Chapter Text
Jake yanked frustratedly at the restraints keeping him bound to the chair Hoytsman had forced him into. He froze as Hoytsman turned back around; his kidnapper had been pacing the length of the ice cream truck, rambling on about this and that, waving his gun in the air in a very haphazardly way that made Jake only a little bit nervous.
“I lost my job, and my wife, and my home, I had to get an ex-client to sell me this stupid truck —,”
Hoytsman was cut off when Jake’s phone buzzed, and Jake brightened. An out.
“This was a bad idea for you, Hoytsman,” he said proudly, raising his chin. “People are gonna notice if I disappear — see, someone’s already looking for me.” Surely, it was only a matter of time before Amy and Rosa found him. Even though, Jake admitted to himself, there was also a good chance he had annoyed them into dropping his case entirely.
Hoytsman picked up Jake’s phone, and then immediately grinned.
Jake frowned. Uh-oh.
“Your e-coupon for Big Mike’s Calzones expires today,” Hoytsman read out, in a mocking tone.
“Damn right,” Jake bluffed — internally cringing, because he had really wanted to use that coupon, and also because it made the chances that he was probably right in thinking he had annoyed Amy and Rosa into forgetting about him a little higher. “And if I don’t redeem that, Big Mike is gonna get real suspicious.”
Hoytsman’s eye twitched. “Big Mike is a cartoon with pizza for eyes,” he snapped, throwing Jake’s phone back down.
“All right, fine!” Jake conceded, keeping his gaze fixed on the gun still gripped tightly in Hoytsman’s right hand. Despite his better judgment about this whole being-held-at-gunpoint situation, his mouth still kept moving faster than his brain. “Maybe not Big Mike, but someone will. And when they do, you’re gonna get more than just community service. And I sure as hell won’t be trying to help you out this time, man.”
Hoytsman’s expression contorted, anger and annoyance and panic all at once. “Shut up, Peralta!” He snarled, brandishing his gun again. His hands were shaking — probably not from any sort of remorse for this situation he had put them both in, and more likely from copious drug usage.
“Oh, boy,” Jake mumbled, cringing back as best he could while tied to a chair.
“Listen,” he tried, eyes locked on the trigger of the gun; thankfully, Hoytsman’s finger wasn’t on it. He was actually holding the gun completely wrong, which was both reassuring and extremely concerning. “You don’t wanna do this, man. Not to me. You said I can help you, but honestly, there’s really not all that much I can —,”
“I said, shut up!”
Hoytsman took a stumbling step forward, raising his hand and whipping Jake across the face with the muzzle of his gun. It struck right into his temple, and Jake gasped a punched-out wheeze of pain, stars exploding behind his eyes.
His head spun, and for a panicked moment he thought he was going to pass out — but he grit his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to stay conscious. He braced his shoes against the floor of the truck, clenching his hands into fists and digging his nails into his palms. He could feel blood trickling down the side of his head, soaking into his hair, and he thought that that probably wasn’t a good sign.
“Okay — okay,” Jake ground out eventually, slowly forcing his eyes open and looking back up at Hoytsman, who was still looming over him. Well — multiple of him were. Jake’s vision was a little blurred and fuzzy. But he could still see clearly enough to make out the crazed, drug-addled look in Hoytsman’s four sets of eyes.
“Shutting up now.” Jake’s voice was slightly slurring, something he was trying to ignore as more panic built up in his chest, shadows still swamping the edge of his vision. God, that hurt. “If I wasn’t tied up, I’d zip my lips and throw away the key.”
“Hey, now there’s a good idea,” Hoytsman muttered, more to himself than to Jake. He ambled over to the truck’s counter, before coming back to Jake and tying a gag around his mouth. Jake smartly said nothing; his head was still pounding and spinning, and the gag wasn’t helping the fact that he felt like he was gonna be sick. Still, he said and did nothing.
He had a concussion at least, possibly worse; he didn’t want to make things worse, worse.
“Alright,” Hoytsman said, eyes still crazed in a very disturbing way — at least, Jake assumed they were. His vision was getting blacker by the second. “I’ll be back.” The man laughed, shoving his gun into his waistband. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Like I can, Jake thought distantly, as he watched the man climb out of the truck though blurred vision, and heard the lock click. The sound rang in his ears.
