Slamming on his brakes, Ryker did a one-eighty, his car coming to a stop on the narrow shoulder about twenty yards back from where the SUV had driven off the road. Phone out, he dialed 911 as he ran, giving the operator a basic rundown of where he was and what had happened. He didn't mention Emmie or Sam, simply saying an SUV drove off the road and the people inside needed help fast.

"Just stay on the line with me, sir, and keep clear of the accident scene."

"Afraid I can't do that." Peering down at the wreck to assess the situation, Ryker took in a quick breath. The car was a broken egg in the middle of a rocky nest situated on the edge of the shoreline. The bottom of the SUV reflected weak rays of golden red from the remains of the sunset up to where Ryker now stood on the edge of the cliff. A mangled guardrail lay off to his side, and the post the SUV had taken out was nowhere to be found. It must have gone down with the car. The only spot of good news was that it was low tide. At least he wouldn't be dealing with a flooded car in addition to a crashed one. But low tide only lasted so long...

"I'm going down now."

The operator kept her voice even, but Ryker could tell she was becoming exacerbated by him. "Sir, given the nature of the scene you described, you'd be putting yourself at risk attempting to go down by the vehicle. I know you're concerned about the victims, but your actions might make you a victim as well. Please remain calm. We'll have emergency responders there soon."

He couldn't remain calm, though, and he couldn't wait, not with the thought that Emmie might be down there, hurt... or worse.

"Just... please hurry!"

Ryker hung up on the well-intentioned operator and used both hands to scramble backwards down the embankment. It was a steep bluff with perhaps a thirty-foot or so drop. He clung to the branches of small shrubs growing out of the cliffside as he slowly made his way downward. About halfway through the descent, he lost his foothold when a loose stone gave way below him. He swore, realizing he might be about to prove the operator right. Dangling there, the dry branch keeping him from falling began to bend ominously.

Just as it snapped, he managed to find purchase on an exposed root. A few minutes later, he was down.

The front of the overturned SUV was badly crushed where it had run into the guardrail. A man hung suspended from the driver side, blood streaming down his face.

It was Sam. And that meant...

"Emmie!" he shouted as he made his way around the car to the passenger side. "Emmie, can you hear me?"

She was suspended by her seatbelt, eyes closed. The door was too mangled to open, no matter how much Ryker tugged on it. Taking off his jacket, he folded it over his arm and carefully brushed the broken glass from the window away from its frame and out onto the ground. He reached his hand inside, past the now deflated side impact airbags, pressing two shaking fingers to her neck.

"Come on, Emmie... please..." Finally, there it was. A pulse, weak but present. In the dim light, he searched her for signs of injury. It was impossible to tell for sure what damage she had sustained. And the baby... shit. What would this trauma do to it, and how would a negative turn in the baby's health potentially endanger Emmie's life?

He brushed hair back from her face and continued to stroke her forehead. "Hang on, just hang on. Help is coming. You'll be okay." Leaning his head inside the window, Ryker kissed her cheek. "I'm here. I'll stay with you." He repeated this over and over again until the sound of sirens echoed from the road above.

#

Ryker once read that when something tragic or harrowing occurred, time around that triggering event moved in a blur because the brain could only process so much. But things did not move this way for him.

He remembered everything with the clarity of an emotionally-enhanced robot. The EMT workers trickled down the cliffside like ants on their way to a picnic, gently moving him aside so they could assess the situation. He told them she still had a pulse.

"What about the driver?" The technician, a tall, middle aged man with a goatee motioned to Sam. Already another responder was breaking the glass on Sam's door to get to him.

Ryker hadn't bothered to check on him. He shrugged his shoulders. Like he gave a fuck whether Sam lived or died.

No that wasn't true. He cared. Anger burned inside of him. If Sam wasn't already dead, he would kill him himself. For Emmie's sake, he suppressed this rage. The half hour it took to extract her from the vehicle was the longest of his life. He spent it watching the tide slowly creep back in, praying they'd be able to pull her out before they had to contend with the ocean's wrath in addition to the hunk of metal she was wrapped within.

