Author's Note: Thank you so much everybody who reads and reviews. You don't know how happy it makes me.

Lisa has a confession to make.

/Nic.

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4. Look Deep Enough Into The Cut To See What Really Caused The Pain (Interpreted CL Bartholdi)

Oh, God. I tried to breathe through my mouth as I, shuddering, and with a heavily pounding heart, wrapped myself tightly in his soft warm suit jacket. It was hopeless. His rich scent drifted upwards and reached my nose, surrounded me, seduced me and cajoled me into a silent, treacherously peaceful, calm. It was like poison and I didn't have an antidote. Pulling up my knees inside of the jacket, I was still grateful for the warmth he'd provided. I couldn't really blame him for how he smelled. Unless that is part of your plan when you pick a victim. Knock them with your scent… Silly pictures of how he went to a Sephora store to buy a carefully chosen eau de cologne for each new 'hit' poured into my mind. I wondered which perfume I was being intoxicated with right now.

You're losing it, Lisa. Shaking my head, I clenched my hands into fists and gasped when I felt the sore area in my left palm. I touched it tentatively. A tiny stone on the floor had embedded itself in my palm when we had fought earlier and it hurt like hell now that I finally had the time to even think about it. I winced when I started picking at the wound to try to extract the little stone. To my right, I heard Jackson stir.

"What's going on?" he asked quietly.

"No… it's nothing. I'm just sore… all over. I felt it when I moved." I swallowed. Sitting next to the man, no, the killer, that had in fact caused it made me feel uneasy talking about it. To say the least.

"Mm," he muttered, indifferently.

He didn't say anything else and I continued to try to dig into my wounded palm. Each new attempt to scrape or squeeze out the tiny stone made me grimace with pain, and it hurt enough to make me hesitate to use more force.

Because of the warm jacket, some of the numbing cold had begun to leave me. My teeth were still shattering from time to time, though, and it wasn't only from the cold. It was everything, Jackson's alarming presence, and the thoughts of what I had done and if my father was going to be okay.

The silence, the narrow space and the darkness, was really starting to get to me and I felt my eyes brim with tears. I swallowed repeatedly. I didn't want to cry in front of him. Then the thought struck me hard: we could die in here. I could die here… soon. If we didn't get out… then it would be over. I bent my head and let my forehead rest against my knees.

How had I lived my life when I'd had the chance? If this was how it was going to end, then how hadn't I ruined it even before I even ended up here? I'd done so many wrongs lately that I couldn't even begin to sort them out.

I'd isolated myself and never let anyone close. Not since the rape. Countless nights had passed when I had wandered my rooms, trying to still my heavily beating heart, re-living the horrible few minutes from the rape, dwelling on it instead of moving on. My whole being had been frozen in that moment and I hadn't known how to get out. It wasn't as if I'd had an actual death-wish… I just hadn't had much of a life-will. And now it might be too late for second chances.

I sighed again and hugged my knees, wondering what he was thinking right now. I listened in the dark, heard him breathe. Did he also think about death? My death?

As I sat there and scratched my palm with clenched teeth, the depressing thoughts of my life and of my father finally got the better of me and I couldn't hold back the tears any more. Trembling, I steeled myself; I didn't want to cry in front of him and I held my breath as a sob unexpectedly escaped my lips.

He sighed. It was the first I'd heard from him in a while. "What is it, Lisa? Is it the dark? Claustrophobia?" He sounded calm and his voice was soft but I still heard a slight taunt in it.

"No... ehm... It's... my palm. It hurts, I think I'm bleeding. I hit something on the floor before when..." I snapped my mouth shut. Better not remind him.

"Don't bleed on my jacket," he replied shortly.

I huffed. "Well, that's just fine," I sneered. "That's just so you! Only thinking about yourself and never someone else."

"Did anything I've done give you another impression?"

"I've seen you friendly," I quipped.

He gave out a short laugh. "That was just play, Lisa. I had to get you hooked and it was fun to see how far I could push the little prude."

I'm no… I snorted and hissed: "You can call it whatever you want. You were disappointed when I turned you down."

"No, I wasn't. I couldn't have cared less."

"Whatever."

"Whatever what?"

"Nothing."

"Oh Lisa… I know how much you've longed for some company. How much you've dreamed of having someone close again. Even for one little moment." His voice in the dark was suddenly soft as silk. "You were so easy to snare and pull in, inch by inch."

