"Are you afraid?"

She was alone with a stranger in a strange place. Of course she was afraid. Or she felt she should be afraid. He held her against her will, and yet he'd not laid a hand on her. Eventually, she expected to be his victim in some unspeakable act of cruelty. At the moment, however, he kept his distance. By the way he looked at her and how familiar he seemed, she felt they must know each other. She wondered if he'd been stalking her. His face might look familiar because she'd seen him in a crowd. One of those vague subconscious memories that tease the mind relentlessly. He was handsome; not that it mattered to her in this situation. Handsome people can be ugly on the inside. Lord knows, she'd learned that lesson the hard way.

"Why have you brought me here?"

"To find out if you really want to die."

She trembled, tears gathered in her eyes. As she suspected, he meant to harm her. Why didn't she fight him? Truth be told, she didn't even remember being abducted.

"I don't want to die."

"No?" His eyelids drooped, turning his expression sullen. He paced a few steps, casual and malevolent. He stayed in the circle of light created by the single naked bulb hanging from the ceiling above them, and yet kept a distance from her. He stared at her in a measuring way. "I've heard you say it a thousand times. `I want to die.'" He paused, and leaned in toward her, toward her ear, as if to whisper a secret to her. "`I want to die.'"

She drew a shuddering breath, and tried to act stern despite feeling small and vulnerable. "Look, you psychotic maniac, I have never said anything like that to you, ever. Ever!"

He rolled back on his heels, still staring at her face. His eyes were spooky blue, and she might have considered them beautiful if they didn't belong to a nutcase who intended to kill her.

"Tell me about David."

The unexpected turn in their tense conversation caused her to gasp. She shook her head, wondering how he would know her son's name. The paper? The internet? Public records? All of the above, no doubt.

"You can't hurt David, and you can't use him to hurt me." She said, her smug reply twisting the grief on her face. "He's dead."

"I know." He replied readily. "I know a lot about you and your life. I know about your son's death. He had leukemia. You tried a bone marrow transplant, but it didn't take and he died. He was only seven years old. You always blamed yourself for his suffering. You always figured it was a quirk in your genes, because many your family members had cancer, but your husband's family didn't. And you always hated yourself for letting him die alone. He begged you to take him home with you that night, but you just didn't have the strength to handle him and his needs. You'd been up with him too many nights to count, keeping vigil at the hospital because you knew the time was close. You needed sleep, so you went home, and while you slept, he died in a hospital rather than the warmth and comfort of his own home, in his own bed. That has always bothered you."

It had been almost three years, and still she could not think about David's last lonely hours without wilting. "So I was wrong." She said to herself. He could use David to hurt her. He just did.

"And after he died, you lost your will to live."

She threw a wary glare at him. "How could you possibly know that about me?"

"The life went right out of you." He continued, his voice low, gentle, "Isn't that what your husband said on the day he filed for divorce?"

She shrugged, and defiantly said, "So, are you going to chat me to death, is that it? Why don't we just get this business over with because I am really tired of your company. Rape, murder, whatever you have on your mind, get on with it!"

He did not intend to let this subject go. "The day you signed the divorce papers, you went for a run." He shrugged, "That might have been considered a reasonable way to relieve stress, if you were a healthy woman. But you weren't healthy. You weighed 260 pounds. You went out on a rainy day, freezing rain, and ran until you passed out. The ER doc told you that you had a mild heart disruption, or something. Nothing lethal, but he warned you to slow down. But you did not intend to slow down. You wanted to have a heart attack."

She grew very still. She'd never confessed that truth to a living soul. She told the doctors that she wanted to take up jogging to improve her health and lose weight, but in truth, she was angling for a natural death. She was Catholic, her parents were strict Catholics. It was bad enough that her son died without last rights, and horrible that she was divorced, god forbid she shame them further by committing suicide, too.

A natural death was the only way out.

After signing the divorce papers, Claire felt like a ghost living in the wrong world. Her chest hurt with misery, and that was what gave her the initial idea to induce a coronary. She ran as fast as she could, ignoring the pain and her shortness of breath, and the icy wind pelting her with rain. Her heart did a strange rumba and she grew dizzy, but she kept going. She wouldn't give in until she was gone.

Her tormentor nodded, seeing in her expression as an acknowledgment of the truth. "You tried again the very next day. Was it your third or fourth trip to the ER that finally clued a doctor that you needed help? I mean psychiatric help."

"Needing someone to talk to isn't something to be ashamed of." She retorted, her voice taking a hysterical note, "In fact, you could use a load of therapy, yourself."

He had the audacity to smile at her in a friendly way. "He always loved your frank way of speaking."

"Who?" she demanded irritably.

"Carl."

Recalling the chilly ease in which he filed for divorce, she rolled her eyes, "Oh please, my husband hated me. After David died, he could hardly look at me."

"Everyone deals with grief differently, Claire. You tried killing yourself to escape it, and he tried to escape by running away. But as you well know, grief doesn't go away so easily."

"No. It doesn't."

"Therapy didn't help, not right away. You still did crazy, risky things hoping to be hurt. Did you ever tell your therapist that you changed your jogging route?"

"How long have you been following me?" she demanded, unwilling to revisit some of the worst days of her life with this man. "Why do you know so much about me?"

He went on, ignoring her emotional outburst. "You listened to the news everyday, writing down neighborhoods that seemed to have the highest rate of murders, drive bys, anything gang related, anything deadly. From that list you chose your new jogging route. And you didn't jog during the day. You chose to jog at night. After dark."

