Disclaimer: I don't own Scandal. If the show'd been mine, certain characters would've been killed off long ago. See if I can fix that here.

Prologue

Liv shot me one last look fit to kill before storming off. I turned and glared at my unwilling houseguest.

"What?" I spat out. Charlie was starring at me with a clinical interest as I locked the door, and I had a feeling he'd watched the whole conversation in this way too. It was unnerving. "I was working. I am working." I sighed. "She can't know any of this."

"Sure." He drawled lazily, unmoving from his seat on my couch. "When can I get these off?"

"When you're done making a run for it."

"It was worth a shot." He bristled. "And I almost made it."

"No, you didn't." I refuted, throwing the keys at him with a little more force than was strictly necessary. He didn't even try to catch it.

"Now if you make a move, I'll kill you." I warned as he patiently worked through the keys before he found the right one.

"Are you sure you can manage that?"

"I've come out top several times now."

Charlie appeared nonchalant. "Well. You're taller; I'll give you that. And younger too, but that could go both ways." He moved on to the next key. "You're so confident, so self-righteous…" Another key. Click. "If I were you, I wouldn't be so sure." He finished as he finally unlocked the cuffs, tossing them to the coffee table with a content sigh. "So where do we start, boss?"

I laid out a handful of profile photos. Charlie turned serious. "That's… that's Team 107. They're all long dead."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. It was seven years ago. In Beirut, wasn't it."

I handed over a freeze-frame from a surveillance video and watched Charlie grow still. "No way…" The photo showed a man in his early forties looking straight up at the camera. The location was the intersection closest to the B613 headquarters. In appearance the man was unassuming, but the way his eyes glinted – we both knew what he was after. The time stamp in the lower right corner dated the photo to be taken a week ago.

"The rest of his team are here too. Sighted all over DC during the past week."

Charlie's gaze was still fixed on the photo he held in his hand. "Oh snap."