AARON
This is not good.
He repeats this to himself more and more often as time goes on. As well as cursing himself for not noticing that it was a two-man kidnapping. Aaron can hear his dad yelling at him over the woman laughing in the other room.
They are smart. His hands and ankles are tied to a chair in the middle of the room with plastic ties, and no nearby items to help him. He's never been claustrophobic. but he feels panic edging its way into his field of vision and blurring his eyes.
"Shawn, what the hell did you do?" Aaron mutters to himself. What he knows from emails is only that Shawn worked with the police department. Though Aaron always asked how, if Shawn was really a cop like dad, or if he's just bothering them, Shawn never actually answered him.
Now he's wondering if that was a good thing.
"Hey!"
Aaron freezes, staring up at the man standing over him. His mask is gone, and there's a small mole on his upper lip that's normally hidden under the mask.
Aaron stays quiet.
The man glares, about to speak when the woman walks over, hand on his shoulder and smiles at Aaron.
"He's adorable. If my source is right, the cops will pay. They can't afford to lose their precious psychic, can they?" She leans over Aaron, squeezing his cheek.
Psychic? Aaron wants to groan. He's going to kill Shawn if he lives through this.
"Plus he's a civilian," the man adds.
"Ain't a normal civilian, though." The woman smiles. "Seeing into the future? Reading crystal balls? Reading tarot cards? Like a shop psychic maybe."
Aaron takes a deep breath, refuses to bite into their clearly-laid bait. He shakes his head.
"What's that? I can't hear you?"
When Aaron looks up, she's holding a phone in front of his face. She reaches over and curls a hand under his jaw.
"I wonder what you would look like with a bloody lip," she wonders out loud.
Aaron braces himself, but it still hurts when she punches him square in the mouth. He spits the blood onto the floor.
She does it again, and again, and again until she's satisfied with her work. She bites her tongue and leaves the room, the man following close on her heels.
They start talking, but Aaron can't focus on them right now, though he knows he should. His ear is ringing, blood dripping from his mouth, and he thinks a tooth might be loose. He doesn't poke it yet.
The windows are covered in wood. He can't tell if that's light peeking through or just another room. Aaron sighs, and almost gives up, almost decides to just give them the satisfaction of him talking. But if they know he's not really Shawn, then they will almost certainly kill him.
Aaron likes his life too much to die just yet. He wants to unveil the new game his company is working on this weekend and he has a sinking feeling that he won't be back in Japan next week.
If she was taking a video, that means she wants the cops to feel insecure, angry for not finding them sooner, guilty for not saving their "precious psychic."
Seriously, Aaron's going to have some fun with that knowledge.
They walk back into the room as Aaron starts to plan his escape.
"Okay, one more video that we will give them tomorrow, and by then, we'll be thousands of miles away."
He tries not to be surprised at this information. So they want the cops to trace the videos, or for the investigators to find their location. Like cat-and-mouse.
Aaron really doesn't think far past that when the man suddenly holds a cloth over his mouth. Instead of a drug, it's just water, and then man is cleaning off the blood room Aaron's mouth. They want him to look like it's been some time.
The woman hands a mask to the man, pulling on her own, and placing the camera on the tripod before turning it on.
"Hello Santa Barbara's finest. I hope you enjoyed our last video. Raw, behind the scenes footage of what's been happening here. I will admit, your Shawn is very difficult to break. Absolutely refuses to speak. Quite incredible. But we'll destroy him soon enough."
Aaron feels hands wrap around his neck and can't even yelp in pain as the man squeezes. He's on the brink of passing out when the man lets go, gasping big gulps of air when he's free to do so; the man's hands stay planted on his shoulders, keeping him in place.
The woman trails a stun gun against his arms. He tenses, waiting for the shock to come. So when the barbed wire is whipped against his thigh, he yells.
She does it once more, then holds the wire up to the camera.
"Bought it recently. Had to... bargain a bit to get it faster." Aaron gasps as heat rolls over him, white hot at the points where he's bleeding.
The man squeezes tight enough to crush Aaron's collarbones in his bare hands.
"Of course, it won't go to waste."
The woman wraps the barbed wire carefully around Aaron's ankles and legs. Aaron has a feeling, an urgent feeling telling him to stay still.
The man pulls his hands off, and Aaron isn't ready for the quick but forceful tap of the stun gun to his shoulder. He jolts and the barbed wires pulls against his legs.
Aaron can't hold back his screams.
He wakes up disoriented and angry. He's in the back of a van, mouth covered with duct tape and his hands and legs are tied tight with rope.
He remembers the emails he received about the Yin-Yang killer, about how his mom was kidnapped and strapped to a bomb. He also remembers Henry talking about how Shawn was shot and kidnapped, and ended up jumping onto a speeding car at the end of the debacle.
If Shawn, his goofy, 7 seconds younger brother, can survive all that, so can Aaron. Hopefully.
The back of the van has light streaming in through the blacked out windows, and the separator between the back and front is closed. Aaron can sit up, thankfully, and finds his whole body aching and hot. He's in the remnants of his t-shirt, and his jeans are all bloody and ripped from where the barbed wire cut into him.
It hurts to breathe, and he remembers being strangled by the man at the beginning. Like a treat for what was to come.
Shawn really needs to find him quick.
He moves closer to the separator when he hears muffled voices, trying to catch their names.
"-don't wanna ever leave you."
"And I you. Never leave my side, älskling."
"Of course. I'll be here until the end."
Aaron winces at that. By the sound of that, they're willing to die for each other. And Aaron is most likely going to be the middleman between them and the cops.
He sighs. He's already ransom, which also serves as a body shield.
Henry taught him and Shawn how to break out of a trunk of a car, but never a van and never when they were kidnapped by Bonnie and Clyde without the burglar tendencies and more murder and torture tendencies. Aaron isn't a fan of being tortured, and is in no hurry to be tortured any time soon, yet he knows as soon as they relocate he'll be strapped down and taped.
And he doesn't even know why. Why Shawn? Why kidnap and torture him? What could Shawn have possibly done to them to warrant such pain? What would they do if they realized he isn't actually Shawn?
Aaron doesn't want to know. He doesn't think they'll just let him go off on his own. Thoughts of what could happen if anything goes wrong turns his stomach.
On cue, and rather inappropriately, his stomach rumbles.
God, he could really go for a taco.