A/N: So, it hasn't quite been another month, but sorry for the delay. . . writer's block is awful.

Thank you so much to everyone who's kept reading this! I love you all. And please review, (!) let me know what you think, even if you think this has gotten awful and want to let me know

"Danielle!"

Hearing her name called, Danielle paused outside the front door and glanced over her shoulder. Mr. Blakemore was hurrying over to her, leaving his three youngest children standing in a tight knot on the sidewalk.

The police had been called from the Blakemore's neighbor's house, and Mr. Blakemore had rushed home after a friend at the police station called him to say that an alert had been sent from his address. Everyone else on his team was tied up, so he claimed, and that included Ben. Now, as Mr. Blakemore approached her, Danielle tried to loosen her shoulders and stand up straighter, not wanting to seem as tired or scared as she felt.

"You kept my children safe," he said. "Thank you."

Danielle forced a smile onto her face. "Do the police know who did it?"

"No." His tone told her that he had some ideas, but she didn't want to know.

"Did anything valuable get taken?" she asked, remembering the deadbolt on his door.

Mr. Blakemore shook his head. "I didn't see anything missing, but check your things."

"I will."
"Okay. You alright?"

She avoided looking him in the face, reasonably confident that he would be able to tell she was lying. "Yeah! Everything's fine."

"Good." He didn't look convinced, just as she had predicted.

You're not safe anywhere. The bitter thought rose to the front of her mind. You never were.

The following morning Catie was dropped back off at her house, where she was enthusiastically welcomed by her siblings, and Danielle managed to slip out unnoticed into the backyard. She hadn't seen Alex or Sebastian and could only assume that they were off doing something with the case. What even was their case? Alex's explanation - as of the last time he spoke of it, which was almost a week ago - was something about an assassinated Arab and the Senate Committee for Energy. Danielle wasn't sure she wanted to know more than that.

Sometimes, she admitted to herself, she did miss her old life. Having her best friend for a roommate and being a piano performance major had its own problems, but at least she had known what was wrong, even if she hadn't been able to fix it.

Danielle stepped off the back deck and crossed the backyard towards the patch of woods that extended back behind the other houses on the Blakemore's street. Had it really been last week that Alex found the camera and tripod? Or was that two weeks ago?

She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Her mind felt sluggish as if she had been sedated, but she knew better. She was just stressed.

She also hadn't slept very well since the fire back in London. After the incident with Catie, Danielle's nightmares had gotten worse, and Alex was completely unavailable to help her. Not that she needed help, she was fine.

Leaning against a tree, Danielle took out her phone and checked the reception. It was poor. She stuck her phone in the front pocket of her jeans with a sigh and flipped her hair over her right shoulder, feeling it catch on the tree bark.

"Why am I here?" she muttered.

The trees didn't answer, thankfully.

She tugged at the neck of her t-shirt as it rubbed uncomfortably against her throat. What was wrong with her? Yesterday, she had been fine. Calm, steady. She'd gotten herself together but now . . .

Probably jitters from the break in, she told herself, hoping it was true. Or you're homesick.

Homesick, ha. She had nothing to miss in England, except two friends. Everything else - the school, the music - she could find almost anywhere. Objectively, she knew she was good enough at piano to have a decent shot at any conservatory in America and Germany, except perhaps the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Now, that was an idea. Finish school somewhere else.

Danielle frowned. She would have to think about that.

Senator Janice Fields had recently acquired a new home, far north enough that the estates eschewed the property tax of D.C. proper, but close enough to the city that the winding uphill drive had an impressive view of historic Washington. It was much larger than her previous home, though Alex kept that observation to himself as no one knew he had snuck out to what he'd thought was her house, and the wide front porch was guarded by towering hedges. The rest of the mansion was painted a pale shade of yellow, with a white tiled roof and gutters cut in elegant curves reminiscent of stonework. Perhaps they were. Outwardly, the mansion was pretty - beautiful, even - but Alex couldn't shake the feeling that there was something else there, something straining against the pretty exterior. Maybe that was because he already knew about the Senator and her activities with Troy and the dead Arab, but Alex had his doubts.

"Nice house," he muttered.

