Five
Tap tap tap.
Must be raining, Tim's exhausted subconscious muttered, but his body didn't rouse. It couldn't be time to get ready for work yet.
Tap tap tap.
This time the rhythmic tapping was accompanied by a tickling sensation on Tim's cheek, and this finally elicited a response. Tim's hand lifted groggily to bat the offender away, and Tim twisted a little in his confined space- I always wrap my blankets in my sleep- to find a more comfortable position.
“Can't you wait till morning, Jethro?” he slurred.
Jethro snickered, then the snicker turned into a bark of laughter.
Tim's eyes snapped open, his sleep-addled brain remembering that he wasn't at home twisted in his own blankets in his own bed- and that's definitely not Jethro- and that he was looking up at two grinning faces, upside down in his prone potion.
“Gotcha,” gloated Mutt, staring down at Tim, tap tap tapping his fingers against the half open window once again.
Jeff just sneered and tossed away the long weed that Tim suspected had been the source of the tickling on his face.
Staring up into the two brutes' faces, Tim knew he was in a bad position; lying on his back in the confined space of the car, there was nothing for him to do but groan at his bad luck and sigh in resignation. They had him, and he knew it as well as they did. For now.
“Out,” Jeff demanded with a gesture, and Tim sighed again, then sat up and emerged from the car. To Tim's gratification, both burly men took a step back and widened their stances, prepared for anything.
“You couldn't at least let me get my whole two hours sleep?” Tim groused, making a show of his discontent. He'd learned that those two had the same characteristics as all bullies. Showing fear simply drew their attention to possible entertainment. Just before Tim slammed the car door, his eye caught the bright green pendant lying on the car seat, right next to his phone. He reached in and grabbed both quickly, with one hand, and stuffed them in his pocket just as each of the men seized an arm.
Tim smirked. Apparently they'd learned not to underestimate him, a fact that surprised Tim as much as them. They'd been chasing him for five days, catching up to him numerous times, but this was he first time they'd actually had him in their custody. They'd mistaken Tim's quick snatching of the items as an attempt of some kind in their jumpiness.
They quickly restrained Tim with a white plastic tie around his wrists that they tightened to the point of pain, but Tim was just glad that his hands were restrained in front of him rather than behind. An experimental pull proved that he wouldn't easily escape, and he received chafed skin for his trouble. They hadn't patted him down, though, or searched him. Amateurs, Tim scoffed to himself. Gibbs would head-smack us into next week if we didn't bother checking someone after cuffing them. Not that Tim was complaining. He still had his knife strapped to his ankle and his phone in his pocket, and he would have been devastated if they'd taken Sara's necklace from him. He couldn't imagine why they hadn't bothered to see what he'd stuffed into his pocket; he'd tried to hide the phone cupped in the palm of his hand, but the necklace had dangled free, in full view. Maybe they hadn't seen the phone? It didn't seem as if they had.
“Get in,” Mutt ordered, pulling open the back door of their own vehicle, a much nicer one than the one Tim had stolen. Tim was willing to bet, though, that for all the newness of this more modern vehicle, that the engine didn't sound near as good as the one he'd been driving.
He sighed at the loss of the car and hoped he could get it back to it's proper owner eventually.
Tim settled himself in the back passenger seat, and Jeff reached in and pulled the shoulder seat belt across his chest and over his abdomen, buckling it.
“Get comfy,” Jeff smirked. “This is where you stay. You unbuckle and I'll know.”
“And just in case you're wondering,” Mutt threw in with a mocking grin, “the back doors have child locks engaged. You can't open them from inside.”
Good to know, Tim thought as the door was slammed, confining him to his little corner of the backseat. But he still couldn't help giving his door a quick try before Mutt and Jeff joined him in the car, seating themselves up front.
They hadn't lied.
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“Whatta ya got, Abs,” Gibbs said immediately on answering his phone.
“Hello, Gibbs,” Abby said pointedly.
Gibbs sighed. “Hello, Abby. What've you got?”
“I've missed talking to you, Gibbs. You've been gone five days and you haven't called me once! Don't you miss me?”
“I miss you, Abs. Now tell me what you've got. Did you ID the six in the tapes?”
