Brothers in Arms

A Haven fanfic

By Jeannine Trevizo

Chapter 6

-x-

It was sometime after 2 am when Nathan had finally fallen into a restless sleep. Dreams turned nightmares had plagued him all night. More than once he’d fought up from horrible visions of finding Audrey either dead or dying. As exhausted as he was, while he’d woken slightly from the dreams he had groggily turned and fallen asleep again, letting Audrey’s smell on the pillow lull him back under.

So when his cell phone rang he startled awake, his eyes opening at the sound. His veins filled with a shot of adrenaline with the ringing phone, hope filling him as he prayed for good news. He groped for the device in his pocket as he noted that it was light outside. While he wasn’t fully rested he realized that at least wasn’t brain dead as he noted the caller ID and spoke into the phone.

“Dwight, do you have any news?”

At the sound of the phone ringing and Nathan’s voice, Duke jerked awake on the couch, his clothes crumpled more than ever. His eyes swung to where Nathan was now sitting up bolt straight on the bed, ear to his cell phone. He watched as Nathan cupped his head in his hand once he’d hung up the phone and Duke feared that the news was bad.

“Nate?” he asked from his spot on the couch.

“No new info,” Nathan said his voice filled with sadness yet a twinge of optimism that there wasn’t a body washed up on shore. “Dwight has a call in to the State Police, thinking he might get a hit on Audrey through them. He knows we need to keep the news from HPD for right now. He’s going to check around the shoreline thinking maybe whoever took her might have thought to stash her on one of the summer boats. Someplace where people aren’t around for long stretches…”

Nathan trailed off as his mind wandered once again to the idea of Audrey having been physically kidnapped from her own home, then possible tied up, hurt, in pain… his mind threatened to shut down at the agonizing thoughts that filled his mind. He hated feeling so helpless.

“Nathan…”

Hearing his name, Nathan’s head raised and his eyes cut to Duke. At the concern he saw there he simply looked away, his hands clenching on his thighs as he tried to get his emotions under control once again. He could think clearer after the little sleep he’d gotten but with the light of day he still didn’t have any clue as to who had Audrey and where.

“We need to figure out who could have gotten in here and out again. Carrying her out of here should have attracted someone’s attention.”

Without waiting for Duke to say anything, Nathan pushed himself out of Audrey’s bed and turned to find her bathroom. After using the facilities he came out to find Duke standing by the couch, the look in his eyes saying he was more than a little concerned.

“Okay, I’m going to go downstairs and check my employee list. I’ll see who was working last night between four and eight and we can ask if they saw or heard something that could help,” Duke said before he moved towards the doorway. “You have ten minutes to get yourself together and come down. When you do, I will have coffee sitting for you and you will eat something, alright.”

Nathan looked at Duke and fought not to shake his head. He wasn’t sure what disturbed him more – the demand that he eat something, Duke’s offer to help get him information or just the general decent way Duke was treating him. Under any other circumstances Nathan was sure he probably would have brushed it off as Duke trying to play an angle but right now… it seemed legitimate.

“Thanks Duke,” he answered, the way he said it making Duke believe he really meant it. ”I’ll be right down.”

Nodding Duke opened the door and headed downstairs leaving Nathan alone in Audrey’s apartment once again. He looked around and swallowed hard as he made himself remember that if he, and Duke had their way, the next time he had to step foot in this apartment, it would be to have that dinner date that they’d been kept from having before.

With the hint of a smile as he considered not letting her out of his sight once they found her and having pancakes for every meal for a week, he turned for the door to go downstairs and meet Duke and start the search for Audrey once more.

-x-

Without any real light penetrating the space she’d woken up in, Audrey wasn’t sure how much time had passed since she’d been kidnapped. She knew that in the hours that she’d been awake she’d tried to figure out where she was and fallen asleep at one point, feeling the effects of the taser as well as plain exhaustion.

In the near darkness she had investigated the small space as best she could with both her hands and feet tied up. After a while she’d finally realized that she was locked in a closet, maybe a bit smaller than her apartment’s bathroom. With her limited mobility she’d done what she could to assess her situation, trying the door knob with her tied hands, but found it quite secure.

At one point she had considered trying to find out if she could open or break the door but wasn’t sure if there was someone in the building that would hear her. The last thing she wanted to do was make any noise that could alert her abductor that she was awake and possibly get tased again.

She did however try to wiggle out of the plastic tie cuffs around her wrists, causing her to rub the skin raw and possibly bloody. At one point after what seemed forever she had almost just decided to risk it and was going to try kicking at the door when she heard noises on the other side of the door of the room she was in.

