Sorry this one took so long...My computer has been acting up. Enjoy my wonderful readers!

Thank you guys so much for the reviews. Just to let you know, i love the constructive criticism and the compliments, haha! It makes my day when i read a review!

Also, i switched points of view in this chapter just to show what's going on with the guys. I normally hate that but it was necessary here.

Carmen's P.O.V.

My mind drifted in a foggy haze for what seemed like an eternity. All I could coherently decide was my head was pounding and I was so tired.

When I finally had enough rest, I woke up.

I was lying on a brown, faded leather couch in a small white room. It looked like a hospital room, sterile and alien. The only thing different? The windows were barred.

"Hello?" I called, my voice breaking.

My voice echoed faintly in the barren room. I wobbly stood and approached the door cautiously, only to find it was locked from the outside. Just great…

My brain could have been made of Jell-O and I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. It was fogged and swimming. "Hello?" I shouted louder.

"Miss Rose?"

"Um…yeah?"

"Please quit yelling, the master is trying to sleep," a feminine voice replied through the door.

"I will continue to yell until someone lets me out!"

"Then your throat will become awfully parched." With that I heard the tip-tap of heels on wood flooring.

"What the hell?" I screamed.

It was no use, she was already gone.

"Okay…this isn't so bad. Think Carmen, how do you escape a prison cell?" I knew it was a sign of insanity, but I couldn't help thinking out-loud.

I paced back and forth going through my list of ways to get out. I had no tools what-so-ever and very little knowledge of prisons. I was going to be stuck here forever!

"Miss Rose?" that same voice asked.

"Let me out!" I replied.

"The master wishes to see you."

"Tell him to go to hell."

"As you wish…" she tapped away and I smiled grimly. I knew who 'the master' was…Steve's jackass of a father. Why me? What made him come after me? Why couldn't it have been Cherry Valance?

"Miss Rose?"

"What do you want?" I demanded.

"Master is here, he wants to talk to you."

Without another word, the door clicked open and in he strode.

"Ah, my dear sweet girl, why must you be so difficult? I only do this out of love."

"I don't want your love," I bared my teeth like an animal.

"Oh, but you do… I believe a certain boyfriend of yours rejected you last night, didn't he? It must have hurt, the look on your face, ugh!" he sighed dramatically.

"You…saw us?" I whispered.

"Of course! And I'm none too happy about what you offered him," his words came out in a reprimanding tone.

I glared at him. He grinned back. "Now, since the current situation is underway, I'd bet good money you want to know why you are here, yes?"

"Uh, yeah, that would be a smart bet," I rolled my eyes.

"Well, you are an extraordinary young woman, if you haven't noticed; I couldn't help but become mystified by your beauty!"

"My beauty?" I resisted the urge to burst out laughing.

"Yes, oh but that boy got a hold of you first! It broke my heart my dearest. That's when Kandice hatched such an evil plan, and it seemed rude not to use it to my abilities."

"What plan would that be?" I asked, my heart pounding loudly.

"I was to take you and we would live happily together. While Kandice and that boy you fancy would have an affair of their own! Genius, no?"

"Uh, no. Not even sorta." I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. Someone was now going after Ponyboy. "Who's Kandice?"

"Kandice, my lovely assistant, please show yourself," he called into the hallway. In walked the waitress from La Chateau! She flicked her red hair over her shoulder and grinned.

"Surprised?"

"You…you," I couldn't think of a nasty enough word to call her.

"Kandice, will you bring some wine, Carmen seems to have lost her voice," the guy commanded.

"Right away Master," she agreed happily and flounced out the door.

"So you have an evil minion…wonderful."

"Don't be jealous, she is just an old friend. Nothing compared to us."

"And what exactly are we?" I asked cautiously.

"All in good time my dear," he chuckled roughly.

Just then Kandice came through the door with two glasses and a bottle of something red.

"I don't drink," I said when I was offered a glass.

"So innocent, I can't believe you jumped the boy like you did!" I blushed and Kandice glowered at me.

"When do I get to leave?" I inquired in a small voice.

"In a few days you will never want to leave…" and with that I was left alone to worry and wait.

Ponyboy's P.O.V.

"Excuse me?"

I stirred under the heavy covers of the bed I shared with Sodapop.

"But-but how? And when?" Soda's voice shrilled oddly through the house.

"Soda-" I heard Two-Bit start to complain.

"Shush!"

"Did he just shush me?"

"Shush! Who is it?" Steve said eagerly.

"We'll be right over," I heard the phone slam back to its receiver. "What the hell am I going to tell Pony…?"

"Sodapop, if you don't tell me what's going on right now, I'm going to gut you like a fish," Dally threatened.

