Howdy ladies and gents (umm…are there any gents reading this?)…awkward. Thanks to my 42 readers and three reviewers:

Alexis Taylor (I've been obsessing over NCIS…and I just want to say that I love Deanne Bray!)

LivieLi

ReillyScarecrowRocks

I've reached 211 reviews (thanks to Miriam C. Garnet and LucyReywood for all of their reviews!) and that has made me a happy-pappy camper! Here's that Alex chapter I promised…

Alex's POV:

The water was darker than night and colder than anything I had ever felt before. The white-capped waves kept pulling me up and then shoving me back down. The boat had capsized, but most of the people had made it to one or the other but now they were leaving me behind. When I tried to yell I got a mouthful of salty water and no sound came out. I looked around, terrified, and a brown speck in the water caught my attention. The wave washed over whatever it was and gasped aloud, "Cammie! Cammie!" I screamed. Another wave barreled past me and over Cammie, and by the time it passed, Cammie was nowhere to be seen. "Cammie!" I screamed again, "Cammmmmmieee!"

"CAMMIE!"

"Hush, hush, lay back down," A gentle voice said.

Two soft hands pushed me back onto a soft mattress, "What happened? Where am I? Where's Cammie- I mean Taylor?"

"There was an accident; a ship went down in the ocean about a mile of the coast. One of the life boats capsized, the one that you were in, but everyone was rescued. You and you're friend spent the most time in the water and were the worst off. The nearest hospital is ninety miles away and we thought it was best if you just stayed here."

I must have looked as utterly confused as I felt because she continued, "I'm a third year med student at UCLA."

I nodded and relaxed into the pillows on the bed, staring at the med student. She had short cropped dark brown hair with fading highlights, green eyes hiding behind chic purple glasses, chipped red finger nail polish, a sweater, and jeans on. She looked as tired as I felt, "Where's Ca-Taylor?" I caught myself. We had snuck into the country on false passports and I had to remember that. Cammie is Taylor, I'm Daniel.

"The girl that came in with you?"

I nodded, she was the only girl on the ship that I had seen, "Yeah."

"She's in a room downstairs, sleeping last time I checked."

"Is she okay?"

"She was pretty wet and cold; you both were, but there were no signs of frost bite or hypothermia. It's my option that's she's going to be fine."

"Can I see her?"

"When she wakes up."

"But not now?"

She stood up to leave me, "Nope. Are you hungry? I have a pot of soup on the stove if you want some."

I nodded, not realizing just how hungry I was, "That would be great. Thanks."

She smiled tiredly, "Your welcome." With that she disappeared and I realized that I hadn't even asked her name.

While I waited for my nameless med student to return, I studied the room I was in. The walls were rough logs, like a cabin out of the 1800s or something. The ceiling was sloped, making me think that I was probably in a converted attic. There were two windows, one at each end of the room, with frost clinging to them in a way I could just make out the gray sky and a few blowing flurries. On either side of me were two other beds, each covered with a thick, colorful quilt like the one I was lying under. At the end of my bed was a dark wood trunk, matching the two that were at the ends of the other beds. The floor was a light hardwood covered by a big braided rug, red, green, and blue. There were matching end tables on either side of all the beds (four total) and the brass lamp on the table nearest to me was on, giving the whole room a warm, cheery feeling. Of the two dark wood doors, one of them remained open; showing the hallway but the other was closed so I couldn't see where it led. In between the doors at the foot of my bed was a roaring fire. The fireplace was made up of rounded gray river rock and a thick pine mantle. Along the mantel were boughs of pine with a robust looking Santa Claus and a metal sled with reindeer. Above the mantel hung a very large moose wearing a knitted cap with floppy ears. To tell the truth, it was beginning to creep me out. Its large glass eyes we fixed directly at me and the poor creature's unwavering stare was enough to make anyone squirm.

Thankfully, my med student returned baring a tray containing a bowl of chicken noodle soup, crackers, a glass of milk, and a cup of coffee, "I didn't know what you'd want to drink, so I brought both."

"Thanks," I said as I took a big bite of the hot soup. My facial expression must have been entertaining because the med student was now smiling…good time as any to ask her name, "I didn't even ask your name."

"Nancy Brisbane, but my friends call me Nan. You're Daniel Rose, right?"

I nodded, "How did you know?"

She pointed to my backpack which was sitting on the trunk in front of my (I missed it due to the creepiness of the moose), "I went through your things to see if I could find any contact numbers. I called someone in England named Jack…the connection was horrendous, but I think she understood that you were okay. Is she your mother?"

"No, my uh-our house keeper," I lied. Sorry Jack. "My mother died when I was quiet young."

She nodded, "So did mine."

We were quiet for a minute, me eating, her watching me. Finally she asked, "So, how do you know Taylor?"

"We go to an international school in London. Our parents are…are engaged to be married. We had been in Russia on holiday we decided that it would be more fun to take a cruise to Alaska than to fly."

She really did not look convinced, "So you took the Hole in the Water? That's really not what most people with more than five bucks in their savings account consider a cruise ship."

