Warnings: Mentions of off-screen violence. And a couple of dismembered body parts.

.***.

Gus: We're in a hostage situation, Shawn. You don't get that?

Shawn: I do get it. What I don't get is the bulletproof vest over the shirt. What is that? Gus Walks Into a Bank

.***.

They knocked him out again and he woke up in Psych. It was early Friday morning, and by his recollection they'd been snatched from the very same office almost exactly twenty-four hours before. It was like nothing had happened. Except Gus was missing.

Have you ever missed a step on a staircase in your own house? You're surprised for that instant, and a little afraid of falling, but after you get over being surprised and scared, you're baffled that you were so confused by something so familiar.

That's what being without Gus was like. Like missing something that should be there.

For a moment Shawn sat on the couch, looking absently at his wrists. They were torn, bruised, and probably in need of bandages. He'd never been good at that first aid stuff, though. Gus was good enough for the both of them, and he was never very far from Gus.

It occured to him that the bruises were the only evidence of his ordeal. His kidnappers, that goddamned drug cartel, had left no trace, only warnings that rang out over and over in Shawn's head, a song he couldn't shake off. You have two days, psychic wonder. Make them count, or you're friend's going to die.

Yeah, he got that loud and clear. Except for the small problem that he wasn't psychic.

His father had come close to this possibility once, when Shawn barged into the house on a Sunday morning, pretending he'd forgotten a sweatshirt but really there because he knew his father would make him an omelet, which he'd been craving. Anyway, over omelets Henry Spencer had started the conversation by saying, "you know this psychic thing isn't going to end well, Shawn. And I'm not even talking about personal trust issues here. If you keep telling newspapers you're psychic, the government's going to pick you up and lock you in a lab until they find out what makes you tic."

To which Shawn had responded with something like, "I thought I was the conspiracy theorist, dad! You're walking all over my gig!"

And one of those newspaper articles touting his psychic abilities did lead to a white room, to people who knew exactly what made him tic. Except they weren't the government, just run-of-the-mill drug smugglers who'd had their stash stolen by a rival gang, and they didn't know where they'd hidden it.

Back in that white room, Agent Smith had told him, using the gun to gesticulate, "We have to put the forty-eight hour window on you. It's definately going to be out of the country by then, and we need it back."

"Why not just intimidate one of their members?" Shawn had asked, bewildered. "I'm sure that gun would go a long way towards making someone talk."

Agent Smith smirked at that, "I was curious to see how good your powers were. If you were actually psychic. We could have a very lucrative partnership if you are."

"I think you threatening to kill my current partner might put a damper on our relationship." Shawn had said, and Agent Smith actually laughed at that. He wasn't really a Smith at all, when Shawn looked close (and Shawn couldn't help but look close.) More of a Martinez or a Lopez.

Shawn decided he couldn't do much about his hands and gathered up all his strength to push himself off the couch. He was tired - being unconscious wasn't the same as being asleep - and had had two blows to the head in twenty-four hours. But he wasn't exhausted. He was too frantic.

So he took his coat off the back of the chair where it had been lying all day and made sure the sleeves covered his wrists. Then he took the Blueberry and drove it straight to the police station, hoping to God they could help them.

Agent Smith/Martinez/Lopez had mentioned the police very specifically. "We know you work close with them, and you're dad's hanging around there, too. Don't worry, we don't care if you tell them about this. In fact, we prefer it." He caught Shawn's look of surprise and laughed meanly. "You were expecting more threats against your friend if you involved the good old SBPD, right? You can tell them everything, psychic. Just don't tell them where the drugs are, and let us get to them first, comprende? If you don't find the drugs, or they're not where you say they are, or the police are there to arrest us, then your friend dies. But you can tell them everything else. Anything you want."

Drug cartels could say things like that when they held all the cards.

He must have looked a sight, bursting into the Santa Barbara Police Station with his eyes wide and wild, looking around for Juliet or his father or Lassie, anyone who could help him. He was so focused on looking for them that he barelled right into Buzz McNab.

"Hey Shawn!" McNab said, smiling picking Shawn up from the floor where he'd landed hard. Buzz didn't seem fazed at all by the collision. "In a hurry? You and Gus have a case?" He looked around, registering then that Gus wasn't at Shawn's shoulder like always. "Where's Gus?"

"Where's Lassie?" Shawn asked, ignoring all the questions Buzz had posed to him.

McNab jerked a thumb towards Vick's office. "I'd watch out though, Shawn. He's pretty pissed that you're having your mail sent here now."

If Shawn had been thinking straight, he would have asked about the mail, but now he really understood the term out of your mind. Isn't that what Gus always said? And now Shawn could hear him even as he hurried towards the Chief's office: "You must be out of your damn mind, Shawn."

If those words had ever been true, they were true now. He felt unhinged, unanchored without the calming presence of Gus by his side. Which is probably why he literally ran into Lassiter as the older man was walking out of the chief's office.

"Spencer!" Lassie growled, the same way he always did. He was holding a small box and held it out to Shawn, pinching it between his fingers like he didn't want to be contaminated. "This is a police station, not your own personal mail service."

Shawn reached for the box and Lassie pulled it further away. Shawn swiped at it without thinking, and that's when Lassiter put down the box, depositing onto a nearby desk and grabbing Shawn's arm.

"Wha - Lassie!" Shawn yelped, trying to pull his arm free, but it was too late.

Lassie stared at the bruises and cuts uncomprehendingly, then looked around, registering for the first time Gus's absence, and, more worryingly, the near-panicked expression written all over Shawn's face. "Alright, Spencer. What happened?"