"She's gone."

"Who?!" the gang cried in unison.

"Carmen…he got her."

"Excuse me?" I shouted, wide awake now.

Carmen's P.O.V.

The next three days were long and tiring. I would sleep through the day and under the cover of night would try to hatch a plan to get the hell outta here. For some reason, the people 'round here are nocturnal. After the sun had set, Kandice would whisk me from my chamber and into a dinning hall.

The first time I saw it I marveled at its' beauty. It was a grand room with a round table taking up the center. The table had been covered in sliver platters, covers and all! He sat at what I assumed to be the head of the table.

"Dinner, my love," he called to me.

Kandice led me to the seat just beside him. Have you started to wonder why I didn't run? I had ropes around my wrists and ankles. Kandice practically dragged me from my room in chains!

"Food?" I starred in awe at the luxurious table. I hadn't eaten in hours and was weak with hunger.

Pulling the cover off of one of the platters, he replied, "Yes, food. What would you like? Smoked chicken, steak, sushi?"

"Sushi?"

"California rolls, Caterpillar rolls, Salmon skin rolls…"

"Yes, please," I murmured sitting in the red satin chair.

We ate in silence. Every single time. This was my breakfast of sorts. Then Kandice would lead me to my room. I would travel through a long corridor and up a spiral staircase to get to my destination. "See you in an hour," she would say with a wink.

I paced and plotted in that hour and then Kandice would come and take me back down the stair and through the corridor. The last door on the right opened to a small, indoor pool. "You do know how to swim, right?"

"I'm from California, duh," I had answered.

"Go change in that room there."

I would swim for who knows how long, when my fingers had long passed being wrinkled.

Afterwards, she would take me into the room across the hall for tea and 'lunch'.

I ate with her and a sweet, heavy-set woman named Gretchen. She was the maid, as I found out. The two would gossip about what was going on in the world. It was beyond boring.

Then I would be taken to my room until much later. Gretchen would then escort me back to the dinning hall where I would have dinner with him. We didn't talk then either. Kandice would (once again) drag me to my chamber and make me change into an old-fashioned dress that looked like it had stepped straight out of Romeo and Juliet!

"And this is for…?"

"The master, of course," Kandice replied like I had asked her what the color of the sky was.

The first door on the left was to the library. Being a lover of books, this was heaven. I would eventually be joined by 'the master' and he would sit in a leather chair and watch me dash through the room. I would pick up a book and read a few pages before another sparked my interest. Before long, I was reciting Robert Frost and Shakespeare's works out loud, acting out the parts. I had studied poetry and acting in California ever since I was little. To have all this literature brightened my awful stay.

"What's your name?" I asked on my second night in the library.

"Thomas, Thomas Randle," he answered, shocked slightly by my question.

Now I knew who to send the police after. Stupid man you are, Thomas Randle.

Ponyboy's P.O.V.

The next three days were just plain painful. She's gone, she's gone…my mind would whisper every time I let my thoughts wander. Sodapop had driven us to Carmen's house to talk to her mother about the disappearance.

"She's going to be killed like those other girls! Not my baby," Ms. Rose had sobbed when we had arrived.

"We are going to find her. She will not be killed." I couldn't believe Sodapop could be so calm. Dally was in a fit of rage, screaming at anyone who dared talk to him. Steve was in denial. Johnny was on the verge of tears. Darry was on the phone with the police. Two-Bit was cracking half-hearted jokes.

I slipped away from the uproar of the living room and into Carmen's bedroom.

The sheets were pulled back and her text books strewn across the floor from when we were studying. Images of her flooded me with such intensity I almost cried out.

Her smile when I first met her, the sunset shinning off her dark hair, the softness of her lips, the look on her face when I left last night…I flinched at the memory.

She knew, that's why she wanted me to stay! She knew he was going to take her!

When we got home that night, Sodapop and Steve argued about where she could be. Two-Bit had a map of Oklahoma out and was putting pins in places she might be. Johnny sat on the couch starring at the wall, trance-like. Dally had left hours ago and had not come back. Darry was with Carmen's mom, trying to get the jist of what happened last night. From what she says, she came home to a dark, locked house and figured Carmen was with us. When morning came around and she hadn't called, she called Sodapop. I lay on the bed, breathing heavily. I should have believed her. I should have told her I loved her, again. I should have-

I broke off my train of thought and held back tears. Where the hell are you Carmen?

Carmen's P.O.V.

On the third morning (err, evening) I figured out how I was getting out. Thomas had been telling me about the eighty-eight acre mansion we were in. It is an eighteenth century castle-like structure built by his many-greats grandfather as a wedding girt to his young bride. Gretchen told me the wife later ran off with a knight to Europe, leaving the ancestor bitter and alone. He hung himself in 'the master's' chamber in the North tower.

