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A Tangled Web (23)

Sharon gritted her teeth against the long shiver that ran through her body. It left a dull sort of ache behind, she felt it in her joints and muscles. Her breath echoed, slow and ragged, in the silent confines of her prison.

She wasn't even sure what had happened, exactly.

Her head still hadn't cleared. Each time she fixed her gaze on a point, it seemed to blur and move closer at increasing speed, until she blinked, startled, and then it all snapped right back to its original place again. A nauseating dance.

It was hard to grasp how she'd come to this. Everything that had happened… God, everyone who'd died, and everyone who was in danger… and her, stranded, alone, nearly incapacitated and having failed completely to help herself. And not only herself, either.

Sharon did not take that kind of failure well.

She didn't even try to move, at this point. She sat huddled against the wall, cold seeping into her bones, and wondered if she was meant to die there, after all.

Friday evening, she'd walked into the mall parking garage to retrieve Rusty's car. She remembered that much – her mind had been going over her fight with Rusty, and the case, and the question of where on Earth he could've parked the Volvo… She recalled wondering what Lts. Flynn and Provenza had found at the Sixth Street bridge. Trying to figure out how to talk to Rusty over dinner. Would he apologize? Should she?

There hadn't been that many cars in the garage. Not seeing the Volvo on the ground floor, Sharon had decided, on a fluke, to go down rather than up. After all, it wasn't supposed to make a difference.

The car hadn't been on the B level, either.

Just as she'd entered the C level she'd noticed a white minivan at the far end. It had looked a little out of place, parked as it was in a seemingly random position. There had been some sort of passage behind it, though, so Sharon had imagined that it was the delivery vehicle route, and the minivan must've belonged there…

She wondered, if she'd figured things out earlier, if she'd be at home now...

The floor was long and dark, and there were only a dozen or so cars this far down; there was a door open somewhere at the end, into what looked like some kind of mechanical room. She thought she saw two people inside.

Her Volvo was nowhere in sight. Where on Earth had Rusty parked it? Had he told her the wrong mall? He wouldn't have…!

Her phone rang, then. "Yes, Lieutenant…"

Lt. Tao had told her about Erik Jensen being Susan Crowley's ex-husband, and immediately she'd realized that the whole bomb threat had been out of revenge rather than some kind of environmental activism statement.

That might've been why James Donnell had changed his mind at the last minute; maybe he'd finally seen through Jensen's ruse. Realized that instead of helping people, he'd be endangering hundreds of lives. Maybe his friends had been right – he had been a good guy, after all.

His friends…

Sharon's eyes had drifted back to the white minivan. Her mind flashed back to Andy's words, his report of what they'd found at Danny Murray's house. The two cars in the young man's garage, the interview...

And things had clicked in the worst, worst way possible.

Her voice dropped to a bare whisper. "Lieutenant, call the mall and tell them to evacuate – discreetly. I think Erik Jensen might've brought another bomb. And I need a bomb squad and officers around the parking garage."

But all she heard on the other end was Tao's muffled voice telling her that he couldn't hear her.

And then there were voices from the other end of the floor.

Children's voices.

"Mike!" She hurried toward the source of the voices, with quick, quiet steps. " I'm in the parking garage, at 'Sun Plaza', level C, and I think Erik Jensen is here."

Sharon coughed, grimacing as the movement caused new aches in her body. She'd hit the point, though, where being able to still feel pain was probably a good thing; it meant that she was still alive.

That she'd hit that point at all, on the other hand, was not a good thing.

And to think, if only she'd decided to pick up the Volvo the next day, she might be ... who knew what she'd be doing? It was hard to tell what time it was, or even what day. But anything she'd be doing would be better than this, and so she wished with all her heart that she'd just left the car and...

...but then, who knew when that bomb would've gone off? God, and what if she'd sent Rusty to get the car, instead?

She joined her hands, pressed them to her lips, eyes closing as the terrifying prospect sent a chill down her spine.

No, things could've gone so, so much worse. At least a lot of the damage had been avoided. Or so Sharon hoped, because she honestly had no idea what had happened in the aftermath...

Lt. Tao heard her, that second time on the phone. While he'd been getting back-up dispatched and the mall evacuated, Sharon had spotted a family of four with two large carts behind an SUV. From twenty yards away, she'd flashed her badge and desperately signaled them to be quiet. One of the children couldn't have been older than four or five.

