Five Minutes to Midnight - Chapter Five (Part Two)
Five Minutes to Midnight
Rating - R (possible NC-17 somewhere later in the series)
Warnings (for series) - Whole series (including Final Break) spoilers, violence, (probably) sex, cursing, death, het (canon and not-quite canon pairings), classical literature and mythology references, questionable knowledge by the author of science, medicine, code-breaking and the mechanics of shady multinational conglomerates who secretly rule the world.
Author’s Note - This is the second of four planned stories that don’t directly violate canon, but take place after Final Break in an attempt to make it more palatable (and, to me, more poetic and satisfying). See “Into the Dark” on ffn or my livejournal for the first in the series. Huge thanks to andacus for being my beta and mind-mate (as always) and tofoxriverinmate for her encouragement and feedback.
Disclaimer - If it belonged to me I would have established that Christina Scofield had an horrific sociopathic evil twin that took her place after the lovely mother of both Lincoln and Michael died of liver cancer sometime in the 1980s. Since that didn’t happen... you know that nothing Prison Break related belongs to me.
Summary - Finding out that Michael is still alive and has been held by The Company for four years might be life-altering for Sara and Lincoln, but it’s also just the beginning...
Chapter One
Chapter Two - Part One
Chapter Two - Part Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five - Part One
“Did you carjack a soccer mom or what, Jane?” he asked, utterly incapable of listening to the silence that had fallen over the occupants of the van for another second.
The blonde sitting shotgun - most likely in the truest sense of the term - offered a brief, disbelieving glance back in his direction.
“Yes, because that’s fantastically low-profile,” she responded.
“You bought this thing?” he questioned, disbelief coloring his voice.
“I did,” she confirmed. “Or, technically, Pedro did.”
“Well, I hope we don’t need to make a fast getaway or anything because I’m pretty sure a kid riding his bike on a paper route could outrun us,” Linc said with a grimace.
“And how would you propose we transport eight adults in one car, Linc?” Jane asked.
“Quit it,” Sara said quietly, never turning her gaze from the window where she’d been watching the Texan landscape drift by since the moment they’d gotten underway. “Antagonizing her isn’t going to make this go any faster or any smoother.”
Linc pushed back the urge to continue to bait Jane. It was pointless, he knew, and pissing her off would achieve nothing other than potentially earning himself a split lip or a black eye.
The silence in the car was nearly as stifling as the tension and he couldn’t believe that he’d actually forgotten how frustrating sitting around and waiting could be when the stakes were this high. But, apparently, he had. Somehow in four short years, his memories of being on the run had dwindled down to fire fights and car chases and awkwardly cramped sleeping arrangements.
He’d never dealt with this well, the waiting. Maybe it was borne of his many years spent sitting around on death row. The experience had taught him a lot of things, but patience wasn’t one of them. Sara, however... Sara had always handled this kind of atmosphere in stoic silence. And this time, he noted, was no different.
He watched her watching out the window, staring blankly at cars and trucks speeding by through the heavily tinted glass. She wasn’t seeing them, of that he was sure. Her mind was miles away, torn between an unnamed island and an unmapped safe house.
He knew the feeling.
“Jane...” came Pedro’s voice from the driver’s seat in a tone that Lincoln really didn’t like.
“I see it,” Jane replied, voice steady and all business.
Linc’s gaze shot around, instinctively looking for whatever threat might have cropped up.
“Take the next exit,” Jane instructed, gathering up her things.
It was then - when red and blue lights blinked through their windows and a telltale siren let out a single, staccato warning call - that Lincoln realized they’d been looking in the rearview mirrors and there was a highway patrolman directly on their trail.
“This isn’t happening,” Sara mumbled, shaking her head in disbelief.
“It’s one cop, Sara. A highway patrolman. It’s nothing,” he said reassuringly, though from the look on her face she didn’t believe him any more than he believed himself.
Had he honestly just been frustrated at being bored?
“Get your stuff together fast and duck down,” Jane yelled back at the occupants of the van.
“Grab my pack too, Jane,” Pedro told the blonde.
