A/N: I'm sorry in advance, but this chapter is full of A LOT OF VIOLENCE AND GRAPHIC THEMES. If you didn't catch that the first time, go back and read the caps. This is a warning to people who have triggers, I"M SORRY. I will be more than happy to give you the summary of what happens in this chapter, if you message me.

Thanks, by the way, to everyone who has followed, favorited, commented, pretty much loved on me throughout the story. You all are great, and I just wanted to say thanks to you all. On with the show!

Gabriel woke up the next morning with thoughts of breakfast and Sam. Now that she knew that Gabriel wanted her, he could turn up his charm and have her fall head over heels in love with him. And what better way to do that than through breakfast? With his mind made up, Gabriel went to go downstairs to start some pancakes.

When he got to the second floor he absently walked to Sam's door. When he realized where he was, all he could do was smile to himself. Sam had permeated every corner of his mind, it seemed. He leaned against the door, listening for her, but the room was too quiet to hear anything through the door. Gabriel opened the door just a crack, but the room was silent. Puzzled, Gabriel let the door swing open fully.

Sam wasn't there, which was harmless by itself. Her room was clean and organized; her bed made, her dirty clothes to one corner of the room and all the books that she was reading were all piled around her bed. It was so...Sam, that it made Gabriel smile in spite of the freak out that he was having.

What wasn't so harmless was that her bed wasn't rumpled because of a night of sleep and her dirty clothes weren't in the corner with all the others. Her room was spotless, except there wasn't a book on her bedside table or anywhere on her bed from a round of late night reading. Sam wasn't here, and from what Gabriel could tell, she hadn't been here for a while.

He turned then and tried to walk calmly to the kitchen, hoping that she was there. That she just got a early start to the day. That she was reading the paper, sitting at the table, or maybe on the counter with her feet dangling against the cabinets with a cup of coffee grasped between her hands. He ended up running, and when he got there, there was no Sam.

Gabriel froze when he didn't find Sam in the kitchen. "Sam?" Gabriel asked to the empty room. It was no use, Sam wasn't there. He walked to the living room, still calling out Sam's name. "Sam? Come on Sammy, don't be like this. You're starting to freak me out. Sam? Sammy! Sam! Please, Sam!" Gabriel was yelling by this point and woke Bobby up.

"The hell are you yellin' about this early, idjit?"

"I can't find Sam. I can't find her, Bobby, she's not here."

"Now Sam, you know that we have to talk," Luke was standing in the doorframe, lit from behind so Sam couldn't really see his face. It wasn't a good tone of voice; it was too calm and controlled. "Why did you think that you could leave me? Especially in the middle of the night? Who knows who could have picked you up?"

Luke was trying to sound as though he cared, but Sam knew better. He didn't care about her, he cared that one of his things was gone and now he had it back. It would be so much harder for her to get away this time. "As it happens, the person who picked me up was infinitely better than you," she mumbled to herself as she tried again to get some sort of slack in the ropes that were tying Sam's hands up above her head.

"What was that, sweetheart?" Luke asked her with so much sweetness that it almost made her gag.

"Nothing," she replied louder this time.

He was suddenly right next to her with his face hovering over hers. The rage that was in his eyes was evident from this distance, and the coldness there was frightening. She had no idea what he would do to her, but she was pretty sure that it would be worse than anything he had done before and that thought terrified her. "Don't test me, Sam, I'm not in the mood." Sam whimpered and nodded. "Good. Now, as for your punishment for leaving..."

Luke trailed off tapping his chin. Sam knew that he already knew what he was going to do. He never went into any situation without mapping out his moves. His expression brightened for a moment as though in realization and he pulled out a knife from behind his back and held it between them. Sam paled and visibly tried to shrink back into the ratty mattress that was underneath her. Luke smiled, "I think you need some reminding of what you are, Sam."

"Gabriel, ya need to calm down. Here," Bobby said as he passed Gabriel a drink, "Drink this down and tell me again what happened."

