When she woke she felt even worse. Her whole body ached as if she had a flu, her head felt like it was in a vise, and even small movements convinced her she was destined to vomit soon. She heard only muted mechanical sounds like water in pipes, or a furnace, so she risked opening her eyes.

She lay in a dimly lit, unfurnished, large room with a high ceiling of steel girders. One long wall was boarded over, and by the rays glowing around the edges of the boards, she guessed they covered windows. Rachel lay on the cement floor on a sleeping bag, not far from a closed door. She identified two other doors to the room, one of which was open. That doorway was the source of most of the daylight which leaked into the murky atmosphere.

Rachel tried moving. Every joint and quite a few of her muscles ached. She was vaguely grateful that the room was large. When she vomited, she could do it far from the sleeping bag. If she could get far from the sleeping bag.

She rolled onto her hands and knees, and stopped, waiting for her stomach and head to calm. A wave of panic washed over her. Where were her captors? When would they come for her and what would they do? The urge to flee was powerful enough to bring her to her feet, blinking as her eyes teared up. God, she was so scared.

Operating on some instinct, she stumbled toward the door with light beyond it. She reached the doorway, and saw, with a surprising jolt of relief, a bathroom. The suggestion of the toilet undid her, and she emptied her stomach into its basin, her head howling a protest at the violent movements caused by her heaves.

When the storm was over, she sank back on her heels, and closed her eyes. She was trembling and weak, but she did think she felt a little better. Using the sink for a prop, she hauled herself to her feet and turned on the water. The tap whined and sputtered to life, spewing brown water. She stared at the water flow numbly, until it began to run clean. She rinsed her mouth.

Time to take stock. Feeling a little stronger, Rachel explored the bathroom. It, too, had a cement floor, exposed pipes, and nothing movable. The window did not open, and had bars beyond. The glass was frosted, or - she wiped at it - very grimy. It also had a sturdy security mesh woven through it. Looking out, she saw she was on a second story, overlooking an industrial yard.

She leaned her forehead against the glass and tried to think. Why had she been taken? Could Lucky expect to use her against Emmett? Or did he want something from Connor? No one knew of her relationship to the Highlander; they had arranged the "death" of her adopted father years ago. Russell Nash was her employer, nothing more. Still, Connor had feared that Lucky might involve her, that's why he sent her out of town, she reflected wearily. Actually, if you looked for someone to use against Connor MacLeod, you wouldn't find many prospects, she realized. Damn. But, if revenge was all Lucky wanted, wouldn't he just kill her? Unless . . . she suddenly remembered herself sitting on the guest bed, reflecting that she hoped Lucky didn't start sending them Emmett's fingers or other body parts. Terror seized her, and she slid down the wall, crying.

Some time later, her tears ran out, and nothing had changed except the sunlight, which was more dim, and came from a lower angle. She heard the sounds of a door opening and people entering the large room.

"Where is she?" someone asked, not sounding too alarmed.

"Check the bathroom," someone else replied.

Rachel scrambled to her feet, not wanting to be found on the floor. Her stomach tightened with fear, but her head abruptly cleared. She heard someone heavy clumping toward the open bathroom door, and, in a small act of defiance, she turned on the tap and splashed cold water on her face.

To her surprise, the footsteps stopped just short of the door. In the background she heard sharp, angry words, and moaning.

"You. Come outta there," a near voice ordered. But the speaker did not come into view.

Rachel blinked, amazed at what appeared to be something like courtesy toward her modesty. For a moment she entertained wild thoughts of slamming and holding the door, and shattering the window, and ripping out the security mesh, and squeezing through the bars, and . . . right. Gathering her courage and her dignity, she flushed the toilet, and emerged.

The man before her was impressively large. He wore a tailored suit and polished shoes. He held no weapon, but his fists were the size of small melons. Behind him stood another man she couldn't see very well, and next to him, on the floor, was a man-sized heap making the moaning sounds.

"Take off your shoes," the giant ordered.

Rachel stared at him.

"Take off your shoes and your hose," he added.

When Rachel didn't move, he bent his head toward her and spoke in a lower tone. "Take 'em off, or I take 'em off you."

So much for courtesy. Rachel removed her shoes and her nylons while the man watched. She threw them on the floor behind him. The man grinned.

The other man moved forward and picked them up. Rachel thought he might be the smaller, weaselly man who had come to the store. He regarded her with the same dead eyes and said, "Your boss put my brother in the hospital. But he got his." He sounded satisfied.

Rachel stayed silent, but she looked at the giant.

"Lucky wants to talk to you later," the large man said. "If you're a good girl you might get some dinner. If you're not, you might get some a' that." He nodded his head toward the huddle on the floor. Rachel suddenly knew who it had to be.