Abby seemed to understand that it was time to get down to business, because she didn't continue what Gibbs knew could turn into a whole tirade, answering his question instead.
“Yep. And it's pretty big. First off, we know why Tim took off after these people. They've got Sara, Gibbs!”
“Sara?” Gibbs asked for clarification, then his mind snapped in that way it does when all the pieces finally start to fit. “You mean Sara McGee? His sister?”
“The one and only, Gibbs, and you have to get her back! What if she's being hurt? And poor Timmy's probably out of his mind, worrying about her.”
“I'll find her, Abs. And him, too,” he said in an attempt to calm her down. He wondered how many Caf Pows she'd sucked down already. “So we know Tim's motivation. What about the others? The ones that have Sara, and the other two?”
“Okay. I'm sending their idents to your phone but here's the rundown. The three that have Sara have rap sheets miles long. Two of them have been accused several times of extortion, harassment and threats, assault, attempted murder and murder on various degrees. None of the allegations ever stuck, though. They've always managed to weasel out somehow and neither of them have ever done time. The other guy went a whole different route with his life of crime, and he's just recently been released from state jail for, and I quote, 'intrusion into sensitive and confidential government files by way of remote access', unquote. He's a hacker, Gibbs!”
“Hacker.”
“Yeah. Kinda like Tim, only he does it illegally. Well, I guess Tim does, too, cause no hacking is legal, you know, but at least Tim-”
“You said 'he',” Gibbs interrupted her sternly, and Abby quieted. Gibbs knew she could go on forever if given the chance. “So that means one of the alleged murderers is the woman?”
“Righto , my silver haired fox! She's one tough customer. Her rap sheet's longer than her 'alleged comrade in arms'. Sara's keeping not-so-good company right now.”
“What about the other two?”
“That's where it gets even more interesting, Gibbs. Listen to this.”
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“So.....you guys got anything to eat?” Tim asked from the backseat.
“Sorry,” Jeff, the driver, smirked at Tim in the mirror. “Feeding time at the zoo is over.”
“I think you need a shower more than you need food, Timmy-boy,” Mutt taunted. “God, you stink!”
Tim didn't bother to answer. He knew he was less than pristine. He was filthy, clothes and all, with dust and grime, sweat, and old blood. The first couple days, Tim had rented motel rooms for a shower and bed for a few hours at a time, and he'd had clothes to change into. But for the bigger part of the last three days he'd been broke, and then he'd lost his clothes with his car, and he'd also become more determined and obsessed to keep up with Sara and ahead of Gibbs; there just hadn't been room for things like a shower.
But Tim didn't care. As far as he was concerned, it was a small payback to the two goons for stuffing him into the car.
“How do you know who I am?” Tim asked. They'd used his name several times in their encounters, but he hadn't exactly taken the time to ask. But now, it seemed, he was in the perfect position to find out as much as he could.
“We know lots of things, Timmy,” Mutt answered.
“Fine. So you know me, or at least about me, for some reason. Does that mean you know what I'm doing out here?”
“Of course.” Jeff didn't elaborate, so Tim didn't bother to expand on it. Jeff could, of course, be lying, in which case Tim didn't want to give them any information they didn't already know. He didn't really think Jeff was lying, but Tim decided to err on the side of caution.
“So you're in this with them?” No explanation was needed who 'them' was, if these two really knew who what he'd been up to. Tim was pretty sure they weren't, but he didn't have any other ideas of why they might have been trying to catch up with him.
His found that his suspicions were correct when he caught the two of them sharing an amused glance with each other, Mutt uttering his trademark snicker.
“Not exactly,” Jeff explained to Tim through his rear view mirror. With another glance of humor at his partner, he said “We're a little more.....organized.....than that, if you catch my drift.”
“Organized? As in.....organized?” Surely they couldn't mean what Tim thought they meant. Why would an organized crime operation have any interest in him?
“That's right,” Mutt gloated. “How do you feel about us now?”
“You guys? Nothing. You're obviously just the flunkies, the background muscle,” Tim said, almost stunned at his own bravery. Or was it stupidity? Maybe he was channeling Tony again. Tony never knew when to shut his mouth, and he always got worse in the tensest moments.
