On his way out of Duncan MacLeod's loft apartment he told his former teacher his plans to get on his bike and drive around in order to figure out some things. What did being an Immortal mean? Did he always have to kill or be killed? Could there ever be such a thing as peace among Immortals? Easy questions like that. As Richie Ryan carried his sleeping roll and bags down to his motorbike the next afternoon, however, he began to have second thoughts.

The spring Seacouver sky had lost its sunshine in favor of a rolling bank of rainclouds, and the chill breeze sneaked up beneath his leather jacket and flannel shirt. The parking lot full of broken glass, cracked asphalt and rusting automobiles forewarned him of lonely nights ahead in run-down motels and seedy bars. He didn't really have anywhere to go. He had few mortal friends to look up. His financial situation verged on precarious at best, enough for a couple weeks of gasoline but no major repairs if the bike should break down.

Richie studied the bags in his hands. He didn't want to wander aimlessly around the highways of America. He'd been there, done that. He didn't want to stay in Seacouver either - not with that whole Methos affair still able to turn his cheeks red with embarrassment, and certainly not in a bed that still smelled, at times, like Jennifer Hill's perfume.

Time for something different.

Time for a vacation.

He deserved a little fun, didn't he? For almost a year he'd been consumed by blood and killings. One dark, haunting night last October Duncan had taken a Dark Quickening and loosed his mocking cruelty and greater swordsmanship on Richie. The younger Immortal had only survived thanks to Joe Dawson's intervention. The subsequent news Duncan had left the country hadn't soothed Richie's panic-drenched nightmares, his shattered esteem, or his burning need to prove himself. Wandering up and down the West Coast and northern Mexico on his bike, he'd gone out of his way to pick fights with other Immortals. He'd severed men's heads in alleys and parking lots. He'd nearly lost his own head twice. The killings boosted his confidence but left him cold and empty inside, ripe for the peaceful driveling of the Immortal claiming to be Methos.

Richie had fallen for the whole story like a housewife curled on the sofa with a torrid romance novel in hand. Peace. Immortals did not have to fight in the Game. Immortals could lay down their swords. After years of fighting for footing on the slippery slopes of violence, Richie was ready for any respite that came his way. He'd nearly gotten himself slaughtered for his gullibility. The only thing he'd learned was the identity of the real Methos, who'd been masquerading as mild-mannered Adam Pierson. And hanging around with a five-thousand-year-old Immortal who could probably take his head with a flick of the hand did not exactly make Richie comfortable, no matter how much he pretended it might.

Richie went back upstairs to his apartment over a roach-infested Chinese restaurant and dug out an airmail letter postmarked in Marseilles. He could never think of eleven-hundred-year-old fellow Immortal Amanda as the motherly type but sometimes she made a very sexy fairy godmother capable of great generosity. He dialed the telephone number she'd provided. She sounded delighted to hear from him. She directed him to a well connected lawyer in Seacouver's financial district who conducted a prosperous underground business in fake passports. Forty eight hours later, using a ticket Amanda paid for, Richie boarded a plane for France and leaned back to enjoy the in-flight movie. Going back to the country where he had already died publicly once gave him a few minutes of worry, but he reasoned if he kept off racetracks he'd be safe. In a pinch he could claim a distant relationship to the deceased Richie Ryan, and hopefully no one would give it a second thought.

Ten hours after leaving the States he exited the airline terminal with a duffel bag in one hand and his packaged broadsword in the other. Airplane travel always left him cramped and headachy but he was glad to be back in France, home to many of his happiest memories. The weather along the Riviera still carried the faint chill of winter but the sun warmed his face and the air swirled around him with the pungent smell of European cigarettes and sounds of French conversation. He sensed Amanda long before he found her, and when he saw her he dropped the duffel bag in stunned appreciation.

"What a beauty," he murmured.

Amanda stretched back against the luscious curves of the car hood, her black mini-dress a sharp contrast to the vehicle's flawless red exterior. "You like?" she purred.

"Like?" Richie grinned. He circled the hood, every bit of fatigue and jet-lag forgotten. "Like? Amanda, do you know with this is?" Amanda's face took on a pout. "You're talking about the car?"

"This is not a car, Amanda. *This* is a 1997 Ferrari F-50. It's got a 4.7 liter V12 engine with 520 horse-power at 8500 revs per minute. It can reach 200 miles per hour and goes from 0 to 60 in four seconds. Saying this is a car is like saying . . . it's like saying you, Amanda, are just another pretty face. It's a tragic understatement."

She laughed at the comparison, restored to good cheer by his offhanded compliment. "I knew you'd like it. It's Jean-Pierre's and he calls it Marie."

"Who's Jean-Pierre?" Richie asked, eyeing the car's sumptuous leather interior and generous speedometer. Although Amanda and Mac had only broken up again a few weeks earlier, after the Corey Raines affair, he had little doubt either of them would soon find another bed partner. He'd thought he was horny, but Amanda and Mac could win prizes for their cheerful promiscuity.

"You'll find out," Amanda promised, sliding behind the steering wheel. The hem of her dress slid up her thighs, but he only had eyes for the silver key jingling in her palm.

"Can I drive?" he begged.

"Not on your life. Get in."

She kept up a cheerful monologue all the way to Jean-Pierre's chateau, chatting gaily about fashion, shopping, and an Immortal she'd had to kill in Nice. Richie sank into the leather seats and listened with his eyes closed. She told him Jean-Pierre lived in a seaside cottage. The "cottage" turned out to be a fourteen room chateau perched on a cliff overlooking a vast expanse of the Mediterranean. The immaculately landscaped grounds and distant crash of waves cloaked the nineteenth-century structure with a peaceful, serene atmosphere. Richie carried his bag and sword into the cool, dark entrance hall, and put down both at the tingling, crawling sensation of another Immortal's presence.

"Monsieur Ryan!" a man called boisterously from the top of the curving stairs. Jean-Pierre was a man Duncan's size, fair skinned and casually dressed, and appeared to be in his forties. He had a ring on his right hand that looked like a solid chunk of gold. His grip nearly crushed Richie's hand. In French he continued, "So pleased to meet you."

"The pleasure is mine, and please call me Richie," Richie replied politely in the same language. "You have a wonderful place here. I'm sorry if my French isn't very good."

"Nonsense," Amanda said, squeezing his biceps. "Your French is superb. Or will be, when we're done with you. Jean-Pierre, would you take dear Richard to his room? I have some freshening up to do."

Jean-Pierre played gallant host, showing Richie the downstairs rooms - the library, drawing room, dining room, and kitchens - before escorting him upstairs to his own bedroom. Richie eyed the sleigh bed and wide mattress with a barely concealed yawn. The jet lag had caught up to him with a vengeance. Jean-Pierre told him to rest and come down when he was refreshed. The grounds boasted an indoor swimming pool and tennis courts the young American might want to use.

"Or perhaps you'd like to help an old man practice," Jean-Pierre grinned, hefting the weight of Richie's packaged broadsword.

Richie's mood fell a little at that. He had no desire to become someone's chopping block. Jean-Pierre looked strong and very, very capable of slicing off anyone's head. Instead of objecting, though, he merely smiled, and after his host left he took off his shoes and crawled beneath the embroidered coverlet to sleep for a few hours. When he woke dusk tinged the sky from horizon to horizon, and Amanda and Jean-Pierre were in the drawing room sipping wine and dancing to Nina Simone records.

He watched them from the doorway, hating to interrupt. Seeing Amanda giggling and flushed in Jean-Pierre's arms reminded Richie that she must have had thousands of lovers and that Mac was one of many lucky men.

"You're awake," Amanda said, spinning in Jean-Pierre's arms. "Feel better?"

"Less wiped out," he admitted. "Starving."

She laughed. "You're always starving. Go shower and dress for dinner. We're going to town."

"I didn't bring anything to dress in but jeans," he said.

Jean-Pierre lifted an eyebrow. "Well, some of Rene's clothes are still in his old room, maybe there's something that can fit you."

As Richie and Jean-Pierre climbed the stairs Amanda called after them, "Dress for dancing! We're going to Bernace's after."

"What's Bernace's?" Richie asked.

