Author's Note: At the plea of one of my readers, I'm doing my best to finish this story up (even though my muse has left the building, so to speak). I'm going to try to force myself to write a little each day. Updates will be happening but they might be a little spread out.

Tyler Vaughn watched as the van he was riding in went through puddle after puddle. Water seemed to be coming in through all the open cracks and crevices of the hunk of junk the team had gotten as a ride. He sighed and looked at the people in the van around him. They were your typical CIA grunts. Usually just there to make sure the hotshot agent didn't get killed or anything.

It was rather funny, the idea of him being a hotshot agent.

Throughout training, all he had ever wanted to be was like his father. The agent that backed up everyone else. The one that made sure the job got done while others took the glory by doing high risk moves. He wanted to be the reliable guy who kept the others alive.

Didn't happen that way.

Over the past few months, he had been forced into being a slightly loose cannon. He had to be the one to perform all the crazy stunts that got things done, that kept people from being killed and put the precious artifacts in the hands of the good guys. It was only by drawing more attention to himself that he could truly do all the things that were necessary.

It was ironic when his coworkers joked about how much he was acting like one of the CIA's best agents, Sydney Bristow. If they only knew.

Tyler had been working with Sydney and her husband, Julian Lazarey, in order to find Hope. He had become a semi-double agent, if you wanted to get technical about it. Sydney's mother, Irina Derevko, had offered him temporary employment with her agency until Hope could be found. He accepted, knowing that he couldn't tell one soul at the CIA what he was doing. Because that would leave too many loose ends, too many ways that their efforts could go wrong.

So he had started getting himself put on missions that were in the same cities where Hope might be. Or, if she was gone already when he arrived, Tyler tried to weasel out information from any contact he could find about why Hope had been in that city.

Sydney and Sark had first pinpointed their daughter in Mexico, but that turned out to be a slight bust. By the time they got to the facility where they thought Hope was being held, it was deserted. Nadia had left behind a note to tauntingly let them know that it was Hope's decision to be with her aunt.

That information almost broke all of them.

The Hope they knew, or Ana in Tyler's case, would never chose to have a life like Nadia's. She knew that the things her aunt did were wrong. There was no way she would find the same pleasure and satisfaction from them.

Letting out another breath, Tyler turned back to stare out the window as the rain poured down.

Seattle. It was the next city on his list. There had been a rumor that there was a big drug corporation in the area that was dabbling in the creation of a new biological weapon. Two days earlier, the weapon had been completed, and the corporation was shopping for a buyer. It was the kind of thing Nadia Santos would never allow to happen without the corporation feeling her presence.

And since this weapon seemed to be the real thing, Nadia wouldn't just send in some goon to do the "negotiating". No. She would send someone important.

Tyler closed his eyes and leaned his head against the cool glass. All he could was hope that this time they were right. Because something was horribly wrong with Hope if she was willingly working alongside her aunt. And she needed someone to find her before she slipped in too deep.

At the very least, he owed her that much.

Hope gave the man sitting across from her the best seductive grin she could muster. She hated having to turn on her sex appeal to get things done, but it looked like this guy wasn't budging. She had promised her aunt that she wouldn't return home without something to show for her trip. The past few missions Nadia had sent her on had resulted in the acquisition of absolutely nothing. Hope hated to fail.

"Mr. Daveros, I think we need to get down to business. My employer is interested in purchasing that little gadget you've been cooking up in your lab. Why don't we talk price?"

"I am not sure your employer is the type of person who I want to be entering into business with," the middle-aged man answered with a sly grin.

Hope narrowed her eyes. This guy was turning out to be kind of sleazy. It was her duty to knock that stupid greasy grin off his face. Reaching down, she pulled a disk out of her pocked and slid it across the table. "If you know what's good for you, you'll make those doubts disappear right quick."

"What is this?" he asked, picking up the disk.

"Proof that I haven't killed your family. Yet." Hope watched the man pale at her words. "Listen. I don't want to do it, but I will if you force me to. Take a minute before making up your mind. Go verify the information I've given you. Then you can come back in here and we'll get down to business."

Hope watched him fight to keep himself from bursting out in anger. Eventually, he must have felt the wisdom in her words because his chair screeched against the floor as he pushed himself away from the table. Giving her one last angry look, he excused himself and left the room to presumably figure out if she was telling the truth.

She almost wished it was a lie, but the proof of what she had done was right in front of her eyes. The black gloves she had put on before showing up to the meeting hid the blood that covered her left hand. Mrs. Daveros had gotten a little frisky when she was kidnapping them in Vancouver early that morning, and Hope had been forced to give her a nasty blow to the back of the head.

Hope shuddered at the memory, and the concept of kidnapper-victim relations that she had been taught in agent training suddenly came to the top of her mind. It was a phenomenon how if a kidnapper treated their hostages with politeness and respect, eventually the hostages started feeling their kidnapper's plight. They began to sympathize and even took actions to help the kidnapper achieve their goal. She had never understood that concept until now.

Working with her aunt in the beginning had constituted no worse deeds than she had done in her whole history as an agent. She had just been the overseer on a lot of operations. Her hands didn't even get dirty.

