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Ryan knew he was almost certainly going to die here. Whoever had taken him was good, was prepared. They’d covered their tracks and taken him in the middle of the night on a Friday when people would be the least likely to notice he was gone. They’d taken him… well, he wasn’t sure exactly, which was all the more impressive.
Add up all of that and combine it with the fact that hardly anyone at the Bureau liked him or cared whether he lived or died, and it was a death sentence. No one would authorize the manpower necessary to find him and save him. He’d probably be lucky if they even found his body afterward.
So here he was — hands tied tightly behind his back, head aching from a blow he’d taken earlier, sitting in a windowless room in what seemed to be an abandoned house — waiting to die. Because he was sure that whoever had taken him, they were going to kill him. He’d made a lot of enemies over the years.
It wasn’t surprising at this point in his life to have people out for his blood.
Sometime later, long enough that he’d almost begun to think that they’d just leave him there until he starved to death, there was a loud noise somewhere out in the rest of the house. Ryan sighed, figuring his clock was finally running out. About time.
There was a part of him that argued that he should have been spending this time making a plan, that he should fight for his life like he always had before. But the truth was that he was tired and he’d gotten to the point where he wasn’t sure he cared enough to do either. If the Bureau, who he’d given so much of his life and sweat and blood for, wasn’t going to save him, why should he bother to save himself?
He looked up as several deadbolts clicked unlocked and the door to the room finally unlatched and swung open. Not knowing who had taken him in the first place, he didn’t have expectations for who would be standing there. And yet he was still surprised.
“Hello, Ryan.”
“What-” Ryan cut himself off, shaking his still pounding head sharply like that would change what he was seeing. Because as it stood, it didn’t make any sense at all. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, are you surprised to see me?” Joe asked just a little mockingly. “I can leave if you’d like. Perhaps someone at the FBI will track you down eventually.”
If nothing else, Ryan was sure that Joe had not been the one to take him. And he was fairly sure it hadn’t been any of Joe’s followers either. They had a certain style about them that hadn’t been present in his kidnapping. Which could only mean that Joe had come here to rescue him.
“Why?” he asked plaintively, lost for anything else to say. His head was reeling and he was pretty sure at this point that it wasn’t just from the earlier blunt force trauma.
Joe raised an eyebrow, looking somewhat disappointed with Ryan’s lack of comprehension for his plans. “Why indeed,” Joe said. “You should know by now, Ryan, that no one else can hurt you but me. I can’t just allow someone to swoop in and kill you for petty revenge now, can I?”
In a certain way, Ryan supposed that made sense. He would never tell Joe that of course, but he understood. They had a connection, loath as he was to admit it even to himself.
“So you just came so you could kill me instead?” Ryan asked. Subtly as he could, he strained against the bindings around his wrist. They were tight, almost tight enough to cut off the circulation by now, and they weren’t giving way. He was at Joe’s mercy.
“Perhaps someday, but not today,” Joe replied with far more amusement than Ryan thought the situation warranted.
Joe stepped forward, stopping so close that Ryan had to crane his neck to look at him, leaving him feeling far more vulnerable and exposed than he would like with his throat bared. A long moment passed as they looked at each other, the only sound in the room their breathing and the too fast beating of Ryan’s heart in his own ears.
“But for now,” Joe finally said, leaning in so that his breath blew warm and intimate across Ryan’s face, “I just want you to remember who it was that came for you.”
Ryan frowned and opened his mouth to ask what exactly Joe meant by that, but he didn’t have the chance to get any words out before pain exploded in the side of his head once again and everything went black.
⁂
When Ryan came to, there was a lot of noise. He blinked his eyes open in time to see Mike come through the door, gun raised.
“Ryan!” Mike exclaimed, immediately putting his gun away and rushing forward. “Are you hurt?”
Ryan took quick stock, noticing immediately that the earlier dull ache in his head was now sharper but still not debilitating. More surprising was the fact that he was no longer tied up, his hands resting comfortably in his lap like someone had purposefully placed them there after releasing him. He tried not to think too hard about what that meant.
“I’m fine,” he said, standing carefully. Mike’s arms moved like he was going to help, but he seemed to realize that Ryan would rather move under his own steam. “Nothing permanent, just a headache.”
Mike nodded, looking relieved, and Ryan wondered if he’d come expecting to find Ryan dying or worse. Which begged the question of how he — and the rest of the FBI, based on the noises he was still hearing from the rest of the house — had found him or even known he was gone in the first place.
“How did you find me?” he asked, already heading out the door. He didn’t want to stay in this room any longer than necessary.
“We got an anonymous tip,” Mike replied, following close behind as always. “It was weird because we didn’t even know you’d been taken at that point, but I checked your apartment as soon as the call came in and well, it was pretty obvious something had happened.”
Ryan was pretty sure he knew what the answer was, but he had to ask anyway. “Did you trace the call?”
Mike shrugged. “Of course,” he said. “The call came from here, which is how we found where you were.”
“Of course,” Ryan repeated, not sure whether to be frustrated or impressed or even relieved. He decided it was best not to confront those sorts of emotions at the moment. “Was there anyone here when you arrived?” he asked, trying to shift into work mode. It was difficult when his mind was running repeatedly over Joe’s last words and the feel of his breath on his face.
“No one alive,” Mike said with a sigh. “It looks like there was some sort of disagreement and things got… violent. We got lucky with that, I guess. You got lucky.”
“Lucky, sure,” Ryan said with his own sigh.
He considered for a moment telling Mike at least what he knew, but rejected that idea almost immediately. He could tell them later if it became necessary. For now he wanted to keep Joe’s involvement to himself. Maybe that would give him time to come to terms with the fact that Joe had saved him when no one else could or would. He was fairly certain that was something he would be thinking about for a very long time.
Which was probably exactly what Joe wanted.