Sebastian glanced over, his glasses askance. "Yeah."

They got out of the car and approached the towering front doors, white panels inlaid with glass, and Alex was only dimly aware of the rustling in nearby bushes as some members of the hand-picked detail from the CIA (this was supposed to be a joint operation, after all) got into their appropriate positions. The plan was rather simple: Alex and Sebastian would talk to Senator Fields as part of the follow-up inquiries into the assassination, and someone else would commit a very convincing fake attempt on her life with a small charge that would cause more bang than damage. That would in turn provide the opportunity for the FBI to place a few extra members on the Senator's security detail, thus giving them the ability to either find Troy or figure out how and why the Senator was in contact with him.

Simple.

The security camera on one of the porch columns whirred as it pivoted on its stand to follow Alex and Sebastian up the stairs, but Alex knew that it wasn't streaming any live feed to its monitor inside. Because the front of the estate was riddled with security cameras and a van of armed CIA agents would surely raise some alarms if it was caught on tape, the cameras had all been jammed. Any monitor would see only the last image the cameras had projected.

Sebastian reached for the heavy brass knocker, but thought better of it and jabbed the doorbell. Alex could hear it chime inside the house.

"She'd better be here," he muttered.

"We have an appointment," Sebastian replied. "She wouldn't risk looking guilty by avoiding it."

"You sure about that?"

"No."

Before Alex could say anything else, the doorknob twisted. Resisting the urge to adjust his tie, he straightened his shoulders and tried to smooth his face into a politely blank expression as the door was pulled open by a broad-shouldered man in a suit. He could have been a butler or an aide. Wordlessly, he beckoned them inside.

As Alex stepped onto marble tiling, his eye was caught by the framed portraits that hung displayed on the walls inside the foyer. They looked to be paintings of historical figures - there was Washington crossing the Delaware, some other guy with a wig, and a scene Alex didn't recognize: a group of men working to build some kind of retaining wall.

Sebastian's mouth was pressed into a flat line as he was clearly unimpressed with the Senator's taste in art.

The doorman cleared his throat from the opening to a long hallway. Alex tore his gaze away from the paintings and walked after him, hearing Sebastian's footsteps follow. In the hallway, the flooring changed from marble to dark, gleaming wood. The walls were white and smelled of fresh paint, but bare. No paintings, photographs, or other decorations were hung. To be fair, the Senator had only recently moved in, but the lack of personal touches gave off a distinctly impersonal chill, as if the mansion belonged to no one.

The hallway opened into a massive living room that had a spiraling staircase in the middle leading up to the second floor. Shiny railings hung suspended from the ceiling and followed the staircase up until the landing. Alex thought they looked more like a safety hazard than a design feature.

Up the stairs was a hallway, half of which had another railing with glass siding that looked down onto the living room. The other half led to the open door of an office.

The man in the suit disappeared into the office after gesturing for Alex and Sebastian to remain in the hallway. When he reappeared, he only nodded at Sebastian to enter.

After a quick glance at Alex, Sebastian went ahead alone.

Sebastian had never considered himself to be un homme politique, as his old international relations professor would say, but to be fair, he had never considered himself to be FBI material either. Now, four years out of college, he was standing in a creepy house in front of the Senate minority leader, Janice Fields. He had done his research on her: staunch Democrat, divorced, three grown children. Her youngest daughter was Sebastian's age, which meant that the Senator was quite literally old enough to be his mother.

Now that was a creepy thought.

Sebastian knew the big secret about D.C. politics was that the more time any official spent in their elected office, the less they cared about party affiliation and the more they cared about keeping their position, their power, their empire, their legacy. Democracy, like any other system created by mankind, was fallible.

Still better than the alternative, he thought to himself as he entered the office with the suit-butler-bodyguard guy at his back. Why just Sebastian, why not Alex? Was this because Alex was foreign, or because the Senator suspected something?

Sebastian frowned. Or she's been tipped off. By Troy.

The office was sparsely furnished large, oakwood desk, chair, bookcase. No art or photographs on the walls, much like the barren hallway downstairs. A cold draft blew from the air vent above the doorway and made the room feel cold and clinical, like a doctor's office - no, like a morgue.

