AN: I just finished writing "Anything", and needed a fic that was less dark, though I wasn't yet in the proper mood to go back to FY, WTTJ and the like. So, I found myself bingeing "Kidnapped". When you haven't read your own work in years, it's like reading a story anyone else wrote. All along, I found myself thinking, "Hey, I like this. I want to see how it ends." Hopefully you do too.
1
Kellerman paced the living room, which was really the first sign that something was wrong. He was not a pacer. There's no need to pace, when you're not the one calling the shots, just following orders. No such thing as dilemmas or qualms. Only Yes, sir.
The smell of burnt rice tickled at the back of his throat. If you'd told him a week ago, that the thought putting him in such a state would be so mundane, he would have laughed you out of the room.
Sara was not wearing a bra.
"I get paranoid," he told himself. Again.
But then, he was also right, a lot of the times.
The clock on his wall read four in the morning. Half an hour, since he'd burst into Sara's room. Since her little trip to the bathroom—fifteen minutes, away from the cameras. What had she been up to? When she came out, her hair was wet. And she wasn't wearing a bra.
Kellerman wished he hadn't noticed that. If you must know, he was nothing if not a gentleman.
Though he had to keep an eye on Sara, basically all day long, there was nothing voyeuristic about it. His eyes did not linger on her body—objectively pleasant, if a little thin. He would never, ever, leer at her like some kind of pervert. This was business, for God's sake. He was a professional.
But when he burst into her room earlier, there was something about her—
Lance, you frightened me.
The prick of her nipples, hard against her blouse. How the body betrays you. Though he never looked at that part of her body in particular, he took in the change.
Let's call a spade a spade.
He was a man, and he could tell whether or not a woman was wearing a bra.
At any time, he expected to laugh, from how stupid the whole thread of thought was. Stupid, maybe. But serious.
Because there was no way in hell this woman, with her chin-held-high dynamics, her cold and dignified manners, would take off her bra for a minute while she was his prisoner. She'd wear it, even if it was made of barbed wire.
Barbed wire.
Kellerman did laugh, when it hit him. What she had done.
"Oh, Sara," he sighed, staring at the footage from the camera.
She wasn't asleep. Back to the wall, facing the door. In case he came back.
"Let's not keep you waiting."
2
Standing against the wall, heart pounding, with the underwire of her bra tucked in her sleeve, Sara remembered, suddenly, what it was she loved about morphine.
Not giving a damn about anything.
Live or die? Meh. Wake up in a pool of her own vomit? Have men mount her while she was out cold? So fucking what.
She could have been dragged to hell by an army of angry horsemen, so long as she could take a needle with her and shoot opioids in the crook of her elbow.
Now, though?
It's a little cruel, Dad. If you were going to let me die, you should have done it back when my life wasn't worth living. When I was too young to think death meant dead, too high to care if it did.
When her bedroom door burst open once again, she wasn't surprised.
Panic planted its teeth into her heart, taking such huge bites with each second, she couldn't imagine there'd be anything left in her chest by the time Lance had closed the door.
There was no need to switch on the light. She hadn't switched it off.
"You know, Sara, I respect intelligence."
She kept silent.
God, she wanted to hope, wanted to fool herself—
He doesn't know, he can't know.
But he did. In her blood, in her bones. She knew this.
"I respect you," he said, closing the door. Not slamming it. "Maybe it doesn't make much of a difference to you, but it should. What's there not to admire in strength? Courage? Cleverness."
She swallowed. He watched her, without giving her a moment of break. Beneath his usual friendliness, his voice was ice cold.
"Yet I don't get the feeling you respect me all that much."
Fear pushed her to find her voice, "I do."
"Really? Giving your father hints about the takeout company, to help him find you—whoever he hired. Right under my nose, too. You mustn't respect intelligence all that much, Sara. Or, you mustn't think I'm an intelligent person."
Oh, I do.
There was no need to say so.
The answer printed itself on her face, dressed in horror.
"Then," he smiled. So cold. "There's what's just happened. In the bathroom."
A lump, like molten gold, went down her throat.
He didn't tilt his head to the side, didn't put on a show of theatrics. Didn't move.
Sara froze solid, as she imagined you must freeze, underwater, when the grin of a white shark takes you unawares. So completely in his element. How do you outswim a shark?
