I KNOW IT'S BEEN A VERY LONG TIME SO I DECIDED TO POST THIS CHAPTER I HAD SAVED. I WANTED TO ADD MORE FIRST BUT I COULDN'T LET THIS GO ON UN-UPDATED FOR ANY LONGER. HOPEFULLY I CAN FIND IT IN ME TO POST SOON.

On the bright side, Nicky could no longer feel any pain in his broken thumb. But now wasn't the time to be optimistic. He was overwhelmed by the shock of having heard the click of his shoulders dislocating. He couldn't stop screaming.

The look on Julian's face was that of a child having just unwrapped his birthday present. He was eager to play.

He knelt down again beside Nicky, slipped his hands under Nicky's arms and lifted him onto his lap. "Now, now. I didn't like that anymore than you did, Nick. But it was for your own good."

Nicky groaned, frustrated and, frankly, irritated. "Fuck you! You…You—" He sputtered, exasperated and grasping for words. "Sei un figlio di puttana! Vai a morire ammazzato!"

Julian's eyes narrowed. "Leave my mother out of this." He said with a grin, raised his hand, and slapped Nicky's face. "I could always cut that tongue out, you know."

Nicky's moaning ceased at once. "Okay, okay. I'll bite it. Stop breaking me, please." He knew he wouldn't like the answer, but he asked anyway. "You already had me tied up. Why did you have to pop my shoulders out? And don't say it was for my own good."

Julian glowered down at him. "Because I don't like it when you're all tied up, but I'm too eager to wait for you to admit that you want it." He smiled, tracing Nicky's jaw with his fingers. "But you will. They always do."

Nicky was fighting the urge to vomit once again. Those words were exactly the ones Julian's father, his coach, had said to him. You will surrender. They always do. When he was thirteen, he thought he didn't have a choice. His body belonged to whomever decided to take it and do with it what he pleased. The coach was bigger than him, stronger, and scared the holy hell out of him. All the boys on the team thought the coach was intimidating, but he had a lot of knowledge about hockey and so earning his attention was an honour. If he ignored you, then that was when you had something to worry about. It meant you weren't good enough, you hadn't a future in the game, and no one wanted to play with you if he thought you were shit. Being on the coach's good side got you invited to parties, sympathy grade boosts from the teachers, and – the only thing Nicky cared about – friends. It was yet another reason that Nicky's only choice was to surrender.

"You're wrong." Nicky croaked. A bead of sweat dripped from his forehead despite the goosebumps that had raised on his arms.

Julian quirked an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"I'd never admit that. I never wanted to get hurt. I don't want to get hurt. And I will fight you. Arms or no arms. I'll never surrender again." Nicky swallowed hard. "So you do whatever dislocating you need to."

Conseiko insisted on driving and, although he didn't go nearly as fast as Nicky notoriously did, Chris planned to take his truck from then on.

Reaching for the chicken handle, Chris caught sight of two police cruisers and a forensic van in the side view mirror. "I don't know if you really needed to call for backup, Jacob."

Conseiko shot him a look. "Why not? It's him. We've got the bastard."

Chris steadied himself with a hand on the dashboard as Conseiko weaved around a Toyota Camri. "He'd have to be an idiot to hang around after his mother reported the car missing. That he didn't do it himself tells you that he didn't want it reported."

"Yeah, but we kept the station wagon out of the papers and off the news. He doesn't know he was spotted with the last victim. Maybe he's just a momma's boy. He waits for her to do everything for him."

Chris shook his head. "No, not the initial amber alert. His mother told the cameras that the boy's little sister and the neighbor saw him getting into a brown-paneled station wagon. The perp wouldn't have been able to watch any local TV station that night without seeing the amber alert ribbon on his screen."

Conseiko let out a long sigh. "Fuck! Even when this guy slips up, he's one step ahead of us!" He took a sharp left and accelerated his speed as if to match his frustration.

"Unless he was too occupied to watch TV that night." Chris hated himself for saying it.

Conseiko was thinking the same thing. "Let's hope to God he wasn't."

