The being known as Sameen Shaw caught up to the Audi A8 Root was driving two blocks from where she wrecked Bertha. The brunette Pillar tapped the window of the passenger side and slid into the seat when the lock popped up.

"The Dashing Duo taken care of?" Root asked when the door closed.

Shaw shot her a look. "What?"

Root responded with a smirk. "Jeremy and Martine. They're both pretty good looking."

Shaw rolled her eyes. "Do you think I'd be here if they hadn't? Anyways. I hope you have some vacation days saved up," she said, turning in her seat to face the Persian mortal. "You aren't gonna be able to go back home for a while."

Leila Ilar shrugged. "I invested the money you left me well; I volunteer with the National Council for Iranian-American Relations nowadays. I can afford to take a month or two off."

"Well that's something I guess. It'll make keeping an eye on you until this is blows over easier. Though I gotta say, you might not be able to go back to your life after this. The thing that's after you gots extraordinary resources."

Leila frowned. "So where are you taking me?"

"Somewhere not even God'll be able to find you."

Leila cocked an eyebrow. "Coming from someone else, I might be worried about that. So, last I heard, you'd been recruited by some secret government agency you couldn't tell me anything about."

"Still can't, not that it'd matter anyways; you wouldn't have heard of them. But yeah, I spent some time with them before they tried to kill me."

"That wasn't very smart. You leave any of them alive?"

"Unfortunately yes. My new boss has a pretty strict zero tolerance on murder policy and would moralize me to death if I killed everyone who deserved it. Anyways, he built Big Brother but needed people to actually stop the stuff it saw."

"But that's the woman I know, always looking after those who can't look after themselves. My guardian."

Shaw scowled as Root grinned. "That does seem like Sameen," Root agreed rather cheerily. "She actually did say that she is the one who does the protecting to me once."

"Alright, that's enough gossip from you two," Shaw announced abruptly. "So, this is most likely you being connected to me, but what have you been doing with the NCIAR? Anything anyone wouldn't want you doing?"

Shaw caught Leila shrugging in the rearview mirror. "I don't have a set job, I work with everyone in the Philly office, doing a little bit of everything. Some gopher and secretary work. Editing and contributing on letters and statements, setting up appointments, consulting with other academics. Contributing to policy papers. Could I at least call in and tell my boss I'm not going to be in for a while?"

"When we get to where we're going. The thing that's hunting you can tap phones at will. I took out the first chase team, but you call anyone and they'll have another one on us in minutes."

Leila sighed. "Well, at least I'll have time to think of an excuse for why I disappeared right before the hotel got shot up."

"So how did you two meet?" Root asked asked after a minute of silence, catching Leila's eyes in the rearview mirror. "Sameen never talks about her past so the opportunity to learn anything is a good one."

"I first met her in the early thirties, spying for the Americans, keeping an eye on the radicals for the Shah. She lived nearby and looked after me when I was a girl."

"That seems to be something she does," Root commented, shooting a sly look at Shaw.

"She disappeared for a while when World War II broke out and turned back up in the seventies. Got me out with my future husband right before the Ayatollah took power. I pretended to be her mother when she went into medical school and then into the Marines."

"Were the two of you ever… together? "

Leila shook her head. "Heavens no. She got to know me too young, I think. Not that I didn't try. She has many attractive qualities, as I'm sure you've discovered."

Root nodded. "Sometimes it feels like I find another reason to love her every day."

"I remember that feeling," Leila agreed.

"You guys do know I can hear you, right?" Shaw interrupted, throwing a glare at the side of Root's head.

"And?" Leila asked with all innocence in her voice.

Shaw pursed her lips and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I suppose it'd be a bit much to expect the two of you to refrain from gossiping like fishwives."

"What can I say, sweetie, you're just so fascinating."

"And you of all people should know that some mystery in a relationship can be good, but too much can kill it," Leila added.

"Oh, I doubt there's any danger of that. I'm her Stele."

Shaw could feel Leila's eyes boring into the back of her head. "Isn't that interesting," she said lowly.

"That was my thought, more or less," Root agreed. "So. I had assumed that you didn't actually exist after I found out the truth about Sameen. Do you do this much, get people to pretend to be relatives?"

"It's not the first time," Shaw replied. "Especially as it's been getting harder and harder to fake an identity over the last decade or three. It helps to have actual people to anchor a new name."

Shaw tuned the two women out as Root turned back to Leila , scanning their surroundings, trying to spot any potential tails. Samaritan had proven itself to be an extremely canny enemy; she wouldn't put it past the AI to have given Lambert and Rousseau orders to lose them so that a secondary tail could follow them back to wherever they were headed.

Root pulled the car into the underground garage and the three of them took the elevator up to the lobby of the Hotel Sumir. Neti was waiting for them as the doors opened, dipping into a low, flourishing bow.

"My Lady, welcome back."

"Neti, Leila. Leila, Neti. Leila's going to be staying here for a while so if you could get her settled?"

"If I may ask, do you know how long?"

"Samaritan's hunting her, so until we either kill it, get her off its hit list or find somewhere else to hide her she will be our guest."

"As you wish. If you would come with, Mistrine." Neti pressed the call button of one of the elevators, gestured to the door when it dinged open a few seconds later.

