A/N: Hey there! I decided to toss you guys a bone and start with Shawns POV first. It's short, but it's supposed to be that way.
Shout Out: I wanted to thank all the people who reviewed this story and even those that didn't, but please, REVIEW! I like, live off of reviews. And I know there are a lot more people who read this than those that review. If you want me to continue to update quickly than you'd better start REVIEWING!
DISCLAIMER: I really hate these things. It's so dumb. If I DID own Psych then this is probably what every episode would look like and the show would be canceled. Which would lead us Psych-os to start a petition to bring it back. Right? I thought so.
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Shawn screamed in agony as he hit the bottom of the hole and his right leg took the brunt of the impact. He screamed again when it crumpled underneath him and he landed on his right side, hard. Shawn could feel shards of glass and other things embed themselves in his back and side. He lay there, gasping in pain, and watched as the night sky was covered by something. Bad Guy was covering the hole.
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Lassiter opened his mouth to start giving orders. They had two cases now, and they were a man down. But before he could get a word out a frantic woman came running into the station with a small redheaded girl trailing behind her.
"I just saw the news!" She said to no one in particular, "I swear I didn't kidnap her! I'm the nanny! I was just watching her while her mother was at a party!"
"Whoa, calm down." Lassiter walked towards the woman, "Kidnap who?"
"Her! Lena!" The woman pointed to the little girl who was now sucking her thumb.
It can't be this easy, Lassiter thought, It just can't be. He looked the woman in the eye and said, "Do you mean Arlene Simmons?"
"Yes!" The woman exclaimed, "I was only watching her, and then I saw the news. I didn't do anything, sir. I swear!" Now the whole room was buzzing with the news. Everyone thought the same thing: Could it be this easy?
"What's your name, miss?" Lassiter asked.
"Ramona. Ramona Clarke." She said, "I'm the nanny."
"Somebody check her out!" Lassiter shouted and McNab was typing away at his computer instantly.
"She's telling the truth, sir," McNab reported a moment later. "She really is the nanny."
O'Hara butted in a moment later, "Then why did the mother report her missing?"
"Let's find out." And with that Lassiter headed out with his partner and Gus not far behind.
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"Henry," Vick began, "I know your worried, but-," She didn't get a chance to finish due to the enraged shouting that cut her off.
"Shut it, Karen," Henry snarled, "All I want to know is where the hell my son is!"
"So do I," Vick decided to ignore the elder Spencer's outbursts. He was only concerned for his son, after all. And Vick knew that he masked his worry with anger, with anything but his true emotions.
"Then why are we just sitting here?" Henry demanded, "We should be out looking for him!"
"I have Detective Lassiter and O'Hara on it," Vick said, "Mr. Guster is, uh, assisting them." Gus hadn't been doing much assisting since Vick had mad Shawn's disappearance an official case. He hadn't really been doing much of anything. Vick thought he was still in a state of shock
Henry slumped down into Vick's special chair she'd gotten when she was pregnant and put his head in his hands. "Ah, Henry," she tried to get his attention, but his mind was elsewhere for now. Karen walked over and stood beside him and, after a little hesitation, put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
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An hour later Casey Simmons, Arlene's mother, arrived at the police station where the detectives had told her to be half an hour ago. When they drove out to her mansion and found no one there they went back to the station and got her cell phone number from the nanny, who'd calmed down a lot since she first arrived. Ms. Simmons had still been on her way home when they called. She said the yacht party had run a little late. The detectives found it suspicious that the mother didn't seem very broken up about the 'abduction' of her little girl. They had decided not to mention it to her until she arrived.
"Lena!" Casey exclaimed, running to her daughter with outstretched arms. "I've been so, so worried!" She kissed her daughter on the forehead before looking up at the three people before her. "How did you find her?"
"We didn't." Lassiter said bluntly, "The nanny brought her in."
Casey stood and when she spotted the nanny sitting at O'Hara's desk she marched toward her saying, "You bitch! I trusted you! I trusted you with my little girl and then you kidnap her!" Casey had reached Ramona now and punctuated the end of the sentence with a hard slap across the face.
"Whoa!" Lassiter pulled the mother back, "Take it easy!"
"Ma'am," Juliet said as Lassiter restrained Casey, who didn't seem to be all that angry with the nanny, but seemed to be more upset about breaking a nail. "We know your daughter wasn't really kidnapped." That caught the mother's attention.
"Wha-what are you talking about?" Casey sputtered.
"The more important thing is what were you talking about when you reported your daughter missing?" Lassiter countered.
Casey's shoulder's slumped in defeat, she knew she'd been caught and there was no getting out of it now. She sat down in the nearest chair, which happened to be Lassiter's, and began her story, "A man came to me at the party. He said that if I didn't say Lena was abducted that he'd have her killed."
"And you believed him?" Lassiter asked, disbelief lacing his voice.
