1"Son of a bitch," Frank snarled as they both ducked down off the porch and sought cover. "Where did that come from? Did you get a direction, Stephen?"

"West," Stephen barked, his voice carrying over the rain. Water streamed in his eyes and he brushed it away with a flick of one hand. Lightning strobed through the yard again, followed by the crack and spittle of electricity, then the rumble of thunder.

The momentary light gave Frank just enough visibility. "We're not going anywhere in the car, Stephen," he called.

"What?"

"Tires slashed, just like Miles' car. I saw it in the last flash."

Stephen bit off a curse, wishing he'd come for a firefight rather than to find Miles caring for an old lady with too many cats. "I'm unarmed. You got something in the car?"

"Got it in my hand," Frank said, pitching his voice lower. "Was a Boy Scout, remember?"

"There goes my merit badge. Let me try to draw him out, you get behind him."

"You got a death wish?"

"You got a better plan?"

Silence for a moment, punctuated by rolling, grumbling thunder and the drum of rain. "You draw him out, I'll get behind him," Frank finally said.

"Good plan," Stephen agreed wryly.

xxxXXXxxx

"Dr. Durant."

Natalie looked up to see the young investigative epidemiologist she'd been working with for the past three days. She couldn't remember his name. She wondered if he was as tired as she was.

"Yes?" she said without moving out of the bedside chair. She could see Eva straighten up in the bed in her peripheral vision.

"If I could speak to you out here?" the man said uncertainly.

"It's all right, she has clearance."

The young man shrugged. "Okay. We found how it was administered. Now that we knew what we were looking for, it was almost embarrassingly easy. The source was the local restaurant/bar. It was inserted into certain foods and only certain ones, not even all samples of the same food. As if he didn't want a mass contagion, but a controlled case where NIH would be called in but the area wouldn't be considered a national threat to safety."

Eva turned an alarmed face toward Natalie. "What happened at the Ferguson house, Nat? They should have called by now."

"I'll get someone out there," Natalie said. "In fact, I'll go with them. You stay right where you are," she added when she saw the tension bow through Eva's entire body.

"But–"

"You'd only get in the way, Eva, and you're not well enough to go traipsing out in this kind of weather. If anything's wrong, do you want me to have to worry about you too?" It was a dirty trick but Natalie knew it would be an effective one.

Eva sagged back into the sheets. "No," she admitted. "But let me know as soon..."

"As soon," Natalie agreed with a smile.

xxxXXXxxx

They didn't have to leave the yard. They didn't even have to leave the porch.

Lightning struck as if on command, backlighting two figures now in the center of the yard.

A bearded man, long hair stringing down in soaked tendrils around his face, held Miles in front of himself, a perfect barrier between them. Miles sagged in his rough embrace, his head lolling forward, his eyes half closed.

"Don't recognize me, do you, Stephen? Frank?" The man shuffled his hold on Miles as the young man started to sink deeper into his arms, losing the fight to stay conscious. "Oh, no, Miles," he chided, jerking him upright, "come on, you don't want to miss this. Don't you want to see Stephen finally get what's coming to him? He can't be easy to work for. I remember him too well. What's it been like, huh? A kid like you... he'd eat you alive.

"Right, Stephen? Isn't that your managing technique? Take 'em young and soft and harden the hell out of them. Well, it hasn't worked on this one." He laughed, shifted his grasp on Miles, the arm around his neck tightening, the gun muzzle probing deeper into his throat.

"All it took was an old lady in distress and here he was, like that proverbial lamb to the slaughter. You never would have fallen for that one, would you, Frank? You would have noticed something wrong right away." He leaned in close to Miles, his lips to his ear. "See, that's training."

The gun moved away from Miles, arced toward Frank. "And Stephen is good at that. Good at knowing when to leave people behind when they become liabilities. Aren't you, Stephen. You just became a liability, kid. Wanna see if he leaves you behind?"

"Tom Bennett," Stephen finally said.

"You gotta be kidding me," Frank muttered.

"I don't kid, Frank, " Bennett said, "you should remember that much about me. "No sense of humor."

"Let him go, Tom," Stephen suggested, knowing it was useless. "Let him go and let's talk, you and me and Frank. Like it used to be."

"Oh, good line, Stephen," Bennett laughed harshly, "just like in the movies! Let him go. Take me instead. All you're missing is your white hat and rearing steed."

Miles slumped in his arms, his eyes drooping shut, blood loss taking its toll. At this rate it was going to become difficult to hold his hostage and carry out his plans, he thought. Inconvenient.

The kid was becoming more of a liability than an asset, but he could hardly dump him and take his chances. Frank was no doubt armed. He knew that without any question. Frank didn't go anywhere without some kind of protection. Dump the kid and he was just asking for a bullet through the forehead. So it was juggle his uncooperative burden and talk or just blow Stephen and Frank away where they stood.

But where was the satisfaction in that?

Sure, that's where the bad guy showed his Achilles' heel every time. Talking instead of shooting at the big showdown. But they had to know why they were going to die or there was just no sense in it. No reason for the victims he'd already taken. Not that he was going to lose any sleep over any lives he'd taken; it was just that there were rules in life and he was a man who went by the rules. He always had. It might get him killed here on this storm ridden night, but then there was always a price and what did he have to live for anyway?

And if Frank took him down, he'd put a bullet in the kid's brain on his way to the ground. He'd have that satisfaction anyway. They could watch the young doctor's brains splatter out in the rain. Nice image. He liked it.

"You left us," he said, finally.

"We had orders," Stephen said and heard how inane and weak his own words were, how pitifully they carried out over the storm.

A flash of lightning strobed across the small clearing, flaring across Bennett's features, giving him a demon's mask. Thunder cracked like a rifle shot instantly afterward.

Miles winced and sagged deeper into the big man's arms, his leg totally numb and useless beneath him. Blood from a cut on his forehead sluiced over his face, diluted by rain, rendering him all but blind. He thought for a moment that he was imagining that Stephen and Frank were there, hallucinating, but the gun at his temple was all too real, its muzzle jammed into his temple. I don't want to die, he thought.

"Screw your orders!" Bennett shouted over the rain, suddenly bringing the gun around to aim at Stephen.

"They told us you were out, Tom!" Frank yelled, trying to draw the man's attention to himself. "We were told you got out. We had no reason to go back."

"Liar!"

"He's telling the truth!" Stephen insisted as the gun arced from Frank to him. It was hopeless, useless, and he knew it. Tom Bennett had been an unreasonable man when he was young. After carrying years of hatred and now murder, he would only be worse. He was going to kill them all.

And then suddenly Bennett howled and it took Stephen a half second to realize that Miles had stomped backward on the man's instep with every ounce of strength the young man possessed. Bennett lost his grip and Miles fell like a stone to lie unmoving in the muddy grass.

"Drop it!" Frank yelled, knowing he was going to have to shoot.

Bennett swung on him. There was a leering smile on the man's face when Frank's' bullet took him in the center of his forehead.

(To Be Continued)