Title: Red Headed Goddess, 8/?

Author: Goddess Evie

Date: September 9, 2007

Category: J/JHR, Angst

Summary: Things go wrong.

Disclaimer: I do not own JQ. I am only using the characters for my own unique story. I am using lyrics from the song "Time" by "Sarah McLachlan" on her Afterglow CD. I do not own it, either. Well, heheh, I own the CD, just not the rights to all the songs. If you get my drift.

Author's Notes: And here we go! It's these last few chapters that made me put the rating up at M. I want to warn my readers that from here on out things are going to get a little more dark and graphic. I'm not going to go any further than I have to, but there will be language and some nudity (I hope I'm not giving too much away), so if you're not comfortable with it…well…sorry. Some people will probably read this and go "Oh, that's nothing. I've read much worse." But still, I didn't want to continue without a warning. This chapter only has a very little cussing right at the end. But I wanted to start the warnings now. That way, no surprises. One last thing, this chapter is a little on the short side, but I couldn't resist the perfect cliffhanger that presented itself. So, you guys get cut off a little early. I promise I'm already starting on the next chapter! Hopefully, since the muses are really singing to me with this one, you won't have much longer to wait. And with that said, enjoy.

Chapter 8: You see love, a tight thorny thread that you spin in a circle of gold. To have me to hold me, a token for all to see, captured to b e yours alone.

"You found something," Jonny stated into the phone and Jessie instantly focused on him and the conversation he was having with her father. Her eyebrows raised, her eyes widened and her lips pressed together as she stared at Jonny expectantly, waiting to hear the news. He was glancing at her as he listened to the answer, looking just as anxious as she was. As soon as he hung up the phone she began pressing him for information.

"Whoa!" Jonny cried, holding up his hands in a placating manner. "Race wouldn't say anything. Just that he'd fill us in later."

Jessie scowled and turned to stalk down the path. With a sigh, Jonny followed, unhappy that their previously light-hearted mood had been spoiled. As he trailed behind her, he remembered the picture in his back pocket and pulled it out to look at it again, hoping that maybe this time there would be a spark in his memory and he would remember why he recognized it.

He stared it as he walked along behind Jessica, glancing up at her often to make sure she was still stalking along in front of him. He traced the curve of her hair bouncing in the air with a fingertip, then the strong angle of her arm, the familiarity the photo held for him haunting him the more he stared at it. His face scrunched up in concentration, he paused as he sensed himself approaching Jessie who had finally stopped and turned back to him.

"That's really bothering you, isn't it?" she guessed, peering over the top of the picture.

"I know I've seen this picture somewhere before. I just know it," he whispered in determination.

Jessie huffed and gently pushed the picture out of sight. "Put it away," she asked, softly pleading and looking up into his blue eyes.

Jonny's expression softened and he slid the picture into the back pocket of his jeans as he grabbed her around the shoulders with an arm and pulled her close. She slid her arm around his waist as they started walking again, leaning slightly against him.

"You know, Race is probably getting the info on this guy right as we speak," Jonny declared, giving Jessie's shoulders a squeeze, which she returned.

"Dad'll rip his heart out when he finds him," Jessie returned with a laugh and they both smiled.

"Let's not think about it anymore," Jonny suggested, leaning his head back to look up into the sky.

Jessie turned to look at him, smiling at the way his eyes innocently searched the sky, the strong line of his jaw and the ripple of muscle where his neck connected to his shoulder. He caught her looking out of the corner of his eye and she grinned at him without blushing. A grin he returned.

The conversation started up again when Jessie asked about Hadji's leaving for his first semester at college. Although the tone was decidedly less happy than before Race had called, it was still better than dwelling on Jessie's stalker. Although he never came out and said it, Jonny was obviously a little apprehensive about not having Hadji around all the time. Jessie pulled herself even closer against her best friend in a comforting gesture as he tried his best to be excited for Hadji and felt an answering squeeze around her shoulders.

The conversation moved on to other subjects as they continued along the trail. The path curved to the left and as they came around they saw the end of the trees where Jonny's red sports car was parked. It had only been fifteen minutes or so since Race had called and Jessie wondered if there would be enough time for another walk around the park. The end of the trees was only a hundred feet or so away and Jessie was just turning to suggest it to Jonny when someone jumped out at them from behind a tree to her right.