She was mortified by the truth of it. She chose a neighborhood that had been labled as dangerous. Graffiti on fences and iron bars on windows seemed to confirm the reports she'd heard. The first night, she ran past a group of teenage boys that were loitering on a corner. Her heart tripped and thrilled as she anticipated abuse and hoped for the worst. The boys stopped talking the moment they saw her, and stared at her as she went by. The neighborhood was predominantly Hispanic, and here she was, this extremely obese white women jogging through their turf.

They did nothing, said nothing. Just watched her. She was halfway down the street when she heard them burst into laughter. That was enough to wound her feelings, but wounded feelings was not the reason she wept all the way back to her car. She wept because they didn't do a thing to her. She was acutely disappointed that she was still alive.

Determined, she returned night after night and ran the same route in the same neighborhood, passing by the same corner and the same boys. They murmured low amongst themselves, laughed at her, and that was it. She was beginning to think she was wasting her time, until one of them actually spoke to her.

She passed them, as she had done nightly for almost 3 months. A couple of the boys snickered, as usual, but one actually stepped out of the group and said, "Hey, mama,"

He was seventeen, perhaps. Dark, thin, churlish; trying to grow a moustache with scant results.

Feeling a bit giddy, she paused, continuing to jog in place. Finally! A gangbanger had finally had enough of the fat white woman. She expected anything and everything from the boy.....except what actually happened.

"Yeah?"

He nodded, respect on his features. "Looking good."

The others chimed in with the same sentiment. She thought at first that they were mocking her, and realized that they were being earnest. Losing weight hadn't been her goal, but it had been happening. She shrunk, and they had noticed.

"Thank you," was all she could think to say, and she continued on her way.

She did not know it then, but that encounter would change her life. Ruiz, the boy, cheered her on every night. She began looking forward to passing that corner. It felt good to encounter the best humanity had to offer. Her jagged need to die smoothed to a dull ache, and she began thinking in terms of her future. Her health. She never had a goal in

mind, but after losing 140 pounds, her goal became good health.

"A sign of life." her abductor said, as if speaking to her thoughts. He smiled at her, his eyes twinkling. "Ruiz is a good kid. Too bad about his brother."

"You know Ruiz?"

He shrugged. "I know of him. I know that his life might have turned out differently if his father hadn't intervened. His father, Ray, he couldn't stand to lose another son to senseless violence."

He was a stalker, she knew it now. Otherwise how would he know about Ray and Ruiz and the boy lost to them?

"Ray needed someone to talk to. Someone who understood the pain of losing a son." His smile grew knowing, "Amazing the way you found your soulmate, Claire. In a grief support group. And don't you find it amazing that you would choose his neighborhood to jog in, without even knowing it was his neighborhood, and that his son would be the one who really welcomed you into the family, before even knowing you belonged?"

The coincidences surrounding her budding relationship with Ray did seem destined. Still, it took a long time for a real romance to develop between them. For the longest time, she didn't feel she deserved Ray.

"He wants to marry you."

Claire glanced at her kidnapper. "I want to marry him." She said softly.

"Then why the doubts?"

"I don't know."

"You're not afraid of being in love, are you?"

She shook her head, feeling helpless and small. "I don't want to get married without my son being there." The truth tasted bitter on her tongue.

"So this is why you want to die? Because your son won't be able to attend your wedding?"

"I told you, I don't want to die."

He stepped closer to her, and she recoiled, hoping he did not touch her.

"Do you really mean that?"

"Yes." She felt amazed, because she hadn't really thought about it in a long time. She was alive, and wanted to stay alive. "Yes, I do mean it. I have forgiven myself for missing David's last moments." She asserted, "I still regret not being there, but I don't want to die because of it. I didn't cause his death. Did I?" She asked suddenly, then she rolled her eyes at herself for posing such a question to her abductor, as if he'd know.

"No. You didn't cause his death. He had cancer; you didn't give it to him. It just happens sometimes" His voice soft, he added, "You made his short life wonderful. You did everything you could, and David knew it. He loved you."

She covered her face to hide tears. She hoped it was true.

"Claire, I want you to think, now. What was the last thing you remember before being here?"

She snuffled, dropping her hands slightly so that she could see him. "I don't know, I don't know," She remembered leaving Ray's house, ready for work. She waved at Mrs Gonzalez next door, and got into her car. She turned on the radio, and started driving. "I heard one of David's favorite songs on the car radio and it made me think of him. That is the last thing I remember."

He smiled. "So that's why I'm here."

"What do you mean?"

Informative, he said, "You ran the red light at Alvernon and Grant."

"No," but yes, now she remembered screeching tires.

"Claire, do you really want to live?"

"Yes." She whispered.

He stared at her face, searching for the truth.

"Close your eyes." he said finally.

She shivered, hugged herself, and closed her eyes.

"Be happy with your life, and I'll be happy."

It was a boy's voice. "David?"

She opened her eyes, blinking as though waking from a long sleep. Many things came to her at once. She was driving her car. Heading through a busy intersection at full speed, against a red light.

Claire gripped the steering wheel tight and used both feet to push down the brake pedal. Her car screeched to a halt in the middle of the intersection, where a dozen speeding cars and trucks flowed without pause. As if she were surrounded by a force field that protected only her, each and every vehicle missed her. Fear for her life, then wonder at her good luck, replaced the memory of the strange man who knew too much about her life.

She left the scene feeling peaceful. Happier than she'd felt in a long time.

Ray told her that her Guardian Angel was on her shoulder that morning, directing traffic.

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