He wanted to do something to try and escape — but his head hurt, and he was so tired, and surely someone was coming to save him.
Soon. Maybe.
He hoped.
And then he gave into unconsciousness.
When he woke back up, he had no idea how long it had been. But Hoytsman wasn’t back, and his head hurt worse. It took him several minutes to even remember what was going on — which, he thought again (somewhat deliriously), probably wasn’t the best sign.
His ears were still ringing — a loud, whining, high-pitched noise that made him cringe — and that made pain go shooting through his skull all over again. He felt like he was gonna be sick, but he swallowed it back; if he threw up into the gag, he could choke. He could die.
After a while of circling this increasingly hysterical line of thinking, Jake mustered up enough wherewithal to try and wriggle out of the ropes keeping him bound to the chair. But each move he made made him hurt all over again, and by the time Hoytsman got back a while later, he had given up. At least Hoytsman wasn’t four blurry copies anymore — small mercies.
The man was grinning widely as he stomped inside the truck and yanked the gag from Jake’s mouth — a stark contrast to his personality from earlier. Which was another thing that probably wasn’t a good sign, and was a sign that he had most likely done a shit ton more of coke and the like.
Jake stayed quiet as Hoytsman picked up his ramblings right where he had left off — going on and on, more bullshit about how Jake had ruined his life . . . and how he was gonna help him fix it.
“You’re gonna help me get my life back. You’re gonna confess, on video, to framing me for everything that got me in trouble.” Hoytsman pulled his gun from his waistband, leering nastily. “And if you don’t . . . I can always add on to how fucked your face looks right now.”
He reached out and poked cruelly at Jake’s temple with the tip of his gun, right where he had struck him — where there was surely nasty bruising, and blood that Jake could feel crusted into his skin and hair. The touch made Jake’s entire skull explode with agony, and he jerked back almost hard enough to knock the chair over, vision momentarily going black again from the pain.
“That’s what I thought,” Hoytsman said with satisfaction, as Jake panted for breath, swallowing back bile, struggling to regain any semblance of composure even as fresh panic began to build up in his chest.
He watched helplessly as Hoytsman pulled out a camera, setting it up while humming to himself (and stopping every once and a while to do a line off the counter of the ice cream truck). Then, he propped up giant posterboards of writing. Jake squinted at it; the words looked all blurred together, impossible to make out. Maybe he could have a few minutes ago, but after Hoytsman had messed with him, he was back to seeing double.
“Start here,” his captor instructed, tapping expectantly at the top of the posterboard and turning on the camera. Jake just stared, dread dropping into the pit of his stomach. It was getting harder to breathe.
None of this was funny anymore.
“I can’t read it,” he managed to get out through grit teeth, each word sending a shock of pain from his temple through his entire body. He didn’t know why it hurt so bad; he had been concussed before in the field, and it had never been like this.
But, he thought, he had never been alone like this, for this long, with no one to help him, unable to even help himself.
“What are you, a moron?” Hoytsman snapped. He stumbled closer, swaying on his feet (or maybe that was just Jake seeing two of him again), glaring at Jake, blinking rapidly and breathing very loudly. “I spent thirty-four dollars at the craft store on this shit! And I’ve been planning this stupid plan for way too long! Read it!”
“You — you hit me real hard, man,” Jake grunted, squinting harshly. “Everything’s blurry.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, maybe if I hit you again, that’ll fix it!” Hoytsman barked out. He raised an arm back to bring down onto Jake — and accidentally swung his gun right into his camera, knocking the tripod over. The lens shattered, scattering glass all over the floor.
Enraged, Hoytsman lunged forward. He knocked Jake — and the chair he was tied to — backwards and raised his gun, expression twisted. Everything was happening so fast, and Jake had no time to react, and he could barely breathe from the pain and the panic.
“You fucking —,”
Hoytsman’s rage was interrupted by a very rapid series of knocks on the closed window of the ice cream truck, and a woman’s voice called out, “Excuse me, are you open?”
Hoytsman leaned down towards Jake, who was so lightheaded that he was certain he was only seconds away from passing out again.
“Keep your mouth shut if you know what’s good for you,” he sneered, before pulling Jake’s chair back up and ambling over to the window, sliding his gun back into his waistband.
