When I ask about Ramsey Canyon, the resort's concierge tilts his head and asks if we have survival gear. He has maps and advice. Stay to the paved roads, he says, when I ask about the ruins of mining towns that are on his map.

He thinks we'd be better off going to the preserve with no side trips. There are 14 kinds of hummingbirds that visit this time of year, he says. Just stay on the marked trails there because it's safe there. And don't pick up anything because it's a preserve. And don't wander around off the preserve because the mountains and canyons are too remote and too dangerous if you don't know what you're doing.

We stop off at a hunting store the concierge tells Jeannette about. She shops for tools; I shop for stuff we can have with us in case we have to hike. She leaves with binoculars, pocketknives for us each, compass and a rolled up bit of camouflage netting. I ask her what she thinks we're going to do down there. She says, well, now we'll be ready in case we end up doing some tracking and surveillance.

I have gotten our water bottles, trail food and packs for us to carry the gear.

Jeannette looks at the beef jerky and laughs. We're not gonna need this crap, she scoffs. We're not gonna need any of it, I say, because we're just going to look at hummingbirds.

The boy who helped me gather supplies said that if we do go hiking in the desert to just be sure and turn around and leave before our water supply runs out. I chuckled but he was deadly serious. Okay, I said. When I told Jeannette later, she said people give me advice designed for a fool because I make it obvious how much I am scared of the desert. Not scared, I tell her, just don't get the attraction.

We get off the interstate at Benson and take the state highway south. We have to go through Sierra Vista and it's almost cruel that this is the town we have been circling all this time, sure it holds the key to finding Ben and his gang, and now we are breezing through it. Our passage is only slowed by one stoplight. I look around and wonder who among the people here know anything that will help us.

We had zeroed in on Sierra Vista because of something one of Jeannette's Bureau friends said to her. About the history of this country and how this town was like the Bisbee of so many years ago - a bit of the old West with just a softer edge than the rougher, smaller towns in these mountains. And that if Sierra Vista were your seat of operations, you'd have options for escape and evasion that could make it paradise for someone who really knew how to survive in that stretch of desert.

You go south and you're in Mexico. You go east and you're barreling straight through to New Mexico. You go north and you can get lost in Tucson or the Catalina Mountains that ring its northern boundaries, which is where our resort is. You go west and nobody would follow you for long. And with all the abandoned mining towns and the mines themselves, caves and caverns ... no telling how lost you could stay in the county itself if you needed to.

What surprises me as we reach the turnoff for the canyon is how remote a place has to be that the only landmark you are told to look for is the stop sign by the Texaco station. Turn right, I say to Jeannette when we reach it.

And then the strangest thing happens.

The desert turns green. The view over the mountains as we drive the road to the canyon is oddly beautiful. There are no real trees but there is green. There are even streams. San Pedro River, says a sign over one bridge. Not much of a river, I say. Jeannette says it probably dries up in the winter.

"What are we looking for?" I ask her. "Some kind of sign?"

"Let's just go to the preserve. That's a start. Play tourist and see what we see."

"Do you ever wonder where these little dirt roads go to?"

"No."

"Liar."

"I picture the people who travel those roads ... bouncing over the ruts in old trucks and heading into town once a month to shop, take in a movie, pick up their mail."

"Maybe it's hunters."

And so we muse as we drive, both examining the greenery we didn't expect to see. At the preserve, they charge us $5 each to enter. There is a little visitor's center and we stop in there, looking around, examining everything as if we're going to have to testify about this some day and you never know but we may.

They give us maps to the paths. They approve of our gear and our shoes. You have binoculars, one of the women says and we nod. She nods back. You'll see so many hummers, she tells us.

We ask for recommendations on the trail to take and she shows us one on the map that she says will give us great views of the surrounding elevations. Oh, she says, before we walk out ... one last thing ... there are rules. No getting off the paths. No picking anything up. No climbing trees. No loud noises.

And there's one piece of advice, she says with a grave wag of her finger. Listen for rattles.

Outside, Jeannette hoists her day pack and checks her compass. I stand there considering my options.

"What's up?" she asks when I don't follow her.

"Rattles?"

"Snakes. Rattlesnakes."

