The blackness fogging her head receded inch by agonizing inch as Elizabeth pulled herself out of unconsciousness. She groaned. It felt like she'd been hit with a Mack truck…and then it had turned around and backed up again for round two. Her muscles were stiff and knotted with pain, and there was a burning sensation in her shoulder that was making her arm go numb.

She went to bring her hand up to her head…and found herself restrained. Reality hit her like a blow to the stomach and she gasped, her eyes flying wide. Elizabeth tugged her arms and grit her teeth against the new onslaught of pain. She was sitting in a high back wooden chair, that was supremely uncomfortable to begin with, with her hands tied tightly behind her back and her ankles strapped to the legs.

Elizabeth slowly became aware of the rest of her surroundings. She was sitting in the middle of what looked to be an interrogation room with grey blank walls on three sides and what she was sure was a two way mirror on the fourth wall.

"Hello?" Her voice was barely above a whisper. Coughing, she swallowed a few times, her mouth like sandpaper. "Hello?" she croaked a little louder this time. "Is anyone there?"

A voice crackled over an intercom so suddenly that she gasped and threw herself into a coughing fit. "Well, I was wondering when you were going to wake up. I was afraid I'd used too much chloroform. How's your shoulder feeling?"

Dragging in a deep breath of stale air, Elizabeth tried to distinguish the voice from her memories, but her head was killing her. "Hurts," she managed. The burning sensation was quickly turning into numbness that spanned her shoulder, arm, and neck.

"Good," the voice said ruthlessly. "You deserve to be in pain."

"Who are you?" Elizabeth breathed, finally feeling the terror she should have felt settle in the pit of her stomach. She flinched as the intercom clicked off and sat in trembling silence as a door she'd neglected to notice opened behind her. Swallowing hard, she tried to control her trembling limbs as the person walked closer and closer to her.

With a pained yelp, Elizabeth's head was jerked backwards by the roots of her hair until she was staring, disbelieving, up into the face of her kidnapper. "Jaime?"

The woman snarled at her and let go of her hair so abruptly, she nearly fell backwards. Jaime walked around to face Elizabeth, fury and hatred blazing in her eyes.

"Hello, Elizabeth," she spat. "Long time no see. You didn't waste any time stealing Will away from me."

Elizabeth stared at her incredulously. "Are you kidding me? You broke up with him. He was almost done too. Five more months and he would have been home."

"He wasn't supposed to make it," she growled. "You know better than most people how foolhardy and impulsive he is. He was supposed to die over there!"

"What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you say something like that?"

"Because," she said, "I didn't want to wait. I thought I was in love with him and then I met someone. Someone who I thought was better and I broke it off with Will. Will was supposed to die and never come back and I was supposed to have everything with this new man. And then you came along. You slut, with you big fake innocent eyes and perfect Barbie doll curves. Will wanted you when we were in high school, and he wants you now. And the guy I was with? He left me for you. Or I should say, he kept me trailing along for amusement while he fucked you!"

"B-but…what...—"

"Shut up! Just shut up! Yeah, that's right. I can see it dawning on you now. I'm in love with Dave. He's mine. He's been mine and then he saw you. And suddenly I was nothing more than a pesky girl he screwed when he was bored."

"So you attacked me," she said slowly. "And then kidnapped me and now have me tied up God knows where, all because I started dating Dave? Jaime, you can have him. He's all yours."

Jaime backhanded her so hard, the chair toppled over. She hit the concrete floor with a jarring thud, and tears sprang to her eyes.

"Listen to little miss gracious over here. Telling me I can have Dave. I don't need your permission bitch! He was never yours to begin with!"

"Jaime," she started slowly from the floor, so as not to further anger the woman who could murder her if she wanted to at the moment, "There was no need to do all this. You could have just talked to me. Explained the situation and I would have gladly broken up with him."

"So why didn't you?"

She felt her temper rise. "Because I would have been beaten within an inch of my life, that's why."

Jaime scoffed. "You probably deserved it. Dave would never hit a woman if she didn't deserve it."

Elizabeth blinked up at the woman, that four years before, she had known so well. "How can you say something like that? Has he ever hit you before?"

"Of course not! I don't annoy him like you do. I don't disobey him like you do. I do whatever it is that will make him happy. I love him."

"Would you listen to yourself! You know he abuses women and yet you claim you're in love with him? You had a great guy before, who would never lay a finger on you, but would lay the world at your feet if you asked him too and you gave him up!"

With the grace and deadliness of a panther, Jaime whipped out a knife and crouched down, pressing the blade against the wildly beating pulse in her neck. "With you out of the picture, Dave will be all mine. And between Dave and I, Will won't stand a chance. I'll kill you, and then we'll kill him."

Elizabeth felt the terror clawing at her throat, but she forced through one word. "Why?"

Jaime chuckled darkly. "Revenge."

The last thing she saw was the demented sheen glazing Jaime's once pretty brown eyes before the world went black.