Little Secrets

Summary: It's basically "Pool Shark: Part 2," my version. Drake and Josh get to visit Chip at his house, and they get some unexpected surprises, one of them being Chip's fourteen-year-old daughter, whom Drake takes a strong liking to right away. However, that's not the only thing that they don't know about Chip.

Chapter Two

Deadly Secrets

Once everything was settled, everyone reunited back in the living room, Chip taking the couch, Alana sprawled on a chair, and Drake and Josh sitting on the other couch. They weren't quite sure what to do, since all were in a bit of an awkward position, especially Josh, though Drake was beginning to agree with his stepbrother. Alana and Chip now seemed even more hesitant and withdrawn.

Nevertheless, Chip tried to make his guests feel at home. "So what have you been up to?" he asked, looking for an icebreaker.

"Not much," Josh replied, jumping on the perfect opportunity to dive into the subject of Alana's and Chip's hesitation. "What about you? Anything new going on?"

Chip looked at Alana for only a fraction of a second, and had you not been looking for it or known that something was wrong, you probably wouldn't have seen it. However, Josh was; and it concerned him even more when he saw it. Chip replied almost as soon as he was asked, though. "Nothing really," he said nonchalantly with a shrug. He and Alana did a pretty good job at hiding whatever it was that was troubling them.

"Really?" Josh asked, nodding. "Nothing freaky going on?"

Alana straightened up a little bit and looked at Chip before saying, "No. Why would you think that?"

"Oh, I don't know," Josh said. "Maybe it's the way that you guys are acting really weird."

Chip sighed, and both he and Alana looked at each other before looking down at the ground. "I guess we haven't done the best job at concealing our hesitation," Chip said.

"Yeah," Josh replied.

"I guess you would have found out sooner or later," Alana jumped in before her father could say anything else. "After all, you two don't look that stupid." She was trying to lighten the mood.

Drake moved off the couch quickly, kneeling down next to Alana and taking her hand. "Alana," he started, "you know that you can trust us. It's okay. We're here for you."

Alana gave a small smile.

"And the same goes for you, Chip," Josh told his former counselor. "What's wrong?"

"Duck," Alana said quietly, so quietly that the others barely heard her.

"Duck?" Josh asked dubiously.

"Duck!"

She grabbed Drake and threw him to the floor, covering his body with her own. Chip did the same thing to Josh. Practice had made him very perceptive and quick, taking things without question. At that exact moment, gunfire burst into the living room through a nearby window. Screeching tires could be heard as a car rounded the corner of the street, and the gunfire stopped.

Chip and Josh slowly rose when they were satisfied that everything was all right and that the gunman wasn't going to come back. The room was a mess. Broken glass that had been hit lay scattered about, and the window had obvious bullet marks. Things that had been hit by the bullets were obviously marked, as well.

Then Drake's anguished voice was heard. "Alana!"

Josh and Chip immediately spun around and looked at him worriedly. What they saw made them rush over. Drake was holding an unconscious Alana in his arms, and blood covered both of them.

"She must have taken a bullet when she went to protect you," Chip said, and unusual amount of calmness in his voice. He turned her over and saw the bullet hole. "It must have pierced an artery. She's lost a lot of blood. We've got to stop the blood flow. Josh, find me a piece of cloth that I can use to apply pressure to the wound with."

Josh hesitated, pierced and frozen with terror.

"Josh, now!" Chip repeated, more loudly and forcefully to knock Josh out of his state of stupor.

That got Josh going, and the adrenalin did the rest. His usually numb fingers grabbed and ripped off a piece of his own shirt with amazing precision and quickness, and he immediately handed it to Chip, who in turn pressed it against Alana's wound to try to suppress the bleeding by applying pressure.

"Why her?" Drake asked quietly, tears streaming down his face.

Chip heard him, though. It was true. Alana didn't deserve it. She was innocent, but unfortunately, criminals don't like to play by the rules.