"Yeah. I actually got that, Jeannette."

"And?"

I sigh. "I don't like the desert. And I don't want to go anywhere I have to worry about rattlesnakes sneaking up on me."

"Get your ass in gear. We won't be long. And you are doing this. Now, let's go. We just have to work out whether that old coot was giving us a clue. Let's play the hand we were dealt."

She strides off. I pick up my day pack and groan. It is hot and dry. There are rattlesnakes I have to listen for. And just then, I see a tiny flying jewel zoom across in front of my face. It hovers over a cactus, a flash of brilliant blue in an otherwise drab landscape. My mouth is open. Jeannette calls my name. She sounds angry. I run to catch up and as we walk, I am now hunting for hummingbirds even as I listen for rattles.

We are gone maybe 40 minutes when the rain starts. We haven't expected it. I spy an overhang and we press ourselves back against the natural stone wall behind us, and this is how we get out of the rain. It stops as suddenly as it started.

And when it stops, two things amaze me. One is that it seems even greener. The second is that within ten minutes, every bit of standing water has evaporated. We are both dry.

We sit on a bench at the highest point of the trail and look down on the San Pedro.

"We were expecting too much," Jeannette says.

"We had to do this. We were following up a lead."

"This one didn't pan out."

"He's having a good laugh right now, thinking of us wasting the day down here."

"I'm going back to that bar and kick his ass."

"I love it when you get all mucho macha."

"Look down there with your binoculars."

"Another hummer?"

"No ... there's something moving down there."

Two cars. Driving up one of those dirt roads that seem to crisscross this area. She's seen the dust clouds. We watch them until they stop by an arroyo. Hikers, she finally says.

I think we honestly believed that we might get here and be scouting around from a lookout and see an outlaw's camp. Then we'd sneak up on it, check it out with our binoculars and find them all there, splitting up the loot.

Neither of us, of course, are used to this dry heat. In Memphis, the heat is wet and steamy. We drag our asses back to the visitor's center. We have consumed all of our water in the last stretch of the hike. Jeannette even ate a piece of beef jerky. She said it was for the kicks of saying she'd done it but I know she liked that salty taste.

We buy bottled water, juice and Gatorade at the little visitor's center.

As we drive out of the preserve, we are munching granola and downing green Gatorade. We turn left, heading back to the resort. We are too wiped out to argue or brainstorm. We just wallow in the air conditioning of the car and drive along the canyon.

I have forgotten all about the hikers. Jeannette has not. We come to a dirt road and she says this must be the one they took. She slows down and we both gaze to our left. We see a big dust cloud heading our way.

"They've given up already," I say.

"Maybe they weren't hiking," she says.

Is this instinct? We both notice a shift in each other. 

We passed not a soul on the drive in. This is a pretty desolate stretch of road. And the dust cloud is gaining speed.

She steps on the gas and we take off. I turn to watch behind us as the two SUVs blunder out onto the road in a roiling wave of red-brown dirt. Their tinted windows match the black color of the metal that is all the more ominous for the dirt and dust that covers them. Now I concentrate on the only one I can see. The one that is closing in on us. Fast.

"How long to the highway?" I ask Jeannette.

"We'll make it," she says.

But we don't.

Just then, we round a curve in the road that we cannot see beyond because of the canyon wall we are skirting. There is a car in the middle of the road. Jeannette pulls hard at the wheel, veering off instantly onto the only escape route ... one of those dirt roads.

The jolt is not absorbed by our car's suspension and we are both jarred down to our spines as she races over ruts and we go airborne after hitting what might have been a dry creek bed. The jarring of the car as she speeds along makes it really hard for me to scan about and help Jeannette spot other trails we could dodge off onto to shake the SUVs behind us.

The SUVs are keeping up. They seem to be laying back because you know they can handle this terrain much better than this car.

I'm turned, watching the SUVs, because Jeannette says to see if they are aiming any firepower at us ... in case she should charge off into the desert just so we don't get cut down from behind by staying on this dirt road. Suddenly, I'm wrenched toward the windshield and the only thing that keeps me inside the car is the seatbelt that barely latches onto my torso as Jeannette is braking wildly and the car swerves then turns as if it's doing a pirouette.