"Are you going to insult my intelligence?"
"No."
"Good." He extended his hand. "Give it to me. And before you play dumb, pretend there's nothing to give—I want you to think real and hard, Sara. As to whether I like to be insulted."
Sara remained motionless. Not because she didn't want to obey, but because her arms suddenly felt like independent entities, unconnected to her brain or willpower.
She floated outside her own body, watched herself in this room, with Kellerman. The shark and the swimmer.
He gave her a little time to compose herself. In this state, she couldn't say if it was seconds or minutes.
Even if her limbs still seemed insubstantial, she reached inside her sleeve and plucked the underwire she'd taken out of her bra.
He took it, and the contact of his fingertips was like plunging in a pool of cement.
Violence between them was never there, but it was always real. Tangible, in every word Lance spoke, and every silence. But it had never been so close to the surface, bubbling thick with rage and heat.
It didn't even occur to her, not to give him the underwire. Go down fighting? It might have flashed through her mind before. But she sensed, at this second, that he would crush her, grind her to dust before she could draw blood.
He contemplated the underwire for a moment. He didn't smile, didn't laugh politely, in that way she hated—even that would have been a relief. "What were you hoping to do with this?"
Sara didn't try to lie. What good would it do?
"Hurt you."
It probably sounded as ridiculous to him as it did to her.
He looked back at her, and seemed just a little closer to a man than to a shark. "Right. I don't take that personally. Why wouldn't you use all the weapons you can? War is never personal, is it, Sara?"
He took a step closer.
Oh God.
Thoughts torpedoed into her head.
I should have died an addict, should have died to the sweet taste of morphine, any death but this.
"The fact that it leaves you one bra short, and none the closer to putting a dent in me… Well, there's only so many ways to say this without coming off like a jerk, I suppose. But I should hope it illustrates how pointless it is to fight me. Do you see that now?"
She nodded. Her heart, throbbing against her chest. Fear melting everything in her body to mush.
"I'm going to need a real answer, Sara. If you could manage to go in there," he waved at the bathroom, "and take your bra apart all so you could find some piece of metal to use against me…" With his fingers, he twisted the underwire until it snapped. She couldn't hold back a shiver. "Then surely you can manage words."
"Yes."
"Yes what?"
"I see that it's pointless to fight you."
"Good. And you're not going to do anything like that again, ever?"
"No."
"From now on, we're going to be allies. You're going to help me try to save your life. Yes or no?"
"Yes."
"Good."
Sara tasted iron in her mouth. Her back flush against the wall, until she could not put one more millimeter between them.
"Because I'll admit, I feel a little alone in this. From now on, I could use your cooperation—your full cooperation. That clue about the takeout, and this," he chuckled, looking at the underwire. His laughter was an ice desert. "I could sure use that creativity, to get me out of this dead end I'm in. See, I'm really running out of ways to help you escape with your life. But maybe I just lack the imagination. So why don't you do the thinking for me? Tell me, what's my next move, Sara?"
She scrambled for composure, same as she did in the OR, when an artery started squirting blood, and the patient's vitals were suddenly compromised, almost beyond saving.
There was no time for fear. No time to think that he could kill her, in a heartbeat—would kill her, if she didn't say the right thing.
"You torture me."
Lance blinked. For the first time, the power balance shifted between them a bit. She surprised him.
"If my father's people located me," she said, "they're probably watching the area. Waiting for the right time, to make their next move. You don't wait. You call my father, tell him you know he's broken the rules, and there'll be consequences. You torture me." Her teeth clenched hard, but she didn't break eye-contact. "That's the consequences. You make him listen while you do it, and you remove any possibility of his stalling you. He can't have time to come up with another plan. If his team doesn't back off, you kill me. This morning, at eight o'clock, as soon as he can get his hand on a phone and call the press, he's to release a statement, saying he'll veto the bill on gun reform. If he does what he's told, you send me back. Whatever's left of me. That's how your employer gets what he wants. It's how you save me."
Lance stared at her for a moment. There should be room for satisfaction, somewhere, in those few seconds of silence. To think she threw him off—that the swimmer could do anything to surprise the shark.
He broke into a grin. "See?" he said. "I knew I could get you to respect me."
…
End Notes: Had the best of times going back to this fic. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments!