"Miss…Miss! You can't…!" The guard's voice trailed away as Casey disappeared up the steps of the main entrance to the mansion, brushing past him and into the reception area.

"I'd say she already has." Jazz noted to the guy as he passed, convinced that if he had tried this it wouldn't have worked. The guards stepping out of Casey's way had something to do with the sight of an attractive "woman on a mission" storming like a Valkyrie into the headquarters of her foe. Casey was dressed in a long black, almost Gothic dress she had borrowed from Marti for the funeral and her long hair was untethered and flowing behind her.

"This place is bigger than I thought." Casey paused briefly. Jazz nodded.

"Let's start with Smythe's office." He said. "Derek will have to visit there at some point."

Casey approached the bemused receptionist. "Professor Smythe's office. Where is it?" She demanded.

"Please?" Jazz prompted, pulling his ID from his pocket. He inwardly groaned too, remembering the events at the hospital a few weeks ago. Casey was showing a few too many Derek tendencies for his liking.

The receptionist's eyes widened at the badge and she gasped.

"Third Floor end office." She said nodding towards the elevators.

Casey turned immediately towards them.

"Is something wrong?" The receptionist called after Jazz.

"Just make sure you open the door to my friends when they get here." Jazz shouted over his shoulder.

Casey waited until the elevator doors had closed in front of them cutting off their view of the reception area and whisking them up towards the upper floors.

"Will the others come in now then?" She asked.

"Yeah. They'll be forced to."

"Oh?"

"They need to arrest you." Jazz said with a smirk.

"And you?"

"According to Spike, I'm just "observing"."

They found Smythe's office easily enough and that was when Jazz took over.

"Case. Hang on." He ordered in a terse whisper. "Derek would kill me if I let you go in there first." He said holding her back by the arm and drawing his weapon. Casey nodded seeing the sense of what he was saying. She hung back but removed her own gun from her purse. Jazz's eyes widened.

"Does Derek know you have that?" He queried. The gun was far bigger than the ones that he had seen her practice with.

"Derek bought it for me."

"You know how to use it?" He asked.

She smiled. "Of course. Derek showed me."

Jazz shrugged and took up the standard position on one side of the door. Casey adopted the mirror pose for the other side.

"Ready?" Jazz asked her. Casey nodded.

"Police!" He shouted… and kicked in the flimsy door with a loud crash.

"Subtle." Casey commented. "I thought I was overly-dramatic."

"Needs must…" Jazz said casually, leading the way into the room.

The office was empty but it was clear that someone had been here and left in a hurry: a filing cabinet drawer was still open, the once tidy desk was in some disorder, but what caught the attention of both Jazz and Casey was the bookcase pulled out from the wall and the gaping black hole beyond.

"What the fuck?" Jazz exclaimed.

Casey edged forward. Her hands grasping the gun were pointed down to the floor between her feet, her arms quite straight. She leaned over the hole, sweeping the area with the weapon.

"It's an elevator shaft." She announced glancing up at Jazz. "Why's it hidden?"
"It looks like there is more to this place than is marked on the plans." Jazz noted.

Casey looked thoughtful. "If there are lower levels, below the ground I mean, do you think that is why Derek's GPS isn't working?"

Jazz nodded. "I'll call Spike and get him to check the plans again. And then we'll go down."

BBG left the conference room and closed the door behind him. The alarm was still sounding and in the underground passages, despite the interior décor which deadened some sound, the klaxon reverberated loudly.

Something was definitely up.

He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and frowned when he saw there was no signal. Unlike the noise of the alarm, the bedrock which these tunnels had been channelled into was very good at dulling electrical signals. It was one of the things that made the site ideal for scientific research: there was no external interference.

It was, however, useless for cellular communications. Sighing loudly, he walked back to the nearest wall phone, a distance of about 600 yards, so that he could call the security office.

"Hey Randy! It's Jake. What the fuck's going on?" BBG asked.

"Randy can't come to the phone right now." An unfamiliar voice said cheerfully. "He's rather tied up." As he spoke in the mansion security office tens of feet above, the RCMP field agent glanced across at "Randy" who was handcuffed to a filing cabinet.