The firefighters worked efficiently and quickly, even though it felt like they were moving slower than ketchup from a glass bottle. First, they had to stabilize the vehicle so that it didn't shift while they worked on it. Next, they secured the seatbelts with vice grips, and then the Jaws of Life were hauled down over the cliff. Once they set to work, first prying open the jammed back door and eventually taking it and the front door off in one piece, the process took less than five minutes.

The sight of her exposed, still dangling unconscious, nearly brought him to his knees. He fought back tears as she was laid out on a stretcher, which they hauled up on a pully to the road above.

Ryker followed the stretcher up using ropes the responders had secured to the cliffside, but he wasn't nearly as fast as the pulley system. By the time he'd scrambled up to the top, she was already being loaded into an ambulance. A firefighter stopped him on the way to his car, handing Ryker a familiar opal pendant.

Shocked, Ryker looked at the firefighter questioningly.

"We found it when we were removing her from the vehicle. She was clutching it in her hand." He patted Ryker on his shoulder. "I know who you are, you know. My wife showed me the picture of the two of you together just the other day. Thought you'd want to have this so you can give it back to her."

Whether he said this because he believed Emmie would live or because he wanted to give Ryker a glimmer of hope, he didn't know. Either way, Ryker could have kissed the man.

"Thank you."

The firefighter nodded. "Of course. The police will want to question you at the hospital. They'll want to know if you knew the deceased..."

He blinked, his mind taking a moment to understand what was being said to him. So, Sam was dead then. No wonder they'd focused most of their attention on Emmie. They still hadn't brought Sam up.

Ryker thanked him again and got in his car. He needed to be at that hospital as soon as possible, but even the drive there seemed to take an eternity.

When he finally arrived, Trisha met him at the entrance to the emergency room. "They just took her back. Oh, my God, Ryker." She threw her arms around him and squeezed him tight.

He broke free and started to head towards the intake desk. "I need to know what's going on."

Trisha grabbed his arm. "I know, but let them do their work, Ryker. There's nothing more they can tell us right now. She's alive. There's that. Right now, she's alive."

Nodding, he allowed his sister to lead him to a vacant chair in a nearby room, where he would wait long into the night, tracing the outline of Emmie's necklace as it lay against his palm. He waited and waited to find out whether his world had come crashing down around him.

#

Ryker woke to a tap on his shoulder. Eyes flying open, a tingling panic overtook him as he realized he was about to be told whether Emmie was going to make it or not. Instead of a nurse or doctor in scrubs, however, a woman in a grey business suit stood over him, mouth set in a straight line. She flashed a badge at him.

FBI.

"Ryker James?"

He straightened himself up and attempted to bring his head out of the fog it was currently in. He'd intended to stay awake all night but judging from the light pooling into the waiting room from the window across from him, it was already morning. "Yes, I'm Ryker."

"My name is Agent Georgia Marcos. Please come with me, sir. We have a few questions for you."

Trisha entered the room with a tray of coffees just as he was about to leave. She acknowledged the agent with a nod and handed Ryker one of the drinks. "I've already been questioned by Georgia." Ryker raised an eyebrow. It was so like his sister to already be on a first name basis with the fed investigating Emmie's case. "I'll let you know if there's any developments with..."

Her voice trailed off. Last night, the doctors hadn't been able to tell them much about Emmie aside from the fact that it was all very much touch and go. She was still unconscious, and that might last hours or days or forever.

Trisha gave Ryker's shoulder a little squeeze with the hand not holding hot coffee and then Ryker was off, down the hallway to a private room the hospital had offered up for Marcos to use.

Ryker had imagined them in a cement room, him sitting across a metal table from her while she drilled questions into him, just like he'd seen in so many movies. Of course, he himself wasn't under investigation, and instead, they sat side by side on a small couch next to a cluttered desk. This space must have served as a hospital administrator's office during normal working hours.