It had only taken a few whispered instructions, and the parents had picked up their offspring and abandoned shopping carts and car, hurriedly making their way out a side exit at the opposite end from where the minivan was parked.

She'd chased a group of teenagers out, too, who'd been talking too loudly on B level.

And then she would've just gotten out, herself. Except she'd noticed a dark-clad silhouette – too tall and burly to be Danny – carrying something from the back of the van, toward the open mechanical room. (That must've been a way into the mall, or worse and... damn it, he was almost there, a dozen steps away, and what would he do once he reached it...?)

She'd lost reception, again. What if Lt. Tao hadn't managed to evacuate 'Sun Plaza' yet? At least the parking garage was empty. If she just allowed Erik Jensen to carry the bomb into the actual mall, and it went off, there could be a couple of hundred people in there, maybe more.

Damn it.

She'd meant to stall him. From a distance.

Sharon put her phone in her pocket and drew her weapon, leaving her purse abandoned by the wall. Then she made sure to have a clear line of sight to the man, and called out, her voice carrying easily along the empty walls.

"Stop! Erik Jensen! LAPD!"

He paused.

"I have a weapon on you," she warned. "Don't take another step."

The man remained motionless, his back to her still.

"Turn around very slowly."

Would she dare shoot him if he made a run for it? No. Maybe. Better for the bomb to go off in the parking lot than the mall – but then, she wasn't exactly setting out to be a hero, here, either.

Today was really just a terrible day.

Sharon took another step back, for good measure.

"Turn around, Mr. Jensen," she called again.

Only… he didn't.

Dropping the bomb, the man dived in the opposite direction. For a second Sharon froze, trying to take cover, but the bomb hadn't gone off (and of course it hadn't, he wouldn't have dropped it if it'd been activated on impact!), and then she saw it, sitting on the ground right at the entrance into that mechanical room, and she tried to take off after Jensen, and then…

Well – things got a little fuzzy at that point.

The bomb had gone off. Obviously.

Jensen must've detonated it – after having made his way out, maybe? By mistake? Unclear.

There had been a blast loud enough that Sharon had thought her head would split from the pain. The heatwave had slammed against her, thrown her off her feet. She'd hit something – hard, her teeth rattling from the impact. Air had turned to ash and fire in her lungs. She couldn't see.

Then there was silence, painful silence, her head hurting so much that she'd been paralyzed, unable to do anything more but mentally beg for that pain to stop.

She'd thought of her children, then. That was maybe what she remembered most clearly.

She'd been surprised to wake up at all.

After time had started to mean something again and her thoughts had fallen back into some semblance of order, Sharon had been very surprised to find herself awake, and aware, and – pain permeating every inch of her body, yes, but... alive.

That had not been the end of her surprises.

A young man had been sitting a few feet away smoking a very pungent joint.

Danny Murray, it appeared, had gotten her out.

It had taken a while, but once she'd recovered enough to actually keep her eyes open and form words, Sharon had prompted enough of a conversation to piece together the young man's side of things. Apparently the blast had demolished half the floor and probably the rest of the garage above it, but Danny had been far enough to somehow escape more or less unscathed. (Children and fools, etc.) Sharon, herself, had been fortunately positioned behind a load-bearing column, meaning that she'd avoided being instantly blown to bits in favor of being only slightly blown to bits.

Keeping a humorous view on the whole thing was necessary in her efforts to not relinquish sanity to panic.

So...yes. The bomb had gone off. The garage was probably in ruins. And she was only alive because Danny Murray had gotten her out.

The absurdity of that was a little much to process, so Sharon tried not to think about it. Her head hurt enough as it was.

In yet another surprising development, Erik Jensen hadn't been anywhere around when she'd come to.

Danny had eventually explained, in his unique way that had required about five repetitions only to make sense of what he was saying, that he didn't know where Jensen had gone. The man had gotten out before the blast, whereas Danny had spotted Sharon and decided that she might appreciate the help. (God.) While his psycho partner had made a quick escape, Danny had pulled her out of the crumbling garage and loaded her into his goddamn minivan, and somehow gotten them both out via the delivery passage, which hadn't entirely collapsed yet at the time.

Sharon, of course, remembered none of that. Vaguely, she thought she might've been in motion, at some point. Maybe lying on the floor of a car. There might have been a breath of fresh air here and there, but mostly she remembered the excruciating ringing in her ears, and the way the world kept tilting at odd angles whenever she tried to stand. And the nausea.

