Sydney sat on the park bench next to the Carousel, waiting for Connelly to show up. She had no idea what information he would have for her. The little bits of information she had pried from him had taken a lot of poking and prodding on her part. The idea that he was now willing to volunteer information was bordering on ludicrous.

That was adding to the frustration of not being able to bring Sark in on the progress she was making with Connelly. But they had to keep up appearances so that meant no contact, not even a short phone call.

She closed her eyes for a moment and felt the wind blow across her body. There was something in the air that was making her uneasy. The situation she found herself in had been bogged down with dead ends and failed initiatives. It was an endless, fruitless search, but she had a feeling that something was going to happen, and it was going to happen soon.

"Miss Bristow, you came," Connelly's voice called from behind her, interrupting her thoughts.

"What do you have for me, Peter?"

"You called me Peter. We are making progress. I think this calls for a drink."

"Hell would have to freeze over before I would choose to spend any more time with you than I already have. Now, why am I here?"

"Now, now. Must we rush straight into business?"

"Yes. That's all I'm here for. What do you know?"

"Julian never mentioned to me how all business, all the time you are." Connelly shrugged. "To each their own, I guess. It just hurts because although I know that you're incredibly impatient, you should still probably be a lot nicer to me considering how large a help I am being to you and your journey of personal discovery."

"All you've managed to tell me so far is that Sark wants me dead, which is pretty much old news. The man has tried to kill me more times than I can count."

"He came to me, Sydney, with the idea that killing you was exactly what he needed to work his way up the chain of command. It wasn't ludicrous or out of this world. He really is a practical man."

"I'm getting real tired of you trying to steer this conversation off track. If you don't get to a point, I'm going to leave you alone here in this park."

He rolled his eyes. "Like I said, impatience. As I was saying, Julian knew there was a margin of error to his plan, and that was the real reason why he brought me in."

"He wanted you to create a Plan B." Sydney nodded her understanding.

"Exactly." Connelly sat down beside Sydney and pulled her hand into his in a move that was so intimate that Sydney wanted desperate to punch him on the spot. "Tell me. You really care for your Michael Vaughn, your partner at the CIA, don't you?"

Disgusted but still in control of her temper, she yanked her hand away and slid as far down the bench as she could without falling off the end. "Vaughn is my partner, and he means a lot to me. That's all I'm going to say on that subject. "

"All I'm saying is that anyone doing research on you could find that out. First thing I teach my students is to understand your weaknesses and eliminate them. Michael Vaughn is one of your weaknesses."

"Are you trying to convince me to kill my partner or do you actually have the information you promised?"

Smiling, he winked at her. "I like it when you're sassy. It's so attractive. The reason I asked you to come here today was I thought it was time I stopped lying to you."

"How did I know that you had been lying to me this whole time? You are truly scum and a complete waste of my time." Sydney got up to leave.

Connelly grabbed her arm roughly and shoved her back down onto the bench. "I wouldn't be so hasty, Sydney. I never really lied to you. I just omitted a few details where I thought you might not be able to handle the whole truth."

"Like what?"

"I was the one who tampered with your partner's memory."

Sydney's eyes widened. "Were you behind all of this mess?"

"In a way, yes. But in the way I think you're specifically alluding to, no. It was my job to make sure that if Sark didn't go through with killing you, if you found some way to dig your claws into him, that I provided an out. So that's what I did. Vaughn's predicament should have distracted you enough to give Julian time to come to him senses and leave."

"But he didn't. He stayed and continued to lie to me."

"A pity, isn't it? It seems that not even I can get him to leave you alone."

Sydney stood up again, and this time Connelly did not stop her. "I'm really tired of playing this game of run around with you. Your flirty banter is lost on me, and to be honest, it sickens me. I'm tired of having to listen to you talk on and on about things that are not even slightly significant to me. I have real things to be finding out. So I think it's time that you just told me all the information you have, and we can terminate this little relationship we have going. It's for the best that we get this done as soon as possible and get out of each others' lives."

"It's in my best interest to keep myself useful to you, Sydney."

"What do you want from me, anyway? I just don't understand what's in this for you."

"You keep pushing me to play my ace in the hole. I'm not sure if that's very wise for either one of us."

Sydney leaned over so that she was hovering over him, placing her eye to eye and nose to nose with him. "Really, it's been fun, but I'm ending this. It's over."

A slight movement leading to the click of a safety being taken off a gun and a poking sensation in her abdomen made her freeze immediately. "Nothing's ever over, Miss Bristow."

She continued to look at him with determination, not letting this shift in control falter her. "So, this is new. Why the gun all of the sudden, Connelly? Are you really that scared of me when I get frustrated? Because you really don't want to see me in the middle of a mission."

Unwilling to let her ease the tension out of the fact that she had a gun poking into her, Connelly stood up, pushing the gun into her just hard enough to make her wince. "You're a descendent of Rambaldi. That makes you lethal. And that makes me a cautious man."

Sydney's eyes lit up in surprise. No one was supposed to know about that little detail. She and Sark had single-handedly confiscated and destroyed the proof that Milo Rambaldi had been one of her ancestors. Only the two of them should be privy to that factoid. Staring at him suspiciously in case this was just a good guess on his part, she asked, "How do you know about that?"

"It all goes back to the love of your life. The man can't keep a secret."

"That's a lie. The last time you spoke with him, Sark had no idea that I was descended from Rambaldi. At least no more than the rest of us did."

"It was always a suspicion of everyone that you were connected somehow."