Jessie turned to meet her attacker even as Jonny began to pull her away. Something stung her eyes almost immediately, forcing her to turn away in order to protect them. Tears pooled and began to fall immediately and she rubbed helplessly at her eyes as she tried to make the sting go away. She doubled over with a coughing fit, her breathing gone ragged and short. Next to her, she could hear Jonny's painful grunting turn to exaggerated coughing and knew that whatever had blinded her had gotten to him as well.

The pain in her eyes was so bad that Jessie couldn't even open them to see her attacker and her diaphragm was starting to ache from her uncontrollable coughing fit. She fell to her knees only to feel strong arms wrap around her waist and she knew immediately without having to see that it wasn't Jonny. She began to struggle and scream as she was lifted into the air, but the pain in her eyes was too much of a distraction and her cries for help were interrupted with more coughing fits. Every time she tried to force her eyelids open, the stinging increased and the world around her was nothing but a blur.

Jessie could hear Jonny calling for her and even stumbling around trying to find her, but if he was as blind and in as much pain as she was, he would never find her. She continued to struggle against her captor, screaming through her coughing and hoping that perhaps their friends playing Frisbee in the field or even the picnickers would hear her and come for help, knowing with as much pain as her eyes were giving her, she wasn't going to escape on her own.

Whoever had a hold on her bumped into something and released her with one arm. She tried to use that to her advantage, struggling even more desperately, but he quickly held his hand over her mouth, a sweet smell invading her nose before she began to feel light headed.

In a matter of moments she was completely unconscious.

JQ

Jonny's eyes widened as he saw a familiar figure step out from behind a tree and everything clicked together in his mind. He grabbed Jessie and began to swing her away from the man coming at her. The attacker's hand was raised and he held a small canister that he squeezed to spray the contents into their faces. Immediately, Jonny's eyes began to sting painfully and he began to cough uncontrollably and the reaction caused him to let go of Jessie so he could rub at his eyes to try to make the burning go away even as he bent over unable to breath regularly.

Still as his eyes seared and breathing became continually difficult, he was tuned aurally to Jessie and he heard her when she began to struggle and scream and knew their attacker had grabbed her. He screamed for her and lurched in the direction her screams were coming from…and disappearing to. Something caught his foot and he fell face forward towards the ground. He managed to get his hands out in time to half-way catch his fall and he struggled unsuccessfully to get to his feet again. Jessie's screams were getting farther away, but he couldn't see and his eyes were ablaze with pain and he wanted just one good, deep breath. Tears streamed down his cheeks and he was too busy rubbing at his eyelids and trying to get a clean breath of air to find the balance to rise again.

He called out for her again desperately and hoarsely from all the coughing when her screams were suddenly muffled and then died down. A few moments later, as Jonny rolled around on his back with the heels of his hands pressed against his eyes, he heard an old engine start and then the vehicle drive away. His mind was split between the pain in his eyes and the knowledge that Jessie's stalker had managed to get his hands on her. Keening softly for her, Jonny cried more to know the worst had happened than for his own physical pain.

It was a long time before Jonny could open his eyes at all, and even then they still burned and his sight was mostly blurry. He continued to blink and rub at his eyes, trying to clear his vision, and mopped up his tears and snot with his shirt. It took him a few more moments to get to his feet, his depth perception impaired along with his sight and his balance off. His coughing had died down, but his throat was scratchy and he still couldn't get a decently deep breath.

He couldn't wait any longer than he already had. Jessie and her attacker already had a pretty good head start and Jonny was going to have to break the speed limit to catch up. He stumbled towards his car as he clumsily dug the keys out of his pocket. With his vision still hazy he had a hard time getting the key and lock to connect and he had to mop his tears away twice more with his shirt before he got his door open.

Once inside the car, Jonny realized he was more a danger than a help trying to drive with his vision still half gone. He stuck the key in the ignition with a couple of failed attempts and found a half-full water bottle in the back seat more by feel than by sight. Tilting his head way back and ignoring whatever damage the water might wreak on his leather interior, Jonny dumped what was left of the contents of the bottle into his eyes as he forced himself to hold them open.

Blinking rapidly, he used his shirt as a towel once more, but the water seemed to have little effect. As if a clock were ticking away the seconds in his head, Jonny felt every moment slip away from him while he sat, useless and blind, unable to go after Jessie. Every moment he sat here doing nothing was another moment Jessie was alone in the clutches of a man who was psychotically obsessed with her. The words of those letters ran through Jonny's mind, haunting him…pushing him to action.

