J.M.J.

A/N: I'm back a couple days early! Thank you for continuing to read and for your patience while I was gone! Thank you also for following and/or favoriting! Thank you especially to AllTrekkedUp for your review on chapter 5! I really appreciate your support!

Chapter VI

Missing

Pete wasn't sure why he was doing this. It was a job for detectives, if it was a job for anybody at all. Most likely it was nothing and none of anybody's business. Besides, he'd just gotten off his shift, which had lasted an extra two hours, as it had been a busy shift and there had been a lot of paperwork to wrap up. He would much rather just go home to bed.

On the other hand, he couldn't deny that he was more than a bit curious about this case. The accident had been odd, but strange things happened in vehicle accidents all the time, many of them stranger than this. It was just an instinct of some kind that told him there was more to this one than a simple accident. Then, Jim had called him and told him that, by coincidence, his path had almost again crossed that of one of the paramedics who had been at the accident, John Gage. It was only "almost" because Gage had missed a date, something which, Jim had learned, was completely out of character for him. Jim had called Pete to ask him to help him track down Gage's whereabouts, as Jim had a feeling that this was no coincidence. But Jim was sick with the flu and had a sick wife and a sick two-year-old, so Pete had insisted he would look into it himself so that Jim would stay home.

He was starting to regret it now. After all, it was none of his business if a guy he didn't even know missed a date with a nurse Pete didn't know. There could be any number of explanations for it, all much less melodramatic than Jim seemed to think, and it would be humiliating for Pete to discover that it was one of those. Moreover, as he had been thinking all along, this was a job for detectives, who wouldn't even be investigating it yet, since there was no evidence that anything had happened.

Still, Pete had said he'd do it, and the job was half-done anyway. He'd gotten Gage's address and phone number from the police report and tried calling him. There had been no answer, so he had driven to Gage's apartment building. Pete was sitting in his car in front of the building, making up a story that would sound less ridiculous in case it turned out Gage was there after all. Then he climbed up the stairs and knocked on the door. No answer.

Pete knocked again, louder this time, but still there wasn't even a sound from the apartment. The door of the apartment across the hall cracked open, and a young woman looked out.

"Could you please be quiet?" she requested in a sleepy, annoyed tone. "Do you realize what time it is?"

Pete was well aware that it was the middle of the night. It was part of the reason that this whole thing was so unappealing to him. Even so, all he said was, "Sorry for waking you up. Do you know the man who lives in this apartment?"

"Yeah." The woman gave him a curious look as she woke up a little more. "What do you want with him?"

"I'm Officer Malloy of the LAPD." Pete took out his identification to show her. "Mr. Gage was a witness to a crime yesterday. I need to talk to him about it. Do you know where he is?"

"I'm not any kind of a nosy neighbor, if that's what you're thinking," the woman replied. "I don't keep tabs on everybody. Although I guess I did notice that Johnny hasn't been home all day. Maybe he got called in for work. He's a fireman, you see."

"Thanks for your help," Pete said and went back to his car.

Gage getting called in for work was one of the possibilities Pete had thought of earlier. Of course, that didn't explain why he hadn't called his date to cancel, but there could be reasons for that, too. Maybe he tried calling, but the nurse was already at work herself and nobody had gotten the message to her. Then the big flaw in the theory hit Pete. Jim had said that the emergency staff at Rampart Hospital didn't know anything about Gage's whereabouts. If he had been on duty, he would have been in there several times that day, unless he'd gotten no calls at all that day, which wasn't likely. Perhaps Jim had a point that there was something strange going on here.

Pete drove back to his apartment. Whatever was going on, there wasn't anything more he could do about it tonight. He'd keep thinking about it tonight and see if he had any answers in the morning.

/

"Morning, Roy," Mike Stoker greeted Roy as he walked past him out of the kitchen early in the morning.

"Morning," Roy replied in a subdued tone. He had thought about trading his shift today with one of the paramedics from the other two shifts. The accident was still weighing heavily on his mind, and he wasn't too excited about having to drive the squad today. He'd already made up his mind that he'd let Johnny drive today.

