Barney lay against the dolly he was strapped to. He was hyperventilating. He couldn't help it. Before him was a masked monster with red eyes gleaming at him. The monster's spawn. Those maroon eyes declared her pedigree more eloquently than any DNA test the FBI could have devised.

"You wanted to talk to me?" he asked, trying not to squeak. It might have seemed funny, such a large man terrified of a small woman who weighed less than half of what he did. It wasn't funny to Barney. He could feel sweat trickling down his back under the straitjacket.

"Yes," Susana said. "I wanted to…ask you some questions. Then settle up your account with my papa."

"Dr. Lecter."

"Very good, Barney. Was it the eyes? It's always the eyes, isn't it."

"Windows to the soul, your father said."

Susana snorted. "Poetic claptrap. Don't change the subject."

Barney would've talked about whatever she wanted if it bought him some time. He took a deep breath.

"Were you planning on screaming, Barney? I'd rather you didn't. It'll echo off the walls and be so very unpleasant for both of us. But if you must…"

She opened one door and hopped out onto the bumper. At the top of her lungs, she screamed, "HELP! RAPE! POLICE!" She glanced in the porthole at him and grinned at him fiendishly. His heart skipped a beat or two. She leaned out again.

"I HAVE KIDNAPPED A LARGE BLACK MALE NURSE NAMED BARNEY! I HAVE HIM STRAPPED TO A DOLLY IN THE BACK OF MY TRUCK, WHICH I KILLED SOMEONE ELSE TO GET! AND I DID IT ALL ON PURPOSE!" she screamed out into the night. Then she hopped back in the truck, and raised her eyebrows at him, quite pleased with herself.

When Susana announced that she had done this all on purpose, Barney broke out laughing. He couldn't help it. He laughed until his sides ached and he heaved for breath. He didn't like the increasing anger in Susana's gaze, but he couldn't have stopped if she had gutted him on the spot. He spluttered out laughter in great heaves of his breath and chuffed in air in painful, short gusts.

"I'm not laughing at you,--no, please, really…I—I just," he gasped.

"A bit stressed out, are we?" Susana asked archly. The menace in her voice was unmistakable.

Barney's small teeth bit down hard on his tongue. A few moments later, he felt the warm salty taste of his own blood in his mouth, but he was able to stop laughing.

"Yes," he husked. "I didn't mean to laugh at you. Or your father."

"Good."

"You were showing me that screaming won't do me any good. That no one will hear me and that it will just annoy you."

"Correct," she said.

"Your father must have taught you about planning. He was always an excellent planner. Taught me about it too."

"He was," Susana said after a brief pause. Her tone made it obvious.

"I'm sorry," Barney said with real regret. Those two words, delivered with real sadness and sympathy, did a lot to help win him back his life.

"So what did you want to talk to me about, then?" he asked. "I'll tell you anything you want to know."

"What was it like, guarding him?" she asked curiously. The question was so basic, so common that Barney thought he might laugh again.

"Well," he said, "we were civil. Always tried to be. He didn't talk a lot at first. There were some times he would go for months without speaking. I was taking some courses by mail, and he showed some interest in them and told me to get some books."

"Go on," she said.

Barney felt a bit like Scherezade in A thousand and one nights. His life depended on how long he told this young monster a story that interested her.

"Mostly, we talked at night. That was when the crying died down to a dull roar." He strained. "I had a lot of respect for him, though."

"Respect? You took away his mail privileges and put him in restraints at times."

Barney felt sweat break out on his forehead. Shit.

"That was security. There was stuff I had to do. He knew the rules. Security was never personal."

"I'm sure he felt that way," she said drily.

"Actually, no. He knew it wasn't personal. I made sure of that." He squinted at her and smiled, displaying his small white teeth. "Can you tell me your name? I like to know a person's name."

"No," Susana said sharply. "I'm his daughter. That's all you need to know."

"Can I guess?" he said slyly.

Her eyes narrowed. She studied him carefully for a moment or two. "Sure," she said guardedly.

Barney noticed she seemed bothered. That made him nervous. Had he known the reason why, he might not have been so worried. Susana was bothered because she was not able to follow her normal plan.

"Well," he said. "Dr. Lecter always liked Suetionius. He said if he had a child he might consider that for a name. But he also said that he wouldn't ever name a child something that stuck out too much." He chuckled and smiled. He knew from long experience that a killer often has a harder time killing a victim that is humanized to him – or her. "He said if his name was Bob or Dave Lecter instead of Hannibal that he might have been able to get a few more in before he was caught. So I'd bet your name is Sue, or something like that. Something a bit more nondescript."

