"Oh, yeah? I saw you sitting with her on the plane-it didn't look like you thought it was a fantasy, even then." Great, now he had her doing it-getting totally off point.

And he was looking back at her as if she were nuts. "I only sat with her because you dumped me."

"The point is, damnit, that you were supposedly in love with her-while you were in bed with me. What exactly does that say about you, huh?"

"You're jealous that I was sitting with Tracy even though you dumped me," Jenk said slowly, realization in his eyes. "That's crazy, unless...you dumped me because I scare you. And I scare you because...you like me too much."

"Yeah, right," Lindsey scoffed. "I dump you because I like you. What am I, a total head case? And hello. I didn't even dump you. You can't be dumped after only one night. There was no dumping. We had a thing, and it ended. A little early, but it was always going to end."

"You like me too much," Jenk said again. "You're afraid that I'm going to screw up your carefully planned life, spent all alone with your TiVo, doing penance for your guilt about your dead mother and your dead partner-he was your partner, right, when you were with the LAPD? The friend who nearly killed you? Not to mention all the other dead people in your past that you didn't get around to telling me about."

How dare he...? Lindsey stopped, and he jogged back toward her, moving in a circle around her to stay warm.

"How'd I do? Close, huh?"

She couldn't speak. It was as if he'd hit her with a two-by-four, square in the gut.

"You've figured out what you deserve," Jenk told her with a jab of his finger in her direction, "because of some bullshit that you've brainwashed yourself to believe, and since you don't think you deserve to be happy, you dumped me."

She stopped herself from saying the words she desperately wanted to say. The anatomically impossible directive, or even a less obscene request that he take up permanent residence in the underworld. She wanted to instruct him to take his overinflated ego with him and never darken her door again.

And why on earth had she told him anything about Dale and the shooting? And shame on Jenk for using that against her. She'd told him things she never told anyone, and this was what he did with it. That would teach her. God, she wanted to cry.

Instead, she made herself laugh. "Believe what you want, if it helps you cope."

"Back at you, babe. Although I wouldn't have pegged you as a coward."

Them was fightin' words, but she knew that her nonchalant shrugs pissed him off more than any angry outburst ever could. "Whatever."

"You know what, Lindsey? It turns out you're right. You don't deserve me." Jenk jogged away from her. "You're not worth my time."

She had to lean over, pretending to catch her breath, trying to regain her equilibrium. Good riddance, good riddance...

They were almost at the SUV, almost done with this nightmare. Back at the motel, she'd go see Tom. She'd tell him she had a family emergency, and she'd catch a bus down to Boston. Fly home to California from there.

She just got the first season of Rescue Me on DVD. She'd marathon it. Ten straight hours of Dennis Leary, popcorn, and ice cream would make her feel better. And then she'd go visit her father so the family emergency excuse wouldn't be a total lie.

Lindsey straightened up and made herself follow Jenk down the road, one foot at a time, picking up speed as the cold numbed her face.

And then there it was, the SUV, the last of the daylight gleaming off its front windshield.

Jenkins didn't say anything to her as he unlocked the doors, as they climbed inside, as he turned over the engine. He couldn't manage turning at that point in the narrow road, so he ran the vehicle in reverse until he could maneuver it around.

It took several moments for the heat to come up, and when it did, Lindsey blasted it.

It was possible, though, that she was too numb ever to feel completely warm again.

CHAPTER.

TWELVE.

This was pretty durn weird.

It wasn't as if Izzy had never helped warm up a teammate with hypothermia before.

It was a lot like hugging an ice cube.

Since a tub of warm water wasn't available, skin-to-skin contact had been the only available way to increase Sophia's body temperature.

Her proximity to the fire hadn't helped, so Izzy and Dave had stripped to their briefs and crawled under a pile of jackets and clothes to cradle Sophia between them.

Maybe the fact that made it so weird was that his SEAL teammates who'd suffered hypothermia in the past tended not to have breasts.

Or perhaps it was the Arabic writing carved into the small of Sophia's back that was freaking him out.

She had about a half a dozen thin, fading scars on the trunk of her body that had at first shocked him because he'd thought they were self-inflicted.

Izzy had once picked up this Goth chick at a Renaissance fair. It turned out that she had some serious issues that she'd tried to handle by taking a razor blade to her arms and stomach. Coming face-to-face with that had been an instant soft-on. He'd made some lame excuse-he was coming down with the flu-and boogied out of her ramshackle RV. He'd kicked himself for his cowardice though, for not being honest and telling her that he had issues with her method of dealing, so to speak, with her issues. He'd even gone back to find her several days later, to urge her to get help, but the entire fair was gone, leaving an empty, trampled field.