Yesterday had been a long day. After he had told Joanne about the accident, she had spent the rest of the day trying to convince him that it wasn't his fault. He had to admit that he knew that it wasn't. The other driver had been the one who had been speeding, had run the stop sign, and had made the whole awful situation worse by driving off. Roy couldn't have stopped him from doing any of that. But still, even if his part in the incident had been completely accidental, it didn't absolve him from the guilt he was feeling about it.

Roy poured himself a cup of coffee. Nobody else was in the kitchen at the moment. That was just as well. He didn't want to talk about it any more than he needed to. Of course, Johnny would insist on talking about it. He'd probably still be going on about his idea that it had been intentional. Then also, if it was too obvious that something was on Roy's mind, Captain Stanley would probably eventually call him into his office to talk about it. If he was lucky, maybe the others either wouldn't notice or wouldn't say anything. At least, he could have some peace from them.

Roy glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was time for roll call. He grabbed his hat out of the locker behind the squad and then lined up with Chet, Marco, and Mike in front of the squad. When Captain Stanley came out of the office, he gave the four men a questioning look.

"Where's Gage?" Cap asked.

"I haven't seen him this morning, Cap," Chet told him.

"His Rover's not out back, either," Marco added.

Cap frowned. It wasn't like any of the men on his shift to be late. When Johnny got there, he'd be in for a lecture. Besides, Cap had several drills planned for today and he wanted Squad 51 to go out on fire inspections. And, of course, most importantly, Cap couldn't afford to only have half his paramedic team there in case a call came in before Johnny arrived.

Biting back his annoyance, Cap went through roll call. John still hadn't arrived by the time it was over, so Cap called his apartment. There was no answer. As he hung up the phone, he glanced toward the door of his office and saw that the men were still hanging around there, curious about this unusual turn of events.

"Marco, go see if John's arriving right now," Cap said. "If he's not, I'll have to call Dispatch."

Marco trotted to the vehicle bay behind the station. There was still no sign of Johnny's Rover, and so he hurried back to report this to Cap.

While Cap called Dispatch to explain that half of Squad 51 had failed to come into work that morning, Roy crossed his arms and leaned against the squad, wondering what was going on with his partner. Johnny cared a lot about his job, and while he'd cut it fairly close arriving on time now and then, he'd certainly never been this late. It was strange, to say the least.

"Did any of you hear from John at all yesterday?" Cap broke into Roy's thoughts.

Each of the men replied in the negative.

"He had that presentation at the elementary school yesterday," Chet spoke up. "He probably messed up so much that he crawled in a hole and isn't going to come out again."

"Thank you for that suggestion, Kelly." Cap couldn't keep a trace of irritation out of his voice.

"Can you find out if he showed up for that, Cap?" Roy asked. It was just a feeling, but there was something not right about all of this. He'd feel better about it if they could learn something that would indicate that there was nothing wrong with Johnny.

"I'll call the school." Cap reached for the phone as he was talking. A brief conversation confirmed that that John had indeed been at the school the day before. Cap leaned back in his chair with a sigh. He'd need to prepare a very stiff lecture for whenever Johnny decided to show up, not to mention call for another paramedic to fill in for John's shift.

Even with the school's affirmation that Johnny had not missed his presentation, Roy still couldn't understand what was keeping John.

/

Johnny stirred and realized that the sun was coming in through the window of the small shack. It had been an uncomfortable, and Johnny had only dozed here and there, but fortunately his kidnapper had not tried to harm him in any way. The man had done a great deal of shouting and threatening, but he had done nothing to carry those threats out.

The first thing Johnny noticed as he woke up fully was that the kidnapper was gone. Johnny strained against the ropes that were binding him. This looked like a perfect opportunity to escape if he was being left alone, if even only for a few moments. The ropes were tied too tightly. John couldn't loosen them.

It had only been a few minutes when the kidnapper returned. He glanced at Johnny and then checked the bonds to make sure his prisoner had not made any progress to escape.

"You're not feeling any more cooperative this morning, are you?" the man asked.

Johnny didn't bother to return. Nothing he said seemed to help his situation at all.

"Oh well." The kidnapper shrugged. "You haven't saved me any time after all, but no matter. I'll find the others on my own. I'll keep you around for the time being, though. If this goes wrong, I might need some leverage."