Three minutes later they were in the chief's office. Shawn was flanked on either side by his father and Juliet, with Lassie and the chief staring him down from the other side of the table. Shawn recounted everything he knew, his voice getting higher and more desperate as he went on. He could see no happy ending for this story.

"I don't get it." Juliet said, holding Shawn's hand. "You know Gus so well, shouldn't you be able to sense him?"

Shawn actually smiled at that, though of course why would anyone at the police department think otherwise? He presented himself as a psychic who could basically see things at will. He was glad, though, that his father saved him the trouble of answering.

"There's no way he'd be able to see anything right now, Detective. He's too emotionally involved." Juliet nodded sympathetically and Shawn shot his father a grateful glance. Very rarely did Henry Spencer outright lie for his son, and the fact that he was doing it now meant he thought there was a reason for Shawn to preserve his cover- that he would be working with the police department again in the future. That they would get Gus back.

"So we should think of non-psychic ways to either locate Mr. Guster or these stolen drugs," Vick said, looking at each of them. "Any ideas?"

"What's in the package, Shawn?" Juliet asked, pointing to the box that had been sitting on Shawn's lap through the whole story.

"No idea." Shawn had completely forgotten the box was there at all, but now the curiosity that Gus always swore would actually kill them, like it had killed the cat, was piqued. And satisfaction brought that ol' cat back, right? So he opened the box.

It was a finger, sitting on top of day-old newspaper. A long, brown finger that, no more than twenty-four hours before, had definately been on the right hand of Burton Guster.

Shawn thrust the box away from him and worked very hard not to be sick. And while he couldn't stand Juliet's hand on his arm, he found he didn't mind in the least when his father rubbed circles on his back, like he used to do when Shawn, as a child, would find himself crawling onto his father's lap for the comfort the closeness brought.

"Get it out of here, Lassiter." Henry growled, because if he didn't say something the thing stuck in his throat would burst out in a yell, or a hard punch at a wall. Was this really happening? Gus kidnapped as colatroral so Shawn could work voodoo magic he didn't really have? Could this possibly be real life?

Karen Vick was trying to remain unmoved, but she found herself blinking and swallowing hard before letting out a deep breath. She was still in charge after all, the big boss who got to make all the big decisions. "Do we know that's Gus's finger, Shawn?"

"It's his, of course it's his." Shawn muttered. He was rubbing his temples, small circles like the one his father was still rubbiing onto his back. He couldn't look at the chief, because the chief was near that finger, and he certainly couldn't look at that.

"It could just be a bluff though, right?" Juliet said, cheering up a little at the thought. "Right, Shawn? Did you try calling him? Have you actually spoken to Gus since this whole thing began?"

"I think you're kind of missing the point of 'kidnapped,' O'Hara." Lassiter muttered. He'd put the box with the finger behind his back. He'd bring it down to Woody later.

"It's nine in the morning. He could just be at home, or at Psych!" Juliet was pitiably excited, and Shawn felt a little better at the suggestion that things might not be as bad as they seemed.

"I guess I could try." He slipped his hand into his pocket and reallized he'd forgotten his phone somewhere between getting kidnapped himself and getting to the police station.

"You should probably use the station phone anyway," Vick said kindly. "Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky."

Five minute later they were in front of a phone. Lassie was stooping below his station to operate the location equipment, because they didn't want the rest of the department in on this, not yet. If they could reach Gus on his phone, then the finger was a part of another investigation. If they couldn't...well, then it might be time to call in the big guns.

Everyone, all five standing around anxiously, was surprised when the phone was answered on the sixth ring and Gus's strained voice came through the other end. "Shawn?"

"Hey buddy." The relief in Shawn's voice was heartbreaking, "Where are you? Are you alright?"

"I'm - I'm okay." There were voices in the background, voices that sounded cruel even over the phone. "Could use a Band-Aid, though."

"Yeah, I sensed you got a papercut or something." Shawn sucked in a breath, looked up at the cieling and blinked back tears. He wouldn't cry. He could be relieved that Gus was alive and well enough to make jokes, but he couldn't cry in front of Lassiter. "You know, this is a little bit too much like Along Came a Spider for my taste."

"That would make me Brittney Wilcox, and you Carl." Gus said, and that made Shawn do a double-take. Along Came a Spider was something he'd watched with Gus, and had mentioned it so that Gus would say that, in a perfect world, he, Gus, would be Morgan Freeman. Not...Brittney Wilcox...

There was the sound of a phone being ripped away, and then the unmistakable groans that come when you're being beat up and don't want to make a fuss about it. "You got our little gift, Spencer?" That was Agent Martinez or Lopez, from The White Room.

"Leave Gus out of this!" Shawn said, and he didn't care that he was begging. You try not sounding scared out of your mind when your friend's finger is in a box behind Lassie's back.

"No can do, buckaroo." The voice was sing-song, happily lilting. "And I know the cops are trying to track this, so I gotta hang up now. You know how to reach us, though, once you know where those drugs are. Soon we'll run out of fingers to cut off."

A click, and the line when dead, but not before half a truly horrible scream made it into the room. Lassie threw down the headphones he was wearing. "Damnit! We were ten seconds away from getting a fix on their position!"

"It's alright, Lassie." Shawn said, his voice low and eerily calm. "This is Gus we're talking about. Of course he gave us a clue."

"What are you talking about, Shawn?" Juliet asked, "He barely had time to say anything."

"He said enough." Shawn said, pushing himself away from the table, "I know where to find him."

.***.

now, do you all know where he is? i like to think that gus would have back-up plans for the back-up plans. he would definitely be able to get a message to shawn. and this is a pretty good hint.

questions? comments? gripes? concerns?