A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews on the last chapter! I was a little stuck on moving this story forward, but here's the next chapter, and forward we go. And we're just a few minutes before sunset, which is good - because you know I don't like writing this story in the dark. I suppose the whole story gets a content warning, but I'm going to reiterate it for this chapter.
Friday, 11:56 a.m.
Secrets.
The boss is manipulating her, she knows this, but she also knows she's weak from fear, her heart and all her muscles working overtime since the door burst open last night and this nightmare began.
But still.
Now the boss is just looking at her with those cold eyes. She's waiting for something, but Addison isn't sure what.
"Boss?"
They both turn to see two masked men in the doorway.
She only recognizes one of them.
How many of you are there?
Before she can count in her head, before she can panic any more than usual, the two men have crossed the room – swift and menacing, and she shrinks back in her chair instinctually.
Their voices are muffled, but the tone alarms her.
"What's going on?" She hears her voice rise. "Is Derek okay?"
The boss stands up and looks down at Addison like she's a bug.
A bug on her back.
Then she turns to the intruder Addison recognized, before. The one she's been thinking of as the taller one since last night, even though there's no shorter one to compare him to.
Not alive, anyway. Not anymore.
"Keep her quiet, please," the boss says. Her voice is calm, even polite.
And then she's gone.
Fast and quiet, like every step Addison has seen her take. She can't make out the direction, not past the kitchen door. Is she going to back to whatever's in the basement?
Her heart speeds up, making her feel faint.
The taller intruder ignores her. She stands up, no longer able to sit.
"What's going on? Please just tell me."
He doesn't.
She takes one more step toward him, not even sure why, just desperate to know.
And he shoves her against the wall.
She's caught off guard, too fast to brace herself and the back of her skull thumps its hard surface.
She inhales on a cry of pain, not wanting to satisfy the intruder, but she can tell he's distracted – too distracted to enjoy the discomfort he's inflicted, and that's not like him.
A gong interrupts the silence, from the living room. The old grandfather clock.
"What is it?" she asks. "Something's going on."
"Shut up."
She counts the gongs to try to calm herself. Twelve in all. They fill her head and then she's talking again even though she knows she shouldn't.
"Did something happen to Derek?" her voice rises, she can't stop herself even as he shoves her again, a hand at the base of her throat.
"Something's going to happen to you if you don't shut up."
"Johnson."
The intruder turns at his name, Addison still somewhere between surprised and confused first that he has a name at all, and second at how ordinary it is.
Even when nothing else about this house is ordinary, not anymore."She wants you," the New One says.
The taller intruder gives her a look of contempt and one last shove against the wall.
"Keep her quiet," he instructs the New One, who nods.
Addison shrinks back against the wall instinctually as the other intruder approaches. She's realizing how tired she is, too tired for bravado.
"Pissing him off again, huh?" the New One asks. He doesn't seem particularly angry about it.
Addison doesn't say anything. Having him this close is making her heart thump. He doesn't shove her, though, or touch her at all.
He rests a leather-clad hand on the wall next to her and she sees that same hand, last night, touching her. Resting on her stomach. It could have been worse, god, it could have been so much worse.
He steps back, a smirk visible in the cutouts of his mask.
"Give me your hands," he says.
"No."
She resists instinctually again when he reaches for her, nerve endings tingling. Somehow she's faster – just the first time, any sense of relief gone when he easily grabs her wrists the second time.
She forces breath in, and then out.
Stay calm.
"Tell me what happened," she proposes. "Please. What's happening at the hospital?"
He looks from her captured hands to her face, contempt in his voice when he speaks. "Do you think this is funny?"
Her hands are flat against the wall now, the pressure on her wrists making her want to scream, but she doesn't respond.
"Answer me," he says, tightening his hold until she can't keep her eyes from watering.
"You answer me," she counters.
Addie, stop, and she hears it in Derek's voice – a warning, a defense, all at once, but when he takes another step closer, no distance between them at all … it seems like it's too late now.
"You know what? I think you behaved better before you got all dressed up."
She's confused for a moment, thinking of the costume they forced on her the previous night. But then his hands are at the waistband of her jeans and she realizes the meaning of his words.
..
He's alone in his office, scans on the lightboard, and it's ordinary. It's so ordinary.