Her hearing still wasn't back all the way – she tried not to think about that too much, either. Bruised eardrums were a small price to pay for having walked out (so to speak) alive from an explosion. Even though it was probably more than just bruising… keeping her balance was taking unbelievable effort, and most movement made her nauseous.

But being alive was a good thing.

She'd held on to that mantra, because everything else had been going very, very poorly.

Sharon had no idea how long it had been between the moment that the bomb had gone off, and when she'd finally been able to focus on her surroundings again, but when that had happened, she'd found Danny Murray staring at her, and they'd both been equally confused for a while.

'Are you like… feeling okay?'

Considering that she'd been lying on the floor, shoulders half-propped against a crate of nails, screws and bolts, barely able to move and with no idea of what was happening to her – well, things had not gone well in that first conversation.

'Here… uh, I got you an apple. That's all I could find at my mom's house. She doesn't like, cook a lot or anything. Oh, and a granola bar. I can open it for you...!'

It had taken a few seconds to fight down the wave of nausea, and then she'd demanded to know what the hell Danny was talking about and where they were and why they were there and what had happened and …

Sharon wasn't sure, entirely, but she might've blacked out somewhere in the middle of that, for a couple of minutes.

Her head had been really killing her. It wasn't much better now, but back when she'd first woken up in whatever hole Danny had brought them to, it had been unbearably bad...

Her head really hurt.

"What time is it?" she asked when she finally managed to get her bearings again.

"… Saturday?"

God.

God! A second later it hit her – Saturday! The pounding in her head and the nausea had only gotten worse, but she tried to scramble to her feet anyway.

"I have to get out of here…!"

"I'm like, not sure you should do that, though..."

"I'm fine –" A statement belied immediately by the fact that it took four attempts just to sit up properly against the crate, and the effort left her head spinning and something like a tornado buzzing in her ears. "I – my phone. I need your phone."

"Oh, uh… I left it in the car."

There was a car? "The..." Sharon shook her head, to little avail. "Alright... let's get to the car, then." She tried for the fifth time to stand, and the goddamn floor refused to stay put. It was probably just as well that she hadn't eaten in a while. "What time on Saturday…?"

"Like… real early. Like, not even eleven."

Eleven. Eleven! Oh God, it had been… fifteen hours since she'd gone to the mall… what was happening? What would everyone be thinking by now? She had to get back home!

Danny looked really uncomfortable, at that. He took a step back (unnecessary really, since she still hadn't managed to get up), and grimaced, "Yeah, uh,… I don't think I should like, let you …leave, kinda…"

Wait – this was a hostage situation?

Unclear.

Danny's jaw had almost literally dropped when she'd angrily asked him what he was hoping to accomplish by kidnapping her...

"What? Uh, no? What…? Wait, why would I like, kidnap you?" He shrugged, confused. "I was trying to help you…!" Then he grew worried. "Wait – are you gonna like, arrest me or something?"

"Er…" Sharon had been fairly confident to have the upper hand in that conversation, but even so, keeping up had been a little challenging.

She blamed the concussion.

"No… Danny, I'm not going to arrest you, you... saved my life."She supposed it was true. Fate loved its little pranks. "But we can't stay here. We have…" Sharon tried to get to her feet again, and managed only to send the entire world spinning and another wave of nausea back up her throat. "Help me up," she instructed. "I need to let my – friends, know where I am. They'll be…"

Looking, they'd be looking. Hadn't she been on the phone with Lt. Tao…? God –

" –they could think I'm dead!"

Danny looked genuinely surprised at that, like it hadn't even occurred to him. "Oh. But like… you're not." He pondered the conundrum for a moment. "But I see why people might think that… like, that garage was totally wrecked. Wait… you don't think there was anyone in there, right?"

She assured him that no, other than the two of them and Erik Jensen, she'd cleared everyone else out before the blast.

Danny seemed so relieved. "Oh, good. 'cause you know, we weren't like, gonna hurt anyone."

Sharon groaned.

"It's just… Jimmy said that that mall was like, bad for people. So he was gonna make sure that they wouldn't get hurt… but then he… like…died… Before he got a chance to do it… so I thought I'd do it for him. You know?"

It was all so sad, really.

