A/N: Okay, if you hated the last chapter...you aren't going to be happy with this one either. I'm too fond of Boothangst, I suppose, and in the mood to write some. So I'm afraid it's another dark chapter, but hopefully the payoff will be worth it.

And yes, I do know I need to write faster (Yes, Mendenbar, the Furbys keep urging me on - they are making the dogs crazy!). I promise to do my best to get the next chapter up quickly.

This chappie is dedicated to Punky Misfit, who helped me decide if this chapter or the next one should be up, and bonesweet21 for encouraging me to hurry up! :-)

Disclaimer: I would love to meet the people who own Bones. I'd love to meet the cast of Bones. Since I don't own the show and I don't live anywhere near LA, the chances of meetings are pretty remote at the moment...Cold and Dark:

As he became aware, Booth realized he was cold and wet.

Scratch that. He was freezing.

His boxers and t-shirt clung to his damp skin. His head throbbed, as did the two spots on his neck where he'd been tasered. His left shoulder ached where he'd been kicked. Great. Just great.

At least that's what he thought had happened. His memory was foggy and he recognized the symptoms of being drugged. Hoping for some clues to his situation, he opened his eyes.

It was dark. So dark that Booth could barely see his hand as he waved it in front of him. He felt a wave of panic wash over him and he fought it. Assess the situation, figure out where you are.

Even as he thought the words his hand rapped sharply on the side of his prison. Like the surface beneath him, it was smooth, hard, and very cold. It was also very close to him.

Shaking not just from cold, Booth felt the walls with his hands. They were pretty close together. His shoulder's didn't quite brush them, but there was only a couple of inches of clearance on either side.

The hole he'd been tossed into while a POW came rushing back into his consciousness. The nights were cold sometimes, though not as cold as here. But it was enough to bring back the fear and panic he'd experienced during that ordeal full force into his present.

A whimper escaped his clenched teeth as Booth snapped his eyes shut and tried to regain control of himself. He couldn't afford to give in. He had to find a way out.

Booth slowly tried to sit up. Something scraped his face as he did so and he lay back down with a curse. He felt for the offending object: it was boxlike, and felt like a kind of sturdy plastic. For some reason an image of the plastic file holders that were on the wall near Cam's office came to mind.

There was an opening to the side and he brushed his hand along what the plastic seemed to be shielding. He had better luck identifying this object: it was a speaker of some kind.

Booth shook his head, wishing the drugs weren't messing with his thought processes so much. Where was he? Obviously a container of some kind. But what?

His ears caught the rumble of a motor of some kind. Frowning, he concentrated on the sound. It sounded as if it were on the other side of the wall on his right. The noise was muffled, but it sounded familiar, as if he'd heard it somewhere before.

It came to him suddenly. He was at Wong Foo's, in the back, shooting the breeze with Sid while the man was cleaning some dishes. Booth was sitting on top of – of –

His breath caught.

A chest freezer.

They'd shut him up in a freezer and left it on. And chest freezers…they were airtight.

He slammed his hands up to the top of the freezer. His arms didn't quite straighten out and pain shot down his arms. He ignored it. Maybe, maybe he could hit it hard enough to break the lock…

"Ah, you're awake Agent Booth."

The loud voice, totally unexpected, caused the FBI agent to yell in fright. His heart was hammering and Booth pressed a hand to his chest, feeling his St. Christopher's medal underneath his t-shirt and feeling what Bones no doubt would call an irrational sense of relief.

Bones. Oh…he hoped she was okay. That he and he alone was taken.

"Well, I'd hoped you'd be chilling out by now, but perhaps the freezer's just not cold enough for you?"

The voice was female, and sounded pretty cheerful. But there was a dark edge to the cheerfulness that made Booth's skin crawl.

"Well, don't worry. I'm not going to make it any colder. I don't want you to die of hypothermia. I just want you as uncomfortable and miserable as possible while you suffocate."

Booth mentally cussed out the owner of the voice while he felt around the inside of the freezer. It was longer that he was, but he wasn't sure by how much. He couldn't begin to guess the dimensions and even if he could he wasn't Bones or Hodgins – he couldn't calculate how much air he had.

There was a wire that went from the speaker to the top of the freezer, disappearing in the seam where wall and door met. The wire was covered in tape of some kind – electrician's tape or duct tape, Booth wasn't sure which.

Frustrated, he slammed his hands against the lid. Again and again, his palms tingling with pain and his arms and wrists complaining.

Laughter filled his prison. "Now, Agent Booth, we were smarter than that, I made sure the lock was reinforced just for you! You're not getting out of your coffin that easily, I'm afraid."

Coffin. The word burrowed its way through his skin, buried itself into his heart which was beating as if he'd run five miles. Booth curled his aching hands into fists and tried to calm down.

"In a little bit I'll call your partner and let her know she's going to suffer like me. She took Heather away from me, I'm taking you away from her. Fair is fair."

The woman's words actually calmed Booth down some. Bones wasn't a target. Whoever this insane woman was, she wasn't going to try to kill his partner, his best friend. He was the only one in danger.

And if anyone could find him in time, it would be Bones and the Squint Squad. Booth felt himself settling down. He'd be okay.

But the woman apparently wasn't finished with him yet.

"You know, Agent Booth, Heather and I researched you before we took you. We wanted to learn more about the FBI agent who derailed us."

Booth was running his fingers along the edges of his prison, hoping to find a crack in the seams he could use to his advantage. He wished the woman would shut up.

She didn't. "You know, Agent Booth, at least Heather and I gave our victims a chance to survive. What chance did you give all the people you killed?"

He froze at her words. Don't listen, the rational part of his brain begged him.

"A sniper doesn't give people a chance, does he?" the voice continued. "Kills them from a distance. Watches them die. Tell me, Agent Booth, the people you killed. What right did you have to destroy their lives? The lives of the people who cared about them?" Her voice got louder and more piercing. "What gave you the right to destroy my life? You're getting what you deserve, you know that! You deserve to die!"

"No…" he moaned. He clapped his hands over his ears and turned on his side, away from the speaker. He didn't want to hear any more. It sounded too much like his nightmares, like the thoughts his seeing Teddy had brought to the surface. He couldn't deal with it. Not now. Maybe not ever.

But the voice didn't stop. And Booth lay there, shivering, fear and panic running wild in his body and mind, praying that Bones would find him soon.