"He showed me a picture of her." Casey told them. She looked up at the detective with wide eyes, "I just wanted to protect my daughter. I don't know why he asked me what he did. You have to believe me," She pleaded.
"We do," Gus spoke up for the first time before either of the detectives could get a word in. They stared at him and Lassiter brought him aside.
"You don't really buy this shit, do you?" Lassiter went on before Gus could open his mouth. "She's obviously lying!"
"Look at her, Lassiter," Gus insisted. "When she came in it was obvious that her concern was real! Show her the picture of Alexander Carmichael. I bet she'll ID him as the man who threatened her daughter."
"Fine." Lassiter said, "Just to prove I'm right."
The two made their way over to where Juliet was waiting with Casey, her daughter, and the nanny. Lassiter picked a paper off of his desk, "Is this the man who approached you at the party?" He asked.
Casey gasped and hugged her daughter tighter, "Y-yes! How did you know?"
Just then they were interrupted when the Chief walked out of her office with Henry Spencer in tow. She glanced at them curiously and walked over and Henry followed her. She stopped next to Lassiter and said, "What's going on, Detective?"
"Ms. Simmons just identified the man who threatened her daughter's life as Alexander Carmichael," Lassiter answered as he held up the picture for Vick to see. "He definitely wasn't in that parking lot by accident."
They heard an intake of breath and looked to where the sound had come from. Henry's mouth was hanging slightly open and when he saw that everyone was staring he asked, "You don't remember?"
"Remember what, Mr. Spencer?" Juliet asked in return.
"This is the guy that you two," He gestured to Juliet and Lassiter, "arrested last month. The triple-murderer? That ring a bell?"
Vick shook her head, disappointed in herself for not seeing it sooner, and Lassiter slammed his hands down on his desk, causing everyone to jump. "Dammit! I should've seen it!"
"Wait, what?" Juliet asked, "I remember the case, but I don't see how it ties in with everything that's happened."
"He's been awaiting trial for weeks now," Vick said, and Lassiter finished it with, "And Spencer's the one who caught him."
They all looked at eachother, finally beginning to understand why the things that happened earlier that day happened. Casey Simmons broke the silence by asking, "Wait, who's Spencer?"
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Later, after the Simmons family and their nanny had been ushered out of the station, the group, including Henry and Vick, began going over the case. They all agreed that the 'kidnapping' of Arlene Simmons had been a distraction for something else. They just had to put all the pieces together.
"Okay," Vick started, "We know that the Simmons kidnapping was a distraction orchestrated by Carmichael, but what for?"
"That's obvious!" Henry exclaimed, "His plan was to kidnap my son!"
"It makes sense," Juliet said, "Since Shawn was the one who exposed him, Carmichael would have a vendetta against him instead of, oh, let's say, Lassiter."
"And if he was in the parking lot he would've had the opportunity to tail us back to the police station, and then follow Guster and Spencer the rest of the way." Lassiter contributed.
"If Carmichael took Shawn after I left him at the office," Gus said, "then what's he planning on doing with him?"
They all fell silent. There were a lot of possibilities that could answer that question. The one that first came to mind was that Carmichael would kill Shawn and disappear, but there was a chance that he'd keep him alive. They all hoped it was the latter.
"Maybe the note O'Hara found will tell us something," Vick said.
Juliet quickly walked over to her desk and plucked something off of it before returning to the group. She held it out for all of them to see, "But it's in code, Chief," she said, and they all looked at the rune-like symbols on the paper, as if by staring at it long enough they could figure out what it meant.
"Hey, I recognize that!" Buzz, who'd been eavesdropping for some time now, said and the others turned their stare to him. Buzz shifted nervously, the weight of their stares settling in. "My nephew, he was really in to some book called 'Dragonology'. He finally learned how to write 'the secret language of dragons' he called it. It looked just like that."
"McNab," Vick said, "can you read it?"
The rookie looked at the paper closely, "I-I think so." Everyone let out a collective breath they hadn't realized they'd been holding. This could be the break they'd been waiting for.
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Shawn groaned as he tried to bring himself into a sitting position. He hurt all over. The gunshot was bad enough, but add a who-knows-how-many-foot fall to the mix and you get pain. Horrible, unbearable pain. Shawn had known from the moment he hit the ground that his right leg was broken, but at least it hadn't been his left. He needed at least one leg to get out of here.
He finally got himself upright and he leaned against the wall of the hole. "If only I'd taken Gus up on that offer to skip this case and get pineapple smoothies instead," He said to himself. And he really did wish that he'd taken Gus up on that, but when the Chief had said it was a kidnapping he knew he couldn't just stand by. He'd just had to help.
And look where that had gotten him. He'd been kidnapped, shoved into a trunk, shot, and then fell into a hole. That was just perfect. Now, all he could do was wait. Wait, and hope the others found him in time. He had a feeling that this was only the beginning.
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