Disclaimer: I don't own Carmen, I'm just borrowing her for awhile.

Author's Note: Readers, I apologize for the long hiatus. Sometimes real life gets in the way and makes my muse take an extended vacation. But thank you for your patience, and I hope you enjoy these final installments.

My mother used to tell me everything seems clearer in the morning. When I came to sometime around noon after what was the longest, absolute worst day of my life, I had only one thought in mind: flight.

I didn't dare face whatever tabloid frenzy was waiting for me back at my apartment. So, I showered, dressed, wolfed down some room service, and headed for the train station. En route, I made a brief detour at the ATM and withdrew a thick stack of bills, enough I hoped to last me a few months. I rode the Metro-North to the end of the line and paid cash for a mini-van that had seen better days. I didn't stop driving until I nearly reached the Canadian border.

I was, as they say in the gangster movies, "on the lam."

I used the rest of my money to rent a small cabin. It had no TV, no heat but a propane stove, and great southern exposure. It was peaceful and wooded and quiet. After about a hundred calls from nosy reporters and three weeping voicemails from my mother, I pitched my cell phone deep into the cool still waters of Lake Champlain. I didn't want to talk to anyone and I didn't want anyone to talk to me. There was nothing to do except paint. So, that's what I did.

I painted sunsets on the lake, pine trees, convenience stores at midnight, motels off the interstate. I painted scenes from my life in the city; people falling asleep in empty subway cars, fashionable types dining in jewel-box sized brasseries, street performers busking for money beside the Bethesda fountain. Most of all, I found myself painting scenes from my relationship with Sofia…Carmen. A beautiful figure stretched out naked in the moonlight in San Francisco. A shadowy woman slipping out through an open window. Two women smiling on the steps of a museum.

I went through an entire tube of cadmium red.

They say that pain is good for art. All the shame and heartbreak Carmen had dumped in my lap fueled a bender of creativity that carried me through the summer and into the fall. I wasn't about to cut off my ear and send it to her in a jar, but I had no problem letting the anger and sadness flow down my veins, through my paintbrush and onto the canvas. Maybe I had stopped painting before because I actually had nothing to paint about. Whatever my brief affair with the master thief had been, it had provided a well of artistic inspiration.

As more of my feelings ended up on the canvas instead of festering inside of me, my heart knit itself back together, and callused over stronger than before. Isolation and distance brought clarity. I realized that I had been hurting, lonely, sick at heart, long before Carmen Sandiego ever showed up on my doorstep. I wasn't going back to that life anymore, I couldn't. In my more charitable moments (which usually involved alcohol), I wondered if that had been part of Carmen's master plan all along. If, in saving me from a life of crime, she was trying to do for me what she could not seem to do for herself. But that was probably just the merlot talking.

When the leaves burnished crimson and bronze and I awoke to frost flowers on my window, I bowed to the inevitable, loaded up the van, and headed back to the city.

I had not much cause to think of Carmen or my former life in the busy months that followed. Upon returning, I sold my loft and rented a bright but grungy apartment in one of the edgier parts of Brooklyn. Within a few weeks, I had booked a gallery show at a trendy spot that had literally slammed the door in my face when I had shown up portfolio in hand four years ago. I might have been nothing then, but as the rumored ex-paramour of a notoriously uncatchable thief, well, I could write my own ticket. Sex sells and I should know. Whatever twinges of guilt I felt at exploiting my relationship with Carmen for personal gain, I stuffed down with utilitarian smugness. She had ruined my former livelihood; she could help me make a new one.

I'll never forget the last time I saw her. It was a grey winter day. The winds whipped through the streets and alleys, chafing my face and chilling me to the bone. I had trekked over to the gallery to pick up a stack of glossy postcards fresh from the printers- my show was only a month away. Enzo, the owner, had smiled wolfishly at me and I could see dollar signs light up behind his eyes. "We are going to make a lot of money together, principessa," he told me with a wink.

