Running with Secrets

Untitled Part 3

The voice was one Jeanie had not expected to hear. It shocked her, even. "Jeanie! How did this happen?" asked the familiar voice. She felt the familiar person step in closer to her hospital bed.

He felt the glances his detectives glaced at each other as they sized up the now very dynamic situation.

"Uncle Seth!" New tears fell and she didn't stop them as she reached for the man now sitting next to Sally.

"Jeanie, how?" He cried to her again. He would have to explain to his detectives that his sister would be very angry with him for not going to the hospital earlier.

Jeanie couldn't stop crying and her headache was getting worse. She sat up and threw her arms around her uncle. "Matt said he had something to show me and I assumed he was going to propose, since we'd been talking about our future together for some time and I went with him to an empty warehouse I thought he'd decorated but it was dark and dirty and when I walked inside, someone jumped me and they beat me, Uncle Seth, then Matt choked me. I think he thinks I'm dead because I quit struggling and then I peed my pants."

"So, Matt, your boyfriend, tried to kill you?"

"He said he was sorry." She cried into his shoulder."He leaned over my body and whispered 'sorry' before he left with his friends."

"I know it's a really bad time, but I need you to remember if the friends had names." He gently nudged her. So many things went through his mind as he listened to his niece. Namely the week that had gone by that his sister had badgered him to look into the disappearance of her daughter.

"Use your resources, Seth!" She demanded. He never imagined the Jane Doe in the hospital could be his niece. If he'd had listened to the niggling voice in his head, he'd have found her four days ago.

"I think he called one Chazz. One was Grady, and the last one I know of that was there was called Steele. I think his real name was Xavier. I only ever met him once." Silence again. Jeanie looked around at the people in her room, realizing the only sounds she heard were from the machines she was hooked up to.

Uncle Seth kissed her on her forehead and stood up after he briefly commanded his detectives, "outside." They stood in the hall, waited briefly for their captain and when he didn't stop outside the door, but instead kept walking toward the exit sign down the hall, they knew he meant business. If they knew anything still, they would stay silent until they had all stepped outside.

"I don't understand, Sir." Sally was the first to break the silence between the three when they arrived in an empty outdoor courtyard. "Your niece is Jane Doe?" She watched Captain Vanderson cross one arm into the crook of his elbow while the opposite hand stroked his short gray beard.

"My niece, who has been missing for a week, Detective." He had too many thoughts circulating in his head. One was his top undercover detective, Michael Paul, who had been missing for the same week his niece had been missing. What would he tell his sister? Another was how would he recover his department now that the top case had been cracked wide open? The electrician was elusive as ever and some how, Mike had infiltrated in the last year, but in the same time, his niece met "Matther Benson", the top alias of his best undercover agent. Never putting the two together until now. Not knowing her "Matt" was neck deep in infiltration.

"Sir?" Heath broke the silence. "What should we do about your niece?"

"Nothing right now, Johnston." He furrowed his brows.

"Sir?" He asked.

"Doing anything about my niece will tip off The Electrician, and get Paul Killed." He sighed and rubbed his beard again. "We need to keep her out of sight and away from Paul. He can't know anything. And her mom can't find out--Patti. Patti can't know!"

"I've never met Paul, Sir." Sally said. His reputation for blending in is unsurpassed." She sighed. It was hard being a new detective in a new precinct. She had to learn everything all at once, along with trying to prove herself to the captain.

"That it is, Loveridge. That it is." The captain looked worried. "That's the problem. He could come to the precinct and no one would know he's been there."

The gravity of the situation hit Heath really hard. Jane Doe. Calling card. Michael Paul. The Electrician. Jeanie was surely blessed he left her for dead.

"What do we do then, Sir?" Sally asked. "She obviously can't go home and she's scheduled to be discharged in three days. She needs a safe house."

"Do we even have a safe house?" Heath asked.

"We have a couple, but we'd have to do it differently this time. We can't take any chances on this. If either Paul or The Electrician find out she's alive, things will get really ugly, and I can't let that happen to Jeanie. Or Patti." Vanderson raked his hands through his hair as his detectives shifted nervous weight. There were so many variables for him to think about to keep his niece safe.