Chapter 12:

Jason moved down the hall slowly. It had been a long, arduous process to get this far and, somehow, he doubted it was going to get any easier around the corner. Pressing himself against the wall, he edged his way closer to the end of the wall, peering around it carefully. Three guards stood in front of one of the doors, facing each other in a very casual conversation group. None of them seemed to be alerted to the presence of an intruder on the compound, which meant Jason's efforts to cover his tracks had paid off.

He carefully pulled the rifle, stolen from the first guard he encountered, from his shoulder and took aim through the sight. Lining the crosshairs flawlessly he pulled off on explosive shot and took out the guard standing nearest him. The other two reacted instantly, opening fire without aiming. Jason ducked back behind the safety of the corner, eyes peeled for reinforcements to come flooding over at the sound of gun fire. A quick glance at his watch told him that soon he wouldn't have to worry about that.

For now, however, he had to take these two out fast, before they raised the alarm for the whole building. Ducking down, he took his hand gun from its holster and pulled off two clean shots. They hit one of the men in both of his legs, crippling him for the fight. The remaining man, realizing how outclassed he was, ceased his fire and disappeared down the opposite hall, his cowardly footsteps echoing through the floor.

Jason, gun still in hand, moved to follow him, but stopped at the door they had been guarding. He tried the doorknob, but it was locked. "Kristina?" he called softly, hoping not to scare her more. He dug in his pocket for the keys he had lifted earlier. It didn't take him long to discover the correct one, and soon he had the door open. He stepped into the room carefully, his gun at his side. It was empty.

"Kristina, it's me, Jason. Remember me? Sam's friend. I'm here to take you home, to mommy and your sisters."

He sighed, aware that he was talking to himself, and was about to leave when something small and weak latched on to his leg with a thud. He looked down to find Kristina hugging him tightly, looking up at him with large, scared eyes. He smiled warmly, scooping her into his arms, balancing her so that he had full use of his dominate gun hand.

"I want to go home," she sniffled. He looked her over carefully, surprised and relieved to find her unharmed. At least physically.

"I'll take you there. I promise." She nodded silently and closed her eyes, her small head against his chest. As much as Alexis hated to admit it, Kristina was now a part of Jason's life, because she was so important to Sam. He was obligated to protect her as fiercely as he would her sister, and he found he was glad to do it. Holding her securely but not making her uncomfortable, he leaned out the door way and looked down the hall.

Clear. With a slight suspicion of being set up, he moved out of the room, staying pressed to the wall as he moved back the way he came, hoping for an easy exit. Breaking in was one thing: breaking out now that it was known he was here and he had the disadvantage of a child in his arms was quite another.

He altered his pace, trudging along with such careful slowness it felt like he was parodying himself and his profession. Keeping low, eye constantly moving, the first thing he wanted to avoid was being ambushed.

"Freeze, Morgan!" A stern, yet shaking voice ordered. Jason looked around, bewildered, then saw a man hiding behind a slightly cracked doorway, the barrel of his gun easily pointed at the intruder. He pulled the door open to reveal himself, and behind him a small crowd of equally intimidated but severe armed men. Jason frowned at them, standing straight slowly, not surrendering his position or his gun. The lead man tensed, his young face curling into a conflicted scowl.

"Drop the weapons and release the girl or we'll be forced to open fire," He warned. A flicker in his eyes, a shadow across his face, and a quick shift in the air told Jason that the situation was not quite what it seemed. His frown deepened, his clear blue eyes fixed dauntingly on the man before him. He did not drop his gun, nor did he raise it. He just stood there. The man, bewildered, made a sharp motion with his gun and barked, "drop your guns!"

Jason did not.

Gun fire tore through the building, a thunderous symphony of pain and death.

Manny held Sam to him innocently as they walked along the docks, his hand on her side rather than exploring the curves he so longed to know intimately. Sam kept her face turned away from him, towards the familiar setting around them, her feet, the murky sky above: anything other than his eyes, his unreadable expression.

