A/N: This is a short story I wrote several years ago, before there was even an Internet. Thought I would let it see the light of day again in e-format, for any fans out there who might enjoy it.

Darkness.

"You still with me, Kel?"

Kelly Robinson turned his head in the direction of his partner's voice. "I'm with you," he nodded. "Any unfriendlies out there?"

"I'd bank on it, yeah." Alexander Scott's words echoed in the metal drainpipe where the two men crouched. "How you doin'?"

Kelly ran a hand through his hair. The ends that had been singed in the accident felt like straw. "You mean other than the fact that I can't see? Just peachy."

"Well, you're not missing much – we're in a pretty average-looking mess this time, nothing particularly scenic."

"Lucky me."

Irony dripped from Kelly's remark, justifiably so. Their luck for the past twenty-four hours had been of one sort only: bad. Devastatingly, unbelievably bad.

The mission had been a bust from the get-go, hitting rock bottom the night before when their helicopter had been shot out of the sky, killing their pilot and dropping the two of them smack in the middle of no-man's land, leaving their adversary in hot pursuit and Kelly flash-burned and temporarily blinded.

At least he hoped it was temporary.

It had been a monumental effort on Scott's part to lead his injured partner over miles of uneven terrain, every step a potential pitfall. Finally, just before sunrise, the top-flight espionage team known collectively as 'Domino' had crawled, exhausted, into the drainpipe for a desperately-needed rest.

"You could leave me, you know," Kelly said conversationally.

"Yeah, I know." But he wouldn't. They bothknew that.

"You got any better ideas?"

"I'm working on a few." Scotty sloshed through the bare trickle of muddy water toward the opening of the pipe and squinted into the early morning sunshine. "Think I'll take a little walk, actually. Maybe there's something out there that we didn't pick up on last night."

"Is it morning?" Kelly held his hand out toward the opening, tentatively seeking the warmth of the sun. "I can't even tell light from dark."

"Give it time, now…"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, all right."

Kelly's impatience underscored what Scott already knew: time was one thing they had very little of, and a secret agent getting blinded was about the worst thing in the world that could happen. Particularly to his partner.

Scotty climbed to the top of a nearby rise and scanned the bleak horizon. Nothing but empty desert and distant mountain peaks. They hadn't been too far out of Las Cruces, New Mexico when the chopper had been shot down. Yet, there was a distinct possibility that the rush to get away from Daegger the night before had led them farther away from civilization.

But the pipe had to mean drainage. And drainage meant…

Bingo. Scott spotted a thin curl of smoke wafting up from behind a nearby hill. He started towards the subtle sign of life, moving cautiously every step of the way. There was no telling where Daegger's men were. It didn't pay to be overconfident in this business.

The tin-roofed adobe house was settled in the hollow between two sandy hills dotted with scrub brush. Nearby, a small plot of land rimmed with low trees grew lush and green, looking more like a household garden than a cash crop. No vehicles in the driveway – only a tractor at the edge of the cultivated plot. Yet there had to be someone in the vicinity; the smoke from the chimney testified to that.

Scott made his way to the window and peered inside. An overhead fan turned lazily in the immaculate kitchen, circulating the aroma of fresh-baked bread that reminded him how hungry he was. Still nobody in sight. Noiselessly, he sidled toward the back of the low structure and stepped around the corner.

A mere six feet away, the startled girl at the woodpile dropped her armload of kindling. Scotty moved into plain sight and held up his hands very slowly.

"I won't hurt you, okay? I'm one of the good guys, honest I am. I'm sorry if I scared you."

Still there was no answer. "Okay, maybe you don't buy that. I can't say as I blame you." It was pretty unlikely that the girl was used to having scruffy-looking men she didn't know dropping in on her from out of nowhere, black or any other color; not in this isolated part of the country. Scotty's brain shifted into a higher gear. "Or maybe you don't speak English, is that it? What about Español?"

There were another dozen languages he was prepared to try, one by one, but the girl slowly brought her hand up and flexed her trembling fingers nervously, in a series of precise maneuvers that Scott immediately recognized… although it was one language the Rhodes Scholar wasn't conversant in.

"Oh, man…" he sighed. "You're deaf, aren't you?" She only stared at him. She couldn't be much older than twenty; her wide-eyed ingenuous expression lent to her youthful appearance. "You wouldn't happen to read lips or anything convenient like that, would you?"

He took her lack of response for a 'no'. "Wonderful. I can talk to just about anybody on any street corner in the entire world, and right here in the middle of the good old U.S. of A. I run into somebody who can't understand a word I'm saying." He tried smiling at her next, and that seemed to bridge the communication gap rather well – she smiled shyly in return. "If I ever get home, I'm gonna demand a refund for my college tuition."

Next he offered her the palms of his hands outstretched, very slowly. "Okay, nothing up my sleeve… I'm not going to hurt you, I promise." He kept up the patient, reassuring smile, which seemed to be their only hope for a mutual understanding anytime soon. "Are we getting somewhere? I sure hope we are, because I can't hang around here playing charades all afternoon… I got a friend stashed in a drainpipe who's probably getting kinda lonely by now."