A/N: Hey all! We've made it to chapter 7 and to the deep stuff. Tread lightly, friends, as this chapter gets a little violent.
Thanks for reviewing, as always, and I hope you enjoy the chapter!
Elizabeth
The weekend after Thanksgiving passed by without any mishaps, but all the while, Will knew her secret. The secret that had been so sacred only she and Henry knew, and there were very few secrets like that they were able to keep between just the two of them in their life, was now out to the first person other than the doctor.
At first, she was unsure if she felt a sense of shame in having someone else know or if she was upset about the ensuing lack of intimacy felt between she and her husband now. It was no longer theirs to keep, it was now her brother's too.
She and Henry went back to work Monday. Finals were approaching quickly, and neither of them had felt ready for the impending doom already coming upon them. Even as teachers, they still dreaded finals week.
Wednesday rolled around and she was already exhausted. She'd forgotten how much work it took to grow a human in the six years she hadn't done this. On Friday, she had her feet propped up on her desk and was leaned back in her chair when she heard a knock on her door.
She sits up slowly, carefully placing her feet flat on the floor. "Come in," she says once her feet are down. When the door cracks open, she sees Blake Moran, and she smiles warmly at him, "Blake," she says, leaning forward slightly and furrowing her brow, "This is a surprise."
"Yeah," he says shyly, giving her a sheepish smile as she beckons him inside and he sits down in the seat across from her. "I was hoping you had a chance to talk about scholarships." He says.
With that, she's busy helping her look through scholarships to continue his education. She didn't ask for an explanation as to why he suddenly needed financial help, but she could sense a tension. By the time he left, he had help and she was hoping he was okay.
Only about ten minutes pass by after Blake exits, and in comes Henry. "Knock knock," he says, smiling sweetly at her as he shuts the door behind him.
She groans and props her feet back up on the desk tiredly, flopping her head back against her office chair. "I'm so tired." She mumbles, her hands crossed over her stomach.
With a sympathetic smile, he walks around to the back of her chair and immediately rubs her shoulders. She lets her head fall over gently and closes her eyes, happy to release some of the tension she's holding in her shoulders. When he takes his hands off after about a minute, she hums in disapproval, peeks one eye open and looks at him, and he's smiling at her again. "Sorry babe," he says, "I have to go meet with my student. Just wanted to come in here and see you."
She sighs and looks at the clock, remembering that this was the whole reason they drove separately today—he had a meeting with one of his students about his grade in the class, and Elizabeth had to go pick up Stevie from basketball practice. She rubs her lips together a little, feeling another rush of guilt as she thinks about the secret that only she, Henry, and now Will know. "Do you think we're doing the right thing not telling the kids?"
He looks over as he's heading toward the door, "What?"
"The right thing. The kids. The baby." She swallows thick after the last word, still feeling like it's such a sour taste on her tongue.
"Oh," he says, reaching for the doorknob, "I think so," he admits, "I think it's best to hold it to ourselves for a little while."
"And Will," she groans.
"And Will," Henry replies, half laughing and shaking his head. "I gotta go," he says, rushing back over to her and kissing her on the cheek, "See you at home."
"See you." She coos, then stands up when he leaves her office. She gets her things together and forces her feet to move her out the door, and she locks it behind her and tries the knob to be sure. An old habit from her CIA days.
The halls were mostly empty on this Friday afternoon. Most professors leave around two or even before, and she's normally out of here by now, too. But she'd waited a little longer to get more prep for finals finished, something she'd normally do at home had she not had to go pick Stevie up. As she steps outside, she looks down in her bag and shuffles around for her keys, the toe of her shoe dragging the sidewalk and causing her to trip. She grumbles to herself a little then looks back in the bag, digging once more. As her fingers feel the metal and she's approaching her car, she grabs them right before a hand forcefully slides around her mouth and something's poked into her side. Even through her coat and her sweater, she can tell this isn't just his hand poking her.
"Don't scream, or I'll shoot you." She hears a man's voice say, and her eyes go wide as every instinct in her is telling her to scream. The keys fall from her hand and clink on the sidewalk as she's pushed forward and away from her car.
"Walk," the voice commanded, her breath breathing into his palm quicker and hotter. She considered biting him, but the poking in her side told her not to. The side door opens on a van, and he turns her around quickly to face him. She feels her hands grabbed from behind and hears the zip tie before she feels it tighten around her wrist, and she winces. The first man shoves her down into the van while the second man escapes out the back and hurries into the driver's seat.
