Cooper allows himself to relish in the sound of Blaine's voice before he registers the useful points of that exchange. They would be allowed a video call - one that would at the very least prove Blaine to be alive and hopefully provide some locational clues.

Then, what Blaine said sinks in.

'They said they'd give me another eye patch…'

Another.

He had that patch off a month ago.

He collapses into a chair and leans forward with his head in his hands before picking up his cell phone again. Peter is looking at him critically but he'll pick up the point in a second when Cooper calls his father.

"Dad?"

"Cooper! Please tell me you have good news?"

"I need every security tape from the house for the last two months."

"Done."

"I'll be straight over."

He hangs up. There is no small talk after that, both men go about getting what they need to get Blaine back.

Cooper looks around at the room, they're waiting for him to speak.

"Blaine got attacked with a rock salt contaminated slushie and scratched his cornea, he had to wear an eye patch. He had it off a month ago. They've been watching him!"

Peter can obviously tell the anger coursing through him right now is close to being uncontrollable so the conversation is redirected. "Your parents house has security cameras?"

"Yes. Dad's a snob about his cars and the back yard is completely secure, so there is a camera showing the drive and the street, If they've been close enough to watch him we might get lucky and be able to identify or track someone - we'll get the security footage from the others on the street too."

"Right let's go."

"Have you spoken to your parents much since he was taken?"

"No, just the once."

Peter seemed to be intent on keeping up a useless stream of conversation so that Cooper wasn't tempted to roll out the car and pull something drastic by himself.

Cooper would if he had more than nothing to go on.

He greets his parents as quickly as he can - he just wants the footage. His mother is hysterical, and his father looks no different to usual - stony faced and strict, the only evidence of stress is the gaunt look you get from not sleeping well. He wants out of this house, where he can make himself useful - getting into a fight about how if it weren't for his father's homophobia they could have had hours extra time in searching for Blaine wouldn't help him now.

"This is all the footage?"

"Everything." He tucks the flash drive safely into his jacket. Behind them Peter is awkwardly trying to comfort his mother, offering sentiments that they're doing everything they can, and while that's true and they are, Cooper has heard such a speech a thousand times before and now, when it's his family, his flesh and blood - his little brother on the line, they feel empty. So he wraps his mother up into a hug, and shakes his father's hand and leaves the second that they have the security footage from all the houses on their street.

"Cooper I trust if anyone can find him, it's you."

"I'll find him."

When he was younger Cooper had always had the best relationship with his dad - they shared so many common interests and he was the model son - everything an Anderson should be. But filling those requirements so fully meant Blaine had been overshadowed and neglected. The stiff air which surrounded their family had still managed to produce someone as selfless and young at heart as Blaine but he had suffered for it, caring too much about what others think and growing up feeling the constant need to please and be better when he was already so perfect. Cooper had been too late to realise their family relations weren't equal. His parents had tried hard over the years to reconnect with him, but always ended up in the same fight. Somehow, despite having a brother who had landed himself in prison, Blaine was still considered the family screw up. The only reason Cooper hadn't severed ties with them was for Blaine's sake.

Cooper had really let Blaine down, he'd gotten locked up for the four most painful years of his life and he was not going to let him down again.

Peter drives them back, but he doesn't take them to the office - he stops at Cooper's house.

"Go home and sleep we're just going to be pouring over security footage - there is nothing you can do."

"Peter I can't."

"I will call you the second we find something, I promise. You know you can trust me."

"I do, but it doesn't feel right…"

"At least go and get dinner, get out of the office, have a shower and then come back. You can't destroy yourself over this."

"Small price to pay."

"Two hours then. I'll pick you up in two hours."

"Deal."

Those two hours both simultaneously drag and pass in a blur. He does shower - spends far too long in there, but it gives him nothing else to focus on except Blaine so he eats instead, what little he can and then has a beer to see if it will calm his nerves at all. Of course it doesn't. He's glad to be back at the station, staring at security footage of his own home and desperately wishing something useful will come up.

It does, in the early hours of the morning when everyone is understandably fuzzy eyed and drifting off home in shifts to get some rest before coming back. Cooper feels a swirl of warmth at them all - treating this with as much vigour as they would any case, if not more despite their original hesitance to accept him as a presence on the force.

"There." Jones points at a red car parked on the opposite side of the street, two houses down. "That's the fourth time that car has been there. Cooper do you recognise it?"

"No. It isn't new or well kept enough to belong to any house on that street. Trust me. If it moves on again after Blaine is out of sight then we can call it a suspect."

"Every other time it's been there Blaine has either parked on the driveway and gone straight into the house within seconds, or he hasn't been alone."

