"Do you think that's what Sam's been hiding from us? The fact that she knows the kidnapper is fully aware of who and what she is?"

"Another thing I think we'd better find out. Because in the wrong hands, Sam could be an unbeatable advantage."

"And in the right hands?"

"An unbeatable advantage."

Getting to her feet as he got to his, Jaylene said, "Am I wrong, or isn't the queen the most powerful piece on the board in chess?"

"You're not wrong."

"Um. Have you told Bishop yet? About Samantha being here? Being involved?"

"He knew, more or less. The news reports."

"Did he say anything about this chess game?"

"Yeah," Lucas replied rather grimly. "He told me not to lose."

As soon as Samantha picked up the small silver medallion, it started.

The black curtain swept over her, the blackness thick as tar, the silence absolute. For an instant, she felt she was being physically carried somewhere, all in a rush; she even briefly felt the sensation of wind, of pressure, against her body.

Then stillness and the chilling awareness of a nothingness so vast it was almost beyond comprehension. Limbo. She was suspended, weightless and even formless, in a void somewhere beyond this world and before the next.

As always, all she could do was wait for the glimpse into whatever she was meant to see. Wait while her brain tuned in the right frequency and the sounds and images began playing before her mind's eye like some strange movie.

Flickering images at first. Passing so fast they were a blur.

Echoing sounds and voices. Everything distorted until, finally, it snapped into place.

It wasn't at all what she had expected.

She found herself looking down on a scene that seemed ordinary enough. A little family. Father, mother, two small children, a boy and girl. They were gathered around the dinner table, apparently for their evening meal.

Samantha tried to concentrate on what they were talking about, but there was a kind of pressure in her ears, as though she were going up in an express elevator or a plane, and all she could hear now was a distant, muffled roaring. She tried to shift position so she could see their faces, but no matter how hard she concentrated she couldn't seem to stop hovering above them.

The scene dimmed before she could begin trying to memorize details, and she found herself once again in the dark, dark emptiness.

It was getting colder.

And it seemed an eternity before another scene brightened and steadied before her. This time, only the little girl was there, or a little girl, maybe a different one, huddled in a corner of some unidentifiable room, cradling one of her arms with the other in a protective posture that struck Samantha as jarringly familiar.

It's broken. Her arm. Why doesn't she tell someone? Why is she afraid?

In a blink there was another scene, a woman sitting on a bed in a neat bedroom, her hands folded in her lap, feet together on the floor, the posture oddly stiff. And across from her was-

Cold. Dead. Cold. Dead.

That's what she's thinking. Feeling.

Waves of the woman's fear pushed Samantha away, carried her swiftly to the next scene. A little boy in his bed, visibly shaking, his eyes huge with terror as he stared at the window. And outside, lightning, the rolling boom of thunder, rain pounding.

It'll get me. Get me… get me…

Another scene, and this time Samantha didn't see another person, just spiders, hundreds of them scurrying toward her across a wood floor, and she tried to back away, looking down, seeing her feet, except they weren't her feet at all-

And then she was in a dark, stinking forest, nearly smothered by the stench of the damp rot all around her, trying to get away from all the snakes that were slithering toward her, grabbing for a limb to try to beat them back, surprised to see a man's hand instead of her own-

Once again, before she could note further details, that scene was gone, this time replaced by a dizzying stream of them, like a slide show revved up to high speed. She thought she was in some of the images, strangers in others, but all of them were filled with terror.

She couldn't take in one image before the next one flashed by. And the confusion of dozens of conversations all going at once nearly deafened her.

Fear pushed at her, washed over her, waves and waves of it battering her, cold and wet and black. She could feel pressure building up, outside and inside, steadily increasing until it was painful, until she knew it was dangerous, until she was almost numbed by the force of it.

And then, abruptly, she was back in the absolute silence, the cold, dark emptiness so lonely that-

What are you afraid of, Samantha?

She opened her eyes with a start and a gasp, her ears dimly registering the thud of the pendant falling onto the table. Her open hand was burning, and she stared at it, at the white imprint of a spider and its ghostly web overlaying the much fainter line and:ircle that already marked her palm.

"Sam… Sam, you're bleeding."

She looked across the table at Caitlin's white, shocked face and felt a tickling beneath her nose. Reaching up with her left hand, she felt wetness, and when she held the hand out saw that it was smeared with scarlet.

Samantha stared at both her hands, one marked with icy fire and the other with her own blood.

"Sam?"

"What are you afraid of," she whispered to herself.

"Me? Heights. But it isn't really a phobia." Caitlin grabbed a handful of paper napkins from the dispenser on the table and handed them across the table. "Sam, the blood-"

Absently accepting the offering and holding the slightly rough paper to her nose, Samantha murmured, "Thank you."

"What the hell did you see?"

"How long was I out?"

"About twenty minutes. I was getting worried. In case you don't know, it's very spooky watching you do that. You go as still as a statue and as pale as one made of marble. Except this time you started shivering toward the end. What did you see?"

Slowly, Samantha said, "Maybe what he wanted me to."

"Who? The kidnapper? But you said he probably left the pendant for Sheriff Metcalf to find."

"I did say that, didn't I?" Samantha looked at the other woman. "Know anything about chess?"

"Not much, no. How about you?"

"I know pawns are sacrificed. And I know that a very good chess player is able to think several moves ahead of his opponent."

Baffled, Caitlin said, "So?"

"So I think this guy might just be several moves ahead. Ahead of the cops. Ahead of Luke. Ahead of me. And no matter which way you look at it, that's not good."

It was later that afternoon when Lucas stood in a storage room of the sheriff's department garage, studying the large glass-and-steel tank where Lindsay Graham had died.

The old mine was so inaccessible, it had beeu^ impractical to transport CSI officers up and down the mountain the numerous times that would have been necessary for a thorough investigation of the tank. Though trucking it down the mountain had required an entire day and half the department working on the transport. There had literally been no better way, since the heavy forest made any kind of airlift impossible.

Not that having the tank had helped them, as far as Lucas could tell. No useful forensic evidence to speak of had been recovered. Only Lindsay's prints had been found inside the tank, and none whatsoever had been found on the outside.

A few hairs had been found in the tank, at least two of them black, so not Lindsay's. Lucas had sent the lot to Quantico for analysis, along with a request to Bishop to do what he could to hurry things up.

The kidnapper had apparently left the area before the afternoon rains that had washed away any track. Either that, Lucas thought savagely, or he had sprouted wings and flown his ass out of there, leaving no trace behind.