Chapter Three

The next seventy-two hours passed, for Willow, in a nightmarish blur. She was clear headed when they started. She was shaken awake by Spike, who tossed her none too clean clothes at her and told her, "We are leaving. You have ten minutes to get dressed. Make the most of it, Red."

He didn't leave. He was going to stand there while she was getting dressed. Willow's mind boggled at the notion of getting dressed in front of him. Then she considered the alternative of staying naked, with nothing but a sheet to cover her and found motivation. Gritting her teeth, and taking a quick inventory of her clothes, she sat up gingerly and dropped the sheet she was holding to her chest, grabbing her bra first. Arms in, the two hooks in the back snapped into place. She reached for her t-shirt, blocking out his presence in the room. Panties, and then her overalls.

She was reaching for her socks when he made a noise, sounding impatient. "Come on, Red. Move it along."

He was in a big hurry. Why? Angry mob? Had someone found them? "You said ten minutes," she pointed out.

"It's an expression," he countered, speaking slowly and carefully.

She started to argue the point, but his hand grasped the bib front of her overalls and he jerked her to her feet.

"Don't make me angry," he warned in case she didn't understand the tone of voice.

"Right. Or you'll . . . kidnap me, threaten me, and . . . glare at me," she fought her rising panic, mentally gritting her teeth. "Now, let go," she remembered that she had managed to back him down once before. "You are bigger than me, faster than me, and you can kill me without trying hard. I get that. May I put my shoes on?"

His fingers tightened in the bib of her overalls for a moment. His eyebrows rose. She looked like she needed help to stand, and she was ready to play plucky little heroine? How . . . cute. He let go of her.

"Hurry up," his voice softened, but it was no less menacing.

She sat on the edge of the bed, feeling like the puppet strings had been cut. She bit her lower lip, picking up one sock and sliding it on, and then the other. "Are we going anywhere in particular?" she asked. "Is this going to be another, you threaten me and I agree to do something for you, and you say if I fail you'll kill-"

"It was special for me, too, Red," Spike cut her off.

He half carried, half dragged her through what appeared to be an abandoned house, from the dust and cobwebs. She insisted on taking her purse with her, which he carried. It was dusk, and Willow found herself shoved, rudely, into the Desoto, from the driver's side. She dove towards the passenger side door and was pulled up short by his hand in her hair.

"Bigger, faster, stronger than you, remember," Spike sang out mockingly, unwittingly sounding like a British version of the intro to the Six Million Dollar Man that Willow used to watch with Xander and Jesse after middle school while trying to figure out the market value of the bionics, updated for the nineties.

He produced a set of handcuffs and cuffed her to the passenger side door. She stared at them, amazed at her good fortune. Unlocking handcuffs was something she had actually practiced as an exercise, probably because she was girl most unlikely to be in handcuffs for any law enforcement related reason. There was the whole being burned at the stake thing, and then being caught helping Angel and Buffy break into the Mayor's office to steal a box of nasty face sucking crab things, which had involved quasi legitimate civil authority, but in both cases, being able to open handcuffs would have been a definite plus.

Then downside reached her. She had practiced with handcuffs, but she had never quite managed to get them off, though Giles said her concentration was improving.

Spike watched her. She had curled up in a defensive ball when he grabbed her hair, cringing as if she expected him to hit her. No wrestling around to get the cuffs on, since she had been so good as to bring her arms up to protect her head. When the handcuffs went on she raised her head a bit to look at them, and he could see some of the tension in her body dissipate. Why? She was a witch. She had put a wrench in some of Angelus' plans a time or two with some surprising spell casting. He would have to stay on top of her.

"Smart girl. I will hit you," he told her. "It won't bother me in the least," he added. "Now sit still and you won't have any bruises to show for it. Or not," he shrugged.

"Either way works for me," he backed off enough to let her up, his hand still in her hair, tugging her upright.

She sat up cautiously, peering at him through a fall of her hair, wincing at the pull of his hand in her hair. He gentled his grip, rewarding her for compliance, and let it go, smoothing her hair out of her face. He waited to see what she would do. Her eyes were huge in her face, a bright, luminous green. Her lips trembled.

"Poor Spike," there was a hint of malice that would have been more effective if not for the quaver in her voice and the fact that she was shaking like a leaf. "Reduced to hair pulling," she said pithily.

