"Felice?" Epps' voice was heavy with sleep as he answered his phone by the third ring. "It's almost 1:00 AM. What's going on?"

"They have him. They have Lennox." Felice said hoarsely, her eyes still glued to the screen of her laptop.

She didn't know how she'd done it, but somehow she'd managed to track the van Lennox had been taken away in. She'd just functioned, typing in the respective commands mechanically; accessing a variety of traffic cams until she'd seen the van being parked in front of a large abandoned warehouse. Working under stress was part of her job and it was probably the only reason she was still calm, relatively speaking.

"Wooh, slow down! What are you talking about?"

"Remember the incident in Mexico a few days ago?"

"No, it doesn't ring a bell." Epps retorted with exasperation. "Well, yes of course I do! We lost Mitch there!" he snapped; then obviously becoming aware that there was no snide reply from her. "Felice, what the hell is going on?"

"Mitch wasn't the target, Lennox was."

"It was an accident. The 'Con shot him, you know that."

"Damn it, Epps! It was not an accident!" Felice exclaimed, snapping out of her rigor; anger about Epps' witty comment welling up inside her at last. "I checked the cam-footage. Mitch was covering Lennox while you breached. He was shot before the 'Con blew him up, I've seen it. But the 'Con had been lasing Lennox. Mitch was shot because he moved just a second too early and hadn't he done so the bullet would have hit Lennox. He was the target. It was a trap."

There was silence at the other end of the line.

"Epps, you have to believe me!" Felice implored; her voice shaky. "I wouldn't believe it myself, but I've hacked into the cam-feed in front of his house and half an hour ago he was abducted by four armed men."

"And you think it was the White Ghost?"

"Well, of course I do! Jesus, Epps! We have to get him back!" she yelled, incredulous about her friend's slow comprehension.

Again, the line remained silent for a couple of seconds before Epps spoke up again.

"Fine, but we need a plan. I'll call the others and we meet at HQ in an hour."

"An hour?! We don't have that kind of time!" Felice exclaimed pacing the length of her apartment.

They had to act now or Lennox was as good as dead. Her gaze fell on the duffle bag and the gun case containing her rifle next to the couch and suddenly she knew what she had to do.

"Go and call the team. Gear up and come to this location." She told him the coordinates of the building she suspected Lennox to be held captive in. "I'll meet you there."

"What? No! Felice, you can't go after the White Ghost all alone! That's insane!"

"If we wait, Lennox dies." she said, her voice flat yet deadly serious. "Just hurry up."

And before Epps had the chance to contradict her, she ended the call. Shoving her phone into the back pocket of her jeans, she opened the duffle bag and put on her vest, fastening the catches. As she did so, her eyes rested on her rifle once again but she decided against taking it, just took a small item from the box and then closed it. Grabbing her car keys from the table, she left her apartment at a jog, slid behind the steering wheel of her car and headed off into the night.

Lennox woke by the sound of boots growing louder and louder. The rhythmic sound was pounding in his head like a starting jet. He groaned as he opened his eyes. He was in a dusky place. Low ceilings with tiled walls and no windows, but through an open door he could see a wide space and gallery with several doors and a flight of stairs down to his level. Maybe he was in some kind of storage facility, but he wasn't sure.

One by one, his senses came back to life. It was cold. The air was moldy and thick. There were no noises except for the rhythmic pounding of shoes against the concrete floor. Someone was coming. He glanced down just to find his hands bound to the chair he was sitting on and his feet tied up as well. He tried to remember how he'd gotten here but the images in his head were blurry.

After having dinner with Felice he'd seen her to her car, then driven home. But before he'd been able to enter the house, he'd got clocked from behind. Where was he? He looked around again, his eyes resting on a single monitor installed in one of the corners of the room. He blinked a few times to get the image into focus. It took him only seconds to process what he was looking at. The camera was directed at the building Felice was living in. A jolt of panic and fear ran through his body as he struggled against his cuffs, dreading what he was going to see next. Had she been abducted too?

But before he could pursue his thoughts, the door to his right was opened and a person stepped inside. The stranger's steps were slow and even as he rounded Lennox until he was standing in front of him. For a moment his face remained in the shadows, but when he stepped forward and his face was illuminated, Lennox felt his heart come to a standstill.

This was impossible. He was dead. He had seen him die. Or had he?

"Matt?" he asked hoarsely.

The other man smiled viciously.

"Glad you still know my name."

"What… How…" Lennox stuttered, thunderstruck.

"It doesn't matter now." Matt said and Lennox could make out his features even clearer. He was still tall and burly, but his buzz cut and clean-shaven chin had been replaced by longer hair and a beard giving him a somewhat rough, wild look. It wasn't his appearance what made him look so different from the man he'd once known however. It was the look in his eyes. They were ice cold and filled with hatred. It made his blood run cold.

The man turned towards the screen, producing a remote from his pocket and forwarding the tape. For a few seconds nothing happened, then Lennox saw the familiar frame of Felice walk towards the building's entrance, opening the door and vanishing inside.

"As you can see, I did my homework."

"Where is she?" Lennox asked through clenched teeth.

Matt remained silent and smiled menacingly.

"Where is she?!" Lennox yelled, but as his opponent's smile grew even wider. He forwarded the tape again and Lennox saw Felice leave the building in rather a hurry, dressed in what he recognized as her bulletproof vest. A wave of nausea came over him as it dawned on him what was going to happen.

"Oh, she'll come. Trust me."

"What is this? Some kind of revenge?" Lennox asked flatly.

