Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Family Ties ❯ Chapter 30 ( Chapter 30 )

Disclaimer: I don't own the G Boys, I just borrow them from time to time and return them a whole lot happier. I do own the plot line and any other characters that appear here that are not in the Gundam Wing Universe; please do not take them without permission. Written for pleasure not profit.

 

Warnings: Angst, sap, fluff, violence, Mpreg.

 

Rating: NC 17

 

Pairings: 1x2x1, 3x4x3, 5xS, HxOC

 

Summary: Sequel to Chimaera. Life in the Maxwell -Yuy household has undergone some big changes when Duo brings Keitaro home from the hospital. Hilde's wedding is approaching and the guys find there's more to this baby business than they thought. Struggling to raise a child, work at Preventer and keep the home happy is certainly a trial for both guys. Add an assassin's threats to prominent government officials' lives and both men find their lives are suddenly changed. Just how far will one go to protect the ones he loves?

 

Dedication: to all my lovely readers out there who enjoyed Chimaera and have since begged, threatened, pleaded, bribed and blackmailed me for a sequel. ^_^

 

 

 

"Family Ties"

 

January. 2007 ShenLong

 

 

Chapter 30

 

“Harim has confirmed that no one other than Nurse Brown, Duo, myself and you two have entered or left the premises today,” Heero informed Sally and Wufei as he re-entered the mansion after paying Harim a visit.

 

Wufei rubbed his tired eyes. “We don't have much to work with,” he stated.

 

“We might have a little more,” Heero replied mysteriously.

 

“How?” asked Sally.

 

Heero waved a vid disc at the pair. “This is the surveillance disc from the monitors around the grounds.”

 

“Ah. Then I suggest we play it,” Wufei said and got up from his seat to follow Heero through to the lounge room, grabbing the notebook and pen as he did.

 

Heero put the vid disc in the machine and grabbed the remote. With the three of them settled comfortably on the couch, he hit play and they all watched intently.

 

There wasn't a lot of human movement on the disc which was to be expected, so Heero fast forwarded through the majority of it, pausing to play when one of them spotted something that might be of use. They watched as they left for work then skimmed through again.

 

“Hold it, Heero,” Sally said as she spotted someone coming out of the mansion.

 

Heero duly hit the pause, then play button and the three stared intently at the screen, watching as Nurse Brown appeared with Keitaro and settled him in the car. The car departed and Heero hit pause again.

 

“Make a note of the time she left, Chang,” Heero said, scanning the small clock on the bottom of the screen.

 

“Fourteen hundred,” Chang replied and wrote it down. “Having left at that time, she should have been back ages ago.”

 

“There didn't appear to be anything wrong with the car that I could see,” Sally added.

 

Heero made a note of how far into the disc they were before continuing. He paused it again not long after. “That's Duo,” he stated softly and they watched the disc as Duo appeared driving up to the house.

 

“Time?” Wufei asked.

 

Heero glanced at the clock on the bottom of the screen again. “Fifteen-thirty-five.”

 

“Right.”

 

The disc played again for a short while before Heero hit the pause again. This time Duo could be seen leaving the house and heading for his car in quite a hurry.

 

“Can you zoom in on him, Heero?” Sally asked, her brow wrinkled.

 

“What time does it say?” Chang demanded.

 

“Seventeen-ten, and I'll see what I can do about the close up.”

 

The screen flickered a little as Heero did his best to close in on Duo. He'd also noticed something not quite right. When he managed to get fairly close without distorting the image too much, he stopped and stared.

 

“He looks upset,” Sally commented.

 

“More like pissed off,” Heero muttered as he studied the image closely.

 

Duo's face did appear to be fixed in anger, Heero could tell simply by looking into his husband's eyes that he wasn't a happy man.

 

“Why would he be so angry?” Chang puzzled. “If the nurse had called for assistance, I can't see him being annoyed over that.”

 

Something in Heero's mind suddenly clicked and he shot upright in his seat. “Of course!”

 

“What?” Chang and Sally both said in unison.

 

“The vid phone,” Heero replied as he dropped the remote to the couch and took off out the room and back to the office to where the vid phone was.

 

Sally and Wufei looked at each other before scrambling to their feet and following. When they entered the office, Heero was typing madly on the keyboard.

 

“Yuy?”

 

“If Nurse Brown called to get help, it will be logged in the vid phone memory. All I have to do is access the memory and I'll know any incoming or outgoing calls.” Heero continued his typing.

 

“You can call up the records on your computer?” Sally questioned. “I thought you could only get those sorts of records through the vid phone company.”

