"You look pretty gloomy," Krycek said. "What's on your mind?"

"Just thinking how stupid I was to trust you and believe your story. The other guys never would have."

"Don't be too sure. I have something to show you."

"What?"

"You weren't the first one I captured." He held a photo in front of Jimmy's nose.

It was a picture of Byers, lying on a carpet just like the one in this room. He'd been stripped to the waist, or maybe naked; the picture stopped at the bottom of his rib cage. His eyes were closed, as though he were unconscious. His face was marked only by a bruise on one cheek, but his chest looked like someone had strung him up and used him as a punching bag. For a one-handed boxer: his left side was covered with bruises. There were also angry red stripes across his chest, and more lashes on his shoulders hinted that his back had been whipped even harder.

Krycek was leaning over him, watching his reaction, careful to stay out of range when Jimmy recovered from his shock and began thrashing uselessly until the handcuffs dug into his wrists. Normally, when he got mad, Jimmy liked to have a lot of space to be mad in. It kept him from hitting whoever happened to be in reach before he thought about whether that was a good idea. Being tied up really made it worse. The target of his anger was right in his face, and he couldn't get away from him or lash out at him.

"You! You!" Words failed him. "What did you do to him? If you killed him..."

"Oh, he's alive. I know what I'm doing. I can keep him alive for a very long time." He made it sound like a threat.

"Let him go! You've got me as a hostage. Let him go now!"

"You're in no position to make demands, Jimmy," Krycek pointed out, patting him on the belly.

"If I ever get loose..." But it seemed an empty threat. "Why Byers? What do you want with him?"

"There's certain information he has that I want."

"Where is he? Why are you holding him separately?" he demanded. He wondered if Byers was in the adjoining room. "Why don't you at least put us in the same room?"

"I wanted some privacy for some of the things I've been doing to him," Krycek explained.

Jimmy seethed as his imagination chewed on that one. Not that Byers hadn't been in tough spots before. It seemed to be the fate of the staff of the Lone Gunman to face personal danger for each week's issue. But this one seemed just a little too personal.

"But maybe that's not such a bad idea, to put you in the same room. You know, Byers is a lot tougher than he seems. He's a very hard man to break. But I think bringing you in, and torturing you while he watches, might just do it."

It just might. What a horrible image.

"You should see the look on your face!" Krycek taunted.

"What do you want from us?" he moaned, sagging down onto the mattress. "What can I do to get you to let him go? I'll do anything!"

"I'm not letting him go until he talks. I've already tried every interrogation technique short of breaking his fingers. That's next on my list."

"Please don't," Jimmy whispered.

"If that doesn't work, I'll have to use the knife."

Again Jimmy thrashed against the handcuffs, which just bit deeper into his wrists, and kicked at the air. It was useless. He settled back, breathing hard.

"And if he doesn't talk, I'll just have to keep cutting until he bleeds to death."

"No! No, please!"

"If I do decide to kill him, would you want to be with him?"

"Please, I don't want you to kill him at all," he moaned.

Krycek patted his arm, just below where the handcuff was biting into his wrist. "Let's just suppose you have no choice about that part. Would you rather he die alone, on in your arms?"

"I hope they lock you up and throw away the key."

"I asked you a question," Krycek said dangerously.

"In... in my arms." He swallowed. "Nobody should have to die alone. Especially... not Byers." He fought back tears. If any of his heroes had to die, it should be the other two who were there to comfort him. Jimmy didn't feel he deserved that bittersweet honor.

"So you'd rather I kill him in front of you? You're saying you want to watch?"

"That's not what I meant." Damn, now he was crying in front of this heartless monster!

Krycek traced the track of Jimmy's tears down his stubbled jaw with his fingers. "I hate to see a grown man cry." But it was obvious that he was lying. The bastard was enjoying this!