Briefly, she considers screaming, she's reminded by the gun pointed in her face that she better now and she stops herself. Surely someone saw us, she thinks to herself, wracking her brain on how to get herself out of the situation. Her fingers writhe behind her as the zip tie digs into her skin, and she's landed awkwardly on her knee and is trying to shift to lean against the van's wall.
"What do you want from me?" She begs, her voice trying to stay steady as she tried to focus on the man. Before she could get a better look at him, though, he slams the door shut and hops in the passenger seat.
"Go," he barks at the driver.
The trip was like any other road trip—that is if you have a hostile family who has zip tied your hands behind your back. It was silent. No one spoke, and Elizabeth didn't try to speak again for fear of being shot. Her chances were better if she's out of the van, so she waited for what felt like hours, but she tried to keep time in her head by counting. If she's correct—she's out of practice—they drove for about 64 minutes. By doing this, she kept the thoughts of Henry and Stevie and Ali and Jason out of her head. They would creep in, but she'd shove them out and try to focus on time. She would need this if she had any chance of surviving. The only thing she couldn't push away was the dire sense of nausea she felt the entire ride.
When they came to a stop, the sudden flood of light made her squint as the door opened. The first man who had pointed the gun at her pulls her by her feet, sliding her across the van floor. Her breath hitches and she coughs a little from the sudden inhale, and she feels her hand burning, too. Though she's unable to look and assess the damage, she can feel blood running down her fingers. He pulls her again and she stumbles to her feet, looking around as he holds her by her arm. In the distance, she sees a metal building, but there's nothing else around to observe—they're in the middle of the woods.
"Walk," he says again, and she is shoved in the back when she doesn't move at first. Stumbling again, he pushes her toward the building while the driver comes around and shuts the door, and she looks over her shoulder briefly to see what he looks like.
Both men, from what she can tell, seem to be in their twenties or so. They both have thick accents that she recalls from her time in Iraq, and she's kicking herself and wondering how the hell anyone from her time in the CIA, and particularly in Iraq, has found her. This was something she wasn't supposed to have to worry about anymore. Her and her family weren't supposed to be in danger any longer. Yet, here she is, being shoved into the metal building with two men behind her who she thought were in her past.
She looks around once inside. Immediately, she notes the lack of sunlight—no windows, no exits except the one they just came through. She swallows thick, her heart racing once more as she sees a chair in the middle of the room. This was no interrogation—this was an execution.
When they shove her into the chair, she grimaces from the pain on her hand. They tie the zip tie to the chair and tighten it, and she checks to see if she can move at all while they zip tie one ankle to the chair. As they are standing up, she hears footsteps coming from behind her. The first man, the passenger, pulls his gun out and points her directly at her forehead, and she freezes. "Don't dare move." He growls.
She swallows thick and hears the footsteps coming closer, and then she hears them walking to her side, and she finally gets a glimpse at the man. This man, however, she recognized.
She keeps her eyes from widening, trying to steady her breathing and her incessant need to throw up everywhere. Her eyes start to fill with tears, but she blinks a few times to get them away. She can't show weakness—not now. This man wasn't supposed to know she was alive—they'd staged her exit from his area by faking her own murder. Though it was only a ploy to get her out of there safely, Adnan must have somehow found out that it was all fake.
As she stares him in the eyes, she can tell he isn't here for many questions. He's here for revenge.
She swallows hard and clears her throat, "What do you want from me?" She asks, "I don't know anything, if that's what you're after."
"You do know!" He shouts, and she tries to keep herself from jumping, but her leg comes up protectively and her thigh rests against her stomach without even realizing. "You know the CIA assets who came and killed my brother!"
She does know. She knows exactly who they are. She worked closely with them to take down Adnan's brother's operation. Back then, though, Adnan was only a teenager, and now he's a grown man with a gun on his side. She blinks at him once, "I do," she admits. "But you know, too."
"I don't know where to find them," he says, lowering his face down and getting closer to her. He's almost straddling her lap at this point, and her thigh is still pressed against her stomach as he gets in her face, "But you do. You have the resources, Elizabeth."
She swallows thick, unsure how he even knows her real name. They'd all used aliases during that time—if he knows this, and he found where she worked, what else does he know?
"I don't know where to find them." She gets out.
Instead of replying to her, he reaches across and slaps her with the back of his hand across the cheek, and she lets out a squeak as she stares down at the floor to her left. Pulling herself together, she looks him in the eye and tries to say it more defiantly.