"I told you. I don't have it," Chip replied, enunciating the last sentence and bracing himself for the beating he knew was to come from the bodyguards closing in around him. He steeled himself and set his face in a resolute expression, staring fixatedly at the crime lord Derek.

"Wait a minute," Derek said, holding his hand up and stopping the large, burly men from beating Chip's small frame to nothing but a pile of cuts and bruises. The men still looked ready to kill, but the stopped at Derek's order and let him continue to speak. "I've got a proposition for you, Chip. You know I'm such a nice guy—"

"The greatest," Chip mumbled.

Derek pretended not to notice and continued speaking, though the disapproving look in his eyes when he glanced at Chip was enough to let the younger man know that it hadn't been the best thing to say. "I'll give you another shot, and if you fail this time, it won't be you that pays the price. Instead, we'll just take something else to compensate for the loss of money. We'll get our money either way."

Something else? Compensate for the loss of money? What was Derek talking about? What would he take that would give him enough money to be put in place of the money owed?

"I'm getting tired of dealing with you. A new toy would be nice, one that I could make some money off of. You're dear Alana is extremely beautiful." He paused here for effect.

The words hit Chip like a bag of bricks almost immediately, and he gasped. "No!" he exclaimed. "No! Not Alana! You can have anything else, anything that I have! Just please don't take her from me. She's the only thing that I have. I can't lose her." He was near tears at the end.

Derek chuckled. "I knew that she was worth a lot to you and that you love her and would die for you. Think carefully for your choice, Chip. It won't be you that pays the price for your mishap if I don't get the money by this time next week. It will be your darling daughter Alana. Which would you rather I take?"

With that, Derek snapped his fingers and brushed past Chip, his bodyguards following and leaving Chip alone in the large, empty room. He sank to his knees and put his head in his hands, sobbing and shaking. He couldn't let them take Alana, his innocent daughter. He couldn't risk her life. He had to get the money. How was he ever going to fix this?

Later on at the hospital, Drake, Josh, and Chip all paced around in the waiting room while they waited for Alana to come out of surgery. The bullet had embedded itself deep in her flesh, and it would be an intricate operation to extricate it. Other than a sore spot and weakness for the next few days and a deep wound for the next few weeks, Alana would probably be okay. She would be unconscious for a while after the surgery, but the right measures had been taken when the accident had happened, and everything had been done correctly. No complications were in sight, though observation would be kept on her just in case.

Chip had been debating on whether or not to tell them everything that was going on or not, and it had been driving him nuts and taking up most of his time and thoughts for the past couple of hours. He ultimately decided against it, deciding that the boys had enough to deal with right now. They were still trying to cope with the fact that an assassin was after Chip and Alana. They didn't need to know the full story quite yet, and it was pertinent to anything going on at the moment. It could wait.

Drake had been dwelling on the depressing moment that he had found Alana's wound after the wild gunman had shot into the house. He had been scared to death, sad about possibly losing her, and alert with the adrenalin flowing through his body at seeing such a wound and all the devastation. There were so many questions that he wanted—needed—answers to, but he couldn't form them. He most certainly couldn't ask Chip about them. Not only could he not find the words, the other man had enough to deal with. He didn't need to be pestered with questions, though there were so many that Drake itched to know the answers to. He wanted to know the full story, wanted to know what exactly was going on, wanted to know how he could help. It appeared that he wasn't getting answers to any of these questions anytime soon, though.

Josh, on the other hand, had a million thoughts running through his head and emotions vying for the biggest part of his mind, heart, and soul. He was concerned for everybody. Drake had seemed to be thrown into a melancholy state of depression since Alana's injury. Chip had seemed to become much more reclusive, worried, weary, sorrowful, and seemed to be hiding things now more than ever since Alana's injury. Alana herself had been shot, and any number of things could go wrong, even though nobody expected them to. She wouldn't be much help in relating the story for a little while. Josh, too, wanted to know the full story and know how he could help. He wanted to know what was going on and why these things were happening, but he didn't want to hurt Chip anymore than the fragile soul had been hurt. So many things seemed to be going wrong for the other man that Josh was afraid that Chip was bordering on an emotional breakdown. He would be there if the other man needed him.