That was brave. He chuckled. "Banter? That's new. I liked that snarl on your face when you tried to brain me, that night at the high school, when I took you and the boy," he chuckled, "that, and the screaming. " The back of his hand was so close to her face that he could feel the warmth coming off of her. Her skin, normally creamy, with her pink and white complexion, was ashy.

"I said to myself, Spike—I talk to myself, you know," he confided, watching her chest rise and fall with short, shallow breaths, right there on the edge of panic. He remembered that too. The race of her heart, the heady scent of her penetrating his alcohol fogged rage, the intent way, puzzled way she listened to him, unwillingly, resentfully, pulled out of her more immediate problem of being more or less at his mercy to be engaged by his, let's face it, infinitely more interesting break up with Dru.

"Where was I? Ah," he laughed quietly, shaking his head. Okay, he was making this up. At the time he had been thinking along the lines of get Dru to crawl back to him, and acquire more whiskey, but she didn't need to know that.

"I said, Spike, now that's the kind of girl you chase. Slow enough to catch, smart enough to run, and a good screamer."

His unexpectedly friendly tone of voice scared her more than when he was threatening her. She expected to be threatened. He threatened, she caved. It was a depressing, but comfortably familiar pattern. She did not understand why he had not gotten to the point. There was some reason for all of this-unless there was not, unless this was all a spur of the moment, fly by the seat of his pants thing. She closed her eyes, feeling tears welling up to fall on her cheeks.

He opened her purse and started rummaging through her things. She did not have much in her purse. Keys. A thin wallet with a driver's license, an American Express Gold Card, a video rental card, and several library cards. More than one library card? He flipped through them. Sunnydale High School Library, Sunnydale Public Library, University of California-Sunnydale Library—Jesus, it was ridiculous. Some CDs, probably for work since they were labeled neatly with labels like 'Firewall Patches' and 'OS Patches-Test Server', a day planner, notebook, and a pencil. He rolled the pencil between his fingers.

"Hmm. I think maybe you should keep this, you might get lucky," he taunted. He started to formulate a joke about rubbing him out. Pencil. Eraser? Get it? And decided that it was beneath him.

"And the notebook," he insisted. "Paper cuts. Fucking hate them," he tossed her purse over his shoulder into the back seat, having decided that while the contents were decidedly non-threatening, no stakes or holy water, the ID and access to money were too useful if she tried to escape. Next stop, the purse would go into the boot of the Desoto.

"Why are you doing this? I'm not important or anything," she pointed out, feeling deeply shamed by the woeful sound of her voice.

He started the car. "Red," he shook his head. "In a free market economy the value of a thing is in what others can be induced to pay for it. You should know that. You're a bloody American. You grew up on bottled water, right? You silly sodding people buy water when it's free from any open tap."

He had a point.



They were on the road, traveling, or in a sleazy hotel room. As the first day, or night, wore on it started to blur. In the end it would all run together for her. She lost track of time. Sleep deprived, tired, filthy, and starving. It did not occur to her that there was method in this.

The tactics were the same Spike would have applied to a minion. Soften them up. Get them dependent. Blood loss and her injuries made her more susceptible to manipulation. She had almost gotten away the first night that they moved. They had stopped at a place on the highway for fuel, smokes, and a trip to the bathroom and food for her. It was a little after ten in the evening, the beginning of a long night.

She should have been more suspicious when she was allowed to go to the bathroom by herself. She managed to get a window open, climbing out. The effort left her in a crumpled heap outside with scraped hands and knees, but she had stumbled to her feet, one hand braced against the cinder block wall.

Dazed and bleeding, she had looked for an escape route. For a moment, she simply stood there while every instinct she possessed clamored for flight. She did not have an inexhaustible reserve of energy. She had a tiny pool of strength, resolve, and continued consciousness that she was going to hoard like a miser against a real plan. She followed the side of the building, one hand on the wall, moving like an old woman. They were at a roadside gas station, one of the all-in-one places with the conveniences of a gas station, a quick mart and fast food all under one roof, proximate to a highway exit. The bland sameness of it, the store, the highway less than a half a mile away, was disorienting. She could have been absolutely anywhere in America, though she was sure she was still in California. They simply had not been traveling that long.

