The ghostly figure lurked at the edge of the woods and John’s finger tightened on the trigger. When her voice whispered to him on the wind, he felt as if he had been kicked in the gut.

“John? John, is it you?”

The blood drained from his face and he took a hasty step forward to find her in his arms. “God, Doc, no! You shouldn’t be here. You should be gone,” he moaned, the words catching in his throat.





“We weren’t leaving without you, John. You should now that by now,” she whispered angrily, wrapping her arms around him as if she never planned to let go. She had suspected that he had no intention of following them. She had known he would not put them in the hands of a stranger if he had intended to go with them. She would not allow him to throw his life away for her. Not now, not ever.

He felt the steel in her grip and knew that argument was pointless. His guts twisting in fear, he pushed her back into the cover of the trees. As Bolan came up to him, he didn’t even bother cursing the man. “Dimera’s a few feet out. You and Patrick go get him. I’m going to lead the way out.”

John’s voice was hard and ugly, and the two guards didn’t stop to argue. Holding Marlena’s hand in his own, he silently led the small band into the cover of the woods. He only prayed that they had not wasted too much time waiting.

To John’s ears, they sounded like a herd of elephants trampling through the dense brush. The woods were starting to lighten with the coming of the dawn, and while it would make their passage easier, he wished that the cover of darkness had lasted just a little bit longer. There was no way they were going to make it to the destination he had in mind without being spotted. There were too many pursuers. There was too much noise. He was going to get them all killed out here in the quite solitude of the wilderness and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to prevent it. This was what he had always feared. This was what he had known would happen. His final gift to her would be her death.

Gritting his teeth in frustration, he fought down the urge to speed their pace beyond that of a slow crawl. Silence was still their best hope. There had to be mercenaries combing the woods that flanked the field. If they tried to move any faster, the noise was certain to draw attention. As he slipped beneath the rotting hulk of a fallen tree, a muffled sob halted him in his tracks.

John crouched beneath the massive log, resting his hand on the velvety moss that encased it, and looked back on the ragged band that followed him. They stumbled through the silvery fog that clung to the damp forest floor. Eric’s eyes gleamed a soft blue, the only spot of color in a landscape painted in shades of gray. Sami and Carrie trailed close behind, Sami seeming to draw strength from her older sister through the hand she held firmly in her grip. He had known before he saw her tear stained face that it was his little girl’s cry that had brought him to a halt.

As they paused for rest, Sami sank to the ground and tried to hold back a sniffle of pain. Ghostly pale, she seemed to be at one with the mist that surrounded her. The only sign that she was not a spirit from his past was the red of the blood that trailed down her cheek. Easing down beside her, John wrapped his arms around her shivering frame and pulled her close.

“Sami, it will be okay. I will get you out of here. All of you. I promise.” The words sounded hollow in his own ears and he didn’t know why she should believe him. It was a lie, and he knew it.

She tilted her head up to meet his eyes, her long blond hair running over the back of his hand like the softest of silk. “I know you will, Daddy,” she replied, her pale eyes without guile, without doubt. It was the same look she had had the first time he had held her, when she was still a baby and he and her mother her whole world. He’d be damned if he’d let her down.

An icy clarity descended and he dabbed at the bloody cut on her cheek. “I want you to stay here, Sami. Stay here with your mother and I will be right back. Okay?”

Mutely, she nodded, her eyes never leaving his face. Leaning forward, he placed a light kiss on the top of her head.

“Stay here and catch your breath,” he called to Bolan. “Be ready to move quickly when I get back.” Dropping his pack, John propped his machine gun a tree and scouted the terrain ahead. Scouts were out looking for them, he just needed to find them fist. As he stalked past Eric, the boy fell into step behind him and John came to a sudden halt.

“Eric, I need you to stay here. I’ll be back in a minute and we are going to have to move out quickly when I’m done,” he said tightly, the urge to hurry becoming undeniable.

“Dad, I want to come. You need another pair of eyes. I can be quiet, I promise.”

“I don’t have time to argue. You stay here,” John hissed, his mind already on the task at hand. Abruptly, he turned and began weaving his way through the trunks of the trees, leaving the boy standing in his wake.

