Bernardo set Diego's guitar down on the bed, yawning. If he was going to stay up, he was going to need help, and a snack from the kitchen seemed the right idea. He gently closed Diego's door, knowing Alejandro slept in the larger bedroom two doors down. Don Alejandro should be asleep by now, Bernardo thought. He'd overheard the man say once that Diego's playing often soothed him to sleep…something the two of them took full advantage of.

He found some leftovers from that evening's dinner and brought them to the sala, setting them on the table.

Off to his right, he heard a creak. He paused, looking over at the cabinet on the wall. Behind it was another secret entrance to the tunnels that peppered the hacienda. He waited, thinking it might be Diego although that seems a bit soon for him to have returned already.

When the cabinet wall didn't open, Bernardo returned his attention to the table. He would eat and then return to Diego's room, and when Diego returned he could go to the servant's quarters off the main house and sleep.

That sound again! Bernardo turned in time to see the cabinet swing open, and two unfamiliar men came into the room. His eyes went wide. Who were they, and how had they gotten into the tunnels?

With a start, he realized the only way could have been from the secret cavern…the same direction Diego would have taken to get out that evening. As he raised his hands as they came menacingly toward him, he had another realization. Whether Diego had gotten past them to ride as Zorro that evening…or if he had encountered them in the tunnels…there was a good chance that Bernardo was on his own.

One man, an ugly, stout man with a scar running from his eye to nose, motioned at Bernardo with a pistol. "You chose an inopportune time for a midnight snack, compadre," he said in a low growl. "Sit."

Bernardo pointed to his ear, then his mouth, and shook his head. Continue the ruse, he told himself. If he could just buy enough time…

"He's deaf and stupid," Scarface's partner guessed.

"Si, but it appears his eyes work just fine." Scarface leered at him, and Bernardo took a step back, bumping into the table. The silver set and the candelabra on the surface rattled. "Stop moving," Scarface told him. "Too bad he cannot tell us if he's the only one here. A place like this must belong to someone with a lot of money…or more than one someone."

"And perhaps those are someones that someone else would pay a fortune for," his partner offered.

"Exactly."

Scarface handed his pistol to his partner, then roughly grabbed Bernardo and yanked him into one of the chairs. He moved to a bench seat near one of the windows and pulled a blanket off of it. He ripped the fabric into strips.

Bernardo winced. He was fairly certain that particular item had been made by Diego's mother. Scarface bound Bernardo's wrists to the arms of the chair. "Let's go see if there's anyone else awake," he said, "apart from the man in the cellar."

Bernardo's heart sank. Diego.

Diego awoke in pitch black with a splitting headache. Opening his eyes to the darkness, he had a moment of panic until they adjusted. He assessed his condition quickly–still in the tunnels under the house, lying on his side, hands and feet bound, and gagged with something.

He remembered coming into the main tunnel, remembered seeing a face, and then something cracking him across the face. He could smell something coppery and knew it was blood. Diego wriggled himself to a sitting position, wincing as the darkness exploded with lights. His head hurt, but everything that could move, even a little, did move, so that was a good sign.

He flexed his fingers, his wrists. Whoever had tied him up had done a marvelous job, and he cursed them silently behind the fabric inbetween his teeth. He had no idea how long he'd been out. And in his current condition, there was no way to continue on his escapades this evening. No, he thought, better to get out of this mess and return to the house, to make sure my father and Bernardo are all right.

He swore, twisting his wrists again. This was going to take awhile.

Bernardo heard cursing in Spanish, and craned his head to see Scarface's partner manhandling Alejandro de la Vega down the stairs. He yanked on his bindings, but nothing budged. "Get your hands off me," Alejandro growled. "I will enjoy running you through with cold steel."

"You and what army, old man?" Alejandro was shoved into the chair opposite Bernardo. "Do not move. You are not the first old man I've had to teach a lesson to," Scarface's partner threatened.

As if to emphasize the point, Scarface took a knife from the silver set and pointed it just under Bernardo's chin, forcing his head up.

Alejandro saw it, and paused. "Ah, you are not as foolish as I thought," the partner said. He studied Alejandro as Scarface bound him to the chair, seeming to enjoy roughing up the old ranchero just a bit. "He looks a bit like the one from the cellar, eh?"

Scarface looked at Alejandro. Then, he grinned. "Si… especially around the eyes. Father and son, perhaps? This one–" here he nodded to Bernardo, "-looks nothing like either of them."

"The one from the cellar?" Alejandro repeated. "What are you talking about?" He glanced at Bernardo, who did his best to maintain a lost, scared expression. It was not difficult.

Alejandro was a smart man, and he put two and two together quickly. "Diego. Where is my son?" he demanded of the two men. "What have you done with him?"

Scarface moved to the cabinet against the wall, pressed the mechanism to open it. Bernardo watched Alejandro closely. He didn't seem surprised at all by the hidden passages. And he wouldn't , Bernardo supposed. After all, Alejandro's father had built this hacienda from the ground up. The man disappeared while his partner kept a pistol trained on their two hostages.

Minutes later, Scarface reappeared, hauling a bound and gagged Diego along with him. Diego was still dressed as himself. Bernardo winced at his friend's injuries- the cut across his face looked like it had been made with the butt of a pistol and it was already starting to bruise. There was a trail of dried blood running from Diego's cheekbone.

"Diego!" Alejandro gasped, yanking on his bindings. "I'll see both of you hanged in the plaza before morning," he swore to the two bandits.

Diego's face was a cross between worry for his father and Bernardo and fury at being caught off guard. Scarface shoved him and he stumbled into the table, hip bouncing off the corner. He righted himself and glared at the two bandits. His eyes drifted to Bernardo and his father. Gracias a Dios, they both seemed unharmed. That was the good news.

The bad news…he had no idea how he was going to get them out of this.