What a wonderful story. Not.

The wife had a secret tunnel built so she could meet with her knight without her husband knowing. That tunnel was in my room. The wife's old bedroom. It was all too ironic to be true!

I opened the closet and ran my fingers along the carpet until I found the knotted end of a rope. I pulled and the floor opened back on itself reviling a gaping hole in the floor. It was pitch black. I'm so not going down there, even if it is to safety. I would probably get lost and suffocate before reaching the end.

On my way back to my room from the library, later that night, I grabbed hold of one of the lit torches lining the corridor. "May I?" I asked innocently.

"Of course, my dear sweet Rose," Thomas smiled lightly. If he wasn't older than my father and insane, he would be charming. That's probably how he lured the other victims, I thought in horror.

I turned to leaves but he gripped my arm. "Trust me; it's for the best that you're here. Your life is safe only in these walls."

"Goodnight Thomas," I said dully and climbed the staircase.

Ponyboy's P.O.V.

We took turns searching. The police had given up hope in the first forty-eight hours, but we kept looking. Two-Bit checked local bars and hotels, seeing if anyone was there looking like Steve's father. Steve tracked down his mother to get more background on his father's where-bouts. Johnny and Dally went out of town to search farms and put up fliers. Nothing was working.

The worst part of all? Sodapop's reaction.

The first night I came home from helping the guys search and Sodapop was sitting in Darry's chair, hugging his knees to his chest.

"Sodapop?"

"Yeah, Pone?"

"Why are you crying?" I sat on the arm rest and put my hand on his shoulder.

"It's all too much! She's dead and we all know it. You know, I liked her Pony, in the beginning. Hell, I might 'a even loved her. But she was perfect and happy with you. And I realized I loved her like a best friend who I wished was my sister. And now she gone!" he wailed.

I nodded slowly, taking in his outburst. "She's not dead. I would feel it," I finally decided to say.

"Course Sandy leaving me doesn't help nothin'," he sobbed soflty, ignoring me.

"Sandy left you?" That's new.

"Went to Florida to live with her grandparents…" he paused and let out a few more sobs. "I loved her Ponyboy, and I love Carmen, and mom and dad! Everyone's leaving me. Did I do somethin' wrong to deserve this?"

I shook my head vehemently. It broke me to see my brother like this. "No Soda, you don't deserve this. You know that!"

I couldn't think of anything else to say to make him feel better so I just let him cry. He did, boy did he ever cry during the night…

When he had cried himself to sleep, I would let a few tears leak out and then stress and exhaustion would lull me to dreamland. But my dreams were nightmares. Every single night.

Johnny came in a few hours after I had fallen asleep, waking me. "Pony, hey, Pony," he whispered shaking me awake.

"Whatda ya want Johnnycake?" I replied groggily.

"Dally's gone."

"What do ya mean he's gone?" I sat up and blinked at Johnny.

"We were at the store and he was talking to the lady. When he was done he told me to go back to the lot or your place. He was gunna 'take care of things.'" Johnny did little air-quotes. "You shoulda seen the look in his eyes. He knows where she is."

"And he didn't come tell us because…?" I trailed off in exasperation.

Johnny shrugged. "Don't know man, but the lady said somethin' bout a mansion in Joplin. Just up the 44 from here. I think that's where Dally was headed."

"Go get Steve and Two-Bit. I'll wake up Darry and Soda. Meet me back here in ten minutes." I stood up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. "Finally…." I sighed.

Carmen's P.O.V.

I hiked up my dress skirt and lowered myself into the hole. Holding the torch tightly in one hand, I closed the trap door with the other. It smelled like sewage and the air was almost foggy. The stench burned my eyes. I stumbled through the dirt path way for what I imagined to be hours. I hit a dead-end and my legs collapsed beneath me. The wife must have really loved the knight to travel through this god-awful thing.

My hands wandered over the wall, hunting for the latch that would take me to the outside world. I found an opening and slid my fingers underneath. It clicked and I pulled up, the earth surrounding my hand shuttered. This had to be it, I thought. My body shook from fear, anxiety, and something even more foreign: the sweet taste of freedom. Once I had pulled the thin layer of dirt out of my way I padded through and let it fall shut behind me. I leaned my sore back against it and gasped.

It was one of the most beautiful gardens I had ever seen! The pebble pathway snaked around the outskirts of the castle. Flowers of every shape and color bloomed on oversized, well groomed bushes. But that's not what made me gasp in panic. Under a rose arch-way stood a male figure. Waiting for me.

Review! I hope you guys like this chapter...any predictions for the next?