There were two service islands. At one, a teenage boy was carefully cleaning the windows of his car while he filled up. A man, with a little girl ridding his hip, crossed the parking lot to put the child inside a car seat on the passenger side of a green mini-van. A navy blue Jeep Cherokee pulled in, up to the side of the Building where Willow was lurking. The door popped open and he driver, a woman in her early forties with frosted ashy brown hair got out. Something in the way her expression sharpened with concern when she saw Willow standing there reminded her of Joyce Summers.

She looked at Willow, almost curiously, wary, but concerned. "Hey! Are you alright?" she asked.

Relieved, Willow started to cry. She didn't need a plan. She was going to get away. "Please," she managed between breathless sobs. "I'm in big trouble."

The woman looked toward the fat, cylindrical tower of air that flanked the building at a distance of some three yards, "I was going to check my tires," she said, gesturing to the pump. "Why don't you get in the car?" she suggested. "It's okay. Come on. Get in the car. You can tell me on the way," she said gently. "You poor thing," she reached out to take Willow's arm. "Come on. I'll help you."

Willow didn't know if she meant that she would help her to the car or just help her. She had to tell her that checking the tires would have to wait, and she was afraid if she did it would seem demanding or pushy, and then maybe she would change her mind, and she didn't want that. "I have to-"

"That's okay," Spike came swaggering out the shadows behind Willow-or so it seemed to her. He actually came around a large display of coolant and windshield wash fluid on pallets stacked five feet high on the end of the wide sidewalk fronting the store. He had not only anticipated the break for freedom, he had practically orchestrated it in order to provide a small demonstration.

"The girl is with me, luv," he said, smiling a little half smile. The smile was calculated to disarm, and it almost always worked. He had the East London accent down cold, slurring the endearment around the half smile, as his gaze drifted downward. Slinking around the girl, who was too startled by his sudden appearance to react.

He wasn't big, like Angelus, whose hulking physicality and brooding scowl was effortlessly intimidating. Smaller, slimmer, oozing charm, just a little too pretty in an incongruous way that belied the fashion statement that he had perfected, he was intriguing at first glance. Deprived of a mirror for over a century, he measured the impact of his appearance in the reactions it produced. His gaze lifted and he let the smile develop as their eyes met. This was a mature woman, probably in her mid-forties. She wasn't missing the posturing, but there was something almost appreciative in her gaze as she tried to work out what she had inadvertently been drawn into.

He could get out of this without causing a scene. One solid punch, and she would be out cold. He could talk his way out of it. He knew what he was doing and Willow didn't, which gave him a huge edge on her.

"Get in the car, Red," he said, pitching his voice for her. The smile that had softened him didn't reach his voice.

The hair on the back of Willow's neck prickled as she began to grasp that she wasn't the only one in danger from Spike.

It was the subtle change in his tone of voice that tipped the older woman off. Her lips thinned and her eyes went to Willow, taking in the totality of her appearance. She looked terrified, and there was simply no way that she was going to stand by and act like there was nothing wrong.

Willow took an unsteady sidestep in the direction of the Desoto, watched by the woman who had gotten out of the Jeep. Her distraction was a gift. She would never see it coming. Spike started to lean to his right as if he was following Willow and then he smoothly changed directions.

But Willow saw it. In a way everything slowed down. She wasn't fast or graceful or particularly quick thinking in a crisis. She had a tendency to panic first and think later. She deeply envied Buffy's quick thinking and ability to be glib and trendy in the face of danger in the way you can admire or envy something that you simply know will never be within your grasp. She was also tired and scared, and a little sick to her stomach as she looked down at the blood on her hands where she had scraped them on the window sill.

"I cut my hands," she announced.

It was starting to hurt in the way that shallow surface cuts do. She drew herself up stiffly. "I'm not a bad person," she said suddenly, loudly. "I have a disease! Okay?" she shouted.

Unsuspecting victim on hold, Spike swung around to stare at the girl, who was starting to bear a certain creepy resemblance to Dru. She licked the blood off her hand without grimacing and stuck her tongue out at him. "And I 'm not taking any more Thorazine!" she shouted at him. "If you think it's so great, you take it!"

