Author's Note - Thank you very much for the reviews. Just read a spoiler for tomorrow. Really wished I hadn't. Kind of want to cry...

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Her whole body trembled. A ball of nauseating fear curled up in her chest and she tried not to make an audible noise. He knew exactly who she was. Everything about her. She wasn't just some random girl swiped off the street. This had been a planned attack. An attack that had been planned and executed with perfect precision. He had her in his dark, musty dungeon and there was no way to escape. In fact, she knew – without a doubt – that the only way she would leave this place was in a body bag. She'd been in dangerous situations before but, knowing Isaac's deadly record, this really topped them all.

"Why…" she whispered, wiping a sweaty tendril of hair from her damp forehead, "Why are you doing this?"

"Ah, isn't that the big question?" Isaac smiled, crouching down so he was on her level, staring intensely into her eyes. She physically recoiled. "The one you've been trying to figure out for months. Your team haven't done a very good job of finding out who I am, have they Dr. Alexander?"

Nikki gulped, looking away. "There was no evidence on the bodies. We had no clues."

"Were you impressed?" the man asked, curiously. Reaching out her ran a cold finger down her burning cheek. Much to her disgust, she almost leant into the coolness for relief. Almost.

"Impressed by what exactly?" she snapped, glaring at him.

"My obvious expertise? My light-handedness? My clinical attention to detail," Isaac suggested, nonchalantly. A wolfish smile curled his lips. "Didn't you wonder how I learnt enough to fool you with all your clever tests and procedures?"

"We assumed….we assumed you were connected to the field."

"Ah…then you'd be right, Dr. Alexander. Not quite as stupid as you all make out, eh?"

"Are you a pathologist?" she asked, curious despite herself. She was never one to give up on a case. She loved learning the facts. Piecing together the bits of the puzzle.

"Not quite," he smirked, "Not quite but you're very warm."

"A doctor?"

"Guess again."

"A detective," Nikki guessed, hating that she was cooperating with him but not seeing how she could do anything else. She was very aware that he was playing games with her.

"Gold star!" Isaac said. His blue eyes were suddenly distant. "Well, I was a detective." He focussed back on her. "But then I decided to have a change of career. Personally, I think it utilises my hard-learned skills quite well, don't you?"

Nikki said nothing. She'd had enough. She wasn't going to allow him to build a rapport with her. She wouldn't be his plaything. The fact he was a detective meant he knew exactly how to play the mind games until you broke. He'd probably done it enough times in interrogation. She kept her mouth clamped shut.

"Oh, Dr. Alexander, have you had enough?" Isaac asked, patronisingly, his head cocked as if he was addressing a wayward puppy or a stubborn toddler rather than a woman he was torturing in his basement. "Don't you want to know anymore? I thought a pathologist's thirst for answers was what drove them? Or is that just cops I'm thinking of?"

He looked expectantly at her with dark eyebrows raised. She glared at the radiator that was still burning her shoulder, determined not to make eye contact with this monster. There were thin cracks and chinks in the ceramic of the radiator. Gently, she ran an already burning finger down one. Her eyes shone with tears, partly from the pain and partly from the devastating reality of the situation she'd found herself in.

"I had a fiancée once," Isaac said, his deep voice echoing around the enclosed space. Nikki flinched like a frightened animal.

"That's nice for you," she said with biting sarcasm.

"It was. I loved her very much. Then she went missing. I was distraught. I thought she'd been abducted." Nikki found herself listening intently, despite desperately wanting to have the strength to ignore him. "I had the whole London police force looking for her. For weeks I searched. Those were the worst and darkest days of my life."

"How unfortunate for you," Nikki sniped but really she was intrigued as to where he was going with this story.

"And then, out of the blue, I had a phone call from her. She was in America. She told me to leave her the hell alone and to stop looking for her. That's when I realised she'd just left me. She hadn't been in trouble. She wasn't dead. She was just a stupid, selfish bitch who'd got fed up with living with me and gone. I was humiliated. I'd wasted police time and effort. I went from being the victim to the laughing stock of the CID."

"Touching," Nikki said, acerbically. "Maybe she realised what a murdering bastard you were and got out before you could off her as well-"

"Oh no, Nikki, don't you see?" Isaac interrupted, flashing her his sharp white teeth, like a shark coming in for the kill. "She's the reason I'm doing this. She made me suffer and didn't even care. I can't make her pay but I can make you pay in her place."