Mutt turned around in his seat, reached back with his muscled arms, and gave Tim's head a hard shove. Tim's head, as Mutt had untented, bounced off the window hard enough for Tim to see black spots in front of his eyes. A painful goose egg began forming immediately, adding to the bruises already marring Tim's face.
“Big words for a man with his hands tied,” Mutt taunted as he turned back to face forward.
“Good one, Leslie,” Jeff laughed, complimenting his blonde counterpart.
“Leslie?” Tim asked in what felt like glee. He didn't stop to think better it. “Leslie? You're kidding me. Your name is Leslie.” That name was as far from fitting the bullish, muscled blonde man as would be calling Gibbs a kitten.
“What of it?” Leslie snapped. That was obviously a sensitive subject. “There's nothing wrong with that name. My father and grandfather had that name. It's a manly name.”
“Whatever you say, Leslie.” This time the teasing came from the driver's seat, from Mutt/Leslie's own partner.
This time, it was Tim's turn to snicker, but it just resulted in Mutt/Leslie reaching back in fury and socking Tim in the stomach.
Jeff laughed while Mutt/Leslie pouted. Tim said nothing, just tried to regain his breath and fight down his gag reflex as he stayed bent almost double over his lap.
It was at that moment that Tim's phone beeped insistently from his hip pocket.
“What's that?” Jeff demanded, staring at Tim through the rear view.
“My watch,” Tim lied, his voice still thick with the pain of the gut-punch. “I had it set to wake me up.”
Jeff's glance flicked to Tim's wrists, both of which were glaringly lacking a timepiece. Tim had lost it days ago, and he had no idea where. “It's in my pocket,” Tim explained quickly.
“Well shut it off,” Jeff ordered, returning his eyes to the road. Mutt, as Tim was too used to referring him as to change it, said nothing and seemed to take no interest in the exchange.
Tim slipped his hand into his pocket, awkwardly in the restraint, and pushed a button on the phone, getting the right one just by luck and quieting the beep. It would have stopped soon on it's own anyway, Tim knew, because it wasn't the alarm, which he'd shut off earlier, but the tone that signaled a text message. Sara's text message. Another tidbit to inform him where she was or where she was headed.
Tim waited several minutes, watching Jeff closely to determine that he wasn't watching Tim through his mirror. When Tim felt it was safe enough to move some without suspicion, he slipped his hand back into his pocket, feeling for his phone. It was a hard reach, because the phone had slid deeper and the tie around Tim's wrists restricted him. Tim forced his hand deeper, ignoring the pain of the plastic tie pulling at his other wrist, and stretched his legs out a little to loosen the pocket. Jeff's eyes flicked to Tim in the mirror, and Tim stretched his back and shifted position on the seat in an obvious way to disguise what he was really doing. When Jeff's eyes returned to the road, Tim finally got his finger tips around the small phone and pulled it out slowly.
Holding it down out of view between his leg and the car door, Tim glanced down at the screen.
'into KY. Harlan.'
So. They'd crossed the border into Harlan, Kentucky. Tim closed his eyes and tried to imagine the atlas he'd had a couple days ago. Had he seen Harlan? Yes! It was the first town over the border from Virginia to Kentucky. Tim's eyes snapped open and he took in his current course.
They were headed in the wrong direction. Whatever Mutt and Jeff's bosses wanted with him, they were taking him off his course for it.
Tim felt that urgent obsessed need that had become familiar in the past couple days to get back on course and resume his hunt. Those people, whoever they were, were taking Sara further away, and Tim's 'escorts' were dragging him in the wrong direction.
It took all of Tim's will power not to scream at them to Stop! Turn around! He had to change course!
Tim's hands balled into fists in his effort at control. He knew it wouldn't help, they would only laugh at his demands and desperation.
He had to get away. Before, he'd thought he would simply wait for his chance and go, but Tim was no longer willing to do that. He couldn't afford to just wait. They'd already taken Sara across one border and Tim didn't know how far they planned on going, or why, and his struggles to catch up with her were now being reversed by the two idiots in the front seat. And he instinctively knew that if he waited too long it would be too late. Tim had the not-so-irrational fear that if he lost her trail again, they'd just take her further and further away and he'd never find her.