"Dance club," Jean-Pierre smiled. "We're going boy-watching."

Richie almost stumbled on the stairs, but regained his footing and fought to keep his face straight. Jean-Pierre gave him a dashing smile but said nothing. Richie followed him to a room at the end of the hall and made sure the door stayed open while the older Immortal rummaged through a large closet and tossed slacks, shirts and jackets onto the canopy bed. "Who was Rene?" Richie asked.

"My former lover," Jean-Pierre announced blithely from the depths of the closet. "Does that bother you?"

"No," Richie said quickly. "I just didn't figure. . .well, you and Amanda look pretty close."

"We are," Jean-Pierre said, reappearing with sweaters in his arms. "There are two sides to every fence, you know."

Richie didn't care an iota about Jean-Pierre's sexuality - having grown up in liberal Seacouver, and having spent several months on the streets, he knew people came in every conceivable shape, size, color and preference. Over the next several days he found it impossible not to like his charming host, especially considering the free room and board and use of all the chateau's amenities. He finally let himself be talked into sparring and was relieved to find Jean-Pierre a passable swordsman without any passion at all for fighting.

"I never look for trouble," he confided as he lunged towards Richie. Richie easily deflected the blow. Jean-Pierre mopped his forehead. "I just want to keep my head."

"I know the feeling," Richie grinned.

Richie pitched in when needed, helping Amanda cook elaborate meals or the staff gardener keep up with the landscaping. Mostly he was on his own and happy to spend hours relaxing in the heated pool, strolling the countryside, or watching satellite movies on the chateau's home entertainment system. The third week of his stay, Jean-Pierre and Amanda announced they were going on a yachting cruise to Greece with some friends of theirs from the sixteenth century. The housekeeping staff was taking its annual vacation. Would he mind watching the house by himself for a week?

Richie pretended to think it over. "I don't know. Fabulous house all to myself? I don't know if I can handle it."

Beneath the dinner table, Amanda rubbed her foot along the inside of his right calf. "Maybe, if you're nice, Jean-Pierre will throw in the car keys too."

"Deal," Richie grinned.

The day after they left he borrowed a tuxedo from Rene's closet and sank behind the wheel of the Ferrari with a grin of pure delight. The road out of Marseilles took him out through the Provencal countryside, past open rolling fields and vineyards backed by mountains. He zoomed through the small fishing port of Cassis, slowed fractionally above Toulon to see the beaches where the Allies had landed in 1944, and stopped to buy a Coke in St. Tropez. He marked Cannes on the map for a later visit, skirted Nice without interest, and made Monte Carlo by noon. A fast car, bright sun, trendy shops, the millionaire's playground just waiting for him at every turn - he couldn't imagine being back in America, wandering around on his bike and worrying about the meaning of life.

He let the valet at the Grand Casino park the Ferrari, and strode into the place as if he already owned it. An hour later he had ten thousand francs in winnings stacked up against his right hand. Two hours after that, fifty thousand francs. Ten thousand dollars American. More than enough to draw the attention of two unaccompanied women his own age, each with stunningly low cleavage and clever make-up.

By two a.m. he was partying in a luxury suite of young jet-set heirs and other international players, dancing with a girl in a tight black pantsuit and ignoring the handfuls of cocaine spread across the glass coffee table. The pulsing beat of some flash-in-the-pan pop group pulsed through Richie's head, aided by speakers half the size of the Ferrari. The dark, smoky atmosphere disoriented him a little, although he'd been careful not to drink too much. When the song ended he waded through people conversing in German and Italian and sidled up to the bar for something cold and non- alcoholic. A woman with golden hair piled high on her head smiled at him from the corner and turned to her date, a brooding man Richie had first seen at the casino.

He took his spring water to the balcony, and tried to clear his head by admiring the glittering lights of Monaco spread beneath like a tapestry of stars dragged to earth. The dark and mammoth sea spread out from the shoreline, highlighted by the distant glow of yachts and ships. Richie took in a deep breath of the faintly salty air, happier and wearier than he'd been in a long time. As he exhaled his arm brushed against someone, and he turned to apologize.

"No need," the blonde woman said, in heavily accented English, her face lighting up with a smile that almost made Richie's knees turn weak. "My fault."

"No, it's mine," he said. "I apologize."

"You're Richard Redstone, the millionaire, aren't you? That's what they're saying inside."

Richie blushed. At times, during the night, he might have slightly exaggerated his net worth. He saw no reason to end the charade just yet. "They're not wrong."

"I'm Marina," she said, offering her hand and that dazzling smile again. He caught a whiff of her lilac perfume. "It's so very nice to meet you. Would you like some champagne?"

Richie put down his water to take a glass from her. They clinked flutes and toasted Monte Carlo, good fortune, and fate.

An hour later he was unconscious and in the hands of his kidnappers.

Oblivion he could deal with. But oblivion disappeared beneath an onslaught of vomit spasming up from his churning stomach and through his mouth and nose. Voices cried out in disgust, calling him a pig in French, and he struggled for some sense of up or down, some grasp on reality. The hands with vice-like grips on his legs and under his shoulders swung him around in the dizzying, all encompassing darkness. Richie strained to see, fought to roll away free, but succeeded only in tearing his wrists against the cuffs holding his arms behind his back. A musty, shaggy rug came up against his face, chest, stomach and twisted legs. He vomited against that too, helpless against the sweeping sickness twisting his insides so violently.

He shivered uncontrollably, coughing on the sourness burning his throat and nose. He finally recognized the tightness over his eyes as a blindfold. Some of his clothes had disappeared - his socks, shoes, jacket, tie. He struggled to understand what had happened while at the same time translate the voices arguing in French somewhere nearby.

"You clean him up, I'm not your servant - "

"It's your fault you gave him enough for a horse - "

"This isn't going to help - "

"Stop arguing!"

"Richard?" A woman's voice. Something wet and cold touched his face and he flinched back. The woman wiped his mouth, chin and neck and then put her warm hand on his forehead. She smelled like flowers in a way that seemed familiar. "Are you going to be sick again?" she asked gently.

"Yes," he mumbled, seconds before his stomach rebelled again.

" - you deal with it - "

" - I *loathe* this - "

He tried to curl up against the cramps in his stomach and huddle into the rug for comfort, but the unseen hands lifted him against his weak protests and dumped him on a soft bed. His arms were freed, stretched wide to his sides, imprisoned in thick circles of cold metal. The lilac smell returned as the woman washed his face again, and a blanket descended on him with warmth and heaviness.

"Who are you?" Richie asked. The tight blindfold hurt, and he twisted his head in frustration against the pillow. "Why are you doing this? Don't do this."

"Sssh," she scolded. "Don't talk. Drink this."

One of her hands lifted his head while the other held a glass against his chattering teeth. "No," he said, trying to turn away. He yanked uselessly against the chains holding his wrists and tried to organize his chaotic memories. "You drugged me. You're Marina."

"This is just water," she said. "I promise. Please drink it."

Reluctantly he sipped at the water, and found it did soothe his throat and settle his stomach a little. She eased his head back and he took some calm, steadying breaths. His shivers had diminished slightly and he felt much warmer, but the chains and blindfold rubbed his frazzled nerves raw.

"Can you loosen the blindfold?" he pleaded. "Please? My head hurts."

"I shouldn't."

"Marina, please. Just a little."

Her fingers worked the knot and he sighed in relief as the cloth loosened. A sliver of bright light appeared at the bridge of his nose, breaking the disorienting darkness into manageable fragments. He'd always hated total darkness - it reminded him too painfully of locked closets where bad little boys went to be punished.

"Thank you," he said sincerely. "Why are you doing this?"

She cupped his face. "Rest. Try not to worry. You won't be harmed, I promise." Seconds later he heard a door click and realized he was probably alone.

Richie stifled an urge to laugh. Try not to worry. He'd been drugged, kidnapped, blindfolded, handcuffed. For the first time in years he didn't know exactly where his sword was. He didn't sense any nearby Immortals but that could change in an instant, and he would be very easy prey for anyone like Kristov or Hyde looking for a Quickening.

