Taking Hold {ON HOLD}

Chapter Four

When they had arrived home an unusually quite Ana had disappeared to bed without speaking more than a handful of words to Adam. He had managed to pull her out of her daze long enough to get her out of the building but the moment that they had enter the quiet car for the drive home she had slipped back into its clutches.

"It doesn't matter. It's fine." Ana replied, trying to move herself out of Adam's grip but his hands held her firmly in place.

"You should have told me if you were hurt." He murmured, pressing lightly around the affected area to determine if there was a break.

"It's just a bruise. In our line of work it's hardly surprising." Ana responded, avoiding his gaze and attempting to subtly hide her back from his view but he was too perceptive to be drawn in by cheap distraction techniques.

Adam placed a hand on either of her hips, forcing her to turn around.

"Ana..."

"Let go." She demanded, pulling his limp fingers away from her skin easily, grabbing a top that had fallen to the floor and tugging it over her head.

"What happened?" Adam's voice held no whisper of its usual comical edge, his lazy smile replaced by wide eyes and a creased forehead as he attempted to understand the markings he had just seen.

"Nothing. Nothing at all." With those clipped words Ana escaped from the room, launching herself down the stairs and out of the front door before Adam had barely had the time to blink. It was only when he heard the engine of the car catch that he started moving.

"Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t." Adam muttered as he took the stairs three at a time, throwing the door open just in time to see the bumper of the car disappear out of the gates. "You are a bloody idiot." At that moment Adam wasn't sure whether he was talking to Ana or about himself, both were equally true.

Wasting three more minutes desperately trying to recall how to ride a motorbike Adam finally followed Ana out of the gate and found himself weaving in and out of London rush hour traffic up the river towards Westminster.

"If I get killed because of you Sparky, I can guarantee that I will come back and haunt you." Ignoring the melody of beeps that followed him along the badly paved road Adam activated the tracker on the car and set about following Ana.

Unfortunately for Adam, Ana wasn't all together stupid and knew that he would be following her. After about five minutes of negotiating some more than questionable routes and breaking too many laws to count Adam finally managed to catch up with the tracker, only to discover its crumpled remains in the middle of the street a faint red light flashing weakly.

"Think!" He hit his hand against his head hoping for a moment of inspiration as to where she would have run to but the only location that came to mind was a little too far from home.

Ana would stick fairly local, she wasn't spontaneous at heart, this had been a temporary blip brought on by emotions that she wasn't prepared to deal with. She would most likely stick to London so that left more than 60,000 streets for her to hide in.

Would she come home eventually? Almost definitely.

Could Adam afford to wait that long? Absolutely not.

She wouldn't have gone to somewhere too densely populated; Ana didn't like to be in crowds when she felt stressed. She would have gone somewhere with grass, somewhere close to nature. Battersea Park was probably the closest, just across the river but apart from the trees there was nothing to draw Ana there. She would go some that was significant to her; she would want to feel safe, around people that she knew. Or perhaps just one person that she had known.