The men left, the unmistakable sound of a strong lock clicking behind them.

Rachel padded toward the huddled man, the concrete cold on her bare feet. "Emmett?" she ventured.

Emmett looked up at her. "Oh Rachel," he sobbed. Even in the twilight she could see bruising and blood on his face.

Rachel paused. He was clearly badly injured in some way, and she knew a moment of hesitation. She also found herself furious with him. The room held only one sleeping bag and he was on it. She wanted to order him off of it. Don't be ridiculous, she told herself. That's not why you're angry. Get over it and deal with the situation.

She knelt next to him and touched his shoulder carefully. "Emmett, what did they do to you?"

Emmett clutched his chest. His breathing was forced. "They've broken something. God, it hurts. Oh, Rachel . . ." He sobbed again and caught his breath. Crying hurt him, she could see.

"He's dead, Rachel. I'm so sorry. Russell. I never meant for . . ." Pain or no pain, Emmett lost himself in sobs.

Rachel slid a comforting arm around his shoulders, trying not to hurt him. "What happened, Emmett?"

"They shot him. They shot him. Oh, Rachel, Rachel."

She smoothed his hair and made an attempt to clean the blood from his face. "How did it happen?" she encouraged.

"He . . . I saw you leave in the cab. I recognized the driver. I went to warn him."

"What were you doing there?"

"I was waiting. I needed to go back for something. Then they saw me and everything started. Did you hear me? Russell's dead. He's dead."

"Shot."

"Yes. I saw it. It was awful."

Rachel was sure it was awful. The ability to get over being dead, she had noticed, had never made her father eager for the experience. Getting shot . . . how awful.

Just not as awful as Emmett believed.

"Well, we need to think how to keep us from being dead. Do you know what they want?"

"They want something I have. Something I kept. How can you be so calm? I know he was important to you."

Rachel puzzled over what to say. If they both got out of this alive, they wouldn't have much chance of hiding Connor's existence in a living state from Emmett.

"Did Russell ever mention to you . . . he sometimes wears a bullet-proof vest?"

Oh, good one. Rachel rolled her eyes at herself.

Emmett removed himself gently from her grasp and regarded her with pity.

"A vest," he said. "Sure, honey, sure. Maybe he was wearing a bullet-proof vest."

This was ridiculous. Emmett wasn't even mocking her. He was genuinely trying to humor her.

"There is some toilet tissue in the bathroom," she told him as she stood. "Let me try to clean you up."

Rachel cleaned his face as best she could, trying to distract herself from her fears. Emmett uncurled somewhat to allow her ministrations. The blood, she found, was only on his face, where his lips and the skin over his cheekbones had been cut. His nose bled, so Rachel had him pack it with tissue.

"Why did they beat you?" she asked.

"Bunishbent," he mourned. "Also, dey wad be to tell dem where someding is."

"The ledger from National Linen Supply?"

Emmett's eyes grew wide. "How did you doh?"

"I found it in your . . . "

"Shhh!" Emmett held a hand out toward her mouth, and Rachel drew back to avoid it. "Dey bight be listening. Dat ledger is all dat keeps be alive. And you too, probably."

Rachel grew cold. She knew exactly where that ledger was. It was lying on top of her green sweater in her suitcase. Where ever that was. She felt sick again.

Emmett shifted uncomfortably on the sleeping bag.

"I dever thought to be back at National Linen Supply. I ran to Nord Carolina to stay clear of dem. I lived dere for dirty years. No family, you doh? I couldn't risk it. What if dey found me? And dow, my son, my son. I should dever have looked for Karen. I should dever have come back. Dey've killed him. After all dese years." He was crying again, and pulled the tissue from his nose. Rachel handed him some more.

"Emmett, what did you mean, you never thought to be back at National Linen Supply?"

"Here," he replied. "This is the New York branch of National Linen Supply. Their warehouse, anyway."

Hope surged in Rachel. "It is? That's wonderful!"

"Why?" He dabbed at his nose.

"Because," Rachel dropped her voice to a whisper. "Russell knows about National Linen Supply. If there's a New York branch, that's the first place he'll think of."

Emmett closed his eyes. "Rachel, I told you. Russell's dead."

Oh yeah. "I mean, uh, Duncan will think of it. He's very resourceful, too." Rachel knew she was acting too calm about Russell's "death," but she didn't have the energy to fake a grief she didn't feel.