The results scared him. He saw a flash of surprise in her eyes and she took a step forward. Her hand went for her pocket. Perhaps he had hit too close to the mark.

"Okay. Okay. Tell you what. I'll just call you Sue and I won't ask if that's actually your name or not. That sound okay to you? Can I just call you Sue?" His tone was soothing and calm. He tried not to betray the fear he showed.

She leaned in close to him. "Tell me more," she said.

"That's really about it. Your father and I talked about a whole lot of things. Genetics. Philosophy. I think he liked teaching me."

"Were you a willing student?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "I liked hearing about what your father had to say, Sue. I wouldn't be where I am if not for him."

"So what did he educate you on?"

Barney smiled again, then wondered if she could see it through the mask. "Oh, there's a lot. I don't know if I can even remember them all."

"You better," she said, although Barney noted that her tone did not carry any real menace.

"Genetics, for example. He had a lot to say on how characteristics are inherited. With me, I never really went to school, so he had to start from the bottom with me. He taught me a lot about chemistry. Medicine. Genetics. Sciences, things like that. You have to remember, Sue, I never went to college until I was much older. Barely graduated high school."

"Were you afraid of him?"

Barney didn't know if this was the right answer or not, but decided that honesty would be the best policy. Lecter had been almost a human polygraph, able to discern lies with razor accuracy. He might well have taught a few tricks to his daughter.

"At first, a bit. As we got to talking, I got less and less afraid of him. I always dealt foursquare with him. Same as I'm dealing with you. I think he respected that."

"Are you afraid of me?" she asked.

Barney mulled over his words before answering. "I'm afraid you're going to hurt me, or kill me," he said carefully. "I see you getting angry occasionally and I get afraid that you'll lose control."

"But are you afraid of me?" she persisted.

"Right now? Yes."

"Sort of silly, don't you think? A big, strong man, afraid of a little girl like me." She came close to him and ground her hip against him in a circular motion. He was shocked speechless for a moment or two.

"The-the big man's strapped down and the lit-little girl has a knife," he stuttered.

"That's true. But I know you're afraid. I can smell it." Her nostrils flared under the ski mask. Barney thought crazily of her father in his cell, and his powerful sense of smell. Of course, no extra powers of smell were needed to smell the fear-sweat Barney had been basting in.

"Can you smell me, Barney?" she asked mockingly.

Barney toyed with the idea of telling her she used Evyan skin cream, and sometimes wore L'air du temps, but not today. He decided that sarcasm was not called for, given his position. She probably knew the line.

"No," he said.

"You sure?" She pressed herself against him. In any other case he would have been delighted to have a woman her age press herself against him, but now he was simply trying to think. "No perfume? No powder? Can you smell my—" she stopped and stared into space with a frustrated look. "My chacon?"

Barney looked blank behind his mask. "Your what?"

"My chacon. My concha. My--," her frustrated look became more intense. Hannibal Lecter had taken pains to teach his daughter English, but he had stepped around profanity as deftly as a man will step around where the family dog has defecated on the grass. "You know," she said.

"No, I don't," Barney said, and then it hit him like a ton of bricks. English wasn't her first language. Sounded like Spanish. And where did they say chacon instead of concha?

She looked mad now. Then the memories of his trip to Argentina twenty-five years ago weighed in, and he remembered what she was trying to say.

"Oh!" he crowed. "I…um…I know what you mean. And no, I can't smell that. And the English word for that is…well, I was raised not to say words like that around women."

"Yeah," she said acidly. Barney realized now: she was frustrated not only because of her lack of knowledge of English profanities. She was mad because she thought she looked foolish. And that was bad.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," he said soothingly. "You speak English very well. I didn't even pick up on an accent. And I've been to Buenos Aires, and nobody there speaks as well as you do."

When he said Buenos Aires, all hell broke loose. Her eyes flared behind their eyeholes. He saw her entire body tremble and could have sworn that her eyes did glow red with her fury.

"WHAT?" she screamed, and her right hand dove for her pocket. It came out with a wicked-looking knife. It clicked open in a trice and she leaped on him. Barney's dolly crashed against the wall and came to rest at a forty-five-degree angle. The blade touched the corner of his eye and began to dig in. It hurt like hell. He could see her flaring eyes and her trembling lips. Barney had dealt with people who were very worked up, and he knew that her already waning self-control could snap in an instant if he said the wrong thing. Whether he lived or died would be determined in the next few minutes.

