Day 1

"Stiles, what's wrong?"

"You should have believed me." Stiles stared at his father with something bordering on hatred in his eyes.

The sheriff couldn't remember ever seeing his son so angry, at least not since they buried his mother. "Son, what's going on?"

"You don't get to call me that right now. We came to you for help and you took his side." Stiles dropped Scott's bloody sweatshirt on the desk before walking to the door. "Jackson did that to him and now he's missing."

"Stiles!" The sheriff rounded his desk, launching in the direction of the front doors just in time to see Stiles pulling out of the parking lot and away from him. He looked down at the bloody sweatshirt in his hand and prayed it wasn't the bad omen he feared. "I need an evidence bag now." The Sheriff watched intently as one of his deputies pulled a bag up around the sweatshirt and sealed it inside. "Get it tested now and get someone over to Scott McCall's house. Be ready to put out an Amber Alert. Get Jackson Whittemore in here now!"

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"Scott's gone." Stiles wasn't even sure how he managed to drive his jeep to the subway station from his father's office in the throws of a panic attack. As it was, all of his energy went to forcing that damning sentence out of his mouth in the presence of someone who might not even care.

"What are you babbling about?" Derek snarled at the pale teen on the stairwell. He could hear Stiles' heart thundering away in his chest, even as his breaths started stuttering in painful gasps.

"Jackson took Scott." Stiles shuddered, feeling his knees give out. He would never be able to wipe the scene from his memory. He could still smell the blood pooling on Scott's bedroom floor and the fresh plaster dust from the sheet rock sliced with desperate claws as Scott tried to fight off his attacker and failed. "So much blood."

The broken whisper stabbed the alpha with fear and Derek grabbed his chest as he collapsed on the floor. His body rippled through the change as he allowed the feral beast loose. Fierce red eyes turned on the messenger, growling a warning at the trembling human.

Stiles could feel the unspoken order for details in the growl. "They have him. Jackson took him over an hour ago but I don't know where they went. We were on the phone and I heard Scott screaming and a car door, but there was nothing when I got to Scott's house but blood." Stiles felt black closing in around him in a heavy fog. "I know you don't get along, but please Derek. Find him."

Derek roared, streaking out into the night in search of the most trusting idiot he'd ever met. He knew one day that Scott's goodness would get the better of him. Hunters would use any tool at their disposal to destroy a werewolf, including their compassion. He knew it was coming, warned Scott to be careful about trying to save Jackson, but he also knew, somewhere deep in his soul that Scott wouldn't learn, not until he was forced. Launching over the logs to the ledge, he stood on the boulder, howling a desperate call and hoping he wasn't too late but he was met with silence. Sending out a second desperate roar, he was met only with the howls of his three pups, safe in their homes. His legs shoved off the rock and he sprinted to the house, anxious to see if he could pick up the trail left behind.

The scent of Scott's blood intersected his path and he veered to the left toward the warehouse district. Six miles down the road he found Jackson's car and the site was covered in the stench of Gerard Argent, but the trail died abruptly. He had his suspicions after the run in at the underpass that Gerard was controlling the Kanima, but the scent of the two together confirmed his theory. The combination did not bode well for Scott and Derek could only pray that he would find the missing boy before Gerard put a blade through him. It sickened him to actually be praying they were interrogating him because he was well aware of what Argent's used to extract information, but the process was slow and it would give him the time he needed to find Scott.

Stiles was waiting for him in the same spot on the rail depot floor. "Find anything?"

"Gerard has him." The Alpha walked past him into the old car and cracked the glass on the wall. Yanking out a map of the rail lines through Beacon County, he walked back out and spread the paper over a crate near Stiles.

"Do you know where?" Stiles was immediately on his feet, scurrying over to the crate. He leaned over, searching the map as if the answer would spring out and tell him where to find his best friend.