Rachel's hope didn't seem to impress Emmett. She saw his eyes glaze over with fear and pain. She let him rest while she thought. If she gave the ledger to their captors, was there any chance they would let them go? Surely murder was a sufficient risk even to these mobsters that they wouldn't do it if they could avoid it. Emmett obviously believed he'd be killed as soon as they didn't need him for information. She sighed. He was probably right. They clearly had had no hesitation about opening fire in broad daylight on a city street. God, it must have happened seconds after she turned the corner. Hard to imagine. Why did they keep her after killing "Russell Nash"? Because they still didn't have the ledger; that had to be it. They guessed it was in Connor's store somewhere, or that she might know where it was. So they would torture her, too. She wanted to cry again.

The door opened, and their two jailers stood there. "Time to go," said the giant.

II

One man apiece led them down a poorly lit flight of stairs. Emmett whimpered with pain, but the giant gave him no mercy, yanking him along by the forearm.

They entered a ground floor room with few furnishings. Rachel's fear-clouded mind didn't register much about the room except for the five men standing and one sitting in it. Their escorts jammed her and Emmett into metal folding chairs and began wrapping ropes tightly around them. They faced an old man, his face shrewd and wrinkled, who sat in an armchair like it was a throne, two of the younger men flanking his chair like attendants. Beside him stood a desk with a few papers and a phone.

"So," said the old man, in a voice wheezy with respiratory trouble, "Mr. Nash. I give you time to reconsider. Now, you have something for me?"

Pale and miserable looking, Emmett shook his head. One of the standing men strode to stand in front of Emmett, swung his arm back, and slapped him, brutally. Rachel gasped and cried out.

All eyes turned to her. She bit her lip.

"Mary," wheezed the old man. "Is that your name?"

Rachel nodded. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she tried to take deep breaths, but the malice in the gaze of the old man froze her breath from her.

"Well, Mary, this whimpering lump of flesh took something from me. Something which could hurt my business. You're in business, aren't you, Mary. You know how hard you have to work to establish yourself . . ." He broke off, coughing. Rachel stole a glance at the faces of the other men. They did not react to the coughing fit. One of the attendants handed him a handkerchief.

As Rachel looked around the room, she spotted familiar looking baggage on the floor by a door. Her pounding heart seized in her chest. Her suitcase!

As he recovered from the fit, the old man gestured at another of the men. This other man stepped behind Rachel and yanked her head back by the hair. Rachel's panic surged, and she struggled desperately against the ropes.

"We're not wasting any more time on this slug," said the old man.

"Where do you want me to cut her first, Nash?" asked the voice behind her head. "Ladies hate to have scars on their faces." The leash of her hair tightened, and Rachel was forced to stop struggling. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a hand with a knife approach her cheek.

"I don't know, I don't know," cried Emmett. "I'm sorry!"

"Do it," the old man ordered, and the knife blade rested on her face.

"Wait!" Rachel cried. "I'll tell you where the ledger is!"

"That's more like it," said the man who had slapped Emmett. He stepped to Rachel.

"Noo," moaned Emmett.

"Where is it?" Rachel's hair was released, and she returned her head to its rightful place on her neck, and blinked through tears at the man before her.

"It's in the store," she lied, praying with all her might. "I found it in Emmett's things. National Linen Supply, right? 1947?"

"Where did you put it?"

"In a drawer," she said. "I don't know how to tell you where . . ."

"Rachel, don't!" Emmett cried.

"Rachel?" asked the man behind her chair. "I thought her name was Mary."

"Shut up, Joe," ordered the old man. "So, Rachel," he emphasized the name, "your boss is dead. I have a whole graveyard for people who cross me. You better be telling the truth, or you'll be feeding worms, too."

"Do you want me to take you there?" she asked in a small voice. "I have a key."

"No way!" said the slapping man. "Pop, after today the place will be crawling with cops."

"I'm not senile yet!" the old man snapped, but his protest was weakened by the coughing fit which followed. The younger men waited for it to pass. Emmett cried.

"No, Rachel," the old man answered, when he could. "You're gonna call someone. Someone else who can get in the store. You tell somebody who cares whether you live or die where the book is, and they better bring it to the park bench by the Giuseppo Mazzini statue in an hour. No cops, or you and Mr. Smart-ass are both dead. Got it?"

Rachel nodded and gulped. "I have to call the store."

"Not the store!" said the slapping man. "Cops'll have a phone tap."

"Think of someone else," siad the old man.

"There's no one else. You killed my boss. Now there's only his cousin."

"It's true, Lucky," said another man. "We checked her out. No family."

"It's a sad thing to have no family, Rachel. No one who cares whether you live or die. You should marry yourself a nice man."

Lucky thought for a moment. "We'll risk the tap. You keep the call short, you understand? If we have to hang up on you . . . Tommy here doesn't like hurting women, but Joe doesn't mind at all."