"That's stating the obvious. Why are you trying to pin all my problems on Julian? Why is it so important that you keep us apart, Connelly?"

Frustrated with her constant questioning, Connelly forcefully turned her around so that she was no longer facing him and could therefore not look at him accusatorily. "Get walking before you manage to draw more attention to us. We have places to be."

"If I didn't know better, I would have thought this was a planned kidnapping. But you wouldn't really be that stupid, now would you?"

Connelly didn't answer. Instead he just led her down a few pathways in the park and straight to a black car parked on the curb. "Get in. We have much to talk about."

"I'd be more willing to talk if you got rid of the gun," she suggested while opening the back seat door.

"Not a chance." Connelly shoved her hard into the car and slid in after. "So, I'm sure, despite your calm demeanor, you're just dying to know what's going on."

Sydney shrugged her shoulders. "Not really. I knew you would pull something like this eventually. I just thought that I could wrangle a little more information out of you before you actually physically pulled a gun."

"Well then, you obviously underestimated me." Connelly glanced out the window for a moment as the car pulled away from the curb. "I guess we should follow the standard protocols of an unexpected abduction. That means I should start with the part where I break through your calm collectedness and make you finally realize what a pickle you've gotten yourself into."

"Go right ahead," she dared him.

"Where to begin?" he said with a chuckle. "First, there are a few things you need to know. God I love that phrase. It just rubs your face into the fact that there are things that I know that you don't, and I'm still not sure if I want to share."

"Could you do me a favor?" Sydney asked seriously. "If you fully intend to kill me at the end of this kidnapping, would you just do it now? I don't know how much more of your theorizing and babbling I can take without going crazy."

"I've known you were a descendent of Rambaldi long before Sark came to me with a plea for help in killing you. He wasn't the one that kept you alive. That was me."

"You're trying to tell me that Sark kept trying to kill me during our two years at the Covenant and you were the one preventing him from succeeding?"

"No. I was the one who made sure he fell in love with you so that he would protect you from himself. Less work for me that way." Sydney nodded, and he continued. "Like I've said before, the man was halfway in love with you already. It wasn't that hard to nudge him over the edge."

"Why did you want to keep me alive?"

"So that I could bring you around to my side, by force or by words. I need the only living descendent of Rambaldi to be on my side."

Sydney felt herself stiffen slightly at that statement and forced herself to let go and keep up the appearance of not caring. "So, you want to work with me? You really only had to ask. Kidnapping at gunpoint was not necessary."

Connelly rolled his eyes. "I also needed you to be distanced from the people who care for you most. Looks like I didn't even have to worry about that. All your friends at the CIA are avoiding you because they don't know how to handle your new engagement." He chuckled when he saw Sydney's surprised expression. "Didn't think I knew about that one, either, did you?"

The car pulled over in front of a large apartment complex. Connelly unlocked the door and stepped out onto the pavement. "I trust I don't have to bring the gun out again."

"No, you've intrigued me. I want to see where you're heading with this." Sydney tried her best to look brave as she followed Connelly into the building. He was right about her becoming unnerved. She had grossly underestimated him, which was ridiculous considering she knew him to be the man who formed Sark into the perfect spy. Peter Connelly knew a lot more about what was going on than she gave him credit for, and she had a feeling that the revelations for that day weren't over.

Connelly pushed her into the elevator and hit the penthouse button. "I figured that after today, you and I won't have many secrets between us. I might as well show you where I live."

"That's extremely stupid reasoning. Which is why I guess I won't be leaving this building alive if I don't agree to whatever you want me to."

"A very perceptive woman. Every day I realize why Julian is so madly in love with you." The elevator doors opened straight into the penthouse. "Welcome to my humble abode. Now let's get back to that kidnapping protocol. As I was in the middle of telling you in the car, you really don't have anyone to turn to right now, thanks to me. All your CIA friends are terrified by the idea that their best spy could be in love with their greatest adversary. Then there's said adversary. You currently aren't talking to him right?"

Sydney scowled at him. "Because you told me he was still trying to kill me."

"Which you pretended to believe. In reality, there was no way you would still believe that Julian Lazarey wanted to kill you. So, instead, you're pretending to be estranged from him, even though you're telling all your friends that you plan on marrying him. Sloppy details, Sydney. They're what ruins the perfect lie. And sloppy lies lead to trouble. How is Sark supposed to know that you're in this predicament when you aren't even allowed to contact one another? Looks like your personal savior might not be able to rescue you this time."

Holding his hand out, Connelly motioned for Sydney to enter one of the rooms. "I'm just going to leave you in here to think things over for a while. Then we'll start negotiating."

Sydney nodded and stood in the center of the room while Connelly shut and locked the door behind her. She took a quick scan of the room and realized there really wasn't much to work with. This was obviously where Connelly always kept his "special guests". It was a small room with no windows, and there wasn't even any furniture for her to break and turn into a weapon. It was just a blank room with doors that lock from the outside. There was no surveillance equipment either, which either meant Connelly was incredibly sloppy or incredibly smart.

She knew that she should probably be freaking out right now. It would be expected. "Probably would be having a nervous breakdown if you hadn't slipped up," she chided Connelly, even though there was no way he could hear her.

Connelly had made only one mistake, but it was huge. Earlier, in the car ride, he had referred to her as the only Rambaldi descendent. That meant that he had no idea that Nadia existed. Sydney wasn't sure how it would help her in this situation, but she knew this was all she had right now. Because Connelly had been telling the truth about one thing. She was probably the only one that could get herself out of this mess.