The woman behind him backed up to her open car door, looking startled and kind of like she was kicking herself for thinking that Spike was the bad guy. Willow could just see her giving herself a mental smack for reading into the very toned down homage to punk that Spike had going on. Mr. Bad Ass Vampire didn't even have a scary looking piercing. Candy ass.

"Common side effects may include lethargy, sleepiness, low blood pressure, dry mouth, blurred vision, constipation, weight gain, difficulty urinating or stiffness," she chanted in a weird parody of the ubiquitous drug commercial. "Less common side effects may include dizziness, racing heartbeat/palpitations, weakness, sexual problems, restlessness, skin rash, seizures, low white blood cell count, tremors or involuntary facial/tongue movements," her voice rose to a shriek.

"And I'm the crazy one!" she looked around. "Can you believe this?"

The funny thing was Spike, looking completely taken aback. It made her giggle. She stabbed one finger at him. "Welcome to my world, Mister. I'm the freak in the freak club," she told him with a certain degree of satisfaction. She turned her attention back to the woman clutching the door of her car.

“Yeah," she jeered. "That's right, lady. You're just like the people at the hospital. They say they want to help you but then they're holding you down, jabbing needles into you, turning you into a mindless drone for their experiments."

The driver's side door of the green mini-van slammed shut and the engine roared to life, leaving the service island and accelerating to the drive. The teen-ager cleaning his car windows stood, open mouthed, watching the show.

Over the speaker attached to the service station, a male voice announced. "Please get in your car and lock your doors. The Glenn County Sheriff's Office has been called."

For a second there, he had been thinking complete melt down, but when she slipped in the over-the-top bit about 'experiments' he knew he was witnessing a performance. He was impressed. She was drawing a hell of a lot of unwanted attention, and he had a moment there when he had thought, oh, hell no. Nothing is worth baby-sitting the insane Part II.

"Red, Get in the car," he said grimly. "Now!"

For a second she thought she had him. The woman in the Jeep had gotten back in her car and locked her doors. She was pulling around the building to leave. Nearly dizzy with relief, Willow closed her eyes for a moment, wondering how long she had to stall before the police got there.

Spike however, knew damn well that they had, maybe, five minutes, and he had no intention of waiting around. She just wasn't fast enough to evade him. He grabbed her around the waist and picked her up. To the avid observers inside the store and at the service island, it looked like a dance. He moved toward her, she sidestepped and then spun around to run, shouting, "Vampire, help!" and he scooped her up, with one arm around her waist and the other pinning her arms down to her side as she twisted and tried to kick him.

"That was very, very stupid," he told her, shaking her with each word. He half carried, half dragged her over to the Desoto.

The boy cleaning his windows watched them, seeing a guy wearing a leather coat despite the heat, and a formerly pretty girl, her face ravaged by tears and . . . mental illness. It was sad. It always amazed him what girls would put up with from guys like that, and now he was even more amazed by what guys like that would put up with. The car caught his attention. He had noticed it when he pulled in to fill up. A car like that, needing a bit of work, but still, a pretty cool car for an antique.

Spike opened the driver's side door and using his body, maneuvered her inside, working up to a good hard shove that sent her across the front seat.
She banged her head against the dashboard and curled up in a defensive ball, clutching her head.

"Ow!."

He slid in behind the steering wheel and slammed the driver's side door. For a second he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

She was rubbing her head. "I'm going to have brain damage if you don't quit throwing me around head first," she announced.

He hauled her upright with a fistful of her hair. "And, how is that my problem?" he snarled, reaching across her for the handcuffs. " Do you think I won't kill you, or are you just testing the idea?"

He clamped the handcuff around her right wrist, seeing pain blossom in her eyes as his hand clamped down on the handcuff. It was too tight, and he knew it, which meant that he was going to have to loosen it. He left it for the time being.

If she hadn't been little Miss Independent Thinker, none of this would have been necessary.

"Next time you decide to go off on a stroll, pet, look around at all the people I'll kill before I catch up to you."

After that exhibition, she had gotten the message. Her guilt over what might have happened to the woman who had stopped to help her—he had no idea how she had identified her with Joyce Summers-gnawed at her. She was supposed to help people, not help them get killed. Spike would have been amazed to discover that even without a trail of dead bodies, the object lesson he wanted her to absorb was delivered when she realized that he would kill her would-be rescuer.