After what seemed like an eternity, the doctor finally walked into the room, wearily wiping a gloved hand over his face. "She's come out of surgery and is now under observation in a recovery room."

Those few words made everyone sigh in relief and relieved most of the tension in the room almost immediately. "How long will she be kept here and under observation?"

"We'd like to say about a week, but we're not so sure. It seems that she somehow acquired a poison in her system, as well," the doctor replied.

The tension immediately returned. "May we see her?" Drake asked, anger clouding in his dark eyes and his fists clenched. He couldn't believe somebody would do that!

"Yes, of course," the doctor told him, already walking out the door. "Are you the only three that will be here?"

"Yes," Chip replied.

"There is technically only supposed to be one, maybe two visitors at a time; but I think I can bend the rules," the doctor informed the three.

"Thank you," Chip said. "We are grateful."

As the doctor reached the room and began opening the door, he laid out a few rules. "You must not make a whole lot of noise, and you have to be careful around her. We would advice not touching her a whole lot, especially near any tubes or special equipment or the wound."

Chip nodded his understanding, and the three went inside the room, the doctor closing the door behind them. The sight of the fragile, pale figure before them with an oxygen mask covering her face and tubes sticking out all over the place hardly looked like Alana, and Josh thought that Drake was going to cry again. Even though it was completely against his character, but he seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. Alana really was special to him, and she had the ability to completely change his character and go against the laws of human nature themselves for him.

"How did this happen?" Drake asked quietly. "Why did this happen? First she was shot. Now we find out that she was poisoned?" He turned on Chip, anger flashing like flames in his eyes and his voice growing louder with each sentence. "This is all your fault! Who did this? What did they want? We want the whole story, and we want it now! Maybe if you hadn't tried to cover it up and had told us the whole story in the beginning, this wouldn't have happened!" He gestured to Alana, shouting by the time he finished the last sentence.

Chip drew back a little, pain evident in all his features. Drake's words had struck him like blows on the face, but he covered up the hurt with anger of his own. "Maybe if you had listened to her to begin with and hadn't acted like an idiot and questioned her, forcing her to lie on top of you to protect you, she wouldn't have gotten shot!"

"Stop it!" Josh yelled suddenly, bringing both sets of eyes to focus on him, startled. It had been completely out of his character, but he couldn't stand them fighting anymore, especially not with Alana already there looking so frail.

"Sirs," a female nurse said, opening the door and holding a clipboard. She just barely stuck her head in. "I'm afraid that if you don't quiet down, I will have to remove you from the premises." With that, she closed the door and went back to her work.

Josh drew in a deep breath before he continued. "The last think we need is you two fighting. I know that you guys have never had a very good relationship, but we need to stick together and be strong, especially now. We need to work together. Alana is already lying there, fragile and injured, also innocent. It wasn't her fault. It wasn't anybody's fault but the man that tried to gun us down. Now, if you two are finished acting like children, why don't we quiet down? Even though she's unconscious, Alana can probably still hear us or at least understand us to some extent. The last thing we need is for her to get restless and injure herself further. Let's start working as a group against the common enemy instead of going against each other like the enemy. Come on. Together, we can find out who did this and figure out what we're going to do and how to stop them."

Chip and Drake just stared at him for a few moments, dumbfounded, before Chip shook his head with a smile and said, "That's my Josh. He always was the best little camper."

Josh smiled back wearily. What he had said was wisdom far beyond his years, and everything that had happened recently had completely drained him. He just needed to know that Alana would be all right and rest.

Together, the three headed over and stood next to Alana's bed, just staring down at her and hoping that they would be able to get through the rest of this all right… and that this would be the worst that she would ever get.