Gabriel accepted the whiskey and threw it back waiting until he could feel the warmth in his belly before he told Bobby, again, what happened last night and this morning.

"I dropped her off at her room last night and everything seemed fine. I went upstairs to sleep and didn't hear anything out of the ordinary. I woke up this morning and went to go check on Sam, and when I got to her room she was gone. Her room looks the same as it always does, no signs of a struggle or anything. It looks like she just up and left," Gabriel told him as he passed his glass back to Bobby and accepted another.

"Do you think she did?" Bobby asked.

"Why would she? She was happy here, right? She felt safe here. Why would she leave?"

"I dunno," Bobby answered looking lost. "Why don't we go look at her room and see if anything is gone. If she packed, we can assume that she left of her own accord. If not...well, we'll figure that out later."

They walked up the stairs and with Gabriel in the lead, in to Sam's room. The room smelled of Tease perfume and old books and Sam and the idea that she wasn't here was tearing Gabriel apart. He walked forward, though, looking at the books that she had strewn around her bed. Theologies, law, medicine, philosophy; Sam craved knowledge and she greedily took anything that she could get her hands on.

"What was Sam wearin' last night?" Bobby asked.

"Green flannel, black tank top and jeans. Why?" Gabriel asked and turned to face Bobby who was holding up Sam's flannel from the night before. "...So when Sam left, she was wearing a tank top and jeans." Gabriel said more to himself than anything else. He didn't get it, why would Sam leave the flannel? A look of realization came over his face and he whispered, "Shoes," into the room and started searching frantically for something.

"Come again?" Bobby asked him.

"Shoes. When I found her running along the side of the road, she was in a tank top and jeans and no shoes. Right now, wherever she is, she's wearing a tank top and jeans," Gabriel told him.

"...And no shoes," Bobby finished and immediately started looking for the pair of converse that Sam had loved. In the search, they had switched sides of the room that they were looking in. When Gabriel saw the shoelace that was peaking out from underneath a shopping bag his heart stopped.

"Bobby..." Gabriel whispered into the room.

Bobby turned then and saw Gabriel cradling a shoe.

The pain was close to unbearable.

It was worse than when Alastair was cutting her. At least he didn't know what to say in order to emotionally rip her apart along with the physical carving that was going on. Luke had already cut her clothes off and was infuriated when he found the neon pink g-string that she was wearing from last night. He automatically assumed that she was sleeping around to avoid him; trading sex for a place to hide from him, so he had re-carved the scars that covered her left thigh telling her 'I wouldn't have gone to someone else if you would have just remembered how to be the whore that you are' and 'Maybe you need a lesson on how to let me between your thighs'; promises of 'You'll have to learn again to take what I give you and like it' and 'Maybe it's been too long without someone reminding you of your place'.

After he finished carving the words into her, he had made her beg for his cock at knife point, and he gave it to her.

Twice.

The first time was harsh and rough and he was cold and unfeeling; it was for power, and Sam got the message loud and clear. It was okay, though; she had been through this before, and would get through it again. The second time he came to her, it was soft, kind and gentle. Sam thrashed as much as she could and tensed and begged him to stop, but he didn't. He just kept murmuring to her that she was a whore and that was all she would ever be. He left her when he was done, and she curled in on herself as much as she could and sobbed.

"We have no idea where to start looking, Bobby, that's the whole problem!" Gabriel yelled at the older man. They had been arguing for about an hour as to what the next step was other than, find Sam. Gabriel was frustrated, panicked and afraid for Sam. Those scars on her legs were new; there was no way that those scars are as old as her story. The psycho that she was with carved those words into her, he knew it. Now that she had run away, who knows what he would do to her.

"Well, we have to start somewhere. Just show me where you were drivin' and maybe we can figure out where she came from," Bobby told him patiently. Just because Bobby was being level headed didn't mean that he wasn't worried for Sam. In the short amount of time that she had been here, she had become like one of his own. Between that and the way that Sam was warming up to Gabriel (and the way Gabriel was falling in love with Sam), Bobby was just as frustrated as Gabriel and Gabriel shoutin' at him wasn't helping anything.

