Bobbie Michaelson sank into a garish orange plastic chair outside the hospital room that had practically been her second home ever since her husband had come down with the new mystery disease. She rubbed her face, her eyes red from tears she had kept private from him but now had no defense against. They slid down her face unchecked and she sniffled, embarrassed to be caught in such weakness in front of the doctor from the big city.

"I'm sorry," she said around a muffled sob, "I don't mean to–" she waved a hand helplessly, "I'm sorry, Dr.–?"

"Natalie. Call me Natalie. And don't be sorry. You can only be brave for everyone else for so long. Then it has to come out." She leaned forward, closer to the woman, placing one hand on her shoulder.

Almost instantly, she drew he hand back when she saw the angry red ring on the skin of her wrist, a haunting reminder of struggling against the handcuff. If Frank hadn't found her when he did... she wasn't sure how long the car would have teetered on the edge of the cliff but it looked a lot worse from outside the vehicle than from within...

She swallowed hard, wondering why she hadn't said anything about the charms. Because she'd thought they were from Stephen? Because it was a stupid thing to do, accept gifts without knowing where they were from? They weren't gifts, she reminded herself, they were lures. It was crazy not to turn them over to the police, but she simply couldn't make herself do it. There was that tiny frisson of fear that it might just possibly cast a shadow of doubt, a shred of suspicion onto Stephen. She simply couldn't do it.

"Bobbie, how long before you brought your husband in did he show signs of being sick? Anything, headache, stomach problems, anything."

Bobbie pulled a wad of kleenex out of her pocket and blew her nose, then pursed her lips as she thought over her answer. "I'm not sure, really, Dr–, Natalie. Cody doesn't complain when he gets sick, I mean not really sick. If he gets a little cold or something small like that, he whines like a baby." She smiled fondly. "Wants to be waited on hand and foot. But if he's really sick, he barely says anything, just rides it out."

She looked down at the mess of tissue in her hands, stuffed it away in her pocket, then looked up. Her eyes were red, her face pale and wan. She looked tired, older than her 30 years by weariness and worry. "Is he going to be okay, Natalie? Is he going to die?"

Natalie lifted her hand to the woman's shoulder and rubbed it softly. She simply didn't have an answer.

If he pulled his hair out every time they were caught with a seemingly unsolvable disease, Miles decided he'd be bald before he ever got close to thirty, so he resisted the urge to grab handfuls of hair. Again.

He had to get out of the hospital, if just for a few minutes, and the portico bench seemed like the ideal place. Close enough to be reached at a moment's need, far enough away to not have to see the sick faces, or the worried families. Natalie had the right idea. Sequester yourself in the laboratory and not have to deal with patients.

That wasn't fair and he felt a surge of guilt the instant he thought it. Natalie was good in the lab. Great, in fact, and that was why she was there more often than she was at a bedside. Right now, he was just feeling sorry for himself. Sorry and alone.

His buddies from college, the ones who would associate with a kid several years their junior at least, were settling down with families or still out partying hard, something he'd always either been too young to do or studying too hard to have time for. Instead, now, he was watching people die because he didn't know enough, move fast enough, care enough.

And oh God he cared.

Sometimes he thought he cared too much, if that was possible. He didn't know how Connor did it. Maintained that edge, that detachment. He envied the man the ability to walk away when he had to, to slot things into a proper perspective, not let them eat him alive from the inside out. Maybe he wasn't cut out for this after all.

Absently, he stuck his hand into his pocket and found the watch fob, all but forgotten in the long hours and stress. Now, he took it out and let if fall into the palm of his hand. A caduceus. The double snakes wound up around the staff, the medical calling symbol his grandfather had carried with pride for as long as Miles could remember.

A shadow fell over him and he looked up, startled.

"Rough day?"

"Connor?"

"That rough, huh?" Connor sat down next to him and glanced over at his hand. "What you got there?"

Miles looked up at him again. "I thought..." He laughed, a short, soft snort. "I thought it was from you. I didn't think anyone else would know. Or care."

"What are you talking about, Miles?" There was a lacing of concern in Stephen's voice now. Miles looked tired but Stephen couldn't quite puzzle out what was bothering him other than the obvious.