Once he started, he couldn't stop. The humiliation of showing weakness in front of Krycek just made it worse. Krycek watched him cry for a few minutes, then touched his shoulder. "Hey," he said softly. Jimmy ignored him. "Hey! Listen to me." Jimmy looked at him. "I have no intention of killing Byers. Not today. I just wanted to see what kind of reaction I'd get from you."

"Now you know," he sniffled.

"You're no fun; you're way too easy. Making Skinner break down, now, that would be satisfying, or even Mulder."

"You're not gonna kill him?" A weight seemed to lift from him as that sank in.

"All I want is some illegal computer work done for me. Once his friends do that, I'll release Byers. You too, eventually."

"Wouldn't Byers be more useful doing the work for you? The guys are used to working as a team. You'd still have me as a hostage."

"Langly is the best at what I want done. And he's known Byers a lot longer than he's known you."

That was a diplomatic way of putting it. Jimmy liked to believe that Langly was his friend, and wasn't fooled by his constant sarcastic putdowns. He'd gotten worse abuse in locker rooms from some of his best friends, back in school. It was just the way some guys showed their affection for each other. But how far would he go to save Jimmy? Not as far as he would for Byers, that much was sure. And Krycek was sure to have asked Langly to do some pretty dishonest stuff. With Byers not around to protest, Langly would do it, to save his friend. So would Frohike. If he'd kidnapped Langly instead, Byers would be tearing himself apart choosing between his principles and his friend's life. Yeah, Krycek must have the guys pretty well pegged.

"Langly would do anything for Byers. He'll give you what you ask. Just be patient. Please."

"I think I found a pattern match on the headboard from the picture," Langly said. "But that manufacturer has shipped, like, ten thousand beds to half the cheap motels in the Northeast."

"Well, at least that narrows it down a little," Byers said. "It's good to be making some progress."

"We've only got two hours left," Frohike pointed out. "Maybe it's time we thought about bringing in outside help."

"What can we do?" Langly asked. "Report the kidnapping to the FBI? Krycek is already officially wanted by the FBI, and they haven't been able to catch him yet. He's gotta have help on the inside, so getting the FBI involved would just be tipping him off."

"Two hours," Byers muttered. Two hours, and Krycek would start cutting pieces off of Jimmy, unless they did one of the jobs for him. He felt his two friends looking expectantly at him.

Krycek had been very quiet for the last hour, sitting at his computer. Maybe he was reading. There was a lot to read on the Internet, according to Frohike.

Krycek just kept staring at the screen, punching a couple of keys every so often. Jimmy spent the time worrying about Byers, and wondering what he'd been doing when Krycek had captured him. He was sure that Byers hadn't been captured by being gullible, like him. No, Byers must have risked himself heroically, knowingly putting himself in danger for yet another good cause, and this time he'd lost the gamble. He was an incredibly brave man. And now his luck had finally run out.

Krycek got up from the desk and slowly walked over to the foot of the bed, where he squatted down. He seemed to have taken a sudden interest in Jimmy's bare feet. He reached out and fingered the smallest toe on Jimmy's right foot, separating it from the others, holding it between thumb and forefinger, running his thumb up and down it. Jimmy wished he would lean closer so he could kick him in the face, but his leg was already fully extended. Finally he looked at his watch and sighed. He paced back and forth across the room, checked his watch again, and went back to using his computer. Jimmy didn't waste time wondering whether Krycek had a foot fetish. That was the least of his worries right now.

There was less than an hour before the first deadline. Clearly they weren't going to rescue Jimmy in that time, and they couldn't count on Krycek waiting until morning. They'd have to give in to one of Krycek's demands. Studying the beer bottles, Byers was relieved to find that one of the jobs wasn't morally objectionable at all. Intercepting data from a military satellite to track alien ships in orbit wouldn't hurt any innocent people, as far as Byers knew. That would buy them another twelve hours to look, and it was an easy enough task that Byers could do it in his sleep. That was fortunate, since he was half asleep already. He gathered the information and entered it on Krycek's web form with ten minutes to spare. Langly gave up for the night, but Byers kept looking for any trace of where Jimmy had been taken. Even without the next deadline to worry about, how could he sleep knowing that Jimmy was in Krycek's clutches?

