Chapter 2:

A/N: I want to thank everyone in advance for giving this a chance. Should be a fairly good mix of all seven characters, plus my two OFC's, which hopefully work well within the story.

Disclaimer: I don't own them, only the ones you didn't see on TV. Thanks to those that made up this universe.

--

"Don't know what to tell you cowboy," Vin Tanner shrugged, "but that's all she said to me before she passed out. 'I think you boys went and pissed someone off again.'"

"No names? Not a clue?" It was the third time Chris had asked some variation of the question. Vin shot his friend a leveling look. The leader of Team 7 withdrew his hands from his hips, rubbing his face with his right hand. "Yeah," he sighed, "never mind."

They stood a few feet away from the hospital bed located in a private room of the Swedish Medical Center. Samantha Hunter lay motionless beneath the thin sheets, connected by a bunch of wires to a series of monitors and IV's, all of which beeped in a steady, reassuring pattern. Both the nurses and the doctor had attempted to usher the two federal agents to the waiting room, but two matching icy glares had put a stop to that quickly.

"Just loaded her up in my Jeep and came straight here," Vin went on. "I don't reckon' we'll get much in answers till she wakes up."

Vin slouched against the wall, hooking his thumbs through the belt loops of his pants, one booted foot propped behind him against the wall. She looked small lying there, frail, a word he would have never imagined using in the same context as Sam. She had always been loud, strong, a fighter. Or maybe it wasn't her at all, maybe it was him. She was lying there, bruised and broken, and he couldn't have helped it, and he was still clueless as to the why. He was helpless, and it made him frail. He didn't like the feeling.

Vin studied her carefully through hooded lids, knowing Chris still knew, and knowing he would never say anything. Vin and Sam had become fast friends during her time with the agency. Skilled in both Karate and kickboxing, Sam had been a good sparring partner for Vin, and they'd often hung out outside of work. Blue eyes lingered on the dark red circles around her wrists, skin bleeding and blistered and raw. Anger rose in him like bile.

"What did the docs say?"

"What?" Vin looked over at the blonde man, distracted.

Patient, Chris asked again. "What did the docs say?"

Yeah, what did the docs say?

"Not much you don't know," the sharpshooter said with a shrug. "She'd got a concussion, so they took her up for a Cat-scan, which was clean. There's a hairline fracture of her left cheekbone, so she'll be sportin the black eyed look a while. Couple busted ribs, some bruising on her kidneys." Vin stopped for a moment, jaw working. "They broke some of her fingers on her left hand, and she's missing three fingernails. Cut her up pretty good too." He pushed himself off the wall and began to pace. He'd seen that kind of tactic before. "Whoever it was beat the shit out of her, and then they tortured her."

Torture, gee that's novel. I must look like hell.

"Doesn't that kind of make you think it was a personal thing?" Chris questioned, more to hear the thought aloud than expecting a real answer. "Maybe someone she helped us put away while she was part of the Team."

Not personal Chris, all you guys. I've been keeping my nose clean here.

"Does it matter?"

"Might. If it means a clue to finding out who did this," Chris said reasonably. "JD and Buck are goin over the security footage from the garage right now. Nathan and Josiah are interviewing the attendant." Chris watched some of the tension seep from the younger man's shoulders. Something was being done, even if not by him. Made him feel better.

Vin stopped his pacing. "You tell Ezra?"

Ezra. God. I bet that went over well.

Chris made a face. "Yep. Can't say it went over too well."

Ha. Wait, that's not funny. Really though, they're taking this far better than I thought they would. Now if only I could open my damned eyes. Sam felt consciousness returning, but she lingered on the edge of it, her eyes feeling too heavy too lift. It was an odd, disembodied feeling.

"Didn't expect much different, really. What'd he say?" Vin was curious. Next to himself, Sam had probably been closest to the reticent southerner, despite their distinctly oil and water personalities. Sam had rubbed Ezra wrong from the start, but the two had grown to respect each other, and the sarcastic barbs they'd traded were done primarily in good humor. So when Sam had skipped town, turning in her badge and vanishing without a trace, it had hit the undercover agent hard, though he'd have been loathe to admit it.

"Not so much what he said, as what he didn't. You know Ez."

"Yep, suppose I do." Movement and a low groan from the direction of the bed stopped the conversation the two men were having in its tracks. Samantha's right eye fluttered open, the left side of her face too swollen for her to open her eye more than a slit.

