It hadn't taken long for the FBI to determine no threat existed in the newly discovered basement. Peter had been among the first into the hidden room, and the moment he reappeared he pulled Caffrey aside and held him by the arm to speak to him in a voice that was softly intense.

"Neal, you don't want to go in there," he warned. "Wait for them to bring her out."

Neal's face was all grim determination as he looked straight into Peter's slightly watering eyes. "Is that an order, Agent Burke?"

Peter's frown deepened. He shook his head and removed his hand from Neal's arm, placing it gently on his shoulder instead. "No."

Apprehension flicked briefly through Neal's eyes, and his shoulders dropped slightly as he released some of his resistance. "It's that bad?"

"It's pretty bad, yeah," Peter replied, watching the young man closely.

Neal nodded solemnly. "Okay."

Peter withdrew his hand and allowed Neal to walk past before turning to follow him down the steps. The thief didn't betray any emotion down the long dark flight. He didn't pause as he passed through the first heavy metal door frame. But when he pushed past the second door and entered the unexpectedly brightly lit room, he had to stop and steel himself against the onslaught of what he encountered there.

The stench was overwhelming. Neal understood now that the shine in Peter's eyes hadn't necessarily been tears of emotion. Like scenting the bouquet of a gruesome wine, Neal couldn't prevent himself from detecting and identifying the metallic sharpness of blood and musty odor of sweat that lurked beneath the open-sewer foulness of human filth. He smelled burnt flesh and rubbing alcohol and cursed his carefully refined senses.

His eye swept the scene and knew the shade of paint required to match the blood dried on the walls and floor, the strokes of charcoal that could be used to capture the precise pose of the body which hung limply from the restraints on either side of it.

Neal stood dumbfounded as rage and grief fought each other to a numb standstill. The woman's back was to him, and as he approached he couldn't escape noticing the tears and burns on the expanse of skin stretched before him like the appalling canvas of a cruel madman. He circled around to face her, seeming oblivious now to anything else, and knelt on the soiled and sticky floor, hardly daring to breathe. He reached out an unsteady hand and gently swept her long dark hair away from her face. She stiffened ever so slightly at his touch, and Neal froze, throwing startled blue eyes up to find Peter standing beside him.

"Oh, God, Peter... she's alive?"

How could he have missed it? No. He knew. He had been so sure of the absence of life before him, so overtaken by the horror of the scene, that he had missed the faint rise and fall of her breath. Because other than that she was so still. So very still.

Peter nodded and Neal was suddenly aware of the other people in the room. He shrugged quickly out of his jacket and placed it around the woman's shoulders as lightly as possible. His hesitant fingers hovered just next to her cheek for a moment before settling softly on the pale and dirty skin and it flashed through his mind that he might have looked very much like this once.

Burke saw a trace of a shudder run through Neal. The convict leaned forward until the heads of the two kneeling figures almost touched. "You're going to be all right," he whispered. He raised his other hand so that he was holding her face in his delicate fingers now. "You will." Neal swallowed back memories of his own terror and hopelessness to concentrate on making the figure in front of him believe his words. "It gets better. It does. I promise."

She began to breathe more rapidly with the exertion of keeping her roiling emotions in check and Neal thought he knew just what she was feeling. God, he didn't want to, but he did. She's trying not to hope. It's too dangerous, too painful, too close to returning to life and feeling and everything you've given up to protect what's left of your sanity.

Peter had to physically step away from the intimacy in front of him. It broke his heart to see Neal like this. To find their victim in this condition was infuriating enough, but to watch his young friend relive God-knows-what was more than he could take without putting his fist through something. He turned, but instead of finding relief, he found himself staring at a table lined with tools he recognized from the DVDs. There was the tubing he'd watched being forced down their victim's throat sitting next to the scalpels he had seen cut into her flesh. Needles, a hot plate, knives, metal of varying shapes and sizes, intravenous tubes—and he had seen almost every item at its gruesome work. He looked away to bark a little too impatiently at a nearby agent, "Goddammit, where are the bolt cutters? And the medical team? Christ!"

Neal stirred immediately at the words, and dug into his pocket for his lockpick kit, fuming with himself for ignoring something so obvious. "Peter?" he called quietly, his voice still hoarse with emotion. Peter spun to find Caffrey beginning work on the shackle holding the woman's left hand to the metal post sunk in concrete. "A little help?"

"Well, why didn't you do that earlier?" Burke groused.

Neal looked at him with red-rimmed eyes and an expression Peter couldn't quite read before clearing his throat and returning his attention to his task, saying softly, "Hold her arm."

Peter complied. "I'm sorry. I just..."

"I know," Neal cut him off. There was a click and the first bond fell. Peter supported the limb, holding it in place as he called for someone to assist.

"Here," Burke instructed the agent, "Keep the arm elevated. She's probably been in this position long enough that moving it too quickly will cause pain." He relinquished his grasp and moved to repeat the performance on the other side, but found his words already being heeded by the same mustachioed man who had loaned Caffrey his flashlight.

There was a second click, and Neal moved quickly but gently to support her weight with his own, leaning her in to rest against his chest. "Easy," he said. Despite the warmth of the room, she was shivering now, and though Neal was glad to see her allow herself some reaction, he wished he could wrap her up in something more substantial than the light sport jacket he had already draped over her. He wanted to comfort her with an embrace but was afraid to touch her any more than he had to, afraid to inflict any unintentional pain by brushing against one of those many open wounds he had seen or pressing into a hidden bruise.

So he just let her rest against him as he murmured whatever small words of encouragement he could manage until the paramedic s finally appeared in the doorway across from him, and Neal was ushered back up into the fresh night air, obliged to relent his caretaking to better-trained hands.

...