Sharon had only been able to follow pieces of what Danny had told her, but it seemed to her that he'd really only wanted to follow whatever ideals his friend 'Jimmy' had talked about. It didn't seem that he'd understood most of those ideals – James Donnell had clearly been the smarter of the two by far – but he'd bought into them because his friend had been a role model. And when Jimmy had died, Danny had thought to do one last thing to honor his memory.

It was unfortunate that that thing had turned out to be Erik Jensen's criminal revenge scheme.

Sharon would've almost been sympathetic to the young man, had circumstances been different – she had been sympathetic to him, honestly... but her situation had been such that there was little room left to worry about much other than her own plight. She'd been alone, in pain, confused, unsafe...

And with little prospects of relief: on the matter of leaving their current location, Danny had proven immovable.

Innocuous, gullible and well-intentioned though he was, the young man had still understood that her presence somehow equated trouble. He'd understood that from the second he'd spotted her in the garage – which was why instead of taking her to a hospital like any normal human being, he'd stranded them both in some deep dark corner and expected that he could just stay there until everything would magically work itself out and everyone would be happy.

Sharon's less-than-agreeable response had disabused him of that notion. But damn it, he'd been adamant that he couldn't let her leave, although he couldn't even rightly articulate why. It might've had something to do with whatever twisted plan Jensen had put in his head, and if Danny still thought that he was doing everything for the sake of his dead friend…

She'd argued and threatened until pulses of pain throbbed behind her eyes and the pressure in her eardrums had become a dull aching roar, and all she'd accomplished had been distressing the young man, and further altering her already precarious physical state.

When she'd literally had no other choice save for passing out, she'd settled down; Danny had offered her his goddamn apple again, and Sharon's throat had tightened in a frustrated, pained sob.

He seemed to feel genuinely bad for her, as well as slightly confused as to why she was so unhappy. In the end he decided that it must've been on account of her injuries.

"I'm sorry about like, your hand. Mom didn't have a first aid kit…"

Sharon hadn't even noticed the bloody gash on the back of her left hand; compared to the pain in her head, her ears, and the way the room kept spinning, it really wasn't that big a deal. She doubted it was losing enough blood to be a primary cause of concern; more likely she should've worried about internal bleeding, shock... and the dire circumstance that she'd been missing for almost sixteen hours, and as far as she knew everyone could've thought she was dead…

Danny took her injured hand, surprisingly gentle, and she didn't even bother pulling it back.

"Uh, maybe we can tie it up with something…like, maybe in one of these toolboxes…" She could vaguely feel something wrap around her hand, loose enough that it didn't make it hurt worse. "Jimmy always had some of that, like, hand soap thing with him… you know, since he worked with all the animals…? He'd probably know how to fix this… uh, I hope it doesn't hurt too bad." He finished fiddling with whatever wrapping he'd improvised, and cleared his throat. "Sorry you got hurt and everything… I don't think that was supposed to happen. Dr. Jensen said no one was gonna get hurt… are you sure you don't want like, that granola bar? I don't think it's that old…"

Sharon moaned.

"Danny, I have to get back out there," she repeated for the tenth time. "I can't let everyone worry that I'm dead, I have children, responsibilities – I have to get back to them. Do you understand that?"

The room was too dim and her vision too blurry to see his expression, but she heard the rustle as he stuck his hands in his pockets, and then took a couple of doubtful steps around.

"It's just… I kinda think Dr. Jensen wouldn't like that, you know? Maybe if he calls me back I can ask him if that's okay…? I was gonna ask him anyway…"

"You called him?" Oh God.

"Yeah but like, he hasn't been picking up…"

Oh, thank God.

"Danny –" Something else occurred to her. "Danny, let me make a phone call. We can stay here... I just want to let my family know that I'm alright, so they won't worry."

He 'uhm'-ed, unsure.

Sharon squeezed her eyes shut as she shifted her position, accidentally putting her weight on her injured hand and sending a stab of pain all the way up to her shoulder. She was sore, her muscles protesting with every movement... but no matter how much effort it took, she had to move, because the alternative was just giving up, and giving up was too scary a thought right now. All the scarier because it was so tempting.

Gritting her teeth, she managed to stumble over to the opposite wall and, after trying the door again and finding it still – predictably – locked, she let herself slide down the wall again and lowered her forehead to her bent knees.

