"Are you okay?" Logan whispered into the darkness.

Maddie didn't turn to face him, but she slowly nodded her head yes. Logan might not be a spy, but even he was pretty sure she was lying.

The darkness was thicker, somehow, with Maddie here. Logan had already resigned himself to his fate, but he was far less okay with it now that Maddie had joined him in this predicament.

"I did everything you told me to," Logan said, trying not to sound defensive. "This wasn't supposed to happen."

Maddie sighed, heavily. "I know you did. This is entirely my fault."

"Maddie," Logan started, forcing the words past the tightness in his throat. "Why are you here?" The words sounded like an accusation, but Logan couldn't stop it in time. He couldn't help but be a little angry that Maddie had walked into this cabin where they were both probably going to die. But being angry wasn't going to change anything now, so he adjusted his tone and continued. "And why are you alone?"

Maddie turned to Logan, her eyes cold and dark, and Logan could see the anger and fear boiling behind them. "Because," Maddie whispered. "I'm pretty sure this isn't about you."

"I'm the one who got kidnapped," Logan accused. But then he paused, and thought. And once he did, the reality became obvious.

"I'm the bait," he said quietly.

Maddie nodded.

And that was when Logan heard the door upstairs squeak open, and the heavy steps of a well-muscled adult man echo from above.

"We're both the bait," she whispered angrily, as though she somehow should have realized all of this sooner.

"Hello, Rosalie," Michael Manchester said calmly. "I hope I haven't kept you waiting."

Rosalie laughed, and the sound sent shivers down Logan's spine as she responded. "Only fifteen years."

Logan was very aware of the way Maddie had instantly come alive beside him, panic hovering behind her eyes as she processed what was happening above her.

"I'm sorry," Michael Manchester said sympathetically. "You know I really didn't fake my own death and move to Alaska just to inconvenience you."

Logan could hear him strolling casually around the cabin, assessing the situation.

"Kind of unfair to bring my daughter and the kid into it though, isn't it?" he posited. "Just not very sportsmanlike. Are you really going to kill all three of us? Because that's kind of a lot of holes to dig, and it's way more time consuming than you'd think."

Michael Manchester didn't wait for a response. Logan couldn't shake the thought that he sounded just like Maddie.

"Probably just Maddie and I, right? And you'll turn Logan over to get a nice cushy cell in a minimum-security prison? I mean, no one's going to miss two people who barely exist anyway."

Maddie had gotten to her feet and was quietly pacing the perimeter of the basement, though Logan wasn't sure what she was searching for. She apparently didn't find what she was looking for, and returned to Logan's side.

Rosalie laughed again. "It's so cute how you underestimate me," she retorted. "But I've had fifteen years to think about how you tore my family apart. Fifteen years my daughter didn't get to spend with her father. . ."

"See," Michael Manchester cut her off. "Maddie lost her mom too, so I think you're re-writing history just a little bit..."

Maddie dropped to the floor in front of Logan and used her teeth to grab the rope around his wrists. Working together, and with the right amount of force applied at the correct time, Logan was eventually able to slip one of his hands free.

"Take off your shirt," Maddie was next to Logan again, whispering into his ear. He didn't know what she was planning, but he did as he was told. He undid the buttons on his collared shirt, wiggled it over the ropes still piled on his left wrist, and passed it to Maddie.

"We're actually even, if you think about it," Logan heard Michael Manchester say through the floorboards.

Maddie sniffed the shirt, and nodded. Logan's first thought was that this really wasn't the time for her to appreciate how good he smelled, but then he remembered that starch could be flammable. Maddie walked to the far corner of the cellar, and jerked her head in a signal for Logan to follow.

"That wasn't the same thing, and you know it," Rosalie's voice echoed from upstairs. Her tone was escalating now, and even Logan knew they were almost out of time. "You knew exactly what you were doing."

Maddie's hands were still bound, but she fished them under her shirt anyway, and appeared to unwind something wrapped around her bra. When she pulled her arms back out, Logan saw a flash of silver, as she negotiated her flint necklace into position.

Logan's eyes grew huge as he realized what Maddie was about to do, but she held her fingers to her lips and motioned upward.