"Hey Vin," she rasped, feeling the skin stretch and split on her lip. "Good to see you... half see you."

Vin knew she was trying to joke, but the attempt at levity fell flat. "How ya feelin'?"

"You know," she choked out, "this is like, the worst hangover ever, without any of the fun of the night before." This time Vin did smile, a little.

"You got the world's worst sense of humor Sammy, anyone ever tell you that?"

"Vin, you are the only guy on the planet outside of my old man I ever let call me Sammy. And yeah, I've heard that a couple of times." She tried to push herself upright on the bed, but the stabbing pain in her hand, and ache in her ribs stopped her short. Instead she just grimaced and readjusted her head on her pillow. "Chris." The greeting was quiet, apprehensive.

"Hunter," the leader of Team 7 nodded. "What the hell happened?"

"I don't know, don't remember much after getting jumped. Bastard got the drop on me." Lie. She remembered everything, when she was conscious anyway. She just didn't remember anything particularly relevant, so why drudge it up?

"Seems I remember a time when that wouldn't have happened," Chris observed mildly. "Used to be better at watching your back."

"Used to have to be," Sam countered testily. "Workin with you boys tended to be hazardous to my health. Bombs, getting shot, presidential assassination attempts, getting shot, falling off cliffs, getting shot."

"You mentioned that one already Sam," Vin reminded her.

"Did I mention how much I hate it?" She questioned. "And look, the very next next time I wind up in a damned hospital it has to do with you."

"Yeah," Chris grunted a little, "well some of you have more of a penchant for it than others." Gray-blue eyes slid between Sam and Vin.

"Why you lookin' at me like that cowboy?" Vin asked dryly.

Chris ignored his sharpshooter. "You get a good look at him? Height, weight, ethnicity? Those things we trained you to look out for?" There was bitterness there, he couldn't help it, and Sam couldn't really even blame him.

"No, I got a crappy look at him, in a parking garage, at night, out of nowhere." Sarcasm dripped from every word. Couldn't really help that either. "I didn't go measuring his facial features under his stocking mask while I was trying to keep him from kicking the ever loving shit out of me." She gingerly touched her face with her left hand. "Fat lot of good that did me."

A short, portly man in a white lab coat whipped in through the door, a nervous nurse at his heels. "What is going on in here?" he demanded, tucking his clipboard beneath his arm.

Chris pulled out his badge, flipping it open. "Federal agents. We need to get a statement."

"Alcohol, tobacco and firearms?" the doctor said dubiously. "Isn't that a little extreme for an assault case?" Chris' jaw flexed as he fixed the doctor with a silent, steely glare. The man in the white coat shifted uneasily. "Right. Well in any case you'll have to come back tomorrow. My patient has been through quite the trauma and needs rest right now. And we have to run some more tests."

Sam grumbled something incomprehensible. "At least tell me you managed to find the chip while I was out," she groused.

"What chip?" The three men in the room chorused.

"The chip," she repeated, receiving three blank stares in return. "The chip, the chip, the microchip," she was starting to get agitated.

Vin and Chris exchanged a look. "How hard exactly did she get hit on the head doc?" Chris asked, only half joking.

The younger woman glared darkly. "Oh Chris, you are hysterical," she deadpanned. "The chip has the message." Chris raised an eyebrow. She wasn't exactly making a ton of sense.

With a roll of her eyes, Sam slowly forced herself to sit upright, thrust back the thin hospital blankets and then hiked up the edge of the her gown, revealing bare skin mottled in several different shades of purple. Vin felt his face growing warm."He used one of those... guns, like you'd use to microchip your dog."

She glanced up, focusing on the Texan. "Aw shit Vin, it's my hip. Don't go gettin' your panties in a twist." At that, Vin's face flamed fully red.

The doctor frowned. "We didn't notice anything strange when we did your physical exam."

"Well would you?" Vin asked. "Those chips ain't hardly bigger than a grain of rice."

"Thought you didn't remember anything," Chris observed mildly.

"I said much, actually, and I do remember that." She looked directly at the doctor then, hoping for nothing more than to circumvent the impending conversation with Chris. "Could you remove it please? Before this thing does something I don't much care for?"

"Uh, sure," the doctor looked back and forth between the two federal agents and the remarkably calm woman lying on the bed. "I'll get some local anesthetic." He and the nurse left.

Samantha eyed Chris warily. "You plannin to arrest me?"

"Don't know," the team leader shrugged. "I got reason to?"

"No, not for a while anyway," she answered truthfully. "I finished my family business and hit the straight like, seven months ago."