We can see nothing but the red-brown dust we've thrown up in the maneuver as we've spun around. Before the car even stops, Jeannette is yelling at me to get her gun from her shoulder holster. She's busy holding on to the wheel and now pumping the brakes to try to get control of the steering.

When we stop, the car rocks a bit. We sit there waiting. She's holding the gun down by her knees, not wanting to spill the fact she's got a weapon too quick. As we wait for the dust to settle so we can see what we face, I ask why she braked. Another SUV, she says grimly. And a guy with an assault weapon.

Shit, I say.

Is there a signal on the cell, she asks quietly.

I check just as the dust is falling and we see that we are surrounded now ... by four cars and by men with guns pointed at us.

No signal, I tell her.

Just do whatever they say, she says to me.

We look at each other.

"Whatever happens ..." I say.

"Just do what they say," she repeats, grim. "And follow my lead."

"Don't be a hero," I tell her just as a voice yells at us to get out.

She puts her gun under her seat. And leaves it there. We both know they will need little excuse to kill because we already know this is no coincidence and there is only one gang who'd do this to us.

We get out, our hands up. I recognize the voice that tells us to keep our hands up and walk toward the nearest man. The one I face uses his gun to wave me forward. I would look at Jeannette but I am concentrating on every face I am facing. I am memorizing them all. There are twelve of them. One of them is the leathered face from the bar in Millville. The one who recommended a trip to Ramsey Canyon.

When I reach the man who waved me forward, he says for me to lock my hands behind my head. He doesn't ask if I'm carrying ... he just pats me down. Hard. And with some unnecessary attention to both my chest and my crotch. I don't even flinch behind my sunglasses.

"Bring them," the voice I know calls out after hearing that neither of us have anything. "And get their gear from the car."

I am prodded forward. My hands are still locked behind my head. Ben stands waiting for us. He is leaning a hip against the side of one of the dirty SUVs.

He seems bigger to me. He is wearing a dark grey cowboy hat, smaller than the huge ones that seem more popular to wear in Texas or on TV. He is dressed in black jeans and a charcoal grey cotton shirt with the sleeves very neatly turned up at the cuff a few times. His hair is still that longish dark chestnut. His beard is full and trimmed but it has a few lighter hairs sprinkled. I never saw him this close in daylight so I never noticed that. He is wearing sunglasses that he lowers when we are in front of him and pulled to an abrupt stop.

"Grace," he says my name in a soft whisper as he steps right up to me. He smiles and then runs a finger along my cheek before pulling one of my hands down. I take this as the indication that I can drop both hands. "After all my efforts to negotiate with you, I must admit I am surprised by this. Why would you come right down here to me, my beautiful girl?"

"To find you."

"And now that you have?"

"If you turn yourselves in to us now, I can promise you that we will not let any harm come to you when the FBI arrests you."

He quirks an eyebrow up in response. He looks beyond me, to his men, who chuckle and snicker behind me.

"So you've come to arrest us?"

"Someone has to."

He smiles at me. And moves in closer until he is able to put his mouth at my ear. "I told you it was a mistake to break off negotiations with me. Oh, Grace, you're proving to be quite a challenge."

"Our colleagues know where we are," Jeannette says. Her voice is cool and brisk. Matter-of-fact. Non-threatening. Just saying what's what. "If we do not check in soon, they will alert the Marshals."

Ben whispers to me, "The fallacy of that, my dear Grace, is that first they have to find you."

I swallow. I want to turn and see Jeannette, to see what she is thinking. But if I do, my mouth will meet his. Instead, I cut my eyes his way ... and just like that, we are looking into each other.

Now his voice is silky, seductive. I hate myself for this reaction and stiffen. His eyes drop and his lashes sweep down. He is not touching me but I feel as if he has gripped me tight. "I will make you a similar promise you have made me. I will not let harm come to you ... as long as you do nothing foolish like run or attack one of us."

Jeannette must have heard him. He must have said it loud enough for her to catch. He glances at her. Now I can turn to look, now that he's turned to look at her.

She nods at him. Yes, she is saying ... we will comply.

He turns back to me. We are so close. His lips brush mine before I can turn my head.