Shocked, and sensing trouble though he clearly couldn't see what the agent could see, BBG hung up. He wasn't used to acting swiftly, however, so he scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully.

"Fuck if I know what's going on. I guess I'd better tell the boss." He muttered to himself.

"Don't worry." A feminine voice said from behind. "I'll happily take him a message."

And then BBG's world went black…again.

"So go on." Derek encouraged. "You decided to set up your own operation here. It must have cost you a fortune excavating these tunnels."
"No actually." Quentin informed him. "The tunnels were already here."
Derek must have looked confused because Quentin settled himself in as if to begin a long story.

"Have you heard of the "underground railroad"?"

"As in the slave railroad? The network of secret routes and safe houses for American slaves looking for a better life?"

Quentin nodded.

"In the 19th century, Canada did not share the views of some parts of the United States when it came to slavery. Like some of the "rogue" states, Canada offered runaway slaves a sanctuary from servitude: a place to escape to."

"It was a fantastic thing, but its relevance escapes me. Surely the underground railroad was south of the Canadian border? It consisted of "safe houses" or "stations" for slaves to move to as they made their way north using connections and people prepared to risk moving them. This house is north of the border. Why would it be necessary as a "station"?"

"I can see we'll have to disagree about whether emancipation was a good thing or not." Quentin announced and Derek wasn't surprised by this admission. Somehow, Quentin did not seem the type to agree with the freeing of people who were considered as "property".

The professor went on. "But the fact was a large number of slaves were given sanctuary in Canada as a result of so-called "oppression" within the US."

"Sanctuary is a loose term." Derek said, remembering some of the less savoury parts of his Canadian history lessons. Slaves had been allowed over the border but in many cases that was the only assistance they had received.

"Regardless, many crossed into Canada."

"But why did they need a safe house north of the Canadian border?" Derek repeated.

Quentin smiled coldly. "Oh it wasn't a safe house. It was a holding station."

"A what?"
"Slaves were valuable property. Some of them were worth a very large amount of money and their owners were reluctant to part with them. They sent people after them and if the slave was important enough to them, they would even pursue them over the border. Then of course when they found them they needed some way to take them back into the States."

Derek's eyes widened. "There was a railroad back?" he gasped.

"Only as far as the nearest US state. Then they had no need to hide what they were doing. Even in the free states such as Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania there was a law which said that the authorities could not interfere if a slave-catcher from another state was operating in the free state."

"And your relative was…"
"…He knew there were natural tunnels in the area he just widened them and took advantage of a business opportunity. Of course the tunnels could never be long enough to cross the border, but they were good for storage. A fact his great-grandson took advantage of later on. He excavated further and then smuggled all sorts of goods across the border, particularly during the Prohibition days. He stock-piled rum and other alcohol prior to running it across to the states at the end of the twenties."

Derek shook his head in disbelief at the pride in the professor's voice. He understood however, that the pride was not that the activities were illegal, but that the family members of which he was talking had used their ingenuity to make a profit; something that Quentin clearly believed he too had done. It saddened Derek to know that the Smythe line had probably been responsible for many deaths over the centuries.

He was just going to ask about the deaths which had resulted from Smythe's own endeavours when the man himself suddenly stood.

"Much as I would like to stand here and discuss my family history with you further, Jake has been gone too long and that alarm is still sounding. I have a bad feeling about this. On your feet. Now! It's time to go."

He jerked the gun to one side in a gesture designed to instruct Derek where he needed to move to. Derek, anxious not to provoke the mad man before him too soon, stood.

"Hands on your head, slowly. Now, I want you to walk towards the door."

Derek did as he was told.

"Stop!" Quentin said when he reached the door. Derek paused.

Never moving the gun from its target, the professor opened the door and looked down the passageway in both directions. Satisfied it was clear, he pushed Derek out.

"Turn left." Smythe ordered. "Follow the passage until it turns the corner."
Derek did as he was told.

He spent most of the next five minutes creating and discarding many plans to overpower Smythe because the one thing he was certain of was that the man behind him was clearly quick-witted, even if he was deranged. Getting the right outcome from this was not going to be easy.

"This is going to take forever!" Jazz complained.

