Identity - Rewritten

Chapter Thirty-Three

May 2014

The tap is dripping.

Curled up in an armchair in the Bunker, a warm mug of coffee cradled in her unmoving hands, Asha watches it drip. She barely breathes, still as an undisturbed pond on a cold, not-quite-summer morning like the one she's found herself in. She waits.

The dripping is slow and steady, consistent like nothing ever seems to be. Asha imagines that each drip marks another second: another second that Ace is roaming free, all the answers they want right there in his head. Another second that those kids are away from home, terrified; another second that the people in their lives worry for them. Another second that Ian is with Jennifer Davinforth.

Asha shakes her head quickly and raises the mug to her lips, sipping at her coffee. He went to Jennifer's of his own volition, and he knows his own limits. He's fine.

Asha sighs and stands slowly from the armchair. She paces to the kitchen, and reaches her free hand over the sink to push the cold water handle all the way back.

Finding Ace is what's important. Asha's never been one to blindly trust her gut without evidence to back it up, but she has a feeling that Ace is the key to it all. They find him, they find the kids. It's just that finding him may prove to be more difficult of a task than they have time for.

Past the other end of the kitchen, the Bunker's door opens, and Ian enters dressed in yesterday's clothes, hair unkempt and tie askew.

"Morning." He sets his briefcase by the door and heads straight to the kitchen cabinets, in search of a mug himself.

"How are you?" The words spill out of Asha's mouth before she can stop them, and her fingers tighten to a death grip on her coffee mug.

Ian stops with his hand halfway in the cabinet above the sink; his head turns in Asha's direction. "I'm fine. Really." He continues on as if he were never interrupted, and shuts the cabinet door once he's taken out his mug. He glances pointedly at the coffee machine, which Asha's blocking, and clears his throat.

Asha's lips form a small "o," and she takes a step back.

Adding whiskey to her mug again suddenly doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

"Did you learn anything?" Asha asks, eventually, and raises her mug to her mouth.

Ian nods. "Once she was asleep I looked around and found a phone in her closet. I found some texts from an unknown number, detailing the ransom information, just like Gregory and Trevor got."

Asha frowns, and crosses her arms, acutely aware of the chill in the room. "I don't understand. How does that tell us anything we don't already know?"

As he fills his mug with one hand, he runs the other over his hair and then tilts his head to the side; a quiet crack comes from his neck. "The texts were sent barely two days ago. There were texts from right after his disappearance, too, telling her to keep quiet and that the kidnapper would be in contact soon, but there was no definite date and no mention of the ransom money. Why finally ask for the ransom and give a date now? After Macaulay's already been gone for weeks?"

Asha doesn't have an answer to that, so she says nothing.

Ian continues, "We didn't put it together with Gregory, because Tommy's already been back for a while." He replaces the coffee pot in the machine, and then picks up his mug and turns toward her, hip against the countertop. "But the texts he got came a week or two after Tommy's disappearance as well. The time between the texts and Tommy's return was short because Gregory paid the ransom within a few days, but why the wait before that? Why kidnap a kid and only ask for the ransom weeks afterward?"