He snaked silently through the brush, making good time now that he was alone. If he couldn’t slip his family past the soldiers that lurked in the woods, the next best option was to remove the soldiers. They had to be spread thinly in order to cover the territory. One or two men at most stood between his family and temporary safety. All John had to do was find those men. The last thing they would be expecting was for him to attack.

The woods themselves were silent, as if threatened by the presence of so many humans. The lone voice of an owl echoed oddly, its call muffled and warped by the thick air that swirled tendrils of fog about the boles of barren trees. His senses stretched to pick up the slightest sign of his enemy, he seemed to test the wind itself for a scent of his prey. The angry chatter of a squirrel, and he slid his knife from the sheath at his waist. The darkened blade swallowed the light around it, a deadly shadow with a razor’s edge. His breathing deep and steady, John drifted across the carpet of wet leaves, moving toward the sound of the agitated animal. From deep within a thick tangle of briars he glimpsed a flash of movement and dropped soundlessly to lie behind the trunk of a thick maple. With only the slightest crackle of branches to serve as a warning, a heavy body burst from the thicket and thundered directly toward him. His pistol was half out of its holster before his mind registered his attacker as a white-tailed deer. The big doe stampeded by him so close he could almost touch her and then disappeared as swiftly as she had come.

John hugged his body to the cold damp earth, not risking a peek around the tree-trunk. If the doe had left her refuge so suddenly, it was only because something had disturbed her. Someone was hiding in that thicket. Someone was waiting for him. The only question now was whether they had seen him. If they had seen him, they would call for help. That, he could not allow.





Gingerly, he eased himself backward, slithering on his belly across the wet earth. When the thicket was completely obscured by the dense brush around him, he slipped cautiously to his feet. With practiced care, he circled his target. Using the cover offered by the rugged land, he edged ever closer to the tangled brambles. A faint game trail that led into the shelter of the thicket and he paused across from the entrance. For long moments, he stood and watched. Unmoving, his camouflaged form blending into the woods around him, he patiently waited for his enemy to reveal himself. Finally, he saw it. A glint of light off of metal, the betraying wink of a surface far too smooth to belong in this primal place. Staring past the slight imperfection in an otherwise flawless ambush, John slowly began to make-out the features of the man he stalked. Small pieces, here and there. The square form of a shoulder. The rounded curve of a helmet. The man was facing away from him, scanning the woods to the west. The man had guessed wrong and it would cost him dearly.

Leaving his pistol snug in its holster, John held his knife low and crept toward his target. Bending almost double, he halted before the narrow passage between the thick mats of sticker bushes. He couldn’t sneak through without alerting the scout, which meant that speed alone would have to be enough. The sound of a single shot would spell disaster.

The snap of a branch echoed like a shotgun blast, and for a split second John thought the target had opened fire. He surged through the narrow opening, hoping to at least take his enemy with him when he died. His left hand clamped firmly over the man’s mouth before he realized that not a shot had been fired.

The man in his grip was strong and fast, his elbow slamming into John’s side even as the knife bit deep into his throat. The sharp blow opened up the stitches in his side and John winced at the pain, his quarry slipping from his grasp. The man stumbled away from him, one hand going to the gaping hole in his neck while the other tried to bring the rifle to bare. Lunging after him, John took him to the ground with a flying tackle, the gun tangling uselessly between the heavy bodies of the fighting men. Sharp thorns tore at the thin skin of the human predators, long vines impeding their movements. Only the muffled grunts of the combatants broke the stillness as the forest seemed to hold its breath. A sharp cry of pain rang out and the stillness of death descended.





Slowly, John crawled to his feet. With a low hiss of pain, he bent to retrieve his knife, bracing a foot against the body in order to pry the knife from between the ribs. With an ugly screech, he pulled it free. It had taken a deep thrust to reach the heart from that angle. A sloppy kill. Almost angrily, he stooped to wipe the blade against the jacket of the dead man. Too damn much blood all over the place, he noted in irritation. With a small sigh, he straightened and moved to sheath his knife. It was then that he noticed the source of the broken branch.

