Something just didn't feel right.

Teresa had known that James' goodbye was real- that it was the end of their time together. But it had been months and there was no sign of him. She had thought he might find his way back to Camila or maybe even Boaz, but when she had checked her contacts she had found nothing. Then she thought maybe he had gone to protect Isabela- someone she knew she could trust. But that had been a dead end as well.

Finally she had called in Ivan. She hadn't wanted to- she wanted to respect James' space. But she couldn't shake the feeling.

Something was wrong.

It had taken a few weeks- apparently James had gone deeper into seclusion that Teresa had expected. But finally Ivan was here, dossier in hand, ready to tell her what she hoped would be good news.

"It was a lot harder to find your guy than expected. I had to do some high level hacking and I met a ton of firewalls," he started. "I mean it was like trying to find a needle in a pile of needles without using your hands. For a while I started thinking you had imaged him, except I had met him too so that didn't really-"

Pote clicking the safety off of his gun ended the rambling. Normally Teresa could handle it, but not now. Her nerves were shot and her patience was almost nonexistent. She shot Pote a chiding look before turning back to Ivan, waving for him to continue.

"Yes, well. Right." His voice was slightly shakier than it had been and the pleasant expression he had been wearing was much more anxiety-filled. "So he's alive, but that's the end of the good news. It appears he is being detained in a previously undisclosed location by Devon Finch." Teresa flinched at the name, even as her heart started pounding over James being held somewhere. "I did some digging, trying to find out why Mr. Finch would be holding him. I found a few things."

By the time he had finished, Teresa was in shock. James had left and immediately gone to Devon Finch. He had signed an affidavit saying that he would stay away from Teresa Mendoza in exchange for Devon Finch- who worked for the CIA- turning a blind eye to her operations. From what Ivan had told her, Finch would occasionally send him out to terminate certain assets for the CIA- all off the record, of course.

She didn't even notice when Ivan left. She didn't hear Pote get up and pour her a drink from the bar. All she could see, hear, think, was James. The appearance of a tumbler of bourbon floating in front of her startled Teresa back to the present. She gingerly took the glass from Pote, cradling the cool glass in her hands. She didn't drink it though- her mind couldn't focus that much. She had thought he was happy. She had thought she was respecting him, giving him the freedom he needed. She had thought he would be safer.

But he wasn't.

And it was her fault.

"I thought I had broken us," she whispered. Pote straightened where he stood. It wasn't what she had meant to say. She hadn't even known she was thinking it until the words were already out of her mouth. But they were true. She brought her eyes up to meet Pote's. His face was hard, like he was angry. But she knew he was just worried. Still, she couldn't help adding, "I thought that he couldn't forgive me for Bolivia. But he was trying to protect me."

In her mind she knew that last sentence had been a statement, but it somehow came out sounding like a question. Pote answered it like one. "James is loyal. And he cares about you a lot. We should have seen it sooner-he wouldn't just leave you."

But Teresa was already shaking her head. "He would. He would if he thought I didn't need him. If I didn't trust him. He wouldn't want me to be looking over my shoulder and he wouldn't want to have to constantly be wondering where he stood. He did that with Camila."

Camila. The reason they had all ended up in this mess. She had been the one to bring Devon Finch into their lives. She was the one who constantly tried to pit James and Teresa against each other. Always scheming, never caring about the people she hurt in the process. Teresa knew she was being irrational- knew that she was more angry that she hadn't tried to find James sooner. But fixation on Camila was easier.

She stood abruptly from the sofa she had been seated on. Her mind was already making plans and weighing her options. Twisting one idea, discarding another, pulling things together and apart with equal ferocity. "We're going to get him back," she said, voice like steel and twice as cold. Devon Finch, Camila Vargas, Cartel or American Government, she didn't care.

She pulled her white blazer together, striding out of the room, her head held high.

She was getting James back.


He had stopped counting the months.

When he had first gotten to this hellhole he had counted the days, then the months, by how long since he left her. Now he didn't measure time- he measured bodies.

Devon had been sending him out at least once a week- sometimes 4 or 5 times. It was always a different location. It was always a different type of target- always a different method. But the result was the same- blood on James' hands and ghosts stalking his dreams. Suzie was still the most regular or his demons. The innocence in her eyes a devastating contrast to the gruesome way her flesh melted from her bones as the flames from the explosion engulfed her. He both dreaded and found comfort in her image in his dreams.

It was better than when Teresa appeared.

He tried not to think of her during the day. He kept his mind busy: going through mental exercises, mantling and dismantling his different guns in his head, planning his next hit even though he never had any information until the day he was sent out. He did sit-ups, push-ups, ran the length of his cell- which was unusually long compared to other detention cells he had seen. 20 feet long by his estimate, but it was only 4 feet wide. He could touch both walls with his elbows still slightly bent. It was claustrophobic on his best days. On his worst days it was like he was buried alive.

He tried not to think of those days either.

He was sitting in the corner of the concrete cell, angled so his legs were stretched out and the door was facing him. Old habits die hard. He heard the thud of boots and forced himself not to react. Sniping jobs weren't the only times they came to 'visit' him. Sometimes when they were painting bruises across his body he would see Cortez- tied up in Phoenix. 'You live by the sword, you die by the sword'. That's what he had said. James couldn't help wondering if this was some divine retribution. Sentenced to suffer for all the lives he had taken while adding to the count- a never-ending cycle of violence until they finally kill him?

The door scraped open, the hinges screaming from the combination of rust and the weight of the door. It was 4 inches of solid steel- even if he had a gun he couldn't shoot through it. The lock was like that of a bank vault, bolts that slid into the surrounding steel frames on all sides. There was no way to open them all simultaneously without a key. And he didn't have that- but this asshole did.

James let a mocking smirk grace his features. "Buddy, back already? I thought you would have spent a few more minutes with your left hand." It earned him a hard kick to the ribs and James had to fight to stay sitting upright. Letting out a harsh cough he went on, "Hey, I was just trying to make polite conversation. I thought we were past this brutish behavior." Flipping his hair out of his eyes, James locked onto the guard. "You're breaking my heart, Friend."

The guard let out a growl that James couldn't force himself to be scared by. They had all growl and snarled and hissed at him at one point. Sometimes he wondered if they were really all human with the amount of animalistic sounds they produced. The guard grabbed James by the arm and hoisted him to his feet. The guy was huge, but that didn't stop James from putting up a token struggle. It didn't matter how long they held him- he wasn't going to let them break him.

"Get your ass moving. You have a job."

Those words stopped the struggling- his body reacting faster than his mind. He was already on high alert, preparing for what he knew came next. The guard dragged him out of his cell and down the long corridor to the stairwell. It was locked and only the guy on the other side could open it. Safety measure. Smart. No matter how many times he saw them, he couldn't help but admire how well run this system was. The guy on the outside let them through, gun to James head the whole time as the three of them walked up the stairs. It was the same way every time. And every time he had to remind himself of why he didn't fight back.

Teresa.

Always Teresa.