"Handcuff them. Then put them in the cars," he barks out to his men. "Separate them ... I don't want them hatching some plot."

A man grabs each of my arms, shoving them forward for another man to put cuffs on my wrists. I cannot help but wince at the feel of the steel. And then I am half-shoved, half-carried to the nearest SUV. I strain to watch Jeannette, who is similarly manhandled into the SUV behind the one they are shoving me into. One of the men slides in behind me and I scoot over toward the other side of the car just as the door on that side opens.

Ben slides in next to me.

He does not look at me. We are the second of the four SUVs to head back to the canyon road. No one says anything for a long while. I am looking ahead. I am trying to keep track of where they are taking us for I am pretty sure it won't be someplace easy to find the way back from.

I feel him shift next to me and then he is pressing against me as he leans toward the front seat. He tells the man in the passenger seat to radio the lead car. Take the scenic route, he tells him. The man next to me chuckles in response. Ben leans back into his seat. His hand touches my thigh just as the cars make an unexpected jog to the left, sending me over against him.

Soon, we ascend and ascend and then we are traveling on the edge of the canyon's lip. The vastness of the open air to our right side, where Ben sits next to me, is frightening. One bad move, I can see when I look ahead at where the car in front of us travels over a gravel road, and we will descend straight down to the canyon floor.

There is a gut-check moment when the driver seems to purposely make too sharp of a turn on this tiny road. I clench my teeth and stare straight ahead, hoping I am giving the impression that I am not fazed. Ben shifts next to me again. Now he holds a paisley bandana before me and says he must blindfold me.

And, what, I thought this was going to be easy?

But in a way, it's a relief. If they were planning on killing us, they would not care if we saw the route to wherever they are taking us. They have to be planning to let us go. After he gets whatever he needs from us. Maybe he just wants hostages. Or maybe he really does think I know something I don't know.

The ride gets rough.

His silent presence next to me is overwhelming.

And so is the knowledge that he is an undramatic killer.

"All that I require of either of you is cooperation. And silence unless I ask you a question," Ben is saying.

Jeannette stands next to me. I don't have to look at her to know her face is stony and her shoulders are back.

My chin is up. I stare straight ahead but am not seeing anything just then. I feel myself sway.

"Good," he says, his voice tough.

Our handcuffs were taken off only a few minutes earlier. We have not been abused. In fact, I have been wondering why I have not been manhandled or hit or something. I am braced for it, have been since the moment they put the cuffs on. The man behind me, the one holding my arms out and still for the guy who put them on ... he whispered in my ear then about just how bad I needed a man strapped between my silky thighs. I was mentally prepared to shut down if it came to that for us.

But I have said nothing since the exchange with Ben where they took us. It is Jeannette who has spoken up, trying to figure out where we stand with this group.

I was led in here once the SUV stopped at last. The blindfold was still on. Ben spoke softly to me, pulling my knees over until I was struggling out of the car with his helping hand on my elbow. He kept a hand on the elbow as he led me forward. He warned me when we reached the steps and I stumbled up as gracefully as I could. Inside, he removed the blindfold and then walked away, ordering me to stay and not move. And then Jeannette strode in, her blindfold off, our eyes meeting and her mouthing to me if I was okay. You, I'd mouthed back. She nodded.

We are in a living room. It looks all ranch style, like you'd expect I suppose. But it is careworn and has lots of stone. Stone fireplace, stone table with a glass top floating on it, stone floors, chunks of glittering stone on the side tables. But the walls are wood, rough lumber, maybe cedar or something. There are two couches, both facing the stone table and we are facing the table with the fireplace beyond.

Three men lounge on the couches, watching us. Ben stands in front of the fireplace, a foot up on the stone hearth. He is no longer wearing his hat. He rakes a hand through his hair. It is longish, past his ears and collar. He glances up at us.

I don't realize I've let my vision sharpen until I register that I've seen that glance from him. I was blanking this all out once I memorized everything inside. But now I'm back ... and I know I need to be here, do this ... I need to be sharp, aware, on edge.

"Now that we've established who's the boss ... let's get the answers to a few questions," Ben says to us. "Grace and I are old friends. But who are you, honey?"