"The trail went cold here." Derek pointed to the warehouse where he found Jackson's car as he searched the surrounding area. "They won't want him in the open," his finger traced a back road to the forest surrounding the town and he cursed. "There must be thirteen hundred square miles of land where they can be isolated."

"Nothing else to go on?" Stiles could feel his hope dying. Scott had already been missing for four hours. "Do you think he's still alive?"

Derek fought down a bought of panic and plastered a stoic look on his face. "Yes. I think Gerard is psychotic enough to torture information out of him." Stiles hissed, but appreciated the honesty. "If they were going to kill him, the body would have been at the warehouse with Jackson's car."

Taking a shaky breath, Stiles started scouring the map, looking for something that stuck out. He spent enough time looking over his father's shoulders to know what happens when there were no leads in a kidnapping. "If you think they took him to the woods, then they most likely took this road. Maybe we should drive it, work grid by grid until we catch his trail." Or at least he hoped Derek's super sniffer would catch the trail.

Derek nodded and grabbed the map. "You drive. If we don't find him by sundown I'm paying Allison a visit."

Stiles winced, but in the desperation to find his surrogate brother, he didn't protest. If Allison picked up any information, even the slightest hint of where Scott was, a little scaring by Derek would be worth it.

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Scott groaned as he came to on a dirt covered floor of what looked like a basement. He could smell woods all around him and stale blood and urine on the floor. The cloying smell of monkshood burned his nose when he tried to determine anything else that would be helpful. He hissed, following the scent down to his burning arms and legs and found he was bound with ropes soaked in the toxic flower's oil. The parallel slashes from Jackson's claws were slow to heal but he seemed otherwise untouched, for the moment anyway. The ropes were enough to tell him that he was in the hands of hunters and he was afraid that Derek might have been right about Jackson. When he opened the door and found a dejected co-captain asking for help, he didn't think anything of letting him in the house and leading him up to his room. Despite the trouble Jackson had caused in his life, he truly wanted to help him conquer his demons so he could finish his shift to a werewolf. He had started to tell Stiles that he would call him back after he finished talking to Jackson when he smelled the sickly sweet Kanima poison. The reptilian eyes were smug as Scott dropped the phone and dodged the claws. Within minutes, his room was trashed and his gut was pouring blood onto the floor as he crumpled into a numb heap. His mind fought but his body remained incapacitated as Jackson hoisted him over his shoulder and carried him out of the room. He remained stuffed in a trunk for a few minutes until the car came to a stop. Gerard Argent's smiling face was the last thing he saw before the world went black.

The sound of approaching footsteps shook Scott from his memories and he turned his head to see Gerard. "Nice of you to join us, Scott." The elderly man was too cheerful as he squatted down in front of his granddaughter's boyfriend. "Now, how about you and I have a little talk."

"I have nothing to say to you." Scott snarled at the misleading, grandfatherly face.

Gerard let the look slide away, showing his true insanity. "I was hoping you would say that." He lifted a set of wires attached to Scott's side, similar to the ones that Kate used on Derek. "But you will tell me everything I want to know about Derek Hale, Scott. Starting with where he is hiding." Scott felt his skin melting under the electrodes as the current shot through his body.

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Sheriff John Stilinski had walked many crime scenes in his tenure on the Beacon Hills police force, but nothing prepared him for the train wreck in Scott's room. He felt his throat closing at the sight of a blood pool slowly congealing on the floor. If he didn't know any better he would say there was an animal attack in the room. Some sort of weapon with four equidistant blades had slashed through the sheet rock and a chair indicating a great deal of strength and rage. If Stiles was right and Jackson was involved in this crime, he wasn't sure he would ever forgive himself for not believing his son. He lifted Scott's bloody t-shirt from the bed with his pen, studying the numerous slash marks through the fabric and determined it was most likely ripped off during the fight.

"Damn." The sound of his deputy's voice drew his attention to the door. "This kid must have put up one hell of a fight."

Through his terror, John gave a small smile in agreement. "He's a good kid."

