As Dave looked up, he could see Lopez peering down at them from the doorway. "Fire's started," he reported, as Dave brushed the debris from Sophia's head. "Lindsey's getting it good and hot. Jenk, keep it going. Don't stop. Sophia, can you hear me?"

She didn't look up, her full focus on Gillman.

"She's pretty out of it," Dave called back to Lopez. He had to wrestle her out of those freezing, wet clothes. "Come on, Soph, you can't help Jenkins, but you can help me."

But Lopez stopped him. "Wait, Dave, if she's wearing wool, she'll be warmer with her clothes on, even soaked."

Sophia was shaking. "She's wearing flannel-lined jeans and a down jacket, a coupla sweaters," Dave told the SEAL. He touched her sodden sweater, reaching beneath to what felt like a turtleneck shirt. Her skin beneath was icy. "Definitely not wool. Cotton maybe."

"Get 'em off her," Lopez commanded. "Why isn't she wearing wool?"

She heard that, which was a good sign, wasn't it? "I'm...aller...aller..." Still, she couldn't even pronounce the word allergic. She barely even had her eyes open as Dave struggled to pull her wet jacket off of her.

"Yes!" Jenk shouted his triumph. Sure enough, Danny Gillman gurgled and coughed and spit out what seemed like gallons of water as Jenkins rolled him onto his side.

Alleluia. Maybe now Sophia would focus on saving her own life. She may have been out of the water, but she wasn't out of the woods. Neither of them were. Not in this cold. Not yet.

"Come on, Sophia, help me," Dave told her again, working on getting her out of her jeans. He had to peel them off, one leg at a time-not an easy task, since they stuck to her wet skin. "Gillman's okay. Jenk's got him breathing. Let's do some work on you. Can you help me?"

But she was shivering so hard, she couldn't even hold her head up.

And there came Lopez, sliding like Tarzan down that rope through the wider hole in the floor that Izzy had cleared. He was carrying Dave's and Jenk's jackets. But Dave was already ahead of him. He'd pulled off his own wool sweater-too bad if it made Sophia itch-and was ready to step out of his pants.

Lopez swore in Spanish at the sight of her, but he didn't slow down. "Mark, help Dave," he ordered, and then it was Jenkins who was gaping at Sophia's nearly naked body.

"Shit, are those scars?" he asked, but like Lopez, he didn't stop moving. He helped Dave feed her limp arms into the dry sweater.

"Yeah," Dave said tersely.

"What happened to her?" Jenk asked. "Did she, like, go through a plate glass window a few years ago?"

"No." Dave was wearing long johns, and he kicked off his boots to strip down to them, giving Jenkins his socks to put on Sophia's pale feet.

In the time it took him to put his pants and his boots back on his now much colder legs and feet, Jenk had wrestled Sophia into the long johns, wrapped her in Dave's jacket, put her over his back in a fireman's carry, and taken her up the rope.

Lopez had done not quite the same with Gillman because he was wearing wool, but they were gone, too.

"Hurry up," Izzy admonished in the fading light at the edge of the hole.

Dave had barely grabbed the rope before Izzy, using plain brute strength, just hauled him straight up. Dave hit the frozen ground like a landed fish, the wind temporarily knocked out of him. As he caught his breath, he smelled the sharpness of smoke from a wood fire.

It was terribly cold without his many layers. He could only imagine how Sophia must've felt.

"Let's go," Izzy said, coiling the rope as he hurried toward the smaller structure.

Dave followed.

LOCATION: UNCERTAIN.

DATE: UNKNOWN.

The first thing he'd do to her was cut off her eyelids.

He'd told Beth that, back when he'd trapped her inside of his car.

Her eyes felt gritty and hot, but only from her fever. She could still blink, still close her eyes. He hadn't cut her.

Not yet.

He was coming toward her, though, the hall light behind him making it hard in the room's dimness to see his face. Or to see what he was carrying in his hands.

"Unchain me, you son of a bitch," she rasped, pulling with all her might against the iron bedframe to which she was tethered. Lord, she was weak.

She knew where he kept the key that would release her. It was on a hook on the wall in the kitchen, right by the basement door. He'd told her where it was nearly every time he left the house, laughing because he knew how much it frustrated her to hear about a key that she could never use, never reach.

The chain that bound her now was too short for her to wrap around his neck.

Although she did have one hand free. One arm and one leg.

Beth lay still. Best to let him think she was helpless. To let him come closer.

"You don't really want me to unchain you, do you, Number Five?" he asked. "To bring you into my kitchen? Wouldn't you rather stay and fight?"

He wasn't holding his carving knife. He was holding a glass with a straw. He'd brought her something to drink. He held it out to her, putting the straw against her dry, chapped lips.

Was it drugged? Possibly. Sometimes the food and water he gave her made the world fade away. She'd awaken to find herself chained up again. Sometimes he stripped her naked and posed her in provocative positions. She'd wake up chilled, with a stiff neck or back. She didn't think he'd ever had sex with her, though-she didn't think he was capable.

She suspected he was afraid of disease. Or maybe he got everything he needed from the power he held over her, combined with his own practiced hand.

"You'll never get better if you don't drink something," he coaxed her, and she took a sip.

It could have been anything in that glass. Blood. Urine. Her own vomit. But it wasn't. It was water, cool and fresh.

She drank more.

"That's my girl." He actually reached out to stroke her hair. Her horribly dirty, matted hair. His hands were gentle-hands that cut and mutilated, but didn't kill.

Hers were the hands that did the killing.

He smiled a gentle smile, a loving smile, as if she were a child or a favorite pet.

He might've been considered handsome-if it weren't for his eyes. His eyes were cold. Empty. Dead.

And very blue.