Screw waiting for his chance. Tim was going to have to make his chance, and as soon as he could.
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“Whadda you mean you lost the signal, Abs?” Gibbs demanded into the phone.
“It just stopped, Gibbs! I've been tracking Sarah's phone signal, like I told you, and I didn't really think I'd catch it, cause it has to be actively in use. But then, whammo! I got it! It looks like a text, but it was active for a few minutes. I was following it, but before I could get a lock on it, it disappeared. And not just inactive, but like......non-existent.”
“So you didn't get Sara's location?”
“No. Sorry, Gibbs.”
“Don't apologize. It was a good try. Let me talk to DiNozzo.”
“Tony? Uh....Tony. Right. Well, he's not here at the moment, Gibbs.”
“Where is he?”
“Not really sure, Gibbs,” Abby answered hesitantly, and Gibbs knew right away she was keeping something from him, but Gibbs didn't have the time to glean the information from her at the moment. He knew he could get it when he needed to with a simple order, and he had other things to worry about than DiNozzo's current shenanigans.
Likely, he was up to something juvenile but clever in an attempt to keep the wool pulled over Vance's eyes, and Abby didn't want to rat him out or get him into trouble. And to be honest, Gibbs often felt much better about leaving DiNozzo to handle things if he didn't know exactly how DiNozzo was handling them. As long as DiNozzo did what was necessary to get things done, Gibbs didn't usually mind dealing with the possible fallout later, when he was back in charge. Usually. Of course, that didn't exclude DiNozzo from a Gibbs-style chiding; that was his job, and it would prepare DiNozzo for when he had his own team in the future. There were always consequences for certain actions, and by then, DiNozzo would have learned to weigh the actions and consequences, because t hen, consequences for bad decisions would be much more severe than Gibbs' wrath.
“Fine. I'll call his phone, and he'd better answer this time. I'll keep in touch.” Gibbs disconnected without waiting for a response, knowing Abby would immediately pass on Gibbs' warning. He had to get back on Tim's trail.
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A quarter of a mile over the Virginia/Kentucky border, a black four door car was pulled over on the side of the road, four occupants inside.
In the front seat, two occupants, a man and woman, watched as, in the back, a young woman cowered from her backseat companion. Her hands were tied together with thin rope, chafed and bleeding after several days, and her face and arms showed evidence of her days of abuse. Her bully's face displayed small marks of her attempts to defend herself on other occasions.
The young woman had made a mistake. She'd become too confident in her ability to be sneaky right in the presence of her captors. She'd gotten away with it up to now, but this time she'd been caught, and she cursed herself for risking it while in the car. They always left at least one to watch her at gas stops, but this time her watcher had stepped outside for a few moments of fresh air.
She'd taken her chance then, feeling the urgent need to let her brother know they'd crossed the border, but her watcher hadn't been far enough away.
They did nothing at that moment, of course, with the eyes of others around. They'd waited until they'd driven a little away from the traffic of the gas station and pulled off onto a side road.
Now the young woman's face showed fresh abuse, though she still refused to cry. They hadn't yet made her cry, and this frustrated her captors to no end, but she wouldn't give them that satisfaction as long as she could help it.
And now her phone, that one life line to her brother and rescue, lay smashed in the street, the victim of a hard boot heel.
She didn't really know if Tim was still on the other end of her communications, because she hadn't heard from him since he'd tried calling her phone with his own prepaid cell, and she tried telling herself that was a good thing. She'd texted his new number back with instruction not to call or text; as she'd expected, that fortunate moment she'd had alone, locked in the trunk of the car when he'd called, had been pretty much the last private moment she'd had, and she didn't want to risk losing the phone. That had given her the idea, though, to continue sending him clues when she thought she could get away with it, and it had worked up to now. She didn't know who was getting them, Tim or other law enforcement, but she knew that Tim would do whatever possible to save her.
But her cockiness had cost her this time, and as the car regained the paved road, her smashed phone left behind and useless, Sara McGee prayed as fresh blood dripped from her nose.
Please find me, Tim, get me away from these people. God, please please help my brother save me.
