Kracken
Disclaimer:I don't own them and I don't make any money off of this
Warning:Male/Male sex, graphic, violence, language
Kracken
disclaimer:I don't own them and I don't make any money off of this.
Warning:Male/male sex, graphic, language, attempted NCS, violence
song lyrics:Keeping the Faith, by Billy Joel
Fake; After the Manga
Faith
"It should be an interesting assignment," Ryo said as tucked a file under his arm.
Rose steepled his long fingers together and looked over his glasses at Ryo. Even siting at his desk, the larger man still seemed to dominate the room. "You were chosen because you worked with this unit before very successfully. I expect the same performance this time. The commander is an old friend of mine and he, unfortunately, doesn't think much of having an outsider come in to solve a case in what he sees as a military matter."
"When higher ups suspect a cover up, an outside investigation is appropriate," Ryo replied.
"But it is always a delicate situation that needs a great deal of diplomacy," Rose said and then looked irritated, "Which is why I have my reservation about sending Latener on this assignment with you. If it didn't require two detectives..."
"Dee's always been able to get information and clues from some impossible situations," Ryo assured him. "As for his diplomacy, some times a hard nosed approach is best."
Rose scowled. "I can't deny his methods have been effective in the past, but this situation is a kid gloves assignment. If you can manage to keep him researching records while you interview and gather facts, I think the investigation will be more successful."
"Sir," Ryo replied simply, not knowing what to say to that. Rose knew that he didn't have much influence on Dee and Ryo suspected that Rose was voicing his reservations, not in any hope of changing the situation, but as a way to ease his own tension.
Rose made a clear attempt to rein in his own personal feelings and admitted, "There was a previous investigator on this case."
"Not successful?" Ryo wondered.
"Not found," Rose corrected with a tight expression. "The detective's car was found down the road from the base. He disappeared without a trace."
"Then the situation is dangerous, not just delicate?" Ryo surmised and felt his own tension as Rose nodded. He was used to dangerous situations, but it was something different when the people supposedly watching your back might be the criminals as well.
"Dee would add fuel to a raging inferno," Rose grumbled, "But I can't deny that you do work extremely well together and that this assignment requires some of his expertise. I leave it to you to police him, though."
"Of course, sir," Ryo replied. "Are we required to stay on base while we investigate?"
"No," Rose replied, "It's better if you keep your distance and your impartiality by not interacting unnecessarily.
Ryo was glad. Bicky was getting too old for a babysitter, but he still felt uncomfortable with leaving the teen alone to get into trouble.
"Col. Lowry will be expecting you at 10:30," Rose informed him. "Be prompt."
"Yes, sir," Ryo replied. When Rose grabbed his phone and began making calls, he took that as a signal that he was dismissed. Sighing, he left Rose's office and made his way back to his desk.
Dee was there at his own desk, tossing a paper airplane at Dreig with a malicious gleam in his eyes. Dreig snatched the plane before it could connect and snarled, "I told you, I'll give you the money on payday. You can't milk a stone, okay? I'm broke!"
"Should have thought of that before you made the bet," Dee growled angrily.
"What bet?" Ryo asked as he settled in his chair and loosened his tie.
Dee grunted. "The Super Bowl, remember?"
Ryo blushed, remembering the game with acute pleasure. "Yes, I do remember."
"Dreig bet me his team would win and the lame asses lost," Dee explained, "just like I knew they would. Now he has to pay up and he's welching on the bet."
"I am NOT!" Dreig shot back and then turned his back on Dee. "Payday, first thing, you'll get your fifty bucks."
"Fifty?" Ryo glared. "Never mind, Dreig," he said. "Dee's not taking your money."
Dreig snorted in disbelief.
"Yes, Dee is taking his money!" Dee argued hotly." What the hell's wrong with you? He made the bet. He has to pay up."
Ryo glared. "Dee, he's your friend. You don't make bets like that with friends."
"I do," Dee snorted.
"Dee," Ryo pointed out as he opened the file on his desk. "If you take that much money from him, he'll be eating ramen noodles and baked beans for two weeks."
