Chapter 26

Sydney stealthily snuck out of their bedroom and headed for where she had heard the sound. Gun drawn, she turned the corner. "Freeze!" she yelled.

Weiss looked up at her. "Hey, Syd."

Vaughn came in after Sydney. "What are you doing here?"

"It's over."

"What's over?"

"Me and Sally."

"Why? What happened?"

"I had this romantic night planned. I had cooked supper. Everything was perfect. I was waiting for her to come home."

"What happened?"

"She came home with another guy."

"Sally? She was cheating on you?"

"Yeah," Weiss said, and as he took a drink from the bottle, Vaughn walked over to him.

"Listen, Eric…Hey, put that down…Everything's going to be alright, okay."

"No, it's not! Why can't I ever get a girl?"

"It just takes time."

"Yeah, well, I don't care."

"Come on Weiss, you're drunk."

"Wow, you're observant."

"Let me take you home."

Vaughn helped pull Weiss out of the couch and, with Sydney's help, got him into the car. Once Vaughn and Weiss had left, Sydney went back into J. D's room to check on him. He was sleeping soundly. Sydney smiled at her son, and kissed the little baby on his head. "I love you, J. D."

For the next few months, Sydney stayed at home with J. D. while Vaughn went on the missions. One of those missions was to retrieve an object that Kendall had called The Hourglass. On the nights that Vaughn was gone, Sydney would sleep with J. D. in her room to make sure that he was safe the whole night.

J. D. started to cry on the night that Vaughn was gone to retrieve The Hourglass. Sydney rolled over, and, opening her eyes, saw a person dressed in dark clothing.

Vaughn stood outside the club with Weiss. He noticed the bouncer that they'd have to get around in order to get in. Vaughn was going to get into a fight with Weiss. Weiss would bring out a knife, and pretend to cut Vaughn. The bouncer would let Vaughn through to get cleaned up, while he restrained Weiss until the police came. Vaughn would go in, wipe off the fake blood, and get to the underground level where The Hourglass was being held.

The fight went well, and Vaughn was allowed temporary access, which he used to get into the sublevel. "Boyscout checking in," Vaughn said into his comm.

"We read you, Boyscout, loud and clear."

"Heading for the sublevel."

"Copy."

Slipping by the club's festive crowd, Vaughn managed to find the door leading to the stairs. Using the lock-pick gadget that Marshall had given him before the mission, he unlocked the door and ran down the steps.

"Base ops, this is Boyscout. We have a problem."

"What is it, Boyscout?"

"There's a motion sensor on a random sweep."

"We had no information on that."

"Well, is there any way to disarm it?"

"Boyscout, this is Marshall. I'm trying to disarm the sensor remotely, but there are a lot of dummy codes. In order for this to work, I need to extrapolate each one."

"Boyscout, this is Base ops. I recognize this system," Dixon said into the earpiece. Turning to Marshall, he explained, "It has a the repeating prefix of 8686 in most of the codes. That indicates that it's an anchor type design. I had a similar system once on a mission in Honduras. I know the back door. Could you move for just a bit?"

Vaughn heard typing, and then suddenly the motion detector stopped. "Base ops, this is Boyscout. It worked. I'm getting The Hourglass."

Vaughn removed the hourglass from the glass case, and was surprised when alarms came on.

"Base ops, this is Boyscout. I've triggered an alarm. Can you disarm it?"

"Not remotely. The Hourglass must have been on a pressure switch. Maybe putting it back will stop the alarm."

Vaughn ran back to the display. Replacing The Hourglass, he waited for the alarm to subside. "That didn't work. I need extraction."

Guards ran through the door, their guns trained on Vaughn. "I've been made," Vaughn said, and then felt a dart lodge itself into his neck. His vision blurred, and then everything went black.

…TBC…