with you." She leaned over and barely brushed her lips with Quinn's.
"I… I like you too," Quinn said. "But I have Sam and you have Puck. We can't… We can't hurt them!"
Epilogue: Mikey and Marie go to jail and everyone else lives happily ever after. Yea!