"It's my grand–" He looked at the fob, realizing only then that it could be anyone's. There had been no engraving on this one or on his grandfather's to differentiate them from any other. "I thought it was my grandfather's. Thought you came across it somehow and sent it to me. My father wouldn't have bothered so it had to..." He ducked his head away, having said too much and only catching himself at it too late to recall the words. "I didn't think anyone else would know about this but you."

Stephen placed a hand on the younger man's shoulder, said, "Miles, I'm sorry. I don't know anything about it. I wish I did. I would have been honored to send it to you."

The words hit Miles hard. He blinked away emotion, cleared his throat, shoved the watch fob back into his pocket, then cleared his throat again. When he spoke his voice was steady, "My patients aren't getting any better, Stephen. So far there's a 20 fatality rate. And Natalie isn't having much luck in the lab either. She knows it's not airborne at this point, but not much more. It's got to be ingested but how, she has no idea. People in the same household are fine. Only one affected per household. It mimics Malaria but standard Malaria treatments aren't working."

He rubbed a hand across his eyes, not looking at Stephen. "We're losing people and not coming up with options."

"Okay," Stephen said, squeezing his shoulder, wishing there were many things he could say right now, having none, "just keep at it, Miles." Wanting to offer more, he added, "Frank has run tests on everything from the local water supply to the coffee at the 7/11 and the burgers at the Dairy Queen. We'll find it."

Her mouth tasted like something had lived and died there.

Eva managed to turn over and reach for the light switch, her mind numb, her body aching and cold. There was no light switch. No mattress. No table. And when she considered sitting up and putting a foot on the floor, there was no floor.

Well, there was, it was just that she was lying on it.

Not exactly a floor either. More like dirt. Hard packed dirt that smelled like... well, dirt. She felt suddenly like a potted plant. But then she realized that her eyes were open after all, she hadn't been out drinking the night before, and she was shivering herself into exhaustion.

She rolled onto her hands and knees, dizzy and nauseated, but that paled when she realized that she was either blind or it was pitch black wherever she was. She had never known what exactly 'pitch black' looked like before, but now she did, with excruciating clarity. Something brushed against her cheek and she screamed, scuttled backward like a beetle until her back hit the side of a wall or more dirt, she wasn't sure which, only that she was in pure darkness and that she was terrified and that she couldn't stop screaming. And screaming.

And that there was no one there to hear her.

Natalie curled her hands around a cup of coffee. One of those thick, white cups that she hated but the only thing available, so she settled. At least the coffee smelled good.

She saw Frank coming before she heard him and smiled. That was one thing that always surprised her about Frank. For a big man he moved so silently. Maybe it shouldn't have surprised her considering his SEAL background, but it always did. He returned her smile and pulled a chair around to sit opposite her.

"So, tell me..." he began and she had a bad feeling.

"Tell you what?" she countered suspiciously.

"Tell me what you didn't tell the cops."

"What are you talking about?" But she sat up straighter in her chair and her hands tightened around the coffee cup and she realized her mistake too late. Of course Frank wouldn't miss it.

He simply raised his eyebrows at her and she sighed. "There was a charm yesterday morning," she said. "It was delivered to me by the doorman. All mysterious, no way to tell who it was from, but it was a grand piano. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a pianist."

"I didn't know that," he said, settling in to listen, that big brother Frank concern on his face so obviously that she actually smiled.

"Very few people do. Stephen is one of them. I thought it was from him."

"And now you don't think so?"

"Now I know it's not, but when the police showed up I was so..."

"Upset," he supplied.

"Yes, upset, that I wasn't thinking clearly."

"Understandable."

"Are you going to let me explain?" she asked with fond exasperation.

He spread his hands in a gesture of surrender.

She sighed. "Okay. I didn't say anything because I was confused. I had thought it was from Stephen but when I woke up after the car... wreck–" she'd started to say accident, knew that wasn't true "there was another one on the seat beside me. Stephen couldn't have put it there. At least he couldn't have unless he was the one who caused the wreck, which would mean he had tried to kill me." She huffed in air. "I told you I wasn't thinking clearly."