Jeannette says her name and nothing else.

The men on the couch trade smirks.

"Jeannette ..." he says it softly, taking a long time to walk around the stone table as his men look as if they are waiting on a show to begin. "Do not try my patience, Jeannette. Who are you?"

I will not look at her. I will not show weakness.

"I am the chief security officer with AIG's mid-South headquarters," she says calmly. "And I am a former agent of the FBI."

His eyebrows rise, his mouth purses. Suddenly he is before me, looking in my eyes. "So you really were hunting me," he says softly.

"Of course," Jeannette says. I say nothing.

He studies my eyes for a while. I remember a mentor telling me once that a silent room is a guilty person's worse enemy when being interrogated. It makes the guilty person nervous because you want it over with ... and maybe you want to unload your sins.

I have no sins, I tell myself.

"How did you know it was me involved in this?" he asks.

I lick my lips.

"She recognized the way you walk," Jeannette says. "In the video they showed on TV."

He looks at her. "When I ask you a question, you answer. When I ask Grace a question, she answers. We straight on that?"

"We're straight," I say quickly, showing I have a voice.

"Good."

"So ask me something," I say, feeling feisty and edgy.

"How did you track us to this county?"

I am close to saying that we have our ways but I know there is a difference between feisty and belligerent. So I say, "We looked at your cell phone records. You had a few roaming charges when you first got the number."

"From here?"

"Yes. Cochise County."

"Well, that was sloppy."

"You didn't expect Pauline to give up any information on you. If she hadn't given us the number ... well, we'd not have had a lead."

His head falls back as if he is considering this. "She got the number from when I called her cell phone," he says to the ceiling.

"She did. And she gave it to me when she realized I wasn't going away." This is easy information to give him. It does not change anything nor does it place us at a disadvantage. And it may just appear I am telling him everything, willing to cooperate. And maybe save our lives somehow. Though I still think he will kill us. Though maybe he'll realize it's too late for him - for obviously our company knows where we are so he's going to have leave this area of the country to be safe.

He looks at me with a wry smile. "You'd almost think I wasn't from this time, being so careless with technology, wouldn't you?"

"That wouldn't have been my first guess, no," I say. "I figured you just had a run of bad luck ... meeting me on the one night you shouldn't have been out in public."

He leans in toward me and speaks softly. "Bad luck? Grace, you really think this was just bad luck?"

I swallow hard. "Well, I think so, yeah. I almost didn't go to the lake that weekend."

He shrugs and walks back toward the fireplace. He paces there, thinking. Then looks up at Jeannette. "Who knows where you two are?"

"Our company. The officers investigating your case in Memphis. A few colleagues in the FBI. The Marshals. My dogsitter."

They all look at each other.

"Then why aren't any of them here with you? Law enforcement, I mean, not the dogsitter."

Tension makes me laugh at his remark. And then I blush as I glance at Jeannette. This is a bad time to lose it.

"This does happen. We are used to conducting our investigations in concert with law enforcement but there are times when we are chasing a lead we believe they are ignoring," she says.

"But to send you in here, courting me to come and take you both out?"

"Obviously, we did not know you were in the area. We believed you were still in Memphis."

"We were near there." He smiles at me as he says it. "But then we heard there were people asking about us down here. So we came back."

Near Memphis, I think. Is it possible they are going to go after the transport to Little Rock like Stewart thinks? Maybe we stopped it. Maybe it won't happen now.

Two other men enter the room. One of them goes to Ben, says something too low for us to catch. He nods. They approach us, grabbing our arms, yanking us away from where we've been standing.

"Gently," Ben says behind us. "Treat them as guests ... for now. They are under my protection, as I promised Grace."

It is night. Cool enough for me to have a quilt wrapped around my shoulders as I stand at the only window in the room and look outside. I can see nothing past the scrubby trees and cacti. But there are at least two men out there. They pace around. I presume they are there to make sure we do not escape. There is another one in the hallway.

Jeanette is in another room down the hall but I do not know which one. They put me in this one before they led her away and I could hear a door opening further down, which is how I know she's near.

We have said we agreed not to try to run away. Separating us as they have is smart. Neither of us would try it if it meant abandoning the other. We either get out of here together or we stay.

