"How do you know?"

"Because they all had bullet wounds to the head. Two of them behind the ear. One to the temple. He bore the brunt of the savagery as well, for some reason."

Oh, I knew the reason. I knew it just as well as I knew who it was who'd been killed by a bullet to the temple.

The same man who had put his gun to my temple.

"Carmine."

"What?" Tom asked.

"Carmine. He was the one who made Ice drop her gun or he'd kill me."

Bull, who'd been listening quietly, nodded his head. "Add to that the fact that he used to be her friend. He betrayed her. She's never taken kindly to that. Roll all that up in a ball, add in those idiots taking shots at her, and I'm surprised she left enough of them lying around for you to find."

The nausea that was threatening from the start of the conversation finally hit. My stomach cramped, hard, and I dove for the side of the bed.

Bull reacted instantly, steadying me and shoving a basin he'd used to clean Ice's wounds under my open mouth. There wasn't really anything in my stomach to expel, but it didn't seem to realize that right away. I gasped and sobbed, trying desperately to catch my breath as the vision of Ice and the men she'd killed played through my mind in an unending stream, causing my stomach to cramp over and over and over again without pause.

When my muscles finally, blessedly, relaxed, I slumped down on the bed, barely feeling the cool rag that Bull used to wipe my face and forehead. "You ok?" he asked, using almost the exact same tone of voice Ice had used in similar situations.

"I'm not sure," I replied as honestly as I knew how.

And, more importantly, would I ever be again?

That Ice had killed those three men wasn't really an issue with me.

While it might very well have been once upon a time, during Ice's capture and my subsequent search for her, I'd come to learn a deep, dark and not particularly appealing secret about myself.

And that was that if I could have, I would have killed them all without a second's pause for taking her so violently away from me.

No, it wasn't that she'd killed.

It was how she'd killed.

Noticing Bull was still staring at me, one hand on my shoulder, I pulled myself together and moved away from him a bit, straightening my aching legs.

"What's going on, Angel?" he asked in a gentle tone.

I swallowed hard and manufactured a smile from somewhere. "I . . .um . . .I need some air, I think."

"Oh." Frowning slightly, he straightened back up to his full height and looked down at me.

I forced my smile to broaden. "Honestly, Bull, I'm ok. I just . . .you know. . . need to get out of here for a couple minutes." To lend credence to my words, I slipped from the bed, standing and stretching. "I'll be right outside. Down by the water. Call me if she wakes up?"

He looked as if he was going to say something, but after a moment, I could see his shoulders sag and he simply nodded in acquiescence. "Ok."

"Great. Thanks."

As I came to the bottom of the stairs, I saw Pop putting the phone back down in its cradle. I looked at him with questioning eyes.

He smiled slightly. "Ruby," he explained. "Corinne's been sprung. Gonna go up and get 'em both 'n bring 'em back home."

The smile which spread my lips this time was genuine. I would welcome them both back home with open arms, particularly Corinne, who I sensed just might have some of the answers I was so desperately seeking in my mind. "Thanks, Pop. That's great news."

"Yup." His eyes narrowed as he looked at me. "You sure you're gonna be alright, Tyler? Don't seem none too good to me right now."

I felt myself nodding, my lips moving to form the lie so naturally falling from my tongue. "I'm fine. Really. I just need some fresh air, that's all."

The look he gave me let me know in no uncertain terms that my lie wasn't in the slightest believed. After a moment, though, he shrugged. "Do what ya gotta do, I guess."

I nodded. "Thanks, Pop."

I found myself on the little green dock, not really aware of how I'd gotten there, only grateful for its cool, silent and non-questioning peace.

My head was a jumble of conflicting emotions; my heart, not far behind.

Lowering myself down to the weathered wood of the dock, I trailed my feet in the water, watching the crescent moon play tag with the wavelets stirred up by the freshening breeze as I leaned my back up against one of the posts which anchored the dock to the shore and disappeared beneath the shallow, glistening water.