Except nothing is ordinary and just breathing is a complex task with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The aneurysm is a blur – not the dilation itself, visible clearly on the scan, but its surroundings.
He can't focus.
He has to operate on Franklin Schaff, has promised to operate on Franklin Schaff, was hand selected to operate on Franklin Schaff.
Because of his focus.
It's his trademark, his skill set, and Addison loves it. At least she used to. Sometimes, lately, it's too much for her, that's what she says. You're so focused on your work, you're missing out on other things.
Is that what happened here?
He missed out on something, something that could have alerted him to this danger?
He's the center of it. He's the reason his wife is handcuffed in her own kitchen, at the mercy of intruders with enough manpower and weapons that they don't stand a chance, even if they weren't trying to protect each other.
What did he miss?
He kicks himself. Again, and again. He grips a pen to keep his hand from shaking, taps it on the desk.
Almost no one knew about Franklin Schaff. That was the plan.
Focus, Derek.
To know enough to do this? To plan this?
Focus, Derek.
He still doesn't know what they want from him. Not specifically. But he knows enough to know it's not good.
Not good at all.
"Excuse me, doctor?"
He drops the pen, startled.
It's just the young man on the janitorial team who comes by to empty his wastebasket, that's all. Derek indicates the can with a brief nod.
And then the air next to him moves as the cleaner approaches. A simple displacement, but it raises the hairs on his arm.
Is it the same cleaner who came last night?
And the night before that?
Is he ordinary? Or, despite his familiar green uniform, is he in fact a stranger?
Is he emptying the trash, or using his proximity to Derek to make sure he's maintaining his façade?
He has no answers, only questions, only a weak thanks when the cleaner finishes. His wave goodbye is almost jaunty.
The rest of the world has never seemed so strange, so menacing.
Not here at the hospital, which has always been his place.
His second home.
And now his second home, and his first home, have both been invaded.
He focuses again.
Not on the scans, but on the silver frame on his desk.
Addison, on the beach. She framed it, she set it there when she decorated his office. I know it's a cliché, I know that's what everyone frames, but you did say you wanted one of just me …. He remembers her voice trailed off a little at the end. He did request exactly that. I don't want to look at my own face when I'm working, he explained to her. He wanted to look at hers. She's holding a large sunhat mostly on her head but failing a bit and laughing, more than a bit. There's a golden glow around her, beachy and warm. They were at Lucy Vincent, one of the few times they went to Bizzy's Chilmark house. Addison preferred Nantucket to the Vineyard, presumably because the Vineyard reminded her of her parents, and the trip he snapped that photo she whispered, it's the best time I've ever had here. It was off season and they made love in the sand on a rough-woven Mexican blanket in shades of blue. Sand in her eyelashes, sun-warmed skin. The photograph is chaste and conservative; his memories are anything but.
I want to look at your face when I'm working.
He wants to look at her face now.
He needs to.
One last conversation with the team and he can leave the hospital, but their separation still aches.
He's gripping the frame in two hands now, hard enough to break, but it's strong.
She's strong too.
..
She's fighting him, adrenaline giving her strength if not aim.
Coloring her judgment red – she can't stop herself.
He stops her, though, on the floor, kneeling astride her to hold her in place, laughing down at her when she struggles. She closes her eyes, fear making her faint. She's utterly powerless.
Powerless and stupid.
Why didn't you shut up?
He drags both arms over her head, clicking the handcuffs shut around the exposed pipe attached to the wall.
Her shirt rides up, her stomach muscles jump under his hands, and he laughs at her.
Each button on the placket seems to take forever, he's enjoying this, and she kicks herself again and again for fighting him, for giving him a reason. She's trying to control her breathing, but it's harsh in her head. Inhale, skipping heartbeats like a frantic animal, exhale. Again.
Finally he's finished.
Her neck strains from the angle she needs to watch him, her breath strains in her throat. He just settles his hands over her hips and then, gripping both sides of the now open waistband, drags the jeans down her legs in one rough movement. Gooseflesh rises as soon as her skin is exposed.
The intruder tosses the jeans aside casually once he's shaken her feet free. She draws her bare legs up instinctually, away from him. If she makes herself small enough, can she disappear into the pipe? Into the wall?
Derek's not here.
He settles down in front of her and she tries to sit up, to gain some leverage, but it's too difficult the way she's chained.
No one's coming.
