AN: This was going to be a bunch of shorter chapters but Harry muse, Ruth muse, and I got into a bottle fine red Italian wine and well, not only did we finish it in one evening but we couldn't bear to split it up. This is a bit different than how I normally write so I hope the format works okay.

Christmas Eve, December 2011

"Base to Alpha One. Come in Alpha One."

Hands clasped behind his back, Harry slowly paced behind his Security Analyst and Technical Analyst in the small confines of the technical suite. It was Christmas Eve, and unlike years of past, Section D found themselves in pursuit of a would be assassin poised to eliminate the PM on his way out of evening Church Services with his family.

Their intel had been vague. Nothing more than a code name and a list of possible targets. But days of endless field work and research had paid off and they'd finally found the target. With little less than an hour before the deed was the be done. Now all that was left was for the team to stop the assassin.

"Base to Alpha One. Come in Alpha One."

Again the comms remained silent. Lucas was good. There was no doubt about it. But Harry was beginning to worry that something had gone wrong. Stopping behind Tariq, Harry picked up a set of headphones and slid them onto his head.

"Alpha One report." he barked out, his fingers gripping the back of the chair.

"Tariq see if you can pull up CCTV of the last reported location."

The techie tapped into the grid of CCTV in that section of London, bypassing the high levels of security with a few taps of the keyboard. "On it."

Focusing on the headset again, Harry looked at the other monitor and watched as Dmitri moved into place. "Alpha Two do you have a visual on Alpha One?"

"Negative. I'm going to move closer and..." His voice faded out as he stared in shock at the roof top across the street, watching as two people fell over the edge.

One managed to grab the ledge, holding tight as the other plummeted to the concrete below. A sickening crunch of bone hitting ground could be heard and for a moment, Dmitri froze, his eyes wide as he tried to ascertain who it was lying on the ground.

"Alpha Two report!"

Shaking himself from his reprieve, Dmitri ran across the street and stopped next to the body. Hand reaching out, he felt for a pulse and not finding one, turned the head. Letting out a breath, he sank back on his heels and looked up. Seeing Lucas lying on the ledge of the building; no longer dangling four stories above the street; he let out a strangled laugh.

"Target is down. I repeat, Target is down."

"Acknowledged." A moment of quiet followed that before Harry's voice came over the comm again. "And Alpha One?"

"Alpha One is safe."

Back in the technical room, Harry pulled the headphones from his head and dropped them on the desk, his head lolling forward as he exhaled deeply.

He'd come too close to losing another agent.

Too close indeed.