J.M.J.

A/N: Thank you so much for continuing to read this story and for following and/or favoriting it! Thank you especially to AllTrekkedUp, Julie, and Jo for your reviews on chapter 4!

I'm going to be away for about a week, and I can't guarantee I'll have Internet during that time. So, if I don't update for a week or so, I'm not dead and I'm not abandoning this story. Thank for your patience!

Chapter V

Kidnapped

Johnny didn't like guns at the best of times, but having a loaded one pointed straight at him was even worse. There was no doubt in his mind now that the "accident" had been intentional, but he would rather not know, honestly. He'd decided the only thing he could do was cooperate, so he had let the murderer lead him to a car and drive him away. It was impossible to tell where exactly they were going, and John was determined, if he got the chance, not to wait around to find out. His biggest advantage was that his captor insisted on driving himself, and so he was more than half-distracted.

Maybe John could try to talk him out of this – whatever the guy was planning, exactly. "The cops don't even know who you are, man. There's no way they can find you."

"Like I said, I'm making sure of that," the man said. "You, that other fireman, the two cops – you're the only ones who saw. If I can make sure none of you will talk, then the cops won't find me."

"Seriously, man." Johnny tried not to sound frightened or desperate, but he couldn't quite make the pitch of his voice entirely natural. "I was the only one who saw your face. The others only saw the car."

"Yeah, and I dumped that." The man smirked. "None of this helps you any, though. I can't wait to see what you come up with for why I should let you go."

Johnny took some time before responding to this. He needed to think through his approach carefully. If he tried to talk this guy out of this too directly, he wouldn't listen. There had to be some way he could ease into it.

Noticing his prisoner's failure to reply, the man let out a laugh. "Nothing to say to that, huh? Might as well keep it that way. Whether keeping you from talking before was necessary or not, it definitely is now. As for what those others saw or didn't see, nothing you say matters too much to me. You wouldn't tell me the truth either way, so I'm not taking any chances. I'm still going to round them up, and you're going to help."

"Hey, man, I can't do that." John shook his head ever so slightly. "I don't know where they are. I never even saw the cops before yesterday."

"You know where your partner lives," the murderer reminded him. "That'll make it pretty easy to find him. As for the cops, you must have heard their names. That would be a decent start to tracking them down."

Johnny looked ahead at the street. It didn't look like there was going to be too much chance of talking this guy out of anything. He wondered exactly how this guy intended to make him talk. Whatever his plan was, it obviously wasn't good. Johnny shuddered.

He'd been in plenty of dangerous situations before. Risking his life was a frequent occurrence, first when he'd worked as a regular firefighter, then as a rescue man, and finally now as a paramedic, but there was always a point to all of that. He'd always been trying to rescue someone else. But not this time. This – This was just pointless. Stupid, even. It didn't make sense, even for the murderer. He could have lay low, kept his head down, and probably would have escaped. He was taking a big chance coming out in the open like this. Of course! This could be a way to get through to him.

"You know," Johnny said, "there were a lot of people around at that school. They might have seen you grab me. Now you've just got an even bigger problem."

There was nothing much the murderer could say to this. Frustrated and angry, he jabbed the gun that he was still holding in his right hand at Johnny. "Shut up! Not a single thing you've said so far has helped you any."

Johnny swallowed. All right, maybe that wasn't a way to get through to him. There had to be something else he could try. He watched which way they were going as he thought about it. The driver turned onto a street that Johnny was familiar with. It led out of the city and up into the hills. That was just great. They'd be miles from any help.

"You know, kid, you'll be a lot better off if you just tell me what I want to know," the driver commented after a long pause. "Just tell me the names of the two cops and your buddy's address, and it'll save us both a lot of trouble."

"Yeah, well, I'm not so sure about that," Johnny replied. Now that he'd had a little bit of time to think, he was starting to formulate a plan.

"I give you my word, you'll regret not telling me far more than you'll regret telling me," the man said.

"Oh, I wasn't talking about me." Johnny needed to calm himself, sound natural. "It wasn't me I was talking about. I was thinking about you. It won't be as easy to catch the others." Sensing the man's anger rising again, John hurriedly added, "I mean, come on. Two of them are cops, and they'll be armed, even if they're off-duty. Plus, they're trained to watch out for people sneaking up behind them and stuff. You've got a plan, don't you?"

"Well." The kidnapper's jaw stiffened and he looked straight ahead. "Sure, I've got a plan. I've got a plan and I've got help. You don't think I'd try something like this without either, do you?"

"Oh, well," Johnny floundered. He was dismayed by the revelation that this man had help. If he'd been by himself, there would have been a better chance of escaping from him. "Of course, you wouldn't try it without a plan. That'd be a really dumb thing to do."