"Scott?" The tension in the room ratcheted up when the desperate voice drifted up from downstairs. "Scott! Oh, God, Scott where are you?"

John sagged heavily and forced his body to stand. He met a frantic Melissa in the hall and blocked her path to Scott's room. "Mel, you don't want to go in there."

"John? What's going on? What happened to Scott." Her breath hitched and she felt her knees starting to give. "Is he in there, is he okay?" She couldn't force the ugly four letter word out of her mouth as she crashed to the floor in agony. Her little boy was not dead, she would not accept his loss.

"Scott's not in there." John knelt next to her, lifting her easily in his arms and carrying her downstairs to the living room. "Stiles was on the phone with him about four and a half hours ago and heard a struggle. When he came over Scott was gone and his room was a mess." He placed a reassuring hand on her knee. "He was taken by force and we think he was injured."

Melissa's body lurched with hysterical sobs, "No, not my baby." Desperate eyes locked on him. "Please John. Find him, find my boy."

He could feel tears welling in his eyes. "We are doing everything we can. We have a credible suspect that we are tracking down and I have every available body in the department on this case." The words felt hollow, like a rehearsed speak meant to keep the victims from losing their sanity and it made John feel even more like a prick. "Do you have somewhere you can stay? My boys are going to be up there a long time looking for evidence." Melissa shook her head, not able to form words through the sobs. "Then you can come with me. I'll take you to the station and you can wait there for updates." He grabbed her purse and helped her stand, hating the feeling of futility sinking into his bones. He knew the math, had been around the job a long time and the amount of blood found in Scott's room didn't bode well for their ability to bring him home alive.

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Derek snarled as they turned down another road and found nothing. "This is worthless."

"You have a better idea?" Stiles felt his hands tense on the steering wheel. They had been driving aimlessly around the woods for six hours in the middle of the night. He could barely see three feet in front of the car and with every passing mile Derek sank further into a feral rage.

"Take me to Argent."

Taking a deep breath, he pulled over to the side of the road. "We tried that already. The house was boarded up and no one was there." He shook with desperation and abject fear for his friend, his brother. "Do you really think anyone would go back there tonight if Gerard had the foresight to move them all first?"

Derek snarled and muscled his way out of the car. He rolled the map out on the hood of the car and shined his flash light over the area they now occupied. Slashing through yet another box on the grid, he fought the urge to fling it across the road in his wrath. His eyes met Stiles' watery gaze through the windshield and he slumped against the quarter panel. As much as it pained him to stop he knew that they needed to get some rest. Stiles was running on fumes and it would do him no good if the teen drove them into a tree during the search. "Grab the gear. We'll rest a few hours and pick up the search at first light."

"You're giving up?" Stiles jumped out of the car in outrage.

"No! I'm making sure I have enough strength to fight our way out when we find him. We're no good to Scott if we get ourselves killed trying to rescue him."

Stiles let his fist fly, hissing at the pain in his hand when it connected to Derek's face. "We can't just leave him with the Argents! You said they would torture him."

"I hate this as much as you do Stiles." The angered wolf slammed him against the side of the Jeep. "I will find him and I will rip the throats out of anyone who stands in my way. But not tonight." He forced his claws to released the younger man, reminding himself that Stiles was as scared of what was happening to Scott as he was right now. "I can't see on a new moon and I don't want to miss anything that could lead up to Scott."

Stiles sagged in defeat, knowing intellectually that Derek was right, but feeling incredible guilt at the thought of giving up even for a short amount of time. "Four hours. We start again at five am."

Derek nodded and rolled up the map. Wordlessly he grabbed a bed roll and a power bar from the back seat and bedded down for the night. Stiles was slower to follow, setting the alarm on his phone in the off chance he did manage to fall asleep and make it through the night terrors the image of Scott's room would bring to mind. The last time he felt this helpless he was watching his mother suck in useless breaths as she died from lung cancer. He wasn't sure he could survive that kind of fall again