Eric stared at him, eyes round with shock. He had never seen anything like this. Never imagined anything like it. John looked down on him with the eyes of a stranger, his knife held in a hand still stained red with blood, a dead man laying sightless at his feet. All of the air seemed to leave the young man’s body, and it was as if he were watching the entire scene from somewhere outside himself. Somewhere far away from the reality of the blood soaked earth.. Eric fell to his knees as his stomach emptied itself onto the forest floor. He couldn’t breathe through the heaves that shook his frame, and for a moment he thought he was going to die. Then he felt the grip of a strong arm, the reassuring contact of a warm hand, rubbing gently at his back. As his father’s whispered voice washed over him, he drew in a shuddering gasp of air that quickly turned to a sob.

“Eric. Eric, go easy. Just relax. It will be alright. Just breathe,” John whispered, holding the shaking boy in his arms. Silently, he damned himself for his carelessness, his inattention. He should have known Eric would follow him. If he had been listening, he would have heard it in the boy’s voice. To have his son see him for what he was…

“I’m sorry,” Eric gasped. “I didn’t think… I didn’t know you were going to...”

“Shh. It’s okay, Eric. You didn’t do anything wrong. This isn’t your fault,” John soothed.

Finally, his breathing began to ease and he pulled away. Embarrassed, Eric stumbled to his feet. Trying to gain some sense of normalcy, he dashed away the tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” Eric repeated in a whisper, his eyes refusing to meet John’s own. “I don’t know why I freaked out like that. I just wasn’t expecting anything like… that.”

John nodded, searching for words that would ease the fear he heard in his son’s voice. “It’s ugly. You shouldn’t have had to see it, Eric. I’m sorry that you did.”

Unconsciously, the boy rubbed his hands together. “Ugly,” he muttered, nodding almost absently. “Did Stefano teach you to do that? Did he teach you to kill people?”

With a small sigh, John struggled to his feet, his hand going to his damaged side. “No. No, Stefano didn’t teach me to kill. He simply taught me to do it well.”





Startled by the answer, Eric looked up at him. “You’ve done it before, haven’t you? You’ve done it lots of times before?”

“Lots of times,” John replied with a nod, his hand going to rest against the butt of his gun as blurred memories whipped through his mind. With a slight shrug of his shoulders, he dismissed the past. “It’s what I did, Eric. It’s what I was before I met your mother.”

“I’m sorry,” Eric repeated, and this time, John could hear no fear in the words. No fear. Only pity.

John studied the clear sky, the morning sun already burning away the last of the fog. Looking down the steep ravine, he knew that they would be fully exposed to view for last hundred yards of the hike to the cave he planned to hold-up in during the light of day. They had made good time through the woods, the need for silence eliminated with the death of the perimeter guard. It still hadn’t been enough. Their last sprint to safety would have to be made without the benefit of cover.

There was nothing to be done about it now, and he focused on getting them safely down to the valley floor. The fallen leaves were slick with dew, and he was forced to grab at the saplings around him with both hands in order to keep his feet. He could not quite hide the hiss of pain as the movement pulled again at the ripped stitches in his side. The warm trickle of blood had already told him that the stitches had given way hours earlier.

Keeping his face neutral, he reached a hand up and helped Marlena over the lip of the drop-off. Despite his anger at her stubbornness, he still couldn’t help but smile at her touch. Even tired and dirty, she was the best looking thing he had ever seen. He knew she had read his thoughts by the sly grin she shot him as she went past him. Damn! He just couldn’t stay mad at the woman.

Marlena picked her way carefully down the steep incline, grasping at the trunks of trees to keep her balance. Fighting not to pick-up so much speed that she had no control at all, she still felt like she was careening down the hill. As she finally made the valley, she pulled herself to a gasping halt and looked back up the mountain. The children were rapidly making their way to her. Wet, tired, and shivering with the cold, they were a bedraggled bunch. Eric looked down and caught her eye, flashing her a tight smile and she sighed with relief that so far they seemed to be taking it all in stride.





At the very top of the hill, John and Bolan were trying to juggle Dimera’s limp body between them. Slipping and sliding under the load, they crashed through the bushes on their knees as often as on their feet. As Carrie stumbled to a stop beside her, she turned her attention to getting her children safely out of sight.

