Chapter 14: Trade for the impossible

A/N
Hey, was that fast or what? :) In this chapter things finally are going a little faster. I hope you guys like it! This one will be LONG.
We're getting close to the ending! Note: my description of Mexico is probably WRONG. After some research I decided to just leave it be, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this chapter now. :) Anyone seen the newest NCIS episode? I haven't. Because they won't broadcast it in my country. Grrr..
(Oh, wondering who Sarah is again? Check chapter 6!)
B/N Here Beta speaking, I totally love it when you call me for your plots. And don´t tell her, but the only reason I beta is so I can read the chapter early and help her with plots (A)

Beta: Tino-chan
Spoilers: (Why do I keep mentioning this?) None.
Disclaimer: No :(
The use of random names in this story is totally coincidental and not based on anyone.

Preview
a man with a tanned skin appeared from behind Sarah. He had a cloth around his head, covering everything above his eyes
Abby's eyes fell on his hands and what he was holding.
She gasped. And then she started to scream.

Xxxx

Gibbs was done interrogating the agents of the small police station. They claimed they didn't know anything about a criminal gang called Comorro or about a truck with a black-haired hostage on it crossing the highly protected border. Of course, Gibbs knew that Mexico didn't extradite, so he didn't have any rights here; he couldn't even arrest them if he managed to catch Abby's kidnappers. It didn't really matter, though. He wasn't planning on arresting them anyway. If they ever were going back to DC, it would be in a body bag, he grimly decided. They thanked the officers, not really wholeheartedly, and stepped outside. Gibbs suppressed a sigh: where the hell was Dinozzo? He told him to be back in an hour… Great, now they had to go looking for him. Just as the special agent was about to send Ziva to go get him, a very familiar person appeared in sight. His black cap was visible, even from the place where they were standing. Gibbs hated to admit it, be he was actually kind of relieved that his senior agent was fine. He didn't need two of his people kidnapped.
That moment, he felt the familiar buzzing in his right pocket: his cell phone. At the same time, he suddenly got a gut feeling.
He pressed the green button and brought the thing to his ear.
"Hello Leroy Jethro Gibbs," a dark voice said. The silver haired agent felt his eyes widen. He knew that voice.
"You!" he yelled through the receiver. "Tell me where Abby is!" It was the voice that had spoken to him before,

"Oh, but it won't be so easy. First, let's discuss the trade," the voice said smoothly. Wild gesturing, Gibbs was trying to tell McGee to trace the call. The junior agent understood and started to pull out cables from his bag like crazy. He opened his computer and let his hands flew over the keyboard.
"Fine," Gibbs snapped, closing his eyes so he could concentrate. "What's your damn deal?" The person on the other side of the line chuckled.
"Right to the point, very good. Well, let's not disappoint you. I want Marcus Harring. He's been sentenced for murder a few months ago. I want him in exchange for the girl." It was silent for a moment when McGee signaled him to keep talking.
"So, you're telling me to get one of your guys out of prison for me to get her back?" Gibbs voice was very cold and his team cringed. Meanwhile, Dinozzo had reached them and was listening in to the conversation, his face tense. "One problem. NCIS doesn't negotiate with criminals!" He almost screamed the words. The voice sighed.
Gibbs glanced aside and saw McGee, raising his thump, confirming he managed to trace the call. Well, that was good.
"We thought you'd think that." There was a kind of click hearable on the other side of the line and Gibbs felt his blood run cold. Because he recognized the sound. It was the click of a safety catch being removed. He started to tell them to wait, but another sound made him freeze. His breath caught in his throat.
He heard someone screaming. And not just someone.
It was Abby.

"We'll show you what happens when you disobey orders, special agent Gibbs," the voice hissed. A loud bang resonated in his ear. A gunshot. He forgot everything and everyone around him and lost it.
"NO!" The scream died away. And then, nothing.
The man had hung up.
SNAP. Ever since she disappeared, he'd been hanging by a thread. That thread unraveled, fell apart. And then he was falling, falling, falling.
Down.
Gibbs was too far away too notice his team, slowly approaching him. Ziva was crying, black trails of mascara were running down her face. Tony had wrapped an arm around her, protectively, but with a look of pain on his face. He knew how to hide it but it was still clearly visible. McGee was looking terrified, his eyes big and round, his hands shaking. Abby's name dying on his lips. But Gibbs; he felt numb. Like the whole world had gone black for a moment.
And now nothing was the same again.
No Abby anymore.
No smiles and Caf-POWS and irrelevant stories and hugs and amazing results and kisses on his cheek and… He got very dizzy and searched for something to hold on to. He managed to get a hold of the car before he slumped against it.
How was this possible? How could he still be breathing? How could Abby just have…
"I think he's in shock," he heard a voice say from what seemed miles way. His vision was blurred but he couldn't seem to close his eyes, to shut out the horror and hope, pray, that this was just a bad dream and-
His thoughts were interrupted.
The cell phone, still in his hand, went off again. For a few seconds, he didn't know what to do with it. Then his marine senses took over and he pressed the green button. With shaking hands, all he could do was to put it to his ear and listen. Silence. Then:

"Gibbs?"