Here in the haunted hunting lodge's former smokehouse, Izzy had seen that none of Sophia's cuts were recent. But as he'd gotten closer, he'd realized that there were more than six of them, but most were almost entirely faded. Those would, eventually, become all but invisible. There was one, though, that she'd carry with her to her grave.

Izzy's Arabic was limited to barely more than the standard phrases in the talkee-pointee booklets he'd found in a Marine camp in Iraq. Put down your weapons, and no one will get hurt. Or Would you like some chocolate for your son? Still, he knew enough to recognize not just that Sophia had Arabic writing carved into her very flesh, but also that it was in a spot that she could not have reached by herself. Even if she were a very nimble ballet dancer.

And he wasn't sure, but he was pretty sure it said slave.

Sophia had finally stopped shivering. She no longer felt like an ice cube-with breasts-but more like a side of beef.

With breasts.

Dave Malkoff frowned across the top of Sophia's head, as if he could read Izzy's mind.

Like, what? Izzy was going to cop a feel? Well, okay, so he already had, but it was totally by accident. There wasn't a lot of wiggle room here, wedged in between the stone wall and the fire, jammed in tight against Sophia and Dave, beneath a pile of clothing and jackets.

For the record, he'd also managed to grab Dave's ass during the past few hours. And that was absolutely not on purpose.

But then he realized that Dave's glare had been to warn him that Sophia was waking up. She'd fallen asleep, but now she stirred.

"You're okay, you're safe," Dave murmured to her. "We're just here with you like this to keep you warm. I know it must seem inappropriate, but, really, this was the only way to get your temperature back up."

She tensed, as if the close contact was more than she could handle.

Izzy tried to imagine someone having the word slave carved into the small of their back for shits and giggles. But he couldn't. Whoever had written that there hadn't had Sophia's permission. No doubt about it, those memories were not fond ones.

"It's okay," Dave told her again and again, his voice calm, reassuring. "You're safe."

And she slowly relaxed as Izzy pretended he was a warming brick-nonthreatening and purely functional.

Lopez came over wearing only his long underwear. The rest of his clothes were either on top of them or beneath them. He tried to hide the fact that he was shivering despite the fire. "How you doing, Sophia? You want to try to get something warm inside of you?"

Izzy was on his best behavior, so all he did was close his eyes. But oh, how he could have commented. Instead, he just silently let Lopez continue.

"I've got some MREs heating up. I've also purified some of the water from that spring you and Dan found. I've got tea brewing."

"Is Danny okay?" Sophia asked.

Danny-Danny-Bo-Banny was over on the other side of the fire, no doubt steaming like a fresh yak turd as his wet clothes dried. Izzy had been there, done that, a time or two. Wearing wet wool wasn't on his top ten list of fun ways to spend an evening. The fragrance, at least that of his own sweaters, was decidedly barnyard-like. Still, Izzy was willing to bet that Dan Gillman was warmer than Lopez, thanks to his multiple layers.

"I'm fine," Gillman called. He pushed himself to his feet and came to stand looking down at them. Lopez had cleaned up the gash on his forehead, but it was developing into quite the egg-shaped bruise. His eye was starting to rainbow, too. "Sophia, I am so sorry. This was all my fault. My actions were inappropriate-"

Lopez was getting Sophia some of that tea, pouring it into an MRE wrapper, for lack of a hot cup. "This isn't the time or place for recriminations or-"

"What actions?" Dave asked Gillman, clearly not climbing into Lopez's boat floating gently on the sea of tranquillity. In fact, the ship he was boarding was the U.S.S. Pop-a-Vein, despite his deceptively mild voice.

Izzy was close enough to hear the sound of Dave's teeth grinding together.

"Or accusations." Lopez surely knew that he was talking to himself, and he sighed.

"I came on too strong. I didn't realize..." Gillman didn't notice Dave's displeasure. He was wrapped up in his own ball of guilt, no doubt feeling bad for treating Sophia like a normal woman, when it was clear to all of them, after eyeballing those freaky scars, that she was anything but.

"It's not your fault," Sophia tried to reassure him.

Dave wasn't convinced. Still, he kept his voice even. Calm. Deceptively matter-of-fact. "So you were, what? Groping her? She tries to get away, you give chase and take her with you through the floor and into the water?" He climbed out from beneath the pile of clothing.

"Pretty much," Gillman admitted. "Although groping is a little strong."