"If that bothers him, then he shouldn't have made the bet," Dee retorted. "I'm taking his money, moving our desks up wind, and not caring because he made a stupid bet."
"I pay up when I lose," Dreig said without turning. "Don't worry about it, Ryo."
Ryo looked concerned, but then he sighed and shook his head. "We need to get going on this new case, Dee. We have an appointment at 10:30."
Dreig did turn then, eyebrow arched. "Did you get the military case?" When Ryo nodded, he looked determined suddenly and said, "That's a tough case. Dee, bet you double or nothing, you won't solve it."
"You're on, sucker!" Dee crowed.
"Dee!" Ryo exclaimed, incensed. "You are not going to bet on a case. That's extremely unprofessional-"
Dee held up a finger. "I declare, here and now, that this bet will not be on my mind at all from this moment forward." He lowered his finger and grinned. "It doesn't have to be. Dee Latener is on the job, so, naturally, this case is getting solved."
Ryo glared. "If I hear one mention of this bet, I'm calling Rose and taking us off the case."
"You got it," Dee chuckled and then said under his breath, "This
is going to be the easiest bet that I ever took."
____________________________
"I hate going out of our jurisdiction," Dee grumbled.
"It's not out of our jurisdiction if they say it isn't," Ryo replied as he watched the scenery go by outside his passenger side window. "If you want, I can explain it to you again."
Dee grunted. "I get it; politician's little pride and joy, civilian training at a Reserves boot camp, said boyfriend son of military personnel. Daughter ends up dead. Boyfriend gets off after very brief investigation. Father pissed off. We get called to save the day because you've been at Fort Dix before."
Ryo nodded. "You left out that said investigation was led by a man close to the family of the boyfriend."
"No on asked him to recuse himself?" Dee wondered with a scowl.
"Apparently it didn't come to light until AFTER the investigation," Ryo replied.
"So," Dee glanced at his partner, "what did you do that was so great at Fort Dix?"
Ryo smiled, "Well, I think some solid, military type training is a plus for any police officer."
Dee snorted, "Just like you to want to do more than you have to. Being a detective hasn't put me in many situations where I've needed to use commando training. Self defense has been good enough on street bums and criminals."
Ryo quirked an eyebrow at him. "I learned to be a sharpshooter there. You could use some of that kind of training."
Dee glared. "There isn't anything wrong with my shooting!"
"Okay, " Ryo replied, "but when you want to stop being in denial, let me know and I'll give you the phone number of their civilian training unit commander."
"Ryo..." Dee began, but Ryo stopped him by pointing to an exit.
"There," Ryo told him.
Dee grunted and turned the wheel of the car. As they pulled onto another road, he shifted in his seat, uncomfortably. "You know I'm not the spit and polish kind of guy, Ryo. If you're expecting me to get along with these guys...."
"Dee, they're reserves, not the regular armed forces." Ryo pointed out.
"Weekend warriors," Dee snorted.
Ryo looked very serious. "I wouldn't say that particular phrase again,
if I were you. A lot of these men and women go out on the front lines of combat."
"I thought... you said they were civilians...," Dee began in confusion.
Ryo scowled. "Didn't you do any of your own research before we left?"
Dee shrugged one shoulder. "Seemed pretty straight forward to me. Go to base. Interview people. Leave base. Look at crime scene. Talk to witnesses and father. Case solved. Go home."
"Dee..." Ryo rubbed the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "It's an entirely different culture on base. You have to know what you're dealing with when you talk to these people or how can you ask the right questions?"
Dee snorted. "I can ask the right questions: Did you know the suspect? Did you see the suspect leave? Did you ever hear the suspect make any remarks about the victim? Have you ever seen suspect do anything suspicious? Have you-"
Ryo sighed and Dee stopped talking.
"Ryo, why do you make everything so complicated?" Dee wanted to know.
"Because it is and you are oversimplifying everything and you know it," Ryo shot back.
"Okay, okay!" Dee relented. "I'll follow your lead and let you do the talking, since you have all the experience and military savvy."
"Good," Ryo replied tartly.
Dee looked sideways and smirked. "Did you wear a uniform?"
