IT WAS DARK. MEG KEPT SQUINTING HER EYES, TRYING TO peer into the gloom. It didn't do her any good. The dark was a thick, tangible presence, as smothering as any wool blanket, as pervasive as an endless sea.

She twisted her body, straining against the ties that held her hands captive above her head. The latex bindings dug into her wrists cruelly. She felt a fresh trickle of moisture running down her arm and guessed that it was blood. At least she didn't feel much pain anymore. Her hands had gone numb hours ago, her bound feet shortly thereafter. She still had a dull ache in her shoulder blades from the awkward position. She imagined that would be gone soon, as well. And then?

She shifted her bound feet again. Tried to find leverage against the corner wall, as if she could climb her way up the vertical surface, slog her way through the ocean of black and burst out the top, gulping for air. Of course, she could do no such thing. She remained a captive twenty-year-old girl. Peering into the dark, inhaling the stomach-churning scent of latex, and feeling the blood drip down her arm.

Sound. She shifted, trying to guess the direction of the noise. Footsteps. Above her. From the right? From the left? She never realized how much the darkness echoed before she had been tied up in this musty basement.

Closer, definitely, closer. Humming now. The man, she thought, recoiling reflexively, then holding her breath.

He had called her name in the mini-mart parking lot. She had stopped on instinct, even though she hadn't recognized the car or the driver inside. Not recognizing someone was hardly new at this point, and mostly she remembered feeling faintly curious. Who was this stranger and what stories from her past would he know?

Instead, he'd told her there'd been an accident. Molly needed her right away. While she was still absorbing that shock, he'd hustled her into the passenger's side of his car. At the last moment, something inside her had balked. She'd seen him open the driver's-side door, watched his body bend down to slide inside and something had stirred in the dark pit of her mind. Not a memory, per se. But an emotion. Fear, stark and raw and instantaneous. She'd grabbed for the door handle at the same time he'd hit the lock button and flashed his gun.

She'd known him then. She'd stared at his face, and while the individual features still sparked no recognition, she had a clear image of a body laboring above hers in the dark. The grunting, the groaning, the endless noises to accompany her endless shame. How the ties, the horrible latex ties, kept her body exposed, vulnerable and there for his taking.

And just when she thought it would never end, she could take no more, and her body would be ripped in half, he had finally collapsed on top of her, heavy with sweat.

The man had laughed low in his throat. And then he'd murmured, “David said you liked it rough. Need a brother or sister for Molly, Meg? Or maybe I'll just wait a few years and give little Molly a try instead.”

She had started screaming then. But the gag smothered the sound, forced it back into her lungs, where it built and built and built. A scream without end.

“David misses you, Meg. David wants you, Meg. You never should've turned him down. Now he's sitting in prison, surrounded by beasts eager to learn your name. We all get out sometime and we all know where you live.”

The man rolled off of her, reached for his shirt. “Oh yeah,” he said casually. “David sends his love.”

The scream had grown too big then. It had exploded up her throat and ripped through her mind. It had burst out of her eyeballs and wiped out her brain. It had gone on and on and on, a sonic boom of a scream. And still she never made a sound. No one heard a thing.

And then as violently as it had started, the scream recoiled, turned in on itself, sank back into her body and took her with it into a dark, velvety abyss.

She had spent a year wanting to remember. Now, in the car with this man, Meg wished she could forget.

He had driven her to a section of town she didn't recognize. Remote. Desolate. The kind of place where only bad things happened. Pulling into a side alley, he took her hands in a surprisingly strong grasp. She smelled the latex before she saw it. Her stomach roiled. She thought she would be sick. He slid the figure-eight ties over her wrists, tightened the bindings, then placed his hand on her breast.

So this was it, she'd realized.

Absurdly, she thought of Jillian. The classes they'd taken in self-defense, the books they'd read on surviving assault.

Women do not have to be victims.

But then why did they make men with such strong grips?

“We have a few hours,” he said lightly. “I have some things I need to do first. But once I've completed my chores… Don't worry, Meg. I remember how you like it.” He flicked his thumb over her nipple. He gave her one last cruel smile, then tied a rolled black T-shirt around her head.

She had been living in darkness ever since.

More sounds now. Banging. Cupboard doors opening and closing. The rattle of pans. Her stomach growled and she suddenly knew what he was doing. He was making lunch. The monster had brought her to his lair, tied her up, captive, terrified for her life, and now he was fixing himself a goddamn cup of soup.

She jerked her arms painfully. Pulled hard on the bindings looped through a metal anchor above her head. Nothing, nothing, nothing! She wanted to scream in frustration.

Women are not victims! She was not a victim! Dammit, she had read the books, she had taken the courses. She had listened to Jillian and she had believed. How could one girl be so damn unlucky? How could she have spent the last year coming so far, just to wind up here?

She yanked on the bindings again. Felt the concrete hold strong while her own flesh tore, and her wrist once again began to bleed.

And then she just wanted to weep.

He would finish eating soon. He would open the door at the top of the stairs. He would descend into the basement with its musty smell of decay and fresh-turned earth.

And then?

Jillian had told them that they could control their own lives. Jillian had told them that if they tried hard enough, they could win. They could be confident and independent and strong.

But Meg couldn't think like Jillian anymore. She was just a twenty-year-old girl. And she was tired and she was hungry and she was terrified. And soon, very soon, something bad was going to happen. Something worse than even the College Hill Rapist.

Very soon, the man had promised her, David would be here.

In the intensive care unit, Dan sat reading a book. Recovering from Rape: A Guide for Victims and Their Families. He had bought the book two weeks ago. He was now on the chapter “The First Anniversary and Beyond-When You Are Not ‘Over It.' ”

Monitors beeped in steady rhythm to his wife's pulse. Down the hall, some other machine started to beep frantically and a nurse boomed, “Code, code, code!” The words were swiftly followed by the clatter of wheels and metal as someone raced a crash cart to the rescue.

Carol never stirred. Her chest rose and fell peacefully. Her head lay serenely on a golden pool of hair. The white sheets remained smooth and unmussed over the faint mound of her chest.

Every now and then, her right hand would twitch. In the last twenty hours, it was the closest they'd gotten to any sign of consciousness.

Dan finished the chapter from the survivor's point of view. Now he moved on to “The Significant Other-When She's Not ‘Over It.' ”

He read, and though he was not aware of it, sometimes he cried.

Down the hall, the doctors and nurses fought desperately to save a life. While in Carol's room her heart beat steadily, her lungs worked rhythmically, and her very peacefulness threatened to steal her away.