He pulled frantically on the chains but the bed didn't move an inch beneath his twisting. When he stopped, his arms and shoulders burned from exertion and his breathing came labored and harsh. Richie forced himself to physically relax. He could deal with this. He could find a way out of it. He was an Immortal, and he'd been taught by Duncan and Connor and others to keep his cool, look for solutions, deal with crises. Take stock of the situation, he told himself. Deal with what you know.

He'd been at a party. He'd met Marina. She had handed him a glass of champagne that made his head spin. They'd gone outside for a walk, and the next thing he knew he was spinning in darkness and throwing up. He reconstructed the arguing voices and determined he'd been kidnapped by at least three people, Marina included. If it had been on behest of another Immortal he would probably be headless by now, so he pursued the other logical alternatives for kidnapping. Politics? The south of France didn't seem to be a bed of political activism. Money? He didn't have any.

He nearly groaned. Marina and her pals didn't know he was practically penniless. Aside from the few grand he'd left the casino with, he had no resources other than a borrowed tuxedo and Ferrari. But he'd dug his own grave by spending half the night boasting about his wealthy parents and own successful high-tech corporation back in the States. Bullshit, all of it, but someone had believed him.

He shifted against the mattress, trying to feel his wallet or passport in his pocket. They'd taken them. The home address was fake. If they checked the registration on the Ferrari they'd come up with Jean-Pierre's address and phone number, but he and Amanda weren't due back from their cruise until the end of the week and the servants were all on vacation. Besides which, the thought of Amanda paying a ransom for him was humiliating.

He weighed that humiliation against the prospects of what his captors would do if they found out their prisoner was worthless. In a best-case scenario, they'd let him go. The worst case was that they killed him and chopped him into little bits before dumping his remains in the ocean or burying them in the woods. Not a very pleasant thought, that. A nightmarish image of his head and torso returning to life without arms or legs attached almost made his stomach twist again. Even if someone paid the ransom on him, he ran the same risks. He'd read newspaper reports of victims being killed even when the money was paid.

Richie sighed. He lifted his head, trying to see past the light just peeking under his blindfold. He could see a blood-red comforter on his chest and the corner of the four poster bed, but just barely. His shoulders had begun to ache and he yanked on the chains with a vengeance, sending sharp pains up his wrists to his elbows. He went back to trying to rub the blindfold free but the effort only netted him a clammy sweat and breathlessness.

The drugs lingering in his system dragged him down into a doze despite his best attempts to stay awake. He woke with a heavy pressure on his bladder. For several minutes he endured the increasing discomfort, listening to the silence that hung in the room and around it. Where were they? Somewhere where they weren't concerned his shouts would bring help or the police. A hotel seemed unlikely. Someone's home, perhaps. Someone who didn't mind having a kidnapped American in the bedroom.

"Hey!" he finally yelled. "Come here! Come out and show yourselves! What's a guy got to do around here to get room service?"

No one answered. He fought down the frightening idea that they'd chained him in place and then left. Maybe they'd come back in a few days, when hunger and thirst had him frantic and whimpering. Maybe they wouldn't come back at all, and he'd be chained for years as his body went through cycles of life and death, life and death. He tried to cheer himself up with the thought at least then he'd lose enough weight to slip free of the manacles, but it wasn't a comforting image.

Richie yelled louder. Several minutes later he heard the welcoming thump of footsteps. A door swung open. "What is wrong?" Marina demanded in French, sounding both angry and afraid.

Richie arched his head in the direction of her voice. "I need to go to the bathroom," he said in English. The pressure was quite bad, and it was a struggle to keep control over the burning need. "And I need to go now, unless you want me to ruin this mattress."

"You ruin it, you lay in it," a male voice warned in English, with no trace of amusement whatsoever. His accent wasn't as thick as Marina's. "You go to the bathroom when we say so, do you understand?"

Richie could feel a rush of heat to his cheeks but bit down on an obscene response. He could almost hear Duncan's voice in his head, telling him to keep his temper. The smell of Marina's perfume drifted closer, and her warm fingers closed around his right wrist. The manacle popped free a second later, and the cramped muscles in his arm relaxed fractionally. He heard her move around the bed but before she could free his left wrist a third voice issued somewhere nearby.

"Stop," the man growled. "Our guest has some questions to answer first."

He spoke English without a trace of accent, and carried such an authoritative air that Richie immediately pegged him as the ringleader.

"What questions?" Marina asked, sounding puzzled.

"Mr. Redstone here doesn't have a bank card, credit cards, or even a driver's license. The registration on the Ferrari we retrieved with his valet parking ticket has another man's name on it. I think this man is a fraud."

Richie tried to concentrate despite the desperate need to get to a bathroom. "I'm not a fraud," he said. "My wallet was stolen in Marseilles three days ago. My uncle Jean-Pierre loaned me his car before he went to Zurich on business."

The blanket lifted at the end of the bed, and something cold and sharp pressed against Richie's bare right instep. He gave an involuntary gasp as his toes clenched and leg jerked. "Tell us your parent's phone number."

"They're traveling too," Richie said. He tried not to squirm as a knife traced the curve of his foot and scratched lightly at his Achilles tendon. "They're on safari. They'll be back in two weeks."

"Two weeks?" squealed the man who'd come in after Marina. Richie had almost forgotten he was there.

The ringleader continued relentlessly, "You said you owned a computer company called Match Tech, but it's not listed in the New York Stock Exchange."

Richie's heart sank as he realized he was about to soil the mattress - partly from need, and partly from the chills racing up his leg as the knife toyed between his toes. "Of course it's not listed," he said. "Only companies with public stockholders are listed on the New York or American Stock Exchanges. Match Tech is privately owned."

"Then tell us how to reach your assistants, and I'm sure they'll be happy to pay a half million franks for your return."

A half million franks? Richie almost protested at being ransomed so cheaply, but he'd come to the end of his justifications. If he didn't fess up the name of someone who could help they might just kill him immediately.

He gave them Duncan's name and number in Seacouver.

"He's my private secretary," Richie added. Thank goodness he'd called Duncan from Jean-Pierre's chateau shortly after arrival. Duncan had fretted about him being in France but his arguments were too little, too late. "He'll know what to do."

"We'll see about that," the ringleader said, and the knife withdrew with the sound of footsteps.

A minute later Richie's left wrist was freed. He was pulled from the bed. Even as he stood in the darkness, his bare feet cold against the rug, something hard came up to press against his back. "I'll put a bullet in you without a second thought," the man warned. Not the ringleader. "You wouldn't be the first. Don't tempt me."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Richie muttered. He was prodded down the hall for about forty paces and then steered into a room of cold tile. Dripping water echoed in the bathroom as his knees bumped up against the urinal. He was given permission to unzip himself and see to his business, and did so with overwhelming relief. He thought about whirling on the man and disarming him with a martial arts block - even in blackness he thought he could aim close enough to cause damage - but the threat of a bullet in his spine dissuaded him. If he died or was wounded and healed before their eyes, he'd have more problems than just a simple kidnapping.

When he was done the kidnapper steered him back to the hated bed and chained him down again.

He wondered how Mac would take the phone call demanding Richie's ransom. He wondered how many lectures he was going to have to listen to if he got out of this alive.

He had no idea that Duncan was no longer in Seacouver.

Marina brought him food. Richie wasn't sure if it was breakfast, lunch or dinner, but the smell of fried chicken made his worries of starvation temporarily vanish. She helped him sit up against the headboard. The blindfold kept him in darkness, and her hand pressing food against his mouth was disconcerting, but he chewed hungrily on the wings she held for him and tried to ignore the spill of grease down his chin.

"Why are you doing this?" Richie asked around mouthfuls. "Just for the money?"

"Sssh." Her free hand squeezed his left thigh in warning. "Eduard will get mad."

"Eduard's your boyfriend? The guy you were with at the party?"

"Why won't you listen to me? He could hurt you, Richard. He could hurt us both."

"Let me go and we'll get out of here. I promise I won't let him hurt you."

Marina sighed. He remembered her standing on the balcony in Monte Carlo, the beautiful lines in her face illuminated by the lights of the city. In retrospect, her eyes had been wary, holding back on him even when she smiled.

"Richard, it's not that easy," she said. Her hand slid higher on his thigh.