Behind the wooden desk, wide and long, sat Senator Fields. She looked nothing like the pictures Sebastian had found of her. In those images, she had dark hair pulled back into a severe bun, a face with just enough wrinkles to reveal failed cosmetic surgery, and piercing eyes. Now, Sebastian only thought that she looked old.

The Senator's hair was streaked with grey where it met her scalp. Her face carried an unearthly pallor like a reanimated corpse, an effect amplified by the dark lipstick she wore that made her mouth a crimson slash across her face. She wore a red pantsuit with a white blouse. Her eyes were dark brown, almost black, and Sebastian suddenly felt the wear that thirty-five years in Congress brought to a person.

"You're Sebastian Yerkes?" her voice was sharp, accented. New York.

He inclined his head deferentially. "Yes, ma'am. I'm here for a follow up to the death of an employee of the Saudi Arabian embassy."

"And how did your. . . little computer software," she made a dismissive gesture that was intended to irk the recipient. "Manage to connect my name to the dead man's?"

"It has come to our knowledge that you met with him several times," Sebastian replied in as formal a tone as he could muster. Something about this woman made him feel as if he was a diver in one of those cages to observe sharks. Except there were no bars, and he was about to get eaten alive.

He had always hated people like Senator Fields, who used their status and wealth to bully the law-abiding citizens into submission, even when they were just trying to do their jobs. That was part of why he'd ended up going into the FBI, despite the disapproval of his family, because he saw his chance to hold up the law for what it was instead of what people wished it could be.

Her penciled eyebrows flickered up for a second. "Who gave you that information?"

Sebastian gritted his teeth. "That isn't relevant. We believe you may be the target of a concerted effort to shut down the Senate Committee on Energy after the work you were doing to bolster American business with OPEC. That could be why the Saudi employee was killed."

"Probably those damned Republicans. They'll do anything to keep their pet coal miners happy - oh, apologies," she said, giving him a knowing glance. "Are you one of them?"

"Nonpartisan. Now, I apologize if you have a problem with the proceedings, but they aren't optional." Resisting the urge to look at his watch, Sebastian frantically tried to come up with something else to say. He was only supposed to be stalling for time until the CIA team found an opening to place the fake charge. According to the previous rehearsals, the blast would come at least ten minutes after Sebastian and Alex stepped foot inside the front door, but Sebastian had no idea how much time had passed since then. Five minutes? Eight? Ten?

And why was Alex still outside?

Suddenly, Sebastian noticed a blinking light coming from a shiny black dome on her desk. He'd assumed it was a paper weight. As soon as he noticed the red dot, Senator Fields shuffled some papers around on her desk until the light was hidden from view.

That couldn't be a coincidence. Sebastian didn't believe in those anymore. So, the blinking red light was one of two things: it was either some kind of notification system, or it was a silent alarm.

This was a trap.

When Catie woke up from her second nap of the day, it was only ten. In the morning. Apparently, she couldn't sleep for more than forty-five minutes at a time, not unless she was completely exhausted. Was that a side effect from the medicine, or was she too wound up to relax? Catie suspected the latter was the reason, but she pushed the thought out of her head as she rolled off the couch and went to the kitchen in search of breakfast.

Soft music filtered through the quiet house as Danielle practiced on the ancient, rickety piano in the sunroom. Catie had tried to learn, once, but that endeavor had ended with tears and no small amount of frustration. She hadn't been able to make her hands do two different things at once, so she settled for listening to Danielle practice instead. The piano had belonged to her paternal grandmother, who was quite disappointed when Catie failed to demonstrate any musical aptitude.

Catie scoffed at herself, standing on her tiptoes to pull down a box of Cheerios from one of the cabinets. You don't need talents like that.

Okay, maybe she was jealous. Slightly. But it was hard, suddenly being surrounded with talented, successful people, when all she had to show for her life was a driver's license and being the target of choice for street attacks. No where near as impressive as being a world-renowned musician.

