He pulled up outside the address he'd found online- a squalid little dump of a place, which made sense considering the kind of luck Jeffery seemed to have in his life. Julian waited a moment before getting out. He wasn't afraid, but he was cautious, and well aware of what was potentially at stake. He was bound and determined to get Desiree out of danger, safe and alive, and winding up in the same situation as her would do little in the way of helping him to achieve that goal.

There were no lights on inside as far as he could see, and presently no vehicles parked in front of the house.

He didn't know whether that was a good thing or not, but he tried to convince himself that it was...

He stepped out of his car, and the cold night air immediately began to sting against his flesh.

He shivered slightly, but proceeded across the street, looking around for any signs of movement- either Jeffery’s or that of a neighbor. The only thing he saw was a black cat ducking through the shadows, however. The whole neighborhood seemed as abandoned as this particular house, with the home on its right foreclosed upon and abandoned, and the one on the left otherwise unlighted, by all appearances vacant.

He stopped at the house's landing, gripping the butt of his pistol as he considered what to do next.

He almost took a step up and went in, but then had a change of heart.

Cautiously, he decided instead to circle around to the other side of the house, and was rewarded for his care by the appearance of a back door.

This felt like a safer bet, and he made his way swiftly forward.

A motion light flashed on as his hand met the handle of the door, and he immediately whipped out his gun, ready to fire it if need be.

There didn't seem to be anyone around, however, and upon pressing an ear to the door he couldn't pick up a single sound.

He stepped back, and breathed a sigh of relief.

He then began to pull on the handle of the door, finding that it was predictably locked. He looked around for anything a spare key might be hidden in and, not really feeling in the mood to waste time, he smashed the butt of the gun into the glass plane of the door.

He waited for a response, but there was none, and he slid his hand cautiously through the busted square, wrapping his fingers around the handle.

He slid the door cautiously open, holding his breath as he entered.

It was completely dark inside, as abandoned as it had seemed from the outside. He briefly considered lighting up the screen of his phone in order to see better, but decided that this was too dangerous, and soon enough his eyes managed to adjust to the darkness.

Before long he'd meandered his way to a locked cellar, and to the quickening of his heart he saw that there was a very dim sliver of light seeping out from beneath the door.

This was it... He knew it must be it!

He nearly called out her name, but managed at the last second to restrain himself, difficult though it was. He looked around the house for a way to break his way in, and settled on a brick he found sloppily pressed against the wall, presumably used as a poor man's doorstopper.

He bashed off the handle of the door, and slowly it came creaking open for him, his heartbeat doubling yet again as the dimly lit steps were illuminated into view.

He took a deep swallow, double checked to make sure that his gun was cocked and loaded, and made his slow, creaky descent into the cellar.

Time seemed to stretch on endlessly as he made his way down the stairs, each step seeming to take an eternity, and the dread of what he might find once he got down there making the hairs on his neck stand on end.

He was soaked with sweat by the time he finally made it to the landing. But once he did, a desperate wave of relief flooded over him like nothing he'd ever experienced.

There she was.

Chained to a radiator.

Cowering in fear, unaware of who it was that had come to see her.

Lit only by a single, naked bulb hanging suspended from the ceiling.

Clearly worse for the wear but alive and, aside from a light ring of blood around her handcuffed wrist, unharmed.

“Julian?” asked a feeble voice, and suddenly a light seemed to pour into her eyes. “Oh my God... Julian!”

He ran to her. Embraced her. Thought he might never let her go again...

Their lips met, and he felt hot tears pouring along his face. Hers, he thought initially, but then he realized they were his own...

“Oh Desiree... Desiree... Are you alright?”

She shook her head wordlessly, though she couldn't really say why- she felt more relieved in that moment than she ever had in her life.

“Oh my God Julian... You came for me! How did you find me? How did you know-”

“I found him,” he said. “A photo of him in your father's study... Jeffery, I mean...”

“Jeffery?” she asked, still having caught only the briefest glimpse of her kidnapper's face, and oblivious to his true identity.