“What you don’t want to get busted with a semi-automatic by the Texas Highway Patrol, Pedro?” Jane questioned with an amused look.
“Funny, Jane. Been there. Done that,” he replied as the two shared a knowing look.
“Do we have a plan for this or...” Alex asked from the row behind Linc, hunched awkwardly between Jane’s other two teammates.
“We do,” Pedro confirmed.
“I’ll make the call as soon as we’re clear,” Jane told the driver solemnly. “If you get the chance to get away clean, take it. But you’ve got to maintain protocol.”
“Yeah, I know,” Pedro replied, signaling that he was pulling over. “I just hate missing all the fun. And I hate letting the team down.”
“We’re square, Pedro,” she told him, cool eyes staring at him over the rim of her glasses as she slouched low in her seat. “You didn’t even owe me this much.”
“Nah,” he agreed. “But I owed Aldo.”
“We all owed Aldo,” she sighed as the van rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the highway.
“Hang on back there,” Pedro shouted back toward his passengers. “Things are about to get messy.”
The van was stock silent for a long couple of seconds and Linc could swear he heard the patrolman’s car door slam shut.
“Now,” Jane hissed and Pedro floored it, the passengers of the van all suddenly tossed around like rag dolls.
“Be ready to bail out as soon as the van stops and run to the nearest side street,” Pedro told them. “Then act natural.”
“Faster, Pedro,” Jane said, her tone warning.
“It’s a Grand Caravan, Jane,” Pedro said, eyes still glued to the road as he weaved in and out of traffic, pushing the vehicle to its limits.
“I don’t care if it’s a damn stagecoach, this plan only works if the rest of us slip past the patrolman undetected. If this timing is off, we’ve got much bigger problems,” she reminded him.
The van jerked suddenly, sharply to the right as it took an exit ramp and Linc felt his temple slam against the window with a solid thud.
“Son of a bitch,” he grumbled, instinctively pressing his palm to his head.
“You bleeding?” Sara asked, a familiar note of concern and professionalism ringing in her voice.
“I’m fine,” he replied.
“Be ready,” Jane reminded them all, as if they needed it. “And shut the door after you get out.”
The van careened around a corner at an impressive speed, wheels screeching against the pavement as it fishtailed a little before grinding to a sudden halt.
“Go, go, go!” Jane ordered, flinging open her door and scrambling to slip between two warehouses.
The other five nearly tripped over each other in their haste to follow suit.
It felt like it took forever. Linc was certain that the cop - or one of the dozens more that surely had been called in to catch their renegade van - would round that corner at any second, guns drawn and ready to throw the lot of them back into prison. Sara tripped and skinned her palm, costing them precious seconds, and Alex nearly forgot to close the van door, having to double-back two steps to do so. It was sloppy. Rushed. They were certainly out of practice and there was no learning curve here.
In the end though, the six of them managed to disappear down the alleyway and Pedro sped off in the van. Five very loud, pounding heartbeats later, the cop car followed after Pedro in hot pursuit.
“This way,” Jane instructed, surveying the area before nodding her head to indicate the chainlink fence at the back of the warehouses.
“What’s the plan now?” Linc asked anxiously.
But Jane had other things on her mind than answering him. She scaled the fence quickly, far quicker than he or Alex or Sara would be able to, and for the first time Linc found himself wondering if they’d honestly be able to keep up with Jane and her people. It didn’t matter, though. Not really. They would do this because they had to. Because there was no other choice. Because Michael needed them. And they would succeed out of sheer will if nothing else.
“We need an extraction,” Jane was saying into a cell phone by the time Linc lowered himself down on the other side of the fence.
“Don’t give me that shit,” she hissed into the phone. “This hasn’t gone that bad. It’s just a matter of getting Pedro out of Highway Patrol’s hands. Send in someone as INS and ‘deport’ him. This is easy.
“Yeah, I got that when you outlined what exactly ‘limited resources’ entailed,” she said sarcastically. “...Thank you.
“Jesus, what a pain in the ass,” she shook her head as she snapped the phone shut.
“Warrens?” one of Jane’s people asked.
Linc really figured he ought to learn which was which, considering there were only two left.
