"Sit down." Caitlin looked dumbfounded, but didn't move, so Guerrero leaned in so close to her that she started to back away from him, stumbled over the couch and once again found herself seated next to Chance who met her with an icy glare.

"You- you don't believe him, do you? I wanted to take the 7up from the lab and destroy it!"

"Then what were you doing in the lab in the middle of the night with a hot soldering iron after it was already gone?" Caitlin opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

"Dude, my guess is she worked on her own version of a new 7up that she could sell."

"You know, Caitlin, somehow I believe Guerrero here more than you. You ran away from me when I was posing as a security guard at Cybotechs. You never complained about not being able to go back to your apartment. When Winston and I brought you here- you just played along. We offered the perfect protection from your upset buyers."

"That's not all there is to it, Chance." Winston took over.

"Guerrero, you said she was trying to kill you. I assume we're talking Barry Novacek here. You hired the Novacek brothers to do your dirty work. When Chance walked in on Vile, he wasn't holding you hostage. The two of you were looking together for something. But when the fight with Chance took a nosedive for him, you needed to make sure he wouldn't start talking. So you shot him. And it was one of the Novaceks you expected when Chance called you. You didn't want them to call your private phone anymore, 'cause it could could the incident in the alley right to you."

"That was the hardest part for me to figure out: what the hell went wrong that night? I thought, with you being responsible for the sniper and all, you might wanna have the honour to tell us?" Guerrero looked at her expectingly.

"Oh, right." he proceeded. "You have no idea. You didn't count on old Barry getting himself killed on the roof, leaving nobody who could tell you what went down that night. Let me enlighten you:

You sent Barry on that roof to eavesdrop on our conversation. You thought Garson would give away the location of the weapon, but instead the five Garsons kept denying they had it at all. That's when all of us became dispensable. Garson 'cause you thought if my nice collection of his crimes didn't make him budge, nothing would. And I 'cause you thought I didn't have any more aces up my sleeve. So you told Barry to take care of us. But you made two mistakes here: One, if there's only one sniper that has to take care of 6 people, it's gotta get messy. Two: You underestimated me. Trying to get to Garson with the files was just the appetizer for my main plan."

Caitlin now showed genuine surprise, but still didn't say anything. Winston interrupted the silence with another discovery:

"Now I understand why you kept asking about him, 'cause we told you he's alive and you wanted to fix that."

"She did? Aww, that's touching." smirked Guerrero. "Maybe I was too hard on you. You know, I did mess up in the alley. I thought me and the men in black were chatting over the 7up itself, when all the time all they were focussed on was the neutralization device. So we talked past each other to a point where I thought there was a higher bidder, but all they were afraid of was you, 'cause you held your own invention hostage. You knew that one thing's useless without the other. You played us against each other."

"But you got tangled up in your own game, 'cause you tried to take advantage of Guerrero without letting him know your true motives." Chance summarized.

All three men were watching her now, waiting for some kind of statement, but all the woman did was shake her head weakly.

She could feel their murderous gazes, she was sure that any moment now they would jump her, make her kneel down on the floor and just put a bullet in her head. So she sat there paralyzed for what felt like a decade for her. It was strange, this was the first time since she had planned all this that she really feared for her life. Until now, it all had seemed like some kind of game, with her being the master. In the last few minutes, however, she had to watch as her power was taken away, and now she was the one with no aces left. Nothing happened. Why didn't they do anything? Finally she looked up at Guerrero, who was still hovering above her. He looked almost amused.

Inch by inch, she slid off the couch and took two hesitant steps. Nobody held her back. She began walking towards the door, never turning her back on the men that had exposed her. The last bit she ran and when she finally turned to open the door, she was sure to find it locked. It wasn't.

###

The three men watched as the door slammed shut behind her. Guerrero ever so slowly sank back onto the couch, rested his head on the back rest and closed his eyes. For a moment nobody spoke.

Then Guerrero's lips curled. "That was fun."

"Oh yeah? I'm thinking I would've enjoyed myself much more if you had actually bothered to bring us into the loop." Winston snarled.

"Where would've been the fun in that, Winston?"

"Guerrero, I half expected you to be gone in the morning." Cahnce said quietly. "I appreciate you let us be part of this."
"You're kidding me." Winston flared up. That's all you got to say to this, Chance? How long did you know it'd all come back to Burton?"

"I didn't. I had a hunch maybe. But I knew Guerrero was on to something."

"Huh. Maybe your hunch can answer my last question then: If the Garsons made it so clear to Guerrero that they didn't want him dead, why attack him?"

"Dude, like I said: the real Garson wasn't there. The stooges he hired may've learnt a few fancy lines, but they, too had no idea what they were in for. Garson wasn't there to control them, so when the shooting started, they didn't know who to trust anymore and decided to change the rules. Didn't help them much."

"So what do we do now? You just let her walk away like this?"

"We don't do anything, Winston. I let Caitlin know Garson's alive and well and Garson, let's just say 'happens to know' where Caitlin hid the neutralization part of the 7up. So they each have something the other wants. Together with Caitlin's disgruntled buyers, this'll end as a game of "last one standing" and I get to be the last one. It's over, dude."

*tbc*

Oh is it now, Guerrero? Well, I guess you guys will find out... sooner or later. In the meantime, if you did NOT see that coming, click the review button. If you saw it from a mile away, still click it. In either case I hope your glasses didn't fall into a meat grinder, so you won't miss the review button.