Gently, John slid his jacket under Stefano’s head, relieved to find that the bleeding had stopped. The old man moaned softly as John pulled a wool blanket from one of the packs and settled it over him. John looked up in surprise as Marlena crouched down on the opposite side of the body.

“Didn’t think you’d want to even touch him,” he commented, watching her with curiosity.

“I can’t very well let him bleed to death,” she replied matter-of-factly, peeling the field-dressing away from Dimera’s forehead.

Sitting back on his heels, John watched as she efficiently stripped the bandages and rummaged through the first aid kit.

“What?” she asked, glancing over at him.

“Nothing. You just never fail to surprise me, that’s all.”

“Me? I’m just putting on a band-aid. You’re the one who was willing to risk his life for Dimera!”

“I didn’t do that for him, I did it to protect you! You should never have waited for me, Marlena. If they had caught me in that field, you and the kids would be free and clear by now!” he shot back, his anger flaring.

Damn! Her presence a constant reminder of his failures, he had to escape from her. “Do what you can for him. I’m going to relieve Bolan,” he said coldly, stalking toward the long corridor that led to the cave entrance.

Marlena crept through the narrow passage to where John stood leaning against the rock wall, peering out at their surroundings. He had chopped down a small bush and wedged it in the narrow crevice that marked the cave’s entrance. Unless you were right on top of it, you would never even know the cave was there.

“Do you think anyone saw us?” she asked, watching his face closely.

His eyes fixed on the surrounding woods, he gave a brief shake of his dark head. “No. No, I don’t see anyone. I think we’re okay for the moment.”

He was still mad, she could see it in the clenched muscles of his jaw. Trying to break him from his self-imposed isolation, she asked, “What happened with you and Eric? He was very quiet when you returned from your scouting party.”

For a long moment, he continued to gaze out across the clearing. When he turned to face her, his eyes were emotionless voids, purposely shutting her out. “He watched me kill a man. He was somewhere he never should have been, and that was the price he paid.”





His anger was a palpable force and she refused to allow it to stand between them. Knowing he didn’t want to broach the subject, she asked anyway. “Are you mad at me?”

He sighed out an ugly chuckle at the understatement. “I am furious with you!”

Though she had known the answer to her question before she asked it, his response goaded her. All of the past hours of worry and frustration had built up to this point, and the emotion exploded out of her with a force that surprised her. She grabbed his arm and yanked him toward her. Separated by mere inches, he looked into her face and saw the fire in her eyes.

“Well welcome to the club!” she hissed. “How do you think I felt when I realized that you were going to stay behind and draw those men away? How do you think I felt when I knew that you planned to buy our chance at escape with your own life?!”

Her fury stopped him cold. He couldn’t fight with her. He could never fight with her. This was simply too much for him to take. Putting on an innocent look, he stared into those amber eyes and said sarcastically, “I thought you would feel really proud of my manly bravery.”

He didn’t know what he had expected her to say in the face of the lame attempt at humor, but he sure hadn’t expected her to hit him. He doubled over in surprise as the blow took him right in the ribs. He crashed down into her, knocking them both against the wall of the cave. Despite everything that was happening, he could not hold back the tears of laughter. “I cannot believe you hit me! I have never, ever seen you hit anybody! You actually hit me!”

Dumbstruck by her own actions, she stared into his smiling face. She couldn’t believe she had done it either. But his, his stubbornness had driven her past the point of rational thought. And she had hit him. Suddenly remembering what had made her so angry in the first place, she reached both hands up to grasp him firmly behind his neck.

“John Black, if you ever try something like that again, I will hit you somewhere that won’t have you laughing. You got me!? A marriage is a partnership. If you think that by letting yourself get killed or captured it somehow saves me from hurt, you had better think again, buddy!”

“Doc, we aren’t married,” he said, his face going hard. “The only vow I have made is to keep you safe. If I can be with you, I will. But if not, so be it. I will never take a vow that keeps me from protecting you with every skill I have. And in the end, if I die fighting for you, I will die happy.”