Ice had spent long winter days trying to teach me the skills needed for meditation. I called upon those skills now, clearing my mind of all intrusive thoughts and concentrating on the air as it entered and left my lungs, never really realizing when I'd fallen asleep between one breath and the next.

I found myself standing on a dirt road deep in the middle of nowhere. For reasons known only in dreams, I was in nothing save a white sheet, which twisted and rippled around my body in response to the wind circling through the grove in which I found myself.

The night was bright with stars which, as I watched, wheeled themselves over my head in a ballroom's stately waltz to music known only to them.

I tried to turn my body, to move, to look around, but I seemed to be rooted to the ground. A ground which was neither warm nor cold, wet nor dry; a ground which simply was.

Looking down at my feet, I saw them hidden, enveloped in a soft white ground-mist which covered the forest floor like something out of a fairy tale.

Though perhaps I should have, I didn't feel any fear. Just a sense of anticipation, knowing my mind had brought me here for a reason, and further knowing I probably wasn't all that far away from finding out just what that reason was.

My reverie was broken by twin spears of bright lights which lanced through the misty forest glen like a white knight on a charging steed. As I continued to watch-having no other choice but to do so, might I add-the lights coalesced into the high beams of an oncoming car. A car that was headed, at a very high rate of speed, down the very road upon which I was currently rooted, unable to move from its onrushing path.

My mouth opened wide in a silent scream as my legs ignored the desperate messages my brain was sending to them.

At the very last second, the car veered sharply left and headed down a small embankment and into the forest proper, where it was halted, suddenly, violently, in a scream of tearing metal and breaking glass, by the massive trunk of a very old, very sturdy tree who hardly shook at all with the tremendous impact.

Then the forest was silent once again.

I looked on in horror, knowing that no one could possibly have survived the carnage of that wreck. Still, I needed to run forward, to be sure, but my cursed feet remained rooted to the ground, refusing even the most forceful commands to move.

Then, to my amazement, one of the rear doors opened, and a blood-spattered figure stumbled out, collapsing on the ground and groaning as he-and I could definitely tell it was a man-cradled his head with both arms while rocking his massive body side to side in pain.

A second man followed the first. This man somehow managed to stay on his feet, though his face was a grisly mask of blood which literally sheeted down from the gaping cut to his forehead and nose.

Then a third figure emerged, and this was one I recognized easily, immediately though she was battered, bruised, and as bloody as her two predecessors.

"Ice!" I yelled out to her, my heart beating quickly in my chest.

She didn't hear me, though. Didn't even lift her head to look my way as she stepped over the body of the first man, almost colliding with the second as she did so.

As I watched, she looked at the man she'd almost run into, a brief flare of rage lighting her pale eyes. Then it abruptly died out and she pushed past him, heading in an unsteady walk back toward the road where I was standing, her lips moving in a silent litany I would have paid a king's ransom to hear..

It was then that the third man pulled himself from the wreckage, and this also was someone who I immediately recognized, having had an up close and personal interaction with him just days earlier, when his gun was pressed against my temple.

"Carmine," I spat. I could feel my lips twist in revulsion as I watched him casually brush the broken glass from his still pristine suit, as if he hadn't a care in the world.

Smirking slightly, he carefully reached behind his back. When his hand came back into view, it was holding the same gun which had been pushed against my head earlier. With an almost careless grace, he lifted the muzzle and aimed in Ice's direction.

"Ice!" I screamed, jerking my entire body in an attempt to move. "Ice! Get down!!!"

But of course, she didn't hear me. Just kept walking toward the road, her hand occasionally going to the back of her head where the butt of a pistol had come down and knocked her unconscious, an almost distracted look on her face.

"Ice! Please!!! Get down!!"

Almost as if she'd heard me, she turned, but it was too late.

A pistol shot rang through the forest.