It hurt like hell. He was right. He had pulled me in, had fooled me completely. "You're wrong," I muttered, steeling myself from the ache that erupted in my chest. "You don't know me."

"Oh, I beg to differ. I think I've seen you cry yourself to sleep more than even you dad has. Or any of your infrequent friends…"

"Shut up. Shut up!" 'I followed you for eight weeks…' I shivered at the thought that he'd been watching me, following me; that I hadn't been alone when I thought I was. What had he seen? Had he been there when I cried? When I got up at night because I couldn't sleep. When I tried reading a book, watching a late movie, pacing my apartment… 'Eggs at three a.m…' His earlier words on the flight rang in my ears.

You were. And it was funny, because in a way it felt as if I hadn't been quite as lonely these last weeks. At least not in retrospect.

"Hit a nerve?" he asked, his voice amused.

"You don't know anything," I retorted sourly.

"Whatever you say."

I yelped as I put my hands to the floor to move further away from him and cringed from the sudden stab of pain.

"What's wrong with your hand?"

What do you care? "I think a stone got stuck there before… when we… you know."

"Let me take a look."

A look? "What? You see in the dark? Tell me if you do because I'm completely blind in here and it's starting to drive me nuts."

"You can't become something you already are. Come on, give me your hand."

Very funny. I snorted, but obeyed, and stretched my hand towards his voice, curious about what he was going to do. A warm dry hand touched my wrist and sent goosebumps up my arm and a shiver down my spine. Then he held my hand in his as he started to examine my palm. I held my breath and my poor heart pounded. How can he be so warm? When he felt the sore spot where the stone had embedded itself, I gasped. "Ow!"

"Don't need to see to discover that one." He padded the area with his fingertips and then he squeezed around it with a steel grip, pinching my palm until I screamed at him to stop. Just when I started beating at him with my free hand and tried to pull out of his hold, he stopped and patted my arm. "Was it as good for me as it was for you?"

"Uh… that hurt!" I blinked and squinted as the light suddenly flickered once before it came back.

Jackson and I stared at each other, our pupils dilated still and our eyes dark and weary. Then we looked down at our hands, mine still in his, and realizing we were touching each other. Touching, but not fighting. I think it felt just as awkward to both of us, because we pulled out of the grip with the speed of light and got up.

"That was…" he said.

I wiped my sweaty palms on my skirt, smearing out the blood and the dirt, and interrupted him. "We need to get out of here."

Suddenly we were allies, both agreeing completely that we should try to find a way out.

"Isn't there any hatch in the ceiling?" I asked.

He looked up and then around. "It doesn't look like it."

"If you lift me I can try to push and see if something gives way."

He nodded.

I was stupid. I hadn't thought about that if he lifted me it would mean that he would touch me again.

He grabbed my waist and hoisted me up until my face was a couple of inches from the ceiling. I examined every square inch of it, pushing and finally slamming my good hand against it. His chin pressed into the soft skin on my belly and I felt his every breath, hot against the thin fabric of my blouse where the jacket had slid up. Suddenly, I needed to get down and out of his grip. Now. Miserable, I slumped in his arms and he let me back down. "It's no use. Don't all elevators have a hatch in the ceiling? They always have in the movies…" I whined.

"Life isn't like the movies, Leese."

Normally I would have snorted at such a cliché, but tonight his words sounded real and important. True. I nodded. "Let's try the door again."

Jackson placed himself on one side of the doors and I on the other, squeezing our fingertips into the narrow crack between them and then, with a nod to each other; we pulled for all we were worth.

Nothing. Not even a squeak from metal being bended, no parts moving, no promise of us getting out.

I didn't take that very well. It was as if the darkness had calmed me before, when I didn't to see our prison walls. Now I saw everything with a crispy, enhanced view, and my head started spinning faster and faster, distorting the image, blurring it with my tears. "HELP! CAN ANYONE HEAR ME? HELP! WE'RE STUCK IN THE ELEVATOR!!!" I pounded at the doors and screamed again and again until my voice cracked and all that came out were hoarse clicking sounds.