The knife continued to dig into the hard bone of his eye socket. Her other hand grabbed a fistful of the straitjacket. He could feel the energy in her, thrumming like a live wire. In this state, she could snap his neck and never feel a thing, at least until the next morning. When she spoke, her voice was shaky but controlled.

"Barney," she said. "Tell me this instant how you knew or I swear to God I'll cut your eye out."

Barney was scared shitless, but he knew that he had to control himself if he was going to get her calmed down. He had spent a lot of his career calming people down. Now his life depended on it. He took a deep breath and tried to get himself under control.

"I'll tell you, Sue. I promise. I need you to take the knife away from my eye."

"Tell me now or I'll put the knife in your eye," she threatened.

"Sue, it hurts. You're hurting me. Is that what you want? Do you want me to feel pain? Cause I am. It hurts like hell. Move the knife and I'll tell you."

Barney's eye teared up. The tears dripped into the wound at the corner of his eye. It stung and burned like hell. His mouth despaired as the blade dug in. He made eye contact with her and kept it on, letting her see his pain. If she was a sadist, it would only backfire, but he thought it might work.

"You're hurting me, Sue," he managed. "Stop hurting me and I'll tell you what you want to know."

Her eyes calmed then, and the nervous thrumming of her body slowed down. He figured she would be tired, hopefully disinterested in killing him. When the madmen on the ward threw a temper fit, it usually wasn't pretty for a while, but they were usually exhausted after that. Thankfully, she drew the knife away and looked at the blood on the blade as if puzzled how it got there.

Barney coughed. Blood trickled down his face like dark tears.

"Tell me," she said dangerously.

"Well," he said, "twenty-five years ago, I wanted to see every Vermeer in the world before I died. There's one in Buenos Aires. So I went…and I went to the opera while I was there. The Teatro Colon. And…I saw Dr. Lecter down there. And Starling. Clarice Starling. At least I thought it was them."

"Did they see you?"

"I don't know. Dr. Lecter looked at me. But that was twenty-five years ago. That's all. I swear to God. I…I don't know what set you off like that." He wondered privately if she was from Buenos Aires. Personally, Barney had believed that Dr. Lecter would move on from place to place. But after such a graphic demonstration about what saying the wrong thing to dangerous people got him, he would no more ask than he would suggest she take off her mask.

"You seem to know a lot about me," she said archly, but calmly.

"Sue, I don't know anything about you. It's all guesswork. I knew that people said…well, chacon, down in Argentina, that's all." He was trembling himself and felt very cold. "I don't want you to hurt me, Sue. I don't want you to go off like that, either. I don't like seeing you so upset."

She looked away and put the knife back in her pocket. Barney got the idea that she was embarrassed and didn't know what to do next. She opened the back door of the truck and hopped out on the bumper.

"I need to settle your account now," she muttered, and then ran off into the darkness. Barney did not like the sound of those words at all. He caught a glimpse of her through the oval portholed windows, and noticed she had taken off the mask. It looked like she was unlocking a door. She wasn't wearing the mask.

If she comes back without it on, I'm dead. She'll kill me.

She began walking back towards the truck, and still did not have the mask on. She was too far away and it was too dark for him to make out much of her face, but she looked a lot like Starling, he thought. Then she moved out of the way so he could no longer see her. Barney shivered. Please put the mask back on. I won't tell the cops anything. God, if you get me out of this I'll go to church. I'll become a damn monk if you want. Just make her come back with the mask on.

The front door of the truck opened. She walked up behind him and grabbed the dolly. Barney turned his head as much as he could and then clamped his eyes shut. For a moment he thought about Dr. Lecter telling him about Schrodinger's cat. As long as he kept his eyes shut, she was both wearing and not wearing the mask. Only once he opened his eyes would one become true and the other false.

"C'mon, Barney," she said.

He opened his eyes slowly.

The masked girl stared back at him.

Barney exhaled a great sigh of relief.

She wheeled him out onto the bumper. The truck came with a power hoist on the back for heavier packages, and Barney was indeed a heavy package. Hydraulics hissed as she lowered him to the ground.

"Know where you are?" she asked, sounding almost like she had a surprise for him.

Barney studied the building in the darkness. "It's too dark."

"Baltimore Internet Museum," she informed him.

Barney groaned. The Baltimore Internet Museum was built on the site of the asylum he had worked in all those years ago. It was a common matter to joke about. Barney had refused to go to the museum since it had opened.

