"What do you mean theirs been another complication?" he barked into the phone as he punched the door of the restaurant out of his way not once noticing the new shadow trailing out after him as he stomped towards his car.
"Listen I've already paid you for delivery, yet no delivery has been made. Ergo I haven't gotten what I've paid for so what the hell isn't computing with you guys on this?" he snarled. His breath came in a fogged huff in the chilly night air ar. "Look I don't care what kind of complication you are up against just get it done."
He didn't even wait for an answer before he hung up the call and shoved his phone back into his front pocket as he stomped up to the driver's door of his car.
The crackling shifting of the takeout bag against his arm has him gritting his teeth in even more frustration when the transferred heat from the freshly made-up food containers threatens to burn through his shirt with the heat as he fumbled with disabling the alarm of his car before needing to shift the warmed food bag to his other arm to flick through the keys on the ring to the one he needed when the sounds of someone coming up behind him as him stiffening until he catches sight of whoever it was in the reflection of the car window.
Just some punk kid.
"Rick Malverne?" the teenager asks in a growl.
"Who's asking?" Rick scoffed
But it's the stinging jab of a needle pricking his skin that gives any answer in return as the asked-for man turns towards the questioner.
"Have you found her yet?"
"No."
"Have you found her yet?"
"No."
"Have you found her yet?"
"No."
"Have you found her yet?"
By this point, the repeated question was only serving to get on Winn's already frayed nerves making his answers almost as angry as Alex's asking as she glared over at him from a spare chair pulled up alongside his computer.
Needless to say, things had been more than a little tense the last few days even since the newest thread of a lead on catching up with a still on the run Maggie had made her trail even colder than before.
Yet it had been amusing hearing "Why would she go back? Didn't she get shot at last time she was there?" questions once Winn had finished pulling up the bank surveillance showing a still teenaged Maggie using the Luthor bank card to make a few hundred-dollar cash withdraws before dropping back into the wind.
"She must remember it too, see? She's even rubbing at the same spot I had to stitch up for her after…." Alex had gone on more than a little pleased with the sight of Maggie so bluntly agitated until the strain of her remembered memories had forced the teenager to sit down from the massive headache that followed.
Winn's hand closes hard over the also tapping pen Alex had taken and had been tapping harder and harder in her frustration when asking hadn't gained any new results. "Look Al, I know your worried for her. We all are." Winn starts out once again running a hand through his already stress-tossed hair as he turns once again in the teen's direction. "and knowing she's been whammed like you and Kara were makes finding her an even bigger priority but…"
"Oh, don't give me that hope speech BS, Schott." The teenager growls. Clearly, the last couple of days of deliberate sleep deprivation were finally taking a more noticeable toll on her than she'd anticipated. "If I wanted that I would have stayed by Kara."
But rather than argue back like Alex had been hoping for Winn was pulling the angry teenager up from her chair. His arms were wrapping around her hugging her close and Alex despite her attempts to hold them back was soon crying hard into the adult's chest in grateful anger at her own show of weakness. Her hands fisted so tightly in the back of his shirt that Winn swears he heard the fabric ripping under the strain of her hold, but he wasn't about to call her out for it as she burrowed closer.
"Alex?"
Winn hates the way Kara's hesitant asking of her sister's name immediately has that more 'Agent Danvers' stance falling into place as Alex leans back in the circle of his arms.
"Nothing yet." Alex says as if those two words were the most painful thing she'd had to say. "Seems even fellow teen Maggie is a regular ninja when she wants to be."
"Alex, you don't need to be the strong one right now," Kara argues her hand reaching up to trace the marks of fresh tears sliding down her older sister's cheeks.
"Yes, I do." Alex barks. "Maggie needs me to be the strong one. She…."
This time Alex's knees buckle as the tears well all over again. Kara of course rushes the short separating steps to catch her before she can really start to fall. Always held Streaky now passed gratefully into Alex's shaking fingers as the sister embraced.
Her dreams were getting worse. Or rather her nightmares were getting worse would be more accurate.
The breath-stealing panic as the mind-mumbling cold seeps even more into her skin as she struggles to keep treading the still-rising water.
Having to listen to Maggie's heartbreaking "do we get a dog?" before the lifeline to her girlfriend was cut away mostly because those were always the times Kara finally managed to wake her up.
Winn catches Lena's shadowed figure watching the sisters as well giving an understanding incline of her head in sympathy before yet again moving off towards the lab to start again on reconstructing whatever it had been that had caused the 'teen-reaging' in the first place.
Winn would have joined in the newest Danvers sibling hug or attempt to offer Lena his help if his computer hadn't picked that moment to chime with a possible lifeline of a thread on the newest addition of the 're-teens' as Winn had taken to thinking of them as he slipped back in front of his computer letting Kara take over 'Alex watch' for the time being as he begins typing away at the computer keys.
"Oh, good your awake." His apparent kidnapper chirps once Rick has gathered enough groggy strength to lift his head from his bowed place against his chest. His mouth aching for relief from the dry aftertaste of the drugs she'd used to knock him out.
"Oh please, I may be young but I'm not stupid." The teenager scoffs as Rick gives a few testing pulls at the wrapped binding of rainbow-colored duct tape holding him more than a little securely to his seat.
He spots several used-up tape rolls littering the floor at her feet.
"I just wanna talk." His kidnapper says as if it's typical for normal talks to start out with after taking someone against their will.
Rick gives the girl a pointed look considering the large swatch of tape covering his mouth.
She rolls her eyes at this reminder.
"Well, I can't very well have you shouting at me and waking up dear old Dad too soon now can I?" she questions.
Rick feels his stomach drop to his toes at the question. It's then that he notices the no longer hazy outline sitting across from him.
Or more specifically the shadowed outline of what he just knew had to be his equally kidnapped father lying on the wrong side of an all too familiar structure.
Why this now free-standing containment structure was familiar to him, and why he was now so terrified he doesn't remember as he struggled even harder against his bonds.
"You know what this means then. Good." The teen smiles keeping her eyes on him rather than following his widened eyes to the still unmoving figure dressed in his father's clothes. "So how about telling me where she is and you don't have to watch your own sick trap in action only this time it'll be your father suffering in her place"
