Joe woke slowly to the awareness that he was lying on his back, it was screaming bloody murder at him and he couldn't get turned around enough to fix the situation. His hands were tied very firmly to the bedpost at the end of the bed on which he lay and his arms were tied behind his back; he was lying on them right now. Joe grimaced in pain, wincing when a slight shift made his back hurt even worse and tried to wiggle his fingers. They were already numb from the pressure of lying on them so long. On top of that, he was gagged, with a large wad of clothes stuffed into his mouth and bound by at least two layers of duct tape. The situation was looking grimmer by the minute.

The room looked like a shadow layered in mist. Joe detected shapes around him, things that might be more bedroom furniture or a Buick for all he knew. He heard muffled breathing near him. That had to be Connor. Joe wriggled his fingers again, trying frantically to work some feeling into them. His head hurt and he felt like crying from the pain but he wouldn't give them, or himself, the satisfaction. His stupidity had gotten them into this! How dumb could he be!

Nearby, a door opened. Looking around him, Joe made out shapes that moved toward him in the mist. He looked up to see Doctor Rich, with his three companions, staring down at him. Doctor Rich looked quite pleased with himself. It was, Joe thought, very much like the expression of a scientist whose lab experiment had come up a winner.

"You and yours have been a lot of trouble to me, young Joseph," Doctor Rich said to Joe, a mild expression of annoyance on his face. "First you feast your eyes onto things which you don't have the sense to leave when you are warned. I didn't have much choice about doing something with your brother, but I really hoped to spare you."

Joe grunted and struggled even harder against his bonds. His hands felt so numb he wasn't really sure they were there, except he felt them against the small of his back, not too far from his wound. Joe pulled at his bonds but they were tied too tightly to get any leeway.

"I really hoped to get out of this without any bloodshed," Doctor Rich continued. "But I fear that I cannot leave you and Connor alive. No doubt you would run straight to the authorities, or your father and that just won't do. There is too much at stake to let any of this go now."

Joe heard Connor grunt. He couldn't quite see his friend, it was impossible to turn his head far enough to see where Connor might be and the mist managed to obscure the view of almost everything else in the room. Joe winced when he pulled against his stitches again and then looked up at the man standing over him. He had a million questions he wanted to ask, a million questions that would go unasked in his current state. He wondered if this was how Frank had felt when he'd had the tube down his throat. If he had questions inside, screaming to be asked and unable to ask them. None of this made sense to Joe, though he suspected if he wasn't so tired and able to think more clearly, he would understand it all.

"I do wish to apologize for all that you have been forced to endure," Doctor Rich said. "But, go to sleep now and I promise, you won't feel any pain later."

The Doctor reached into something, probably a pocket and leaned close to Joe's face. He held a packet of the white powder in his hand, obtained from Joe's backpack most likely and he opened it. Carefully, he spooned a small amount just below Joe's nose. Joe held his breath, knowing what the dust would do him if he inhaled. The doctor turned away from him and by the sound that Connor made, Joe knew he had the same treatment.

"As far as deaths go," Doctor Rich told them. "It will be a fairly easy one. More mundane than shooting you, I think. I am sorry, boys."

With that, he turned away.

Joe grunted and twisted his head back and forth, trying to knock some of the powder loose from his nose. Some of it clung persistently to the tape around his mouth, some of it fell to one side. His lungs were screaming for air. Joe was finally forced to inhale again, through his nose and he almost instantly sneezed when some of the powder trickled into it. He managed to blow some of it out through his nose but he knew, he knew that some of it had gotten into his airway already.

Connor sneezed a moment later than he did. Joe squirmed against his bonds, twisting back and forth to try and break free. Joe's breathing wasn't affected yet, but each breath brought in another small amount of the powder and another sneeze. Joe heard Connor flailing; Joe didn't know if it was from the powder or because he was trying to free himself.

Joe tried to cough but couldn't. It stuck in his throat, now making it harder for him to breathe. He pulled at his bonds but only succeeded in tightening them. He felt each breath coming harder and harder.

Suddenly, the door to the room burst open and he looked up to see the big man standing before him. The big man cracked his knuckles a few times and grinned down at Joe, an evil expression on his face. Spots were swimming before Joe's eyes now; it didn't matter what the man did to him now, did it?