Richie shifted slightly, aware of her hand, wondering what the gesture meant. "Of course it is. You don't have to do what he says. Marina, we'll get away from here. Trust me."

"I can't leave." Her voice wobbled fractionally. "He's my husband."

Richie stopped chewing. "Your husband?" "I had to marry him. He threatened to foreclose on my family's estate if I didn't." Her hand rubbed his thigh and he grew distinctly aware of his groin's response. "Here, drink this."

The wine felt cool and fruity to his parched throat, but he barely noticed. "Marina, please don't . . ."

"You don't like the wine?" she asked lightly.

Richie didn't answer.

"At the party, did you think I was pretty?"

"Yes," he said hoarsely.

"Eduard says I'm ugly. That he should have married the pig."

"Then Eduard is an idiot," Richie said. Her smell seemed very, very close. He didn't know where she was. Part of him was aroused by the prospects, while the other half warned that the time and circumstance were woefully wrong. Something touched very softly against his chin and he flinched slightly, but the softness was only a corner of the napkin.

"You spilled," she murmured.

"Marina - "

Her lips came down on his, gently at first, pressing with more firmness, her tongue nudging for entrance, her mouth demanding more, while at the same time one of her hands stroked between his legs and the other came up to cup his face.

Richie didn't fool himself. Under the right circumstances he might definitely enjoy a fantasy sexual scenario of kidnapper and victim. But the chains around his wrists were not props and he had no say in what she did to him. He supposed he could use her to his own advantage, seduce her into freeing him, but his instincts warned him that he had no power in this game, that Marina would do exactly what she intended to regardless of his needs or wants.

He wasn't so desperate for freedom just yet to settle for his own date rape.

"Marina, no," he said firmly, pulling his head away with such firmness that he smacked it into the headboard. The sharp crack helped him focus on something other than his own hardness. "Not like this."

"But why not?" she demanded breathlessly. "Eduard will not know. It can be just between us."

"What's between us," he said, "are these manacles." He rattled them at her from his imprisoned darkness. "Free me, let's leave, and we'll talk."

"You don't know what it's like," Marina said bitterly. "You don't know what he does to me - "

He heard her clink the plate and glass back onto some kind of tray. He tried to think of more arguments, more persuasion, but she slammed the door shut before any brilliant words came to mind. He sighed, torn between believing her and thinking she was playing him for a fool. His head hurt from the rap against the headboard, which didn't make his thinking any clearer. He pushed back against the headboard and rocked the bed with his weight, but neither bumped into the wall. That was a good sign. Sliding down on his back, he lifted his legs straight up and found the bed canopy. He lifted up on his shoulders, straining to dislodge it, but the heavy wood stayed in place. He sat back up again and used his hands to grope along the chains to where they looped around bedposts. He couldn't break the chains, but maybe he could break the bed.

Powering the move from his abdominals, he lifted his legs straight up together and then bent them back over his head until his feet rested against the headboard. The doubled-up position wasn't exactly comfortable, but he'd done worse under Connor's tutelage. With most of his body weight on his shoulders Richie rammed the headboard with his legs while pulling the posts with his wrists. Once, twice, three times. He paused, wondering if he was making enough noise to bring them running, but when no one responded he resumed his efforts. Burning muscles in his midsection and the threat of dislocating his shoulders made him stop twice to rest, but the bedpost holding his right wrist finally cracked away from the rest of the bed and he had to stifle a shout of triumph.

It took several more minutes to twist, stretch and manipulate his sore body so that the loop of chain slid down the broken post. He couldn't do anything about the actual manacle or two feet of chain, but having his right arm free seemed like a major miracle. He ripped at the blindfold and squinted at the light spilling from a heavy brass bedside table. A bedroom of heavy furniture and bad oil paintings surrounded him. He didn't stop to gather details. Breaking the other post from the sagging bedframe took only a few more minutes, and with chains and manacles still hanging from both wrists he slid to the door and edged it open.

A long hall stretched outside the room, decorated with threadbare carpeting and grim ancestor portraits. Richie knew that forty paces to the right was the bathroom, but all the other doors he could see were closed and unmarked. He edged the door closed and dragged a heavy chair across the bedroom rug to prop under the door knob. He pulled away huge velvet curtains heavy with decades of dust and opened the nearest window. Night time. A vast overgrown lawn, bathed unfortunately in the silver light of the full moon. It stretched a football field's length to a dark, dense forest. The drop to the ground was thirty feet.

No problem.

He did spare a few seconds to search for something to pick the manacle locks with, but found nothing. He saw no sign of his shoes, either, and had to go out the window in his bare feet. His right ankle snapped with the drop, washing him with a flood of white-hot agony, and he forced himself to wait a few impatient minutes while it healed itself. He spent the time casing the chateau above him - he wondered briefly if it belonged to Marina's family - and noted only one window with a light visible, down on the ground floor.

A shout from above made him look up. An ugly man's startled face looked down at him from the room next to the one that had been his prison. Richie swore under his breath and climbed to his feet despite the lingering soreness in his right ankle. He ran around the house, keeping close to the shadows and stone. His chances of escape would be much, much better if he could find a vehicle to hotwire. He passed the chateau's entrance and spotted what he hoped was the garage, but the slam of a bullet through the air made him take an immediate detour.

"Stop him, Paulo!" he heard the ringleader's voice shout.

A slope on the other side of the garage led down towards a black lake and more trees. Richie ran as fast as he could, trying to blot out the roar of a motorbike gunning to life behind him. He could hear the bike gaining on him but didn't dare look back to gauge its proximity. A bola struck him in the back of his neck, wrapping around his throat with a choking tightness, and he stumbled to the grass. He clawed his throat, gagging and choking, only dimly away of a man rolling him to his stomach and forcing his wrists behind his back. Only when they were pinned tightly together by a coarse leather belt was the bola unwound. Richie heaved in air, struggling against impending unconsciousness, and was rewarded for his escape attempt with a savage kick to the stomach that doubled him in agony. He glimpsed faces above - the brooding man from the party, who he guessed was Eduard, and the squat, ugly-faced motorbike rider who was probably Paulo. Eduard was his own age, Paulo quite a few years older. Both looked out of breath from the chase, and furious with him.

"Stupid American," Paulo cursed, and kicked him in the small of the back. A harpoon of red blasted up Richie's spine into the base of his skull and he cried out with the taste of blood in his mouth.

Eduard scowled, "Enough of that! Take him back to the house."

Paulo dragged Richie to his feet and wrapped the bola around his neck. He used it as a leash to pull Richie back up the slope, into the chateau's entrance hall, and into a study of shabby furniture and moldy books. Richie refused to go passively and earned himself ringing blows to the head as additional incentive. Marina stood in a corner of the study, her hair hanging in loose waves around her dark sweater, her face tight and expressionless. Paulo kicked Richie's legs out from under him and made him kneel with his knees wide on the green carpet.

"Where did you think you'd go?" Paulo demanded, smacking the back of Richie's head so hard his vision blurred. "There's no help around here for you."

Richie concentrated on the massive oak desk in front of him and tried to ignore his numbing arms, throbbing midsection, aching back. The tight cord around his neck made each breath hurt. Humiliation at kneeling at his captor's feet and dismay at not escaping warred for dominance in his chest. Duncan would have escaped. Connor would be in the next town by now. He abandoned regret and went with resolve instead. He'd killed Mako, he'd killed Kristov, he could handle these Euro-trash kidnappers.

"Blindfold him," Marina said.

"What's the point?" Eduard asked, his legs moving into Richie's field of vision. "He can already identify us." The casually held gun in Eduard's grip came up to rest with its muzzle against Richie's forehead. "Isn't that right?"

Richie gritted his teeth. "I won't tell the police."

"Maybe. Maybe not. You've already lied to us several times. The man who answered the phone number you gave us said Duncan MacLeod left the country unexpectedly. He'd never heard of Match Tech or Richard Redstone."

Richie couldn't help but jerk his gaze upward to Eduard's scowl. Duncan hadn't been planning to leave the States. Something must have happened. He could be anywhere. The fill-in dojo manager, an old retired boxer named Henry, must have answered the phone.

