Vaughn was feeling better, though not enough better to do anything besides fall asleep watching some boring, completely non-comedic movie with Sandra Bullock about a woman in rehab. Wishing the actress would somehow disappear from the face of the earth, Sydney prowled the room restlessly, waiting for sleep to overtake her.

It simply wouldn't. It reminded her of the weeks following her return to the CIA from the Covenant, when her sleep was cut short by the terrifying dreams that she couldn't even remember once she was awake.

She was still fuming about Sark's comment: Sometimes I wonder the same thing about you.

Asshole. She had half a mind to call her father, have him send a team down to take into Sark into custody for a laundry list of assorted things so awful it made her head hurt to contemplate them.

What was he doing here? She refused to believe it was a simple coincidence that he was here at the same time as they were. Before she even consciously decided on what she was doing, she was carefully gathering things from the room: her shoes, pulling on her jeans, grabbing a hairpin from her luggage. The locks on their doors weren't that sophisticated.


She strolled casually past the bar, which was Sark-free. It was almost 9:30, kind of late for dinner, but kind of early for drinks. Dining room: also empty, at least of Sark. The hotel had both an indoor and outdoor pool, curiously enough for a place right on the ocean, and the outdoor pool was lit with underwater lights in the fading twilight. No Sark.

She was beginning to lose her nerve, and she didn't want to risk knocking on his door twice. She walked past the indoor pool as a last resort. The first floor had a weight room with an observation deck that overlooked the Olympic-size pool, which was also glowing slightly murky aquamarine blue from the lights. There were curiously lots of people in the indoor pool area, and she had to look for much longer than she would've liked before she spotted him, doing laps in amongst several septuagenarians and a couple of pallid middle-aged yuppies. If his technique hadn't distinguished him, his very youth would have; he was the only one in the lanes who was moving faster than a tugboat with a leak in its hull. She was slightly surprised to note that he wore swimming trunks instead of Speedos. Sark, modest? It hardly seemed possible.

She moved quickly now, knowing he couldn't swim forever, and realizing she had a narrow window before he returned to his room to shower and change. Sprinting up the stairs, she broke into a light sweat under her t-shirt. She felt soft, lazy in the heat.

Reaching the door marked 347, she drew the hairpin from underneath her ponytail and inserted it in the lock. A few manipulations and she felt the teeth click into place, and she slipped inside his room. It was nearly the same size and configuration as her own, though the bedspread was a different color and the carpet was a different hue of hotel mauve. It was surprisingly neat, though she had never suspected Sark to be the slovenly type. There was very little in the way of personal effects scattered about. She cautiously opened the drawer of the dresser underneath the TV and was greeted by rows of neatly folded shirts and socks. She giggled a little at her gratefulness that there was no underwear in sight, but she wondered for a split second whether he wore boxers or briefs.

Stop it, she commanded herself, and the smile dropped from her lips. A hardcover book lay on the nightstand, next to the clock radio.

Death in Venice and Other Stories, by Thomas Mann, she read. There was a paper Bacardi coaster from the bar stuck in the pages, near the back. She opened and read at a spot that he had neatly marked in the margin.

Nothing is stranger, more delicate, than the relationship between people who know each other only by sight—who encounter and observe each other daily, even hourly, and yet are compelled by the constraint of convention or by their own temperament to keep up the pretense of being indifferent strangers, neither greeting nor speaking to each other.

She felt as though someone had punched her in the gut, but she kept reading.

Between them is uneasiness and overstimulated curiosity, the nervous excitement of an unsatisfied, unnaturally suppressed need to know and to communicated; and above all, too, a kind of strained respect. For man loves and respects his fellow man for as long as he is not yet in a position to evaluate him, and desire is born of defective knowledge.

Her heart was pounding against her ribs, though she wasn't even sure why. Perhaps because he could come in at any moment and find her here. Or perhaps because she saw herself so much in the passage. Herself, and him, too.

Desire is born of defective knowledge, she mouthed the words silently, feeling her tongue roll around the consonants. It was a sensuous phrase.

"This isn't a library, you know," his voice made her jump out of her skin and whirl around. How had he gotten in without her hearing him? "Though I might consent to loaning you the book, when I'm done with it."

"I… You—" she stammered.

"Relax, Sydney," he said, rubbing a small hotel towel on his wet hair, "You're hardly the first woman to come looking for me."

"I'm not looking for you," she managed, but some tiny, traitorous part of her brain asked her, Well, what did you come her for, then, if not for him?

His lazy smile told her he thought otherwise.

"Ok."

He retreated into the bathroom and started the shower. "You can keep reading if you like, but I'm going to take a shower." She heard the shower curtain being pulled aside, the grating sound of metal-against-metal back and forth as he stepped in. He hadn't even shut the door, the freak.

Sydney perched uncomfortably on the edge of the bed and listened to the sound of the shower. What was her problem? Why did she let him bother her? She glanced at the book, still open in her hand.

Her knowledge certainly was defective about him, but who even cared? Strained respect, hah!

With that, she threw the book unceremoniously on the nightstand and strode defiantly to the door, resisting the urge to look into the bathroom. She let the door slam behind her, and she smiled as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and headed for the stairwell.