Chapter four

Author's note: I don't think I've ever had such flattering reviews before for a story, so thankyou NYT (frankly, so am I), Jar-Par Fan(just keep speculating- you'll see), Mishelle (read on...),ella (2 exclamation marks, aren't I lucky)Gemini-M(Jarod acting strange is the point), pretender fan (the thing about the marine was a rhetorical question :) And I will if I can), angie and Rev2004 (Always?).

She spent an uneasy night dreaming of claustrophobia, and was woken the next morning by the sounds of the fire being stirred up, and another can being opened. Both hands were cold and completely numb, and her shoulders ached from the position she was in. Her mouth felt like the Sahara once more, but after last night, she didn't want to draw Jarod's attention to her. Closing her eyes, she pretended to be asleep again.

A few moments later, hands that felt burningly warm released one wrist from the cuffs, and reattached the spare cuff to the shackle. Parker's arm dropped limply to her side, painful pins and needles running along the skin. She sat up, the change in position easing the pain in her shoulders, and watched Jarod carry across another bowl of soup.

It took another two minutes before Parker could hold the spoon to eat, by which time she had decided to go along with Jarod simply for the sake of her arms. The soup did a little to ease her thirst, but she still would have gladly drained a small lake.

Jarod unbolted the door and disappeared outside for a few minutes. Parker looked idly around the room, bored and uncomfortable. Her shoes were lying at the end of the bed where she had kicked them off last night, and her toes were cold because the end of the blanket had ridden up.

Just as pins and needles were creeping into her toes, the door opened, and Jarod strode in, stamping some snow off his boots. Parker blinked. The night had apparently gotten colder. He walked over and stood over the bed, looking down at her.

'I could drug you and you could ride in the boot, or we can act civilised and you can ride in the passenger seat. Which would you prefer?'

'What do you think?' snapped Parker; resolutions of cooperation or no not, deference did not come easily. Jarod raised an eyebrow warningly.

'I'd like to ride in the passenger seat please Jarod' chanted Parker mockingly. 'Thankyou' replied Jarod, pretending to take her ­­cooperation seriously. He cuffed her to his wrist in the same arrangement as the night before, then led her out the door. The cold took her breath away, and she began to shiver almost instantly. A fine layer of white covered the trees and ground. Two trails of footprints headed off in front of them, and Jarod led her forwards.

The car was running, its heater on full blast when Jarod strapped her in, which Parker was incredibly grateful for, as her fingers and nose had already gone numb. Jarod seemed unaffected. He cuffed one wrist to the seat, leaving her left arm free, then shut the door and crossed around the front of the car. Getting in the driver's side, Jarod drove away without looking back. Now it was daylight, Parker could see that they were in deep forest- the two wheel track they followed was bumpy and in places the trees encroached upon it.

It took a good half hour to hit anything resembling a real road, and Parker was glad when they did, because the bumping and jolting had become increasingly uncomfortable.

The miles of silent highway became numbing, and the sudden halting of the car almost startled Parker. She took new stock of her surroundings; the car had pulled off the road, and was out of sight in some trees. Jarod sat silently and still in the driver's seat, his face expressionless. Parker shivered. The tableau held for a moment, then Jarod looked once at his watch, smiled and then opened his door to the frigid air outside. Parker tried to brace herself against the temperature when he crossed to her side of the car and wrenched the door open, but it was like an icy fist. She expelled a breath, and it formed an instant white cloud that hung in the air as Jarod briefly unshackled her right wrist, the reattached her hands together.

Without a word, he grasped the chain that now ran between both hands and hauled her out of the car. The cold became more extreme. It hadn't snowed yet here, and the sky was the palest blue. The air tasted like crushed diamonds, and things glittered strangely. Shivering, stumbling along as Jarod dragged her after him, Parker wondered desperately what had happened to the pretender she thought she knew so well.

The thick pine trees on either side of the road abruptly ended, revealing a canyon, which the road crossed in a solid looking bridge. The walls of the bridge were easily her head height, however it looked as though not long ago, someone had had an… accident. A hole, roughly the size of a van, had been smashed out of the heavy grid. Right then, it didn't take any sort of intelligence to see what was coming next. Parker began to struggle violently, not trying to get away in this desolate place, but rather take out her captor.

He turned to face her attack, and delivered a ringing blow to the side of her head that momentarily made the world double. Parker gasped the burningly cold air into her lungs and tried to keep fighting, lashing out with a foot, that he avoided. Dimly, she registered a car engine coming closer, somewhere in the distance. She redoubled her efforts, getting nowhere. She couldn't even postpone him, as he now simply ignored her and dragged her forwards with such speed that it was all she could do not to fall over.

Within seconds, she was at the edge of the hole, staring downwards into the black line that was the river, running far below between the pale, sheer, rocky walls of the canyon. Fascinated and frozen by the face of her own death, she was not ready for the sudden shove that put her over the edge. She desperately twisted, like a cat in mid air, lunging back by sheer force of will in an attempt to grab something to save her life. Her stomach lurched in nauseating fear, and as her brain speeded up to encompass all sensations, she realised that she was just too far away, had already fallen too far. In startling clarity she sensed her impeding death, rushing with the sheer unstoppable power of fate.

End chapter four; to be continued