Page 18 of Under His Heel: A Kidnapping

Predictably, she shouted, but then she didn’t care, just had him send her the address and she was off.

He took the time to untie Alex first, careful of his wrist. Alex wasn’t responding at all, his eyes still staring off into nothing. The nearby bathroom provided towels and water, and Tracht cleaned off Alex as best he could. The cotton gauze in his mouth had soaked through, but it looked like the bleeding might have stopped.

When Alex was as clean as was reasonable, Tracht kissed his forehead. Still nothing. With reluctance, Tracht let go of Alex and went to tend to Johan.

As soon as he removed the blindfold, Johan burst into tears. “Uncle Hannes!”

Tracht undid the rest of the bindings, and then he had the brat in his arms, embracing him and refusing to let go, getting his snot and tears all over him.

“Are you all right?” Tracht forced himself to ask, hoping he sounded remotely like he cared.

Johan just cried and cried, and even when Anna and Vasilis showed up, he was barely willing to let go of Tracht. Thank god that Anna insisted.

With his arms free again, Tracht circled back to Alex. It took some coaxing, but he got Alex to stand and lean on him. The paramedics who’d arrived with Anna were fussing over Johan, tending to his infuriatingly mild little scratch.

“Alex. We’re going to get you patched up,” Tracht whispered into Alex’s ears, and that got him a slight reaction.

“What—” and then another hiss of pain, and Alex shaking his head. His eyes did lock on Tracht though, and then there was fear, real fear that Tracht hadn’t seen since their early days together.

Alex slid from his grasp onto the floor, and he placed a bloody kiss on Tracht’s boot. “Sorry,” he slurred, “sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“No. Alex, get up,” Tracht ordered sharply.

Alex complied, pressing his weight onto his broken hand in order to leverage himself upright. The only indication he was aware of anything was the loud hiss he gave. He didn’t try to get close to Tracht, and damn it, this was not the Alex that Tracht wanted.

“Sorry. Sorry. Sorry,” Alex mumbled.

At least the display got the attention of the paramedics. They approached Alex with open concern in their eyes.

“Sir? Please, calm down,” the taller one said.

When he attempted to touch Alex, Alex punched him. Tracht wouldn’t have cared, but it was with the broken hand, and Alex shouted and curled into himself.

“Alex!” Tracht shouted, and he put on the nastiest, most authoritarian voice he could. “Pull yourself together and pay attention!”

The tone broke through to Alex enough that he stood straighter and looked at Tracht properly. Tracht took hold of Alex’s wrist and held it up for the paramedic to look at.

The paramedic—the one who hadn’t been punched—grimaced. “Yeah. That’s going to need a cast. We’ll x-ray it at the hospital and see the extent of the damage. It’ll… it’ll be better if you don’t use it for a while.”

He put a temporary splint on Alex, although it took some effort with the way Alex kept jerking away and panicking. In the end Tracht had to help restrain Alex in order to get it done. Then they got everybody packed up into the ambulance. Johan was still clinging to Anna while Vasilis stroked his hair. She kept reassuring him he was safe, he was fine, they would never let anything like this happen again.

Tracht didn’t say anything to Alex, but he kept his hand on the small of Alex’s back, and every so often he felt Alex press further into that hand.

[Chapter 7]

While the doctors attended to Johan and Alex, Koteas and Vasilis questioned him in a private waiting room. They sat to either side of him, which they probably thought would keep him from leaving.

“How in the world did you find them?” Koteas wanted to know. “We’d already narrowed the location down to the underside warehouses, but…”

“I called in a favor,” Tracht said. “That’s all that you need to know.”

“So where are the kidnappers? They need to be brought to justice.”

The coffee at the hospital was abysmal. With the amount they were charging, they really should provide better food services.

“The favor included handing them over. I elected to remain ignorant of what they intend to do with them.” He could have insisted on calling station security and letting them handle it. But that would have precluded revenge, and that was intolerable.

It hadn’t been as satisfying as taking the whip to Parsons’ back, but he supposed it never would have been. He wished the sab’s leader had been male.

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