“Yeah,” Jane replied.
“Shoulda called Carsen,” the man replied.
“He’s out of pocket right now or I would have,” Jane informed him.
“Hate to break this up, but we’re kind of on a deadline here,” Alex spoke up, looking a little anxious.
“We need another car. Now,” Jane said, letting the previous conversation with her colleague die instantly.
They were in a parking lot, sparsely populated with few options large enough for their needs. Still... there were options.
“Grand theft auto it is, then,” Linc smiled thinly.
“Less messy than carjacking a soccer mom,” Jane shot back as she selected an SUV with fairly dark tinting and pulled a pair of gloves out of her bag before going to work on the locks.
“You might want to put on gloves too,” one of Jane’s men half-instructed, half-suggested as he tossed pairs to Sara, Alex and Lincoln. “Last thing we need is a stray fingerprint in a stolen car.”
“How long do we have until the meet?” Sara asked, pulling on a pair of latex gloves like she’d done a thousand times before as she continually surveyed the parking lot.
“...three minutes,” Alex said, checking his watch.
“And we’re how far away?” Linc asked.
“About thirty minutes,” Jane grunted as she opened the door to the SUV and went to work hotwiring it with astounding speed. “Better hope you’re right about him waiting.”
“I am,” Linc countered quickly, hoping like hell even as he said it that Sucre had learned more patience than he had while in prison.
“Bingo,” Jane announced as the SUV roared to life. “Hop in and buckle up.”
Jane set the car’s cruise control to two miles per hour beneath the speed limit, used her turn signal every time she changed lanes and basically drove like the DMV manual come to life. It was appropriately cautious. It was necessary. It was maddening.
After exactly thirty-two minutes of driving - and, yes, Lincoln was counting - and absolutely no problems whatsoever aside from a few ticked off speeders who’d flipped Jane off as they’d passed her, the SUV pulled into a closed down rest stop off the freeway.
“Damn it,” Sara uttered, eyes scanning the empty parking lot as if a car might materialize in it somewhere if she looked long enough and hard enough.
“Maybe he’s late,” Lincoln asserted, his voice more like a question than a statement.
“Pull around back?” Alex suggested and Jane tilted her head in acquiescence.
The SUV pulled behind the abandoned building along a small service road, but again found it empty.
“Stop the damn car,” Lincoln grumbled.
Much to his surprise, Jane complied.
The car door slammed with a resounding noise, all of Lincoln’s frustration thundering in the unnecessary force exerted against it. He stood where thick-bladed grass met the edge of chipped away concrete and wished like hell that he had something he could punch.
He didn’t realize Sara had exited the car until she planted herself beside him and squinted into the sunlight. She didn’t even glance sideways at him, instead choosing to wrap her arms around her midsection to ward off the cold as she surveyed the flat, sparsely-treed landscape.
“We’ve just started this thing and it already seems like everything’s going bad,” Linc grumbled to her after a beat.
“We’ll adapt,” she replied, as if it were obvious.
Really, maybe it was. They didn’t have any option but to adapt. They’d succeed or die trying and they both knew it.
“Like Michael did,” she followed up, finally glancing toward her brother-in-law. “How many things didn’t go according to plan when you broke out of Fox River?”
“Too many things,” he replied, mulling it over. “Everything. And a lot of people died because of it.”
“We have Jane this time,” she pointed out.
“And we had Michael last time,” Linc retorted. “Jane’s great and all and I know she’s got experience doing shit like this, but she’s no Michael.”
“Well, your father thought pretty highly of her, so how about we give her the benefit of the doubt,” Sara suggested.
“Jesus, I don’t even wanna think about what my father may or may not have thought of her,” Linc half-laughed.
Sara snickered a little and raised her eyebrows at Linc, but said nothing.
“What’s so funny?” came a voice with a distinctive accent and Sara and Linc both turned with great surprise to find Sucre standing a few feet away.
“Sucre! You’re here!” Linc exclaimed.
“Yeah, Sink. You called. Where else would I be? How ya been?” Sucre asked, enveloping the larger man in a hug and thumping him once on the back.