"Sue, don't kill me," he said. "I know you want to…settle up some account or something, but don't kill me. For your dad."

"I'm not going to kill you, Barney," Susana said dispassionately.

"That's good. What are you planning, then?"

"You were friends with my father and so I won't kill you. But you do have to see how life was for him."

"Sue, that whole museum has been remodeled. They tore everything out. There's nothing there for you."

"Not the basement," she countered.

Barney did not know that and shut up. She opened a door and pushed him inside. He wondered how she had gotten keys and decided it was better not to ask. She rolled him over to the freight elevator.

"You never thought about what it was like for my papa, did you?"

"How do you mean?"

"Being locked in the cell. Knowing you won't get out. Ever. Knowing that those are the boundaries you will spend your days in. I'm not going to kill you, Barney, but you will walk a mile in my papa's shoes."

The elevator door opened and she rolled him out. Barney was down in the dungeon for the first time in years. It, at least, had remained constant. His former office, the cells, the barred gates. She rolled him down to the last cell. Dr. Lecter's cell.

The other cells had contained boxes and equipment. Dr. Lecter's was empty. She rolled him into the cell and spread her arms wide. There was no mattress and the toilet seat had been stolen years ago.

"Here you are, Barney," she said. "I'm going to lock you in here."

"And?"

"And leave you here," she said, staring at him as if he was daft.

"Sue, if you're going to kill me, do it quick with the knife and don't lock me in here to starve to death. I never, never, messed with your father's food or tortured him like that."

"You won't die," she said. "Are you nuts? Right overhead is the museum's accounting department." She indicated a bucket of freshly drawn water and some canned food with a can opener. "It's Friday night. They'll be in Monday. If you make enough noise, they'll hear you."

"Sue--,"

"Quiet, Barney."

Barney closed his mouth.

"You'll have three days or so in this cell, alone, feeling the way my papa felt and knowing what he knew. If you're smart, Barney, that'll be it. A stupid man would wait half an hour after I leave and scream and holler so no one will hear him. A smarter man would take the three days, knowing that it'll happen anyway, and concentrate on what is being taught so that his account is settled once and for all. Then, on Monday, when someone will be there to hear you, then make noise. They''l find you, out you come.""

"Or you'll kill me."

"I don't want to kill you, Barney," she said. "If you force me to, that's one thing. But you haven't so far. Now: if I take you off that dolly, are you going to be nice?"

"Yes," Barney said. When you were beat, you were beat, and he was beat.

She unstrapped him from the dolly and let him take a step or two away. Then she ordered him to face the wall and pushed the dolly out into the corridor.

"Now face the wall and don't you dare turn around until you hear the lock snap," she said. "You know I don't use Mace or a stun gun."

"Okay, Sue," he said calmly.

He felt her fingers, light and quick, move across the straps of the straitjacket. Then her footsteps moving out of the cell. Finally, the click of the heavy lock snapping shut. Barney pulled out of the straitjacket and wrinkled his nose as the fear-sweat smell came out. His T-shirt was soaked. He took it off distastefully. There was a bar of soap on the supplies pile she had left him. He tried his sink and discovered that it worked. He pulled off the mask and threw it into the corner.

Shirtless, he spread his arms and looked at her.

"This really what you want, Sue? To lock me in here like this?"

"You'll do three days. Papa did eight years."

Put like that, it almost seemed reasonable.

"Were you planning to kill me, Sue?" he asked gently.

She pondered for a moment. "No," she said. "I thought I might, but Papa spoke well of you. This will teach you how it was for him."

That pleased Barney a great deal more than she would ever know.

"Give me your straitjacket and mask and I'll give you a clean shirt," she offered. She held up an old shirt from the asylum days. Barney doubted it was anything resembling clean, but he agreed.

"Same drill as with papa. Use the document carrier."

Barney gave her the damn things and took his shirt. She looked in at him.

"Keep your mouth shut, Barney, and you'll never see me again. Tell anyone, especially the cops, and I'll find you. I did it once, I can do it again."

Barney sat down on the mattressless bunk. "I'm not going to, Sue," he said resignedly.

"Goodbye, then, Barney."

"Goodbye, Sue."

"Sa na," she chirped – actually chirped – and vanished into the hallway. Barney sat alone in the dark, wearing the old shirt, and began the long, interminable wait until Monday morning.

"Sa na," he mused. "What the hell does that mean?"

Above him, an engine started.