"Well good then, guess I got no reason to place you under arrest." The doctor came back into the room, syringe and scalpel at the ready. The nurse wheeled in a suture tray behind him.

"We'll be needing that when you're done," Chris told him. "Evidence."

"Evidence of what?"

"Not really sure yet."

Sensing that was the best answer he was likely to get, the doctor nodded. I'll need you gentlemen to step outside for a moment please."

Vin and Chris complied. "We'll check back with you later Sammy," Vin tossed back over his shoulder. "What do you think cowboy?" Vin asked in a low voice in the hallway.

"Not sure. I'm not convinced this has anything to do with us. Sam's made plenty of enemies in her day. Could just be after her. Then again, so have we. We'll see what JD can make of this chip, go from there."

The doctor came out a few minutes later, a small plastic baggie dangling from his right hand. A tiny, metallic cylinder rested inside, as Vin had said, no bigger than a grain of rice. "Here you go gentlemen," he said, handing the bag to Chris. The two federal agents nodded their thanks and turned to leave. "Just uh, one other thing." Chris and Vin exchanged a look and paused. "Her blood panel came back. Whoever attacked that young woman in there had her pumped full of amphetamines. He wanted her awake, wide awake, through everything. Sick bastard wanted to torture her, and he wanted her to feel it."

--

The bullpen was unusually quiet when Ezra strode in shortly after ten. He'd been driving to the office when Chris had called him. Vin was on his way to the hospital. That single piece of information was enough to leave a cold knot in the southerner's gut, considering how many times any one of them had wound up in the ER. When he'd heard the name of Vin's passenger he'd had to pull the Jag off to the side of the road. Then he'd turned around, finding himself in the hospital parking lot a short while later, raged in an internal debate over whether or not to go inside. Eventually he'd gone with no.

Josiah and Nathan were not to be seen, presumably still questioning the guard at the gate, and looking for leads on the mysterious white van. Buck stood behind JD at his desk, leaning over the younger man's shoulder, staring at the computer screen.

"Needs to be clearer JD," Buck said insistently.

"I'm working on it Buck," JD answered through his teeth. "This isn't a quick process. Video quality in the garage isn't the best to start with, and there's a bunch of pixellation issues to deal with when you're trying to enlarge something like this." The kid was definitely getting irritated.

"Any luck gentlemen?" Ezra asked quietly. Buck jumped nearly a foot.

"Damn it Ez! Don't go sneaking up on a man like that!"

"I did not sneak," Standish sniffed. "You were preoccupied."

Buck turned back to the computer screen, choosing to ignore Ezra's commentary, mostly because he wasn't wrong. "Nothing yet on the van as far as a plate, but it's a late 90's model Chevy. We caught a pretty good look at Sam though. Our girl don't look much better than if she'd been hit by a truck."

Our girl, the words made Ezra stiffen slightly. There had been a time he would not have questioned the familial reference, but that had been a long time ago. "Yes, well... Miss Hunter is now in the care of qualified professionals, I'm sure she'll be fine."

Ezra moved quickly away from the affable federal agent, eager to halt that particular line of conversation. He sat heavily on his chair behind his desk, running both hands through his hair. Ezra was unsure of how long he'd been sitting there when he felt fingertips resting lightly on the base of his neck. Green eyes flicked upward. Vanessa stood, eyes keenly trained on the other two members of Team 7. "You'd think someone died," she muttered quietly, "considering how off center everyone is. We have cases we should be focusing on."

Ezra twisted his head away from her touch, pushing the chair back. "If that is the way you feel then by all means, suggest it to Mr. Larabee. I am sure you will find him extraordinarily receptive to the notion," Ezra snapped. Vanessa pulled back from him, looking like she'd just been struck.

Instantly, Ezra felt guilty. It was an emotion he'd been feeling all too often for his comfort as of late. "Vanessa..." he began quietly, "I apologize." Apologizing, another thing he'd been doing too much of.

"Forget it," she hissed through clenched teeth, eyes sparking furiously.

Vin and Chris' timely arrival saved any further arguing. "JD," Chris barked as he left the elevator. The young computer whiz pushed away from his desk, rolling out into the middle of the bullpen. "Catch." Chris tossed a small, handheld scanner to the younger man.

"Uhh..." JD stared at the machine like it was alien.

"We stopped by the pound," Vin said by way of explanation.

"Because you wanted to get the kid a puppy?" Buck questioned, just as confused as JD.