No. This couldn't be true. He just heard the shot. Abby was gone.
He killed her.

"Gibbs are you there?" she sobbed. "They shot Victor, Gibbs, he was my friend! And they just… They SHOT him!"
It slowly dawned on him. The voice he was hearing now… She wasn't…

Wasn't?

"Abbs?" he asked in a hoarse voice, full of disbelief. "You're alive?" He stopped falling. Started to float back up.
"Yes," she cried softly, her voice broken. "He didn't shoot me." Gibbs breathed out. He realized that suddenly, he could breathe again. The relief that washed through them was so big, so enormous, that he had to close his eyes again. Abby was alive. Alive. She wasn't gone forever.
"They want the phone back, I just…"
"Hold on, Abbs. I'm coming for you!" He told her softly but confident.
"Just… one thing. Jadelyn, is she… Is she alright?" Just after she said that, the phone was snatched out of her hands and Gibbs recognized the voice from before.
"Gave you a good scare, did it? Remember that this was just a warning! Next time I won't be shooting other hostages. Next time no one will call you back. Do we have a deal?"
"Yes," Gibbs simply answered.
"Good. I'm glad we have an agreement." The sinister voice laughed. "You have two days, that should be plenty of time. You bring him, I'll email you the location tomorrow"
"Okay," The special agent said, hanging up. He faced his team that was watching him with deep emotion, relief visible in everything: in the corners of their smiles and in their look. Tony cocked his head a little to the left.
"You're gonna do it?"
"Like hell I will," Gibbs muttered and got in the car, followed by his team. He felt like he'd just woken up from a very bad dream.
"But boss, what are you gonna do, then?"
Gibbs didn't answer. He pointed at McGee. "What's the address you got?" The probie suddenly seemed to remember that he just found an address and looked at his screen. He turned the computer around and pointed at the place on the map.
"It was really hard to trace. A general IT expert won't be able to do it." Luckily McGee wasn't just an IT expert.
"I first traced it back to Tokyo, Canada and Germany, but eventually it went back to Mexico. I can't tell you the exact place, boss, the signal was too well covered for that. What I can tell you is that the northern and southern part of Mexico is excluded. It's somewhere in the middle." He breathed out and his shoulders sagged. "But it's better than nothing, right?" Gibbs peered through his eyelashes and had to keep himself from yelling: then WHY would you raise your thumb? But he knew that McGee was one of the best; if he couldn't do it, then not many people could. Gibbs slid back into his car seat, processing the information. She was in the middle part. That meant to real desert scenarios –good. The bad news was that they still didn't have a lead- WAIT. The last thing Abby said to him: "Just… one thing. Jadelyn, is she… Is she alright?"
Jadelyn… he'd heard that name before.
The hostage-taker that didn't know anything. He didn't break after hours of investigating so they had moved on, keeping him in custody just to be sure. His trial wasn't in a month or so: time to pay him a visit. Gibbs turned the key and started the engine, aware of his still slightly shaking hands. They were getting closer. And he would find her.

Xxxx

Abby's POV

Victor was dead. The man had a gun in his hand and he'd pointed it at her. She believed he was going to shoot, that she was going to die here.

She was thinking: No, no, she couldn't die; not yet! She had so much to live for! Fear clouded her eyes when she'd pushed Danai away from behind her. The bullet could go through her and hit the little girl… The thought made her want to puke. The man was talking in the phone, the gun still pointed at her. And she couldn't move, she just couldn't! Her legs felt like they were suddenly paralyzed. Shock, she knew, could do that to you. Everyone was dead silent except for the man in the phone. She heard him say Gibbs' name and felt her eyes go round. He was talking to Gibbs! Abby tried to say something, but her throat felt blocked. She heard the man do his offer and softly heard Gibbs denying. Good. She didn't want to do any more damage than she'd already done.
"We thought you'd think that," the man said cruel and before she knew it, he pointed the gun at her more imminent.
He removed the safety catch.
He was going to shoot her. Abby screamed.
BANG.