I stopped when I felt a hand on my arm; someone was talking to me. "Leese… Hey, Leese…" I looked up at Jackson. I had almost forgotten he was in here too. "It's no use. Remember how empty it was? And now it's…" He looked at his wristwatch. "…seven… almost seven p.m… There's no one out there. They'll be gone for the day…" He shook his head.

"Seven!? It can't… be…" I looked down at my own watch. It was smashed and didn't work. It had stopped at five thirty. I inhaled shakily. Seven? God! We had been in here for about an hour and a half. It felt like six. The whole cold night lay ahead of us.

My eyes darted around the walls of the elevator; relentless, unyielding, grey and cold. Ironically enough, the only source of warmth and humanity in here came from the second most terrifying man I'd ever met in my life.

The most terrifying man, the one who'd… I touched my scar involuntarily as a wave of nausea rolled over me … had been an entirely different kind of monster.

I glanced at Jackson again. No, no, no, no!!!! I drew a deep and shaky breath and let it out, feeling as if I would never be able to breathe again. A deep, raw sob of sorrow and fright rose in my chest and I turned away from him, suffocating it, not wanting him to see how vulnerable I was and how this entrapment affected me. I was normally better at that; lying to people, quenching feelings, putting up the always cheerful façade.

I was so damn tired of it.

Would Jackson care if I allowed myself to sink? Would it annoy him or would it amuse him? Or would he just leave me alone? I guessed that he just wouldn't care.

We stood there in silence, in opposite corners of the elevator. Opposite corners of the world. Sometimes I shifted and he would glance at me and then back to nothingness. Sometimes I started when he moved ever so slightly.

Time seemed to stop. The only sound that was heard was the sometimes alarmingly creaking from the cables above us when we moved, and occasionally a whining noise from far off in a distance. Probably a plane… or the wind. I couldn't tell which, but whatever it was, it made me feel even more deserted and isolated… like at the edge of the universe. Alone and abandoned by the world.

Alone… I tasted the word and knew that I didn't want to be left alone right now. I preferred his presence far more than being by my own in the elevator.

Alone… I realized that I had been alone for so very long; that every night when I'd woken in pain, pacing my small apartment, trying to get the memories to stop biting, trying to make the dreams leave, I had been alone.

Alone… I never let anyone close anymore. Jackson was closer to me at this moment than most people ever got… and strangely enough I didn't mind it as much as I had only a little while back.

I would never have let him in of course, in normal circumstances, if we had met in a bar, or through friends. He was a stranger, a terrifying person, and a man… but now he had forced his way in. My will had been but a mere breeze to the tornado that was Jackson's intoxicating power, leaving me breathless with a need I couldn't quite grasp, hating him immensely for mastering me. I turned my head to look at him. He appeared harmless enough now, slumped against the wall, hands in his pockets and looking rather relaxed in his dark pants and light blue shirt.

Flawless, cool; his presence both tugging at me and repelling me.

How did he do it? How did he stay so calm when my heart fluttered with known and unknown fears? What did he do when he didn't stalk me? Where did he come from and where was he going next? If there is a 'next'. If we're ever getting out. Suddenly, I wanted to know. Him. About him. I'd never met a flesh-and-blood criminal before. A terrorist. The little hairs at the back of my neck rose. There had to be so much more to him than had met my eye. Well of course there was. I had only seen a fraction.

I was blissfully starting to forget my own agony as I tried to imagine the mind and soul of a killer. He wasn't a machine; he must have weaknesses… people he cared about… Or had cared about I realized with a shiver. Past tense… What had turned him into a person that could mercilessly kill other humans? What losses would there have been to the little boy he once was? I shook my head. Why do you sympathize with him, Leese? You know what he is! I wasn't sure why I bothered.

No, I was sure. I knew why.

We had connected; and it hadn't only been in my imagination, no matter what kind of lame explanation he tried to use now. Then he had changed, obviously, so had I, but the memory of his smile and his glittering eyes refused to leave me… along with that tiny little hope he had ignited in me a few hours back, that flickering hope for something else than solitude and exclusion. The spark had died now, when he had revealed his true face, and even though I was pulled to him, for warmth, and out of curiosity, there was no way we could have that back; that first meeting, that meeting that had been so beautiful and innocent. It had been irrevocably lost.