“What the hell? Did you walk here or what?” Lincoln asked bewildered.
“I got here early. Parked up the road a ways,” Sucre offered. “Better safe than sorry, I figured. I didn’t wanna be sitting around in my car waiting for a secret meeting at a closed building for too long, right?”
He turned to Sara and kissed her on the cheek.
“Doc, you look good,” he followed up. “How’s the pececito doing?”
“Mikey’s good,” she answered, tensing a little as if she’d just remembered how far away he was from her. “Sofia and LJ are keeping an eye on him at the moment.”
“They here, too?” he asked looking around, the SUV drawing his attention as the doors opened and the other occupants piled out of the car.
“No...” Sara said slowly.
“Alex?” Sucre asked in surprise, earning a smile and a nod from the other man.
“Something’s up, man,” Linc said abruptly. “Somethin’ big.”
“Yeah, I figured. Otherwise I’d’ be back home right now, right?” he asked, laughing a little as he looked back and forth between Sara and Lincoln. “So, what gives? We gotta save the world again or what, Sink?”
“Not the world,” Jane’s voice broke in, drawing his attention. “Just one person.”
“Who’s this?” Sucre asked thumbing toward Jane.
“Jane Phillips, Fernando Sucre. Jane used to work with my father,” Linc said shortly. “She’s been working against the Company since way before we even knew it existed.”
“Woah, woah, woah,” Sucre said, holding his hands up as if to emphasize his words. “Working? You mean worked, right? Company’s gone, man. We buried those bastards.”
“You hit them hard, no doubt,” Jane nodded. “But they aren’t gone entirely. They splintered into smaller, less powerful groups after the Syclla debacle.”
“So now there’s what? Companies to worry about?” Sucre asked astounded as he ran his hands through his hair.
“That’s my problem,” Jane answered brusquely. “And it’s not why you’re here. Not directly, anyhow.”
“So why am I here, then?” Sucre finally asked, looking a little perplexed.
“It’s probably better that I show you,” Jane asserted, pulling a laptop out of her bag and placing it on a weathered picnic table. “Before I do, though. I want to assure you that you are free to walk away from this if you choose to. We’ll be going on this recovery mission either way. Lincoln and Sara seem to feel you’d be a great asset to this operation, which is why we’re offering you the opportunity to join us.
“If you do join us, we’ll have eyes on your wife and daughter to ensure their safety,” Jane continued, staring gravely at an increasingly nervous-looking Sucre. “It’s unlikely they’d be targeted given the resources we believe this arm of the Company has at its disposal, but I wouldn’t say it’s out of the realm of possibility.”
“I gotta tell you, you’re not really selling me on this mission of yours so far,” Sucre replied with a little laugh.
“Well... they say a picture’s worth a thousand words,” she replied, turning the laptop screen toward the bewildered looking Puerto Rican.
“What is... Who’s...” he started.
“That’s Michael,” Sara told him, placing a hand on his shoulder.
He looked at her with wide eyes, brimming with hope and disbelief.
“Sucre, that’s a live feed,” she continued, nodding a little in reassurance as she spoke. “Michael’s alive and the Company has him. They’ve had him for over four years.”
He looked back at the screen, shellshocked and a little manic looking. Truth be told, it was a little hard for Lincoln to watch. He’d always been a reserved man and the Puerto Rican was anything but.
“Dios mío! Yo no me lo creo. Es loco!” He exclaimed. “Oye, papi! No sabía. Lo siento mucho, papi. Ya voy. Lo juro, Fish. Ya voy y vamos a hacerles pagar. Madre de Dios, lo juro sobre la tumba de mi madre, i le devolverá a su familia, mi amigo!”
Sucre’s voice was impassioned and even with only sparing him the smallest of uncomfortable glances, it was obvious to Lincoln that the other man was in tears. Linc had picked up a fair bit of Spanish over the years, both from Sofia and from life in general in Central America, but Sucre’s speech was so rapid-fire that he could barely pick out a few words. However, it seemed to make a great deal more sense to Jane.
“I take it that you’re coming, then?” she asked.
“Si,” he said nodding fiercely, wiping away tears from his cheeks. “Yes. Let’s go get him back.”