And then slowly but surely, she started taking a more active role. She started seeing the perspective that Nadia was coming from. She began to understand why this missions had to be completed, why these actions had to be taken.

She started to believe in what she was doing.

And the world had sucked her in and away from everything she had ever known and held dear.

Here she was. Without family or friends. Without backing by a legitimate government agency. Without the normal values and morals she had been raised on.

And most of the time, it didn't even feel wrong.

Hope was pulled away from her thoughts as Mr. Daveros entered the room again. He was holding a black case in his left hand. She had a feeling she knew what that was.

"How much is your employer offering?" Daveros asked as he stopped right beside her chair.

"Two million." Hope gestured to the case she had set down by her chair earlier in the meeting. "Up front."

"Fine. Whatever it takes for you to release my wife and children."

Hope stood up and took the case out of his hand. "That's very accommodating of you." She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a small piece of paper. "The location of your family. It's been great. I'll be sure to let my employer know what a nice businessman you are."

"I never want to see your face nor any of your co-workers within a mile of my house or my business. Do you hear me?"

Hope nodded as she walked towards the exit. "Just stop making products my boss might want and I promise you'll never see me again."

She didn't pause in her steps until she heard the door click behind her and she was in the elevator heading to the ground floor. Her cell phone rang as soon as the elevator door slid shut. "How did you know that I was done?"

"I'm the head of this agency," Nadia said with a laugh. "I know everything."

"I got the bio weapon. I even saved you three million dollars."

"And that is why I sent you on this one. How did you get Daveros to crack?"

"I kidnapped his family and told him I would kill them if he didn't sell me the drug."

"You could have just taken it from him at no cost."

"I figured if we paid him he wouldn't be looking for revenge. Now he has his family back and a nice little nest egg to retire on."

"Your threat? What would you have done if he didn't sell you the drug?"

"That didn't happen."

"But what if it had?"

"I don't know. I probably would have just taken out everyone in the room and found where they were keeping the drug. It was confirmed to be in the building after all."

"You wouldn't have made good on your threat?"

"His wife and children were innocents. They don't even really know Daddy's job entails making biological weapons and selling them to the highest bidder."

Nadia sighed. "That's what makes you weak, Hope. I had really thought you would have grown out of having these pathetic feelings of remorse and guilt. They're the markings of a horribly inadequate agent."

"You wanted me to kill the family?"

"It would have been right to send him a message that it's not good to get in my way, Hope. If you were smart, you would have seen that." Hope felt a shiver course through her body as her aunt let out a small, restrained laugh. "Which is why I had to do it myself."

"Do what?"

"Send him a message. You did use the normal holding facilities at our complex in Detroit, didn't you?"

Horror dawned on Hope as she realized what had happened. "You killed the family."

"I did what you were too weak to do."

"I promised him his family would be safe now that he handed the drug over."

"Then he's in for a rather messy surprise when he goes to the address you gave him."

The call cut off abruptly as Nadia hung up on her niece. At that precise moment, the elevator reached its destination and let out a happy ding which caused Hope to fling her cell phone against the wall as hard as she could. Its shattering into pieces did nothing to help the rage or the guilt or the sudden urge to cry. All that and more was washing over her.

People stared at her, but it didn't really matter. She was already in control of her emotions. This was part of the game she had chosen to play. Actions had repercussions, and she could see why Nadia had done what she did.

It was the right move.

Nadia was correct in thinking that Hope just wasn't strong enough to make the call.

She should be grateful that her aunt was watching out for her.

Hope calmly walked through the lobby of Daveros Tech, trying to ignore the small voice in the back of her head that was screaming at her to wake up and realize she was being slowly brainwashed. She had more important things to do than start worrying about the decisions she had made. After all, she still had the newly acquired bio weapon. There was a drop-off that had to be done if she was going to finish her assignment.

Hope stood on top of the office building that was the meeting point Nadia had given her. True to form, it was pouring down rain, and Hope was already getting plenty pissed off at not having the foresight to bring some sort of umbrella with her. That would be the second mistake she made on this mission.

The first was showing her mark mercy in not killing his family. She had had plenty of time to think it over on the drive over. Daveros had not been the picture of cooperation, and that could not be tolerated in the world she lived in. Because if you met up with one second of trouble when the timing was off, you were dead.

The family had had to die. It was the only way to teach those watching that Hope Lazarey demanded their respect if not their fear.

Hope looked down as the band on her wrist beeped. The motion detectors she had set up in the stairwell were going off in a signal that her contact was on his way up to meet her. A sense of relief and accomplishment washed over her, and it suddenly dawned on her how easy her life had become. For years, she had been living in the grey zone. Now things were black and white.

Being able to take things at face value even if they made her cringe at times kept her from thinking about all the parts of her life she was willing leaving behind. She missed her family like crazy, but it wasn't like they had really tried to find her. Because she wasn't hiding out. In fact, she kept purposefully putting herself in the spotlight.

But still no one ever showed up.

She heard her contact step out onto the roof and was about to turn to face him when her heart suddenly froze at the sound of his voice.

"Hello, Ana. Or are you going by Hope again these days?" Tyler said, stepping out into the rain.

No one from her old life had ever showed up to find her.

Until now, that is.