I glanced down at my own slumping figure; two pale, bruised legs sticking out of an over-sized black jacket that I had wrapped tightly around my body, the nylon stockings were torn on both knees where the skin was scraped. My high heels were starting to annoy me and as I heaved my aching feet out of the refined instruments for torture that the shoes really were, my heart started pounding harder once more. Torture… Instrument… I was disarmed, and so was he, and if it ever stood between us again I knew what I needed to do, and where that rather sharp heel would go.

The thought of managing to escape from him if the occasion occurred made my cheeks blush with excitement. YES, Lisa! Think constructive thoughts, stop dwelling on your own misery.

The newfound strength made me bolder and I turned to him, trying to catch a glimpse of that icy blue behind the unruly dark tresses that covered his eyes. "Jackson," I said softly.

"Mm." He didn't look up, yet I had a strong feeling that he kept track of my every move.

"I... I have to know. What's going to happen to my father?" His mouth flattened into a thin white line. There was no doubt that the question annoyed him. I flinched when he suddenly pushed away from the wall and began pacing the floor. Staring at the same old, very interesting, chewing gum-stain on the floor before me, I tried to stay cool even though I had my heart in my throat.

"Leese," he said harshly. "I don't have access to a phone anymore than you do."

"But what will your…" I tried to remember what term he'd been using about his killer. "…'associate' do when you don't call him?" Because you didn't, did you? I looked up at him, my heart pounding with a tiny fragment of hope and a large portion of despair.

Jackson stopped in his tracks and regarded me, his eyes piercing mine. "He's not gonna make a move unless I tell him to. I believe we've covered this already."

"Ehm… but if we don't get out of here? What will he do if he doesn't hear from you?"

"Relax, Leese." He shrugged. "He'll hear the news on the radio that Keefe's been taken out and then he'll assume that everything has gone according to plan and that I haven't been able to get to him for some reason and just leave as quietly as he came. Daddy dearest will be safe. Don't worry so much."

"Oh…" I couldn't speak. My throat constricted. If Cynthia had managed to get them out, his associate would hear about the attempted murder on Keefe on the radio… No matter what I did it had been the wrong thing to do. And now there wasn't anything I could do about it.

"And since you didn't call anyone… everything should have proceeded according to plan."

I couldn't breathe; his words hit me like a blow to my stomach. Jackson looked smug and leaned against the wall. He looked like he knew that I had made the call to the hotel, like he didn't care about anything else than punishing me for it. I MADE the call Jackson!!! I wanted to confess, I wanted to see how he reacted. I didn't want to die, but I needed to know if I had caused my father's murder tonight… or not… had to know if the response would be automatic, either as a reaction to the terror attack, or worse; from the lack of an attack. I felt sick again and I crossed my arms over my mid-section, grimacing, as a convulsion of pain shot through me. Dad! I glanced at him again, trying to calm my breathing. What will you do when you find out?

I chewed on the inside of my lip. I know I risked the truce, the little peace we had reached between us. But I didn't feel like I had anything to lose. "Jackson…" I bent my head and my voice faltered. I didn't have the courage. "The phone worked… once…"

I gasped and could only produce a ridiculous yelp as I was slammed against the opposite wall from where I'd just stood. His body was pressed tightly to mine and he squeezed my cheeks bruisingly with one hand, the other gripping my hair. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

His breath was hot on my cheek and I tried to turn my head away as he hissed in rage: "What did you do?!"

Tears formed in my eyes as I tried to twist away from him. Shoe! The heel! I tried to look for it, but I couldn't see it anywhere. Shuffling my feet I tried to feel for it, but Jackson yanked my hair harder and shoved me again so I lost my footing. One glance into his enraged glare made the hairs at the back of my head rise. You already knew…didn't you? "Nothing," I panted. "N- nothing."

I couldn't pretend anymore; it hurt too much. A cry of agony rose in me and I slumped in his grip, tears falling freely as my chest heaved with each sob. I'm so sorry, Dad. I'm so sorry.

Jackson's hold slowly turned less brutal and more into something close to supportive as I wailed helplessly. Finally, my loud sobs faded and I cried silently against his shoulder. When my legs gave out and I started to descend, slumping against the wall, he followed me down, stopping me from falling into a boneless heap on the cold floor.

I held on to his shirt like a drowning to a lifeboat, too cold and too small to fight. He wasn't the one to steady me through this nightmare; he was the person I'd have least expected to find any comfort in, but oddly enough, terrifyingly enough, I did.