"I don't…"

"All you women are the same. Cold-hearted bitches. I'm going to show you what your abduction has done to the boyfriend you left behind."

Nikki couldn't help it. She let out a hysterical bark of a laugh.

"You can't have done your bloody 'research' very well then, can you?" she said, scathingly, "Because I'm not with anyone. It's just me. On my own. A spinster before her time."

"Oh really?" Isaac asked, unperturbed as he arched an indulgent eyebrow. "Well, I have something that would suggest otherwise. Let me show you."

He walked over to the far corner of the room and Nikki could hear him scuffling about. The squeak of wheels reached her ears and her eyes widened when she saw him wheeling a television set towards her. Baffled, she couldn't help but show her disdain at the situation.

"Are we going to watch a film? If I'd known I would have brought popcorn."

"Oh, you won't want popcorn once you've seen this. In fact, I think it may leave you feeling a little green around the gills."

Parking the mounted television in front of her so it pretty much blocked her view of the rest of the room, he went over to a nearby socket and plugged the device in. Once he'd done that he pressed the 'on' button. Nikki waited for a moment and was about to make a smart comment about investing in a new TV set from the 21st century when the screen sprung into life.

The image was of a room. She guessed it was a bedroom from the double bed that sat in the centre. The duvet was a dark, rich blue and the furnishings around the space were uncluttered and stylish. Nikki deduced it was a male bedroom and she found an uneasy sensation of familiarity squirming in her stomach. Suddenly, the door opened and a figure strode in. It took her a moment to realise who he was but the shock of dark brown hair and strong jaw was unmistakable.

"Harry…" she breathed, horrified. Her gaze flicked briefly to Isaac who said nothing, merely leered at her, and then back. She continued to watch with morbid fascination.

Harry roughly kicked off his shoes and almost knocked over a chair by his dresser as he threw his jacket at it. His movements were rash and jerky and he kept moving, almost pacing, as if he didn't know what to do with himself. Finally, he stopped pacing like a caged lion and dropped onto the edge of the bed. He placed his head in his hands and Nikki saw his broad shoulders shake uncontrollably. He was…crying.

"No!" she gasped, "Stop it! Stop it now!"

She tore her gaze away from the screen and glowered at her captor. He merely smiled at her.

"That's how I was….when she vanished. Inconsolable. I held it together for a few days of course but there's only so long you can rein it in."

"But Harry's not my boyfriend! He's just my friend! Why are you showing me this?"

"So you can witness what your absence does to him. So you can know what my fiancée did to me."

"Stop it! I don't want to see." She kicked out, trying to push the trolley away with her feet. Isaac merely put the brakes on.

"Here's the remote. There are two channels. Both live. I'm giving you the chance to switch between the two. Very generous, I think."

He dropped a heavy object in her lap and then left. His heavy footfalls carrying him up the staircase.

Nikki let the tears fall in earnest once he'd left. Running down her burning cheeks and making them feel sticky and uncomfortable. Every time she tried to wipe them away she would knock her cheekbone with the metal of her handcuffs. Eventually, she just gave up. The television still ran and she tried desperately not to look at it. There was no sound but that just made it all the more disturbing. Occasionally, her gaze would travel back to the screen and she would stare in muted horror at the live video of Harry crying. He was crying over her. He was breaking down over her. She desperately wanted to console him. To do anything to stop the broken sobs that wracked his whole body. It was as if someone was running an electric current through him, zapping him and torturing him.

Eventually, she had to switch channels. First she tried switching the television off but Isaac had foreseen this and covered all the other buttons in thick black duck tape. She only had the choice of two. Flicking over, she was greeted by a familiar view of the conference room. Initially, she wondered how the hell he'd managed to get the cameras into there but she guessed, as an ex-police detective, he had contacts and methods. Her brown eyes scanned the shimmering screen and fell on the hunched figure of Leo who was leaning against the desk, staring intently at the whiteboards in front of him. He looked exhausted, like he hadn't slept in days.

Irrational guilt built inside of her. Her friends were suffering in her absence. She wished they didn't care so much. Then they wouldn't be hurt so badly….especially when she turned up dead…