The slow, spinning voice added to the turmoil inside of him. The broken pieces and glimpses of what he was fighting so hard to remember made him almost inattentive to the impressions coming from the world around him. Strong arms were enveloped around him, while a hand was stroking his hair. The words drifted through every once in a while, an unvelcome distraction when all he really wanted was to curl up into a corner and try and block away the pain in his head.
"I know you're hurting, my dear."
"Then why the hell do you insist on talking to me then?" he sourly thought. "Leave me be." A feeble attempt to draw back only resulted in him being held closer to the darker man.
"It's ok, don't you worry. I know who it was. I know who made you hurt like this." Now he was listening more intently to the voice. The world was a treacherous mass of swirling images and colours, so sharp even in their floating state that they hurt his eyes.
"And I know how you can make it go away."
Hearing that, he stilled. Allowing the man he knew that he knew the name of, keep holding him, he waited anxiously for the rest.
"Yes, he is the one that did this to you... And when he is gone, everything is going to be fine again. All you have to do is get rid of him, then everything will be better." There was a pregnant pause, then the words flowed on. "All you have to do is kill Travis, then everything is going to be fine."
"Kill Travis." He startled at the sound of his own voice. Even that sounded foreign to him. The distinct accent was a blessing, giving him one more clue to the mystery that was him. Obviously he was a Southerner, at least raised there. As far as he could see, he was much longer North now. But then again, he only had the view from the large window to go by. But still, there was a certainty in him, that he was a long way from home now.
"Yes." The voice was back. "I will help you. And when the old man's gone, I'll make sure you won't feel any pain at all."
The man holding him had dark hair. The sight of the short, raven locks sparked another flash in his mind. Frowning he tried to match the real image with the thought image. There was a darkhaired man in his life, which was why he had thought he'd feel safe in this man's company. But something wasn't right. It felt like watching your own reflection in a window. You could see every detail, but the mirror image was also filled with everything outside the window.
The images didn't match. Several more images flashed by inside his mind, too quickly to grasp. But every one of them left him with a feeling that something was terribly wrong. He wasn't supposed to be there, wasn't supposed to be this close to the man next to him.
Donovan had let the greeneyed man lean back a little, assuming that the other was simply thinking about what he had just said. But the look in the green gaze when it lifted to meet his was not what he had expected.
"I know you..." The voice had gained strength now, the smooth drawl still strongly present. The curved eyebrows over the emerald eyes drew together in a frown of concentration. "At least I think I do..." A fist was raised and pressed to his forehead. "Why can't I remember? It's..." The words melted away into compact silence. The hand fell away, as the young man lost what little colour was left in his face. Then he lifted his eyes to meet Donovan's again.
"It was you... The knife...you had the knife..." The words were alternating between tumbling over each other and coming nearly painfully slow as his mind fought to assemble the pieces. "You... You killed him..." He placed his palms against the larger man's chest, forcefully pushing him away, eyes burning wildly. "You killed him!"
"You sure this is the right place, JD?" Buck was cursing under his breath as one of van's tires caught in yet another hole in the road. "It don't seem anyone's been out here in way too long."
The younger man was busy fiddling with the hand-held screen in his lap. He looked up briefly at Buck's words.
"'Course I am. This is the place, Ezra is around here somewhere." He directed his eyes to the heavy forest outside before going back to the computer. "And as soon as I get the signal from the tracker into this baby, I'll be able to tell you exactly where he is down to the last inch. I'm telling you, Buck... Whoah, where did that come from?"
A tall wall of timber had seemingly raised itself up from nothing in front of them. The size of the wall indicated that it was part of a large building. The matted colour didn't reflect the sun in any way, completing the discreet placement between a number of wide pines.
"I guess someone doesn't want to be found." Buck's voice was calm, with a tense underlining that didn't escape the younger agent. "JD, you got the signal yet?"
"I do. And it's here. Ezra must be inside the cabin."
"Alright then." Buck opened the door and stepped outside. "Grab your gun, kid. I am going to have a quick chat with Mr. Donovan. Then I am getting my baby the hell outta there."
With a speed Buck would never imagined the somewhat clumsy man to have, JD scrambled around the car and stopped him with a flat palm to his chest.
"Oh no. You're not going to just barge in there like some righteous cowboy out of a ladies' novel. Not at all. I intend to get both you and Ez back sound and safe. Chris will kill me if I don't. So you stay right here until we can work out a decent plan, you hear me?"