Ryo looked at him wide eyed. "What?"
Dee's smirk grew wider. "Did you wear a uniform when you were training?"
Ryo blushed and pulled at his tie as if it were suddenly too tight. "Uhm, yes."
"Still have it?" Dee wanted to know. "Might be kind of exciting having sex with a military-"
"I'm going to forget you said that," Ryo retorted and crossed his arms over his chest and turned towards the window. "We are on a murder case, and we are about to meet Col. Lowry, who had to be convinced to let us investigate, let me remind you."
All right!' Dee replied hotly, but then regained his smirk. "Keep it
in mind, though, for AFTER the case."
_________________________________
Dee woke in darkness. His head throbbed and his gut felt as if it had been kicked in. He smelled mold and damp and the place was very cold. He shivered, feeling sick to his stomach as he cautiously sat up, hands tentatively reaching out. He found a scratchy blanket and cold stone underneath him.
A slat in a door was shot open and light made him blink as it streamed in. It was blocked briefly several times and then a voice grumbled, "Idiot! Why did you bring him here?"
Another, familiar voice said, "He pissed me off and he found out shit he shouldn't have. Killing him's too quick. I want to play for awhile."
Dee was expecting some sort of protest. He wasn't prepared for an evil snicker. "Hey, call me when you get started. I want to watch."
"Of course, dumbass," the familiar voice retorted. "That's what being a part of the 'club' is all about. There's perks."
"Yeah, but some people get too carried away and take advantage of the perks," the first one complained. "If that idiot had been more careful, we wouldn't be facing this damned investigation to begin with. What if this guy's partner figures it out too?"
"He won't," the second one assured him. "I stashed all the evidence and shut up the one guy who could have said boo. He's floating with the fishes at the bottom of the quarry east of here. That's what he gets for talking to this jerk."
"They'll be looking for this one though," the first one pointed out.
The second one snickered. "Let them look. Nobody knows how deep these caves go and the military filled them with rooms."
The slot was shut and footsteps receded.
Dee touched his forehead gingerly and tried to remember what had happened. There was a large cut there and his face felt caked with blood. A hazy, mental picture formed like a bubble. He and Ryo had interviewed a man on the base, Billy Reynolds, and Dee had grown suspicious at the man's obvious evasions. Leaving Ryo to interview the next man, he had cornered Reynold's alone and pressed him to tell what he knew or else. The man had revealed... Dee frowned, trying to recall it... a ring of men who were into extreme bondage/torture. It had gotten out of hand and the victim had been accidentally killed. Billy had been recruited to cover up her visit on the logs, not knowing that he was covering up her murder until later when the body had been discovered, until his life had been threatened to keep him silent.
Dee remembered walking back towards the building where Ryo was interviewing the next man, remembered turning the corner in the evening shadows and having something hit him squarely in the forehead. It had been lights out after that...
"Sorry, Billy, " Dee muttered, knowing that his pressing Billy Reynolds had gotten him killed..
Dee tried to stand and stumbled. He felt dizzy and his ribs were shot with fiery pain. Someone had gotten some licks in while he'd been unconscious, he thought. He found the door and a wall... more stone... like a medieval dungeon... and followed it around. Roughly nine by twelve feet, he guessed when his fingers found the door again.
How had they taken him off the base? Security was tight. He thought about key personnel 'in on the deal' and worried about Ryo. If he had been taken that easily, then what was to stop them from getting Ryo as well? Three detectives missing, one known dead. Weren't they afraid of a full blown investigation; a complete turning upside down of the base and the surrounding area? The answer was obviously, no. Either that was a sign of a very unbalanced group of people or they really were that sure that no one would ever find Dee.
"You don't know my Ryo," Dee said under his breath and went back to his blanket to sit down. "Hey!" he shouted at the door. "I'm freakin hungry! Get me something to eat!"
They didn't feed him, but they did slide water through a slot at the bottom of the door. It was warm water and tasted bad, but Dee didn't have any choice except to drink it. He used some to clean the worst of his cuts, finding them by feel.