He watches her for a moment, then moves a little closer. Lights are buzzing in front of her eyes.
Her focus shifts from stopping whatever he has planned to praying its aftermath won't be left for Derek to see.
She can't help but think, as he pulls her legs down with no particular roughness, settling one arm across them so she's pinned in place – that she's let her husband down.
Derek, I'm sorry.
She doesn't say anything out loud, just forces one breath out after another.
"See, your manners are much improved this way." One of his hands is on her hip now, a disturbing mimicry of a caress. "I knew it," he says, his tone almost soothing, and her stomach turns.
"Please don't," she whispers, finding her voice.
"Please, huh? So you can be polite when it suits you." He rests both leather-clad hands on her thighs and pauses. "Do you think you can keep your mouth shut now?"
"Yes," she says immediately.
"Good." He pats her hip again and she forces bile down. "You haven't been a ten in a while now," he says, a laugh disturbingly present in his tone, "but you're not half-bad. And we all have to do things for the mission."
She doesn't move, doesn't speak, doesn't trust the air around her.
"What's going on in here?"
She never thought she'd be glad to see the intruder she thinks of as the taller one, but his arrival seems to make the New One pause.
"Costume change," the New One says. He stands, leaving her thankfully alone on the floor.
"Weren't you supposed to keep her quiet?"
"She's going to be quiet now." The New One smirks down at her. "Aren't you?"
She nods instead of speaking, and though they make no noise she's certain they're both laughing at her.
"Cheer up, sweetheart," the taller intruder says. "Your pretty husband is still breathing and so are you. How much more do you want?"
How much does she want?
She wants to breathe, yes.
She wants to live.
She wants her home back.
And then without preamble or grace, her stomach growls. Audibly.
"Hungry?" The New One looks down at her. She's hunched over her curled legs, any hope at dignity gone.
She doesn't answer.
The taller intruder elbows him. "You told her to be quiet. She's being quiet." Then he looks down at Addison. "There's no Thai delivery today," he says, but then he's taking a banana from the bowl of fruit Rosa keeps filled – it's always fresh and glossy, anything bruised disappears before it can be touched.
He peels it halfway and sticks it into her cuffed hands.
Eating it is easier than protesting, even if they're watching her in a way that makes her feel even more naked than she is.
And she's glad.
Because the sugar hits her bloodstream, hard and necessary.
Her head doesn't clear completely. She's still exhausted from terror and lack of any real sleep, muscles shaking, heart thumping.
But something in her is waking up.
Some reminder that her best weapons aren't physical. Not when men with guns, men with each other, stand feet away from her. Not when her fear feeds them.
Food for thought, that's what people say, and she finishes the whole banana. It's the sweetest thing she's ever eaten, because now she can think.
She can sit, her bare legs pulled up into her chest, outwardly docile under the intruders' gaze.
Quiet.
Your pretty husband is still breathing.
Derek is alive.
With that knowledge, with nutrients coursing through her blood, she comes alive too.
She's not in the corner of her kitchen, chained to a pipe, half-naked at the mercy of violent strangers.
She's in the OR, she's an intern again. Derek is next to her, she can feel the warmth of his skin through his lab coat and it's just not just the heat of him, it's their ferocious desire to learn. To be the best, to be the first.
Okay, people, what do we know? Their resident is barking at them, prepping them. Come on. What do we know. Montgomery?
What does she know, though?
You're so good, Addie, that's what Derek said to her that day, you're so good on the spot. Instinct. Derek was so good too. Nothing could penetrate his focus, his determination. The whole world disappeared when he worked. Everyone but her.
You're so good on the spot.
What did the intruder say? There's no Thai delivery today. She ordered Thai Monday night. It stands out because it came even faster than usual, she answered the door in a robe and the kid delivering the food blushed.
He was the same kid who always delivers.
Wasn't he?
Why Thai? Why did you say Thai?
There are no leftovers in the refrigerator, Rosa's meticulous about 24-hour shelf life, I know you're the doctors but I know this, that's what she would say.
There is something in her basement.
There is someone in her home.
A lot of someones.
And she's starting to suspect with a certainty that leaves her nauseated, the banana she was so grateful for rising again in her throat – that they didn't actually arrive last night.
To be continued. Faster this time, I really think. I hope you'll share your thoughts with me, because they're incredibly motivated. As always, thank you so much for reading.