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as another agonized scream ricocheted off the walls and seemed to echo on and on in the blackness surrounding her. Jesus God. A shudder of dread washed through her already sweat-drenched body. Where in God's name was she?
    Gingerly, she rolled her head to one side, listening to someone being tortured very close by. She winced as blow after blow rained down on some unlucky bastard. And every groan floating through the darkness reverberated through her body, making her nearly feel each blow. She fought the sensation, aware that at any minute it might be her turn.
    Think! Her brain felt slow, annoyingly sluggish. Pain blossomed behind her eyes and stretched out to every corner of her muddled mind. Didn't matter. She had to think around it. Had to marshal her thoughts so she could figure out where she was and what was going on. And most importantly, how to get the hell out of there.
    Damn, the floor beneath her body felt hard as a rock. Foul, putrid odors permeated the air and she breathed through her mouth, trying not to think what she was sucking into her lungs. Come on. Come on, she mentally chanted, willing her body to get up. To move. To take action.
    Another man's screams of agony joined the first. Tag-team torturing. No interpreter was needed to understand that the two men being viciously beaten next door were begging for mercy and shrieking bloody murder to the accompaniment of the blows.
    Goose bumps chased each other down her spine, then settled in the pit other stomach, where they churned into a mass of nerves that had her ready to scream herself. She forced her sticky eyelids open, then blinked a couple of times as the darkness around her wavered and her stomach did queasy flip-flops. The pain in her head was subsiding to a low roar, but she felt new aches and pains popping up all over.
    Jesus.
    Had she already been tortured?
    Where was she, how had she gotten here? More important, how could she escape? Wherever here was smelled like old pee and older sweat, and God knew what else. Lucky she couldn't see where she was lying. Or what she was lying on. The stench made her eyes water as she swallowed back nausea.
    Something scuttled in the darkness and she drew her knees up, instinctively avoiding what sounded like the Godzilla of rats.
    Another scream, blood-chilling and bone-numbing—then abruptly, and terrifyingly, cut off mid-note.
    Jesus God.
    Silence throbbed like a living presence. Alive with terror. Thick with anticipation of what was to come next.
    A sob shattered the unnatural quiet. A plea for mercy. A slap. Quickly followed by a succession of blows.
    Muffled Arabic voices bounced and echoed against stone walls. While the men weren't in the same room as she was, their voices were clear enough. AJ tried to decipher the rough dialect through the pain of a king-size headache.
    Frowning made the ache in her head worse and didn't improve her hearing. She wasn't able to grasp more than a word here and there, but what she did understand didn't make her any happier. She tried to push herself upright, and instantly regretted it. Quickly, she lowered her head back to the floor as vertigo washed over her, and nausea roiled through her empty stomach.
    "Bite the bullet, AJ," she warned herself, pushing the words out through gritted teeth. "What were they always saying at the Academy? Oh, yeah. Make pain your friend." She pressed a hand to her forehead. She didn't care for her new friend.
    Next door, the victims were whimpering. Keeping her voice low, she whispered encouragement that they would never hear. "Come on, guys," she said while trying to stop her own world from spinning, "hang on. Don't let 'em win." She hoped to hell they could hang on through the torture, because as soon as the beaters were finished with the beatees, it'd be her turn. And sympathy or no sympathy, better them than her.
    She couldn't afford to hurl right now. She willed the dizziness to pass, but because of the darkness, there was nothing to focus