She tried to keep her hopes up, but with every passing second it seemed less and less likely that she'd make it out of this place. It seemed that there were no options left to her. She'd tried ... everything.

She'd even managed to convince Danny to let her use his phone, after all…

"Okay..." Hesitantly, he pulled it out of his pocket. "Oh – but like… you can't tell them where you are, okay?"

"That shouldn't be difficult," Sharon growled, "since I don't know where I am. Just give me the phone, Danny!"

"You're angry," he deduced.

"I am not angry." She managed the least convincing smile in the world. "I'm just… worried, about how my friends are doing, if they think I'm dead. Please let me talk to them, so they know I'm okay."

"Okay…"

He'd handed the phone over, and for one moment Sharon's heart had sped up with excitement, because finally she had a way out, after almost an entire day she could contact the team, finally, she held the phone in her shaking hands like a Holy Grail and then…

And then …

Icy dismay had seeped through her.

"This isn't turning. Why isn't it turning on?"

Danny crouched by her and took the phone back from her reluctant hands. "Oh… uh, looks like the battery's dead...? Guess I forgot to charge it…"

Sharon's jaw clenched involuntarily at the memory. She'd been so hopeful, and her hope dashed so abruptly.

She may have lost her temper a little, then. And damn it, she wouldn't blame herself. If she had to spend the short rest of her life locked up in this godforsaken hole, sick and cold and tired, she sure wasn't going to spend it feeling guilty that she'd gotten angry at the whole thing. It was worth getting angry over! It was – the whole thing was just... just too much.

She wanted to go home. She...

Sharon shook her head, and shifted again. The anger tried to rear inside her chest, but she pushed it back; what was the point in being angry now? She was all alone.

There had really been no point in it earlier, either. Maybe she'd been entitled to it, sure, but since Danny hadn't fully understood why she'd be so unhappy with him, her anger had done no good, and it had only scared him, made him more erratic and confused. And then...

Ugh.

Sharon rubbed a hand to her cheek, shivering slightly. It felt like the air in the room was getting harder and harder to breathe in.

"It's okay, I – uh, I have a, a car charger…? Don't worry! Like, it's okay! For rea –"

"It is not 'okay'," Sharon snapped, "nothing about this situation is okay, Mr. Murray, and I think it's about time you realized that!"

"But –"

"Do you think this is some sort of game?"

"What…?"

"Do you realize the gravity of your situation? I am a police officer, and you are guilty of kidnapping –"

"But I have a car charger…!"

"Then I suggest you go use it! Right. Now!"

That had, unfortunately, just about expended her current abilities to communicate her dissatisfaction. Her vision literally blacked out, her blood pressure making the pain in her eardrums unbearable; she felt a hot ache building at the base of her nose, and a strangled gasp escaped her throat…

Danny backed up a step. "Uh… you're angry. Dude – I mean, uh… Ma'am… I think you'd feel better if you like, chill. Like, don't have a heart attack or something. Like – that happened to my grandma…?"

She was going to kill him. As soon as she managed to stand up straight for more than thirty seconds at a time without feeling the need to throw up, Sharon was going to murder him.

The young man fidgeted anxiously.

"Uhh, really, I don't think you should be getting so angry… you look like, not so good…" He scratched his neck, then suddenly his face lit up with an idea."Hang on – I know what'll help…!"

"Danny –" She had to grit her teeth against the nausea. It was getting worse. Everything was.

"Uh…I'm gonna run up to the car for a lil bit…but just, like, chill, okay?"

She couldn't stop him.

Sharon slumped back against the large crate, one hand shielding her eyes, the other pressed tight against her churning stomach, and she had to watch helplessly as the young man backed out of the room, pulling the heavy metal door behind him. Her heart was pounding, effortful, anxious.

In the sudden silence, her circumstances once again seemed almost surreal. That she'd ended up here in this murky hole, when just a day before everything had been fine, was impossible to grasp. Impossible and terrifying. Things couldn't be going any worse.

And then...they did.

Sharon pulled her knees to her chest, moaning slightly at the pain in her lower back. She couldn't even tell how long it had been, anymore. Thanks to Danny's attempts to 'help', she was worn out, disoriented, frozen to the bones and her head felt three times its size. Even the dim light hurt her eyes, so she'd somehow managed to turn it off, only now it was pitch dark, and cold and deadly silent, and everything was just…

Just…not good.