DARLINGTON, NEW HAMPSHIRE.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2005.

"You were great back there."

Jenk glanced at Lindsey. "We don't have to talk."

"Yeah, I know," she said as she easily kept up with him on the overgrown and potholed road leading back to the SUV. He'd made it more than clear, with his body language and swift pace, that he didn't want to have a conversation.

They'd been given the relatively simple task of going to get blankets and warm, dry clothes for Sophia and Danny. It was matter of height and weight. As the two smallest members of the group, they were not particularly helpful in providing either extra body heat or spare clothing. Although Jenk had given up his jacket to the cause. He was out here, in the growing darkness, in just a sweater.

"I just...thought you were great back there," Lindsey told him.

"Thanks," he said. He didn't seem cold, but his voice wasn't very warm. "You were, too."

And that was quite possibly the least-sincere-sounding compliment she'd ever received.

"It was good teamwork," Lindsey acknowledged. "Dave was impressive, wasn't he? And Izzy and Lopez were pretty amazing with that rope."

"Yeah, will you do me a favor?" Jenk said. "If you're planning on screwing them, too, will you please not do it in the next five days? You know, at least not until we leave New Hampshire?"

If the rudeness of his words hadn't stopped her short, the anger and hurt in his voice would have.

Jenk's hurt stung her more than anger or rudeness ever could. The idea that she'd hurt him...? How had she hurt him? He was the one who ran off to save Tracy, with his bed still warm from Lindsey's body heat.

Yet she'd hurt him because, why? Because she didn't want to be his generic bride? Because even though she was lower maintenance than Tracy and damn good in bed, she wasn't willing to help him achieve a headache-free substitute version of some planned-out perfect life?

Because he wanted a minivan, and he'd thought Lindsey would look good behind the wheel?

She ran to catch up. "That was totally uncalled for."

"Was it? Like you said, I don't really know you. Maybe that's how you get your kicks. One-night stands-a new guy every night?"

Yeah, right. It was more like a new guy every few years, with long, dry periods in between. Because usually after she made the mistake of becoming intimate with some fool, it took her months to recover, and then many months more to be willing to take such a risk again.

Still, even though he was far from right, his holier-than-thou implication pissed her off.

"So what if it is?" she countered. "Look me in the eye and tell me you've never had sex with someone, and then decided right then and there that that was enough."

He skidded to a stop. "So that's what happened? You decided enough was enough? Despite the incredible sex, I'm just, what? Too annoying?"

Oh, my God. "No," she said.

"Or maybe I got it completely wrong, and you were just faking it-"

Men could be so predictable. "Yeah." Lindsey let sarcasm drip from her voice. "You're not man enough for me. Come on, Jenkins, what's up with the childish insecurity? I told you what happened-nothing happened. I'm just not looking for a heavy relationship right now, period, the end. It has nothing to do with...with...penis size, or endurance, or lack of originality in bed. And no, you have no problem with any of those things. God! It's also not about my insatiable man-eating appetite. Any longing looks I've been casting toward Izzy or Lopez or freaking Dave Malkoff are completely your own craziness. For your information, I'm not scheduled to have sex again until 2008, although after this fiasco, it's going to be 2010!"

Jenk was standing there, his cheeks pink, shivering from the cold. The reason he'd been moving at such a brisk pace was to keep warm.

There was no real haste needed in their quest to get blankets and dry clothing. After Izzy and Dave had sandwiched Sophia between them, sharing body heat, skin to skin, her dangerously low temperature had finally begun to rise. She was going to be okay.

"Come on," Lindsey told Jenk. "You're freezing."

But he didn't move. "I don't believe you."

She rolled her eyes. "Of course you don't. Okay. You want a troglodyte reason for why I don't want to be with you? You're too short for me. Happy, or do you need more? You're too short, and I'm a slut-I'll never be satisfied with just one man. Is that what you want me to say? Does that fit your narrow little worldview?"

"I think I scared you," Jenk said.

Lindsey started down the road at a jog. "Believe whatever you want. Just...Let's keep moving."

He caught up with her easily. "I'm right, aren't I?"

"Look," Lindsey said. "I know you're disappointed. I know it's a hard concept for you to grasp-the idea that I'm not secretly waiting for true love to ride up on a white stallion and sweep me away to a life of casseroles, PTA meetings, and sitting in traffic as I go to pick up the dry cleaning. Maybe I don't fit with your antiquated idea of how women should behave. I suspect your struggle comes from the fact that I actually managed to have sex like a man. Like you, as a matter of fact. You didn't invite me home because you thought I was great-"

"Yeah, actually, I did."

She rephrased. "But it wasn't because you thought I would make a great life partner. You wanted to have sex, and you thought it might be fun to have sex with me. Look me in the eye and tell me that if I'd turned into some kind of nightmare-a crying drunk, or some kind of high-maintenance perfectionist-you wouldn't have just faded into the night afterwards and never called me again."

"I would, too, have called you," he insisted. "Considering we're working together..."

"Yeah, but at the time you didn't know we'd be working together again, so soon," she pointed out. "But that's not the point. You keep focusing on the tangents. The point is, when we hooked up, you wanted exactly what I did. You can't accuse me of being a slut unless you admit that you're one, too."

"I never said you were a slut," he said. "That was your word."

"Hello, you're doing it again," Lindsey said. "Let me make it simple. On the night we had sex, did you or did you not have Tracy's ringtone set to 'Here Comes the Bride'?"

"We keep coming back to this," he said. "Obviously it matters to you a great deal-"

"Hey! I asked you a simple yes/no question. So, yes or no?"

"Yes, but-"

Lindsey spoke loudly over him. "So what were you doing with me, if you wanted to marry Tracy?"

Jenk shook his head. "That was just a stupid fantasy."