"Well?" Eduard asked. "Care to tell us any more lies?"

Richie didn't answer fast enough. Paulo kicked him in the back, sending him slamming to the floor. Follow-up kicks by the heavy leather boots landed on the back of his legs, his knees, his shoulders, his bound arms. Richie tried to curl into a tiny ball, desperate to protect his groin and stomach, but a savage aim to his side brought the crack of two or three ribs.

His cries and grunts filled the study as Paulo continued. He didn't care if they knew he was hurting, he just wanted him to stop. Only when Richie's mouth was full of blood and his vision fading did Eduard put a restraining hand on the other man's arm. Eduard leaned down and yanked Richie's head from the floor with a leer. "Who do we call next? And if there isn't an answer, I swear you'll be dead in sixty seconds."

Richie squeezed his eyes shut against the burning of unshed tears and coughed out Duncan's number on the barge. It was the only one he could think of. Eduard dialed the number on a cellular phone, listened to it ring, and then asked, "Duncan MacLeod? I have someone who wants to talk to you."

Eduard shoved the phone to Richie's face. He didn't want to say anything, but Paulo twisted his arm as a warning. "Mac?" he asked, hating how frightened and shaky it came out. "It's Richie."

Duncan sounded groggy. "Richie? Are you all right? It's almost three in the morning - "

"Mac, listen," he interrupted. "You have to listen. They want money."

"Who wants money?" Duncan asked Richie could hear the rustle of sheets as the Highlander sat up. "What's going on?"

Eduard pulled back the phone and began issuing instructions for a wire transfer to a Swiss bank account in the amount of one half million francs, giving Duncan twenty four hours to complete the transaction. Richie couldn't hear Duncan's exact response, just indistinct angry words floating out of the cellular phone. He lay curled on the carpet, fighting the red haze threatening to swamp all of his senses. Eduard folded the phone with a pleased expression.

"The money is on its way."

Paulo's boot nudged Richie's buttocks. He tensed, afraid of more kicks, but none came.

"What do we do with him?"

Eduard glanced down at Richie's helpless form as if he was a bothersome family pet. "Take him downstairs. And this time, make sure he doesn't escape."

Paulo handcuffed him sitting on the damp cellar floor against a heavy wine rack with his hands above his head. A double loop of chain around his waist secured him from twisting around. As an added humiliation Paulo gagged him with a thick strip of grimy blue cotton wound several times around his head.

"No one would hear you anyway," the older man said, pinching Richie's cheek painfully, "but it's a nice touch, don't you think?"

Richie swore at the man, but all that came out was muffled gibberish. With blazing hatred he watched Paulo leave. He tried to rub the gag free against his arm, but the cloth had been tied too tightly. It forced his jaw open painfully wide and tasted faintly of oil and grit, making him want to retch. The pull along his wrists, arms, shoulders and ribs earned him a constant ache and forced him to take short, shallow breaths. The cellar was cold enough for him to see his exhalations frost in the dim light of a naked bulb, and he'd never felt more lonely or abandoned.

Exhaustion dragged at him from all sides. The weariness, hunger and dehydration - two chicken wings and three sips of wine had done little to help - adversely affected his healing. It took several minutes before his ribs tickled with the first flashes of repair. He shifted uneasily against the rack, the gag muffling his groans, hoping his supernatural ability would just hurry the hell up.

He'd closed his eyes and was nodding off when gentle hands framed his face. Richie jerked awake under Marina's touch. "It's okay," she soothed as she untied the gag. "It's just me. Eduard would be furious if he knew I was here, but I had to see how badly Paulo hurt you."

"I'm fine," he growled. "Leave me alone."

"But Paulo kicked you so hard - " Marina tried to unbutton and open his shirt to view the damage.

"Don't touch me," he snapped, squirming beneath her efforts, bringing his knees up in an attempt to block her. He didn't want her to see that his bruises had healed. He adopted a stern tone. "Marina, if you're not going to help me escape then go away. Leave."

Her mouth turned down into a frown. "I want to help, but I can't. He'll kill me."

"So instead you'll let them kill me."

"He'll let you go unharmed," Marina said. "He always lets them go unharmed. I swear."

The cellar temperature seemed to drop several degrees. "Let *who* go, Marina?" Richie demanded.

"The others." She lowered her head. "You're not the first. Eduard owes a great deal of money to his family's corporation, and his father does not know. He pays it back, steals it to gamble again, loses, and has to find more money. But no one ever gets hurt."

Richie wanted to snap his handcuffs, grab her by the shoulders, and shake sense into her until her teeth rattled. "Marina, I can identify all of you. I've seen where we are. I'm already dead."

She swiped angrily at her eyes. "Don't say that."

"Dead," Richie repeated bitterly. "I'm a corpse."

He wondered if he was overplaying his hand just a tiny bit, verging on the melodramatic, but he didn't know how else to persuade her. Marina bit her lower lip, indecision clouding her expression.

"Help me," she whispered brokenly. "Help me be strong."

Her lips met his again. Unlike the earlier kiss this one was gentle, sweet, a question and not a demand. Richie relaxed into it more than he intended to, desperate for just a trace of comfort, a hint of reassurance. The battering, cruelty and deprivation had made him more needy than he realized, and with a mental reprimand he pulled back from her.

"Marina, please," he pleaded hoarsely. He couldn't bear to look at her. He felt stripped before her, naked, helpless, vulnerable to her gaze. "Call my friend Duncan. Tell him where we are. He'll come."

Marina kissed him again - harder, more insistent, one of her hands stroking between his legs, the other coming up to press against his chest. The tiny invader of her tongue plunged into his mouth. Confusion swept over him - would she help him, was this the price he had to pay?

Before he could form a coherent thought he heard Eduard say, "Well, well, well. At it again, eh, Marina?"

She pulled back with a high flush in her cheeks and turned her head to him defiantly. "Don't you have better things to do?"

Eduard came down the rest of the cellar stairs. "Something more interesting than watch the cat play with her mouse? I doubt it."

An invisible hand grabbed hold of Richie's intestines and twisted them viciously. He forced himself to look at Marina as Eduard continued in a mocking tone, "How does it go, Marina? I made you do it. I threatened your family, or foreclosed on the ancestral home? You're afraid. You want to help but I'll kill you. You get him to beg, maybe he promises to protect you . . . really, darling, doesn't it get boring?"

Marina smiled coldly. "Not if I do it right. A woman has to have some diversions, after all."

Richie fought down the urge to be sick.

She cupped his face again, and with one finger traced the outline of his lips. "You're sweet, you know that? You would have made some woman happy one day. Not me, of course, but some other woman."

He jerked his head from her grasp. He tried to tell her to go fuck herself, but the words couldn't work past the lump in his throat.

Marina gave his groin one last affectionate squeeze. "Later, my dear," she said, and went with Eduard up the stairs.

At the top they switched off the light, leaving him alone and restrained in the cold darkness.

***

Richie finally dozed off in a limbo of half-thoughts and lingering fear. He woke with a horrible kink in his neck. His pinned arms and fingers cramped into useless pieces of wood, dead to his control. The rest of his body ached constantly, ceaselessly, without relief. Bored, starving, going crazy with thirst, he tried to distract himself with pleasant images. None came. Instead the worst moments of his Immortal life replayed over and over in his head, a chorus of tragedies and heartaches.

Tessa, broken and dead in Duncan's arms, never to open her eyes or smile at them again. Duncan turning his back on him after Mako's death. Mikey laying his head down on a railroad track - "Mikey go see King of Trains!" he'd cried, killing himself before Richie could do the dirty deed. The terrible betrayal and humiliation of Kristin stabbing him in the back, just as Duncan said she would. He'd screwed up time and time again, and this latest fiasco was just another in a string of stupid decisions. If he hadn't gone to Monte Carlo pretending to be a millionaire he would never have been kidnapped, never imprisoned in this dank and horrible cellar. His suffering was just the price of pride.

He wondered idly if he was being too hard on himself - surely Duncan or Connor had gotten in over their heads more than once, for just as inane reasons - but most of his objectivity had steadily worn away under frazzled nerves and burning shame.