 

“That's usually how you do it,” Heero replied. “But I have our vid phone hooked through the computer too, It's all part of the security upgrade I did when we first moved in here. With Duo's condition we took every precaution we could think of to keep his secret safe and that included the incoming and out going vid calls. We didn't want to risk the possibility of the media getting wind of anything.”

 

“Smart move,” Sally praised.

 

“Hn. Ah, here we go.” The screen began to show a list of incoming and out going calls for the previous forty-eight hours. Heero began to scroll down the list, pausing to check more thoroughly any and all calls made after two that afternoon.

 

“That one,” Wufei snapped and pointed to a sequence on the screen.

 

Heero highlighted the call in question and brought the details up on the screen. “That's not Nurse Brown's cell number,” he growled.

 

“No, it isn't,” Sally replied.

 

“The call came in at sixteen-fifty-five,” Wufei noted.

 

“Fifteen minutes before he left,” Heero pondered out aloud.

 

“Can you trace where that call came from?” Sally asked.

 

Heero cracked his knuckles. “Just watch me.”

 

* * *

 

Nurse Brown watched Duo leave, a heavy feeling in her heart. It wasn't fair he was being forced into murdering an innocent man. If only she'd been more aware, if only she'd tried to resist a little more, if only she still had her purse she could call for help, if only she'd grabbed the can of mace she kept in her purse at the first sign of trouble, if only...

 

If only. Too late. They were the saddest words in the English language.

 

No amount of 'if only's was going to change anything, only she could do that; and she was bound and determined there wasn't going to be a 'too late' added to the equation either! Noting that the door had been locked again had her mind ticking over to the lock pick Duo was going to leave for her. She got up and checked around for it. No luck.

 

Damn! He must have forgotten to leave it for her. Then another thought occurred to her. He would need that lock pick for what he had to do. With a grim look of determination on her face, Margaret began to hunt around the basement for anything she could use to dig away at the mortar.

 

Fifteen minutes later, she was fed up, her wrist hurt, Keitaro was starting to wake and she still hadn't found anything. Wearily she trudged back to the bed and soothed the infant. He needed a diaper change and feeding. She rummaged through the baby bag only to discover there were no clean diapers left - or formula for that matter. As Keitaro was now six months old, he was moving onto solid food and would require an actual meal, not just formula to see him through the night.

 

She glanced at her watch. The dial told her it was ten past ten. No wonder she was tired!

 

Keitaro began to cry louder.

 

Knowing there wasn't much she could do for the child, she began to call out for assistance. After five minutes, the door opened.

 

“What the fuck is all the yelling about?” Murphy snapped.

 

Margaret stopped her calls for help but Keitaro continued his wailing. Managing to raise her voice enough to be heard over the child's cries, Nurse Brown went into rant mode.

 

“This child is hungry and needs changing,” she hollered.

 

“Then do it!” Murphy growled. “Just shut him up!”

 

“How am I supposed to feed and change him when I don't have any food, formula or clean diapers?” Margaret yelled back.

 

“Ah.”

 

“I suggest you do something and do it quickly. This child has several more volume pitches he can reach and I'm sure the neighbors will get suspicious if he's not quieted soon.”

 

The door closed, then reopened a few minutes later. Murphy came into the basement with a pen, paper and jug of water. “Here, give him some water to shut him up for a moment. Tell me what you need and I'll make a list.”

 

Frowning, but with no other option, Nurse Brown rinsed out one of the baby bottles and filled it with the water. She knew it wouldn't keep him quiet for long, but it would help a little. Whilst she gave the child his drink, she rattled off a list of what she wanted.

 

Murphy looked at the list. “You sure you need all this shit?”

 

“Unless you want a screaming child on your hands for however long it is you intend to keep us here, I'd suggest you get it all and then some.”

 

“Okay.” Murphy got up and went to leave.

 

“Make sure you get the correct size diapers too. Six to nine months.”

 

Murphy shook his head and left.

 

Margaret sat back and cradled the child as best she could, talking soothingly to him and hoping their captors wouldn't take too long to get the things she needed. As if sensing all was not right, Keitaro kept his wailing to low whimpers.

 

Murphy managed to find a store open that stocked all the baby things he needed on the list. He grabbed a cart and all but ran up and down the aisles, tossing in the things from the list. He double checked the size on the packet of disposable diapers, grunting in satisfaction at having gotten the right ones. Within half an hour he had everything and was headed back to the hideout.

 

“About time,” Margaret snipped as Murphy entered the basement with the things she'd requested. Keitaro had steadily gotten louder in his demands to be fed and changed and Margaret was starting to get a little flustered herself being unable to do anything other than wait.