TBC
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Must be raining, Tim's exhausted subconscious muttered, but his body didn't rouse. It couldn't be time to get ready for work yet.
Tap tap tap.
This time the rhythmic tapping was accompanied by a tickling sensation on Tim's cheek, and this finally elicited a response. Tim's hand lifted groggily to bat the offender away, and Tim twisted a little in his confined space- I always wrap my blankets in my sleep- to find a more comfortable position.
“Can't you wait till morning, Jethro?” he slurred.
Jethro snickered, then the snicker turned into a bark of laughter.
Tim's eyes snapped open, his sleep-addled brain remembering that he wasn't at home twisted in his own blankets in his own bed- and that's definitely not Jethro- and that he was looking up at two grinning faces, upside down in his prone potion.
“Gotcha,” gloated Mutt, staring down at Tim, tap tap tapping his fingers against the half open window once again.
Jeff just sneered and tossed away the long weed that Tim suspected had been the source of the tickling on his face.
Staring up into the two brutes' faces, Tim knew he was in a bad position; lying on his back in the confined space of the car, there was nothing for him to do but groan at his bad luck and sigh in resignation. They had him, and he knew it as well as they did. For now.
“Out,” Jeff demanded with a gesture, and Tim sighed again, then sat up and emerged from the car. To Tim's gratification, both burly men took a step back and widened their stances, prepared for anything.
“You couldn't at least let me get my whole two hours sleep?” Tim groused, making a show of his discontent. He'd learned that those two had the same characteristics as all bullies. Showing fear simply drew their attention to possible entertainment. Just before Tim slammed the car door, his eye caught the bright green pendant lying on the car seat, right next to his phone. He reached in and grabbed both quickly, with one hand, and stuffed them in his pocket just as each of the men seized an arm.
Tim smirked. Apparently they'd learned not to underestimate him, a fact that surprised Tim as much as them. They'd been chasing him for five days, catching up to him numerous times, but this was he first time they'd actually had him in their custody. They'd mistaken Tim's quick snatching of the items as an attempt of some kind in their jumpiness.
They quickly restrained Tim with a white plastic tie around his wrists that they tightened to the point of pain, but Tim was just glad that his hands were restrained in front of him rather than behind. An experimental pull proved that he wouldn't easily escape, and he received chafed skin for his trouble. They hadn't patted him down, though, or searched him. Amateurs, Tim scoffed to himself. Gibbs would head-smack us into next week if we didn't bother checking someone after cuffing them. Not that Tim was complaining. He still had his knife strapped to his ankle and his phone in his pocket, and he would have been devastated if they'd taken Sara's necklace from him. He couldn't imagine why they hadn't bothered to see what he'd stuffed into his pocket; he'd tried to hide the phone cupped in the palm of his hand, but the necklace had dangled free, in full view. Maybe they hadn't seen the phone? It didn't seem as if they had.
“Get in,” Mutt ordered, pulling open the back door of their own vehicle, a much nicer one than the one Tim had stolen. Tim was willing to bet, though, that for all the newness of this more modern vehicle, that the engine didn't sound near as good as the one he'd been driving.
He sighed at the loss of the car and hoped he could get it back to it's proper owner eventually.
Tim settled himself in the back passenger seat, and Jeff reached in and pulled the shoulder seat belt across his chest and over his abdomen, buckling it.
“Get comfy,” Jeff smirked. “This is where you stay. You unbuckle and I'll know.”
“And just in case you're wondering,” Mutt threw in with a mocking grin, “the back doors have child locks engaged. You can't open them from inside.”
Good to know, Tim thought as the door was slammed, confining him to his little corner of the backseat. But he still couldn't help giving his door a quick try before Mutt and Jeff joined him in the car, seating themselves up front.
They hadn't lied.
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“Whatta ya got, Abs,” Gibbs said immediately on answering his phone.
“Hello, Gibbs,” Abby said pointedly.
Gibbs sighed. “Hello, Abby. What've you got?”
“I've missed talking to you, Gibbs. You've been gone five days and you haven't called me once! Don't you miss me?”
“I miss you, Abs. Now tell me what you've got. Did you ID the six in the tapes?”