Worse, she felt so stupid and mad at herself, and guilty and heartbroken, because no matter what had happened up to the phone battery incident and her terrifying Danny into running off to his minivan, everything that had happened after that had been a hundred times worse. A thousand times worse… and at least part of it had been her own damn, stupid fault.

Danny had come back after what had felt like an eternity, without his phone and carrying a water bottle.

A reusable one, Sharon had noted wryly. At least the young man made a good-faith effort to stick to his friend Jimmy's 'zero footprint' ideas.

If only he and Jimmy both hadn't ended up tangled in a madman's schemes…

The water had tasted stale and chalky in her mouth, like it had been out in the sun for too long; after only a few sips Sharon had had to stop because of the nausea. She'd closed her eyes and exhaled slowly through her nose and grimaced at the pain she'd felt when she swallowed, at the way that water had seemed to turn to dust as it slid down her raw throat…

Ugh.

Groaning, Sharon lowered her face into her hands. How had she been so stupid to drink that, how?

What had happened next was almost a blur.

" –charging, I swear… uh, you can like, call your kids in like, half hour or whatever. Okay? Just uh… don't be angry, I don't think that's like, good for you and stuff, you know?"

"Danny," Sharon pleaded urgently, "you have to take me back. I need medical attention." The blinding headache and excruciating pounding in her ears were only growing worse.

"Don't worry! Dr. Jensen – like, he's a doctor, right? He'll help when he gets here."

"Danny, he's not a …what?" The panic cut through her wooziness, set her heart racing. "What do you mean, 'when he gets here'? What. Did you do?"

But as before, his response to her increased agitation was to backpedal confusedly. "Uh… " He all but shoved the water bottle back into her hands. "Here! And seriously, like, don't worry, it's –"

"Danny!"

He looked distressed. "Dude…"

"What do you mean," Sharon rasped, "when he gets here? I thought you didn't know where Jensen was!"

"I didn't! But like, I left all those messages last night and this morning, like on that phone he gave me? So uh…"

Her eyes widened. "What…!"

Oh God, oh God how had she failed to foresee this?!

"You're getting angry again, aren't you? Oh man –"

Without thinking, Sharon took another drink from the water bottle, and this time, panic must've made her alert enough to actually process things better, and she noticed that the texture was off, way off and…

Her heart sped, frantic. "What did you put in this?!"

Danny held up his hands. "It's just like – the stuff that helps my mom, you know? She used to get angry like that all the time. But like… those pills help, I swear, I take some from her, sometimes, too… Don't worry, they're like, great…"

There had been nothing to do, at that point.

For herself, or for him.

If only she'd thought to warn Danny earlier. If only she'd made more of an effort to clear her head, reason things out, predict his next move – oh, if she'd figured out that Danny's default response to the unexpectedly complicated situation would be to stay put and wait for instructions – and that he'd think to ask Jensen for those instructions! The very man who'd set off that bomb that had nearly killed both of them in the first place!

If only she'd been able to convince Danny to call the team earlier. If only the phone battery hadn't been dead.

If only.

She'd tried to warn him. Told him everything she knew, pleaded with him not to trust Jensen, not to meet him, and certainly not bring him to ... wherever they were. But Danny, innocuous, gullible, well-intentioned Danny, had assured her that she was just confused, and that Jensen was a cool dude and it would all work out.

For a moment, Sharon had thought that maybe she'd gotten through to him, when she'd told him that Erik Jensen had likely had something to do with Jimmy's death. At that, Danny's expression had flickered through some sort of horrified bafflement, before going back to disbelief.

'Danny, Erik Jensen is a criminal. He was planning to kill all those people at the mall –'

'No, no, like, we were only going to –'

'He was going to kill them," she spoke over him, desperate, "and I am certain that he's somehow involved in Jimmy's death, too –'

'But…!'

It was hard to remember exactly what had been said, after that. The room had been spinning, words getting so damn difficult to find, and she'd felt so, so angry, at him and at herself, for being so stupid, so impossibly stupid, and if only she'd done something differently, if only she could've gotten through to him, if only he'd called the team for back-up like she'd begged him to, if only, if only…

…but it had been too late.

For both of them.

Danny had looked completely distressed, but he'd still walked out to meet Jensen, and pulled the rusty door shut with an ominous creak, locking it behind him.