Jake didn’t know exactly what happened, but a moment later, Hoytsman was crying out in anger and pain, and there was a voice he recognized from somewhere saying distantly, “Geoffrey Hoytsman, you're under arrest.”
Some part of him was relieved to hear it.
Most of him was in too much pain to care.
Amy rushed past Rosa, who had grabbed Hoytsman and slammed him to the ground. She gasped at what she saw inside the truck. There were remnants of drugs on the counter, and a broken camera on the ground alongside posterboards filled with the ramblings of a lunatic — but Amy only had eyes for Jake, who was tied upright to a chair, head slumped over.
“Jake? Jake!”
Jake groaned when Amy called his name, then moaned in protest, breathing sluggish and slow, as she lifted his head up by the chin. She grabbed her pocket light, forcing his eyes open, one after the other.
“His pupils are uneven,” she called back to Rosa, voicing her first thought. “The bastard must’ve drugged him or —,”
Amy stopped, then, as her eyes adjusted to the half-light of the inside of the truck, and she saw the state of Jake’s face.
There was a mess of dark, black-and-purple bruising swelling covering the right side of his head, and a smearing trail of blood that led back to a jagged cut right on his temple. The blood had matted into his hair and down his neck, soaking into the collar of his shirt, crusted and dry.
Amy’s stomach dropped with dread; it had been hours since Jake had first gone missing, and this injury didn’t look fresh.
“Shit,” she swore aloud. Jake groaned again, a clear sound of pain. Amy let go of him immediately, wavering with uncertainty for a brief moment of panic before snapping out of it and hurrying back over to where Rosa was cuffing Hoytsman.
“He hit him with something,” she said urgently. “A gun, probably.”
“Yeah, probably this one,” Rosa responded darkly, holding up a Sig Sauer handgun that she had disarmed from Hoytsman. She handed it to Amy, who looked it over — sure enough, the muzzle was stained with blood. Jake’s blood.
“You got him?” She asked Rosa, who nodded, hoisting Hoytsman up.
“Get Jake. I’ll radio for an ambulance.”
Amy nodded quickly. She put the gun on the counter of the truck to bag for evidence later, then hurried back over to Jake, cutting him out of the restraints. He immediately slid out of the chair; she caught him gently, helping him slump onto the floor, careful to not touch anywhere near the ugly wound at his temple.
He was shivering violently, from pain or shock or both, Amy didn’t know. After only a moment, he weakly dragged himself up and vomited, choking on bile and moaning with pain. Amy winced sympathetically, stepping back and hesitantly rubbing his back. Once he was done, she helped him sit back up, leaning him against the counter and keeping her hands on his shoulders, holding him up.
“Jake?” She whispered. “Can you hear me?”
Jake cracked open his left eye. He blinked at her, face screwed up in pain.
Amy swallowed tightly, almost wanting to cry. She knew that this wasn’t her and Rosa’s faults — it was no one’s fault but Hoytsman’s — but still, she couldn't help but feel responsible. Maybe if she and Rosa had listened to him earlier, he wouldn’t have wound up here — hurt and alone.
“I’m so, so sorry, Jake,” she said softly. “We shouldn’t have doubted you.”
Jake stared at her dazedly. After a moment, a brief flicker of recognition passed through his squinted gaze, and some of the tension in his expression eased, as if just seeing her was soothing.
“Amy,” he mumbled. He held up a hand, and she took it, squeezing lightly. Jake gave her a faint smile.
“Told you . . . I was right,” he slurred out, and Amy nearly laughed just from shock. Only Jake would be such an asshole as to pull the I told you so card in a situation like this.
“I don’t think that’s something to take pride in right now, Jake,” she whispered, blinking back the burn in her eyes.
“s’ all good,” Jake rasped out. “Another . . . cool cop story.”
Amy did laugh, then, despite everything. “Getting kidnapped in an ice cream truck is cool?”
“Duh,” he mumbled, blinking hazily up at her. “Up there with . . . catching serial killers, y’know.” Jake’s breath was coming out more choppy with each word from the effort of speaking; Amy winced, her chest tightening with alarm as he closed his eyes and leaned heavier on her. She could feel him shaking a little.
“Save your strength, okay?” She told him. “There’s an ambulance coming.”
“‘Kay,” Jake agreed. And then, because he was an asshole —
“I was right, though.”