"I don't know where to find them, Adnan. Every CIA asset from that mission were placed in safehouses around the world." She explains. That much was the truth. And she also didn't know where they were, it would've been a liability for her to have known.
"Yet I know where your family live," he murmurs, giving her a smile.
"No," she whispers, panic setting in harder now.
He smiles bigger and leans away from her face, backing away from her and circling her like a predator would torture its prey, "You were hard to find, Elizabeth McCord," he says, making sure to add emphasis on her last name. "But your husband was not. I happened to see him on a book tour, pictures in the States," he says, walking back around to the front of her and pausing, "And he happened to be there with you." He says, batting his eyes a few times at her menacingly. "I recognize your face anywhere, I know this face. The face that killed my brother!"
"I didn't kill your brother!" She screams back, but he slaps her other cheek and she whimpers, pulling her leg up again.
He didn't say anything for a moment, and Elizabeth starts to look back up at him and finds where his gaze is. She drops her knee down and puts her foot flat on the floor, and she swallows thick. She knows she's just given herself away. She knows she's compromised the baby. Herself, even.
"I know you had family," he says, "But I didn't know you were busy with a fourth."
Her mind is racing, absorbing the fact that he knows she has three kids and knows where Henry works and—God! Henry! She feels an ache in her chest as she thinks about his own safety, wondering if they took him too. Stevie—soccer practice—she was supposed to pick her up. Her mind feels like she's going in circles, and he kicks her in the shin that's tied to the chair.
With a loud, guttural sound, she looks up at him angrily. "I don't know anything about the people who killed your brother, Adnan."
"You say that," he says, walking to her again and straddling her lap, this time sitting down on her legs and dragging his fingers downward on from her cheekbone to her jaw. She tries to writhe away from him, but he persists and follows her movement. She's leaned as far away as she can be, but he's still got his fingers resting on her jaw. "But I know you were trained to lie, to manipulate," he says, "Just like you manipulated all of us into thinking you and your team were dead."
She takes a shaky breath and feels his other hand moving, and it reaches her side. She jumps away from it, but she can't go far—not with his weight on her lap and her being tied to the chair. His hand slides across her stomach and just below her belly button, and through the sweater she has on, he pushes his thumb harshly into her abdomen. She lets out a whimper from the sudden pain, but also from the fear. "Stop!" She begs.
"Oh, I love it." He says, "Keep going."
She makes herself stop saying anything, knowing all it will do will make him happier if she lets herself speak. He releases the pressure on her stomach and stands up suddenly, "I'm going to let you think about this for a while, Elizabeth, and think about where those assets are." He threatens, "And I'll be back, and next time I won't go so easy on you." He snaps, then lunges toward her and grabs the crown of her hair, yanking her head backwards and forcing her to look up at him, "And when I speak, look at me."
She has a ball of spit just at the edge of her tongue, but she keeps it in. She keeps it in to save her life, and her baby's life. She just prays he thinks she's valuable enough to keep alive.
He lets her head go by tossing it a little, feeling as though she was just given whiplash. Her head straightens and she watches him, and he smirks at her as he walks back in the direction he'd originally come from. "I'm sure you'll talk when I remind you that your daughter hasn't been picked up from basketball practice yet," he murmurs.
Stevie. The feeling of cotton intruding her mouth makes her need to lick her lips, and she swallows hard. "You don't know where she is." She says, "You're bluffing."
"I know exactly where her middle school is and where Alison and Jason are. What I didn't know is that you have been…" his voice trails off and he smirks again, "What is it they say? Getting down to business?" He asks, nodding his head toward her abdomen.
Again, the ache in her sternum arises when she thinks about how stupid it was to give that information to him. She didn't mean to, but if she were still a trained CIA agent, she'd never have given that away.
With that, he walks out of the room and she hears a door shut and then a motor start. She makes note of that—there's two cars, at least, and another exit somewhere that she just couldn't see. Her eyes dart to the passenger—the man who first grabbed her—and she studies him as he slumps against the wall. "Khalil!" The voice scares Elizabeth and she jumps, the pounding in her head starting again. Her eye was starting to swell—the last slap getting much too close to her eye. "Come with us."
Us. There's more. Elizabeth swallows thick and watches as Khalil, the man who was slumped against the wall, stands up and walks away. Before he walks past her, he spits in her direction, and it lands right in her lap. The least of my worries, she thinks to herself.