Exploring his room was next. Searching about, blind, in an unknown situation, made the hairs on Dee's neck stand on end. His hands touched stone, cinder block and the cold metal of a bare toilet. That confirmed that he was in some sort of detention area. That meant that escape was going to be that much more difficult. Dee didn't rule out the possibility entirely, though. He'd been in rough situations before and giving up had never been his style.
"They gotta open the door sometime," Dee muttered under his breath as he felt for the best place to rest. They didn't, of course, and Dee didn't want to think about that. Instead, he tried to plan moves that might help him break free.
"Walk on base, interview a few soldiers, solve case, go home," Dee muttered. "Why can't things ever be simple?" He wondered what Ryo was thinking. What had his lover done when he hadn't come back? It was easy to picture Ryo's concerned, handsome face against the blackness. Ryo might search the base, but he would also be smart enough to put two and two together and question the most likely suspects. That would be key, Dee thought. The confidence of his captors, that he couldn't be found, led Dee to believe that learning his whereabouts was going to depend heavily on Ryo getting that information out of someone.
Someone will rat, Dee thought. For his kidnapping to be carried out, spoke of a large involvement by base personnel. There was going to be another Billy, another person who would see their chance to get out of their situation and inform the police. A small, streetwise voice, that sounded a lot like Bicky, said deep down in Dee's psyche, 'Yeah, right! Why don't you wish for the Tooth Fairy next?'
Dee flipped the voice off and then hunkered in on his sore ribs. I'm already losing it, he growled at himself. I refuse to hallucinate Bicky. He studied the darkness, the faint light coming from around the door and the slot. He tried to imagine what they had planned for him. Having seen it all in his line of work, his imagination, unfortunately, was very large. Knowing that they were a club devoted to domination and torture games, set his mind on paths that made him shiver.
"Come on, Ryo," Dee said under his breath. "I wanna be home by dinner time."
That only served to remind Dee that he didn't know what time it was or how long he had been knocked out. His stomach growled, but that wasn't a good indicator. Touching his face, and his rough stubble, he winced. That was a better time keeper. It told him that evening was long over with.
"Breakfast then," Dee grumbled.
As if on cue, the slot opened and something hand sized was shoved through. When the slot closed again, Dee almost moved forward, hoping it was food, but something warned him, some internal hair trigger sense of, 'something's wrong'. When he herd the skitter of small feet, he knew what his 'breakfast' was. They had put a rat in with him.
"Thanks," Dee grunted angrily.
"You're welcome," a voice said. "My little pet will look more appetizing in a few days."
Dee felt his stomach tighten, but he kept his voice light. "As long as you give me some salt and pepper to put on it, I'll be fine."
"You're a smart ass," the voice chuckled. "I'll enjoy breaking you."
Then there was nothing more and Dee was left listening to his new 'guest'. Not too bad, so far, he thought to himself, knowing now that someone was listening to him. He had imagined a lot worse. Starvation and rats for meals hadn't even been a fourth of the way up the list as a worst case scenario.
"My partner is going to mess you up when he gets here," Dee said, wanting the man to keep talking, thinking that he could use it to identify him later.
The was still there and his reply was steeped in arrogant derision. "Your partner would have to be clairvoyant to find you, Detective."
"He can be," Dee retorted.
The chuckle this time was dark and dangerous. "How long can you have faith in this partner of yours? It will be interesting to find out." There was a pause. "It's four a.m. on the twenty third. Mark and counting, Detective."
"I did want to know what time it was, thanks," Dee replied flippantly.
"I'll keep you informed," the man told him, still amused, "so that we can both know the very second that you break into a thousand pieces."
Dee grunted. "I'm betting, you'll break first."
"Bet what?" The man laughed. "You are at a disadvantage."
"I'll bet my breakfast, walking around over there, that I'll drive you crazy before you do me," Dee told him.
"Interesting, but I'm not partial to rat, sir," The man replied. He paused and then snorted as if irritated at himself. "You just want me to talk to you, don't you? That's why you're saying these ridiculous things. You'll break sooner than I thought, Detective."
"Really?" Dee replied sarcastically. "Seems I'm the one that got what I wanted without you getting wise. Wonder how many more times I can do that before you snap?"