"Exactly," the driver said. "Obviously, I'd never try anything that dumb."

"Obviously," Johnny agreed. "You planned everything out pretty well this far. You had to be in just the right spot at just the right time to pull off the so-called 'accident' in the first place. You must have been parked down the street to come out of nowhere like that."

"Yeah." There was a note of pride in the driver's voice. "That's exactly how I did it all right. It was really perfect. Until you and that other fireman got in the way, that is."

"And then you found me pretty fast," Johnny continued.

The man nodded in self-congratulation. "That part was easy. You had that big '51' plastered all over the side of your squad. It wasn't too hard to find out the names of the guys who were working Squad 51 yesterday."

"That's really clever." Johnny was getting caught up in his act well enough that he sounded much more sincere and confident than he had before. "But how did you find out that I'd be at the school today?"

"It was too easy," the man bragged. "You see, I just went on down to Station 51 this morning and fed the guys there a line about you and DeSoto responding to a call that I was sick. I said I'd been feeling too out of it yesterday to thank you two properly or even to get your names, so I thought I'd drop by and see when you were supposed to work next. They not only told me that, but they also told me about your presentation at the school this morning. It was beautiful. See, I thought I'd wait till your next shift, and then place a phony call for you two to respond to and I'd grab you when you came, but this works even better. I'll only have to deal with one of you at a time and I won't have to risk someone else responding."

"Like I said, that's clever." It was all Johnny could do to keep from sounding at all sarcastic. The murderer's plan was anything but clever. All the men on B-shift could recognize him now, and they'd certainly put it together that the stranger asking about Johnny and Roy who had been directed to the place where Johnny had disappeared from had to have something to do with it. This guy was dreaming if he thought he could capture Roy or either of the cops. The element of surprise had been the only reason he'd been able to capture Johnny. John could only hope that this fellow would make some more mistakes soon and lead the police straight to Johnny before it was too late.

/

It was eight in the evening, but Nurse Dixie McCall's day was far from over. In addition to caring for patients and assisting doctors, there was what seemed like a never-ending stack of forms to fill out at the nurse's station and then it was also the time of the week when she had to work out the new schedule for the nurses. At least, right now, things were fairly quiet. Perhaps a little too quiet, she thought, as she noticed Jennifer Caley, one of the new nurses, just standing across the hallway like she was waiting for something.

She was about to say something to Jennifer when someone else caught her attention. "Hi, Miss McCall."

It took Dixie a moment to recognize the young man who had hailed her without his uniform. Even with his uniform, she had only seen him a few times, since he usually worked in a different district. "Jim Reed." She smiled. "It sounds like you've got some kind of a cold."

Jim nodded. "All three of us do." He was with a young woman and was holding a small boy whom Dixie judged to be about two. He introduced them to her. "This is my wife, Jean, and our son, Jimmy. Jean, this is Dixie McCall, the head nurse for emergency here in Rampart."

The two women shook hands.

"You're not here as patients, are you?" Dixie asked.

"I'm afraid so," Jim told her. "Jean caught this almost a week ago, Jimmy's had it for two days, and then I started coming down with it yesterday. It's bad enough that Jean and I decided we'd better at least get Jimmy to a doctor. We had an appointment with our own doctor this afternoon, but there was some kind of mix-up and we couldn't get in after all. We decided to bring him in here."

"Well, I'm sure we can take care of him," Dixie said. "I think Dr. Early is free right now."

She called Dr. Joe Early over and explained the situation to him. Then, while he took Jimmy into a treatment room accompanied by Jean, Dixie got Jim started on filling out the necessary paperwork at the admittance desk. She was just turning to go back to the nurse's station when she noticed that Jennifer Caley had followed her.

"Isn't your shift ended, Jennifer?" Dixie asked.

"Yeah, about half an hour ago." Jennifer sounded annoyed. "I have a date, and he was supposed to pick me up right after my shift ended. A few of the other girls warned me about him, but he seemed like a nice guy to me. Maybe they were right."

"Oh?" Dixie asked. "Who is this fellow?"

"John Gage," Jennifer replied. "Do you think he's the sort to stand me up?"

"John Gage?" Dixie repeated. "No way. He wouldn't stand a girl up once he got a date with her. Have you tried calling him?"

Jennifer nodded. "About fifteen minutes ago. He didn't answer, so I thought he must be on his way. Surely, it couldn't take him this long to get here."

"That's strange," Dixie said.

Jim hadn't been able to help overhearing. He recognized the name John Gage at once – the paramedic from that accident yesterday who had thought that the hit-and-run had actually been intentional. It was a strange coincidence that he now seemed to be missing. Unless – it wasn't a coincidence.