Rating - R (possible NC-17 somewhere later in the series)
Warnings (for series) - Whole series (including Final Break) spoilers, violence, (probably) sex, cursing, death, het (canon and not-quite canon pairings), classical literature and mythology references, questionable knowledge by the author of science, medicine, code-breaking and the mechanics of shady multinational conglomerates who secretly rule the world.
Author’s Note - This is the second of four planned stories that don’t directly violate canon, but take place after Final Break in an attempt to make it more palatable (and, to me, more poetic and satisfying). See “Into the Dark” on ffn or my livejournal for the first in the series. Huge thanks to andacus for being my beta and mind-mate (as always) and tofoxriverinmate for her encouragement and feedback.
Disclaimer - If it belonged to me I would have established that Christina Scofield had an horrific sociopathic evil twin that took her place after the lovely mother of both Lincoln and Michael died of liver cancer sometime in the 1980s. Since that didn’t happen... you know that nothing Prison Break related belongs to me.
Summary - Finding out that Michael is still alive and has been held by The Company for four years might be life-altering for Sara and Lincoln, but it’s also just the beginning...
Chapter One
Chapter Two - Part One
Chapter Two - Part Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five - Part One
“Did you carjack a soccer mom or what, Jane?” he asked, utterly incapable of listening to the silence that had fallen over the occupants of the van for another second.
The blonde sitting shotgun - most likely in the truest sense of the term - offered a brief, disbelieving glance back in his direction.
“Yes, because that’s fantastically low-profile,” she responded.
“You bought this thing?” he questioned, disbelief coloring his voice.
“I did,” she confirmed. “Or, technically, Pedro did.”
“Well, I hope we don’t need to make a fast getaway or anything because I’m pretty sure a kid riding his bike on a paper route could outrun us,” Linc said with a grimace.
“And how would you propose we transport eight adults in one car, Linc?” Jane asked.
“Quit it,” Sara said quietly, never turning her gaze from the window where she’d been watching the Texan landscape drift by since the moment they’d gotten underway. “Antagonizing her isn’t going to make this go any faster or any smoother.”
Linc pushed back the urge to continue to bait Jane. It was pointless, he knew, and pissing her off would achieve nothing other than potentially earning himself a split lip or a black eye.
The silence in the car was nearly as stifling as the tension and he couldn’t believe that he’d actually forgotten how frustrating sitting around and waiting could be when the stakes were this high. But, apparently, he had. Somehow in four short years, his memories of being on the run had dwindled down to fire fights and car chases and awkwardly cramped sleeping arrangements.
He’d never dealt with this well, the waiting. Maybe it was borne of his many years spent sitting around on death row. The experience had taught him a lot of things, but patience wasn’t one of them. Sara, however... Sara had always handled this kind of atmosphere in stoic silence. And this time, he noted, was no different.
He watched her watching out the window, staring blankly at cars and trucks speeding by through the heavily tinted glass. She wasn’t seeing them, of that he was sure. Her mind was miles away, torn between an unnamed island and an unmapped safe house.
He knew the feeling.
“Jane...” came Pedro’s voice from the driver’s seat in a tone that Lincoln really didn’t like.
“I see it,” Jane replied, voice steady and all business.
Linc’s gaze shot around, instinctively looking for whatever threat might have cropped up.
“Take the next exit,” Jane instructed, gathering up her things.
It was then - when red and blue lights blinked through their windows and a telltale siren let out a single, staccato warning call - that Lincoln realized they’d been looking in the rearview mirrors and there was a highway patrolman directly on their trail.
“This isn’t happening,” Sara mumbled, shaking her head in disbelief.
“It’s one cop, Sara. A highway patrolman. It’s nothing,” he said reassuringly, though from the look on her face she didn’t believe him any more than he believed himself.
Had he honestly just been frustrated at being bored?
“Get your stuff together fast and duck down,” Jane yelled back at the occupants of the van.
“Grab my pack too, Jane,” Pedro told the blonde.
“What you don’t want to get busted with a semi-automatic by the Texas Highway Patrol, Pedro?” Jane questioned with an amused look.
