Sorry it's taken me so long to post the remaining chapters of this fic, but work and other commitments have had to take priority of late - damn them..

And thank you for the encouraging feedback, there's really nothing better to re-ignite those creative impulses.

Enjoy..

Chapter 9

Darien opened his eyes and then screwed them tightly shut again when the room around him started to tilt alarmingly. After a minute or two of struggling to keep the contents of his stomach where they belonged he tried again, and found that by opening one eye at a time his surroundings gradually stopped swaying back and forth and he was able to focus.

He was lying on a low soft white leather couch, with a couple of men - not the two from the parking lot - seated at a table close by drinking coffee and playing cards. For some reason they still appeared to be rocking from side to side and it took another careful look around to explain why…exactly. He was on a boat and a fairly luxurious one if the internal décor was anything to go by. Somebody - and he had no doubt that somebody was Dominic Casati - definitely liked their luxuries.

The side of his head where Keating's gun had been smacked into it, was a burning mass of pain and Darien raised his cuffed hands to the wound, surprised to find a wad of bandage covering it. His movement alerting one of the men who called to someone at the other end of the cabin.

"The Fed's awake."

A moment later Dominic Casati was staring down at him.

"You have Frankie to thank for that," he advised, gesturing to the bandage as he perched himself on the edge of the couch. "We couldn't have you bleeding all over the furniture."

"Hey, compassion's a wonderful thing," he quipped back, easing himself up into as much of a sitting position as he could manage.

For a long moment Casati studied Darien with genuine interest. "You wanna tell me what makes you so special, Fawkes?" he asked finally. "Some of my friends were very interested when I mentioned your name to them. In fact, Johnny Castignacci's people said to say a special 'hello' from them."

Darien shifted on the couch again and rubbed the side of his nose, an amused smile playing on his face. "I guess it must have something to do with my engaging personality," he responded glibly.

"Still the same smart mouth, huh?"

"Uh, well, I do my best. But I'd say anything was better than being a cold-blooded, murderin' motherf…"

A hard palm slammed into the side of his head, followed by a growled warning from the big brute who'd been hovering in the background. "Have some respect."

Casati nodded his approval, and continued as soon as Darien had recovered sufficiently from the blow to focus properly. "Frankie mentioned that you were sick." For some reason his comment brought a low rumble of laughter from the brute still looming close by. " I must say, you don't look so hot Fawkes."

"What do you really care." Darien couldn't suppress the venom despite the pounding in his head.

"You're right . I don't care," Casati asserted. "But there is someone who does seem to, and unless you want her to have a front row seat when we feed you to the sharks, then you'd better get me that damned disk." He gestured to one of the men seated at the table who got up immediately and left the cabin, returning a few minutes later with Frankie in tow. She looked tired, but apart from a yellowish bruise under one eye seemed unharmed. Darien gave her a reassuring smile which she returned with a tiny one of her own, before shifting her gaze nervously to her brother.

"You know Fawkes," Casati spoke as he walked over to stand beside Frankie, one hand grabbing her arm and tugging her rigid body in close. "I'm wondering if little sis here has been completely honest with you." He felt Frankie tense and smiled. "If you're gonna sacrifice yourself for her, I think it's only fair we should set you straight on a few things here. Oh, like the fact that she was screwing around with Coleman, and that the two of them were planning to blackmail me." Casati was really enjoying himself, and the look of complete shock on Darien's face spoke for itself.. "Guess she must have a thing for thieves who're Feds, or vice versa."

Frankie tried to pull away but he just tightened his grip on her. "You bastard," she whimpered.

Casati ignored her to continue. "I thought that killing him might actually bring her to her senses, but the next thing I know she's gone running to the Feds." He shook his head sadly at her, and when he turned back to Darien a cold smile was back in place. "I'm willing to bet she also forgot to mention that when she called the other day, she offered to sell me the disk for a cool million bucks."

Frankie covered her face with her free hand and stared at Darien through her fingers. "I…I only asked for the money for us, so that we could use it to get away and start over somewhere. I was going to tell you, I promise/"

"Yeah, right!" Darien's bitter response was worse than a physical blow.

"He's twisting everything. Darien, please…," she tried forlornly, but he wouldn't even look at her now. Instead he had his defiant gaze fixed firmly on her brother..

"Y' know what! Screw you Dom. I'd rather burn in hell than give you the disk."

"That can be arranged." Turning to the big brute. "Get him up on deck Dino. I think it's time for a little water sport."

A person couldn't fail to be impressed by the sheer luxury and scale of the motor yacht when viewed from one of its three expansive decks. And Darien decided there and then that if this wasn't conclusive proof that crime definitely did pay, then he didn't know what was.

The group now stood aft of the bridge deck, with Frankie vainly trying to struggle free of her brother's grasp as Darien was made to stand on unsteady legs while one end of a long coil of chain was looped tightly around his ankles, with the other end already attached to the hydraulic deck crane normally used for hoisting the power boat and other heavy pieces of equipment on and off the yacht. Once a padlock had been snapped into place securing the chain, he was pushed roughly down into a sitting position with Dino sneering him as he worked the control panel.

Almost mesmerized, Darien watched as it began to take up the slack until the length of chain was short enough to drag him onto his back and then lift him upwards until his body was hanging several feet above the deck. Somewhere over the roaring in his ears as the blood went rushing to his head he thought he could hear Frankie's panicked cries, but for the moment he needed to focus all of his concentration to delay the flow of Quicksilver that was already seeping from beneath his hairline, despite his best efforts to suppress it. No need to give the mob a free show.

When he opened his eyes again he found himself staring down into the deep waters of the Pacific, churning against the sleek white hull of the vessel.

Suddenly, with no warning, the tension on the chain was released and his body was plummeting downwards, and nothing could have prepared him for the shock as his body hit the water - hard - driving out most of the breath he'd taken in readiness. The Quicksilver dispersed on impact into tiny crystalline flakes which bobbed on the surface, catching the sunlight before they eventually dissolved, just as Darien sank into the depths, gasping as the water filled his lungs.

They didn't leave him down there long the first three times, just enough so that when they reeled his bedraggled and gasping form back up he was still conscious, though barely. Each time Casati would ask him about the disk and his response, usually followed by an expletive, would result in another dunking.

After the third time, Casati grabbed Frankie and dragged her over to the handrail forcing her into Darien's line of vision, the terrified look in her eyes followed him all the way back down into the water. This time they kept him under for much, much longer, jerking his body up and down so that the heavy chain around his ankles bit into already bruised and tender flesh; until way after he'd given up his panicked struggle and the futile attempt to retain the breath he'd held. The tightening band of pressure across his chest and the gradual clouding of his vision told him that he was drowning for real this time, and he wondered distractedly just who had said it was a pleasant way to die; obviously some joker who'd never had the impending pleasure of a soggy demise while bound hand and foot.

His life didn't literally flash before his eyes like it's supposed to, but his last cohesive thoughts were more like a collage of memories - some good and some bad. Kevin was there, of course, alongside Arnaud De Fehrn, and then the more dominant images of Bobby Hobbes - who'd become more like a brother to him than Kev ever was - and the lovely over-protective Claire, his Keeper. Even The Official made a brief scowling appearance, presumably not happy that his precious Gland was about to get waterlogged - and Darien found some sort of morbid amusement in that. They all merged as one and then floated in and out of his vision until only Frankie's face remained…and then came the darkness.

TBC