Chapter 4

Elle groaned as she awoke again. Her hands were asleep. She tried to wiggle her fingers to wake them up.

The light at the top of the stairs blinded her again. "Good morning, beautiful," the man's voice said again. "I brought you some food." The smell of food wafted down from the open door, and it made her stomach rumble.

He pulled out a set of keys and fit one of them into the lock. The chain fell off her hands, and she rubbed them, trying to get the circulation back into her wrists. He handed her a plate with something that smelled like chicken. "Eat up," he said, taking a seat across from her.

Elle ignored the plate.

"You don't trust me," he said, his face still hidden in the shadows.

"Why should I?" she asked fiercely.

"Because you're hungry," he said matter-of-factly. "You don't eat this, you'll starve."

Elle looked at the plate. She was extremely hungry. She didn't know how long it had been since her last meal, but her stomach complained that it was empty. She picked up the silverware he had given her and slowly began to eat.

He watched her intently. The way she moved her mouth when she chewed, the way she cut the meat, everything about her excited him.

Elle finished the food and handed it back to him. He took it without a word and began to move back toward the stairs. "Hey," she said. He stopped and turned around. "Why are you doing this?"

There was a long pause as he studied her features in the light. "You're free to move around the room," he said. "But if you try to escape, though it pains me, I will have to kill you." With that he turned around and walked back up the stairs, turning on the light in the room.

Elle glanced around her prison. I was right. It is a basement. She got up out of the chair. It had boxes all around the room, piled nearly to the ceiling. Some of them were open, and dirty dusty clothes hung out of them.

He had pictures on the wall. Her hand went to her mouth when she realized what it was, and she felt like she was going to be sick. They were pictures of her. News clippings of the cases that the BAU had worked on. She saw pictures of her and Gideon and Hotch and Reid and the rest of them, milling around one of their many crimes scenes. Horrified, she couldn't tear her eyes away from the message written on them. MINE. The tears welled up in her eyes.

Elle looked away and vomited quietly.