Her eyes dart to the other man in the room—the only one left—who now has an automatic rifle. It's laying on the floor next to him, and he's not watching her—he's looking in the direction of Khalil. When Elizabeth hears the door shut behind her again, the man looks at her, and she freezes. Neither of them say anything, and she just looks down—at first at the spit on her lap, and then makes herself look away. She hears the motor moving away from the building, and then she can no longer hear it at all.
Some time passes and she hears some shuffling behind her, further away from her—about the same vicinity as the door shutting. She wants to look back, but she refuses to move. She has her head down, trying to not make eye contact with the driver. She'd studied him long enough.
She hears a voice—no, a whistling. He's whistling something that she can't quite put her finger on, and she squints as she tries to tell the tune. She's so tuned in on the sound she almost doesn't hear the shuffling from the driver, and when she looks up, he's already almost right on top of her. She winces a little, "Stop!" She screeches, and he puts his hand over her mouth.
"Shut up," he says, swallowing thick and looking over her shoulder. "What did Adnan mean?" He asks her.
"What?" She says, confused.
"Adnan said business. What business?" His voice is curious, and Elizabeth is picking up a touch of sympathy, even.
She swallows hard and looks into his eyes, studying for any clue that he might be sympathetic toward her. So far, he just displayed curiosity, and maybe a touch of empathy. "I'm pregnant," she makes herself say, hoping to see more empathy twinkle in his eyes. Now she, Henry, Will, Adnan, Khalil, and this driver all know something that even her kids don't.
Henry
"What?" He says, his phone up to his ear as he shoves his hand out in front of him to look at his watch. It was two hours past the time she was supposed to pick Stevie up, and he's rushing to his car. "I'm on my way right now." He says to Stevie who had just been crying to him from the school phone that she was still at practice and the teachers were about to leave.
On his way, he notices something on the ground. It barely caught any light, but one of the keys glimmered. He freezes and looks down, slowly bending and picking the keys up. Elizabeth, he thinks, his mouth going suddenly dry. He feels his heart beating in his throat and looks around, looking for any sign of her. When he sees her car, his heart drops into the pit of his stomach, and he dials the school back. "It's Dr. McCord," he says sternly, "I need the school on lockdown—Stevie's mother—something's happened to her."
He immediately calls the police as he's running to his car, but then he remembers that the police can't do much when it comes to intelligence. This had to be related to her CIA work. Why else would someone kidnap her?
He deletes 9-1-1 from the dial and starts punching in the number for Conrad—a number he had memorized back in 2003 when Elizabeth left for Iraq in case he needed to get an urgent message through. Conrad was the first person he knew could get in contact with Elizabeth.
"Hello?"
"Conrad," Henry breathes, turning the engine on and speeding backwards out of his parking spot, "Elizabeth. She's gone. She was taken from the school and—"
"Whoa, slow down, Henry." Conrad says, and Henry can hear a crowd in the background. "I'm not sure I'm following. What's wrong with Elizabeth?"
"She's gone, Conrad!" He yells into the phone, flying through the mostly-empty parking lot, heading in the direction of the CIA. "Her keys were laying on the sidewalk and her car is still here. She was supposed to pick Stevie up two hours ago! Something's wrong." He seethes.
Aside from the crowd on the other end, there was silence. Henry was about to throw his phone out the window when Conrad finally speaks, "Let me get to headquarters." He says, and Henry was already barreling down the road to meet him there.
This wasn't supposed to happen anymore, he thinks to himself, his hands gripping the wheel tightly. She was supposed to be safe from this. We all were. God, Alison and Jason. The babysitter was supposed to pick them up earlier—they had a half day. He picks up his phone and dials the sitter's number and tells her he's sorry for making her wait, but that they need to be kept a little longer. After that conversation, he pulls into Langley in record time and finds the men guarding the gate. "Call Conrad Dalton and tell him I'm here and to let me in right now!" He's yelling at the men.
But they still weren't budging, even after Henry had explained the situation to them twice now. He was about to yell it one more time when he heard another voice yelling from behind his car, "Let him in!" Conrad says, "He's with me."
The gate immediately opens and Henry is inside the building in no time, waiting on Conrad to catch up. They walk together back to a conference room, and Henry sees the room bustling with people and computer screens projected up on the wall that had locations Elizabeth frequents even now. "You keep tabs on her still?" He asks, dumbfounded.
Conrad clears his throat, "I do," he admits, "I assured you back then she'd be safe. This is not protocol," he warns in a low tone, "So maybe lets not mention it right now."