He blinked at her, having thought she must have known him. “Your father's old business partner,” he explained offhandedly, but then shook his head. “I don't know... It's a long story, and I can tell it to you later. Right now we need to get you out of here.”

“He's been gone for about ten minutes,” she said. “He won't be gone long... He went to go mail a ransom letter, probably from somewhere far away enough from here that no one would associate it with him.”

“God... Okay...” Julian looked around, trying to devise some way of freeing her.

“There's a toolbox, over there I think,” she said, pointing into a dark corner. “I haven't been able to reach it, obviously,  but I'm pretty sure that's what it is.”

Julian rushed over, and sure enough it was as she'd said. He dug around for a while, trying to find something he thought could work to get her out of her shackles, and at last he pulled out a hacksaw, hoping it might do the trick.

“Let's give this a shot,” he said, and she pulled the cuffs painfully taut, giving him as much access as possible to the chains which secured her to the radiator.

The groans of pain that escaped her lips, coupled with the tears rolling from her eyes, were almost too much for him to handle. The saw blade made its way slowly through the metal of the cuffs, but every time he pulled it along it dug deeper and deeper into Desiree's wrist, drawing more and more blood, and causing the hand itself to grow redder and redder from the cut off of circulation.

“I'm sorry... I'm so sorry...” he said, trying to balance his concern for her immediate well-being with the knowledge that Jeffery might descend on the two of them at any moment.

At last, just when Desiree didn't think she could stand it any longer, the chain snapped free of the radiator, and the two of them tumbled back several feet, liberated at last.

“Oh thank God,” she said, her joy at having been set free eclipsing the pain now coursing through her wrist.

“Alright,” he said, “Get behind me to be safe, and let's get the hell out of here before he gets back.”

He made his way back over to the landing, eager to get her to safety, when suddenly he felt her good hand being wrapped over his shoulder, calling him to attention. He turned, and she leaned in to kiss him once more on the lips, this time long and slow, as though the two of them had all the time in the world at their disposal.

He was a little bit dazed when at last she pulled away from him, and she looked at him with bright, almost glowing eyes- eyes which seriously tempted a man to become hopelessly lost in them.

“I love you,” she said, not knowing whether this was appropriate to say after they'd been dating for so short a period of time. But considering she hadn't even known until a few minutes ago whether she would make it out of this alive, it now felt like more of a risk not to tell him how she really felt.

He looked at her for a moment, and she almost feared he was about to reject her affections. But then a warm smile spread across his face, and those blue eyes beamed at her, making her feel as safe and as secure as they always did.

“I love you too,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Now let's get you out of here...”

They hurried up the stairs, hungry for their freedom, so close now that it seemed there was nothing in the world that could stand in their way.

Nothing, except for the bright flash of light that greeted them once they'd made it up to the landing, appearing out of the blackness and disappearing just as soon as it had come.

Desiree didn't know what had happened for a moment- her ears were ringing from the blast, so much so that she wasn't even sure whether she'd actually heard the blast.

Julian's body was slowly tilting backward, leaning toward her like a fallen tree.

And then, at last, they were both falling.

Falling, falling, endlessly through space, jettisoning back down the stairs in freefall, so fluidly that it felt like a dream.

They hit the stairs again before reaching the floor below, and slid several steps down, mangling their bodies in the process. Desiree felt both of her legs breaking in different places, and Julian's body rang with pain as he landed on top of her. He couldn't even tell what exactly had been broken in him the agony was so great, though his mind seemed to gravitate most intensely to the gaping red hole in his shoulder, where a shotgun blast had made its way cleanly through one side of his body to the other. He squeezed his fingers numbly, thinking there should be a pistol there, and wondering where exactly it had gone to.

They lay there in a heap for what seemed like an eternity, both suspecting they would be dead in a matter of minutes, though more than a little surprised that they weren't already.

The stairs creaked ominously, signifying the approach of the mad man who'd orchestrated all of this, taking his sweet time in finishing off the task at hand given that there was no real possibility for either of them to escape.

“Naughty, naughty girl,” he said, making a “tsk, tsk, tsk,” sound as he made his descent to their level. “Having friends over without asking me... Such terrible manners, you bad little thing...”

