J.M.J.

Author's note: Hello and welcome! It's been awhile since I've written for this fandom and even then it was a crossover with Emergency! so it sounded fun to revisit Pete and Jim, especially since I'm rewatching the series at the moment. This story will probably be a short one, around five chapters or so, I would guess. It isn't finished, though, so it could be longer or shorter, depending on how it goes. Thank you in advance for reading and I hope you enjoy! God bless!

Carjacked

Chapter 1

One of the jokes around the division where Jim Reed worked was how he spent his days off. Most of the guys who were married spent the days they weren't on duty working at some kind of domestic task, but it wasn't usually because they willing chose to do that. Jim did. It suited him just fine to do whatever needed done around the house, as long as it meant he could spend time with his wife and his son.

This particular day off wasn't quite going like that. Jim's wife, Jean, was feeling a bit under the weather. Not enough that she was going to stay in bed all day—she had rarely been that sick in her entire life—but enough that she had no desire to leave the house. There were a few groceries that couldn't wait, so Jim had volunteered to go to the market and pick them up. At least he got to spend the day with his five-year-old son, Jimmy, who was ecstatic about it, even if they were only going grocery shopping.

"Can we get ice cream?" Jimmy asked as Jim selected a cart at the entrance to the market and headed in.

"It's not on the list," Jim replied in pretend seriousness before he added with a grin, "We'll get ice cream cones on the way home."

"Yippee!" Jimmy clapped his hands and made a move as if he was going to dash off into the store.

"Hey, you want to ride?" Jim asked before he could.

Jimmy did want to ride, so Jim lifted him up and set him in the cart. As long as he stayed put, it would make it a lot easier to keep track of the energetic boy. To further keep him entertained, Jim pretended the shopping list was a treasure map and the various items needed were actually pirate treasure. Jimmy thought the game was great fun, and while Jim would have never admitted it to any of the other guys on the police force, it made the shopping more fun for him, too.

"All right. Last thing on the list: flour," Jim said after about twenty minutes in the market. "I think the baking aisle is back there."

He turned the cart around and had to retrace his steps. Jimmy kept his eyes open for the flour and spotted the familiar sack first.

"There!" Jimmy shouted, causing several other shoppers to look in their direction. "X marks the spot! What does that mean, Daddy?"

"What does what mean?" Jim asked, loading a sack of flour into the cart.

"X marks the spot."

"Well, on their treasure maps, pirates always used to mark the spot where they buried the treasure with an X," Jim explained.

"Why did they do that?"

"So they'd know where the treasure is."

"But what does the X mean?" Jimmy insisted.

Jim grabbed the handle of the cart and started pushing it toward the checker stand. "I guess it's just an easy mark to make."

"Oh." Jimmy watched where the cart was going for a few seconds. "I think L's are the easiest thing to write. Little L's. They're just one line, like a one. How do you tell a little L and a one apart, Daddy?"

"You just look whether it's a number or a word. If it's a number, it will be a one and if it's a word, it will be a little L."

Jimmy traced the lowercase L in the word "flour" on the sack. "Do they really grind up flowers to make flour?"

They had reached the check-out line by this time. "Of course not," Jim said. "They grind up wheat to make flour."

"Then why do they call it 'flour'?"

"It's spelled different than the flowers that you grow in a flowerpot. A lot of words are like that. They sound the same, but they're spelled different and they mean different things."

"Oh. Miss Clarke was telling us about those. She said they're called homilies."

Jim chuckled slightly. "I think she meant homonyms."

There was a woman in line just ahead of them wearing a fuzzy orange vest. She turned around and glared darkly at the father and son.

"Haven't you ever taught that kid that children should be seen and not heard?" she snapped. "If I had a kid who was asking so many stupid questions, I'd make sure it stopped bothering everyone around it and quick."

Jimmy shrank back a bit at the woman's unpleasant tone and her demeaning words. Years of practice as a police officer had given Jim a good handle on keeping his expression neutral even when having the vilest of insults hurled at him, but anyone who knew him would have recognized the twitch of his eyebrow and the set of his mouth and known that the words had irritated him.

"Asking honest questions isn't going to bother anyone half as much as getting angry at a child for simply existing," he retorted, although he kept his tone even and professional.

That only seemed to infuriate the woman more. "Well! What kind of a thing is that to say? What kind of example are you setting for that kid?"

"A better one than you are right now, I hope," Jim said.

The exchange had attracted the attention of some employees and one young woman dashed to the next cash register down. "I can help you over here, sir," she called to Jim.