He closed his eyes, trying to sleep, trying to do anything that would pull his attention from his body's protests and pains. In his dream he was still sitting against the wine rack, but the handcuffs had disappeared. He sat with knees drawn to his chest, arms wrapped around his knees, shivering, frightened, dwarfed by the impossible thick darkness and silence. Someone came to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He lifted his head and saw Tessa kneeling beside him. Softly luminescent, dressed in a flowing white dress, her eyes full of compassion and her skin as bright and fresh as a child's, she cupped his cheek and spoke his name.

"Tessa," he choked out. "I'm scared."

She said she knew he was. But she would protect him.

"How?" he demanded. "You're dead."

She didn't answer that, but instead reached forward and enfolded him in her arms. Richie let himself relax in her arms. Light flushed through him, washing away all the sharp discomforts. He could feel his own heartbeat against her soft and warm chest, but she had no heartbeat of her own. She stroked his hair and murmured French endearments. He let himself cry, be comforted, be calmed. She pulled away from him and became slivers of light behind the rotting boards of a window set high in the basement's wall. Richie jerked against the handcuffs holding him. For several minutes he struggled to reconcile reality from the dream. Tessa hadn't really been there. Yet she'd seemed so real and lifelike he swore he could still smell her Nina Ricci perfume. Richie sagged against the wine rack, weakened by a swell of bitterness. She was gone. She would always be gone. He'd screwed up then, too. If he'd moved more quickly, taken a sidestep to the right, done *anything,* then she might still be alive.

For hours Richie watched the shadows cast on the floor inch across the cement. The hunger that had howled in his gut had been replaced instead by a vast hollowness. His parched throat ached with dryness, though, and he could feel his insides shriveling up from dehydration. His sense of time had gone completely hazy but he figured it was no later than noon when the cellar door banged open. Paulo appeared, dressed in jeans, a gray turtleneck, and a black leather jacket. He carried the keys to Richie's handcuffs and the .38 automatic. He stopped a few feet away and regarded his prisoner with a sadistic triumph.

"Your friend came through with the money," he said.

Richie gave him a dirty look. "Congratulations."

"I'll think of you while I'm spending it," Paulo sneered. He undid the chain around Richie's waist and then the handcuffs. Richie's arms felt frozen in place. Lowering them made all the muscles in his shoulder creak in protest, as if about to snap into pieces. Richie couldn't hide the pain or his relief. Paulo dragged him to his feet and pushed him towards the stairs with the threat that if he tried anything he'd have to deal with a bullet in his brain.

"Where are we going?" Richie demanded.

"You'll see soon enough, rich boy."

Dizziness swept over him halfway up the stairs as blood rushed back into his arms and unsteady legs. Paulo caught him and pushed him through the entrance out to the front of the chateau. Richie had to squint against the painfully bright daylight. Marina stood leaning against a white Capri with a colorful scarf on her head and a smile on her face. Eduard threw the last of a set of bags into the boot of the car and slammed it shut.

"Richard!" Marina said, as if they were all going out on a picnic. "I'm sorry it has to end this way, but it was good while it lasted, wasn't it?"

Richie took a step forward on wobbly knees. "You lying bitch - " he started to say. He sagged downward as if fainting, then threw his weight backward and into Paulo.

Eduard started toward them just as the .38 went off with a blast of noise. Caught in the stomach, Eduard flew backwards against the Capri and slid down to rest against a rear tire. Richie grappled on the ground with Paulo, his martial arts skills hampered by weakness and exhaustion. His arms and fingers were too slow and too clumsy to respond properly to his commands.

"Stop him!" Marina yelled.

Paulo threw his elbow into Richie's side and tried to wrestle the gun away. Richie gouged at his eyes and wrenched it back into his own grasp. It discharged again, and for a long moment they stared at each other, trying to decide which of them had been injured as a hot stickiness seeped between their chests.

"Son of a bitch," Paulo muttered.

Richie choked on a wad of blood in his throat and died in his kidnapper's arms.

***

Dirt.

In his mouth, his nose, his eyes, pressing down on him, cold and frozen, clogging his lungs, filling his ears.

Darkness.

Was all light an illusion? Maybe he'd never left the cellar where they kept him chained and in pain. Maybe he'd never left his foster mother's closet, with suffocating winter coats hanging in his face and the scurry of spiders across his feet and legs. Maybe he'd never left some mortal mother's cold womb, never been abandoned to the world, and he could write off this life as one long nightmare.

He was buried alive.

The thoughts preceded the first involuntary gasps of returning life. With the gasps Richie sucked in lungfuls of dirt that tore into his chest like thick bits of jagged glass. His wheezing, strangled cries sounded muffled in the grave. Panicked, thoughtless, driven by instinct, he groped for any kind of escape. His wild hands grasped only more cold dirt. Consciousness slipped away from him and he felt his body grow heavy and lax, dead again.

The kick start of his heart again made his lungs suck in more dirt. He tried to breathe but couldn't. He only had a few seconds of consciousness with which to work. Richie fought the frantic needs of his own body and tried to gouge, claw, kick, heave his way free. His right foot broke backwards through to open air and he realized just before dying again that he'd been buried face-down in a shallow grave and had only been digging himself deeper.

Death. Blessed release.

The third time life returned to him he flailed backwards, and both legs kicked free. He still couldn't breathe, couldn't choke out the solid barrier in his throat and chest, couldn't cough or gasp or make any noise. In silent terror he ripped himself out of the earth and rolled to lay on the ground beneath a light drizzle and a canopy of trees in spring bloom.

Death became him.

The fourth time he returned to life - or maybe the fifth, or the sixth, or the seventh - his Immortal body had finally absorbed enough dirt to make room in his lungs for air. He dragged in precious trickles of oxygen, enough to keep unconsciousness at bay. He expelled the rest of the dirt on his own, coughing so hard his chest muscles tore from the strain and repaired themselves. Richie curled limply on his side when it was done, exhausted, numbed to any emotions of relief or release. His eyes focused on the empty shallow grave and he saw what looked like a twig emerging from the dirt. For a few long minutes all he could do was stare at it. The acknowledgment of it as a finger worked its way slowly through his brain, but nothing could shock him anymore. Nothing could hurt him.

He did a little digging to be sure and uncovered enough to see that it was in fact Eduard's corpse beneath him. Richie methodically smoothed dirt back over the dead man and pulled himself upright. The rain had worked through his clothes to his icy skin, but he barely felt the discomfort. He stumbled through the woods for awhile, with no plan or destination in mind, and purely by chance found the road snaking through the ancient forest. He followed it in his bare feet for fifteen minutes before he heard a car approach from behind him. The car stopped. He kept walking. Voices called, "Monsieur!" but since they couldn't possibly mean him, he kept walking. The daylight had faded towards dusk, making it hard to see.

"Monsieur?" a man appeared in Richie's peripheral vision. A French police officer. "Sir, are you all right?"

Richie stopped. Was he being arrested? As a child he'd been told to go to the police for help but as a teen he'd built up a rather hostile attitude, both at home and abroad, when it came to law enforcement officials. He blinked the rain out of his eyes and squinted at the French officer. He imagined he looked frightful, with a dirty tuxedo shirt, ripped pants, bare feet and wet hair.

He dragged up enough French to ask, "Is there a problem, officer?"

"Sir, please, come with us," the policeman said cordially, extending an arm towards his squad car. A second policeman stood at the driver's door, on the radio with someone. The opportunity to sit down on something soft would be wonderful, but Richie frowned at his clothing and condition.

"I'll get your car wet," he said.

"That's fine. We'll dry it later. You should come with us. This is no weather to be walking in."

Richie guessed it would be okay to go with them. He let the police officer lead him to the back seat. Inside the car it was warm and dry. One of the officers fetched him a blanket from the boot and the other asked him his name and address. He gave them the Redstone name and Duncan's address in Paris. They asked him what he was doing out by himself without his shoes or coat on such a remote road.

"Got robbed," he said, pressing his head against the glass window and letting his eyes drift shut. "She took my car and stuff."