Abby seemed to understand that it was time to get down to business, because she didn't continue what Gibbs knew could turn into a whole tirade, answering his question instead.
“Yep. And it's pretty big. First off, we know why Tim took off after these people. They've got Sara, Gibbs!”
“Sara?” Gibbs asked for clarification, then his mind snapped in that way it does when all the pieces finally start to fit. “You mean Sara McGee? His sister?”
“The one and only, Gibbs, and you have to get her back! What if she's being hurt? And poor Timmy's probably out of his mind, worrying about her.”
“I'll find her, Abs. And him, too,” he said in an attempt to calm her down. He wondered how many Caf Pows she'd sucked down already. “So we know Tim's motivation. What about the others? The ones that have Sara, and the other two?”
“Okay. I'm sending their idents to your phone but here's the rundown. The three that have Sara have rap sheets miles long. Two of them have been accused several times of extortion, harassment and threats, assault, attempted murder and murder on various degrees. None of the allegations ever stuck, though. They've always managed to weasel out somehow and neither of them have ever done time. The other guy went a whole different route with his life of crime, and he's just recently been released from state jail for, and I quote, 'intrusion into sensitive and confidential government files by way of remote access', unquote. He's a hacker, Gibbs!”
“Hacker.”
“Yeah. Kinda like Tim, only he does it illegally. Well, I guess Tim does, too, cause no hacking is legal, you know, but at least Tim-”
“You said 'he',” Gibbs interrupted her sternly, and Abby quieted. Gibbs knew she could go on forever if given the chance. “So that means one of the alleged murderers is the woman?”
“Righto , my silver haired fox! She's one tough customer. Her rap sheet's longer than her 'alleged comrade in arms'. Sara's keeping not-so-good company right now.”
“What about the other two?”
“That's where it gets even more interesting, Gibbs. Listen to this.”
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“So.....you guys got anything to eat?” Tim asked from the backseat.
“Sorry,” Jeff, the driver, smirked at Tim in the mirror. “Feeding time at the zoo is over.”
“I think you need a shower more than you need food, Timmy-boy,” Mutt taunted. “God, you stink!”
Tim didn't bother to answer. He knew he was less than pristine. He was filthy, clothes and all, with dust and grime, sweat, and old blood. The first couple days, Tim had rented motel rooms for a shower and bed for a few hours at a time, and he'd had clothes to change into. But for the bigger part of the last three days he'd been broke, and then he'd lost his clothes with his car, and he'd also become more determined and obsessed to keep up with Sara and ahead of Gibbs; there just hadn't been room for things like a shower.
But Tim didn't care. As far as he was concerned, it was a small payback to the two goons for stuffing him into the car.
“How do you know who I am?” Tim asked. They'd used his name several times in their encounters, but he hadn't exactly taken the time to ask. But now, it seemed, he was in the perfect position to find out as much as he could.
“We know lots of things, Timmy,” Mutt answered.
“Fine. So you know me, or at least about me, for some reason. Does that mean you know what I'm doing out here?”
“Of course.” Jeff didn't elaborate, so Tim didn't bother to expand on it. Jeff could, of course, be lying, in which case Tim didn't want to give them any information they didn't already know. He didn't really think Jeff was lying, but Tim decided to err on the side of caution.
“So you're in this with them?” No explanation was needed who 'them' was, if these two really knew who what he'd been up to. Tim was pretty sure they weren't, but he didn't have any other ideas of why they might have been trying to catch up with him.
His found that his suspicions were correct when he caught the two of them sharing an amused glance with each other, Mutt uttering his trademark snicker.
“Not exactly,” Jeff explained to Tim through his rear view mirror. With another glance of humor at his partner, he said “We're a little more.....organized.....than that, if you catch my drift.”
“Organized? As in.....organized?” Surely they couldn't mean what Tim thought they meant. Why would an organized crime operation have any interest in him?
“That's right,” Mutt gloated. “How do you feel about us now?”
“You guys? Nothing. You're obviously just the flunkies, the background muscle,” Tim said, almost stunned at his own bravery. Or was it stupidity? Maybe he was channeling Tony again. Tony never knew when to shut his mouth, and he always got worse in the tensest moments.