Thankful to get away from the unpleasant woman, Jim started wheeling the cart to the next register. Jimmy stuck his tongue out at the woman as they left.

"Hey, that's not a nice thing to do," Jim told him.

"She was mean to us," Jimmy pointed out.

"I know, but that's one of the hard things about life. Even when someone's mean to you, you can't be mean back to them."

Although Jimmy replaced his tongue where it should have been, he continued to glare at the woman. "Is she a witch?" he asked abruptly. "Like in Hansel and Gretel?"

"I don't think so," Jim told him as he placed the groceries on the counter for the cashier to ring up.

"She's mean just like the witch," Jimmy insisted.

"There are mean people in the world," Jim pointed out. "It doesn't mean they're witches. It just means you have to be careful around them."

The groceries were paid for. Fortunately, they fit into just two paper bags, with a loaf of bread left over that Jimmy insisted he could carry. With Jim's arms full so that he couldn't hold Jimmy's hand, the boy went running ahead to reach the car first.

"Hold on!" Jim called to him.

He was a bit concerned about Jimmy getting hit by a car, but the parking lot wasn't very busy at the moment. Jimmy obediently waited for his dad to catch up to him and then walked next to him as they continued toward the car.

"You've got to stay next to me when there are cars around," Jim told him in a tone intended to make it clear that he needed to remember this. "The drivers might not see you or have time to stop if you run out in front of them."

They reached the car and Jim set one of the bags of groceries on the truck so that he could take out his keys and open it. Once the trunk was unlocked, he was in the tricky position of having to pick the bag of groceries back up, have both hands full, and pop the trunk up. In the midst of that, he suddenly felt someone sidle up directly behind him.

Instinctively, he started to turn around, but a man's low voice warned him, "Don't move and you and the kid don't get hurt." It was punctuated by something thin and metal poking into Jim's back: the muzzle of a gun.

"Daddy?" Jimmy said uncertainly.

"It's all right, Jimmy." Jim didn't like lying to his son, but he knew he had to keep the boy as calm as possible. "What do you want?" he asked the man behind him.

A second man stepped out from behind him and snatched the key ring from the lock in the trunk. "Just your car. And while you're here, you might as well lend us your wallet, too. Oh, your hands are full. Let me get it."

Jim stiffened as the man reached for his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He prayed these men wouldn't bother to look inside it until they had gotten away, but he had no such luck. The man flipped it open and instantly saw the badge and police ID inside.

"Hey! Look at this! Fuzz!" He held it up for his companion to see.

"You'd better split while you still can," Jim warned them.

"Like we'd let you go now to go running off to all your buddies and tell them all about us." The man holding the gun let out a long breath. "He's probably got a gun, too. Get it," he said to his companion.

It only took the other one a moment to find Jim's gun under his jacket and take it.

Jim could feel his heart beating hard. He knew that he and Jimmy were in danger and that their chances of getting out had just been dramatically reduced. Time was also running out. These two wouldn't want to hang around this parking lot much longer. Whatever they were going to do with Jim and his son, they were going to make their decision soon.

"Set the groceries in the trunk," ordered the one holding the gun. "Easy about it. Don't make any sudden moves."

He was a bit curious why the men cared whether he set the groceries in the trunk or just dropped them. Then he realized that the men didn't want to make a scene here. The parking lot was quiet, but there were a few people walking here and there between the market and their cars. The criminals were keeping their weapons out of sight, so no one was paying any attention to the group. Most likely, the criminals intended to take the Reeds hostage and kill them somewhere more private.

They would change their plans if Jim made a scene unavoidable, Jim knew. It would be suicide. They would kill him here. But in their hurry to get away, they might allow Jimmy to escape, especially if Jimmy had been warned beforehand to run.

As he bent over to place the groceries in the trunk, Jim glanced at his son and tried to measure whether he would run if he told him to. Jimmy's blue eyes were wide and frightened and fixed on Jim. Jim took in a deep breath as he prepared to what would probably be the last thing he would ever do in his life.

But he didn't get the chance. While he was still bent over the trunk, the criminal who had taken his gun hit him in the back of the head with the handle. He blacked out and fell forward into the trunk.

"Daddy!" Jimmy cried out in alarm, rushing forward to the trunk rather than back to safety.

"Quiet, kid," the other criminal ordered him, grabbing his arm and forcing him into the back seat of the car with him.

His companion shoved Jim the rest of the way into the trunk and slammed the lid. He took one glance around to make sure no one had noticed the incident. Evidently, no one had. Satisfied, he went around to the front, jumped in the driver's seat, and took off.