Ice crumpled to her knees, her hands instinctively covering the wound just above her hip.

Lowering his gun, Carmine slowly walked over to Ice while in the background, his two goons managed to shake off their injuries and flank their boss, one to a side, like a pair of bloody bookends.

He moved forward until he stood just before her kneeling figure, his gun still hanging loosely at his side. "Mr. Cavallo wanted you brought to him so he could finish you off himself."

"He doesn't have the balls to finish off dinner," Ice replied, her voice jeering and cold.

Carmine tilted his head-in acknowledgement, I think--before stopping one of his goons from backhanding Ice for her insolence. Then he continued on in his even, quiet tone. "Since that now seems an impossibility, I really have no choice but to end this here."

Reaching out his free hand, he almost gently cupped Ice's chin.

She jerked it away, staring daggers through him, teeth bared in a snarl of pure challenge.

He tilted his head again, then removed his hand. "I'd say I'm sorry, but at this point, I don't think you'd believe me."

"Ya got that right."

"Anything you'd like me to pass on?"

I watched, panic-stricken, as she jerked her head back once again. A second later, a shining glob of spittle sprung from between his eyes.

Once again he prevented his cohorts from exacting revenge, then casually reached up and wiped Ice's gift away, smirking slightly and shaking his head. "Goodbye, Morgan. Despite how it now seems, it was an honor to know you."

Then slowly and deliberately, he raised his gun until the muzzle was just six inches from her forehead.

"No!!!" I screamed. "Ice!!!"

Again, my pleas went unanswered.

"This is just a dream," I whispered to myself, tears streaming down my face. "Just a dream. That's all it is."

To prove the point to myself, I pinched the tender flesh of my inner arm as hard as I could.

The vision didn't change.

Reaching down, I jabbed two fingers into the swollen skin of my lacerated knee.

Blinding pain tore through me, enough to wake up the stiffest corpse, and still no release from this nightmare.

Blinking tears of pain and grief from my eyes, I almost missed what happened next.

Almost faster than the eye could see, Ice's fist shot out, scoring a direct hit to Carmine's groin. The gun wavered, then dropped completely as he used both hands to cup himself. His eyes bulged and, almost in slow motion, he fell to his knees, mouth wide in a rictus of noiseless agony.

I found myself cheering loudly as the two remaining goons, in a universal empathy of men everywhere, winced and automatically reached down to protect their own private parts.

Which gave Ice time enough to roll away and come, more or less steadily, to her feet.

"Get her!" Carmine gasped, his face as pale as I'd ever seen a face become.

Gathering the wit they managed to share between them, the two goons began to lumber toward my lover. She grinned, then beckoned them closer. I could tell she was testing the weight of her injured side, trying, I imagined, to tell if it would hold her weight if she needed to lash out with her foot.

They came within range, both throwing wild, overhand rights that she managed to block easily, catching their fists, one to a hand, and propelling them backward several steps.

Unfortunately, the move also served to unbalance her, and when she put all her weight down on the injured side, her leg buckled and she went down to one knee, teeth clenched tightly against the pain I knew was shooting through her.

"Come on, Ice," I murmured. "Get up, sweetheart. Don't let them beat you."

Forgoing whatever little finesse they managed to possess, the two men settled for using their greater combined body mass to tackle Ice to the ground, pin her there, and begin to rain blows on her unprotected body.

At first, she simply lay beneath the heavy weight, her arms instinctively rising to guard her head.

"Fight, Ice!" I screamed, stooping down and scrabbling around for any rocks which might be big enough to heft. "Fight, damn you!"

There was nothing, however. Beneath the mist, the ground was as smooth and unyielding as a varnished floor.

Having landed a particularly vicious blow to Ice's chest, one of the men rested his beefy weight back against her injured hip, laughing. "Ain't much of a challenge now, is she Tony?"

"Sure ain't," Tony agreed, displaying the IQ of a slug's slime trail.