“Funny, Jane. Been there. Done that,” he replied as the two shared a knowing look.
“Do we have a plan for this or...” Alex asked from the row behind Linc, hunched awkwardly between Jane’s other two teammates.
“We do,” Pedro confirmed.
“I’ll make the call as soon as we’re clear,” Jane told the driver solemnly. “If you get the chance to get away clean, take it. But you’ve got to maintain protocol.”
“Yeah, I know,” Pedro replied, signaling that he was pulling over. “I just hate missing all the fun. And I hate letting the team down.”
“We’re square, Pedro,” she told him, cool eyes staring at him over the rim of her glasses as she slouched low in her seat. “You didn’t even owe me this much.”
“Nah,” he agreed. “But I owed Aldo.”
“We all owed Aldo,” she sighed as the van rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the highway.
“Hang on back there,” Pedro shouted back toward his passengers. “Things are about to get messy.”
The van was stock silent for a long couple of seconds and Linc could swear he heard the patrolman’s car door slam shut.
“Now,” Jane hissed and Pedro floored it, the passengers of the van all suddenly tossed around like rag dolls.
“Be ready to bail out as soon as the van stops and run to the nearest side street,” Pedro told them. “Then act natural.”
“Faster, Pedro,” Jane said, her tone warning.
“It’s a Grand Caravan, Jane,” Pedro said, eyes still glued to the road as he weaved in and out of traffic, pushing the vehicle to its limits.
“I don’t care if it’s a damn stagecoach, this plan only works if the rest of us slip past the patrolman undetected. If this timing is off, we’ve got much bigger problems,” she reminded him.
The van jerked suddenly, sharply to the right as it took an exit ramp and Linc felt his temple slam against the window with a solid thud.
“Son of a bitch,” he grumbled, instinctively pressing his palm to his head.
“You bleeding?” Sara asked, a familiar note of concern and professionalism ringing in her voice.
“I’m fine,” he replied.
“Be ready,” Jane reminded them all, as if they needed it. “And shut the door after you get out.”
The van careened around a corner at an impressive speed, wheels screeching against the pavement as it fishtailed a little before grinding to a sudden halt.
“Go, go, go!” Jane ordered, flinging open her door and scrambling to slip between two warehouses.
The other five nearly tripped over each other in their haste to follow suit.
It felt like it took forever. Linc was certain that the cop - or one of the dozens more that surely had been called in to catch their renegade van - would round that corner at any second, guns drawn and ready to throw the lot of them back into prison. Sara tripped and skinned her palm, costing them precious seconds, and Alex nearly forgot to close the van door, having to double-back two steps to do so. It was sloppy. Rushed. They were certainly out of practice and there was no learning curve here.
In the end though, the six of them managed to disappear down the alleyway and Pedro sped off in the van. Five very loud, pounding heartbeats later, the cop car followed after Pedro in hot pursuit.
“This way,” Jane instructed, surveying the area before nodding her head to indicate the chainlink fence at the back of the warehouses.
“What’s the plan now?” Linc asked anxiously.
But Jane had other things on her mind than answering him. She scaled the fence quickly, far quicker than he or Alex or Sara would be able to, and for the first time Linc found himself wondering if they’d honestly be able to keep up with Jane and her people. It didn’t matter, though. Not really. They would do this because they had to. Because there was no other choice. Because Michael needed them. And they would succeed out of sheer will if nothing else.
“We need an extraction,” Jane was saying into a cell phone by the time Linc lowered himself down on the other side of the fence.
“Don’t give me that shit,” she hissed into the phone. “This hasn’t gone that bad. It’s just a matter of getting Pedro out of Highway Patrol’s hands. Send in someone as INS and ‘deport’ him. This is easy.
“Yeah, I got that when you outlined what exactly ‘limited resources’ entailed,” she said sarcastically. “...Thank you.
“Jesus, what a pain in the ass,” she shook her head as she snapped the phone shut.
“Warrens?” one of Jane’s people asked.
Linc really figured he ought to learn which was which, considering there were only two left.
“Yeah,” Jane replied.