When they pulled up to Julian Carter's house, it was in darkness. Not even lamplight inside to indicate that a soul was home. There also wasn't a car in the driveway.

Chris jumped out and hammered his fist against the door. As Conseiko joined him on the porch, the patrol cars pulled in the driveway. The three uniformed officers climbed out and went around back as Conseiko directed with a swift hand signal. They waited for thirty seconds, Chris' heart pounding in his chest and a cold sweat saturating his clothes.

While Conseiko knocked again, Chris flipped open the mailbox. It had letters and flyers inside, but then again Chris was sure that neither he nor Emily had checked the mail at all that week. So it didn't mean anything, until Conseiko called his attention to the ground next to the door and along the porch.

He bent down and picked up a newspaper. "September 20th? Damn. This guy's not been here in weeks. There's got to be a dozen papers here."

"Fuck it." Conseiko stepped back and with enough momentum, kicked down the front door.

Shawn stared out the window. The TV was on but he could barely glance at it without his eyes burning. He was so tired and yet never really slept. When his eyes closed, he saw a myriad of faces. None of which were ones that he wanted to see or think about. The problem was that keeping his eyes open didn't make them go away. Gone were the days when he could control his mind.

It was nearly midnight but Shawn did not intend to retire to his room or even turn out the lights. He could hear Jonathon snoring from his bedroom. He didn't realize that Jon was planning on turning in when he told him he was going to watch the game in the bedroom. But it didn't matter really.

Shawn was bored. Sleeping was too horrific to try again, Jonathon seemed to have a problem with Shawn leaving the apartment alone, and there was nothing on TV. It wasn't like he was going to suddenly start caring about school and do his homework. That's when he found himself digging through his closet. He knew it was somewhere. Likely in the old school bag he'd carried from the first grade right up until Jon replaced it with one that his books wouldn't fall out of and didn't smell like skunked beer. He was right. It was there in one of the pockets in the back, which Shawn used to call it's 'secret' compartment. It wasn't really that hard to find it but it's the place he used to hide things, namely the walkie-talkie Cory gave him about 7 minutes after opening them up on Christmas morning 3 years earlier. "Now we can talk whenever we want, Shawn!" Cory had told him, excitedly. While Shawn knew it was best to never dare turning it on when his father was home, he loved the toy and that Cory wanted to share it with him. It turned out that there was little opportunity for the boys to ever talk over them while Shawn was living with Chet, but this meant that this time when Shawn flicked the switch over to on, a green light came on and he only hoped that Cory's was on and charged up too.

Shawn held in the button on the side and raised the speaker to his mouth. "Cory, this is Shawn. Come in. Over." He counted ten beats before he tried again. "Cory? I need you, man. Please hear this. Over." Still there was no response. Shawn thought briefly about phoning the Matthews' house but figured if he woke one of Cory's parents, it wouldn't be pretty for either of them. "Cor, please! Open your eyes and pick up!"

It wasn't until Shawn was sure that his efforts to reach his friend were futile that he realized how lonely he was. It was like he was suffocating and no one around him even noticed. He just wanted help but he didn't even know what that was.

"Help me!" Suddenly, he was screaming into the walkie-talkie. "Cor, help me! Somebody! Just fucking notice me for once! I'm so sick of this."

And then he was sobbing. He threw the walkie-talkie across the room and it hit the door of his bedroom with alarming impact. He paused for several seconds to hear if he'd woken Jonathon but when he heard nothing, he doubled over on the floor and cried.

Nicky was utterly defenseless. With his arms dangling at his sides and feet still tied together, he was in near complete submission when Julian took hold of his ankles and began dragging him across the floor. He was leading him toward his bedroom but Nicky couldn't stop his dislocated arms from hitting furniture along the way, which ruled out any chance that he'd come up with the ability to fight him off.

The smile on Julian's face was sinister. It was as if he'd hunted Nicky in the woods and was bringing him back to his cabin to cook him up and eat him. But this wasn't a sane man who was keeping Nicky hostage in his own apartment. There was only one thing he wanted from him in his bedroom and Nicky silently hoped he'd do the humane thing and put a bullet in his head first.