This is one of those times, Cooper watches with stinging eyes at what he can see on the screen, a hazy image of his brother climbing out of his car and then playfully opening the door for Kurt, bowing a little and yanking him out. They leaned against the car for a few seconds and kissed lazily and then fell towards the house, laughing and carefree in a way Cooper can barely even remember him doing before. In a way that could potentially never exist again if he didn't find a way to get him back.

The front door closes and the car drives away.

It isn't a coincidence. It can't be.

They run the number plate, but it's fake, it did nothing except confirm what they know - whoever is in that car is responsible. It's a serious blow to Cooper that the plate is a dead end but hopefully whoever uses that car, keeps using it and they get a visual - they wouldn't use a fake number plate otherwise, not on a stolen car that they would just abandon in the end.

Right now a random car, and a random man's fake ID are the only clues they have. Cooper is the best at whatever he does, so he recognises just how hard this is going to be.

Blaine has lost all sense of time. The window helps - he knows it's evening now because it's dark but he has no idea how long it was he had cried for until he had wiped his tears away and realised something.

He had wiped his tears away.

They had left his hands untied.

His stomach actually feels like it leaps at the thought, he feels jolted and dizzy and he's shaking but he bends down and reaches for his ankles. They're tied to the chair leg but the rope only feels like it goes around the one chair leg - he can actually get to it, he can feel the knot.

Maybe, if he could get free he would be able to hide by the hatch and when it opened and the men came back up he'd be able to get back down…If they don't note in time or if he can close them in behind him…he could escape…

It is a massive long shot and his heart is hammering at the thought alone but he knows with fierce certainty that if he doesn't try absolutely everything to get free, if he doesn't take every opportunity he gets then he will regret it forever. He regrets letting those bullies at his first school literally chase him out, he regrets not doing anything and only learning to stand up for himself afterwards and he knows he'll regret just waiting now and not trying to do something, even though he knows that something will likely end up a futile effort and causing him a lot of pain. If he's going to be killed by these men or seriously hurt he wants to know he did everything he could - he knows Cooper is going crazy doing everything he can to get him back - he wants to work just as hard and make him proud.

He wants to go home.

It's hard, trying to untie something you can't see when you're equal parts excited and terrified that of being successful. The tips of his fingers feel numb and he's getting increasingly desperate until finally, his left ankle is free. He kicks his leg out in disbelief of actually being able to move it freely. He chokes out a sob and frantically starts trying to get the other one undone too. The possibility of getting himself out seems all the more real when he's freed one ankle.

But he doesn't finish in time. The hatch opens and two of the men climb up. Still with their faces covered. Blaine's been caught red handed trying to escape and he feels so stupid now because who was he kidding? Of course it wouldn't work!

Sure enough, one of them comes up to him straight away and slams his fist into his cheek.

Blaine has been beaten up enough in his past to be able to take a hit with a bit more restraint than those who do not expect one or those who have never been hit before. But those punches were from teenage boys, and this one, from an adult, sends his head slamming to the side. He lets out of a shout of pain and he brings his hands up to cover his face. He keeps his eyes screwed shut and hope that's all. He can't take much more. The sheer force behind it is unlike anything he has ever gone through before this happened to him. Even at Sadie Hawkins when three of them were sparing him and Kevin no mercy, it would have taken three strikes to his face to equal the intensity of the pain he was feeling right now.

He gets an equally forceful punch to the stomach which has him doubled over, knees to his forehead and arms wrapped around himself in a vain effort to protect his body.

A final kick right on his now freed shin is all it takes for him to be begging in desperation. "No, stop it. Please I'm sorry!"

"Leave it now." The voice sounds bored and Blaine can't believe that the other guy is even saying his partner should stop. He doesn't recognise this man's voice - he must have been driving the van that night he was taken.

"Little fucker was trying to escape."

"He'd have to be fucking brain dead not to try and escape after you left his hands untied, fuck off and go and get the food order - I'll deal with him."

The other guy grumbles and sounds annoyed but Blaine feels safer once he hears the sound of him leaving the attic although he has no idea where he stands with this new guy. He can feel strong hands retying the bonds of his feet, Blaine offers no resistance and still keeps himself curled up into himself until the man nestles a hand in his hair and pulls his head up so that they make eye contact.

"Listen kid, I'm fine with teaching you a lesson for doing something stupid like trying to escape but my friends? They'll do it for fun. So don't give us any excuses, because you'll regret it in the end. We just want to be paid and we don't need you conscious or in good health. If it comes to it, we just need you to be only just alive. Understand?"