“That would not make me happy, John. Don’t you see that?” she shot back, tears of frustration springing to her eyes.

“Maybe not. But it will make you alive and I will settle for that.”

“I won’t settle for that, John. I will never settle for a life without you. Not again,” she muttered with fierce determination.

She pulled him down to her with a strength he couldn’t resist. He tried to keep his body stiff, tried to keep the space between them that would allow him room to think. But as her lips met his, legs moved forward with a will of their own and he melded his body to hers in a quiet desperation unlike anything he had ever known. God, she made him weak.





Marlena was senseless at his touch. Blind to everything around her but the heat of his body, she ran her hands down his sides and tried to pull him even tighter against her. She wanted to feel his skin against hers, and tore at the clothes that kept him from her. He gasped out, his groan a mingling of pain and pleasure so entwined as to be indistinguishable.

As she scrapped her nails against his bare skin, he growled deep in his throat. Surging forward, he slammed her up against the wall, her feet leaving the ground. Her back was pressed firmly against the rough rock walls and her long legs moved to clench around his waist. He propped his hands beneath her, held her firmly above him. He looked up at her, pupils dilated so that only the barest gleam of blue encircled the black. “Don’t stop, Doc. Please don’t stop,” he panted out in a guttural tone, his lips drawn back in a snarl of need and desire.

She had no intention of stopping and brought her fingers up to trace the line of his lips. It was then that she noticed the blood. Her hand dripped crimson drops, the metallic smell of copper in the air. Suddenly scared, she looked down into his eyes. The eyes were wild, and at the sign of the blood on her hands, he merely grinned a predatory smile. “It’s okay, Doc,” he whispered, as he wrapped a hand in her hair and pulled her lips down to meet his.

Frightened, she pushed against him, aware enough to know that something was wrong. “John, no,” she said, tearing her lips from his as her mind began to clear.

“Yes,” he grunted, crushing her against the wall with enough force to knock the air from her lungs.

The impact of it stunned her, and she knew she couldn’t fight him. Wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, she whispered into his ear. “John, stop. Please.”

He froze, and for a long moment she simply held him tight. Finally, she let her long legs unwrap themselves and sink back down to the reality of the dirt. Shaking with the aftershocks, she stood with her body pressed against his.

“I’m sorry, Doc. I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he whispered, hanging his head over her shoulder and trying to stop the shuddering in his body.

“Baby, you didn’t hurt me. You could never hurt me. It’s okay,” she gentled, running her fingers in easy circles over the broad expanse of his back.

His breath came out in sharp gasping sobs that were painful to hear, and she simply stood and held him until his breathing finally eased. “Are you okay?”

“Yea,” he whispered back.

Drawing her head back, she waited for him to meet her eyes. “Do you want to tell me about the blood?”.

He gave a slight shrug and stepped away from her. “I got cut in a car accident. It’s no big deal, Doc.”

She reached out to take his hand, knowing that he could not deny her when he was close to her. “John, let me look at it. At least let’s stop the bleeding, okay. That only makes sense, right?

“Doc, not now. Later, okay. I’ve got something I need to do,” he said, pulling away from her.

“John, it can wait,” she replied, no longer willing to take ‘no’ for an answer.

His grim chuckle was not the response she had expected. “Marlena, I need to lay a false trail. It’s daylight. The men after us can track our passage through the forest. There was just no way I could cover our trail last night. That means I need to lay a false trail for them to follow. I need to lead them down the valley and away from the cave. I can use the blood to do it.”

“No!” she said, her surprise showing in her voice. “No, you aren’t going to do that. Someone else can go. You are staying here.”

“Marlena, no one else can do this. Patrick and Bolan are decent soldiers, but they aren’t woodsmen. They don’t know what they are doing. I will lay down a trail and be back within the hour. It’s the only way,” he said softly, knowing that she would not accept it.

“I don’t care! You aren’t going. You’re, you’re hurt. You can’t go,” she stammered, looking at him with wide eyes. “You can’t go.”

With a small smile on his face, he reached out to run a finger along the smooth skin of her cheek. “Yea, Doc. I can.”