This was it. Now she was dead.
Then why did she feel so… alive? Why were there tears running over her face? She looked up and saw the man in front of her, slowly sagging to the ground. Victor.
She wasn't shot.
Victor was.
The forensic scientist felt the blood, streaming over her hands, blood that wasn't hers: blood that flooded from his head and formed a puddle around his body. He was dead. For a second, Abby could only stare at him. She wasn't shot because he jumped before her. And now he was dead. The man with the gun seemed as surprised as she was. He had flipped his phone shut and seemed to be desperately thinking what he should do now. Then his face brightened. He smirked at the body and dialed a number, before handing her the phone.
"You want to call Gibbs? Tell him you're alive?"
Abby just looked at him. Why would he do that? Why would he let her?
"Oh, just wanted to give him a good scare. Maybe he knows we're serious now. Of course, it's a little inconvenient that he's dead," he kicked against Victor's body, that shifted a little under the impact. "But he wasn't going to last anyway with that illness. So, let's make this into something good, shall we?" Still, Abby wasn't able to speak. She stroke with her fingers over Victor's face, smearing it with blood. She tried to clean her hands by wiping them off on her clothes, and stroke his face again.
"You're gonna call or what?" Abby ignored him.
"Thank you, Victor," she whispered. "I'm so sorry. I'll tell everyone what happened, how brave you were." She started to cry now, really cry. Sobs shook her body when she pressed the green button and held the phone to her ear.
"Gibbs?"
It was so good hearing from him, but she couldn't think, she wanted to hug him, touch him, but all she saw was the death body right before her eyes.
The man tried to take the phone back, but she hold on to with all her strength.
"Hold on, Abbs. I'm coming for you!" He told her softly but confident. Was he? Was he really? It was Gibbs, she knew he could do anything, but would he be on time? Well, this was not the time to doubt her silver haired fox. She suddenly remembered something important.
"Just… one thing. Jadelyn, is she… Is she alright?" Just after she said that, the phone was snatched out of her hands. Her hands were empty. His voice was gone.
"Just hurry," she whispered to herself as the man with the phone left.

Now, probably a few hours later, they'd taken Victor away. The blood had seeped in the ground for a part; the other part just dried up. A dark red stain formed the place where he…he… They all avoided the place, cuddling together in a corner. Abby kept telling the children that it was all gonna be okay, that they were all going to be rescued and fine. She didn't think they were buying it. They were all in shock, even Jasmin, who'd only just waken up. She discovered that the girl was drugged. Behind her long hair, she had a small, red needle mark. The deaf girl also didn't recall fleeing from the dark room.
She did discover that the place they were now, what had seemed to be the same room they had escaped from, was in fact a similar room. Of course, no one could install bars in such a short time, and the shadows were different. Besides, there was a rusty ventilation shaft in the right corner, covered in dusty sand. Abby looked at it thoughtfully. No, she wasn't going to fit in there… But-

But a six-year old could.

She turned to Danai, who was looking in the distance, scared to close her eyes because of the nightmares that would haunt her if she did.
"Listen, Danai, could you look at me for a second?" Abby asked gently, petting her hair. As the girl did so, she pointed at the ventilation shaft. "Would you have the courage to climb through that shaft?" The girl looked at the rusty grid.
"Um, it's closed."
"Yeah, but we could try to open it." The forensic scientist stood up with shaky legs and crouched in front of the shaft. She pulled on it with all of her strength.
And with a loud, ripping noise, the grid came loose. The girl fell backwards because of the impact and looked through inside. At the end of the narrow shaft, she could make out a bright tip of light, so bright that it had to be the outside. She motioned Danai to come closer.
'Listen, sweetie, this shaft leads to outside. I don't know where you'll head up, but we have to try. Do you understand?" The little girl nodded carefully and Abby felt her heart breaking by how much this girl had to go through. "You're very, very brave, you know that? I'm going to tell you what to do now, so you have to listen really hard, okay?" Again, Danai nodded.
"This is a phone number that belongs to NCIS. They will help us. You can't trust the police or anyone who is Mexican. Okay? Don't trust anyone, except for tourists. Ask a tourist if you can make a phone call and then you call this number:" She wrote a number with her finger in the dust on the floor. "And when you do that, you ask for Leroy Jethro Gibbs. He will come and get you." She made the girl repeat it a few times and finally asked: "Okay, what do you do?" Danai bit nervously on her lip.
"First I climb through the shaft, then I go look for a tourist, I ask if I can make a call. Then I call the number," she said in a little voice and summed up the number. Abby could tell she was scared. "And then I ask for Leroy Jethro Gibbs," The six-year-old finished.
"Have I told you how brave you are?" She asked with a soothing smile, stroking the girls hair. Danai nodded. Then hesitated, as if she were going to say something.
'Uh… Abby?"
"Yes, sweetie?"
"Are you going to be rescued when I do this?"
"I think so," the black-haired girl answered honestly. "You think you can do this?" Danai nodded.
"I'll see you again, right?" She suddenly asked frightened.
"You will," Abby promised, before helping the girl climb up the shaft. It was just big enough for her not to get stuck, but Luca would've been too big. All she could do now was to pray for it to turn out alright; for Danai to get safe to NCIS. And the other children prayed with her.