Mutt turned around in his seat, reached back with his muscled arms, and gave Tim's head a hard shove. Tim's head, as Mutt had untented, bounced off the window hard enough for Tim to see black spots in front of his eyes. A painful goose egg began forming immediately, adding to the bruises already marring Tim's face.
“Big words for a man with his hands tied,” Mutt taunted as he turned back to face forward.
“Good one, Leslie,” Jeff laughed, complimenting his blonde counterpart.
“Leslie?” Tim asked in what felt like glee. He didn't stop to think better it. “Leslie? You're kidding me. Your name is Leslie.” That name was as far from fitting the bullish, muscled blonde man as would be calling Gibbs a kitten.
“What of it?” Leslie snapped. That was obviously a sensitive subject. “There's nothing wrong with that name. My father and grandfather had that name. It's a manly name.”
“Whatever you say, Leslie.” This time the teasing came from the driver's seat, from Mutt/Leslie's own partner.
This time, it was Tim's turn to snicker, but it just resulted in Mutt/Leslie reaching back in fury and socking Tim in the stomach.
Jeff laughed while Mutt/Leslie pouted. Tim said nothing, just tried to regain his breath and fight down his gag reflex as he stayed bent almost double over his lap.
It was at that moment that Tim's phone beeped insistently from his hip pocket.
“What's that?” Jeff demanded, staring at Tim through the rear view.
“My watch,” Tim lied, his voice still thick with the pain of the gut-punch. “I had it set to wake me up.”
Jeff's glance flicked to Tim's wrists, both of which were glaringly lacking a timepiece. Tim had lost it days ago, and he had no idea where. “It's in my pocket,” Tim explained quickly.
“Well shut it off,” Jeff ordered, returning his eyes to the road. Mutt, as Tim was too used to referring him as to change it, said nothing and seemed to take no interest in the exchange.
Tim slipped his hand into his pocket, awkwardly in the restraint, and pushed a button on the phone, getting the right one just by luck and quieting the beep. It would have stopped soon on it's own anyway, Tim knew, because it wasn't the alarm, which he'd shut off earlier, but the tone that signaled a text message. Sara's text message. Another tidbit to inform him where she was or where she was headed.
Tim waited several minutes, watching Jeff closely to determine that he wasn't watching Tim through his mirror. When Tim felt it was safe enough to move some without suspicion, he slipped his hand back into his pocket, feeling for his phone. It was a hard reach, because the phone had slid deeper and the tie around Tim's wrists restricted him. Tim forced his hand deeper, ignoring the pain of the plastic tie pulling at his other wrist, and stretched his legs out a little to loosen the pocket. Jeff's eyes flicked to Tim in the mirror, and Tim stretched his back and shifted position on the seat in an obvious way to disguise what he was really doing. When Jeff's eyes returned to the road, Tim finally got his finger tips around the small phone and pulled it out slowly.
Holding it down out of view between his leg and the car door, Tim glanced down at the screen.
'into KY. Harlan.'
So. They'd crossed the border into Harlan, Kentucky. Tim closed his eyes and tried to imagine the atlas he'd had a couple days ago. Had he seen Harlan? Yes! It was the first town over the border from Virginia to Kentucky. Tim's eyes snapped open and he took in his current course.
They were headed in the wrong direction. Whatever Mutt and Jeff's bosses wanted with him, they were taking him off his course for it.
Tim felt that urgent obsessed need that had become familiar in the past couple days to get back on course and resume his hunt. Those people, whoever they were, were taking Sara further away, and Tim's 'escorts' were dragging him in the wrong direction.
It took all of Tim's will power not to scream at them to Stop! Turn around! He had to change course!
Tim's hands balled into fists in his effort at control. He knew it wouldn't help, they would only laugh at his demands and desperation.
He had to get away. Before, he'd thought he would simply wait for his chance and go, but Tim was no longer willing to do that. He couldn't afford to just wait. They'd already taken Sara across one border and Tim didn't know how far they planned on going, or why, and his struggles to catch up with her were now being reversed by the two idiots in the front seat. And he instinctively knew that if he waited too long it would be too late. Tim had the not-so-irrational fear that if he lost her trail again, they'd just take her further and further away and he'd never find her.