It had been a long, cold trip on various forms of public transportation from my drafty apartment to Enzo's posh gallery and back. In no hurry to be home, I slipped inside a favorite greasy spoon to warm myself with a quick, cheap cup of coffee. I wrapped my hands greedily around the steaming mug and soaked up its warmth. I was staring absently out the window, day dreaming of my show and new things to paint when a voice I never expected to hear again knifed me in the back.

"Hello, Alex," Carmen said, smoothly sliding in to the booth across from me.

I gasped and my blood pressure shot sky-high. I made a pathetic grab for my fork and knife, as if I thought they would be some kind of defense against her. Carmen chuckled and gently, but firmly, grabbed both of my wrists. "Now, now, all the silverware stays right where it is. I thought you might do me the favor of a chat." She cocked an elegant eyebrow "One fallen woman to another?"

Seething, I released my grip on the flatware. "What do you want?"

"First, coffee." She signaled the waitress, who promptly brought over a fresh cup. I watched her add the slightest bit of cream, turning the color from brown-black to dark cocoa. She didn't take sugar; it was hardly surprising. "You're a tough woman to find, Alex O'Keefe."

I snorted. "I'll take that as a compliment, coming from you."

She smiled and her blue eyes sparkled mysteriously. Today she was dressed in a luxurious wool coat that reached her ankles, the exact same shade as her long dark hair. The contrast gave her skin an ethereal glow in the pale winter light. I had almost forgotten how stunning she was. Almost. "I had to meet you here. ACME has surveillance on your apartment. And I watch them watching you," she explained matter-of-factly.

I wondered how long she had been keeping vigil over me. There were times over the summer when I would hear a car drive by late at night on my isolated dirt road, or notice the same red pickup parked in front of the gas station. I had chalked it up to paranoia at the time, well justified paranoia apparently. "I'm going to have to tell them that I saw you. It was part of the deal I made with ACME," I said cautiously.

"If you must," she replied, completely nonplussed. Carmen's sharp eyes flicked to my hands, fingernails broken, cuticles stained with paint. The cuffs of my ragged sweatshirt were dotted with flecks of Prussian blue and canary yellow. I needed a haircut and hadn't put on any makeup this morning, hardly the pampered girl of the year before. "I see you decided to take my advice."

I shrugged. "I'm painting again, yes. But, I paint for me."

"I'm glad," she said, the undisguised warmth in her tone nearly undoing me, plucking all the heartstrings I swore would never sound for her again.

"And you?" I found myself asking. "How are you?"

The thief took a sip of her coffee and frowned, then added a touch more cream. "I'm fine…I'm..." Carmen's elegant voice faltered and nearly broke. "Alex, I'm so sorry for how things ended between us." She closed her eyes as if to hide the pain in them from me. "My actions toward you were…unnecessarily cruel."

"They were." She looked so sorry and heartbroken, I found I didn't have it in me to make her feel any more guilty. "You did warn me that you weren't always nice," I said lightly.

At this, she almost smiled. "I wouldn't have let you go to prison for me. You have to believe that." She grew silent and twirled the spoon in her coffee cup absently. I looked at her, really looked at her, and saw that this past year had taken a toll. She was still undeniably beautiful and probably always would be. But there were darkened circles under her eyes and a hollow in her cheeks that weren't there when last we met. Finally, she spoke; "Alex, I owe you an explanation."

I shook my head. "You don't…"

"I do," she told me in a tone that left no room for dissent. "When I went to see you last year, I hoped to rid myself of what I considered an…unhealthy infatuation. I thought that if I indulged myself in this fantasy…just a little…I would soon grow tired of it, expose it for how silly it really was."

"I thought maybe you were bored with me…"

"No." She slid back into the booth and sighed, resigned. "I had forgotten...I did not expect..." It was hard to see her like this, in such undisguised agony, an unexplainable woman struggling to explain herself. "Never before have I felt so out of control. I can't have it." Her voice was sure and calm, but her eyes held the look of someone caught in a trap.

