After about an hour or so of driving, Eric stopped the car and glanced over at Selana and her hostage. "Put her in the back," he said tersely.

Selana glared at him. "Why can't you?"

Eric rolled his eyes. "Don't ask questions. Just do it."

Selana's eyes burned a hole through Eric as she opened the door and pushed Kiara out. "Move it. And don't try to make this harder than it is," she said, jerking Kiara's arms behind her back and propelling her toward the trunk.

Kiara obeyed, but only because it seemed the only logical choice. Even if these people were criminals, she hadn't seen them kill anyone yet. If she was lucky, she could still find a way out of this.

Eric popped the trunk and Selana gave Kiara the use of her arms. "Get in." Kiara did so as she heard Selana pull something out that something out that sounded like rope. Then Selana pulled her arms back behind her and tied and wrists and ankles together, much like a cowboy would tie a calf's legs. Then the trunk was slammed shut and all was silent.

"Did you get the disc?" Eric asked once they had gotten back in the car.

"Yes." Selana reached into a pocket and took out a small disc in a clear case. "Nothing went wrong. They won't know it's gone."

Eric snatched the disc away and glared at her as he started the Mercedes. "If nothing had gone wrong, the police wouldn't be after us and there wouldn't be a woman in the trunk of my car." He slammed on the gas angrily.

Selana sighed impatiently. "It wasn't my fault. The security guard saw me as I flew off with the helicopter I didn't know how to fly. All that matters is that we have the disc, right?"

Kiara strained to hear Eric and Selana's conversation, but the back seats blurred their words together. She tried to undo the knots, but met disappointment there as well. She wondered if Selana had learned to tie knots in Girl Scouts or something.

She pictured them in her mind. Eric, with his blond hair and blue eyes, seemed to be the more logical one, the thinker. Selana, with her short black hair and green eyes, was probably just ordered around by Eric all the time. They seemed complete opposites in everything except eye color--both of them had bright, jewel-like eyes.

Now she wondered what she had been thinking, letting Selana into her house like that! "Humans are above instincts," she'd thought. Right. She now saw how false that was. She'd invited a criminal into her home, fed her lunch, and then been taken hostage. If she had more room to move, she would've banged her head against the side of the trunk. She was still an idiot, even after eight years of college!

It seemed like they drove for hours, and perhaps they did. Kiara slipped in and out of sleep, which was as dark as consciousness. In both, her mind busily flicked from anger to scheming to regret to despair. After a while, she realized that the air in the trunk was getting stuffy; her clothes were sticking to her back. Unable to sleep, she let her thoughts run wild while she stared straight ahead, as if she could see through the cloth over her eyes. Her other senses relaxed and stretched to their fullest.

She was keenly aware of the moment when the car stopped moving.

As they came into the more deserted part of town, Eric turned to her. "Once we get home, I want you to take the disc and go inside," he said, handing the disc to her. "I'll deal with the hostage. I can't take any more mistakes from you."

"Fine," Selana answered softly. She wasn't in the mood for another argument just yet. They stayed silent after that until Eric parked in the garage.

"Anything you know about her that might be useful?" he asked.

Selana shrugged. "Her name's Kiara, she seems pretty rich…don't know anything else."

"If you're keeping anything from me…"

Noting his threatening tone, Selana put her hand on the door handle to indicate she wanted to leave. "I'm not."

Eric grabbed her arm tightly. "You could be sent to jail for this, Selana. You wouldn't last a day. You're nothing without me." He released his grip and opened the door. "Now, anything else?"

Selana shook her head slowly and quickly got out. At least she could be away from him for now…

Kiara heard another quick argument before both car doors were opened and slammed shut again. Eric and Selana's not seeing eye-to-eye could definitely work in her favor, if she could pull the right strings and push the right buttons without outside help.

Lying in that cramped trunk, hearing a key turning in the lock, Kiara suddenly wished she could shower or something--she'd always hated looking bad in front of people.

The trunk popped open and rough hands untied her ankles, in the process freeing her wrists. Before she could use this opportunity, however, Eric grabbed her wrists and tied them again, tighter than before. He half pulled, half carried her out of the trunk, setting her on her feet. Her cramped legs protested and she nearly fell, but she wouldn't show weakness in front of him.

One hand still gripping the woman's arm, Eric used the other to slam the trunk closed. He led her--what was her name again? Kiara?--out into a dimly lit alley. He'd never dealt with hostages before, but he'd planned long ago what he'd do with them.

A few blocks down, Eric pushed Kiara behind some trashcans. "Stay there. Don't move. Don't say anything." Since the tone he used now worked so well when threatening Sel, he guessed it'd work just as well with Kiara.

He walked down a little farther to a rusty metal door. He knocked three times, waited until the reply of two raps came, and then knocked four more times. The door swung open, a black man in jeans and an undershirt welcoming him with a growling "What?"

"I need a favor..."

Selana gratefully went inside the house, happy to be away from her brother for the time being. Their home was fairly small, but Selana didn't mind because Eric was gone most of the time anyway and with the exception of his room, the house was all hers. The outside of the house looked almost shabby; there hadn't been a new coat of paint on for almost 12 years now. There was a nice patio with a loveseat by the door, though it wasn't used at all. If there weren't a car parked in the driveway, it probably would have looked like an abandoned house.

But Selana didn't care much what people thought about the outside of the house. She only cared about what the inside looked like, and not to everyone else. The only thing that mattered to her was that being in her home could relax her, which is why she spent most of Eric and her stolen fortune on remodeling the inside of her home to make it perfectly relaxing for her. She didn't really care if Eric liked it; he only used the house to sleep in occasionally and do some work in his office.