The instant the elevator doors shut, both their earwigs beeped once, followed by the Machine's initiation protocol.

'Primary Analog Interface retasking imminent," the Machine informed them once they had both acknowledged Her query.

Shaw grunted. "Where're we going?"

'Secondary Analog Interface will not be accompanying Primary Analog Interface on tertiary operation.'

Shaw's shook her head, eyes unfocusing as she talked to the Machine. "See, that's where you're wrong; Esmail knows Root's my Stele now and that means that he's gonna stop at nothing to take her head. He may not have invented murder but he's certainly perfected the art of it. So until I figure out a way to put him down for good, wherever Root goes, I go."

"As attractive as that sounds sweetie, Finch needs you here to help handle the numbers."

Shaw scowled, turning to face the taller woman. "Screw the numbers Root," she snapped. "Now he knows who you are, what you are, he's not gonna stop until he puts you six feet under. And don't you tell me that you've got the Machine looking out for you; we both know She can't do jack shit to help you when he tracks you down. And it's when, not if. He came within a hair of killing you the last time; I'll be damned if I don't do everything in my power to keep that from happening again."

"Careful Shaw," Root said quietly with one of her special Shaw-only smiles, stepping in to brush a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. "That sounds dangerously like you care."

Shaw reached up to cover Root's hand where it cupped her jaw. "Don't be an ass, Root. You know I care about you and not just because you're my Stele or because of the mission. You matter to me and I'll be damned if I let you run off and get your ass killed the first chance you get. I get that part of you will always belong to the Machine and I'm fine with that, just as long as you realize that part of you belongs to me too. And I'm not letting you go."

Root's smile widened slightly and her eyes took on the peculiar sparkle they got when she was thinking something particularly mischievous. "You make it sound awfully like we're-"

"We're not dating, Root," Shaw interrupted, stepping back. "But that doesn't mean you're a free agent either.

"So what are we, if we're not girlfriends? Lovers? Partners? Crime-spree buddies?'

Shaw groaned, stepping away. "You got me Root. Don't make this a thing, okay? Now I'm sure there's a plane or something we gotta catch, so let's get outta here."

Shaw pivoted on her heel and marched to the door, blowing it open with a heel-palm thrust. Root smirked at her little firecracker before trotting after her.

"So where are we going?" Shaw asked as she jabbed the call button for the elevator.

'Badiraguato, Free and Sovereign State of Sinaloa, United Mexican States.'

"And what will we be doing in Mexico?"

'Secondary Assets Daniel Casey, Jason Greenfield and Tatsuro Daizo have been apprehended by Sinaloan authorities.'

That caused Shaw to pause and blink as the doors to the elevator opened. "Well, can't say that isn't unexpected. Just a little surprised it took so long. Any idea if Samaritan is involved?"

'I can detect no direct links between the two. However-"

"You can't always see what Samaritan is doing. Got it. What can you tell us then?"

'Preliminary analysis suggests assets were apprehended while trying to access MexOCon systems suspected to have been compromised by Samaritan.'

"So Samaritan could have something to do with this, then."

' However , I calculate an eighty-two-point-six chance the two are related.'

Shaw's mouth twisted. "Which means that Esmail is probably involved in some way."

"How'd you get that?"

"Samaritan targeted both Leila and Grace; he didn't turn up at either location, so it stands that if he was not with the two people that connect the two members of our team who have living connections, so he's going after the ones that are in hiding. Though, that's kinda weird too."

"How so?"

"As you might imagine, Esmail doesn't really take orders; he does what he wants and to Hell with everyone and everything else. I've been half expecting him to pull off a one man assault on the Hotel to get to you."

"If you were talking about anyone else, I'd say that seems reckless, but…"

"Yeah, it's Esmail. So either of you got a plan on how we're getting the boys out?"

'You will be attempting the assassination of Sinaloan Governor-elect Mario Valdez Lopez.'

" Attempting an assassination? I'm not sure whether to be insulted or relieved." Shaw considered her reflection a moment before asking her next question. "Why are they gonna stick us in a federal prison instead of taking us to the local jail?"

'The Governor-elect will be making a speech outside the prison, reaffirming his campaign stance of addressing prison overpopulation.'

"Well, this should be fun," Root said conversationally, smirk firmly in place. "I've been a lot of places, done a lot of things but I can't say that prison is either one of them."

"Don't get too excited; It'll probably be less Orange is the New Black and more Prison Break."

"Season one or three?"

"Does it matter?"

"I'd think so. I'd assume it's easier to climb a fence than dig a tunnel, but that's just me."

"You'd be surprised. Walls and fences usually got eyes on them. Tunnels don't."

Root gave that a moment's consideration before she nodded. "You're probably right."

Shaw snorted. "Not probably about it. Take my word, I've broken out of my fair share of, second and third world prisons and there is a definite art to the escape. But it's Mexico so it won't require anything so Hollywood as Prison Break."

"You have experience breaking out of Mexican prisons?"

"No, but I have escaped more than one gulag and in a country where the prison system is as corrupt as Mexico's is, the principals are basically the same. "

Root chuckled. "Next time I get arrested remind me to do it with you in tow."