They didn't push him for more information, for which Richie was immensely glad. At the police station they put him in a lounge behind the front desk. He sat on a worn green sofa with the blanket he'd dragged out of the squad car. The rain had done a good job of washing out the blood on his shirt, and the thick dirt of the grave had done the rest, but they still asked him if he needed to see a doctor.

"No," Richie said. "I'm fine."

By listening to the clerk Richie discovered he was in Eze, a village ten miles outside of Monte Carlo along the road back to Nice. A sympathetic inspector named Camoin brought him a cup of tea - Richie was rapidly learning that crime victims were treated far more nicely than accused criminals - and asked him again what had happened. Richie fabricated a more detailed story of the girl he'd met in Monte Carlo who had dumped him by the side of the road and taken his Ferrari. He gave Camoin telephone numbers for Duncan and the inspector returned with the news Mssr. MacLeod had been contacted on his cellular phone.

"He was in Marseilles, but he's on his way," Camoin promised. "It will take a few hours."

The clock on the wall read just past five o'clock. "Okay," he said. "Can I wait here?"

"Of course. Are you sure you do not wish to see the doctor?"

"I'm sure," Richie said.

"Something to eat?"

"No." In truth his hunger pains had returned with a vengeance, but he had no money and he wasn't about to beg for any off them.

Camoin looked doubtful but left him alone in the lounge. Richie stretched out on the sofa and tried to sleep, but his mind refused to stop hammering him with thoughts of Marina and Paulo. They were out there somewhere, laughing at him, spending the ransom money Duncan had provided. Richie huddled deeper into the blanket, shifting against the rusty spring scratching his back. He didn't know how he was ever going to pay back one hundred thousand dollars to Mac, or where he should even start.

And the Ferrari - what would Jean-Pierre and Amanda say when they returned from their cruise and found that he'd lost the Ferrari? They would be furious with him. He supposed he deserved that too.

He didn't remember falling asleep, but when the tingle of an approaching Immortal came to him he found he didn't even have the strength to open his eyes. He heard Duncan and Camoin talking about him from a long distance away.

"Tell me, Inspector, how did your men happen to find him?"

"We received an anonymous phone call from a gentleman who claimed to have seen Mssr. Redstone walking on the road and thought he might need help."

Richie puzzled over that for a second before realizing that the only person who could have known where he was, aside from Paulo or Marina, was his Watcher. His lousy stinking Watcher, who must have known he was kidnapped and done nothing about it. Not that Watchers were supposed to interfere. But surely there were extenuating circumstances this time? As rapidly as it had come, Richie's anger faded. His Watcher didn't owe him anything but the duty to write down his kills and close his case when someone took his Quickening. He or she couldn't interfere, but had sent the police. If it wasn't for that assistance he might still be out wandering in the darkness somewhere.

A hand came to rest on Richie's shoulder. He stiffened and forced his eyes open. Duncan sat on the edge of the sofa beside him, his face creased with concern. "How do you feel, tough guy?" he asked.

"Okay," he said, and pulled himself up and away from Duncan's hand. He busied himself with folding the blanket so neither man could see his eyes. "Let's get out of here."

Duncan gave him a hand up. Richie tried not to flinch but failed. Duncan shot him a look, started to say something, changed his mind and shut his mouth. Camoin asked him to call if he saw the girl who'd stolen his car, and gave him a victim's rights pamphlet.

"Good luck, Mr. Redstone," he said.

In the car, Richie said nothing. He knew he owed Duncan dozens of apologies and explanations but his whole brain felt wrapped in thick plastic, insulated from real thoughts. Duncan drove them down the dark road to a well-lit cafe and store, left Richie in the Citroen with the heater and radio on, and disappeared inside. He reappeared five minutes later with two cups of hot coffee and a bag of sandwiches.

"Eat." Duncan unwrapped one from its cellophane paper and handed it over. "You look starved."

He sounded angry. Richie meekly nibbled at the tuna fish even though it tasted like sawdust. Duncan made no move to start driving again, and instead ate his own sandwich in the dim reflected light of the dashboard. Richie tried to drink his coffee but the cup shook so badly in his hand that Duncan had to reach over and steady it before it spilled all over the interior.

"Careful."

Richie couldn't even see clearly. He swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. "I know you're mad. I'm sorry. You can leave me here if you want."

Duncan turned to him in disbelief. "Leave you here? Richie, you're not thinking straight. I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at whoever did this to you."

"All that money . . . " Richie protested.

"The money?" Duncan asked incredulously. "You're worried about the money? I didn't know if I'd ever see you again, and you're worried about the money?"

"Now you sound even madder," he offered weakly.

Duncan's face tightened. "Richie, I've been up since three a.m. worrying about you. I've had about three hours sleep in the last forty hours. I drove all the way from Paris to Marseilles to find Amanda, and then I came here. I'm not mad, I'm tired. And relieved. And happy to see your head still on your shoulders."

"Oh." Richie said. He sank lower in his seat.

"Eat," Duncan ordered.

The tuna went down easier after that. Duncan made him climb into the back seat to sleep. The Highlander drove them north toward Paris for three hours, then stopped at a motel. Richie barely remembered being woken and half-carried, half-dragged into the rented room. He slept for seventeen hours, or so Duncan told him when he woke up.

Richie stretched under the motel's scratchy sheets and heavy blankets. He felt toasty warm and incredibly comfortable. "Seventeen hours?" he asked with a yawn. "You sure?"

"Positive." Duncan had been doing push-ups and sit-ups on the rug at the foot of his bed. "You look much better."

"Mmm. Feel it, too."

"Good." Duncan went to the bathroom, ran the sink, and came out blotting his face with a thin white towel. "Hungry? This motel has a restaurant."

The thought of eating in a roomful of strangers, all of whom could probably see his humiliation, made Richie want to pull the covers over his head. "Do they deliver?" he asked weakly.

"I can go get it and bring it back." Duncan sat on the edge of the bed and gave him an appraising look. "Are you up to telling me what happened?"

Richie shifted his gaze from Duncan to the dark television. Beyond the slit of the window curtains, afternoon traffic hurtled by on the highway with a muffled roar.

"Rich?"

"I want to take a shower," he said, and fled into the bathroom before Duncan could argue him out of it. He spent thirty minutes scrubbing every inch of himself under the hot water, rehearsing what to say. He dried himself and dressed in an extra shirt, jeans and oversized shoes from Duncan's bag. Duncan had already gone to the restaurant and returned with several hamburgers, three cartons of French fries, two tall litre bottles of milk and half a chocolate cake by the time Richie emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam.

Playing with his food - twisting the French fries, ripping apart the hamburger buns, stacking all the mustard packages - made telling the story a little easier. He didn't meet Duncan's gaze for most of it. Richie kept to a basic outline of events, from being drugged in Monte Carlo to his ruined escape attempt to the shoot-out that had killed Eduard. He minimized the trauma of digging himself out of his own grave. He left out any mention of Marina kissing him, of her laughing at him. Halfway through the meal he realized he'd lost his appetite, but he kept eating anyway.

"So that's it," Richie finally concluded. He leaned back against the pillows on his bed, uncomfortably stuffed. "Now you know everything."

"Not everything," Duncan said.

"What do you mean?"

"Tell me you're not blaming yourself." Richie looked away. "Blaming myself for what?"

"For whatever. For being kidnapped. For the money you think I sacrificed. For Eduard being killed."

"I don't care that Eduard was killed," Richie said darkly.

"And the rest?"

He didn't answer.

"I know you," Duncan reminded him. "Rich, whatever you're feeling, part of it is trauma and exhaustion talking. You've just been through a terrible ordeal. If you were mortal, you'd be dead. Give yourself time to think about it before you decide what to do about it."

Richie snapped upright in the bed. "Thinking about it is the last thing I want to do, Mac. As for what I'm going to do about it - what do you think? What would you do? Paulo and Marina are still out there somewhere. Who knows who else they've kidnapped, who else they've killed. If I don't stop them, who will?"

"And how are you going to stop them? You don't know where they are. You don't know what their real names are. They could be anywhere in the world by now."

Richie shook his head. "I'm going to get your money back. And Jean-Pierre's Ferrari. And teach them it's not nice to kidnap people."

Duncan stood angrily and threw their empty food wrappers into the garbage. "I don't care about the money! The Ferrari is just a car. But killing them won't solve anything."

