Disclaimer- They are like little action figures I do not own, but have the incisive need to play with. CBS owns them. Mr. Heller made them. No money is, was, or ever will be made from this.
[Chapter 5]
"We need to get out of here." Jane began to pace. He hoped that his message would reach Lisbon. She would understand it and help them, but it didn't hurt to have a backup plan. "Hey? Are you still with me?"
Jane glanced over to the agent. Rigsby looked to be unconscious. "Rigsby?"
"Yeah," Rigsby eyes fluttered open. He was so tired and had to close his eyes for a few minutes. He was dizzy, his head really hurt and the agent suspected he had a concussion on top of the heat stoke, but didn't want to alarm Jane. "Sorry, must of nodded off."
"We need to get out of here," Jane repeated.
"What's the plan?" Rigsby forced himself to his feet and began to sway. The nausea hit him and he willed himself not to throw up.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he lied. "What's the plan?"
"There." Jane grabbed one end of the workbench and began to drag it over to the air conditioner. He climbed up and examined the old wall unit. There were a few screws holding the AC into the wall, most of them were stripped and it looked like who ever put it in used whatever screws they had laying around. There were two eye screws, a drywall screw and three sheet metal screws holding it in place.
"Can you pull it out?" Rigsby asked.
Jane pried the unit from the wall with his fingers. It gave a little. The workbench began to wobble and Jane stopped.
"It's loose, but I can't get enough leverage," he told the agent. Jane jumped down and began to scan the room for something he could use. "We need some sort of lever, a screw driver or something..."
"If we both try to pull it out at the same time we might be able to do it," Rigsby suggested.
"We'll try that as plan B. This will do," Jane showed Rigsby a metal pipe he found in the corner.
"If not we can always use it as a bat and swing on them as soon as they come through the door," Rigsby offered as he leaned on the wall for support.
"That's a definite plan C," Jane said as he climbed back on top of the workbench.
Jane wedged the pipe between the left side of the air conditioner and the wall. He pulled with all of his might. The screws came loose and sunlight peeked through the gap. The workbench began to sway, and he stopped a moment to regain his balance.
"Come on, just a little more," Jane mumbled to himself.
Jane wiped his brow. They need to get out of here quickly. He was curious which Troy kidnapped them and what this whole thing was about, but he was not the intended target. Statistically speaking that didn't bode well for him, being basically useless to his captors, plus Rigsby needed medical attention.
He took the pipe and wedged it between the air conditioner's frame and the right side of the wall. Jane took a deep breath and grabbed the pipe with both hands to try again. The AC shifted a little more but it wasn't enough. The consultant braced his foot against the wall and pulled with all his strength. The screws snapped. The work bench swayed. The pipe slipped, and Jane lost his balance and went crashing into a stack of crates near him.
George Watson sat in the backseat of the Buick Skylark, his Mossburg lay across his lap. He had just finished reloading the weapon as he, Jimmy, and their boss Troy sped down the highway back towards the storage unit. He ran his fingers through his thinning hair and listened to his boss rant and yell over the blaring music that pumped through the speakers.
"I swear you two are really stupid," Troy shook his head in disbelief.
"Where else did you want us to put them?" Jimmy argued. "We couldn't just drive around with them."
"Did it occur to either one of you to stay with them? To, I don't know, watch them?" Troy asked. "I told you to grab one guy. How are there two of them?"
"He was with the guy you wanted us to grab," George said.
"Please tell me you me you restrained them at least?" Troy asked.
"Yeah we did,"Jimmy said, "with duct tape."
"Duct tape? You taped them to something? A chair? A support beam? Each other?" Troy asked.
"No. We bound their hands." Jimmy glanced over to his boss. "What?"
"And their feet?"
"No, just their hands."
"You two are really stupid."
"What? We locked the door," Jimmy insisted. "They can't get out."
Troy shot an angry glare at Jimmy.
"What? You didn't tell us what to do. You also didn't tell us he was an armed state agent. You also weren't the one getting run over or shot at. This is way more effort than what you are paying-"
Troy threw a quick jab to the lanky man's face, then reached over, and flung opened the passenger door.
"Wait!" Jimmy yelled trying to grab for the steering wheel or anything within reach.
Troy pushed Jimmy out of speeding car, calmly pulled the passenger door shut then looked up at the rear view mirror. He glared towards the egg shaped man and spoke again, "you better hope they are still in there."
George nodded and was glad he wasn't riding in the passenger seat.
'W-e-0-k. w-.-g-s-o-n. v-9-1-1-z-f-i. H-l-p.'
Lisbon and Cho stared down at the note pad trying to decipher Jane's message. They were still parked curbside at the convenience store.
"We OK." Cho suggested. "We're okay."
"Yeah, that's what it looks like, but what's the rest of it?" Lisbon tilted the card again to see if there was more to the message.
"911? Emergency?" Cho offered.
"The end looks like help?"
"F-I... Find help? He's trying to find help?"
Lisbon reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. "Grace, have you made any progress with the surveillance videos? Okay good. Hold on let me put you on speaker phone so Cho can hear you."
Lisbon placed her phone on the dashboard between them.
"Can you both hear me now?" Grace spoke.
"Yeah," they said in unison.
"I was telling the boss, Bailey and I were able to find some surveillance footage of their captors. One was from the camera outside where Jane and Rigsby taken. They threw Rigsby in the trunk boss. We have to find them. In this heat it's got to be an oven..."
"I know Grace. We'll find them," she assured her junior agent. "The surveillance video..."
"It's a bit grainy and the resolution sucks. We got an image of one of the captors. We are still working on getting the other. Hopefully we'll get a match with the facial recognition software. Craig, I mean Agent O'Laughlin is running it right now."
"He's our FBI liaison?" Cho asked.
"Yes. We are also running prints we found at the scene. That might take a while there were a lot of them," Grace said.
"How about the car? Any luck with the plates?" Lisbon asked.
"Garrison was only able to get a partial from the witness. We are trying to narrow down the search. One witness said it was a Skylark, another said it was a Century. Half of them said it was black and the other half said it was blue. One witness said there were four men, one said there was only one."
"What's the partial plate?" Cho asked.
"Victor-Nine the last two characters are Frank-Ida," Grace Said
Cho stared at the notepad. "Run this plate, Victor-Nine-One-One-Zebra-Frank-Ida."
"Jane tried us to leave us a message on the back of his ID card. From what we can decipher, they are currently okay."
"That's good to hear."
Lisbon could hear some sort of commotion through the phone. There were several people speaking at once, but it was coming in garbled and distorted on her end.
"Hold on boss," Grace said through the phone.
"Okay."
Lisbon started the car and pulled into traffic. Sitting idly was not helping, and was actually frustrating her more. She flipped the ID card in her hand as she sat at the red light and stared at Jane's smiling face while drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. It was hours since they were taken. There was no contact from the captors and no ransom demand, which seemed to rule out kidnapping for money. She felt like they were missing something right in front of them.
"Think like Jane..." she mumbled to herself as she continued eastward down the street.
"You are going the wrong way," the GPS gently spoke.
Lisbon reached over to mute the GPS unit. She slammed on the brakes and the car lurched to a stop.
"What?" Cho asked as he readjusted the shoulder strap of his seat belt.
"Grayson," she said staring at the on screen map.
Cho waited for her to continue.
"The map," Lisbon pointed to the GPS. ". Westward. Grayson. They are heading west towards Grayson."
"Boss!" Van Pelt yelled through the phone.
"What? What happen?" Lisbon asked.
"Two federal Marshals just showed up."
"Do they have any information on the case?"
"No. They're looking Rigsby."
TBC