"...Okay. Though I don't know how much it'll do," Gabriel said defeated. He walked to the desk in the study and poured over the map. "I was on this main road, here," Gabriel told him pointing on the map.

"Well, that's a pretty long road. Why don't you tell me where you were going on your drive before that. Maybe we can narrow down which stretch you were on."

"It's not like I was really paying attention. I was driving to clear my head," Gabriel gritted out between clenched teeth. He was so mad at himself; why did he have to be so absentminded?

Bobby sighed. "What if you drive it?"

"Huh?"

"Drive, ya idjit. Get in your truck and we'll start at your old apartment and we'll retrace your path. That way I can get an idea of what stretch of road you were on."

"...That might work," Gabriel said quietly. "Come on, let's get crackin'," Gabriel told him with a glint of hope in his eyes.

Luke found her like that an hour later; sobbing and curled into as much of a ball as she could manage. He made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat and jerked Sam's legs away from her stomach and straightened them. He grabbed the end of some rope that was strewn about on the floor and tied her legs to the bed frame opposite her hands. Sam started to struggle, knowing what was coming next, but Luke slapped her, hard, across the face. Sam stilled as she tried to get the ringing in her ears to stop and her vision to not blur together.

"Sam, you know that you have to do what I tell you," Luke was saying. "If you don't, I'm going to have to make sure that you know that I own you. I control you. You are mine," he said punctuating each sentence with a cut from the knife that he was holding. It was the same knife from before; the same one that had carved into her a few hours ago.

Sam groaned with each bite of the blade into her skin. She tried to keep quiet, to not show any reaction, but it was too much. She whimpered when he stopped, "Please...don't. You own me, I'm yours...please..." Sam begged him.

"I want to believe you, Sam, I really do. But you've lied to me before. So, I think that I'm going to have to take a few more drastic measures than just having you repeat my words back to me," he said as he brought the point of the knife against her right thigh. "Try not to black out on me, sweetheart, or I'll find other words to write on you," Luke said with a sick grin, and then the pain started and Sam screamed.

"...So then I made a left here, I think, and I started-yeah, this is familiar," Gabe was telling Bobby who was riding shotgun armed with a map and a sharpie. He was highlighting Gabriel's route as the younger man drove through the back roads of Sioux Falls.

"Okay, and how long do you-" Bobby was saying when Gabriel interrupted him.

"This is it, Bobby! This is where I saw her! I drove past this sign and almost hit her!" Gabriel was yelling at Bobby with relief.

"Great. So I know what stretch of the road to look at. Let's get back to the house and see what's around here," Bobby said and Gabriel floored it back to Bobby's house. They were getting somewhere, and Gabriel couldn't be happier for that. The only thing that he could ask for at this point was that they could find Sam as soon as possible. Preferably now.

When they made it back to Bobby's, Gabriel flew out of the cab of the truck practically before he pulled the keys on of the ignition. By the time Bobby came walking in after him, Gabriel was bouncing in his seat by the desk in the living room. Bobby quickly made his way to the desk and laid the map out fully.

The lots that were surrounding the road were all wooded, but Gabriel was insistent that she came from the left side of the road. They looked at all the lots for 100 yards to see if there were any defining features. Each house seemed to be the same; about the same distance from the road, the same size, everything. Gabriel was getting frustrated again before he asked Bobby, "Are there any lots that have basements, or where the houses are further away from the others?" Bobby looked puzzled, and Gabriel explained his line of thinking. "The scars. They were newer than six years. I think that that freak she's with did that to her."

"They looked that new?"

"They didn't look six years old. She was traumatized, Bobby, why else would she be if he wasn't anything to be afraid of?"

"He did try to kill her," Bobby countered.

"Yeah," Gabriel countered, "And what makes you think that he wouldn't cut her up along with attempt to kill her and whore her out to whoever pays the most?"