Silently he moved through the dense underbrush, working his way back up the small creek bed. The tracks would lead the hunters here and then disappear into the muddy water. It would be impossible to guess where they might be. Even if the soldiers decided to backtrail, there was no way they would be able to tell where their quarry had split off after the passage of so many bodies through the woods. With a tired sigh, he turned to make his way carefully back to the cave, his ears perking up at a distant noise. Freezing in place, he waiting for the sound to clarify itself.

His mind identified the rotors tearing at the air just before the chopper swung over his head on a direct course for the cave. With a silent curse, he sprinted into the thick underbrush. Heedless of the branches that clawed at him, he crashed through the woods at a dead run, pushing his body to cover the more than two miles of rough terrain before the chopper could land. It was a hopeless race, but he clung to the knowledge that Patrick and Bolen could hold the cave almost indefinitely, no matter the forces arrayed against them. The entrance was too narrow to be rushed and the rock walls would provide more than enough cover for two men with automatics to hold off an army. John would arrive in time to take his enemy from behind. With luck, he would fly them all out in the chopper. His plan of attack already sketched out, he topped the last rise just in time to see the chopper taking off into the morning sky.

Standing at the top of a steep hill, he watched as the helicopter slipped away. Knowing that she was on it. Feeling it in his gut, as the icy fear clamped down on his soul. He thought he would break then, shatter into a million tiny pieces, jagged shards that would rip through the core of the world, destroying everything in their wake.

Silence fell across the meadow like a shroud as the sound of the rotors slowly faded. The echoes of her passage mocked him, shouting her loss to the mountains themselves. He filled his lungs to scream his rage, a cry of war to summon his executioners. The sound of voices drifted up to him from the valley floor and he let his breath escape in a silent hiss. Released the fire of the rage, and let the cold empty peace that was death take its place. With an almost feral tilt of his head, he crouched and focused on his prey.

“Dammit, this was not my fault!” Bolen snapped, his voice carrying easily to John’s ear. “It’s not like I had any way to signal you. All I had was the damned tracker. It isn’t my fault you guys showed up while Black was off in the woods!”

“Did it not occur to you to hold the man at gunpoint and simply wait for us to follow the bug?” a man in fatigues shot back in irritation.

“Hey, I contracted with you guys to identify the location of the compound. Hell, I even agreed to stick close to Black and wear a homing bug. I did not agree to commit suicide for you! If you want John Black so badly, you go get him. I fulfilled my end of the deal, and I expect my payment.”

“Fine.” With a gesture, the senior officer motioned a man forward. Digging into the back of a small pack, he pulled out a square pouch. “Enjoy it,” he said, his voice indicating his disdain. Tossing the pile of bills to Bolan, he gestured at a bound figure slouched beneath the trees. “What are you planning on doing with your buddy over there, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Bolen looked up, startled by the question. “Hell, he’s your prisoner. You can do whatever you want with him.”

“We don’t care about the hired help, Mr. Bolen. As far as we are concerned, he is free to go. Now you, on the other hand… I would think you would be worried that it will get out that you betrayed Stefano Dimera. But, like I said, it’s not our problem.” With a formal nod, the soldier turned away and began walking to the south.

From his perch in the thick underbrush, John observed with interest as Bolen looked over at Patrick. Even from a distance, John could see the fear on Patrick’s face. Bolen drew his sidearm, took a step in Patrick’s direction. A sharp report rang out and Patrick was dead. Without glancing at the body at his feet, Bolan turned to trot after the man in fatigues.

“How are we evac’ing, anyway?” he asked anxiously, as the men strode down the center of the narrow valley. They passed directly in front of where John crouched, lost in the shadows. Ignoring the temptation to simply shoot them all down now, he instead watched and listened.

“Who said we’re evacuating?” the senior mercenary replied with barely concealed loathing. “Our main target is John Black. We get the big money when we get him. He can’t be too far, even if the sound of the chopper scared him off. We’re here to hunt him down. You, you’re on your own.”

John slipped silently through the woods, secure within their shadows. He followed Bolen by the sounds of the leaves crushing beneath his feet, the branches slapping at his skin. The man was panicking. Left in the woods on his own, imagined enemies at every turn, he had completely forgotten his training. Around every bush, he expected to find John, waiting to leap at him from the dark places. It made him rush. It made him careless. And when John did finally slip from the shadows to loop a thick arm around his neck, it made him dead.