The last thing that Sharon remembered for a while was that she'd grabbed some large metal tool from the crate, and somehow managed to bar the door from the inside. There might have been some noises from there, at some point, some banging and some shouted threats – but her improvised barrier must've held because some undetermined amount of time later, when she'd become more aware of her surroundings again, she'd still been there, alone, alive… and everything had been quiet.

She didn't even know for sure what had happened to Danny, in the end.

And now here she was.

Ironically, whatever he'd slipped into that goddamn water (how had she been so stupid to take it, how?) had helped with the nausea. And the headache. Her heart beat slower (obviously). But she was missing so much time...

She'd only grown colder, more tired. Once she'd been sure that there was no one on the other side, she must've tried pushing and sliding and scraping at that door a hundred times, but each time to no avail; now, even the few steps to get there were an effort. Whatever drugs Danny had given her had obviously not fully cleared her system yet, and having no food or water didn't help. His apple and granola bar hadn't done much, though she'd at least managed to keep them down…

Her teeth chattered, now and then, her torn jacket barely any protection against the chill. The air was stale, heavy in her lungs, and her eyes hurt from so much darkness. She missed the touch of sun against her skin.

She missed her family, the people she loved.

Did anyone even know where she was? Danny had known, but Danny was probably dead, himself, because she hadn't been able to get through to him… Did everyone think she was dead, too? Sharon's throat closed up just thinking about. Had they called her children? God, were they sitting home right now, thinking she was gone forever? She didn't even know how long it had been, really. Would she truly never see them again?

Jensen knew the truth, too, about where she was. But would her team be able to get him? Would they get him alive?

Would they get him in time…?

Sharon had no notion of time, down here. It could have been a day since Danny had gone… maybe two. She doubted she'd still be conscious and able to move if it had been much longer than that. The fact that she was still woozy from the drugs tipped her off, too… although, that could've also been the damage to her eardrums, or the concussion, or dehydration… well, a long, depressing list of things.

With every passing second she felt worse.

But damn it, she wasn't just going to lie down there to die!

And so she tried the door again, and again, and called out as loud as she could, and searched the room again and…

…and then she was so exhausted she couldn't even move.

In her head, she wasn't giving up, but her body wasn't cooperating and 'mind over matter' would only take her so far when there was no place for matter to go.

Slumped against the wall, she shivered slightly and might've dozed off for a little while, again, waking up with a choked sort of sob, feeling like she couldn't breathe.

Her ears were still ringing a little, so that when she heard the loud metallic scraping, she couldn't tell for sure if it had actually come from outside, or from her own head.

But it had echoed, and there had been some other sounds, and despite her bone-deep exhaustion Sharon's heart had begun to pound again. Had Jensen come back? She was in no condition to oppose him, but better to let him in and take her chances, than wait for death locked in some underground bunker.

At the prospect of it, she felt like crying. She didn't want to die, she wanted to go home and hold her children, and hear their voices, and see the sun again, and get more opportunities to do things, and –

The murmur of voices reached her, and with a sob Sharon decided she was hallucinating, because she could've sworn she'd heard Rusty. The familiar inflections of his words constricted her chest. But Rusty wasn't here, obviously, and God, was she growing delirious, too?

There was just silence, now, and even if she'd been hallucinating the noises Sharon found herself missing them, because even the delusion of human contact was better than being stranded there alone…

She made her way to the door again, and listened, but there was nothing to hear on the other side.

And then she heard a voice again, a muffled 'Hello' – but, it didn't come from beyond the door, it – it came from the opposite side of the room, almost from the walls… Sharon made her way over, bumping against the table, knocking a variety of bolts and tools to the floor, and for a moment there was only silence again, but then, oh God, then she heard the words 'LAPD' drift to her, and her heart stopped beating entirely.

She still wasn't sure she wasn't delirious, but… but she thought she recognized the voice, too, again, and even though her throat was dry and she felt that there was no breath left in her at all, she called out,

"Andy…?"

So now you know everything ;).

Well - okay no, there are actually still plenty of things to know. But we do know everything that Sharon has been going through while everyone else was frantically looking and despairing. Hard to decide who's been having a better time, these forty-eight hours! It's been such a party all around.

Next up, Flynn and Rusty and Sharon will be in the same room together! And cliffhangers will be resolved! And everyone will literally be worried about everyone else - of course.

Thank you all for reading :)