The humor was gone and the man threatened, "If you make me angry, I can think of very not amusing things to do to you, Detective."
"The names Latener," Dee told him with a snort. "Didn't you at least bother to find that out before sticking me in here?"
"What's in a name?" The man wondered. "Your name won't matter to you after I-"
"Yeah, yeah!" Dee growled, "You're getting boring! Can't you come up with some new doom and gloom material?"
The man spluttered, furious, "I will completely control you before long, have no doubt of that. You will end up doing what ever I tell you to. You will beg for-"
"I'll do whatever you want?" Dee wondered derisively.
"Yes..." The man paused and then warned, "You are a fool to make me angry."
"I'm a fool?" Dee snorted. "Seems like you're the one who's stupid."
"How so?" the man demanded.
"You ARE still talking," Dee pointed out.
There was dead silence and then the man said, "You'll pay for your insolence!"
"Still talking," Dee replied with a self satisfied laugh.
That was answered by a curse and then there was silence. Dee sighed and rubbed
at his eyes. You are so nuts, he told himself, egging that guy on, but the imp
inside him, that didn't know any fear, was still grinning.
--------------------------------------------------
"If it seems like I've been lost in 'let's remember', If you think I'm
feeling older and missing my younger days, Oh, then you should have known me
much better cause my past is something that never got in my way, oh, no... shit,
What was the next line... Still... Still I would not be here now If I never
had the hunger.... yeah, that's it, that's me... come on, what's the next line....
" Dee scrounged through his memory trying to dredge up the lyrics to a
song that had been his favorite some time ago.
He paced his cell, hands stuck deep in pockets, shivering and trying to hear the slightest sound to let him know that he was being watched. It was becoming a game, one that, as the long hours passed, he was depending on more and more to keep him awake.
"And I'm not ashamed to say the wild boys were my friends..." Dee sang softly to the dark. He snickered. "That's for sure... Come on, next line, Dee, what was it? You used to listen to this all the time...." He thought of his youth, running with his friends on the mean streets and he could only find a grin and no regrets. The grin hurt his mouth. They had dragged him out twice now to a room with bright lights and worked him with rubber hoses and punched him. Not excessive force, just enough to make him 'pay attention', his tormentor had said. The men had been masked, nothing to give Dee a clue to hold for later. It had made his skin crawl to know that they were getting some sort of sexual pleasure from hurting him. He had tried very hard not to think about that. That's when he had started remembering the song. For some reason, it gave him strength, maybe because it reminded him who he was, not their victim, but Dee Latener, one stubborn, obnoxious, tenacious, and hard as nails detective; a graduate of the slum academy.
Cold water seeped under the door. Dee felt it when he suddenly stepped into it walking by the door for the hundredth time. He bent and felt with a hand. The water was definitely coming in. It was freezing.
"Hey!" Dee shouted. "Me and my friend, Ratty, don't appreciate the water works!"
A voice replied with humor. "We do."
Unless they were using infrared they couldn't see him, Dee thought, and even then it wouldn't be very satisfactory images. They wanted him to cry, scream, beg, he realized.
"If I get wet, cold, and die, it's going to cut your play time way down," Dee snorted. "That's not very smart."
"I'm free and in control, you are not," the voice replied. "Who's the smart one, detective?"
"The smart one is my partner, Ryo," Dee told him. "He'll be here soon. He'll shoot off your balls and make you eat them when he sees what you've been doing."
There was loud laughter from several people. His tormentor wasn't alone. "We sent him on a goose chase," the voice replied derisively. "You can give up that hope right now, detective. He will never find you." He stressed each word of the last sentence.
Dee grinned and shook his head. "You don't know who you're dealing with. Ryo is the most stubborn, anal, relentless, passionate, handsome..." he stopped himself and swallowed hard. "Let's just say I have more faith in him than I do in you idiots."
The voice turned vicious. "You're lovers?" he sounded disgusted and Dee had to laugh. Someone who used torture for gratification thought that homosexuals were disgusting? "If he gets close enough, we may kill him or, maybe, we should bring him here and torture him where you can hear him?" the voice taunted. "Still feel like laughing?"