Well, at least she could remember what chemical had been used to try and kill her: Lanoxin, not lidocaine. Alex had gotten it wrong, back at the townhouse. When Catie had researched the difference between the two, she found that lanoxin was usually used for irregular heartbeats, and an overdose could have stopped her heart. Lidocaine was a painkiller, a number. It could have stopped her heart too, made every muscle in her body numb and paralyzed, but it wasn't what the Voice had given her. Catie only knew her interrogator by her voice - she had never seen the woman's face.

She sat at the kitchen table with her cereal and tried to eat as fast as she could. There was no sign of Agnes or the Twins, so someone must have drove them to co-op. Catie reminded herself to thank whoever had done that later because she knew she couldn't drive in her current state.

Catie tossed her now-empty bowl into the sink with a clatter and followed the sound of soft, quiet piano music to find Danielle in the sunroom. She sat down in one of the cheap plastic recliners to listen, allowing her mind to drift as she listened to the music unfurl into the quiet room.

"Catie?"

"Hm?" Catie blinked, realizing she'd allowed herself to zone out and that Danielle had stopped practicing. The sudden silence hung in the room. "Oh, hey. Sorry. I can leave if you'd prefer-"

"No, no, it's fine," Danielle waved her off, pulling her hair over her left shoulder. "Do you need anything?"

"Oh, no, I'm fine."

"Okay. Sorry if I'm annoying you. I'm under orders from Alex to check on you every hour."

"Wait, what?"

"He is human, you know," Danielle continued as if Catie hadn't spoken. "Sometimes he just pretends otherwise."

"Right. . ." Before Catie could say anything else, she heard the front door get flung open and ricochet off the wall as the twins stampeded inside.

"Catie! Agnes is at the Karg's house!" Nic hollered as he walked through the kitchen and peered inside the sunroom. "Oh. Hey."

Danielle waved at him as she pivoted back to stack her sheet music into a pile and slid it under the bench. While she did that, Catie waited for Nic to finish what he was saying.

"What are we doing for Thanksgiving?" he asked. "Catie, I really don't want to go to Mom's-"

"We're not," Catie said, reassuring him. "We're having dinner here."

Looking relieved, he nodded and disappeared back into the kitchen.

Danielle turned to Catie. "When is Thanksgiving?"

"Tomorrow. Which reminds me, I need to get groceries." Catie sighed and hauled herself up out of her chair. So much for relaxing.

The bench legs screeched as Danielle pushed it back under the instrument, nudging her sheet music along with it. "I'll help, if you want."

"Yeah, thanks. We can take the twins too."

"Thank you for your time, Senator," Sebastian said, having finished the interview. Nothing catastrophic had happened - no bomb, no machine guns, no Galen Troy - but every bit of his intuition was telling him that something was not right. That blinking red light had to be an alert or an alarm.

She didn't reply.

Sebastian hurried out of her office. Alex leaned against one of the railings, waiting for him, and was about to say something when Sebastian marched by him and ran down the staircase.

"How did it go?" Alex asked.
"Where is the blast?" Sebastian hissed back in reply as he hurried down the familiar barren hallway.

"I don't know! Look, watch out - the Suit disappeared after you went inside, and he hasn't returned-"

Sebastian halted abruptly in the middle of the doorway to the grand foyer. "I found him."

"What are you talking about?" Alex shouldered past him and stepped into the tall room. "Oh."

The man who had answered the door was back in the foyer, lying on the floor in a gruesome heap. Dark blood stained the floor near where his bald head was.

Sebastian knew the man was dead, but he still walked over to the body and crouched down, looking for the source of the bleeding. The man had been shot in the back of the head. From the size of the entry wound, the shot had been fired from no more than four feet away, which meant. . .

"Did you hear the door open or close?" Sebastian asked.

Alex shook his head, seeming to pull himself out of a daze. "I didn't." He walked over to the front door and peered out. "There's no sign of the CIA."

"Alex," a thought occurred to Sebastian. "Is your mic on?"

Both of them had been outfitted with small, wireless transmitters before they left the van. The microphones were supposed to transmit to the man leading point on the strike team.

Alex yanked open the first button of his shirt and took the small black device out from inside the collar. "No."

That's what the red light was, Sebastian realized. "They're jamming our signals."

"Let's go," Alex said as he pulled open the door. "She's been tipped off. If we stay, she'll know we know."