Instead of relaxing, though, Selana went to her computer and put the disc in the hard drive. After typing in a few memorized passwords and entering a few codes, she took the disc out and set it on the desk where Eric would see it. Eric usually didn't care when she kept some of the stolen money for herself, and out of $10 million, $1 million didn't seem like that big of a loss.

Inside Joe's house, Eric continued, "Sel messed up again. I need you to hold onto a hostage for a while."

Joe shrugged. "It'll cost ya."

"Of course. We can settle the amount tomorrow. I'll be right back, then." Joe nodded, and Eric returned to the alley. Kiara was where he'd left her—not too surprising. She wouldn't have been able to get far anyway, blindfolded and without the use of her hands.

He pulled her up by the arm and steered her over to Joe's open back door. Joe whistled as Eric walked in, looking Kiara up and down. A bit of color touched her cheeks. Eric shot a glance at Joe before leading Kiara over to the basement. On the top step, he pulled off her blindfold and left, locking the door. She didn't really need to be tied up, anyway.

"And how long will I be holding onto her?" Joe asked, smirking.

"I don't know yet, but I don't want you messing around with her," he replied, staring Joe right in the eye. He wasn't exactly a gentleman when it came to women.

"That'll cost extra. An' I want something' up front." The only thing he liked more than women was money, if only to buy a prostitute every now and then.

Sitting on the top step, head leaned back against the door; Kiara listened to the rustle of money. "There'll be more tomorrow," Eric said. Then the sound of footsteps leading away, back to the alley, and a door opened and closed.

If she'd felt uncomfortable being led around blindfolded, she felt doubly so now. She was alone with a man who obviously thought of women as little more then toys. Oh, joy. The day could hardly get any worse for her.

She sat there for a few minutes, listening to Joe's footsteps. He went upstairs for a while, and then, when he came back to the main floor, she tensed as his footsteps came closer. Then the door behind her opened and he jerked her up by the arm, propelling her down into the dark basement. He flicked on a switch at the bottom, and a dusty light bulb reluctantly sputtered to life.

He obviously didn't use the basement much. It consisted of one room, concrete from the floor to the ceiling. A water heater and heating/cooling system sat in shadows at the back wall, collecting dust. A few boxes partially filled the space under the stairs. Joe took her to the back wall.

In his unoccupied hand, Joe held a set of handcuffs. He hung them over a pipe, freeing his hands to turn Kiara around and untie her wrists. Then he spun her around again and pushed her back against the wall—judging by the look on his face, he'd done this before. Pulling her arms up over her head, his body uncomfortably close to hers, he slapped the handcuffs on her and stepped back. She looked away from him, towards the floor, and let her breath out—she hadn't noticed before that she was holding it. When his fingers touched her face she flinched and tensed again.

He lifted her face up, forcing her to look at him, his thumb rubbing her cheek. "I'm wondering' if Eric paid me enough for this…" If looks could've killed, he would've been reduced to a pile of ashes by Kiara's glare. Instead, he just laughed. "Yer a feisty one," and he laughed again, his thumb brushing auburn hair back behind her ears. Then he let go and walked away, towards the stairs. "You better hope he pays me on time tomorrow," he said, grinning, before turning the light off and heading upstairs.

Shaking, Kiara prayed that he did.

Though she tried to relax, Selana couldn't keep Kiara out of her mind. Kiara must have been one of the only people who'd ever been nice to her, and how did she repay her? By kidnapping her and letting her brother do whatever he wanted with her. The thought slowly ate away at her conscious the rest of the night.

By the time it started to grow light outside, Selana had thought up the perfect way to rid her of her guilty feeling. She hadn't slept at all in the night, but with a few more cappuccinos she'd be fine.

Once it was around 10:00 a.m., Selana wrote a carefully planned note to Eric, which read:

"Dear Eric,

I have decided that, because it was my foolishness that brought the burden of a hostage upon us, it is my responsibility to get rid of her on my own. Any money that she might have we could easily steal out of her bank account, or raid her house to see if there's any hidden there. I will be paying Joe $1,000 for his trouble, and will take Kiara to a place where I can easily dispose of the body.

Selana"

With that out of the way, Selana quietly stole Eric's keys, left the house, and drove to the front of Joe's house.

The basement door opened sometime late in the morning. Kiara braced herself for another encounter with Joe, but the footsteps coming down the stairs were lighter than his. It was Selana who flicked on the failing light bulb.

For a minute, she just stood there looking around at the dusty basement, as if she didn't know what to say or do. Then she walked over to where Kiara was handcuffed, the key to those in her hand. "I...um...sorry...about all this," she said quickly, unlocking the cuffs.

"So am I," Kiara muttered under her breath, stepping away from Sel. "So what happens now?"

"...What d'ya mean?" Sel asked, tossing cuffs and key against a wall.

Kiara shrugged. "...Eric didn't send you here, did he?"

"Well...no. I just...told him I was going to get rid of you somehow...but...erm..." Now it was her turn to shrug. "Just...let's go."

Kiara nodded, not really caring what Sel had planned now. It was obvious that her conscience--however small that might be--had been eating at her.

"I'm going to have to tie you up again to make this look convincing," Selana said slowly, untying a length of rope at her side. Kiara only nodded again, though she had a suspicious look on her face this time. Selana loosely tied Kiara's wrists together behind her back, and then started up the stairs with her.

At the top, Joe was waiting patiently. "You sure you want to leave so quickly, Sweet Pea? You could spend the night or something'."

Selana threw a glare at him, but bit her tongue and quietly left the house with Kiara. She was rough with Kiara as they got to the car, just in case Eric was looking, and quickly drove away.