Surprised blue eyes blinked back at him. "I hear ya. But you better come up with a plan awfully fast."
"I will, I will," JD mumbled. After scanning the area with his eyes, he moved to the back of the van.
"This place must have cost someone a lot of money. And as you said yourself, I don't think that 'someone' wants to be found. And if I was that whoever's inside of there, I'd get me a good alarm system to be sure."
Watching the fellow agent click on a number of the screens in the back of the car, Buck shifted impatiently. He hated waiting. Especially when he was so close, so close to be able to hold Ezra in his arms again. His lover was just inside of those walls, at the mercy of a maniac who had God-knew-what intentions... He had to stop himself from thinking about what he knew about Donovan to keep himself together. The dark was falling in the woods, the afternoon rapidly sliding over into night.
"It has to be Donovan," he heard himself say, leaning to one of the double doors at the back of the car.
JD nodded, working on the computers with his usual energy. "But we can't be sure though, could be some client of his as well..." He fell silent, looking up at Buck. "Sorry about that, I didn't mean to make you worry more... And you know Ez, he's a like a cat, right? Always landing on his feet. I'll bet you that in a minute or so, he'll come walking out of there himself, asking what took us so long."
"I wouldn't be surprised if he did." Buck had learnt to expect everything from his companion and fellow agent.
He was interrupted in his thoughts by JD grabbing a small, black backpack and jumping out of the car. "Seems like they're relying on that noone's gonna find them out here, because the alarms are crap. All I need to do is to find a circuit box and I can turn the whole thing off."
"Then I can go beat the shit outta Donovan?"
"Yes, Buck. Then you can go beat up Donovan."
A cold, feral smile crossed the taller man's face. "Good."
Things were absolutely not going the way Donovan had planned. The sudden change of the man in his arms had momentarily stunned him. Regaining his composure he threw himself out of the bed, tackling the smaller man to the floor.
This time he was being fought, frantic and desperatedly. Fingers dug into the side of his face, nails clawing into the skin. Slick with fresh blood the fingers slipped. Drops of the crimson liquid reached the side of the darkhaired man's mouth, the tip of his tongue reaching out to collect the blood. The metallic taste was sweet to him, leaving him craving for more. Taking hold of soft locks of hair he slammed the smaller man's head into the floor boards. Easily moving he flipped the other around, placing a knee in the small of his back. Raising himself up on his arms, Donovan leaned in to whisper in his captive's ear.
"I really wish you hadn't remembered." The voice was slithering through the air like oil-like smoke, clinging to skin and mind with invisible fangs. "Now I will have to kill you, my dear, I had really hoped to avoid that..."
Large hands was curved around a slender neck, fingers brushing over the damp skin. "But then again... I think we must have some fun first. Kurtz will be happy to hear that I have decided to go with his plan. Maybe I'll even call Travis up, and let him hear how much I'll enjoy this." The fingers tightened.
"So pretty... I really wish I could keep you." He kept squeezing until he felt the man underneath him go limp and immobile. Then he sat back, a smile touching the childlike face into amused curves.
True to his words JD had disabled the alarm system, allowing them to move closer to the cabin. The young man kept a close look out, knowing that there might be more, hidden alarms. Carefully and slolwy he lead the way onto the wide porch.
"What the hell are you doing?" Buck's low voice reached him. "You going to ring the door bell now?"
Looking at him over his shoulder, JD nodded. "Of course. Don't you think he'll realise that he has lost when he sees the two of us, two big and bad ATF agents? Heck, he'll even confess to anything we want him to..."
"You do realise that you're nuts, right?"
Instead of replying, JD pointed to a glimmer of metal inbetween the trees. "Cameras, Buck. And thankfully, none of them are directed this way. They probably never imagined someone coming through the front door. Too obvious."
"Well," Buck relased the safety on his revolver. "I can do obvious."
"And you are so good at it too." JD was notorious for his ill-placed jokes, but Buck appreciated them for what they were meant for. Tension breakers. He needed something to drag his mind away from the fear of what might be happening to his lover only a short distance away from them. They weren't even supposed to be handling stuff like this. Their original target had been a gun running group, another one of Donovan's underground organizations. During a bust they had literally stumbled onto a truck not at all carrying weapons. Not long after they had caught another truck at the state border. Buck knew the importance of their mission, had even been one of the most eager to take it on. But now, facing the possible cost of it, he feverishly wished he'd never heard of George Donovan.