"Your Uncle paid me a lot of money to find you, Joey," the man said. "So, even though it might upset Doctor Rich, well, I think I'll just take you now. You won't be saying anything to anyone anyway."

Joe's eyes went wide with alarm and shock and he struggled even harder. The spots danced before his eyes as the man reached down to the bonds that had his feet tied to the bed.

The door shot open again and the figure of a tiny slip of a girl stepped into the room. She was holding something in her hands that was pointed right at the big man's head.

"Get away from my brother, you goon!" Mandy Hardy said in a calm, almost dead, voice. "One more step toward him and you'll find out just how good I am with this bow."

The big man stepped back, raising his hands into the air as he did so. Vanessa stepped around Mandy, or at least Joe assumed that it was Vanessa by her general shape. She approached the big man cautiously, with Mandy holding her bow and arrow very steady on the man.

"Turn around," Mandy ordered him. "And put your hands on your back. Kneel down and cross your legs behind you. NOW!"

"What if I don't?" the man said, belligerent. "I don't think you'll shoot me. You ain't got the nerve for it, girly."

"Oh, really?" Joe made out the challenging tone in his sister's voice and cringed. "Go ahead and try something then, we'll see just how much nerve I have."

Vanessa approached the man as he finally knelt and crossed his legs behind him. The man lunged suddenly and was brought up short when an arrow whizzed through the air and embedded his hand into the wall behind him. He let out an earth-shattering scream of pain and Mandy had another arrow cocked at him before he could do anything else.

"Would you like to try that again?" Mandy challenged him. "The next one won't just hit your hand, big man, the next one is aimed at something a little more near and dear, I'd say."

She smiled sweetly, at least, Joe imagined her smiling sweetly. The room was getting all shadowy around him now and her words seemed to come to him from a tunnel.

The man gave up. Vanessa yanked his arm free, after considerable tugging, from the wall and bound him quickly at the hands and feet and left him lying on the floor in a very uncomfortable position. Mandy ran over to Connor then and took out a wicked looking pocketknife, which she used to begin sawing at his cords. Someone else, Joe noted absently, was sawing at his own, but he was too tired to take much notice of it now. His back hurt. He couldn't really breathe well and it was getting all nice and dark around him.

Mandy swore softly under her breath, saying every word her mother and father had told her never to say while Mandy worked at the bonds holding her boyfriend down to the table. Every nerve impulse raged at her to go see to Joe, Joe was her twin, her other half, but she stayed with Connor, her boyfriend, the man she was determined to marry after graduation. Vanessa had Joe in hand. Vanessa deserved the honors of freeing Joe.

The darned ropes were a lot more stubborn than Mandy planned. Even sawing her hardest got her barely halfway through just one of the cords. She kept sawing, using all of the determination she had used when keeping the bow trained, steadily, on the man she had shot in the hand. Samantha was here too, out in the hallway guarding the other two men that they had captured.

Connor's breathing was barely noticeable and he was unconscious. Mandy saw the signs of the white powder along the tape over his mouth and running all down the tape to the bed beneath him. Still, Mandy feared that he'd inhaled too much of it anyway. She sawed with more determination, until the fat cord around Connor's feet could be pulled free. She started on the tape around his mouth next, that came of more easily than the rope did and she pulled the wad of cloth out of his mouth, hoping it would help him breathe better. He inhaled, his breath ragged, the wind rattling through his chest.

Joe, Mandy heard, was not doing much better. Vanessa had started with Joe's gag and sat him up on the bed to free his hands and get the weight off the stitches in his back. The mist was clearing with the door open so Mandy could see a little better to know that Joe had gone pale. Mandy sat Connor up and went to work removing the rope around his hands. Again, it took determination to get the rope cut, determination that was making Mandy very tired. Finally, however, she pulled the rope free and pulled it off of Connor's hand, freeing it from the tie that had gone around a leg of the bed. Nasty bit of work that had been.

Mandy rushed over to help Vanessa with the rope around Joe's legs, sawing at it, frustrated that it wouldn't give faster. Vanessa had tears running down her cheeks and a fearful expression on her face.

"Sam, lock them in the closet and come help us!" Mandy called out to her friend in the other room. "We need you to help us get them to the car!"

"Oh, God, Mandy," Vanessa said. "I don't think Joe is breathing at all!"