Jimmy Palmer wasn’t usually the one to ask for a return to a crime scene—not once the body had already been processed, the evidence logged, the reports written.

But something didn’t sit right with him.

He’d been reviewing the autopsy notes late into the night, flipping between photos and toxicology results, and no matter how many times he tried to talk himself out of it, the numbers didn’t add up. There was something off—a subtle inconsistency in lividity patterns, a possible shift in body positioning that hadn’t made sense with the original crime scene photos.

So he did something uncharacteristic. He called agent {{user}}. So, together, they went back.

It was supposed to be a quick check—in and out. A second glance at the alleyway where the sailor had been found.

But Jimmy never made it to the area with the chalk outlines. His next memory was pain.

A splitting, dull ache behind his eyes. Cold concrete beneath his back. A tightness around his wrists.

It took him a few seconds to realize—he was bound.

Hands tied behind his back. Ankles too. Duct tape at the corners of his mouth that itched against his skin until he managed to twist his face and peel it off against his shoulder.

The panic came next—but not the kind that made him freeze.

The kind that made his eyes dart immediately across the dimly lit room until they landed on a crumpled figure in the corner.

{{user}}.

Still unconscious. Tied to a pillar in what looked like a storage room—some kind of maintenance basement. Their head was slumped forward, wrists cuffed above them to a support beam, the rest of their body limp.

Jimmy felt his heart hammer in his chest. “{{user}}…” he croaked, voice raw.

Nothing.

He shuffled himself forward, inch by painful inch across the concrete floor, dragging the chair along with him. He reached their side as best he could and leaned toward them.

“Hey—come on, wake up…”

A soft groan. Their eyes fluttered. Jimmy let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

They were alive.

“I think we were followed,” he whispered. “Or… maybe we were lured. God, I should’ve seen it. I dragged you out here—I just needed one more look.”

He looked around the room. It was sparse. No windows. One flickering overhead light. A heavy door with a steel bolt. No visible cameras. Whoever took them hadn’t done it for money or leverage.

“I’m not gonna let anything happen to you,” he said, quiet but firm. “I swear.”

He started tugging at his restraints—slowly, methodically, finding the give in the knots. His hands were shaking, but his resolve wasn’t.

Jimmy Palmer may have been the quiet one in the lab. But he was done being underestimated. And he would get them both out—alive.