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1 Week prior…

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"NO!"

The man sitting opposite her at the café table sat back and sighed. "Litha, you don't have a choice. You might have retired from the active roster within the Justice Department, but you are still an active operative within the Black Ops field. We had to keep that status viable in order for you to remain as a consultant for the missions, you know that!"

"I don't give a damn Wallace!" Litha Donovan bent over the table and glared into her mentor's face. "I won't do another operation for you!"

Adam Wallace sighed again and stood up. He looked down at Litha and shook his head. "You don't have a choice. Here is your file. Everything you need to know is in there. You know the drill. Litha, you're being requested by the people higher than me."

"Who?" She picked up the file and eyed it skeptically. Level Three clearances… CIA file tablatures… State Department seals…

"You don't need to know that. Go home. Tell Frank you have to go away for a few days. I'm sorry Litha. I really am. I wish I could have put them off, but it's you they want."

'So who do I ask?'

'Ask about what?'

'Who do I ask about why this was done? How do I find out who is ultimately responsible for this?'

'Who said there was someone higher up ultimately responsible?'

Litha growled and struck out at the man before her. The instant her hand struck his 'face' his being shattered like a million pieces of light and she found herself in a myriad of what could be considered 'Afterlife.' She looked around for a being in charge…

One appeared. 'Hello Lilith Morgana Sinclair Donovan.'

Litha looked up at the angel. For a long second she stared hard at it.

'Well?'

'You know why I'm here. I want answers.'

'Do you honestly think you can? Are you in any position to demand anything?'

'Why would I be denied the knowledge?'

'Isn't that what you did to your husband?'

"LITHA!"

Litha stared at the file on the desk in front of her, seemingly oblivious to Frank's shout through the house. How could she tell him about this? How could she look him in the eye two years after she had 'retired' from active service and tell him that it was all a fakery?

"Litha?" Frank came around the corner into the office to see her sitting at the desk, one knee drawn up under her chin and her other leg curled under her in the plush leather chair. "Babe?"

'Why do you show me this?'

'We all have our secrets. Even you Agent Sinclair.'

'I had to.'

'You promised Frank that you would have no more secrets. In a bed, looking into his eyes, you promised him.'

Litha's looked off to the side as her eyes filled with tears. 'Shut up!' she whispered harshly. 'Just shut up! Frank knew about the training consultations I did with the Justice Department Black Ops Teams.'

'But he never knew about this particular mission, did he?'

Litha shifted the file under a stack of self-defense class enrollment forms and looked back. "Hey Frank."

"You OK?" Frank heard the flatness of her voice and grew immediately concerned. He knew that she'd been getting a lot of calls from Wallace lately, calls that always left her upset and sullen. "How did your meeting with Adam go?"

"I told him no."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. I'm retired. How was work?"

Litha hiccuped and looked back up at the angel. 'I had no choice.'

'There is always a choice Agent Sinclair.'

'Not in my world. You do something for someone… and someone else hears about it. But, then this other person wants something different, and they use whatever they can to make sure you do this thing for them… and someone else higher up the food chain sees the doings… and then they want something, and to get it, they use a dark past against you. I'm no saint, you know that. I have things in my life I would not want the world to know about, at the very least not my husband and child.'

'Like this mission?'

'Assassination is the least of my fears..'

'Then what did they hold against you?'

Litha sat at her desk again two nights later, staring blankly at the file. It was silent in the house, Frank and Angelina asleep in the bed together after Lina'd had a nightmare. Litha couldn't sleep. She'd been unable to sleep since the day she'd gotten the file.

'Tell no one… Presidential elections in Colombia… Ambassador to the United Nations… ties to the Cartels… public supporter of Luis Mendoza, known drug lord… end game: take out Mendoza, the Ambassador, and the Presidential Candidate, Ramon Guzman.'

Once more she closed the file and sighed. All of her training, all of her skills… and now she was reduced back to an assassin. She didn't sign up for this. She'd left the CIA and joined the HNR with the Justice Department. She couldn't tell Frank… That bothered her more than anything else… Frank would not be able to know where she was. The fights would start again when she got back - if she got back.

The phone ringing startled her and she let out a soft yelp. Grabbing it up before it rung a second time and woke Frank up, Litha took a deep breath and put the phone to her ear.

'What does the CIA always hold against its former operatives?'

'The truth.'

'Yes. If I didn't cooperate with them, I'd be arrested for 'crimes' I committed while in the CIA - even for so short a time as I was. I was a brilliant operative in those three years before I moved to the FBI's Hostage Recovery Units. Assassination came easily to me. I was swift, silent, lethal, and anonymous. No one ever knew who I was or where I was, except my partner…'

'Do you realize that if you die on the operating table, that you will die anonymously, with only your wedding ring to identify you?'

Litha let out a soft sob, but bit down on any other signs of emotional distress. She would not let this angel win. 'So… this is my punishment? This is my penance for all of my crimes?''

'No, this is your fight. No one knows you are here except the police officer at the ambulance bay doors… if you die, your body will stay in the hospital morgue until the FBI claims you. Frank will not know of your death until days, possibly weeks from now.'

'Where is Frank?'

'He is with Lina. He's had Jake and Alex combing the streets for you for days now, Cody and Monica searching the archives and computer files to find some mention of you. You know, just in case you said yes.' The angel led her to a room and opened the door. Inside there was a table with a chair that faced a raised bank of chairs. In those chairs sat figures of men…

'You still have not answered my question.' Litha looked up and growled. What, was she to be tried now like a criminal? This was getting tiresome.

'What question is that?'

'Who is responsible for this?'

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