"After." He looked down, watching his hand stroke her arm, his fingers tracing the neck of her blouse. "I hadn't hit bottom yet."

"You weren't exactly in a position to make an informed decision."

"We're still trying to work things out."

"Is that why you're here?"

He pressed his mouth to hers. She could feel the rough prickle of his beard, taste the cinnamon gum he'd been chewing. He lifted her onto the counter, his tongue finding hers. It wasn't unpleasant, and when his hands slid up her thighs, lifting her skirt, Faith didn't stop him. She helped him, actually, and in retrospect, she probably shouldn't have, because it ended things a lot sooner than they needed to.

"I'm sorry." Sam shook his head, slightly out of breath. "I didn't mean to—I just—"

Faith didn't care. Even if her mind had blocked out Sam from her conscious thoughts over the years, her body seemed to remember every part of him. It felt so damn good to have his arms around her again, to feel the closeness of somebody who knew about her family and her job and her past—even if that particular body wasn't of much use to her at the moment. She kissed his mouth very gently and with no other meaning than to feel connected again. "It's okay."

Sam pulled back. He was too embarrassed to see that it didn't matter.

"Sammy—"

"I haven't gotten the hang of things being sober."

"It's okay," she repeated, trying to kiss him again.

He stepped back even farther, looking somewhere over her shoulder instead of in her eyes. "You want me to . . ." He made a halfhearted gesture toward her lap.

Faith let out a heavy sigh. Why were the men in her life such a constant disappointment? God knew she didn't have high standards.

He looked at his watch. "Gretchen's probably waiting up for me. Been working late a lot."

Faith gave up, leaning her head against the cabinet behind her. She might as well try to salvage something out of this. "Do you mind taking out the trash on your way out?"

CHAPTER TWELVE

"GODDAMM IT," PAULINE WHISPERED, THEN WONDERED WHY she wasn't screaming it at the top of her lungs. "Goddamm it!" she yelled, her voice catching in her throat. She rattled the handcuffs around her wrists, jerking at them even though she knew the gesture was useless. She was like a goddamn prisoner at a jail, her hands cuffed, strapped tight to a leather belt so that, even if she contorted herself into a ball, her fingertips barely grazed her chin. Her feet were chained, the thick links clanking against each other with every step she took. She had done enough damn yoga to be able to bend her feet up to her head, but what good was that? What the hell kind of help was the inversion plow pose when your fucking life was at stake?

The blindfold made it worse, though she had managed to move it up a little by rubbing her face against the rough concrete blocks lining one of the walls. The scarf was tight. Millimeter by millimeter, the blindfold was forced up, shaving away some of the skin on her cheek in the process. There was no difference above or below the strip of material, but Pauline felt like she had accomplished something, might be prepared when that door opened and she saw a sliver of light under the blindfold.

For now, it was darkness. That was all she saw. No windows, no lights, no way of judging the movement of time. If she thought about it, thought that she could not see, did not know if she was being watched or videotaped or worse, she would lose her mind. Hell, she was half losing her mind already. She was soaking wet, sweat pouring from her skin. Rivulets tickled her nose as they slid down her scalp. It was maddening, made all the more worse by the fucking darkness.

Felix liked the dark. He liked it when she got in bed with him and held him and told him stories. He liked being under the covers, blankets over his head. Maybe she had coddled him too much when he was a baby. She'd never let him out of her sight. She was scared that someone would take him away from her, someone would realize that she really shouldn't be a mother, that she didn't have it in her to love a child like a child should be loved. But she did. She loved her boy. She loved him so much that the thought of him was the only thing that was keeping her from twisting herself into a ball, wrapping the chains around her neck and killing herself.

"Help!" she screamed, knowing it was useless. If they were afraid of Pauline being heard, they would have gagged her.

She had paced out the room hours ago, approximating the size at twenty feet by sixteen. Cinderblock walls on one side, sheetrock on the other, with a metal door that was bolted from the outside. Vinyl mattress pad in the corner. A slop bucket with a lid. The concrete was cold against her bare feet. There was a hum in the next room, a hot water heater, something mechanical. She was in a basement. She was underground, which made her feel as if her skin would crawl right off her body. She hated being underground. She didn't even park in the damn garage at work, she hated it so much.

She stopped pacing, closed her eyes.

No one parked in her space. It was right by the door. Sometimes she'd go out for some air, stand at the entrance to the garage to make sure the space was empty. She could read the sign from the street: PAULINE MCGHEE. Christ, the battle with the sign company to get that "C" in lower case. It had cost someone their job, which was just as well, since apparently they couldn't do it right.

If someone was parked in her space, she would call the attendant and have the asshole towed. Porsche, Bentley, Mercedes—Pauline didn't care. She had earned that fucking space. Even if she wasn't going to use it, she would be damned if someone else would.

"Let me out of here!" she screamed, jerking the chains, trying to wrench off the belt. It was thick, the sort of thing her brother wore back in the seventies. Two rows of riveted holes going the circumference, two prongs in the buckle. The metal felt like a wad of wax, and she knew the prongs had been soldered down. She couldn't remember when it had happened, but she knew what a fucking soldered belt felt like.

"Help me!" she screamed. "Help me!"

Nothing. No help. No response. The belt was biting into her skin, raking across her hip bones. If she wasn't so fucking fat, she could just slide out of the thing.

Water, she thought. When had she last had water? You could live without food for weeks, sometimes months, but water was different. You could go three, maybe four days before it hit you—the cramps, the cravings. The awful headaches. Were they going to give her water? Or were they going to let her waste away, then do whatever they wanted to her while she lay there, helpless as a child?

Child.

No. She would not think about Felix. Morgan would take him. He would never let anything bad happen to her baby. Morgan was a bastard and a liar, but he would take care of Felix, because underneath it all, he was not a bad person. Pauline knew what a bad person looked like, and it was not Morgan Hollister.

She heard footsteps behind her, outside the door. Pauline stopped, holding her breath so she could hear. Stairs—someone was coming down the stairs. Even in the dark, she could see the walls closing in around her. Which was worse: being alone down here, or being trapped with someone else?

Because she knew what was coming. Knew it just as certain as she knew the details of her own life. There was never just one. He always wanted two: dark hair, dark eyes, dark hearts that he could shatter. He had kept them apart for as long as he could stand it, but now he'd want them together. Caged, like two animals. Fighting it out. Like animals.