The slow creaking of a door made him look up. JD was putting a lock-pick back into his backpack. Retrieving his gun as well, he slowly pushed the door open. Everything was quiet.
Communicating only by eye contact and hand gestures, they moved together into the house. The front door lead them into a spacious hall, doors lining the walls at each side. JD consulted the small hand-held tracking device again and then nodded at the centerpiece stairway. Following the older agent, he made sure to have the first floor covered. The silence was bothering him, the place seemed deserted. Or worse.
The indicator on the computer showed that they were almost within arms' length of the tracking device Ezra had been wearing. The second floor was as quiet as the first floor, neither of them making any sound at all either. Now JD was in the lead, having arived at a closed door. He met Buck's blue, determined eyes. Then the sound of a door being kicked in splintered the heavy silence.
The hinges were shrieking in protest, the noise hanging in the air for several seconds. The door slammed into the wall, halfway torn of its frame.
The room was empty.
Carefully JD lowered his gun. The afternoon sun spilling in through the windows caught on something on the floor. Picking it up, the broken pieces of a frail silverchain pooled in his palm. Attached to the chain was a small pendant. He let it dangle from two fingers, holding it up for Buck to see.
"He was here, Buck. This damn thing probably kicked back in after being thrown to the floor... Buck?"
The older man was kneeling on the floor, in front of the bed. Touching his fingers to a dark spot on the boards he examined them closely. Only the look in his eyes betrayed the closed-off mine on his face. On Buck's fingers the dark spot became red. JD knew what it was before Buck spoke.
"Blood."
The omnious word seemed to linger between them, then reluctantly melting into the silence.
Letting his mind slip into analyzist mode, JD dealt with the situation the only way he could think of. "It's still fresh, which means that they can't have gotten far. We don't know who the blood belongs to, might as well be Donovan's."
"The bastard better not be dead yet."
"What?" Big, brown eyes blinked in confusion at Buck. "What do you mean?"
"Can't kill him if he's already dead, kid."
The nearly pleasant tone made JD find the cellphone he had tossed into his backpack. Dialling the familiar set of numbers, he soon had Chris on the other end of the line. "What the hell am I supposed to say?" he idly wondered. "All I got is a blood stain, no Ezra and a friend who might be losing it."
Filling in their leader on what had taken place helped him regain his calm. Chris seemed to understand what he was trying to say not using plain words, the blond having known Buck for a long time.
"We'll be there soon, JD," Chris assured him. "Just keep him with you. I don't think he's going to do anything foolish, but just to be sure..." The thrumming sound of an engine entered over the line. "Josiah's getting the car. We'll be there as soon as possible."
Ever since he had touched the blood, a feeling of dread had settled over Buck and refused to let go. It was Ezra's blood. He couldn't explain how he knew, but he did. The fact that his lover had been so close only to be taken away from him again, was driving him insane. Anger was a living thing inside of him, mingled with fear which was clawing restlessly at his heart. He knew the worried looks JD kept sending him although the younger man tried to hide them. Forcefully getting a grip, Buck straightened. The kid worried enough over Ez, he shouldn't have to worry about Buck as well.
It was just that when it came to Ezra every ounce of reason in Buck happily got up and left.
"You ok, Buck?" JD was studying him closely. "Chris and the guys will be here in a little while. He told us to stay put."
Exhaling deeply, Buck rubbed a hand over his face. "Yeah. We should probably wait for them."
The dark eyes of JD was still aimed at him, the expression in them told Buck that the other was able to read him a little too well for his own liking.
In the end Buck couldn't take it anymore. "Listen, kid, I'm on top of it, alright? I am not going to run off, not going to break down." A small amount of the usual gleam was back in Buck's eyes. "And I am not going crazy. Ez's gonna have the pleasure of doing that all on his own when he gets back."
JD visibly relaxed. "Knowing him, he'll love every minute of it too."
A gust of wind moved through the room, rustling the broken door a little. The sound of metal grinding against metal was sharp, nearly covering the second noise. It was a similar sound, but this time it was caused by wood creaking.
Spinning around, both men found themselves face to face with a shotgun and Donovan's smiling face. The darkhaired man was standing in the doorway, seemingly the perfect, amiable host except for the gun in his hand.
"I do beg your pardon, gentlemen, for not being here to greet you when you arrived... After all," the gun was raised, aimed steadily at their chests. "I believe I have something that belongs to you."