Dee shook his head, "You guys are stupid. If you keep kidnapping and killing people you're going to have the police crawling all over this area, if they aren't already looking for me."
The voice laughed. "If we were anywhere close to the base, but we aren't, detective. "
Dee was stepping away from the water but it was quickly covering the floor. He heard the rat squeaking nervously. He knew what was coming, so he didn't make a sound when it grabbed onto his pants leg and tried to climb. He grabbed it and killed it silently.
Sorry, Ratty, Dee thought grimly, it's you or me.
"So, " Dee asked with hardly a break in the conversation. "Where exactly are we so I know just how clever you really are?"
"Comfortable, detective?" the voice taunted.
"Yes, thank you," Dee replied calmly. "Me and Ratty were kind of getting grungy. A bath would be nice. Want to answer my question?"
They were waiting for him to cry out. Dee grinned in the dark even as he shivered when the water seeped into his shoes.
"Let's see if I can figure it out," Dee mused. "Cement block and stone, under the ground. You're in another room. It's cold, but not too cold. My guess is that it's-"
"Why bother?" the voice asked impatiently, frustrated at not getting what he wanted. "You won't be leaving here alive."
"Because it keeps you talking," Dee snickered.
Silence. Dee imagined furious men behind that door and thought about what his
punishment would be for pissing them off yet again. He shrugged and began singing
again.
"'Cuz I never felt the desire till their music set me on fire and then
I was saved, yeah.... that's why I'm keeping the faith, yeah, yeah, yeah, keeping
the faith." Dee had to laugh at the appropriateness of the words.
_______________________________
The cold water made Dee start. He had been leaning against the wall, shivering so hard he thought he would come apart. He had a feeling he was blue with it and that hypothermia was definitely setting in. The cold water against his ass had alerted him to the fact that he had slid down the wall and had almost fallen unconscious. He straightened again and kicked as one of the many replacement rats for poor 'Ratty' tried to climb him.
A strobe light came on, blinding him, making his pupils dilate painfully before it shut off again. That was their new game. It came on every ten minutes.
"Give up," the voice told him. "All you have to do is call me your master, and admit that your partner isn't coming for you, and we will end this."
Dee snorted as he crossed arms over his chest and put his hands under his armpits. "Yeah, right," he chattered back. "Knowing guys like you, once you get me to break, the fun's over and I get to fertilize the daises. Besides, Ryo WILL come for me."
Several unseen people laughed at that. That worried Dee, even though he tried not to let it get to him. The thought of those perverts getting their hands on Ryo.... of doing even half the things they'd done to him...
Dee winced at the pain as he forced himself to stand and walk for the thousandth time back and forth across his prison. The last time they had taken him out, they had burned the bottoms of his feet. That made walking difficult and Dee was sure that's what they had planned.
"You know," Dee said, "me and the Rat gang don't think much of your room service. They told me they aren't leaving any tip."
Silence greeted that. Their anger and frustration had a limit. Dee knew he was getting to the edge of their patience. They weren't getting any gratification out of him. Soon, probably sooner than he'd like, they'd cut their losses and find an easier victim.
"His eyes are black, you know," he said to the cold darkness. "Large and soft and so full of... everything. Sometimes...," he groped, wondering why he was saying such things, only knowing that he was about done in and the pure faith he had in Ryo wouldn't allow him to think of anything else, wouldn't let him paint anything else against the backdrop of that dark torture room. "Sometimes, he looks like he hurts for the world and then he can look so full of... kindness." He grunted. "Don't get me wrong, he can be one tough dude too. I've seen him take down a bad guy and stay cools as ice in a shootout." He shuddered. He shouldn't have thought about ice. "He's smart, too, where it counts, in his job, when it comes to cracking a case, but.... okay, so, about life in general he's a complete pushover... a complete.... air head... clueless... I spent years kissing the hell out of him every chance I got, sticking my tongue down his throat and my hands down his pants, and he was like... 'Gee, Dee, what are you doing?' Wouldn't you call that pretty damned clueless?"
"He was handsome," the voice said, but it was colored by disgust too. "It was a shame to dump dirt on his face when I buried him."