My day pack was on the bed when I got in. It's been rifled through. They must have found my ID hidden in an inside pocket. That must be how they knew this one was mine.

I am so grateful they left our rations in the pack as we've had no sustenance since our hike. I feast on beef jerky and dried fruit. I drink water from the tap in the bathroom. After I do this, sprawled on the bed exhausted, it occurs to me that we are both no doubt physically spent from the hike's draining heat and then the adrenalin rush of when they ran us down ... and this has to be impacting our mental alertness. What am I missing that I should be seeing in all this? What am I not doing that I should be doing?

I search the pack carefully for a weapon, a means of communication, anything that can occur to me as useful.

I find nothing. They took everything that could have been helpful, including my phone and knife.

For some reason, I am stubbornly refusing to sleep. Instead, I stand at the window and glare outside at the men who keep me here.

Morning finds me curled atop the mattress, the quilt and blankets over me. I even have the pillow over my head. Someone raps at the door and I jump up. I am wiping the sleep from my eyes when the door opens. One of the men is standing there just watching me. I stare back.

"Boss wants to see you."

"Let me just ... wash my face," I say.

"Comb your hair while you're at it."

Asshole.

But at least I have a comb in my day pack. And a spot of makeup though it does little good. Why should I even bother? But I do. And I know it's all vanity.

He gives me 15 minutes and then he snaps his fingers twice, irritated. I follow him downstairs to the big room where we first came into this house that I am now realizing might be some kind of hunting lodge.

But he doesn't stop in the big entry room. He keeps walking. Two men are in there, looking at us as he marches me on. He pushes open a door and motions me in. It's a big kitchen with a long wooden table in the center. Ben is standing before a counter. He is holding a carton with eggs. I look around but it's only him in there.

My escort clears his throat and Ben turns our way. He smiles at me and asks how my first night was with them.

"I could use a toothbrush, things like that," I say. Jesus. I don't know what I'm supposed to say. It's all that occurs to me. I am being cautious but truthful. Build up his trust in my word.

"I should have thought of that, Grace. I know women like their necessities. Bet you'd like some perfume as well? Perhaps a pretty shirt? Change of unmentionables?"

On alert, I examine his tone. Is he taunting me? Teasing? Or simply realizing the truth is he knows women well enough to have some idea of what I'd miss most about civilization where clean clothes, underwear, deodorant and toothpaste should be what I expect to find in my room in the morning?

I cannot tell what his tone means. So I say, "Is any of that possible?"

Now he holds his hand out, motioning me toward him. My escort walks out, closing the door behind him. I take a few tentative steps forward.

"You will come to find out that I would not offer what is not possible for me to do," he says. "All you have to do is ask."

"I think we'd both like some toiletries. Whatever you can spare."

He gives me this solemn nod. "How would you like me to cook your eggs, Grace?"

"Eggs?"

"Yes. We have fresh eggs and must enjoy them while they hold out. Two? Scrambled or fried?"

That's when I smell the coffee. I look off in the direction of the aroma and see the coffee pot. My stomach grumbles. "Scrambled," I say. "May I have some coffee?"

"Please. Would you pour me a cup as well?"

I glance at him but he is now breaking eggs into a bowl. So I go to the coffee, see cups waiting there, pour two out. Put some milk in mine that is in the large refrigerator. Opening a drawer to get a spoon to stir with, I see knives ... steak knives. My fingers itch to take one. But I cannot imagine that he hasn't already seen this possibility and isn't already prepared for me to go on the attack with weapons I can find in a kitchen. He's testing me, I think. And I am testing the limits of the freedom he is allowing me. I look out the window and see one of his men walking around. I take only the spoon from the drawer but I will always remember where the knives are kept, including the big ones I see are near the stove in a wooden block.

Handing him his mug of coffee, I am so close to him. He smells fresh and clean. I can catch the faint whiff of cologne. His hair is combed back. Neat. Damp. His beard is also neat. I remember the impact he had on me at the lake when we were this close. It makes me nervous.

It also makes me aware that I must not smell so nice. That is such a shallow thought. Why is it that ever since I first was around him, he makes me hyper-aware of the fact he's a man and I'm a woman? And I fall into the old traps of caring about his opinion of me as a woman?

