Chapter eight

The phone ringing next to his bed woke Ellison from a disturbing dream. Grabbing it he simultaneously glanced at his watch on the bedside table while growling into the receiver. His watch read 2:34. "Yeah? What's up?"

"Uh, hello? This is Blair."

Jim woke up fully hearing the exhausted and pain-filled voice. "Chief! Where are you?"

"Jim! Don't know. Somewhere in the mountains. I was kid…"

His grunted as the sound of flesh on flesh replaced his voice.

"Ellison. We have Sandburg. He's alive. If you want him to stay that way you and your colleagues come out to Thorne Rider Park baseball fields without the Feds."

"How is he? Is he hurt? Let me talk to him." Stretching his hearing he could hear harsh coughing being muffled in the background.

"No, you listen to me! You don't listen, he gets hurt. You don't do what we say, he dies. We'll expect you at the park at six this morning. We see a helicopter, a uniform or even a car I don't like the look of and we're out of there."

"You've got to be joking! We're being watched, we can't take a piss without an agnet being with us."

"Well, you'd better find a way or it's bad news for Sandburg's. We've got no food for him and I guarantee you'll never find him in time."

"Fucking bastards! Let him go or I'll …" He stopped as he realised he was talking to the dial tone. Immediately, he dialled 69, but got the message that the number was blocked. He jumped out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Grabbing his gun he left his room not realising that he'd not turned on the light and had done everything in the dark. He knocked softly on Simon's door in an attempt to not to make too much noise. "Simon, open the door," he whispered trying to project his voice.

Nothing happened. "Simon," he tried more urgently listening to the snores coming from behind the door. He risked raising his voice some more, "For God's sake, wake up, please."

"Wha, wha…?" He heard a bed creak then footsteps and the door opened to reveal Banks dressed in stunning, burgundy satin pyjamas peering at him short-sightedly with sleep-filled eyes. "Ellison, what the…?"

"Shh." Jim pushed past him into the room after checking to see that no-one else along the corridor had been disturbed. "Keep your voice down."

Simon slowly closed the door behind him and made his way back to his bed. Sitting down on the edge he picked up his glasses from the bedside table. Putting them on he watched the Sentinel pace backwards and forwards across the small space. "Jim, what's going on?"

"The kidnappers just called me."

"What?"

"Shhh, I don't want the Feds to hear. I spoke to Blair. He's still alive."

Simon felt the curl of fear in his stomach unwind a bit. "So, what did they want? How did they get your number?"

Jim cupped the back of his neck with both his hands. "The usual: go to a place alone or they'll kill him, don't tell the FBI, listen to them or they'll hurt him…"

"How did he sound? Was he able to tell you where he was."

"Exhausted, in pain. How he always sounds when he's been kidnapped!"

"Uh huh." Unfortunately, he knew exactly what Ellison meant.

"He said something about mountains, but that doesn't help us much here." He resumed his pacing. "Why did I let him go back alone? I should've made him stay with us or gone back with him at least."

Simon got up and gently led Jim to his bed then pushed him down so he was sitting on the edge. He pulled the single chair over and sat in it so that his knees were almost touching the other man's. Touchy-feely wasn't really his thing, but he could see that he needed to be a bit more empathetic than normal. The last 48 hours had really been an emotional roller coaster (no pun intended!) for the man and he needed grounding. God, he was channelling Sandburg! "Jim, forget about should haves and could haves and let's concentrate on what we can do now."

Jim blew out a long breath. "You're right. Do we tell Patton?"

"You know we can't acquiesce to their demands?"

"I know. God, I know." Unfortunately, as a cop he knew only too well that giving in to kidnap demands rarely brought good results. Also FBI policy was to never give in – that led to criminals thinking they could get what they wanted through kidnapping. However, as a private individual it was difficult to take.

"We can only do what we do best – find the bastards before they do anything else to Sandburg. And to do that we need all the resources that the FBI have. We need to find out how they got your number. Did they call the switchboard or did they know by other means?"

Jim simply shrugged, his concerns were more immediate. There was a moment's silence as each man contemplated the heart wrenching decision they were being forced to make.

The captain took charge. "I'll get dressed while you go and wake the others. Take them down to the conference room and get the coffee on. I have a feeling we're going to need gallons of the stuff. I'll go and wake Patton. Do you know what room he's in?"

"I think it's 332."

"Okay. And Jim?"

"Yeah?"

"Put some shoes on."

The man looked down at his bare feet then ruefully looked up at Simon. "Guess I had other things on my mind."

'And isn't that an understatement?' thought Simon.

Thirty-five minutes later sleepy people were slowly filling up the conference room and the coffee machine was working overtime. Patton was in discussion with an agent waiting for everyone to arrive. The Cascade group was sitting in a corner in a protective circle around Jim watching what was going on.

Simon spoke quietly so that only Jim could hear him, "Can you tell me if anyone's listening in?"