“Shoulda called Carsen,” the man replied.
“He’s out of pocket right now or I would have,” Jane informed him.
“Hate to break this up, but we’re kind of on a deadline here,” Alex spoke up, looking a little anxious.
“We need another car. Now,” Jane said, letting the previous conversation with her colleague die instantly.
They were in a parking lot, sparsely populated with few options large enough for their needs. Still... there were options.
“Grand theft auto it is, then,” Linc smiled thinly.
“Less messy than carjacking a soccer mom,” Jane shot back as she selected an SUV with fairly dark tinting and pulled a pair of gloves out of her bag before going to work on the locks.
“You might want to put on gloves too,” one of Jane’s men half-instructed, half-suggested as he tossed pairs to Sara, Alex and Lincoln. “Last thing we need is a stray fingerprint in a stolen car.”
“How long do we have until the meet?” Sara asked, pulling on a pair of latex gloves like she’d done a thousand times before as she continually surveyed the parking lot.
“...three minutes,” Alex said, checking his watch.
“And we’re how far away?” Linc asked.
“About thirty minutes,” Jane grunted as she opened the door to the SUV and went to work hotwiring it with astounding speed. “Better hope you’re right about him waiting.”
“I am,” Linc countered quickly, hoping like hell even as he said it that Sucre had learned more patience than he had while in prison.
“Bingo,” Jane announced as the SUV roared to life. “Hop in and buckle up.”
Jane set the car’s cruise control to two miles per hour beneath the speed limit, used her turn signal every time she changed lanes and basically drove like the DMV manual come to life. It was appropriately cautious. It was necessary. It was maddening.
After exactly thirty-two minutes of driving - and, yes, Lincoln was counting - and absolutely no problems whatsoever aside from a few ticked off speeders who’d flipped Jane off as they’d passed her, the SUV pulled into a closed down rest stop off the freeway.
“Damn it,” Sara uttered, eyes scanning the empty parking lot as if a car might materialize in it somewhere if she looked long enough and hard enough.
“Maybe he’s late,” Lincoln asserted, his voice more like a question than a statement.
“Pull around back?” Alex suggested and Jane tilted her head in acquiescence.
The SUV pulled behind the abandoned building along a small service road, but again found it empty.
“Stop the damn car,” Lincoln grumbled.
Much to his surprise, Jane complied.
The car door slammed with a resounding noise, all of Lincoln’s frustration thundering in the unnecessary force exerted against it. He stood where thick-bladed grass met the edge of chipped away concrete and wished like hell that he had something he could punch.
He didn’t realize Sara had exited the car until she planted herself beside him and squinted into the sunlight. She didn’t even glance sideways at him, instead choosing to wrap her arms around her midsection to ward off the cold as she surveyed the flat, sparsely-treed landscape.
“We’ve just started this thing and it already seems like everything’s going bad,” Linc grumbled to her after a beat.
“We’ll adapt,” she replied, as if it were obvious.
Really, maybe it was. They didn’t have any option but to adapt. They’d succeed or die trying and they both knew it.
“Like Michael did,” she followed up, finally glancing toward her brother-in-law. “How many things didn’t go according to plan when you broke out of Fox River?”
“Too many things,” he replied, mulling it over. “Everything. And a lot of people died because of it.”
“We have Jane this time,” she pointed out.
“And we had Michael last time,” Linc retorted. “Jane’s great and all and I know she’s got experience doing shit like this, but she’s no Michael.”
“Well, your father thought pretty highly of her, so how about we give her the benefit of the doubt,” Sara suggested.
“Jesus, I don’t even wanna think about what my father may or may not have thought of her,” Linc half-laughed.
Sara snickered a little and raised her eyebrows at Linc, but said nothing.
“What’s so funny?” came a voice with a distinctive accent and Sara and Linc both turned with great surprise to find Sucre standing a few feet away.
“Sucre! You’re here!” Linc exclaimed.
“Yeah, Sink. You called. Where else would I be? How ya been?” Sucre asked, enveloping the larger man in a hug and thumping him once on the back.
“What the hell? Did you walk here or what?” Lincoln asked bewildered.