With Krycek back at the desk, Jimmy's mind wandered back to Byers, and all the opportunities he'd missed to say something to him about how he felt. They'd both been free, and living under the same roof, all that time. He wondered if there would have been any chance someone like Byers would actually settle for someone like him. If they both got out of this alive, maybe he'd finally give it a try, so he wouldn't die wondering. What had he been afraid of? Byers was a nice guy. He'd certainly let him down easy.

He was pretty sure by this point that Byers was gay. He'd suspected almost from the beginning, ever since that day the two of them were coming back from dropping the latest issue of at the printer's. It must have been only a few weeks after the guys had let him join the team, because he remembered that Byers had been talking about the results of breaking the whaling story. That had been in the first issue the two of them had taken to the printers together, right after the one he'd paid for and picked up on his own, as a surprise. Byers had told him that while the story hadn't exactly forced the whaling fleet to shut down, the publicity had been a big setback for the corporation. A lot of whales were probably alive today that would be dead, all because Jimmy's money had allowed them to publish the information Frohike and the others had gotten. Also, they'd run a followup story the next week about how the Japanese government were holding seven eco-terrorists who had destroyed the harpoon guns on one ship as an act of protest, sorta like the founding fathers had done in the Boston Coffee Break. Major newspapers picked up the story, and the authorities had dropped the charges to avoid the international attention. So seven brave young men and women were free who would still be in prison, all because of a thousand dollars or so of Jimmy's savings. The sense of pride that news gave him, especially when the praise came from his hero Byers, was unmatched by anything else he'd experienced in his life. It was way better, even, than scoring a winning touchdown and having his teammates carry him off the field on their shoulders. Maybe even if you counted the part where they carried him into the locker room, stripped him, and showered him in champaign.

Anyway, he remembered was already feeling really good on that day, which was an especially fine sunny day, maybe a little on the hot side. They'd stopped at a red light, and a handsome hunk of a guy crossed the street right in front of the car, carrying his T-shirt wadded up in his hand. Jimmy followed him with his eyes, of course, admiring the muscular and well-tanned chest and back. But since good-looking men always reminded him of Byers, he automatically glanced over at his buddy, and did a double-take: Byers was staring at the guy too! When he saw Jimmy watching him, he took a sudden interest in checking the arithmetic on the printer's receipt. From then on, whenever Byers was in his car, Jimmy took every chance he could to get a good view of shirtless men, even more than he usually would. He got good at timing things so that he'd stop at strategically placed red lights. He chose routes that took them past parks, and colleges with big lawns, and construction sites: anything to increase the opportunities. Byers never commented on the odd routes he took; the Lone Gunmen made a habit of never taking the same route twice anywhere, in order to make them harder to ambush. And sure enough, Jimmy noticed that Byers looked at shirtless men whenever he thought Jimmy wasn't watching him. He was never direct enough about it to make the guys uncomfortable. If they noticed at all, they could always convince themselves that Byers just happened to be looking in their direction by accident. But Jimmy couldn't, not when Byers was so consistent about it. Plus, in all the time he'd known him, he'd never once heard Byers talk about women. Compared to Frohike's constant vague bragging, or Langly's juvenile attitude toward sex, or the crude talk of the lesser men Jimmy used to hang out with, Byers had a notable disinterest in women.

But he couldn't figure out how to ask him about it without sounding like he was coming on to him. After all, it must have occurred to Byers by now that Jimmy was also gay. Jimmy had been openly staring at some of the same guys Byers was, and if he could figure out what Byers thinking, Byers sure was smart enough to do the same! So, what was he supposed to say? "Yeah, great pecs, huh? Say, I notice you seem to especially like looking at the big beefy guys. Is that your type?" Yeah, right, like a man like Byers would ever settle for Jimmy!