Jim started and looked at his captain then tipped his head to one side in his classic listening stance. Megan spotting what was going on put her hand on his arm grounding him.

After a few minutes Jim lost the glazed look and leant forwards. "As far as I can tell there's no-one outside within a few hundred metres and I don't think there are any listening devices in this room. I can't say more than that without risking a zone."

"That'll have to do. Joel, remind me to ask Patton if they've done a sweep of this building. I wouldn't put it past Escobar to have someone outside with a directional mike!"

The last person slipped into the room and Patton indicated Banks to join him at the head of the large table. He stood up and addressed the room, "Sorry for disturbing your beauty sleep, but we've had a development. I'll let Captain Banks explain."

Simon cleared his throat and recounted the very short conversation Ellison had had with Blair's kidnappers. "It's now 3:15, which doesn't leave us much time to sort something out. Because what ever happens we're getting Sandburg back." With a pointed look at Patton he made his way back to his seat.

"As Captain Banks said, we've got very little time, so let's get cracking. This is a map of the park in question." A large folding map was fixed to a whiteboard and Jim saw why the kidnappers had chosen that particular meeting place. The baseball fields were a large open space with very little cover for anyone approaching. It would be impossible to move anyone or anything without being seen from the surrounding area. Looking at the faces of the people around him he knew that they'd come to the same conclusion. "Gutierrez and Johns get in touch with Sheridan PD. We need them out and about looking for ANY trace of Escobar's men and who they've hooked up with here."

The two men nodded and headed out of the room.

"Michaels, King contact park rangers, mountain guides, anyone who has a reason to be out in the mountains to see if they've spotted anything that could help us." The male and female agents picked up their notebooks and shot off. "Okay, That leaves the rest of us. I'm open to suggestions."

An hour and a half later Jim twisted in his seat, frustrated. This was going nowhere. They had two options: go and get taken, don't go and try to find Sandburg before he starved to death. He knew which one would be chosen, all law enforcing services knew not give in to demands made by criminals and terrorists. And although he understood and agreed with the policy he didn't have to like it. The Feds were discussing ways of tracking the kidnappers without being caught, but most of the suggestions meant revealing their presence. They had just over an hour to sort something out and get to the meet.

After listening to another stupid suggestion and with a stomach burning from too much coffee, he'd had enough. He eased away from the table stretching his back and slipped out of the room. Simon glanced over at Joel who nodded and went after the detective. He found Jim sitting in a corner of the darkened lounge.

"What are going to do?"

The words were whispered, but in the silent space Joel heard them clearly. "Don't give up hope just yet. Don't forget that Blair's a resourceful and intelligent man. He's managed to get himself out of tricky situations before."

"How come this always happens to him?"

"You know what he'd say? Bad karma, man!"

Jim snorted in amusement despite himself. "You know we'll never get close enough to be able to follow them?"

"What about you? How far can you be and still be able to track them?"

"Close enough. I'm not thinking at my best, Joel! Let's speak to Simon."

Patton looked up at the three men exasperatedly. They'd walked up to him in the conference room and had tried to convince him that they could deal with the meet. "What the hell's the matter with you? You CANNOT go off on your own! Apart from the risk to yourselves, you could jeopardise our operation."

"What operation?" Jim snapped. "You don't have a plan and the meeting's in 40 minutes."

"Jim, quiet." Simon put a hand on his arm. "Look Patton, we need to tell you something, but not here."

"Unless you can tell me you know where Sandburg is and can save him, I don't want to know. I'm seriously regretting my decision to let you in on this."

Simon jumped in before Ellison could aggravate the agent more. "It'll only take a few minutes and it could be the answer we're looking for."

Throwing his arms up in the air, Patton stood up brusquely from the table and stalked out of the conference room. Fortunately, the lounge was still empty at this early hour so they didn't have to go far. He stopped by the windows, turned towards the men following him and crossed his arms. "Well, what is it? And this had better be good."

The captain glanced over at his detective noting the clenched jaw and blank face. Although he'd agreed to this he knew that he wasn't particularly happy with the situation. "We're telling this to you on the understanding that you an tell NO-ONE else." He waited until the agent gave a short nod. "Ellison can track the kidnappers without electronic means."

Patton stared speculatively at the silent man for a few seconds. "So you really do have enhanced senses?"

Jim froze and stared at the man. "What do you know about it?" he asked angrily his automatic defensive reaction taking over.

"Did you really think I wouldn't search out all the information I could on the people I'm supposed to be protecting? I read about Sandburg's dissertation and how he declared it fraudulent."

The man before him winced, but remained silent.

"So now you're telling me it was all true? And you expect me to believe that you're really this Sentinel Sandburg wrote about?"

"I can prove it, but we really don't have the time, do we? You've obviously done your research. Do you really think two police captains would be standing here with me if they didn't know it was true?"

Both Banks and Taggart nodded at Patton's questioning look.

Patton was silent obviously thinking things over. "Okay. What can you do?"