“I got here early. Parked up the road a ways,” Sucre offered. “Better safe than sorry, I figured. I didn’t wanna be sitting around in my car waiting for a secret meeting at a closed building for too long, right?”
He turned to Sara and kissed her on the cheek.
“Doc, you look good,” he followed up. “How’s the pececito doing?”
“Mikey’s good,” she answered, tensing a little as if she’d just remembered how far away he was from her. “Sofia and LJ are keeping an eye on him at the moment.”
“They here, too?” he asked looking around, the SUV drawing his attention as the doors opened and the other occupants piled out of the car.
“No...” Sara said slowly.
“Alex?” Sucre asked in surprise, earning a smile and a nod from the other man.
“Something’s up, man,” Linc said abruptly. “Somethin’ big.”
“Yeah, I figured. Otherwise I’d’ be back home right now, right?” he asked, laughing a little as he looked back and forth between Sara and Lincoln. “So, what gives? We gotta save the world again or what, Sink?”
“Not the world,” Jane’s voice broke in, drawing his attention. “Just one person.”
“Who’s this?” Sucre asked thumbing toward Jane.
“Jane Phillips, Fernando Sucre. Jane used to work with my father,” Linc said shortly. “She’s been working against the Company since way before we even knew it existed.”
“Woah, woah, woah,” Sucre said, holding his hands up as if to emphasize his words. “Working? You mean worked, right? Company’s gone, man. We buried those bastards.”
“You hit them hard, no doubt,” Jane nodded. “But they aren’t gone entirely. They splintered into smaller, less powerful groups after the Syclla debacle.”
“So now there’s what? Companies to worry about?” Sucre asked astounded as he ran his hands through his hair.
“That’s my problem,” Jane answered brusquely. “And it’s not why you’re here. Not directly, anyhow.”
“So why am I here, then?” Sucre finally asked, looking a little perplexed.
“It’s probably better that I show you,” Jane asserted, pulling a laptop out of her bag and placing it on a weathered picnic table. “Before I do, though. I want to assure you that you are free to walk away from this if you choose to. We’ll be going on this recovery mission either way. Lincoln and Sara seem to feel you’d be a great asset to this operation, which is why we’re offering you the opportunity to join us.
“If you do join us, we’ll have eyes on your wife and daughter to ensure their safety,” Jane continued, staring gravely at an increasingly nervous-looking Sucre. “It’s unlikely they’d be targeted given the resources we believe this arm of the Company has at its disposal, but I wouldn’t say it’s out of the realm of possibility.”
“I gotta tell you, you’re not really selling me on this mission of yours so far,” Sucre replied with a little laugh.
“Well... they say a picture’s worth a thousand words,” she replied, turning the laptop screen toward the bewildered looking Puerto Rican.
“What is... Who’s...” he started.
“That’s Michael,” Sara told him, placing a hand on his shoulder.
He looked at her with wide eyes, brimming with hope and disbelief.
“Sucre, that’s a live feed,” she continued, nodding a little in reassurance as she spoke. “Michael’s alive and the Company has him. They’ve had him for over four years.”
He looked back at the screen, shellshocked and a little manic looking. Truth be told, it was a little hard for Lincoln to watch. He’d always been a reserved man and the Puerto Rican was anything but.
“Dios mío! Yo no me lo creo. Es loco!” He exclaimed. “Oye, papi! No sabía. Lo siento mucho, papi. Ya voy. Lo juro, Fish. Ya voy y vamos a hacerles pagar. Madre de Dios, lo juro sobre la tumba de mi madre, i le devolverá a su familia, mi amigo!”
Sucre’s voice was impassioned and even with only sparing him the smallest of uncomfortable glances, it was obvious to Lincoln that the other man was in tears. Linc had picked up a fair bit of Spanish over the years, both from Sofia and from life in general in Central America, but Sucre’s speech was so rapid-fire that he could barely pick out a few words. However, it seemed to make a great deal more sense to Jane.
“I take it that you’re coming, then?” she asked.
“Si,” he said nodding fiercely, wiping away tears from his cheeks. “Yes. Let’s go get him back.”