Dressed only in his briefs, Dave was not a formidable-looking man. He was one of those guys who managed to be both skinny and fat, and Izzy was betting he'd been rope-thin until recently. He'd probably crossed that invisible age line where his metabolism changed and, much to his dismay, he suddenly had love handles. That had to suck.

"Dave," Sophia said. "It wasn't-"

"Nearly killing both you and Sophia." Dave clarified as he sauntered over to Gillman.

Sophia turned to Izzy. "Give me some space. Please."

He didn't respond. He was just an inanimate object, a warming brick that could only be moved by Lopez. But Lopez was elsewhere, ready to intercede should Dave start throwing punches instead of words.

"Guys," Lopez said, as Dave crossed well into Gillman's personal space.

And kept going.

Fighting in a small space that also contained a pit fire was Darwinism in action. Getting one's nuts seared off made procreation highly unlikely. Of course, there was also the element of Darwinism that suggested that the fittest who survived probably didn't hang around with monkey-minded morons who fought in a small space that contained a pit fire.

Instead of shifting away from Sophia, Izzy shifted toward her. Away from the fire.

"You want to hit me?" Gillman asked Dave, not at all belligerently. He actually sounded hopeful. "Go ahead."

"How about taking this outside?" Izzy suggested. So okay, he was now a warming brick that talked.

But apparently Dave wasn't the hitting kind. He was the threatening kind. "If you ever touch her again," he told Gillman, right up in his face, "I'll kill you."

Izzy couldn't see Dave's eyes from his position on the floor, but he had a clear shot of Gillman. The SEAL would have stood there, absorbing a blow without retaliation, but words like that could not be ignored. So he bristled. And he started to get back in Dave's face, with one of the snappiest comebacks known to mankind. "Oh, yeah?"

Sophia was wriggling around beside Izzy, which was about as distracting as anything he'd ever experienced, except maybe the thought of getting his nuts seared off.

Aha, she was getting dressed. She'd been rummaging around, apparently searching for something, anything to put on, and now she was doing just that. "Zanella, get your hands off me!"

For the record, Izzy's hands had been nowhere near her. She, in her wiggling, had connected with him. She'd nearly kneed him in the groin, and he'd executed evasive maneuvers, period, the end.

Of course, both Dave and Gillman combined their anger and turned, aiming it now at Izzy. Except it had morphed into disgust. "Zanella..." Even Lopez joined in on the familiar chorus, adding a descant of "Izzy, come on."

Sophia, meanwhile, scrambled to her feet. She was wearing one of his sweaters, and what looked like Dave's pants, holding them up with one hand. But then she swayed, as if she'd stood too fast, and everyone-Izzy included-jumped to support her, helping her sit on the remaining pile of clothing.

Lopez leaped to get his tea, helping her take a sip from the MRE wrapper. "It's not too hot," he told her. "I couldn't heat it too much or I wouldn't've been able to pour it into this. But it should be warm enough."

"Thanks," Sophia said. Her eyes met Izzy's, and he knew she was no more wobbly-legged than he was. Her goal-skillfully achieved-had been to distract and refocus, starting with her mention of his allegedly wayward hands. It was masterful-she had the poor little blond waif role down perfectly.

And he was king of the miscreants. "So that was a fun way to spend the afternoon," he said. "Although-no offense Dave-I would've preferred the third in our little hypothermia-be-gone party be Lindsey."

He got Zanella-ed again, as expected.

Dave and Gillman were now bonding in their revulsion of him. Well, not quite. But they no longer looked ready to get their calendars out, to schedule their impending duel to the death.

Sophia frowned. "Where is Lindsey?"

Dave looked at his watch. "Probably reentering radio range right about...now."

Tracy had just gotten out of the shower when someone knocked loudly on the bathroom door.

There was no exhaust fan-probably because they hadn't invented them back in the dark ages when this motel was built-and the mirror was completely fogged. So she opened the door, both to let the steam out and to greet her roomie, who had surely returned from her hike.

"I'll be out in a sec, Sophia," she said, only to find herself face-to-face with Lawrence Decker. She was so surprised to see him, she just stood there, gaping.

"Sorry to intrude," he said. "But I need some help."

She had a towel wrapped around herself, but the thin motel towels weren't exactly generous. Certainly not as generous as her backside. She moved behind the door, peering out at him.

Had Sophia actually given Decker a key to their room? There was something going on between them-or there had been at one time. Tracy had thought, however, that the key-sharing phase of their relationship was over and done. But maybe not. Maybe they were as messed up as she and Lyle were.