As for testing the idea of his tolerance out, that hadn't been her intention, but now that he had brought it up, she couldn't stop thinking about it. He said he wouldn't kill her? What did he want?



It was two in the morning and Oz was at a Denny's outside of Los Angeles, staring at a pay phone like it was an oracle. To call Willow, or not to call Willow? She would, he knew, be asleep. They had agreed that he would call her on Saturday morning, which sounded good in theory but didn't work in practice. They hadn't had enough cash for a hotel after they played Friday night, so they camped, and that was okay, but the only pay phone at the camp ground was out of order and he had stayed up late talking with Devon and slept in. When he woke up, the van was gone because Chris and Dan wanted to go see a movie. Bottom line, he had never gotten around to calling her. He tried to get her at work earlier today, but he just got voice mail.

He was not so good with the guilt. A mental image of Willow sitting around all day Saturday steadily feeling worse about the fact that he had not called, which she would deny when he talked to her, but he was pretty sure was accurate, made him unhappy.

He put his hand on the receiver without picking it up. He should call her, even if it was late. Even if she was asleep and had to get up in the morning. Sleep wasn't that big a deal to Willow. She certainly wouldn't be mad about it. He was pretty sure that she would be . . . sweet sleepy sounding Willow.

He started to pick up the receiver and the lead singer from the band that had played the smaller upstairs stage taped on his shoulder.

"Need to use the phone," she said, looking up at him through her eyelashes.

It was a flirting thing, he realized, feeling mildly flattered. She was kind of cute, with streaky blond hair.

"If you aren't going to be long, I can wait," she offered.

That made his decision for him. Oz placed his call to Willow's work phone number. He didn't expect to reach her there. After four rings, her voice mail picked up. He should have gotten a cell phone so she could call him back, he thought.

He listened to her voice mail greeting with a half smile. "Hello. You've reached voice mail for Willow Rosenberg. Please leave a message with your name and phone number, and I will call you back as soon as possible. If you need immediate assistance, please dial 'O' for customer service.".

He waited for the beep. "I was just missing you, baby," he said. "I hope you have a good day at work. Try to be home around seven, okay? I'll try you again."

He hung up. The blonde girl smiled at him. "Girlfriend?' she guessed.

"Yeah," Oz stepped out of her way to let her have the phone.

She watched him go back to his table with a speculative look on her face.




Spike wouldn't let her sleep for long. She was trapped with him in the un-air conditioned Desoto at night with a window cracked a bare inch, cigarette smoke filling the space faster than the passage of air on his side of the car could clear the air. The blacked out windows kept her from absorbing any impression of the passing landscape. She might as well have been in a moving coffin.

Inside the car, he kept her handcuffed to the passenger side door. For the first time in her life, Willow got motion sick. He had brought her a cheeseburger and french fries with a Coke earlier. Being the thoughtful kidnapper he had checked her handcuffed hand and refastened the cuff a little more loosely. It was either kindness or a new twist on torture. The pins and needles sensation in her hand was vicious.

The unaccustomed sugariness of the soda left her thirsty with an odd taste in her mouth. She didn't drink sodas with sugar, combined with the caffeine they tended to make her jittery. The food made her unbearably sleepy. She slipped into an uneasy, stuporous slumber, and to her at least, it seemed like he was waking her up immediately, roughly shaking her.

She had a moment of clarity. "I'm going to be sick," she rasped.

Gravel crunched beneath the wheels of the car as he pulled off onto the shoulder. Reaching across her, he opened the door. In her eagerness to be out of the car, on terra firma, she lost her footing in the gravel, wrenching the wrist that was still handcuffed to the door. She threw up until she was empty and racked with dry heaves, the bitter and sour taste of vomit in her mouth, burning the lining of her throat as she cried.

He had not gotten out of the car, and now he insisted that she get back in. She was sure that she really would rather die. He simply slid over to the passenger side and grabbed a handful of her overalls in the back, and tugged her into the car. She banged her head, almost exactly where Harmony had thrown her against the bathroom wall. She came to a rest against the passenger door with her arm pulled over her abused head. They pulled in to a deserted rest stop forty minutes later and Spike herded her towards the women's restroom.