"Course not," Chris grumbled. "We needed to pick up one of those ID scanners."

"Because you lost a puppy?" Buck asked with a laugh.

"Be serious Buck," Chris chided.

"Well hell Chris I would, if only you'd make a damn bit of sense. What does an ID scanner have to do with Sam's case?"

Vin had been ducking his head to hide a grin. He dug into his coat pocket and retrieved the small baggie that held the microchip. "Doc dug this out of Sammy's leg a couple hours ago," he explained. Recognition dawned on JD's face. Ezra sat straighter in his chair. "Best we can figure, it's some kind of message, but we needed that scanner to read whatever's on it."

"And why didn't you two just spit that out in the first place?" Buck asked, annoyed.

"Cuz pard," Vin told him with a grin, "it's way more fun to watch you guess."

--

It didn't take long for JD to figure out how to use the scanner. It did, however, take a little longer for him to surmise a meaning from the twelve digit string of numbers that popped up on the screen. 543038176679. A message from Samantha's unidentified assailant. JD figured it had to be some sort of numerical code, maybe an anagram with numbers in place of the letters. Code wasn't something they dealt with on the day to day, and JD had no code breaking software on his computer. Soon his desk was covered in paper as he scratched out first one idea, then another.

Vanessa soon realized that all other work in the department was, as of that moment, unofficially on the back burner. It was quite apparent to her that going to Ezra for support was out, and she wasn't quite foolish enough to approach Chris while he was in one of these moods. So instead she opted to help, or at least try to help. Vin and Buck were locked away in Chris' office, and Ezra had somehow conveniently disappeared, so she sauntered over to JD's desk, leaning over his bent shoulder to get a look at the string of numbers.

"Anything?" she asked, her voice its usual low purr.

JD sighed deeply. "Nothing I can get my head around so far," he groused. "I haven't been able to assign letters to the numerals, or find any kind of relevant correlation. But really, this isn't my area of expertise. This guy is tricky."

Vanessa frowned as she looked at the numbers, brow crinkling. The numbers felt familiar somehow, like the answer was lurking just out of reach in her mind. "But maybe he's not," she said suddenly. "Maybe we're assuming this series of numbers is a message, but what if it's just another clue?"

"How do you mean?"

"Forget what you know. When you look at the numbers, is there anything that jumps out at you, like something you ought to see?" Red nails tapped the desktop next to his mouse.

JD shrugged. Hell, why not? He shut his eyes for a minute, clearing his mind of expectations, anagrams and hidden codes. Then he looked down at the paper. "Three, zero, three, area code for Denver, Boulder." He felt his jaw go slack. JD glanced upward at Vanessa, who grinned.

"A phone number," they said together.

The youngest member of Team Seven pushed away from his desk so fast his chair nearly tipped. "Guys!" he called, stumbling over his own feet as he rushed to Chris' office.

--

Less than an hour and a half later, seven men poured out of three vehicles outside the Denver Bus Depot. One uniformed police officer stationed outside the main entrance started to protest, but Chris and the others barged past him. Ezra flashed his badge and a confident smile. "There is a situation inside that mandates our immediate attention, so if you would please, step aside."

The depot's operations manager met them inside. He was an elder gentlemen, what little hair he had left snow white, curling around by his temples. His name badge read Stanley. He moved at an unhurried shuffle, a large ring of keys jingling on his hip. "Locker 540 you said on the phone?"

"No, 543," Vin corrected quickly. Stanley nodded, unhooking the keys from his belt loop.

"Highly unusual, this kind of request," Stanley remarked. "But I talked to my boss and he said go ahead and do what you ask so... uh... this is the key you'll need." He held up a small silver key with a blue top. JD plucked it out of his fingers without another thought, breaking into a jog trot toward the lockers. 543.

JD waited for the others. "Let's just hope this man of ours isn't a joker," Nathan said. "I don't need to be dealing with no injuries from an exploding locker." Six sets of eyes turned on the ex medic. "I'm just saying."

"Let me open it JD," Chris told the younger man. "I'll just, do it... carefully." The other men back away from the locker bank. Chris slid the key into the lock, pressed himself flat to the lockers and pulled it open. Nothing happened. It was more than something of a relief.

Team Seven crowded around the now open locker. Even in the poor light of the depot they could just make out its contents: a DVD, a scalpel, and two bloody fingernails.

--

Chapter 2

Well, hopefully you liked the second installment. Good? bad? Thanks for reading.