The voice promised pain, and Bolen groaned into his gag as he came around. He found himself stretched awkwardly against a stout old tree. His hands were firmly tied behind him, looped together around the trunk of the tree. He was held upright by another restraint around his neck. The cords around his neck were tied to a high branch, and he had to stand tall to keep from choking. As full consciousness returned, he became aware of the chill of the fall air on his skin, and realized that his shirt and jacket had been used to tie him in place. Stretched out half-naked against the tree, he felt completely vulnerable. When he looked over into John’s face, he prayed for the first time in years.

“Ah… You finally awake, Bolen?” John’s whispered words carried a knife edge. He circled slowly, soundlessly, in front of the bound man. Reaching out, he took the man’s belt in his hands. “You sold me out, didn’t you Bolen,” the quiet voice taunted. “You know what I am going to do to you for that? You’re lucky, Bolen. I’m only going to kill you for that.”

Slowly, John tugged the thick leather belt from the man’s waist. When he grabbed the man’s fly and tugged the pants down to his knees, Bolen’s legs began to buckle. “Oh no, Bolen. I’m not going to let you strangle yourself now,” he said, his grim chuckle drifting through the air. Pushing the suddenly sweating body firmly against the tree, he leaned forward and put his lips inches from Bolen’s ear. “You betrayed me, and I am going to kill you. But for what you did to the woman I love… Bolan, I am going to gut you for that,” he murmured softly.

He trailed the razor sharp blade of his knife along the bottom swell of the man’s stomach, and couldn’t help grimacing as the man’s body voided itself in its panic. When the frantic cries began to leak past the gag to the point of irritation, John slammed a hard fist into the man’s throat. Not enough to kill him, but enough to shut him up for the moment.

“Shut the fuck up, you coward. You want to save yourself a world of pain, you will listen to me Bolan. I am only going to give you one chance. Now, you tell me what I want to know, and I will kill you quick. Do you understand me? ‘Cause if you piss me off, I am going to slice you open and let you hang here watching you intestines ooze down to your knees. Do we understand each other?” he said, his voice cold as he studied Bolen’s eyes with almost clinical detachment.

At the other man’s frantic nod of agreement, an ugly smile passed over John’s face. “I thought we could come to an understanding,” he said encouragingly. “Now, I want you to whisper it to me. I want to know the name of the man who hired you. I want to know the names of the men you worked with. You will whisper this to me when I take the gag out, or I will show you a vision of hell that would make the devil envious. Do you understand?” he asked again, already moving to take the gag from Bolen’s mouth.

The man was so afraid, he didn’t even try to call out. His whispered words rushed out as if the confession could buy his redemption. The ISA hit squad, turned independents and out to the highest bidder. The call in the night, and the obscene amount of money if he would do just one little thing. Give one little bit of information. And finally, the name. The name of the man who had set the price for the capture of John Black. The name of the man who took Marlena. Alamain. It was all that John needed to know.

He looked with disgust at the blubbering form of the man who sagged against the tree, pleading for mercy. Begging for pity. John leaned in to slip the gag back into place before the sound of it made him sick. He stood staring at the man for a long moment, waiting until he again had his full attention. Finally, he stepped forward.

Almost like a lover, he tucked his left hand behind Bolan’s thick neck and leaned across the tight stretched body. He whispered the soft words into the man’s ear, close enough that his breath caressed the sensitive skin on its passing. “I lied, Bolan. Welcome to Hell,” the words said as he slipped the knife into the soft flesh of the abdomen and sliced open the muscle and skin. Stepping back a pace, John looked calmly into the eyes of the sobbing man. As he sank against the bonds at his neck, he began choking for air and John reached around to cut the restraint away. As his head came forward, John could make out his shrieks of pain, even through the muffle of the gag. His face was expressionless as he commented softly, “I hope it takes you hours to die.”

John slipped away into the cover of the trees, never to realize what a disappointment Bolan was. The man hadn’t lasted the hour.

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