 

She rummaged through the bags that contained the 'shopping' and pulled out what she needed. “Here, take that and heat it up for me,” she demanded as she passed over a tin of baby food.

 

“What?”

 

“Are you deaf? I said, take the can, open it, put the food into a bowl and heat it up. Then, bring it back here with a spoon so I can feed the child. Whilst you're at it, I need some hot water to make up the formula, preferably boiled water and some cool, bottled water to cool it off once I've made it up otherwise it will be too hot for him to drink.”

 

Murphy blinked. “Now see here, you're not the one to give the orders...” he began, only to be stopped by Nurse Brown's sudden, angry interruption.

 

“No! Now, you listen to me and listen good. This child is hungry and needs to be fed. I will not compromise his health by feeding him cold food or giving him formula that may be contaminated. Whilst we're on the topic, you can take these bottles, scrub them clean and boil them up too.”

 

“Do it yourself,” snarled Murphy.

 

“And just how do you expect me to do that? I don't have access to the facilities I need to start with, and then there's the slight problem of this.” Nurse Brown indicated her broken wrist. “Seeing as how you lot were the ones who decided we were to partake of your hospitality, regardless of whether we wanted to or not, you're now going to have to face up to your responsibilities as a host. I didn't ask to be here, I didn't ask for you to injure me; this child is an innocent being dragged into all this rubbish, so the least you can do is allow me to give him a hot meal!”

 

By the time Nurse Brown had finished her rant, she was seething with anger. Keitaro had gone quiet and Murphy was looking wide eyed at the woman and was decidedly nervous.

 

“Ah, pass me the can and bottles and I'll see what I can do.”

 

“Thank you.” Margaret snapped and then passed the items over. “Make sure the food isn't too hot either,” she ordered as Murphy beat a hasty retreat.

 

With Murphy gone, the adrenaline began to drain from the nurse and she sagged a little, sitting on the bed next to the infant and resting her head in her one hand. “I don't believe I just did that,” she whispered.

 

Keitaro gurgled and gave the nurse a big grin.

 

Margaret smiled. “Come on, little man, let's see what we can do about getting you changed.”

 

* * *

 

“Here.” Duric passed over a small sheaf of papers to Duo as he drove through the night.

 

Duo took them and began to look through. They were basic, crude drawings of the building the L1 ambassador was staying in.

 

“They will give you the information you need. Ambassador is using the second guest bedroom.”

 

“Security?”

 

“Cameras and outer perimeter guard patrol. Razor wire on top of wall.”Duo continued to study the crude blueprints, a plan slowly forming in his mind.

 

“You have forty-five minutes to get in, do the job and get out,” Duric informed him.

 

“And if I don't?”

 

“You will have a communicator with you. I will be in touch constantly with you and should the need arise, I can allow a window of another ten minutes at the most. I remind you, talking to anyone, trying to escape or aid your escape by informing anyone of your actions will result in the immediate termination of the child and nanny.” Duric spared a moment to look at Duo. “The communicator also doubles as a rather destructive explosive. If you fail to complete the job, try to inform anyone of what is happening or get caught in the process, the thing will detonate.” Duric gave an evil grin.

 

“And don't even think about trying to diffuse it. Any tampering will result in an immediate detonation.”

 

Duo chewed that over in his mind for a moment.

 

“Just in case you're thinking of playing the hero and blowing yourself up with it anyway, remember this; we still have the child and nanny, the only way they will remain alive is if you complete the job and return.”

 

The anger roiled inside Duo. Either way he was screwed.

 

* * *

 

“Got it!” Heero exclaimed and immediately Wufei and Sally were beside him, looking eagerly at the screen.

 

“That's where it originated from?” asked Sally.

 

“Hai. Those are the coordinates for the place where the call was made from.”

 

“Can you...?” Wufei didn't get any further.

 

“Already tracking it down,” Heero replied as his fingers flew over the keyboard and a map of the city appeared in another window, the gridlock narrowing as it homed in on the coordinates.

 

“There!” Wufei pointed to a spot on the screen.

 

“The call was made from within five hundred meters of that spot,” Heero stated confidently.

 

“Then why are we sitting here?” Sally questioned. “Let's go check it out.”

 

Leaving the computer still on, Heero grabbed his gun, jacket and keys, following Wufei and Sally out of the mansion and into the car to check the origin of the call.

 

* * *

 

Duric slowed the car down and turned off the headlights. They coasted along a badly lit back street, passing almost silently along the road between average looking houses. Duric brought the car to a stop in a shadowed alley way and cut the engine. Only the moonlight penetrated the car.