"When it comes to people he loves," Dee told the darkness, ignoring the voice, ignoring the clenching of his heart, "you don't want to mess with him. He'll go 'Dirty Harry' on your ass. I've seen it when he gets like that. You're going to see it too, when he gets a hold of you."
"Maybe I should take you out and show you the video we made while we messed with your partner?" the voice replied. "He had a very pretty scream and he begged so nicely at the end."
Dee laughed. It ended in a rattling cough. He was getting sick, getting dead, he thought, but rallied enough to snort, "So, what'd he say when he begged?"
"He called me Master," the voice told him, tone sounding sexually turned on. "He told me he would do anything I wanted. He begged to do what I wanted."
"Ah," Dee replied calmly.
"Is that all you have to say?" the voice wondered acidly.
"How about, 'liar'," Dee retorted.
The voice snarled. "Liar?"
Dee grinned at the dark, ignoring the pain from the cuts and bruises around his lips. "When Ryo gets upset, he talks in Japanese. Care to tell me what he said in Japanese?" The voice was silent. "Thought not," Dee chuckled and then coughed again.
After awhile, the voice said in an angry tone, "Everyone has agreed. We're done playing. We're going to kill you now."
Dee stopped pacing and stood still, hands clenched.
The voice dripped sarcasm, "Where's your faith now, detective?"
"Stronger than ever," Dee replied defiantly.
"You are a fool." The voice measured out each word.
"And he's MY fool," Ryo's voice said over the speaker and then there was the sound of shouting and things crashing.
Dee tensed, listening. When the familiar lines of Ryo reading someone's rights
washed over him, his shoulders slumped and relief overwhelmed him. Everything
that had been keeping him awake, defiant, and standing up until that point,
drained out of him and he fell. It was okay, he told himself, Ryo had come to
his rescue.
___________________________
"One more time," Dee asked, puzzled. "How the hell did you find me?"
Ryo smiled as he checked Dee's IV lines and helped Dee to sit up against his pillows. Dee was in the hospital, had been there for two days recovering. His fluids were slowly being replenished and his cracked ribs and broken wrist had been strapped and were healing. He had also gone through a series of rabies shots for rat bites.
"A hunch," Ryo told him as he settled on the edge of the bed and took Dee's broad hand between both of his own. "Every time I wanted to talk to a Sergeant Peters, he was off base. Avoidance is usually the sign of a man hiding something, so I tailed him one night. He drove fifteen miles, turned off the road, and then abandoned his car. I followed him to an abandoned, underground bunker. I called for backup and, after they arrived, we stormed the place. There were six men there besides Peters, all from the base, and...."
Ryo stopped talking and his face went tight, all amusement gone. Dee leaned to look into Ryo's dark eyes, the eyes that he had wanted to see during those long dark days. "And?" Dee prompted.
"They had a torture room and 'trophy' room," Ryo replied, going sickly pale. "They had videos, clothing, photos... I counted at least a dozen women in the shots...."
Dee smirked. "So, I was their first guy?"
Ryo's hands tightened on Dee's hand. "How can you joke? Especially after what they did to you? Dee, they were preparing to... to..." He stopped and swallowed hard.
Dee smiled at him and hooked a hand behind Ryo's neck. He pulled Ryo down for a deep, thorough kiss. When he broke from it, Ryo was looking at him tenderly, his heart in his eyes. "They didn't get to me," Dee told him, "so don't let it get to you, okay?"
Ryo was surprised, "But, Dee, how could it not 'get to you'? The things they did to you were horrible!"
Dee's smile widened. As he brought Ryo's hands to his lips and kissed them, he replied, "Because, baby, I had faith."
The End
Read more of Kracken's fiction and fanfiction at
http://kracken.bonpublishing.com
Join Kracken's update ML at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/krackenficsml
Kracken has a yaoi book published, The Angel Within, at amazon.com.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0974416002/qid%3D1066434868/sr%3D11-1/ref\
%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/102-2967152-0308168
and at her publishing website at http://www.bonpublishing.com. Thank
you to everyone who already bought the book. *hugs*