Please see Prologue for general info and disclaimers.

*~*

Thirty-nine hours earlier…

Drumming the fingertips of her right hand against her steering wheel, Sydney sighed and leaned back into her seat. The clock on her dashboard informed her that it was only a little after 8:30, but she was straining to keep her eyes open. She'd been having trouble sleeping lately, often tossing and turning in her bed as she watched the early morning hours tick by on her digital alarm clock. It wasn't that she wasn't tired because she was; it was just that she usually found herself wide awake during the hours of 11 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. and then willing herself to stay awake from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. But now that she actually found herself tired at a somewhat normal hour, she hoped that that meant she'd be able to get a decent night's sleep and minimize the huge bags she had growing underneath her eyes.

As she began to revel in the thought of wrapping herself in her fluffy down comforter and floating off to the land of peaceful dreams and lots of sheep, she spied a young man exit the store and proceeded to stalk him with her car. After he climbed into his little red Honda and drove out of the parking lot, she slid into the newly abandoned parking space and grabbed her coat from the passenger seat, all the while reminding herself that she should be sure to mention to Vaughn that the next time he wanted to have a clandestine meeting in public, he should either pick a less popular place or one with a larger parking lot.

She'd only been inside of the video rental store for about five minutes when she sensed someone join her in the Alfred Hitchcock aisle. Turning her head to her left, she saw Vaughn sidling up to her with a video sleeve clutched in one hand and a reflective expression on his face.

"In a suspense kind of mood?" he asked pleasantly as he lifted his eyes to meet hers.

"I don't know," she replied, matching his tone of voice. "My roommate's a big Hitchcock fan, so I thought I might surprise her with one of his movies."

"How about this one?" he suggested, removing one of the sleeves from a nearby shelf and holding it out to her. "It's one of my all-time favorites."

She glanced down at the proffered video and crinkled her nose when she saw the title 'Rear Window.' "Eh," she dismissed with a laugh. "I dissected that in an English class my junior year in college. Kind of took all the fun out of it."

"Oh, well, then how about…" As Vaughn pretended to be scouring the shelves for a suitable recommendation, he leaned towards her and whispered, "This new intel about a second Rambaldi manuscript came as a complete surprise to us. We had absolutely no idea that it existed at all."

"Well, don't feel too badly," Sydney quietly consoled as she joined his role playing game and leaned across him, her arm brushing against his chest, to pick up an intriguing video sleeve. "Sloane tried to act like he knew all about this second manuscript, but I could tell he was pretty surprised to learn about it, too."

"Oh, goodie, Sloane's as lost as we are. That's reassuring," he murmured sarcastically. "Anyway, your counter mission is identical to the one we had for the Mt. Aconcagua mission. Use the camera I'm about to give you to photograph all of the manuscript's pages, and then deliver the manuscript to SD-6 as ordered." Grabbing a video sleeve, he raised his voice and asked, "Hey, how about this one?"

When she accepted the sleeve, she felt her fingers wrap around the palm-sized camera Vaughn had placed the sleeve on top of in order to keep it hidden from view. Wrinkling her nose once more, she slipped the camera up the sleeve of her coat and returned the video sleeve to the shelf. "That doesn't look like something I'm in the mood to see tonight," she informed him kindly as she crossed her arms and deposited the camera into her open purse.

Thinking their meeting was over, Sydney turned her back to him so that it would appear as if she was giving this 'complete stranger' a cold shoulder and was about to walk away when she heard him mutter, in a low voice, "About what was said the last time we talked…"

She spun around almost instantly with a look of contrition on her face. "Could we—" Just then she remembered how there might be someone watching her, so she dropped to a knee and feigned retying a shoe. "Could we forget about all the stupid, terrible things I said at our last meeting? I am so sorry, Vaughn. I had absolutely no right to say any of those things, and I feel like a complete idiot for having treated you that way. You've been nothing but a really great friend to me when I needed one. And I was so out of line that I— Could we just forget about it? Please?"

"Forget about what?" Vaughn asked lightly with a grin as his way of showing that all was forgiven.

"Thank you."

He waited until Sydney was back to standing on both feet before adding, "But I have been worried about you, and I've been thinking that maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea for you to talk to someone. A professional."

"What? Like a psychiatrist?" When she saw him give a short nod, she chuckled in amusement. "But why would I need to talk to a psychiatrist when I have you to talk to? You're all I need."

She'd expected the compliment to, at the very least, bring a smile to Vaughn's glum countenance, but his expression remained fix to one of distress and apprehension. "Sydney…"

"Really, I'm fine," she insisted quietly, never losing the cheerfulness from her voice. "Last week was…bad. But I'm much better now and we're back to being on good terms, so there's absolutely no need for me to be talking to any professional. Thanks for the concern, though." Looking around the rest of the store to the scores of students and young professionals who were seeking the one video they could rent that would wash all their cares away for a couple of hours, she declared, at normal room volume, "I'm not really seeing anything here I want. I hear there are a few decent shows on TV these days. Maybe I'll go and catch one of those tonight." As she was about to leave Vaughn for a second time, she turned and gave him a shy, disarming smile. "Have a good night. I'll call you once I'm back in the States. I promise."