 

“The property is just at the end of the road, to the right. You'll see it as soon as you get to the T-junction.” Duric grabbed a bag from under his seat and withdrew several items from within. He fiddled with one of the items before handing it over to Duo. “That's your communicator. Remember what I said before about it. I will be able to monitor you at all times, however, I'll only contact you when necessary. Other than that, you contact me should you need to.”

 

Duo took the small contraption and stared at it intently. It was similar to the ones that Preventer used, but different in a crude way. It was obviously home made, slightly larger that Preventer ones and not as sophisticated. A small ear piece was passed over which Duo proceeded to put in his ear.

 

Testing the unit, Duo could hear the sounds easily enough, even though there was a bit of static through the connection.

 

“There's also a small camera located in the base of it. I expect photographs to prove you've done your job.”

 

Scowling, Duo checked out the camera operation; it was similar to those installed in cell phones. He felt his gut churn, bad enough he had to take a life, but now they wanted pictures too!?

 

“Here.” Duric handed Duo a knife.

 

The knife was small, blade glinting in the moonlight as Duo turned it over in his hands and checked the sharpness of it. “I'd rather have my own,” he commented as the edge left much to be desired. “This isn't exactly sharp.”

 

“It's sharp enough,” Duric snapped.

 

“Not to cause a relatively painless and quick death,” Duo retorted. In his mind he knew if he had to kill the ambassador, the least he could do was make it swift and as pain free as possible. His knives would do that easily, this one would be like trying to cut leather with spoon.

 

“You make do with what you have,” Duric snarled.

 

“Then give me a gun.”

 

“No, too noisy and messy.”

 

“Using this blunt thing will mean it's going to be noisy and messy anyway. Ever heard of silencers?”

 

“Enough! The clock is ticking and time's running out. Use the knife and remember, no tricks or the ambassador's won't be the only funeral happening. I expect you to be in and out, job complete and back here to the car in forty-five minutes maximum.”

 

Grabbing the blue prints, Duo gave them one last glance over, trusting his photographic memory to keep the plans safe in his head. He exited the car and made his way out of the alley and to the bottom of the street. He glanced left and right, spotted the wall with the razor wire and noted his target.

 

Tucking his braid down the back of the black sweater they'd given him, Duo checked the knife where he'd stashed it in his boot and began to look for the best way over the wall and into the property.

 

* * *

 

Wufei drove whilst Heero gave directions. The place where the call had come from was across the other side of the city. As they began to close in on their target, Sally, along with Heero, scoured the passing landscape with their eyes, looking for any sign of Duo, Nurse Brown, Keitaro or the missing cars.

 

It was futile. No trace of human or vehicle was to be seen.

 

“It should be around here,” Wufei said as he checked the coordinates against the street he was driving along.

 

All three doubled their efforts.

 

“Shit!” Wufei hissed.

 

“What?” Heero barked.

 

Wufei pointed.

 

On the corner of the street, in the exact spot the coordinates said, stood a public telephone box.

 

“Well, that certainly fucked up that idea,” came Sally's voice.

 

“We have no way of finding out who made that call now. Way too many people use the public phones, it could be anyone of over a hundred people,” Heero sighed, the defeat showing in his face.

 

“If it was Margaret who called, I'm sure there would be a resident around here that would remember a nanny and baby. For that matter, if she's broken down around here, then surely both Duo and Margaret's cars should be here somewhere?” Sally's logic made sense.

 

“We should search the surrounding side streets and maybe do a bit of door knocking to see if anyone has seen them,” Wufei suggested.

 

“Searching the side streets is a good idea, but I don't think knocking on peoples doors is such a good idea right now,” replied Sally.

 

“Why not?”

 

“It's ten-thirty at night, Wufei.”

 

“Ah. I see. Good point. Maybe we should stick to looking for the cars now and do the door knocking tomorrow,” Wufei replied.

 

Before Wufei could start to formulate a plan for searching the streets, his cell rang. Pulling over to the side of the road, he fished it out of his pocket and noted the caller id. “Commander?”

 

Heero fidgeted nervously as Chang spoke briefly with the commander.

 

“We're on our way now, commander.” Wufei closed the cell and put it back in his pocket.

 

“What's going on?” Heero asked impatiently.

 

“One of the agents has spotted a car matching the description of the one Nurse Brown drives. We are to go there immediately and positively identify it.”

 

“Keitaro?” Heero whispered.

 

“There's no sign of the nanny or the child.”

 

~ * ~

 

tbc...