"Exactly!" Matt exclaimed, wild madness gleaming in his eyes. "It can't be long before your girlfriend arrives and then I will finish what the Decepticons haven't managed in over a year."

Lennox closed his eyes for a second, consternation making him speechless as the whole impact of those words hit him, but Matt merely laughed.

"Ah, catching up are we?"

This was why the unsub they believed to be the White Ghost, this man they'd tracked back to all their deployments, had seemed so strangely familiar to him! Not only had his movements caught on camera, but also his demeanor in general. He'd not only seen this man before, he'd worked with him… thought he'd known him. Thought he'd known the man his sister had been engaged to. They'd both mourned him, mourned the death of a friend and almost family-member that was now trying to kill him and his team. How did all of this happen?

"Why…" he asked flatly, watching his opponent walk towards him and bending down so that his face was level with his.

"I endured torture, I endured hunger and cold, the uncertainty if I would see the next day… I rotted in their prisons for years, barely alive when I was freed by a group of strangers. I didn't know how they'd found me, but they told me about their motives. They wanted to get rid of the Autobots and their human allies. At first, I didn't know why they'd chosen me to help them but as I discovered who their leader was, well…" He smiled evilly. "After years of darkness I finally had a goal, a purpose of living, so I started plotting the attacks on your team. And while I watched your every move I saw her joining your team and I knew my time had finally come. Not only that I was going to destroy your career, your life. You handed me my most effective weapon. Her."

"This is sick! If we had just the slightest proof that you were still alive, we would have moved heaven and earth to bring you home!" Lennox exclaimed. "What do you think we all felt when we…"

"Enough!" Matt yelled and began pacing the room. "When you left me to the insurgents you destroyed everything. You destroyed my chance of having a life with your sister. I know that she has married another guy and I don't blame her. She deserves to be happy."

For a moment, sadness flickered through his eyes, but then he blinked and the cold manic gleam was back.

"But you…" he spat. "You took away the only thing that ever meant something to me: her. And now I will take the one thing you love: Felice."

He walked towards one corner of the room, picking up something from a small wooded table and only when he turned to reveal a long knife in his hand, Lennox felt his blood run cold. He felt numb. He could not remember having felt so powerless ever since he'd seen Felice dropping from that galley back in China. He knew that she was coming to free him. That she would walk right into the trap Matt had set up for her and that there was nothing he could do to warn let alone to safe her.

He would be responsible for her death and he would have to carry that guilt with him for the rest of his life.

When Felice arrived at the warehouse, the whole area was deserted. The building was located in one of the suburbs of Washington DC in an area where one tended not to walk around alone after dark. The warehouse seemed to have been abandoned for at least a decade, most of the windows were shattered and graffiti were sprayed on the better part of the outside walls. Piles of debris and rubble lay scattered all over the place, enhancing the dilapidated appearance of the facility, but providing good cover to sneak up to the building unseen, Felice noticed as she observed the building through her binoculars.

She reached across the seat and opened the glove compartment, taking out a handgun and two clips of ammo. Adjusting the silencer she'd brought, she checked the gun and slid it in the back of her waistband. Then she exited the car and made her way towards the building.

Sneaking from cover to cover, she did not see a single soul until she was only eighty feet away. A door had opened on the second level, showing a man stepping on the fire escape platform. He was carrying a rifle which he now slung around his neck, reaching into his pocket for a cigarette.

He never got to lit the cigarette because he was killed with two shots center mass, the sound of his body slumping down barely louder that the shots from Felice' suppressed gun. She was about to move again, when she felt her phone vibrate. Cursing, she reached for it and took the call.

"Shit, Epps. I am in the middle of something here." she hissed, her voice barely audible yet filled with anger.

"We're thirty minutes out, hold it for heaven's sake. You're going to get yourself killed."

"I am not in the mood for a lecture."

"Fine. I just wanted to tell you that we have heat imagery of the building. Looks like nine people in total…no wait, eight. Fuck, Felice, I told you…" he exclaimed.

"We have no time." she breathed. "Guide me towards them."

"Felice…"

"Epps, please…" she almost whimpered.

"Alright, alright." the Tech. Sergeant said, giving up his attempt to persuade her to wait for them.

He waited for Felice to connect her phone to the wireless headset, insert the earpiece and secure the microphone on the lapel of her vest. She then stored the phone in her pocket, reached for her gun, her grip tight around the handle. Taking a deep breath, she looked towards the building before she gave Epps the signal.

"Go."

Epps guided her into the building where she encountered two guards. She took them out with two shots each, the sound of her gun still muffled. That made three of the eight guards, plus the White Ghost.

She sneaked upward, clearing every room and taking out four more in the process. Shooting each of them in the back, they never knew what hit them, but Felice didn't bother to feel sorry for them. They were responsible for a whole lot of evil things, committed murder and were threatening to kill one of her friends and now there were paying the price. In short: they'd messed with the wrong person.

Peering around the next corner, she knew that she must be close to the location Lennox was held captive. At the end of the corridor she could make out a faint light; the only one she'd see since entering the building. A man was standing at the beginning of a hallway, guarding the further path. She was too close to shoot him, so she sneaked up to him from behind, her arms tightening around the man's neck. He was taller than she and fighting her grip fiercely, but Felice mustered all her strength, her mind focused on Lennox... The figure in her arms stopped to struggle and went limp. Gently, anxious to avoid any noise, she laid him down and stepped over him, her gun already drawn again.

"I can hear them." she whispered. "I am going in now. Hurry up, will you." she added, trying for a brave, reassuring tone. But her heart was hammering in her chest as she peered towards the light.

"Copy that. Hang tight." Epps replied and with that Felice made her way towards the lit room.