Henry looks at Conrad and feels a rage bubbling up inside him. How the hell could they let this happen to her? And right now, too, at this time in their lives when everything was already turned upside down? They were supposed to be in the private sector now—they were no longer government employees. Not even himself—though he had done intelligence work more recently than Elizabeth. As he looks around the room, he feels his fists ball up. Why did it have to be her? Why not me? He swallows thick and immediately thinks that it must have something to do with one of her assignments. Someone must've found her.
It feels like hours before someone finally announces, "I think we found her, sir."
Henry knows the woman is talking to Conrad, but he goes over to her anyway and all but begs for more information. "We tracked a van with traffic cameras going down this highway," she says as she's pointing on the map, "And it turned off here."
"And went to the woods." Conrad says, his voice grave.
Henry looks over at him and then back at the map, realizing then and there that this was going to take far too long. He shoves his hands in his pockets, "Follow along if you need, but don't you dare try to stop me." He says, grabbing his keys and heading toward the door.
"Henry!" Conrad yells, "Wait!"
"I'm not waiting," he says, turning and facing Conrad. His hands are shaking as he holds them out in front of his body, creating a barrier between he and the CIA director. "I didn't even tell her I loved her today when I left. So no, Conrad, I can't wait around until the bureaucracy gets their asses in gear and finds her and possibly waits too late. I'm going. Send help if you want."
He knows he shouldn't be going—that it can be dangerous and, honestly, that it's ridiculous to not wait for backup. But he can't bear the thought of her being hurt or shipped off to another country where they'll never find her again. He feels dizzy as he races through the hallways again and out to his car, and he drives off in the direction that they showed on the map. As he's turning toward the woods after driving for thirty minutes—what should've been an hour trip—he sees military vehicles coming in behind him and takes a deep breath. We're going to find you, Elizabeth. I'm going to find you.
Elizabeth
When she hears the back door open again, she picks her head up and freezes. The other man had gone and sat down again after she told him what he'd asked for, but she'd watched him for a little while longer. He was, indeed, sympathetic toward her, and even more so after she'd told him she was carrying a child. She'd stopped herself from begging him to free her multiple times, hoping that he would have to fight the demons in his mind on his own.
Without any sort of warning other than footsteps, she's yanked backwards by her hair, the chair flipping up on its back. She drops to the ground hard, the back of her knee banging down onto the edge of the chair as it's tied with nowhere else to go. She lands on her hands, and she cries out from the pain of all her weight and the chair falling on her right wrist. Had she not been full of adrenaline, she would've heard the cracking noise that ensued.
She opens her eyes to find Adnan staring down at her, smiling, "Given any more thought to my question, Elizabeth?" He asks.
"I don't know where they are," she repeats, her voice trembling. She truly didn't know anything.
"You have the resources to find out."
"I don't know anythi—"
Before she can finish her sentence, he walks around and kicks her in the side just above her hipbone. She cries out again and writhes. Her body wriggles, but not from the pain—from the fact that her worst nightmare is quite possibly coming true. This is how it ended, she thinks to herself, recalling the nightmares she'd had about losing the baby. Everything she'd told herself about it just being anxiety, about mother's intuition not possibly knowing such things…it's all becoming a lie. The truth is setting in as she watches his leg pull back, ready to kick her again.
This time, a gunshot rings out and makes her ears hurt, and then within seconds she feels the weight of a body landing on her. She cries out from more pain, and looks down to see Adnan bleeding out across her body, her sweater absorbing most of his blood but much of it running onto the floor. She hears voices coming from behind her, but before she can assess more, the driver is running up to her and cutting her zip ties. "Go!" He yells, yanking the body off her.
Unable to keep up with everything from being in shock and in so much pain, she has to stare at him for a minute.
"Go!" He yells again, "Go! Get out of here before they—"
She watches as a bullet goes through his head, and she scrambles to her feet and runs to the exit. A bullet goes into the wall beside her, and she runs in the opposite direction as fast as she can—trying to ignore all the pain in her body and fueled by pure fear.
The footsteps are following her closely, and she hears running water somewhere nearby. She runs toward the sound, unable to see very well in the dark, and finally she can see it just well enough that she stops and slowly gets in. Painstakingly slow on multiple accounts—it's freezing cold, she's in a lot of pain, and she's terrified that they'll see her getting in. She can hear the footsteps as she's lowering her shoulders into the water, and then she hears them running right past her. The water is up to her ears as she waits for them to get further away, and she's slowly wading toward the other bank, making herself wait and count for two minutes before letting herself get out. Sopping wet and freezing, she crawls from the water and shivers, trying to stand onto her feet and figure out where to run in the dark from here without running straight into her kidnappers.