At the door, Willow balked. "You can't come in," she insisted in a sudden show of stubbornness.

"Don't be absurd," Spike said, possibly misinterpreting her on purpose. He pushed the door with one hand and the small of her back with the other, propelling her forward.

"No barrier," he pointed out, checking out the large bathroom. He sat on the lip of one of the sinks lining the walls. He studied the flaking black nail polish on one hand. "Made this stop for you, Red. I suggest you do what you need to do to take care of yourself. I'm not going to do it for you," he told her.

"I hate you," she said quietly, and she felt it. Really felt it. In the same, shaking inside way that she felt about Faith after all that she had done to them. She had not really hated Spike before.

Feared him. Vampire, duh!

When he showed up in Sunnydale, luring Buffy out of the Bronze, standing back to watch her fight another vamp that he had ruthlessly set up for no more reason than to study his opponent in action, he had been nothing like any of the vamps they had come across before. Buffy hadn't been able to dust him, though she managed to stay one step ahead of him through the season of fear that was their junior year in high school. After Angelus emerged, she almost felt nostalgic about Spike, who had never been interested in anything but killing the Slayer in a strictly impersonal, completely business-like way. Angelus was into torture, committed to inflicting maximum mental and emotional torment before the real suffering began, and everyone around Buffy was fair game.

He gave a bark of a laugh. "I should say so, pet," he said. "Like dolphins hate sharks-the sharp teeth and the eating habits," he pointed out mockingly. "You know a vampire?" he shook his head disapprovingly, patting himself down for another cigarette. "Nothing more unnatural than that, really. Thank Angel for corrupting you on that one. You're supposed to hate my kind. That's the way it works," he lit a cigarette and waved in the direction of the sinks. "Don't have all night, Red," he reminded her.

She went to the sink and blocked out the vampire as much as she could, rinsing her mouth out. The sour taste lingered, tormenting her nasal passages, but it wasn't as bad. She splashed water on her face and shut off the water, going to one of the empty stalls and shutting herself in to use the bathroom. When she came back out of the stall he was crushing the cigarette out in the sink he had been using as an ashtray. She went back to the sink to wash her hands.

He started pulling paper towels out of a dispenser in handfuls, and turned the nearest tap on to soak them in cold water. He walked over to her. "Lift your hair up," he ordered.

Her hands shook and she closed her eyes, half expecting him to sink his teeth into her exposed neck. He slapped the wet towels on the back of her neck instead. Rivulets of cold water slid down her back, soaking her t-shirt. She was feeling less like she wanted to die. Kneeling in the gravel with the smell of vomit thick around her, she had given up. She had known if he left her there, she would have curled up in the thick underbrush on the side of the barren highway and willed herself dead. It made her feel ashamed. Her Nana Rosenberg had survived Belsen-Bergen when she was younger than Willow was.

She had no right to give up.

She held onto that thought when she was back in the car, shackled to the door. As mile after mile crawled by, she concentrated on the needs her body expressed. Her stomach ached like she had done too many sit ups. She was filthy. The neck of the t-shirt she was wearing was stiff with dried blood. She hadn't had a shower since Thursday evening.

What day was it? Friday when she encountered Spike and company at Mike's. They had been on the road a day and a half. Sunday? Maybe Monday? Oz usually called her on Saturday morning, no matter where he was. Buffy would have been expecting her to call. She would definitely be missed at work-though she remembered something about Spike and the other vampire talking about calling in for her, claiming she was sick. She had to believe that eventually she would be found. Her only job was to stay alive long enough to be found.

As dawn approached, Spike took an exit off the highway and pulled into the parking lot of a Red Roof Inn. He glanced over at her. She was awake and very quiet. Thinking again, her firm little chin stuck out in a picture of grim determination.

Aware that he was watching her she made herself look at him. "I scream or try to flag down help and people die horribly?" she guessed, sounding bitter.

"Hmmm," he pretended to consider. "Works for me," he agreed. "I'm going to get a room. No wandering off," he admonished with a smirk, seeing as how she was tethered to the car by the handcuffs.