"Where's Jeannette?" I ask him, suddenly feeling disloyal to my friend and my hero who, I know, would never be this shallow. "Is she joining us?"

He takes the coffee slowly. Watches me as he sips and then carefully places the mug on the counter. Finally, he says, "I thought she might like to sleep in. And I wanted some time alone with you, Grace."

"Are you going to feed her, too?"

"Of course. What do you think I am?"

"A murderer. A robber."

"An outlaw?"

"That about sums it up."

"Does it, Grace? Sum me up, I mean. That is all there is to me in your eyes?"

For some reason, his tone is so softly aggressive ... and I really do blush under the scrutiny of this tiny exchange between us. I take a half step back, look around. But when I turn back, he is waiting on an answer. I shrug my shoulders. "I don't really know you well enough to know you. So yes, that sums you up real well to me."

His mouth puckers up. He is considering this. Then he smiles at me. "Would you like some toast?"

This is how the breakfast with him is. He probes, finds out something about my opinion, and then veers the conversation to something that makes me notice that if I didn't know his background, I'd have to say he was treating me with such kindness. Almost courtliness.

I know what he's doing. He's trying to win me over. Trying to erode the truth of what he is within my mind. To see him as a person rather than the sum total of his crimes. Trying to get me to revert to societal customs of courtesy. Trying to see if I am vulnerable to persuasion and maybe vulnerable to turning to his side as opposed to staying on Jeannette's side.

This is why she is not here with us this morning.

He will probably perform the same sort of interrogation of her later, when I am brought back to my room. Or maybe he's already had breakfast with her and now it's my turn for the mind games.

After breakfast, he has me brought back to my room. I listen for sounds of them going to get Jeannette to bring her to him. I hear nothing like that. Fear pricks at me. Is she okay?

There is nothing to read in the room. There is a pack of cards in the bedside table and I while away the hours playing solitaire. Lunch comes to me on a tray. When the knock comes on my door, I hear the second knock on a door further down the hall. I open the door, the leather-faced guy is standing there with a tray. I peer down the hall and see Jeannette peering down at me.

Oh, thank god.

She's alive.

Sometime late in the afternoon, when the day's heat is pushed around by a gathering wind, it rains. I stand at the window and watch it as it moves over us, a curtain of hard-hitting water that slides across this camp and keeps on moving. It leaves in its wake a sharper tangy smell.

Not long after, there is another knock at my door. I listen for the echoing knock at Jeannette's and here it is. I am already at the door. We look down the hall at each other. We are relieved to see each other and are beginning to gain some equilibrium.

The man at the door, the youngest one in the group, just stares at me. He has peach fuzz and slim hips. He's holding out folded clothes and a small paper bag on top.

Inside the room, door closed, I examine what he's brought me. There are several shirts. A pair of shorts, a broomstick skirt and another pair of jeans. There are two changes of underwear and he's even guessed right on the bra size, the experienced womanizing bastard. And there's a little summer skimmer that must be meant for me to sleep in. Inside the paper bag are toiletries I requested plus shampoo and nicer soap than was in the bathroom. And there's a bottle of cologne in here. Channel No. 5.

Jesus. I don't remember the last time I even smelled that old-fashioned scent. I've never worn it. But ... I sniff it tentatively ... it's actually rather nice.

Don't be charmed.

That's what he wants.

To catch you out. To confuse you.

Instead, examine this. What's it say that may reveal a weakness on his part?

But what hits me instead is this ... he plans on us staying here a while. Why else bring several changes of clothing?

I should be relieved. At least it signals he's not planning to execute us ... today. Or tomorrow. But surely he's not planning on keeping us for a long time? How could he? I would bet anything, my life, on the fact that there is a general manhunt underway for us. They will find our car and they will know what's happened.

Now they will all believe me about this man.

And that would mean that the longer he holds us, the more determined and more aggressive they will become. It will be him against the full might of law enforcement - federal, both states and Memphis. Surely he realizes that the sooner he figures out what to do with us ... something permanent ... then they get the heat off?

Surely he'll let us go?

He won't kill us.

Right?