Screw waiting for his chance. Tim was going to have to make his chance, and as soon as he could.
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“Whadda you mean you lost the signal, Abs?” Gibbs demanded into the phone.
“It just stopped, Gibbs! I've been tracking Sarah's phone signal, like I told you, and I didn't really think I'd catch it, cause it has to be actively in use. But then, whammo! I got it! It looks like a text, but it was active for a few minutes. I was following it, but before I could get a lock on it, it disappeared. And not just inactive, but like......non-existent.”
“So you didn't get Sara's location?”
“No. Sorry, Gibbs.”
“Don't apologize. It was a good try. Let me talk to DiNozzo.”
“Tony? Uh....Tony. Right. Well, he's not here at the moment, Gibbs.”
“Where is he?”
“Not really sure, Gibbs,” Abby answered hesitantly, and Gibbs knew right away she was keeping something from him, but Gibbs didn't have the time to glean the information from her at the moment. He knew he could get it when he needed to with a simple order, and he had other things to worry about than DiNozzo's current shenanigans.
Likely, he was up to something juvenile but clever in an attempt to keep the wool pulled over Vance's eyes, and Abby didn't want to rat him out or get him into trouble. And to be honest, Gibbs often felt much better about leaving DiNozzo to handle things if he didn't know exactly how DiNozzo was handling them. As long as DiNozzo did what was necessary to get things done, Gibbs didn't usually mind dealing with the possible fallout later, when he was back in charge. Usually. Of course, that didn't exclude DiNozzo from a Gibbs-style chiding; that was his job, and it would prepare DiNozzo for when he had his own team in the future. There were always consequences for certain actions, and by then, DiNozzo would have learned to weigh the actions and consequences, because t hen, consequences for bad decisions would be much more severe than Gibbs' wrath.
“Fine. I'll call his phone, and he'd better answer this time. I'll keep in touch.” Gibbs disconnected without waiting for a response, knowing Abby would immediately pass on Gibbs' warning. He had to get back on Tim's trail.
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A quarter of a mile over the Virginia/Kentucky border, a black four door car was pulled over on the side of the road, four occupants inside.
In the front seat, two occupants, a man and woman, watched as, in the back, a young woman cowered from her backseat companion. Her hands were tied together with thin rope, chafed and bleeding after several days, and her face and arms showed evidence of her days of abuse. Her bully's face displayed small marks of her attempts to defend herself on other occasions.
The young woman had made a mistake. She'd become too confident in her ability to be sneaky right in the presence of her captors. She'd gotten away with it up to now, but this time she'd been caught, and she cursed herself for risking it while in the car. They always left at least one to watch her at gas stops, but this time her watcher had stepped outside for a few moments of fresh air.
She'd taken her chance then, feeling the urgent need to let her brother know they'd crossed the border, but her watcher hadn't been far enough away.
They did nothing at that moment, of course, with the eyes of others around. They'd waited until they'd driven a little away from the traffic of the gas station and pulled off onto a side road.
Now the young woman's face showed fresh abuse, though she still refused to cry. They hadn't yet made her cry, and this frustrated her captors to no end, but she wouldn't give them that satisfaction as long as she could help it.
And now her phone, that one life line to her brother and rescue, lay smashed in the street, the victim of a hard boot heel.
She didn't really know if Tim was still on the other end of her communications, because she hadn't heard from him since he'd tried calling her phone with his own prepaid cell, and she tried telling herself that was a good thing. She'd texted his new number back with instruction not to call or text; as she'd expected, that fortunate moment she'd had alone, locked in the trunk of the car when he'd called, had been pretty much the last private moment she'd had, and she didn't want to risk losing the phone. That had given her the idea, though, to continue sending him clues when she thought she could get away with it, and it had worked up to now. She didn't know who was getting them, Tim or other law enforcement, but she knew that Tim would do whatever possible to save her.
But her cockiness had cost her this time, and as the car regained the paved road, her smashed phone left behind and useless, Sara McGee prayed as fresh blood dripped from her nose.
Please find me, Tim, get me away from these people. God, please please help my brother save me.
TBC
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