Richie gazed at him innocently. "Mac, I didn't say I was going to *kill* them. Give me some credit. I know the difference between killing Immortals and killing mortals."

Duncan looked unconvinced. Richie tried a different tack. "Like you said, if I were mortal, I'd be dead now. In a shallow, unmarked grave in the middle of nowhere. They did it once, they'll do it again. I'm just going to make sure they don't." He took a deep breath. "The question is, are you going to help?"

"Are you going to stop blaming yourself for being kidnapped? It doesn't matter that you were pretending to be something you aren't, Rich. Everyone does that occasionally. It wasn't an open invitation to be drugged and terrorized and killed."

Richie didn't answer. He didn't know how to answer, not when Mac put it that way.

Duncan sat down on the edge of the bed and squeezed Richie's leg. The gesture reminded Richie uncomfortably of Marina, but the forced down his discomfort to listen to the Highlander's words.

"I'm glad you're not dead, Rich. And listen to me - the money is nothing. I never want to hear a word about repaying it or owing it to me. I would give away ten times that much, a hundred times that much, if it meant your life or death."

Richie managed a very small smile. "Well, if you're just *giving* it away, throw some this way."

Duncan's expression remained serious. "Are you going to forgive yourself?"

"I'll think about it." Richie cocked his head. "Are you going to help me?"

Duncan's shoulders sagged in defeat. "I'll think about it. And while I'm thinking about it, where would you suggest we start?"

"With a license plate number," Richie said.

Sickness shook him from head to toe. Groggily he tried to roll onto his side to ease the aching in his gut but his hands and arms could move only a few inches without being stopped by the rattle and grip of chains. A blindfold around his head cut off the world of sight, and panic seized his guts. He lay outstretched on a hard wooden floor, helpless and open to cool air. A nightmare, that's what this was, some kind of nightmare . . .

"You're awake, I know it. Come on, Paulo, you can't sleep all day."

He found his voice. "Who's there? What is this? Some kind of trick?"

"Kind of. You might say, trick or treat."

Something cold and sharp slid along his face. Paulo flinched as the blindfold was cut free. He opened his eyes to a decrepit barn and the sight of birds roosting in the rafters. He lifted his head to see who his kidnapper was, and bit down on a strangled cry.

The American. Redstone. The one they'd buried over a month ago.

"Hi, Paulo," Richie said, grinning. "Remember me? Thought I'd come back from the grave and pay you a visit. Sorry it took me so long to find you - did you miss me and all the good times we shared together?"

"You're . . . dead," Paulo whispered.

Richie scowled. "That sounds so final, Paulo. I can't be dead if I'm here, right? I mean, that would be really creepy."

The toe of Richie's steel-tipped boots dug into Paulo's side. He tried to pull away but the chains held him fast. He remembered kicking Redstone repeatedly in the study and his own ribs took on a tingle of warning.

"Too bad about Ed, huh?" Richie said conversationally, dragging his foot lightly up and down Paulo's exposed side. "Nice of you two to throw him in the grave with me. Kind of like a two-for-one special. The police are digging up his body even as we speak, did you know that? Wonder who the killer is."

Paulo fixed his gaze on the ceiling. "What do you want?"

"Want? Me? Well, there's that money thing. Half a million francs? You're going to get it back for me. And Marina - remember her? Blonde woman with her tongue down everyone's throat? You're going to tell me how to find her, too. And the gun you used to shoot me and old Eddie with. That's number three. Plus there's the matter of a missing Ferrari."

"Go to hell."

"Oh, Paulo." Richie kicked him in the side, not a terribly hard kick, but one certainly guaranteed to get his attention. "You're going to have to do better than that."

He crouched down and began retying the blindfold, tighter this time. The blackness of the thick cloth enveloped Paulo, making him feel a hundred times more vulnerable. "Marina has the gun!" he said. "You'll have to find her. I don't know where she is."

"You know what? I think you're lying. See you, Paulo."

Fear rose up in the Frenchman's gut. "Where are you going?"

"I'll be around when you want to talk," Richie answered. "If you're good maybe I'll bring you some lunch. Maybe not. I'll see if I'm in the mood. If I were you, I'd think real hard about Marina, the money, the gun and the Ferrari. You're not going to make any noise, are you? I'd better just make sure. And it's such a nice touch."

He tied a gag around Paulo's mouth and then left him, spread-eagle on the barn floor. The bright summer sun warmed Richie as he crossed the yard up to the old white farmhouse. The place had been abandoned years ago, probably caught up in foreclosure or probate. He had spent quite a number of days watching it to make sure it would be safe. Pushing in the peeling kitchen door, he made his way past the empty cupboards in the kitchens and up the sagging stairs to the second floor.

Marina started squirming before he reached the bedroom door. She hadn't made any progress freeing herself from the manacles that held her to the old brass bed he and Mac had lugged in and assembled. Her blindfolded and gagged face turned to him as she whimpered a protest. Her lithesome body, clad in a sweater and slacks with no shoes, twisted in beseechment.

"Hi, honey, I'm home," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. He undid the gag. "Miss me?"

"Did you get him?" she demanded, licking her lips. "Did you get Paulo? I told you where he was. He has the gun."

"Marina, Marina," he chided. "I think you're lying to me."

"Please, Richard, or whoever you really are. I'm begging you to let me go. I can't feel my arms anymore. I'm afraid I'll lose my fingers, my hands . . . "

He gazed at her for a long moment. Seeing her bound as he had been bound gave him no joy. He remembered all too well the ache in his body, the protest of pulled muscles and stretched limbs. Silently he undid one manacle. She sighed and let her hand fall to his leg.

"Thank you," she whispered. Her hand began rubbing at him. "Let me do something for you . . . "

Richie stood abruptly, flooded with painful memories, his boots scraping against the hardwood floor. Marina laughed. "Afraid of me?" she mocked. "Are you still a little mouse? I don't know how you survived that bullet, Richard, but you're never going to get me to tell you where the gun is."

"We'll see about that," Richie said. Ruthlessly he reshackled her wrist to the bed despite her struggles. "See you later, sweetheart."

"Richard!" she yelled angrily. "Don't you leave me! Don't you dare leave!"

He gagged her before he left. Her muffled screams of outrage followed him down the stairs, out the front door, and down to where Duncan sat on the hood of the Citroen twisting a piece of straw between his fingers.

"It's a dangerous game you're playing," the Highlander said mildly, without looking up.

"I know," Richie said, digging his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. "But they'll only be a little worse for the wear by the time I'm done with them."

Duncan lifted his gaze. "I'm not talking about them, Rich. I'm talking about you. You barely eat, you hardly sleep - it's not good."

"I know." Richie squinted at the dirt road that led away from the old abandoned farm toward the highway. The sky hung close to the ground this far in the countryside, and the trees had begun their full summer bloom. Insects buzzed lazily in the grass near his boots. "All I want is the gun. Then they can go to jail for Eduard's murder."

Duncan looked down at the piece of straw in his hand and discarded it without comment. Richie turned back to the farmhouse and barn. Was he really seeking justice? Or just revenge? Duncan hadn't been the world's most stellar teacher when it came to telling the difference between the two. Richie had once spared Tessa's killer from a five-story drop off a fire escape, and Duncan told him he'd been merciful. But that was before the Dark Quickening and before Richie's own headhunting days, a time when he'd been naive and innocent and young. It had been a long time since Richie had felt young. And mercy seemed to be a lesson he'd have to learn again.

"Let's go," he said suddenly.

"Go where?" Duncan asked in surprise.

"Anywhere but here."

"Are we coming back?"

Richie slid into the passenger seat. "Mac, would you be helping me if you didn't trust me?"

"No." Duncan climbed behind the steering wheel. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't trust you."

"Then let's go," Richie said, drumming his fingers on the armrest.

As they drove away Richie frowned, imagining he could still hear Marina and Paulo yelling for help through their gags. He decided the cries were a trick of the breeze moving through the trees, or a loose valve in the Citroen's engines as Duncan swerved down the dusty road.

He closed his eyes just the same, turning from the sunny day to his own inner darkness.

THE END