"She's probably figured that out."

"Sebastian."

"Yes?"

They were walking faster now, towards Sebastian's car, their footsteps echoing off the freshly paved driveway.

"The shooter. Whoever killed the butler-aid-whatever." Alex's voice became strained as he bent down, checking the undercarriage of the sedan for something.

"They're inside the house."

"I know. So why aren't we dead?"

"I don't know," Alex muttered as he got onto his stomach and peered farther under the car, brow furrowed with concern.

"Will you stop doing that and get in the car?" Sebastian sat down in the driver's seat and jammed the key into the ignition. The CIA team would see them leaving and realize that the mission was a bust.

Alex glared at him as he got into the car and slammed the door behind him.

Sebastian snorted. "What are you checking for, explosives?"

Alex didn't reply.

When he pulled the car out of the driveway, Sebastian glanced over at Alex as he realized his mistake.

Alex's face was ashen. His eyes were dark, hollow like he had walked through a nuclear wasteland.

"Sorry," Sebastian cleared his throat, pushing his glasses up onto his face. "I wasn't thinking-"

"It's fine."

Something in Alex's voice told him to drop the subject.

By the time Alex got back to the Blakemore's house, he had shaken off the eerie feeling from seeing another corpse, and even managed to start up a conversation with Sebastian, who was trailing him to the front door.

He could hear music playing from the speakers from outside the house, and before he stepped onto the porch, the door flew open and Vince came running out.

"Alex!" he yanked his glasses off his face. "You have to stop them!"

"What?" Alex was immediately on edge. "What's going on?"

"The music! It's awful!"

Sebastian laughed as Alex let out a carefully controlled sigh and tried not to start yelling at Vince about the difference between emergencies and inconveniences. He's a kid, Alex reminded himself. He's thirteen.

"When you're gone," Vince said, continuing as if Alex hadn't been about to storm into the house, "The balance between normal and other is ruined."

"I like this kid," Sebastian muttered.

Alex shot him a glare. "Don't encourage him. Come on, Vince, let's go inside."

Vince dutifully plodded back towards the front porch, his bare footsteps clomping against the stairs. His hair stuck up in several different directions and his glasses sat crooked on his narrow face. Alex followed him inside and turned to go into the kitchen, only to find that the door was closed. He hadn't even realized that the kitchen had a door. It was wood on the top and bottom, with small strips of moulding that made a grid of glass panes in the middle. Through the windows, Alex could see Danielle, Agnes, and Catie holed up inside. A large bowl sat on the table, and Agnes was pulling bits of dough out of it and pressing them in the bottom of a pie dish. Danielle crouched in front of the oven window, carefully scrutinizing whatever was inside, and Catie was washing dishes. She stood at the sink up to her elbows in soapy water that dripped onto the front of her baggy t-shirt. She wore black sweatpants, and her coppery hair was pulled back into a sloppy, tangled ponytail. The color had returned to her face, and she definitely looked okay.

Alex remembered how she'd looked when she had first woken up. Even after taking a shower and brushing her hair, Catie had looked . . . emaciated. She wasn't painfully thin or malnourished, but something in her face, the liveliness of her eyes, had been eaten away and hollowed out. She had looked more like a reanimated corpse than a human being, and that scared Alex, as much as he hated to admit it, because he knew that he had looked the same way. For years, he felt like a dead person walking, numb and dissociated from reality.

He didn't want Catie to end up the same way. She had people who cared about her, who needed her.

Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Alex raised his hand and knocked thrice on one of the glass panes.

Danielle glanced over. Her face brightened when she saw him and she jumped to her feet, running around the table to unlock the door and yank it open.

"Alex!"

He held out his arms to hug her as she stood on her toes to wrap her arms around his neck. She smelled like cinnamon and. . . pumpkin?

"What are you cooking?" he asked, pulling away.

She grinned. "Pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving is tomorrow, according to Nic, and Catie wanted to get started tonight."

"It's almost eleven."

"And?"

Alex reached out to ruffle her hair and when she slapped his hand away, he poked her in the stomach, making her lips twitch into a grin as she shoved his shoulder. It was good to see her happy.