Rachel nodded. She thought furiously. What should she say?

Tommy, the man who had slapped Emmett, dialed the phone and held the receiver to Rachel's ear. Joe held his knife to her throat. The weaselly man lifted an extension which hung on the wall.

She listened to the phone ring. What if Connor answered?

Duncan answered. "Hello?" He sounded tense.

A sudden wave of emotion washed over Rachel, part relief and part panic. The situation had seemed so unreal to her, and hearing Duncan's familiar voice made it somehow worse.

"Duncan!" she half sobbed.

"Rachel! Are you all right? Where are you?"

The cold point of the knife reminded her to watch her words. "Duncan. I'm okay," she lied. "Emmett's here, too. These men want . . ." She needed to remind him of the name of the company. "There's a ledger. It's for National Linen Supply. I put it in the drawer in the desk. If you don't bring it to the park bench by the Giuseppo Mazzini statue in an hour, they'll kill us."

"No cops," hissed Joe.

"Can you find the ledger? It's for National Linen Supply, from 1947 to 1952."

There was silence while Duncan considered her words. Lucky pointed at his watch, and made a "speed it up" motion.

"Rachel," Duncan answered, "they shot Russell, and they took his body with them. Don't be afraid."

Tommy pulled the receiver from her ear and spoke into it. "No cops, buddy. One hour." Then Lucky pressed the hook down, and Weasel hung up the extension.

"Was it too long?" Tommy asked.

"We're okay," Lucky replied. "Frank and Jamie, get over to the park. And get her keys outta her bag, just in case. Tommy, you take 'em back upstairs. And Tony, get me something to drink. I'm dyin' here."

Tommy and Joe unwrapped the ropes binding her and Emmett to chairs. To Rachel's horror, the giant, who must have been named either Frank or Jamie, moved, not to her purse, but to her suitcase.

"Pop, let me lock 'em in the graveyard. I don't want to have to haul 'em down later," said Tommy.

The giant turned her suitcase over and reached for the latches.

"The keys are in my purse," she volunteered, a little too hastily.

The giant looked at her, as did everyone else, and then looked at Lucky.

"That's nice to know," Lucky said. "Something important in the suitcase, Rachel?"

Her blood ran cold. Blood . . . "My Kotex are in there. Could I have them? I'm on the rag."

A moment of silence gripped the room. Rachel held her breath and tried not to look as scared as she was. A distant lady-like part of her winced at the indelicate phrase, but she had needed to be as blunt as possible. It had worked for another Rachel . . .

Lucky snorted and coughed. "Get 'em outta here," he said. "Downstairs is okay."

She and Emmett were hauled toward a different door. Rachel looked over her shoulder as best she could, and saw the giant abandon the suitcase and reach for her purse, just as she and Emmett were shoved through the door, and crowded onto a cement stairway. The slamming door echoed hollowly. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, thank you. Please don't let them change their minds.

III

Emmett sank down by her feet, his breath rasping in the gloom. He said nothing. Perhaps he was in too much pain to speak.

Rachel also remained silent, standing upright in the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust. She had seen the descending stairs in the brief moment of light as they entered, and now she slid her hand along the sides of the door, searching for a light switch, but she found none. She moved one bare foot forward, feeling for the edge. Leaving Emmett, she descended into she knew not what.

After ten steps, her foot felt cold, packed earth, and her vision began to make out a narrow basement with exposed pipes, ducts, and electrical conduits suspended from the low ceiling. The place smelled damp and close, with a faint odor of something unpleasant, but which she couldn't quite identify. Something wisped against her cheek and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Ah!" she gasped, as it tapped her again. Too firm for a spider's web, she judged, breathing hard. She reached before her and found a hanging cord. She pulled it, and a blessed dim light fell from a bare bulb above her.

Now she could see the basement. The brick walls, the narrow, ground level windows just below ceiling height, the earth floor, and many shadows where the single light source was blocked by ducting.

"There's no water, no sleeping bag," Emmett observed from the landing above the stairs. "They expect to kill us soon."

"Or let us go," Rachel replied, though she didn't hold the hope she defended. She felt thirsty, and guessed that Emmett, injured, must be even worse off.

Emmett began a slow progress down the stairs.

Rachel continued to look around. Two large spades leaned against the wall a few feet from her, with fresh dirt muddying their tips. She frowned and looked at the earth floor. It was darker in large, rectangular patches, where the dust and topsoil had been disturbed. As if something had been buried . . .

"Emmett," her voice sounded strangled, even to herself. "Did they call this the graveyard?"

The dark patch near the spades began to move.