The Price We Pay for Family - 11

Cont...

Sam had never felt such relief as when AJ and Cass were ushered into Rhodes's situation rooms. 

"Uncle Sam!" Cass threw himself into Sam's arms. AJ waited a beat before joining the intense hug. Sam felt something in him relax and finally breathe as the knot of fear loosened for the first time this week. They weren't out of the woods yet, and this still had a possibility of going way south before resolving itself, but they were safe. They were home. That's all that mattered. No matter what. 

"AJ! Cass!" Sarah gasps, bursting into the ops center. 

"Mom!" Both boys threw themselves at her in unison. 

Sam rose, watching them cling to each other and drank in the happy sight before turning back to the wall of monitors. Pressing an intercom button that connected to Bucky's one-way comm unit, "We have them. They're safe." On-screen, Sam could see Bucky's shoulders relax from their tense position. Bucky nodded once. The comm went dead. Sam couldn't stop the surge of fear that it brought, but it was part of the plan. They had no less than nine state-of-the-art trackers in him or on him. There wasn't anywhere he could go on this planet; they couldn't find him. 

Sam's knee bounced nervously as he watched the monitors that showed the tracking signals. On-screen, Bucky was conversing with someone they couldn't see. He pulled off his jacket and draped It over his arms crossed over his chest as he spoke to a man who stepped into view. A crowd pushed by momentarily obscuring the camera's view, but they were still there when they passed. The other man stepped closer, a lot closer, so he was right in Bucky's face. Bucky didn't move, just tilted his head. Another wave of fans came through, blocking the camera again, then the signals began to move. 

"Moving!" Sam warned, watching the signals move towards the road. 

Rhodes scanned the screens looking for them, "No visual, confirm visual."

 Torres darted into the screen fighting through the crowd, "No visual, in pursuit." 

Sam watched as the signals moved down the street before stopping, "He's by the street. Keep going." 

Torres changed directions and shoved through the crowd of crazed fans, going towards the street as fast as possible. 

That's when everything went wrong. Five of the nine trackers they had on Bucky went offline. Then three of them simply vanished. Sam choked on air staring at the screen that now only showed one light sitting in the middle of the street, and swore.

 Before he even knew what he was doing, he was scrambling out of the ops center and bolting into the crowd, shoving people left and right, never stopping his breakneck pace as he ran towards the tracker. Breaking through the crowd, his heart dropped out. Standing in the middle of the street was Torres, just Torres, holding a dark leather jacket in one hand, looking down the street helplessly next to an empty space where a vehicle had once been. 

"No," Sam breathed, staring at the scene that was every bad possibility out there rolled into one. Nononononono please no. 

Torres turned at his voice wide-eyed and so much younger than any of them and gulped, "He's gone." He looked down at the jacket in his hand in disbelief and then back at Sam, "It was just lying in the street." 

Sam somehow stepped forward and grabbed the jacket, still warm, from Torres. Looking around, he knew they were never going to find these people unless they wanted to be found, a camera blind zone, easy access to the highway, and hundreds of people. 

They were gone. And so was Bucky.

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