Suddenly, Danielle froze as her eyes widened. "Hi."

Oh, right. Sebastian.

Alex glanced over his shoulder and stepped past Danielle into the kitchen. "Sebastian, Danielle. My sister. Sebastian is here to check on Catie on behalf of her father."

"Please tell me you didn't pick the music," Sebastian said by way of introduction. "Taylor Swift? Really?"

Blushing furiously, Danielle bit her lip. "No. That was Catie."

Catie flipped off the sink faucet, wiped the soapy bubbles off her arms with a dishtowel, and waved to Sebastian. "I'm fine!"

"Yeah. I can see," Sebastian grimaced. "I completely forgot Thanksgiving's tomorrow. Sh-"

"Language," Catie said loudly. "My sister is nine years old. And you're welcome to join us."

"I'll think about it. Anyways, you're alive, and everyone's in one piece, so I'm going."

Danielle slid past him to get out of the kitchen. "I'll show you the door."

After they left, Alex turned back towards Catie, who was watching him closely. She looked almost afraid. "Are you really okay?"

"Yeah," she said, but her voice was brittle. "I'm fine."

Later, when all food preparation was finished for the night and the younger Blakemores were asleep, Alex was cornered by Danielle in the sunroom. She glowered at him with her hands on her hips, and Alex had seen enough arguments between the Daniels' to know that she was irritated.

"What's wrong?" he asked warily.

"What did you do to Catie?" Danielle hissed. "She's really moody, Alex."

"Well, maybe that's a side effect of being drugged-"

"No, not moody like tired, moody like sad." Her eyes searched his face, making him want to look away.

"I, uh." Alex cleared his throat. "I might've been a little insensitive when she woke up?"

Danielle rolled her eyes and grabbed him by the sleeve, pulling him out of the sunroom. "She's on the front porch. Go apologize. She's done so much for us, it's the least you can do."

"But-"

"Alex."

He was too tired to argue, but as he started towards the front door, she said, "Did you hear about what happened yesterday?"

"No," he replied, still facing away from her. "What?"

"Someone broke in," Danielle said quietly. "While I was here with the kids."

He whirled around. "Are you okay?"

"Ssh, you'll wake them. We're fine. They're all a bit shaken up though."

"Do the police know who did it? Does Ben know what happened?"

"No. We didn't see anyone. And I don't know if Ben knows." Danielle bit her lip, her usual nervous tic. "Maybe Mr. Blakemore told him today."

"Dani-"

"Really, Alex." She gave him a tired smile, and for the first time he could see the dark circles under her eyes. "It's fine."

Even as she went upstairs, leaving him to go find Catie, he couldn't help but worry about her. She was just starting to get her life back on track now that she was free from her mother and that bastard drug dealer, but if she derailed again . . . Alex wasn't sure she could come back.

Momentarily telling himself to forget those thoughts, he glanced through the front door and saw Catie's silhouette sitting on the front steps with a rectangle-shaped bottle next to her. Worry seized his chest as he pushed open the door and stepped out. "Aren't you too young to drink?"

Catie barely glanced over her shoulder. "What do you mean?"

He crossed the porch, standing over her. "The bottle."

"Oh." With the faintest hint of a smile, she held it up to him. It was plastic-bottled Fiji spring water. Oh.

Suddenly feeling incredibly stupid, Alex sat down next to her. "Sorry. It looked like vodka, or some other kind of liquor."

"And how would you know what those bottles looked like, Alex Rider?"

He grunted but said nothing else.

After a few minutes, she smiled bitterly at the boards between her feet. "Well, thanks for the concern." Sarcasm dripped off every single word.

"Hey, I'm sorry about what happened after you woke up," Alex said slowly, trying to think of the right thing to say. "I was . . . rude."

"Rude? You acted like I was the most inconvenient thing that ever happened to you." Her voice was entirely quiet. Alex would have felt better if she'd yelled at him. "Maybe it would have been easier for you if I had died and the bad guys thought I was Danielle, but I'm not, and I'm not apologizing."

He felt like she had stabbed an ice-cold knife into his chest. "What? If I thought we'd be better off if you were dead, I wouldn't have committed a bloody crime to get you out of that hospital. I wanted - want - you alive." Because I could never forgive myself if you died.