She froze for a moment to make sure they weren’t coming to the closet but when no voices or footsteps came she slid herself close to the door. Carefully she pushed herself up the wall to let her stand as best she could. Leaning her ear to the door, she was just able to make out a heated conversation almost out of earshot.

“I removed her from the equation,” said the voice of the person who had appeared at her door and tasered her; the man that she’d once called her boss… the fake ‘Special Agent Howard’.

“You didn’t kill her…”

She fought down a gasp as she realized that the man who had just spoken was Dave Teagues, a man whom she’d thought was her friend. Yet she knew that when she’d finally confronted him about Sarah and Lucy and knowing who she was, Dave had been the one reluctant to tell her what she wanted to know.

And now she could see how far he was willing to go to keep her from finding out what she had demanded to know. Audrey strained to hear, her body contorting in the small, closet like space.

“I didn’t believe that was required. I was simply incapacitating her before she could cause any more problems.”

“You were supposed to get her here and have things fix themselves, like always,” Audrey heard Dave say, and as she listened harder, trying to understand what they were saying, what it meant.

“I did my job before… I shepherded her here when Garland’s request came to bring her to Haven when the troubles returned… like I was supposed to,” replied Howard.

“This is not how it is supposed to work Robert! Vince wants to help Nathan and her start a war. If that happens I don’t know if people, if Haven will survive. I won’t be responsible for that!”

“I can’t help you. I’ve done more than I should have by abducting her.”

“What about the memory wipe… can we still do that?”

Audrey bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from gasping. Dave was saying he knew about whatever had wiped the other Audrey Parker’s memory and now wanted to do the same to her…

“It only works once a cycle and the real Audrey Parker’s insistence in trying to find answers removed that option for you,” her former boss said, thinking back on his carefully constructed plan to have the Audrey Parker that needed her memory erased find the house and the book… and how it had been screwed up.

“So… the only way we can stop this is…“ Dave began before pausing and taking a deep breath before continuing, “We need Duke to kill her.”

Inside the closet Audrey slid to the floor as her legs gave out, her mind unable to wrap around what she’d just heard. Dave; kind, grandfatherly, photographer Dave wanted her dead… She closed her eyes and whipped her head back and forth trying to dislodge the words from her mind as she continued to hear the slightly raised voices on the other side of her closet door.

“Which I understand he is reluctant to do,” Howard stated matter of factly.

“We will have to find something to convince him.”

“I don’t know what you think you can use as leverage. You have heard that he and Wuornos’s son are hunting for her even now…”

Audrey’s eyes snapped open even as her heart leapt in her chest. Nathan was looking for her, just as she had hoped, and he had convinced Duke to help…

“Yes, but they won’t know to look here. Just… stay here and make sure she stays locked up until I can figure this out.”

“No. I’ve done too much as it is. I’m getting out of town… I wash my hands of anything else you do.”

Audrey listened intently as she heard a set of footsteps moving away quickly from the other side of the door of the closet she was in.

“Damn it Robert! You can’t leave now!” Dave yelled as he ran after the man Audrey now knew as Robert and as ‘Special Agent Howard’.

Audrey heard both sets of footsteps lead away from her position and then there was a slamming door. Knowing that both of them were now probably out of the house, she realized this was her chance at escape. She forced herself back up and tried the door knob with her tied hands once again but it was still locked. Angry and frightened she let herself slide to the floor again and laying on the ground as best she could she turned to kick at the door, hearing the wood thud heavily under the force of her kick. It didn’t move and she felt the pain reverberate up her feet and legs from striking the solid wood.

Still she tried several more times before she felt herself getting winded. The jolt of electricity had already weakened her and now her exertions were tiring her out. Leaning her head against the wall of the closet she closed her eyes and rested.

With the house silent once again she suddenly realized that she could hear something… and she finally recognized that it wasn’t people speaking but rather music possibly on a radio somewhere in the building. She listened closer and identified the strains of the Captain and Tennille and once she did she reminded herself like she had that first day she’d arrived in Haven that she would not die to the sounds of that damn song.

She just needed to find a way out or hope that Nathan and Duke could figure out how to find her…

-x-

Dwight had gotten a phone call from his buddy in the State Police. He hadn’t even expected that they’d have anything at all, at least for a while. But the information that the Maine police had given him wasn’t for Audrey, but rather it was on someone else…

He pulled his phone and dialed a now very familiar number, not surprised at all when it was picked up on the first ring.

“Nathan, I have some news…”

- End Chapter 6 -