Blaine understood so much that he could barely even breathe.

"Y-yes. I, understand."

The man thrusts a water bottle at him and Blaine sees the ripples that his shaking hands cause in the liquid. He wants to open the bottle and drink it all in one go - his stomach is clenching for his thirst to be quenched but he is too paranoid and has watched too many films and read too many books to not be suspicious of it.

What if it was drugged?

It seems this guy knows what he was thinking, because he laughs. "Kid if we wanted to rape you we wouldn't need drugs. And if we wanted to drug you we could force them down you in an instant. It's just water, fucking drink it."

Blaine swallows nervously, what the man says is true - they could force him to do anything right now and he wouldn't have a choice, if there were drugs in here they wanted him to take they would be in his system soon enough, one way or another. So he uncaps the bottle and sniffs it tentatively, before drinking. It feels so good to have a drink - even if it does have something in it at least before he passes out he'll feel the relief of having a drink.

It seems that the man was right though, it was just water - Blaine feels no different by the time the other guy comes back with food. He walks over to Blaine with a sneer on his face that causes Blaine to flinch harshly and the man to laugh cruelly, but thankfully all he does is hand over a small six sliced cheese and tomato pizza. Blaine knows that realistically, he should take his time with it - knows that after having nothing but water for almost a full twenty-four hours now is going to make any new food, especially greasy takeout hard to handle. But he is starving. Half the pain he feels - the dizziness and the stomach ache he recognises from hunger pains, so when he timidly asks permission to eat and is granted it, he devours the entire thing.

When he is finished he knows instantly that the food has made him feel somewhat better - the fogginess from being so intensely hungry has lifted and he toys with the cardboard box in his hands, the words 'Eliza's homemade pizza' sprawling across the lid.

It's taken away from him and he quietly thanks the men for the food as they blindfold him again and let him use the bathroom. He drinks from the sink again and avoids the mirror completely - he can feel the angry pulse in the side of his face from being struck so hard and he doesn't need to see it as well.

It seems the other man - the one who had hit him has left now, and he is left with the kinder one.

It strikes Blaine how horrid his situation is because before this, if anyone had ever attributed the word kind to a kidnapped Blaine would have laughed at them and said it wasn't possible.

They return to the dim little attic and the man shoves Blaine into the room so he is clear of the hatch which he shuts pointedly - as if Blaine would try and escape again so soon. "Sit over where you were first put."

Blaine hobbles over and sits, back to the wooden pillar connecting floor to slanted roof and the man ties his hands together but he doesn't tie them behind his back he ties them in front and then he connects the end of the rope to the wood, giving him a bit of leeway. He drops an old and fusty smelling sleeping bag onto his legs. It's thin - probably a summer one, but sleeping upright the night before, tied and terrified and freezing leaves Blaine grateful for that piece of sparse material. He wiggles inside it, desperate to settle into it before it can be taken away. The man kneels next to him and grabs his hair again.

"If you try and escape again then that's it, alright? We beat the hell out of you until we get bored, you get no food, no water - nothing. You'll regret it and we'll enjoy making you regret it."

Blaine nods as best he can even though it hurts his head and pulls his hair. The man smiles at him and slaps him around the face for what appears to be good measure, for he says nothing else - just leaves him alone again.

The sleeping bag is useless really, it does nothing to comfort the hardness of the floor and the smell is making him feel slightly queasy, but it is keeping a chill off of him and he is glad to be able to lie down. He curls up as best he can and tucks his bound hands to his chest. He can feel himself start to cry again as his mind lets him do nothing but go over everything that has happened to him.

He doesn't know what it is exactly that brings him to the idea, it's probably thinking about how gross he feels - how he wishes he could brush his teeth because the water wasn't enough alone to fully wash away the taste of the pizza…but he realises that the name of the pizza shop wasn't a fast food chain name he recognised. It had said that it was homemade - even given a name…what if…what if there was only one 'Eliza's homemade pizza' shop?

That would help Cooper out, right? No one gets takeout from somewhere miles away from where they're taking it to…

If he told Cooper the name of that pizza place when he next gets a phone call…it could help…

He was already in so much pain from his mistreatment…there would be no way to disguise what he was doing - that would be it - they would beat the shit out of him - and he would be lucky if that was all that happened to him. He presses his knuckles into his eyes harshly. It's information that he is smart enough to recognise will likely help find him…

The only trouble is, he's petrified.

He isn't sure that he even has any courage left.

Thank you so much for your wonderful reviews and all of your alerts, thank you, thank you, thank you! I really hope this doesn't disappoint anyone!