I shrugged, "It was Taylor's choice. I think she had a boyfriend or something waiting for her."

"I really don't believe you."

I took the last bite of the soup and crackers, "It's the truth."

"Then who's Cammie?"

"My girlfriend," I answered without thinking. Oh boy, if Taylor/Cammie finds out I said that…

"So why were you yelling for her?"

"I had a nightmare."

She stared me down at me, looking surprisingly like the moose, "Whatever you say."

I put my hand on my heart, "Honest, it's the truth."

She snorted and picked up the tray, "Sure. If you need anything, just push that button, it's an intercom. Oh, and that door leads to the bathroom."

"Okay," I replied as she disappeared out of the room. I flopped back onto the bed, promising that I was just going to wait to make sure that Nan when back to wherever she had come from before I went to find Cammie. My final thought before I drifted off into an unplanned sleep was what kind of house has an intercom system?

When I woke up, the only light in my room was from the fire place. At some point, somebody had turned off my lamp and the sun went down. I crawled out of bed and as I washed up in the bathroom, I recalled that most of the time it was dark in Alaska during the winter. It had been rather dark when I had eaten; I mused as I exited the bathroom and began to change into a pair of jeans and a fresh t-shirt, so I really had no idea what time it was. I looked around to see my shoes drying on the hearth of the fire place and decided against putting them on. I could be quieter in stocking feet.

I stepped out of my room and into a short hallway, which was decorated with woodsy, country things similar to my room. There were stairs to my left and another open door to my right which was a laundry room. I walked down the steep but sturdy stairs which ended at another hallway, a longer copy of the one above me. To my right, all the doors were open but one, so I headed in that direction. I poked my head into all the rooms as I passed. Two had suitcases in plain view, two more looked lived in and all of them had numbers on the door. Most of the rooms had one or two beds, unlike mine which had three.

I paused at room 105 and knocked, calling out, "Taylor?"

The door flew back almost immediately, revealing a rather rumpled looking Cammie. She reached out and grabbed me by the front of my shirt and yanked me forward into her room, "What the heck happened?"

"What?" I asked, utterly confused by her abnormal manner.

"Where are we, why are we here?" she hissed looking around the room to make sure that nobody else was around.

"Don't you remember? The ship sank, they brought us here because Nan is a med student and the nearest hospital is."

"Her name's not Nan!" Cammie shriek/whispered.

I was seriously beginning to worry about her…maybe she had hit her head or something, "Then what is her name?"

More shriek/whispering, "I don't know! I just know that she was on the ship with us and she was at the party in Harbin. She's been following us! She's from the Circle!"

"Cammie, I walked around that ship for three days while you were sleeping, I didn't see her."

"She was wearing a wig and colored contacts! She was an old woman! And at the party she was that reporter, the one that's on the CIA wanted list! "

She may be right, "Alright Cammie, I need to calm down, take a deep breath. Start from the beginning."

She ran her hands trough her already mangled hair and did as I instructed, "Okay. For one of our classes in my high school freshman year at Gallagher, we go through the CIA wanted criminal list, people who are wanted or suspected to be criminals but haven't been picked up yet. Then we pick someone and research them, do a presentation, the whole school thing, you know?"

I nodded.

She took another deep breath, "Well, I chose one of the most mysterious women on the list, someone only known as Quinn…I had this whole mysterious woman complex after I read the real story behind Amelia Earhart's edited journal. Turns out that wasn't the real one but I didn't know that then. But I'm getting off track. All that is known about Quinn is that she's a woman between the ages of twenty and thirty from somewhere in Northern Europe. She's highly dangerous and an amazing disguise artist. About seven years ago she seemed to drop off the radar…and an American name Kate Counsel hopped on. You've probably read her stuff; it gets picked up by most of the wire services."

" 'Kate Counsel: Uncovered', right? She does all those government cover ups and assassins and international espionage stuff."

Cammie nodded, "That's her. If took several years for anybody to make any connection between the two and when they did, the coincidences started to get weird. For one, 'Counsel' means 'Quinn' in Gaelic. Two, Kate has never covered the elusive Quinn in any of her stories, and she's done just about everybody else. Three, Kate always seems to be around when a kill goes down that matches Quinn's style. And four, Quinn's most recent activities have been tied in with Circle hits. It's theorized that she's working with them as an assassin."

I stood in silence for a minute, "How sure of all this are you?"

"Extremely."

I ran a hand through my hair, "We're going to have to contact MI6."

"I already would have if I could."

"I don't think I like the sound of that," I said, looking at her straight in the eye.

"The necklace-slash-tracker MI6 gave me is gone. So is the iPod."

"Could you have lost it in the water?" I asked.

She shook her head, "The necklace, possibly. The iPod, no."

"So someone took it?"

She nodded, "We have to get out of here. Like yesterday."

I nodded and began to formulate a plan, "Okay…I think I have an idea…"

Ouch, another cliffy. Sorry guys! I promise that the last chapter won't be a cliffy, how's that? Review lovies! You know how they make me smile!

~Striker