"Yes, you told me that," he agreed.

"How did you know?"

He reached into his pocked and when he opened his hand, she could see the second piano charm–the one that had been on the car seat–laying in his palm.

"Why didn't you say something?" she demanded.

"I wanted to be sure," was all he would say.

"What do we do now?" she asked with a sigh.

Frank gave her an 'isn't it obvious' look. "We go to the cops."

Exhausted, Eva sat slumped into the hard-packed dirt, wiping the tears from her eyes, her fingers smearing mud across her face. She wondered what she must look like and almost laughed, caught herself and then really did laugh, the sound strangled, harsh. She was afraid to laugh in case someone might hear her? She'd been screaming herself hoarse, not to mention deaf, for the last fifteen minutes. A little laughter wasn't going to hurt anyone.

Okay, she told herself, time to start doing something rational and hopefully productive. Gingerly, she got to her feet, found she could stand, though she had to stand stooped over to avoid hitting her head on the wooden ceiling. Spiders. She just knew there had to be spiders in here.

But the little creepy crawlies weren't her fear, the dark, closed in space was.

"You're going to stay in there until you learn not to take the Lord's name in vain." She curled her arms around herself, her knees drawn up to her chest, and cried. She cried until dinner time when her foster mother finally let her out of the dark closet if she promised to do better, to never swear again, to do anything that would keep her out of that dark, frightening place.

Shaking off the memory, Eva steeled herself to uncurl from the floor and try to make out shapes in the darkness, the earthy smell rankling her nostrils.

Exploration seemed to be the next order of business.

Right after wondering who the hell had done this to her in the first place.

Obviously the guy she'd decided to be a good Samaritan for--or else he'd be stuck inside here with her. Or he was dead--the thought piggy backed on top of that one. Oh, geez, let's see if we can't totally scare ourselves to death. So, no driver in aid joining her, so that was the baddie. The main question was, who did this?

Images and gruesome tales of serial killers tripped in right after that question. If she could get her mind to shut up, she might be able to unfreeze herself and get something accomplished. So with dire warnings to herself to stay on task and ignore the fact that she had obviously been drugged and dumped into a damp, dark, tomb-like box, she started out to determine the dimensions of her enclosure.

It was roughly the size of what she assumed a cell would be, probably smaller. Feeling along with her hands wasn't much of a judge of space. And she'd found out at least what it was. A root cellar or at least storage. There were rough-hewn shelves along three walls with a few bottles and one box of rice that had something in it that moved. She didn't touch the box again. It hadn't been used in a long time, was nearly cleaned out. Not much chance of Farmer Brown's sweet-faced wife coming along any time soon to find her and let her out.

The second, and more important discovery she made was that there was a door on the top–locked of course, and from the outside where she couldn't even play with the lock–made of weathered wood. It was old wood and splintered, but her hopes that it would be weak were quickly dashed when she put one of her shoes on her fist and tried to knock a hole in one of the planks. The wood held, her hand felt like she'd slammed it into... well, a thick board.

That idea out of the way, she felt her way back to one of the rows of shelves, picked up the heaviest Mason jar she could find and smashed it against the shelf. It bounced off and hit her in the stomach.

Now that hurt. She doubled over and rubbed her lower belly where the jar had impacted. Okay, the jars were unbreakable. She knew that about Mason jars; they were made for canning fruits and vegetables at high temperatures. Of course it was going to be virtually unbreakable without something harder than they were. There had to be something she could use to dig her way out of here, just enough digging to sabotage the lock. Root cellars are locked to keep people from getting in, not out. Back on her knees, she started doing a blind inch by inch search with her hands. It took her two hours, but she finally found it, under the last shelf, of course, but a length of pipe, strong and heavy enough to dig away at packed earth.

Vince Gill getting his heart broken on the jukebox, an overworked waitress who had seen better years even before she started working at The Last Chance, backwards baseball caps and bluejeans, and cigarette smoke.

Ah the good old days.

Frank stepped inside and did a quick recon of the dimly lit room, finding what he was looking for in the darkest corner of the small bar.