She felt like she was dancing on a very precarious edge. And she wasn't the most graceful of creatures. She had to keep her focus, had to stay at least one step ahead of him, always lead and never let him get under her skin. He was an amazing actor. That was something she could not let slip from his mind. He convinced an entire city that he had changed his wicked ways, that a life saving surgery had also created a sweet, placated demeanor. She had been the one to see straight through him, so doing so again now should be a cake walk.

She felt his eyes falling heavily over her as they came to an abrupt stop. She hesitated, then looked at him slowly, brushing her hair from in front of her face. He was smiling at her. Not grinning, smirking or sneering. Smiling. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get herself to react. All she could do was stare at him in stoic disbelief.

He took her hands in his and eased her into a short turn, standing face to face with her, a foot of space between them. She lowered her eyes to their intertwined fingers. He kept running his rough thumb over the back of her hands, drinking the softness of her skin through his touch. She shivered without any sense of cold, her hair bristling on her arms and the back of her neck. Manny released her hands and removed his jacket, draping it around her shoulders. She let him wordlessly, not touching it, her eyes hard and distrusting.

"What are you trying to pull?" She asked through slightly chattering teeth. It was a surprising unconscious display of just how deeply this act was affecting her. She could feel her courage slipping away, the fact that this man was capable of anything sinking in. He could turn his charm, his malice, his reality and his fantasies on and off like a light switch. For him, getting what he wanted was simply a matter of tactics, and he had thousands of winning game plans inside that morbidly twisted mind of his.

The really terrifying thing, though, was not the danger of his proximity. It wasn't the fact that he was a man who used murder as a stepping stone, delighting in leaving families torn and destroyed. It wasn't that his idea of fun was torture and that she was his favorite victim. The really terrifying thing was that he knew just how to get inside her head. How to make her so jumpy and insecure, just by changing the way he spoke. He was inside her mind, a part of her thought process, and he knew how to take advantage of that.

He had her in his complete control, no matter how hard she tried to fight him off. It left her breathless, her lungs screaming for air but her throat unable to appease them. Her stomach was doing somersaults, her head numb and unwilling to bring order to the chaos inside her.

"What makes you think I'm trying to pull anything, Sam?" Manny asked, almost insulted at the accusation. Sam snarled, grabbing the jacket from her shoulders and tossing it to the floor in a sudden burst of frustration. Manny looked at her in mock surprise, eyebrows arched to a point on his forehead, "that's an expensive jacket." She responded by stomping on it, driving the heel of her shoe pointedly into the fabric.

"You're not fooling anyone. Not me, not any of the cops that have this place surrounded. You're at the disadvantage, so stop pretending you have some sort of upper hand. Just give up and maybe you won't have to go to jail with a new bullet wound-"

Manny pulled her to him, crushing her against him as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and back, almost bruising her lips with the passion of his kiss. She struggled against him but had no room to escape, trapped suffocating against his lust. He felt the scream in her throat, the tenseness of her muscles as she tried to fight him, the stings of her forceful punches and kicks as effective as if she were just playing with him.

He released her from her torment, holding her close. She looked into the face she knew as clearly in her waking as in her nightmares: evil. His eyes were dark and impossible to read, his mouth moving soundlessly as he let his gaze pierce through her resolve, shattering her composure once and for all. The tattoos on his neck were alive with sweat and threatened to spring to life. All strength left her and she screamed silently as her body collapsed against his. He hugged her to him, a laugh rumbling through his chest, searing her ears like fire.

"I don't have to fool anyone, Sweetness," he cooed, his voice strange and distant: insane. He looked off over her shoulder as he spoke, his eyes reflecting the moon as it shone on the black water his fingers playing through her thick black hair tenderly. She mustered her strength and pushed away from him, surprised to have him let her. She stumbled back, landing heavily sitting down on the dock. He looked down at her in more ways than one, a monstrously serene look on his face, "all I had to do was get to you. And here you are. Alone, for the most part, and with me."

"But your plan is ruined!" Sam blurted out, "Jason is probably on the way back from your island with Kristina in his arms: Alexis is going to have her daughter back! Your stupid game of revenge is over!"

Manny sat down next to her, his legs crossed beneath him, his arms hanging limply over his knees. He looked her over meaningfully, "Is that what you think?"