He left the car running when he went in. Willow could not resist seeing if she could slide over far enough to reach the steering wheel and the gas pedal after she estimated that he was inside the lobby. The handcuff bit into her wrist cruelly as she stretched. The focus and emotional control that it took to work magic eluded her, not that she hadn't tried, but her concentration kept slipping into a sleepless stupor, and when she started to sleep in the car, she automatically tensed up anticipating Spike's typical reaction to her sleeping. He would shake her awake, or slap her, not hard, but in a stinging kind of way that never failed to get her attention.

She was almost there. Leg over the shallow hump in the center of the front seat, hand on the steering wheel. The dense black spray paint on the windows posed a problem, leaving her virtually blind even in the streaks where the paint was thin enough for someone with preternaturally enhanced vision to see through in the dark. He was badly parallel parked to the curb. She had felt that when he had pulled into the parking space. She forced herself to think methodically to the steps behind getting the car out of the parking space and in motion. She gripped the steering wheel and tugged on it, feeling the sluggish tension in it. No power steering?

Could she drive a car one handed without power steering and manage not to kill herself? It was a heavy car. It would probably hold together if she crashed into something. The handcuff was cutting into her right wrist, reminding her that she would probably loose her hand in such an event.

She found herself half laughing, half crying in frustration as she tried to decide if this was her moment in the metaphorical woods, caught in some trap, where she was willing to take off her own hand to escape. She was running out of time to decide, she realized. She grasped the steering wheel shift, trying to make out the indicator to see if the car was in park.

The driver's side door opened. There was enough light from the parking lot lights for her to see that the car was in drive. "Emergency brake," Spike told her dryly. "Christ! You didn't hear it? You can't reach it from there, Red," he pointed out. Thought of that, too, ducks, he thought to himself, feeling smug as he watched her take it in, feel the leash he had set on her snap her back into her place.

He didn't sound angry, and she cautiously retreated to her side as he got in. He drove around to the back of the property and got out, coming over to her side to uncuff her from the door. Once inside the room, he cuffed her to a chair, where she remained for the next hour, sleeping fitfully.

Spike went out, probably to make a quick meal of some unfortunate. From the contents of a bag he brought back, and casually tossed on the table just out of her reach, she guessed that he had taken the Desoto somewhere for gas and picked up a few essentials. Cigarettes, junk food, and a bottle of water, just out of reach. He took a shower, and emerged with a towel wrapped loosely around his waist; skin gleaming wetly as he turned on the television.

Willow was uncomfortably aware of just how filthy she was, and hungry, thirsty, and how naked Spike was with nothing but a towel loosely slung around his hips. He was not as tall or physically overwhelming as Angel. There was a time when she had liked that about him, because Angel made her nervous without really meaning to, and Spike only scared her on purpose, which was less confusing.

Without his usual costume of unrelieved black, he was sleek and sinuous; all sharp angles and lean muscle. No fat. Did vampires get fat? Could you get fat on a diet of blood, or did you stay fat eternally if you were a fat person when you were turned? She felt a surge of irritation at her loopy train of thought.

He stretched out on the bed, settling in for a nice, long cozy nap, content to pretend that she was not there. All in the service of breaking down her resistance.

Had she known that was his plan, she would have given him credit for his success. He had felt her attention shifting from the food she was probably craving, to him, to the bathroom, in a confused sort of way. Dark shadows ringed her eyes. Physically she was in worse shape than when they had started out. She did not want to draw his attention to herself, but she also couldn't figure out how to get what she wanted without doing that.

"Spike?"

"Red?"

"I'm thirsty, and I need to . . . go to the bathroom," she admitted, sounding defeated.

"Hmmm," he glanced over at her. "Should have thought of that before you decided to try to drive off with my car," he told her.

She frowned at the unfairness of that. The one had nothing to do with the other. "I saw a McDonald's," she lied. "I was thinking: breakfast. I didn't want to put you out since you've been so considerate."

He snorted. "Right," he said, but he smiled at the absurd improvisation and the sarcasm. Not bad. "Are you going to stop trying to escape?" he asked.

She considered lying, and discarded the notion. "Probably not. There are unwritten rules that have to be observed." She was amazed at how coherent that sounded.

Unwritten rules? Right. Prisoners were supposed to try to escape. Their keepers were supposed to be sadistic bastards. He could do that.

"Then, sit there. I'm doing my part."