And there he was, at last, unmasked.

The man in the photograph, aged badly, though very much one and the same.

His eyes glowed crazily, and a twisted smile spread across his lips. He held the shotgun aimed at the center of Julian's chest, threatening to kill him on the spot if he made any sudden movements.

“Hello... Jeffery...” he gasped defiantly through his pain, and Jeffery simply laughed at this.

“What, is that supposed to impress me? Intimidate me? Yes obviously, you know my name... You're here, aren't you? I'm not an idiot...”

Julian scowled, but had to close his eyes from the pain now coursing through him.

Jeffery laughed at his futile attempts at resistance, and to try and buy himself some leverage, Julian gambled, “Don't try anything... I've called the police, and they'll be here... Ugh... Any minute now...”

Jeffery sighed, and shook his head.

“No... No, I don't think you did, I don't think they will be. I think if you'd called them, you wouldn't have been a fool and tried to save your poor little princess yourself. And then, of course, you wouldn't be in this situation, and you might both still live to see another day...”

Julian narrowed his eyes at him.

“Don't... Ugh... Hurt her!”

“You know, it's funny... I actually wasn't going to, when this all started. I'd never hurt anyone before. But now I'm starting to like it. Quite a bit, in fact...”

Desiree shrieked, as suddenly the barrel of Jeffery's shotgun came whooshing through the air and pressing up against Julian's forehead. Julian winced, but didn't make a sound.

“I like hurting men like you. Men who think that the world belongs to them, and that they're some kind of alpha male... Men who ruin it for the rest of us. Men who horde all the money, take up all the good pussy... Men who turn a simple attempt to get ransom money into a goddamn bloodbath, because they think they always have to be the ones to save the day. The world could stand to do with a few less men like you, in my humble opinion, and I'm more than happy to contribute to the cause...”

He cocked the shotgun, and they both lay there, frozen, waiting for him to fire.

He sneered down at them, then laughed, pulling the gun just up from off of Julian's forehead.

“On second thought, I was just telling Ms. Starr here how it might be nice to have some fun with someone before offing them. Considering it, I think she's too important, too valuable to mess up too badly. But you... You on the other hand... You have real potential...”

He swung the shotgun down several inches, and jammed it against the wound in Julian's shoulder. He shouted in pain, tears streaming from his eyes.

“I could finish off that arm for you, if you like... That could be fun... Or- ooh!”

He yanked the barrel away from his shoulder, giving him momentary relief, but then made his stomach lurch as he whipped it down along his body, and slammed it against his groin.

“There's an idea I like quite a bit... Cut you off at the source, and stop men like you from reproducing. That might knock you down a peg or two, don't you think? Hmm, I'm really liking this idea. What do you think Desiree? Would you still love your man if he wasn't a man anymore?”

Desiree's reply went as follows:

BLAM!

Jeffery howled in pain, and toppled to the floor, the shotgun flying from his hand as he went. It discharged and shot a hole in the wall across the room, and landed on Julian's good shoulder.

It took everyone but Desiree a moment to figure out what the hell had just happened. While Jeffery had been distracted threatening Julian, she'd managed to grab her boyfriend's fallen pistol out from beneath him where it had landed upon their collapse down the stairs. It had been a hellish feat to say the least, fumbling with the trigger while her hand threatened to burst in its metal prison, waiting for the right moment to shoot him to avoid Julian being killed as a result. Of course, she didn't really want to turn him into a eunuch either, but Jeffery had seemed intent on making that happen either way at that point, and she didn't think she would have a better opportunity than that to act.

Thankfully, Jeffery had been too shocked by the pain of his right ankle being blasted apart at close range that he hadn't had the chance to fire- it wasn't the ideal shot, Desiree knew, but it had been the best she could do without making any obvious movements that would have revealed her intentions to the man holding the shotgun.

And now the race was on, with all three of them injured, all three of them, at least for the moment, disarmed. Julian now had access to the shotgun, but it was too long and unwieldy for him to get a hold of with his one good arm, much less cock it and fire it at a target slumped virtually on top of him. Desiree still had the pistol, but had only been able to fire it that first time because Julian had had it cocked and loaded already. She knew next to nothing about guns, and even if she had she could barely operate the thing now, her hand hurting so badly in its cuff that she thought she might end up losing it.