Despite his vision only being partially restored and very slowly returning, Jonny knew he couldn't sit here any longer. Formulating a plan in his mind, Jonny turned the key in the ignition and shifted into first gear, shooting out of his parking spot and into the traffic lane. His best bet would probably be to take back roads, where there was less of a chance of him encountering other motorists. Picturing his destination in his mind, he mapped out the most direct route, including as few high-traffic roads as he could, and turned down the first residential street he came to, decelerating some but still driving well over the speed limit.

Squinting his eyes to try to make the road in front of him clearer, Jonny prayed that no stray kids would jump out at him. He was certainly going faster than was safe, even for the mostly deserted back roads, and he wasn't paying much attention to the stop signs he encountered. If Jessie had been here, she would have used this as an excuse to rail him about his driving.

Jessie…

With a determined growl, Jonny sped up, rubbing at his eyes again with the back of his hand. His vision was decidedly clearer and the burn had receded to a dull ache. Again he pictured his destination: a two story, white, colonial style house with pillars and balconies, set on a spacious corner lot with a circular driveway and a fountain, complete with a nude woman holding a pitcher, on the manicured front lawn. Jonny had only been to Zach Ellis' house once, but it was times like these that he was glad he had his father's photographic memory.

A mostly quiet, but generally well-liked student, Zach had been a highly awarded amateur photographer. He had graduated from Rockport high school just the previous year. While he'd been a student there he'd worked as the photographer for the school paper, where Jonny realized he'd seen the picture in his back pocket, now. Zach had even given Jessie an enlarged copy of the photo, because she'd liked it so much, which Jessie had proudly pasted into a scrap book. Zach had always had at least one camera on him and he was ever stopping to take pictures, seeing opportunities everywhere he went, even within the hallways of Rockport high.

The one time Jonny had visited Zach's house had been in the early spring before Zach had graduated. He'd done some photography work for an assignment Jonny had been working on for English with a couple of other classmates; a presentation they had to give on the works of Thoreau. Jonny's group had asked Zach to take some nature stills and Jonny had come to pick up the photographs so they could put their display together and be ready to present the next morning. He remembered how beautiful the photographs had been and how much he had thanked and praised Zach.

Jonny still felt completely surprised and incredulous that the usually shy, soft spoken young man was the same person he had watched jump out from behind a tree and spray Jessie and himself with pepper spray. He could hear Jessie's screams and attempts to free herself and wondered that quiet Zach was capable of all that had happened in the past thirty minutes.

And if he's capable of that, what else is he capable of now that he has Jessie in his possession and all alone?

The question popped into his head just as he turned down the block Zach's house was on and spotted the elegant white residence on the other end of the street. Jonny slowed down as he neared the house and pulled into the circular driveway, but didn't pull up to the door, instead parking closer to the street. He hoped he hadn't already been spotted. Having the element of surprise on his side was an advantage he didn't want to lose. As he crept toward the door, Jonny didn't see any other vehicles, but there was a three car garage on the east side of the house and plenty of foliage that hid the rest of drive where Zach could have parked. Jonny wasn't even sure what kind of car Zach drove.

Listening intently as he neared the front door, Jonny slowly reached for the handle, only to be surprised when it suddenly pulled open before he even touched it. His head snapped up, and his own surprised blue eyes met the bloodshot brown ones of a woman in a cream, terrycloth bathrobe, her graying blonde hair pulled back into a sloppy ponytail and a cigarette smoldering in her right hand. By the bloodshot eyes and the thick smell of alcohol wafting from the woman, Jonny deduced the woman was quite drunk. The two stared at each other for a moment before the woman's face suddenly twisted into an angry, suspicious expression.

"Who the hell are you?"

Assessing the situation and thinking fast, Jonny quickly realized that the woman before him was Zach's mother. Zach was taller than the woman, about as tall as Jonny, but they had the same dirty blonde hair, the same noses, the same thinly arched eyebrows. Stuttering a little, and hoping the woman was too drunk to notice, Jonny gave the first decent answer his mind came up with.

"I-I'm looking for your son, Zach."

The woman looked him up and down again skeptically, and then uttered the three words that chased all of Jonny's hope away.

"He's not here."