"You can't have it with Ivy, you mean," I ventured, hoping my tone did not betray the sudden jealousy I felt.

Carmen looked at me and once again said with that icy nonchalance of hers, "I can't have it with Ivy. I can't have it with you. I probably can't have it with anyone."

Fantasies of control. How right I was, from the first moment I saw her. And then it all became sickeningly clear. I was not a pawn in a game between the thief and the detective; Ivy and I were both pawns in the game Carmen played against herself. It was a painful thing to know. "You have a remarkable talent for self-destruction, Carmen," I said quietly.

"So people keep telling me."

I continued with my own small deduction. And I took no pleasure in being right. "You decided that you couldn't have either of us…so you made sure neither of us would want you."

The thief said nothing, just stared back at me with this unfathomable look, and her silence was confirmation enough. "The game at least has never been sharper, so that is some consolation. Ivy wants to put me away more than ever…I wouldn't have thought the girl could despise me more than she already did, but there you have it." She shrugged off her pain as if it was nothing, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw the slight tremor in her left hand as she reached for the creamers again.

I had imagined many times what I would say and what I would feel if Carmen ever came back to me- the way you do when your heart gets broken so completely. I imagined scenarios where I was cool and distant. Or, alternately, full of righteous anger and blistering scorn. I never expected to feel pity. What else could I feel for this woman caught in a vicious cycle, able to escape from anything except the prison she had created for herself.

Perhaps aware that she had already said too much, Carmen swiftly redirected the conversation. She gestured to the street outside, where two punks were getting in a fight. "I don't like your neighborhood. It's not very safe, Alex."

Her hypocrisy was laughable. "It's what I can afford. And I like the scene here."

Her blue eyes turned soft. "Are you all right? Do you need money?"

Oh, I was not going to let her do that to me. "I get by. I'm fine. Really."

She wouldn't let it go. "I have a place on the Upper West side. Pre-war. Large windows, lots of light. I don't use it very often. I'd like it better if I knew you were safe." It almost sounded like a plea coming from her.

I raised my eyebrows. Ivy was right; the woman was hopelessly fickle. "I'm not a bird in a cage, remember?" I said, letting her own words return to her like a boomerang.

"No, of course you're not." She took the blow with grace, but her eyes dimmed with disappointment. Then her mood spun on a dime as she pulled something glossy from inside her pocket. It was the invitation to my gallery show. How she had procured it…well, I guess she wasn't the world's greatest thief for nothing. "What's this, by the way? 'Scarlet Women'?" she asked playfully.

I blushed. "I didn't come up with the title. I hope you're not angry…"

"Why would I be angry? I always said your work should hang in a museum," she toyed.

What she was hinting at was unthinkable. If my coffee cup hadn't been empty, I might have dumped its contents in her lap. "Carmen, if you care for me at all, don't show up at my gallery show. Please."

A wicked look came into her eyes. "Oh, I wouldn't dream of crashing your opening. I promise."

I knew better than to trust her or waste time trying to reason with her. I snatched the invitation back and tossed a few wrinkled dollars on the table. "Save the mind games for Zack and Ivy, Carmen. They don't do anything for me. Good-bye," I told her and beat it toward the door. Because just once I wanted to be the one that left her, that made her feel abandoned and rejected.

I stalked off and made it halfway down the block before she caught up to me. "Alex, wait," Carmen called. I spun around in spite of myself, eyes teary and blazing. "You forgot your gloves." They were threadbare things with holes in them. I needed new ones, but didn't want to spend the money. "These will never do. It's too cold," she said softly. She took off her own velvety black ones, gloves that had probably committed hundreds of robberies, and gently tucked them around my hands. I stood there stupidly in that moment, totally undone, as she wound her red cashmere scarf around my neck. She pulled me in to her embrace and all my hard-won resistance melted away. Carmen's lips were soft, but all her kisses tasted like goodbye.

I turned and fled before I lost myself to her for good