"...Fair point," Bobby conceded and started to look up the specifics on the houses that were in the 100 yards of land that they were looking at. It was a long search, but it ended with decent results. "Okay," Bobby said about an hour and a half later, "There are two houses that could be what we're looking for." Bobby wrote down the addresses and handed them to Gabriel.

"Alright," Gabriel said with a grim face, "Let's do some recon."

Sam had been awake the whole time that Luke was carving into her thigh. Both of them were bloodied and bruised; there were nicks where Sam had started thrashing and the knife slipped and rope burns around her wrists and ankles. When Luke had finished with his "masterpiece" he had thrown a dirty towel at her, untied her arms and told her to clean herself up; that "next time he wanted to fuck what was his, he didn't want to get bloody in the process".

When he left, he had bolted the door behind him leaving Sam alone in the room. It was dark; there were no windows, only one door out. The room was square and the walls were thick, maybe even soundproof. Everything was dirty; the floors, the ceiling, the mattress, hell, even the rag he had thrown at her had been dirty. It was interesting that he would have a room like this, seeing as how Luke was methodical and almost OCD in his cleanliness. Probably for the ambiance Sam thought dryly.

She untied her feet with shaky hands and retrieved the towel from the floor where it had fallen. Her legs burned when she brought them up to her stomach to inspect the damage. The skin around the gashes was red and hot to the touch. She was afraid that they might be infected already, but she realized that an infection wouldn't set in for a day or so. The lines were sure, as though he knew when she would thrash and try to throw him off of her. It was infuriating, but Sam pushed that down and tried to find the cleanest part of the rag.

As she cleaned, she thought about Gabriel. What was he doing? When did he find out that she was gone? Was he looking for her? Did he get her secret message with her shoes and her lack of over shirt? Did he even care that she was gone? Did he care at all for her? She knew that he liked her, maybe even wanted to sleep with her, but did he love her that way that she loved him?

Wait. What?

When did she come to the conclusion that she loved him? It was apparent to her; there was no denying that he made her feel safe and cherished and happy and carefree like she did back before all of this badness in her life, but since when did she want, no, need that to be reciprocated?

Okay, so maybe she knew for a while that she had loved him (read: since that day that she had gotten him off the roof), but it shouldn't mean anything. She had never had love before, so why did she need it now? But no matter how she tried to tell herself that it was nothing, she still wanted more than anything to have that feeling returned.

Not that it matters. she thought to herself. It's not like I'll ever see him again.

Gabriel was fidgeting again. Bobby had told him three times at the previous house to calm the hell down; that no amount of twitching was going to make them find her faster, but Gabriel couldn't really stop himself. So, Bobby told him to either get it under control or he was going to watch a different house. Gabriel had stopped, thankfully, but a few hours later, he was back to fidgeting, so Bobby packed up and walked to the next house.

This one had more promise; there were people that were patrolling the inside of the house, whereas the other place looked to be the home of a younger couple that was blissfully in love. Upon further inspection with the aid of binoculars, it was ascertained that the female of the couple looked nothing like Sam. The men that they saw were stoic and dressed in an everyday fashion, but they had ear wigs or they carried around walkie talkies which really gave them away.

They took the house in shifts, sleeping- for a few hours in Bobby's case, or an hour or two in Gabriel's -before switching off with the other. Bobby was better rested, but Gabriel was the one to determine that there was an anomaly in the watch of the third man patrolling the grounds. He would come just two minutes later than everyone else, which would give him enough time to get in there and find Sam.

When Gabriel told Bobby this, the older man snorted with disdain. "Are you kidding, Gabe? We have no idea what the interior of the house looks like, how many people are actually in there, if Luke is in there, where Sam is; hell, we don't really know ANYTHING."

Gabriel was quiet for the whole rant that Bobby gave, then looked the older man in the eye and told him quite calmly, "You're right. But I do know that I can't leave her in there any longer than I have to. I'm going in there, tonight, Bobby. I'm going to get her out, and I really don't care what I have to do to accomplish that."

Bobby looked at Gabriel and shook his head. "I have your back, ya idjit," was all that Bobby told him in reply, and Gabriel slipped out of the truck and into the night.