"I'll be able to hear them talking from anywhere on the field. I'll be able to keep them in view from up to a mile away. If their vehicle is burning oil I'll be able to tell where they've been. Is that good enough?"

Patton nodded slowly. "Tell me something. If you really are, what was the expression again, a Sentinel, why did Sandburg lie?"

An awkward silence followed his question. Simon cleared his throat. "That's not relevant to this operation and…"

"It's none of your business," Jim snapped.

"Perhaps not how I was going to say it, but basically he's right," continued Simon.

Patton looked as if he wanted to argue, but looking at the faces of the men before him he realised now was not the time. "Acknowledged, for now. Okay, how are we going to play this?"

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Blair took a sip of water then with shaking hands, carefully twisted the cap back on the bottle. He'd been rudely woken up in the night from his intermittent slumber by his kidnappers bursting into his cell with bright torches. They'd dragged him along to the tunnel entrance and propped him up against the wall.

"You're going to talk on the phone," bbb-#1 (he'd thought it was #1 but in the wavering light it had been difficult to say) had told him emphatically, "you'll give your name and nothing more. Okay?"

"Wha… wh…?" In his weakened state Blair had found it difficult to understand what had been going on. "Owww!" His eyes had watered as his hair had been gripped in a large hand and his head forced up so he'd had to strain up on his toes. He'd scrabbled at the wall behind him with his bound hands in an effort to stay upright.

"Listen, fucker," the man had snarled directly into his face, "just say your name when I tell you to. All right?"

Blinking away his tears he squinted up into the flashing eyes boring into his. "Yeah, man. I hear you." Thankfully his hair had then been released and he'd locked his knees as his trembling legs had started to fold beneath him. A phone had been held up to his ear.

"Speak," the man had commanded.

"Uh, hello? This is Blair."

"Blair! Where are you?" He'd almost collapsed when he'd heard Jim's anxious voice in his ear. 'Please, please, please,' he'd chanted in his head, 'come and find me, Big Guy.'

"Jim! Don't know. Somewhere in the mountains. I was kid…" The phone had been pulled away from his ear and he'd been slapped to the ground. He'd landed with a grunt that had set off a spate of coughing. By the time he'd caught his breath the phone conversation had been over and his two kidnappers had been discussing something over his head. He'd been feeling too rotten, too sick to follow the conversation. They'd then dragged him back to his little hidey-hole, cut the duct tape around his wrists and left him there in the dark.

And now he was watching the confines of his prison slowly become visible as dawn sent light down the hole above his head. Another shiver coursed through his body and he wrapped his arms round his chest grateful that he could do so. He wondered why they'd untied him and the only answer he could come up with was depressing. They could see that he was in no state to even attempt an escape or inflict any damage on his kidnappers. His breath whistled in and out of his lungs, his chest felt tight and his left leg hurt with a deep ache. With the way he was feeling he realised they weren't far off in their assessment.

As the room lightened he saw something gleaming by the door. He crawled over to it and was surprised to see a large plastic bottle of water. Thank God! He was so thirsty. Then realisation hit him like a fist in the gut. This was it! They weren't coming back; they'd left him to die in this cold, unfeeling place. Then why the water? "Blair, get a grip," he admonished himself. His voice sounded gravely and his breath wheezed in and out of his lungs. "If they wanted you to die they'd simply put a bullet in your head." Feeling marginally better he opened the bottle and took a couple of gulps. Not knowing how long it would have to last he made himself stop from drinking more.

It felt wonderful going down his parched throat and he almost opened the bottle again for another mouthful. Unfortunately though, once it reached his stomach it also reminded him that he'd not eaten for quite a while. The nausea from the day before had lessened, but his head was still aching fiercely and his vision was still a bit fuzzy. He wondered what Jim was doing and questioned himself as to whether the man was even looking for him. 'Of course he is, doofus. He was pleased to see you and even apologised for his behaviour.' However, he couldn't keep quiet the little voice of doubt that spoke softly in his ear. He'd given up too much, lost who and what he was in the fervour of finding and being with a Sentinel. For all his arrogance and surety, Blair still needed reassurance about his usefullness in life. The last year had seriously undermined his self-confidence.

He dragged himself over to the metal door and inspected it closely. Perhaps he should see about getting himself out of his prison. Belatedly, he thought about searching his pockets to see what resources had been left him. His slicker gave up a ticket stub to the museum in Sheridan and a soggy receipt. His jeans unfortunately, were empty of his penknife and wallet, but his left back pocket contained a crushed packet of unsalted peanuts. He stared forlornly at the meagre haul. Even MacGyver would have had a problem creating a means of escape with this sorry lot. He debated opening the peanuts. They would ease his hunger a bit, but also increase his thirst. His stomach had other ideas though as it woke up with a grumble at the thought of food. Resigned, he pulled the packet open. The small number of nuts that he allowed himself tasted like sawdust, but determinedly he ate them knowing he needed the energy.