Xxxx
One hour later

They had arrived in the capital city of Mexico: Mexico City. The city was located around the middle of the country so they guessed it was a good place to start. Gibbs wanted to visit the main state prison to visit the criminal that had kidnapped that little girl in a hotel just a few days ago. But before that, he wanted to speak to the little girl herself. They talked to the FBI on the phone: Fornell. He was already back in DC and gave them an address. It didn't take long before Gibbs and Dinozzo were on their way. Ziva and McGee were already at the hotel they booked for the night. It was a small, discrete place with a palm tree next to the entrance. There only were three rooms available. So they had decided that Gibbs could get his own room, because, well, isn't that obvious? One for Ziva because she was a woman, and one for Tony and McGee, who unfortunately, were stuck together. All their boss did was to put his suitcase on the bed. Then he left again, making Tony run after him. So now they were sitting in Gibbs' car, in total silence. Tony was trying to keep breathing when it looked like they were crashing at every corner, and Gibbs was just thinking of everything and nothing; about time and lack of time, about Abby being here and Abby being gone. About saving her and losing her. Tony's phone ringed: it was McGee.
"What's up, probie?" he asked, grateful to break the silence. "What? You what? Great. Well, I know I'm not gonna sleep on your room anymore… Yeah, I'll put him on. Its McGee," he told Gibbs. "He has food poisoning because he ate the shrimps from the mini bar. His boss raised an eyebrow and accepted the phone.
"So McGee, you call me when I'm really busy to tell me you're ill?"
"Um, that too, boss, but we just got a call from prison. That little girl's kidnapper died about an hour ago. He was killed in an uproar." Gibbs' hands tightened around the steering wheel. "Did he say anything before his death?"
"No, boss. I'm sorry." He sighed.
"McGee, go to bed. I need you tomorrow. Tony can sleep in Ziva's room."
"What?" Tony protested, but he ignored him and hung up. They continued the rest of the trip in renewed silence. When they arrived, they were both pretty tired. The house was pretty grand; it was radiating: we have money. They were let in by the maid, who directed them to the living room. Jadelyn was sitting on a chair, playing with a doll. She didn´t seem very happy. She looked up when she saw Gibbs and put the doll down.
"Have you found Danai?" She asked eagerly, slipping from the chair. A young woman appeared in the door opening.
"Jadelyn, honey, go play upstairs, okay?" She waited until the girl was gone and faced them "Can I help you?"
"Yes Ma'am. We're from NCIS. That stands for-"
"I know what it stands for. You helped us getting Jadelyn back! Any new on the case?" She asked with wide eyes.
"I'm sorry, but no. We're here so we can ask your daughter some questions," Tony smiled at her. Her face fell.
"I'm sorry, but no. Your people already asked her questions. She told them that she had to put a blindfold on and after that, she was at the hotel. She alerted the hotel manager by singing a song, who called us. End of story. I don't want her to relive that bad experience again.
"Ma'am, it might be vital information to get your other daughter back," Gibbs said calm. But the woman was inexorable. She kept directing them to the door so they had no other choice than to leave. Back in the car, Gibbs was very angry. He told Tony to go and look for possible witnesses or statements again. In other words, he had to go to houses and shops again. And again. But Gibbs' look was so scary that Tony didn't even dare to groan. Their hotel was a ten minute drive away, so Gibbs pulled over half way and told Tony to get out so he could walk back, to go by doors and ask anyone he saw for information. Reluctantly, the senior agent got out and started walking again. He watched the car leave with pain in his heart. Suddenly, he saw someone stumbling across the road. A little girl was slowly coming his way…

A/N
Soooo
Anyone really think I killed her off? Anyone?
XD
Woohoo cliffhanger!