"After speaking with your sister, it's come to my attention that you both know a certain amount about Ms. Marsden's past. Could you please tell me the extent of your knowledge?"

Ryker related what he had pieced together. "I think that Sam guy was someone she trusted, but he turned against her." He squeezed Emmie's necklace. The feel of the opal, warmed from his skin, was a comfort to him. "You know about the picture of me and Emmie, right?"

She nodded.

"Well, I think the wrong people saw it. Emmie was supposed to be hidden here, but the photo exposed her. My guess is that they paid Sam to kill her once they realized where she was living."

Agent Marcos crossed her hands and placed them on her knees. She paused as though she was contemplating how much to tell him. "That's partly correct. This is an unusual situation, Mr. James. Most people in WITSEC remain in WITSEC. With the internet and social media, it has become harder and harder for people to hide forever, however. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't be discussing even this much with you. However, the media has already gotten wind of Sam Jacob's death. We've managed to keep them out of the hospital but it's only a matter of time before this all becomes a story, especially because this case relates to several high-profile incidents occurring as we speak in the Chicago area."

"Chicago?"

Ryker tried his best to listen as Agent Marcos recapped a case involving a crime syndicate and the testimony of a man who Emmie had once been romantically attached to. The baby's father, most likely.

"I knew there was a no-good ex involved."

"'No good' is one way to describe him. There's also an ongoing investigation of a kidnapping. A young girl was taken by operatives within the Chamberlain syndicate. This girl was used as a pawn to force the hand of a US Marshall."

Ryker fit the pieces together quickly. "Sam."

"That's correct. The girl is his daughter and she's still endangered."

After that, the interview turned to the events on the road the evening before. Agent Marcos wanted to know every detail. At one point, when Ryker explained that Sam had purposefully veered his SUV towards Ryker's car, clearly meaning to cause a head-on collision, her placid exterior began to waiver.

She recovered, but not quickly enough to avoid his notice. "You knew Sam, didn't you?"

She sighed. "This isn't easy for me. Yes. I've known Sam Jacobs for almost six years. I worked with him on several cases. It's still hard to believe..."

Ryker felt sympathy for her, but he was still angry as hell at Sam. "Yeah, well, believe it. He tried to kill Emmie, and if it wasn't for Emmie, he might have killed me as well. I'm sorry those assholes took his daughter, though. That just makes a shitty situation all the shittier."

After several more questions, she released Ryker back to the waiting room. Trisha motioned for him to sit next to her where he'd be able to see what she was watching on the TV mounted to a nearby wall.

Live news coverage showed what appeared to be a standoff between law enforcement and some unknown people inside a dingy-looking warehouse.

Trisha pointed at the screen. "Right there. That's the reason Emmie is unconscious in a hospital bed right now." Agent Marcos must have filled Trisha in just as she had Ryker. The bitterness in her voice matched his own dark thoughts. "That's where Sam's daughter is being held."

A/N: What we know: Sam is dead. Emmie is alive. The baby is holding on. The feds know about Sam's daughter and are attempting to recover for her. Trisha is pissed about everything.

What we don't know: Whether Ashlyn will be rescued. Whether or not Emmie and the baby will pull through... What is happening with Ian's testimony.

Here's what's up: I will be giving you the second part of this chapter on Monday! Yay! Confetti all around! What that means is that this story will finish a week from today, on May 12th. I can hardly believe it, but there it is. You have two more updates and that's all she wrote!

Today's votes go to Sam's daughter, Ashlyn. The poor kid is battling cancer, just got kidnapped, and... her dad is now dead. I'm feeling really bad for her and am glad I didn't make her into more than just a peripheral character or I'd be weeping right now. I will be accepting sad emoji face comments along with votes for poor Ashlyn now until she is hopefully rescued and miraculously cured.

Today's dedication is for ekyaapinky for being such an awesome reader!