Catie shifted, turning her head to look at him. Most of her hair had escaped its ponytail to hang around her face, framing her dark, glistening eyes. Even though her eyes were wet, her voice was steady. "I had nightmares. There were snakes, and a field, and-" her voice broke for a second but she cleared her throat, shaking her head. "-And everything was dead. And then there was this voice, and it came from somewhere, asking me about you. What you did, why you were here. It said it was going to kill me."

Alex frowned in the darkness. He thought Elise hadn't interrogated her, just drugged her. If she had lied about that . . . what other lies had she told? "I'm so sorry, Catie. I didn't want any of this to happen. You were right, you know, about the guy in the cafe. He's wanted internationally." He sighed heavily. If only he could go back in time. "I should have listened to you."

"Yeah, well." She wrapped her arms around her legs and hugged her knees to her chest. "You couldn't have known. I can handle it." Her last words were spoken with no small amount of bitterness and anger.

"Catie-"

"Oh, it's not just you. My mother waited twenty years to leave Dad, almost as soon as I turned eighteen. Like, 'oh, Catie's old enough! She can parent my kids.' Ha. Agnes is still traumatized from being kidnapped, and now she doesn't even have a Mom." Catie sniffed. Alex resisted the sudden urge to put his arm around her. "Now you're here, with your own story and life, and suddenly . . ."

"Everything changed. I know."

"Do you really, though?"

"Yeah." Alex stared straight ahead and didn't look at her. "When I met Danielle - well, it was really bad. Everything was. Suddenly all these people came back, and things started happening. . . it was crazy. And before that-"

"Someone died."

His words suddenly grew heavy on his tongue. "Yes."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not trying to make excuses. I just- well. It's hard. And I guess I should have - yeah, I should have realized that it's hard for you too."

Catie reached for her water bottle and took a long drink, not replying, but Alex understood. Talking was hard. It was unpleasant. It was also completely necessary, because in case anything bad happened, well . . . Alex didn't want Catie to think that he wished she had died. That kind of thinking could haunt a person for the rest of their life.

"So," Catie said. Alex had lost track of time. "What happened to you?"

He felt the familiar twist of dread in his gut, thinking that she was referring to his earlier assignments for MI6, but she gestured to his chest with a forced smile.

"Your shirt," Catie elaborated, her smile genuine this time. "Buttons are missing, it looks like someone tried to yank it off you. So, was Senator Lady unable to resist your British charm?"

His jaw dropped as he stared her indignantly, feeling his face heat up as he realized what she was jokingly implying.c"Catherine Blakemore!"

She must have been able to see his expression even in the dark because she laughed, covering her mouth even though he could see the outline of her shoulders shaking with mirth.

"I'm sorry," she giggled, trying to stay serious as he elbowed her until she leaned away. "Don't use my full name, I hate it."

Alex scowled at her. "Yeah, well, for your information, I was removing a microphone from my collar - stop laughing, Catherine - rather hastily."

"Oh, right," Catie said with a matter-of-fact nod, trying to smother a grin. "I'm sure -"

"Don't even finish that sentence."

She was silent again, but seemed considerably happier even if it was at Alex's expense. After a few moments, she yawned and glanced at her watch. "It's after one. You should go to sleep. I'm sure you have a long day of defusing bombs and stalking phone calls tomorrow."

"What about you?"

"I'm not tired." She looked away, and it was obvious that she was lying.

"Catie."

"Okay, I've read articles that say that if you've had anesthesia it could kill you in your sleep. Side effects. It's probably stupid, but whatever." She shrugged.

"Huh." Alex had never heard anything like that before. "Well, maybe you could sleep on the couch or something and at least be upright."

"Maybe."

His eyes flickered over to her face. She was definitely scared.

"I can stay with you, if you want. I usually don't sleep much." You know, catastrophic nightmares and all.

"Oh, how touching," said a third voice from the walkway in front of them.

Catie screamed and flinched, grabbing Alex's forearm so tightly that he would probably have bruises later. But bruises were the least of his worries, because he was staring into the darkened face of Galen Troy.

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