Frank shook his head as he watched the long legged, long haired blonde give up on her attempt at striking up a conversation, and wander away from the morose young man sitting hunched over a half glass of probably warm beer. Oh, Miles, what is wrong with your hormones, boy, he wondered, as the blonde headed back to the bar. Must be worse than I thought.

He wended his way through the crowd, surprisingly large for a Tuesday night, skirted around the pool table with its stereotypical good ol' boys hunkered down around it, and snagged himself a beer from the bar.

The look he got from Miles wasn't welcoming. "Stephen send you to drag me home?"

"Naw, I sent myself to drag you." Without waiting for an invitation, he turned a chair backwards and straddled it, snugging it up to the table. After a long draw off the beer--it had been a long, long day--he said, "Stephen told me."

Miles bit his lower lip, considered, went for feigned ignorance. "Told you about what?"

That bad, huh? Frank thought wryly, and prayed he'd never hurt his own kids the way Miles' father had hurt him. It was written in every line of the kid's body, the slumped shoulders, the restless fingers toying with the half-drunk beer, the pulse jumping at his jawline.

"Want to play this game," he asked asked, "or do you want to try to talk it out with a friend?"

Miles ducked his head away, then swiped at his eyes, rubbed at his temples as if he had a headache. "I thought just maybe, just maybe, Frank," he said and there was more anger than sadness in his voice, "it might have been from my father. That he thought enough of me, or even enough of the old man, to send me something of his." He cleared his throat, looked away. "I should have known better."

"You going to let him keep doing this to you, Miles? Even when he's not anywhere around? He's not worth it."

"Doing what?" Miles came back at him, still angry. "I'm just having a beer, not turning into an alcoholic."

"You know what I mean. Letting him have this much power to hurt you." He reached forward across the table, tapped Miles' hand, patted it, then sat back again. "It sucks. It's not fair." He shook his head. "If you'd just give me the okay, I'd go rearrange his Armani lapels for him."

Startled, Miles looked up at that, caught the image in his mind, and laughed out loud. "You would, wouldn't you?" he said, still coming down off the laugh. "I'd almost let you. Except it wouldn't matter, Frank." He went serious again. "He wouldn't understand what the hell you were talking about. All my life, if there was a problem, dad just threw more money at me and that was supposed to take care of it. The only thing he couldn't 'fix' was grandad dying and I don't know if he really cared much about that."

He laughed again. "I sound like I ought to be coming out of that jukebox, don't I? Next thing, we'll be starting a bar fight."

Frank laughed back at him. "Not me, junior. You start a bar fight in this Redneck town and you're on your own. You figure out where it came from?"

"No, that's just it. No one else would have had it... well, one like it." He pulled the watch fob out of his pocket and handed it over to Frank. "I don't even think it's grandad's, Frank. It looks too new."

Frank turned the piece of leather over in his hands, then looked carefully at the metal caduceus attached, running his thumb over it. "Symbol of the medical profession," he said thoughtfully. "I always wondered why they used snakes to symbolize healing. Ah!" He held up a finger in a mock stop gesture. "I didn't ask for a long winded doctor explanation, Miles, just musing out loud."

That earned him another laugh and he could hear an easing of the tension in the kid's voice when he spoke. "It's pretty generic, but who else but one of you or my dad would know about my grandfather? And nobody would know about this except for my dad. Well, not many people, unless they researched it." He laughed again.

The word spiked Frank's attention. "Why do you say that? Researched it?"

"Oh nothing, I just meant that grandad made a big deal of presenting it to me when I graduated from college just before med school. It was in a lot of newspapers. Dad has always been real fond of his own press, he made sure he was in the picture. But why would someone want to know that?"

"Yeah," Frank agreed thoughtfully, "why would they." He started to hand the fob back, but then closed his fingers over it before Miles could reach for it. "Let me hang onto this for a while, would you?"

"What for?"

"I have strange fetishes."

"Oh, okay, well, then of course." Another laugh and the tension was gone.

"You done with that?" Frank nodded toward the beer.

Miles shoved the glass away. "Yeah, it's warm anyway."

"You always were a wussy drinker, kid."