Finally there was Jeffery, clutching at his wounded ankle, howling in pain.

For as much joy as he claimed to derive out of causing others pain, he really didn't seem especially capable of handling that much of it himself.

“Grrrr... YOU BITCH!” he shouted at Desiree, his eyes bugging, and Desiree almost dropped the pistol in terror. Then, to make matters worse, Jeffery reached into his pants pocket and whipped out the knife he'd used to kill Shade, which he'd had on his person this entire time. He lifted it into the air with the intention of bringing it down upon her somewhere, exacting his revenge. From the corner of his eye, however, he happened to catch sight of Julian fumbling frantically with the shotgun, almost to the point that he could swing it around at him and fire.

At the last moment, Jeffery curved the arc of his blade, and drove the blade of the knife into Julian's upper thigh- giving him another source of excruciating pain to compete with the many other now afflicting him.

“GAHHHHHHHHH!”

Desiree had had enough of it.

Jeffery heard the click of the pistol, which desperation had caused her to figure out at last. He'd just turned his head toward her, when suddenly he saw the flash of the muzzle, and the infinitesimal flight of the bullet in his direction.

And that was the end of Jeffery.

Desiree watched as he hovered in the air for a moment, his head swaying around the nauseating red hole in its center. Then, at last, he toppled backward, eyes still open, and breathed his last, convulsive breath.

Desiree wanted to cry, and vomit, and scream all at once, relieved though she was. That last shot, though, had been as much as her crimson hand had been able to stand, and by now it felt positively numb. She extricated herself painfully out from beneath Julian's weight, and crawled over to where Jeffery lay, scavenging desperately through his pockets of the key to the cuffs.

“Desiree...” Julian moaned, the shock of his injuries clearly getting to him now that the immediate danger had passed. “Desiree are you... Alright?”

She didn't answer at first, but instead remained focused on the desperate search for the handcuff key. At last she yanked it from Jeffery's still-warm person, her eyes glinting at it as she held it in her grip.

She shoved the key into the lock of her cuff, then twisted it painfully open, gasping as her bloody red hand was freed, and the metal shackle went clanging to the cellar floor.

“Oh thank God,” she gasped, feeling more relieved than she should by the alarming sight of it. Her fingers trembled, and she couldn't move them, but she hoped- prayed- that it would be alright once it had time to recover.

“Desiree...” Julian muttered to her, his voice now positively feeble. He was clearly fading fast into unconsciousness, but tethered to alertness by his concern for her safety.

“Yes! Julian! Yes, I'm here.... I'm okay, I'm going to be okay. We both are... Okay? Do you understand me? We're both safe now...”

“Good... I'm... I'm glad...” he whispered.

“Just hold on... Please hold on... I'm going to call for help... I'm going to get us both out of here...”

She clambered carefully into the pocket of his jeans, mindful of the knife still jammed into his leg, and managed to pull out his cell phone, its screen cracked, but still glowing. She thanked God that it still had three bars of signal down here in this crypt of a place, and she hurriedly dialed 911, not thinking it was possible to get out of this place in a big enough hurry.

“Desiree... Desiree...”

“Yes... Just hold on... I'm calling us help...”

“Desiree... Did you mean what you said earlier? When you said you loved me?”

She froze, just short of hitting the call button on the phone.

“I-” she stammered, only because this now felt like it had taken place a lifetime ago, rather than a few short minutes. “Yes... Of course I did,” she said. “I do. I really love you Julian. I think I've loved you for a long time...”

He smiled at this, and closed his eyes.

“Good,” he said. “Because I really love you too...”

He went silent, but the smile on his face remained as he slipped into unconsciousness. Desiree experienced a moment of panic, but saw that he was thankfully still breathing. She placed her good hand on the side of his face and stroked his cheek lovingly, then took a deep breath.

She turned back to the phone, hit the talk button, and at last made the phone call that would save their lives.