There was a small space above their heads between the floorboards and the wall. Just enough to funnel smoke up to the second floor.

If she didn't set herself or the whole cabin on fire in the process.

Logan shook his head "no" violently, but Maddie rolled her eyes, as if to say "what other option is there."

And unfortunately, Logan couldn't disagree. A long five seconds of silence had passed upstairs, and Logan knew they couldn't wait any longer. He held out his hands and used them to step Maddie onto his shoulders, where she sat precariously.

As Maddie adjusted herself on Logan's shoulders, he heard Michael Manchester let out a heavy sigh from upstairs.

"I didn't know Gregory Maxwell had any children when I killed him."

Logan and Maddie both froze at the words. Logan glanced up. Maddie's face was processing what she'd just heard. Her hands frozen on the flint necklace, her elbow pinning the shirt to the wall.

"Are you asking me to believe you wouldn't have done it if you had?" Rosalie responded.

Logan reached up and slipped the flint necklace from Maddie's frozen fingers. He positioned it in his hands, closed his eyes, said a prayer, and lit a spark.

Nothing happened.

"That's not what I said," Michael Manchester's voice slid through the boards above them, the weight of his words heavy in the air. "But I am sorry. For your daughter. I can't imagine she had an easy childhood growing up alone with you.

Maddie's hand dropped next to Logan's ear, and he placed the flint and striker back between her fingers. She deftly lit the spark, which landed on Logan's discarded shirt. There was a nanosecond, where it looked like nothing would happen, and then a small, flicker of flame began to burn.

Rosalie laughed, and Logan shivered again.

"Like hell you are," she spat. "Enough talking. I think it's time your daughter and her little friend joined us, don't you?"

Maddie balled the shirt up in her hands, and stuffed as much as she could into the space between the wall. Then she slid down from Logan's shoulders, dragged him across the room, and waited at the base of the stairs. The cellar was filling with smoke, and Maddie buried her nose in her sleeve. Logan quickly did the same.

Footsteps began to cross the floorboards above their head, and for a moment, it seemed their efforts had all been in vain. And then that tiny flicker of fire, that small flame of hope, changed direction, and the floor beams caught.

The smoke in the cellar became almost instantly heavier, but Maddie still held Logan's arm firm. Then Logan heard a gunshot and the sounds of a struggle, and Maddie yanked him up the stairs.

The smoke was heavier upstairs, and growing thicker by the moment, and Logan couldn't see either Michael Manchester or Rosalie Sinclair clearly through the haze as Maddie pushed him behind her and shuffled them to the still open door, and through the storm door.

Logan gasped in a breath of fresh air as Maddie slammed the stormer behind her as hard as she could, and banged her fist into the lower metal section three times in quick succession.

And then she dragged Logan behind her as they ran through the clearing and into the tree cover on the other side.

"Mad. . ." Logan tried to get her attention, but his lungs burned, and his legs felt like jelly. "Maddie, your dad. . ."

"Would prioritize your safety," Maddie cut him off. Logan caught a glance at Maddie's face, but there was nothing there to see. It was almost as if Maddie had turned off all of her emotions to push herself through this moment. And it was terrifying.

Maddie stopped 100 feet in from the tree line and crouched in the bush. Logan stayed perfectly still beside her as she watched the cabin with appraising and nervous eyes. But there was nothing to see, except the ever-increasing pillar of smoke, and the flames that were quickly devouring the wall adjacent to the hole they'd found.

Maddie's eyes lit up for a moment, and she turned to Logan and whispered, in a hushed but desperate tone, "Do you hear that?"

Logan listened. If he concentrated hard, he could make out a barely perceptible but rhythmic humming noise, almost like a dolphin flapping its fins against the ocean.

Logan nodded. "What is it?" he asked, confused.

Maddie turned her pained eyes back to the cabin before them, and if Logan hadn't been watching her carefully, he would have missed the word that fell from her lips, barely making a sound, as if saying it out loud might jinx it out of existence.

"Hope."

AN: I know, this chapter has some really sketchy science. Is starch actually flammable? I don't know, the internet was indecisive, this is fiction, please don't come at me.