"Only if we let it." Casey said in a determined voice. "It helps that everyone has evacuated the building. Did Spike say what was happening up top?"

Jazz had managed to contact the surface security office and speak to the field agent in charge using the wall phone. Spike was still flying by helicopter from Ottawa, but the agents on the surface knew who Jazz was and why he was there. They even knew that Casey's entry was illegal but none of them judged. They had been told that Derek was one of their own, that it was a civilian who was taking the law into their own hands for his safety. They might have to arrest her at the end, and sorting out the details was going to be a nightmare, but none of them was in a hurry to be the arresting officer and they all understood her motivation.

"They're rounding up the scientists and support staff." Jazz explained as they made their way down the corridors quickly, searching the rooms as they went. "My guess is most of them are innocent. This guy keeps his cards close to his chest."

"You think BBG is sufficiently restrained?" They had left Jake handcuffed to a concrete pillar knowing that one of the local RCMP teams was already on its way into the passages.

"Casey. Have you ever tried to get out of a set of those cuffs? Forget I asked; I don't want to know about Derek's sex life."

"You're an asshole, Jazz." Casey informed him. "It's not like that."
"No?" Jazz asked.

Casey grinned and winked. "No. We use silk scarves."

They swept the corridors, working their way from the mansion to the extremes of the passages. Jazz had been right and most of the site was empty because the scientists had been evacuated. The siren they had sounded was the fire siren and people who work underground fear fire more than anything, knowing the flames and smoke are funnelled down the corridors in the same way that smoke is funnelled up through a chimney.

They had been underground for nearly fifteen minutes and had covered more than a half a mile of passages. They still hadn't found Derek.

"How much further?" Casey asked.

"According to the team up above this touches almost to the outskirts of town."
"You're kidding me?"
"Nope."

"Shit!"

Jazz glanced at Casey. "We'll find him."
"I know. I just want him to be alive when we do." She said quietly.

Sam was restless. He'd been content for the last few days to just ignore his instinct about the parking lot incident, but for the past twenty four hours something just keep eating at him about it.

He knew that Casey had been on his mind for a while. It wasn't that he still harboured those feelings for her. It was the brotherly sense of responsibility surfacing again. He just couldn't put it to bed when it came to Derek's step-sister. And there in was the problem. It wasn't because she was Sam's ex-girlfriend or even that they had built a pretty decent friendship over the years, it wasn't even that she was the doctor who had brought his daughter into the world. Instead, the sense of duty definitely came from the fact that Casey McDonald was Derek's step-sister and Derek was dead.

Derek who was, and always would be, Sam's best friend.

Which meant Sam had to step up to the mark.

Sam had booked the flight to Ottawa for a fortnight's time. He had arranged a pleasant-looking hotel on the outskirts of the capital city and was very much looking forward to a short city break.

He was also hoping to receive a few answers.

Ruth had agreed to the vacation so she and Amelia Casey were going to be going with him. Ruth had approved the timing and the hotels etc. She had however, made one request of Sam before they actually boarded the flight.

"Talk to Marti." Ruth had insisted. "Make sure she knows we are going and ask her advice. She'll know what sort of reception we'll get."

So here he was outside Casey's apartment, waiting to talk to Marti.

It looked the same as always but Marti's car wasn't there which wasn't a good sign. It probably meant she wasn't there. He decided to risk it anyway and left his own vehicle to cross the street and enter the building. During the bad days of Casey's drinking she had given him her door code, although these days he no longer had a key to the front door. Instead he was forced to knock.

The door flew open immediately, making him step back in shock.

"Sam?" Marti gasped, also stunned. He was clearly not the person she was expecting. But she recovered quickly and her next words surprised him.

"Do you have a car with you?"

Sam nodded dumbly.

"Oh thank god!" She exclaimed and reaching inside for her purse, she emerged from the apartment. "You can drive. I'll fill you in on the way."

Their flight from the tunnels had been at a pace but a few doors from the end of the largest corridor, Quentin suddenly took a diversion down a side corridor and paused beside a door. He placed his thumb on the keypad and was rewarded with a click as the door unlocked.

"In there!" Smythe ordered, pointing with the gun. Derek had no choice but to comply.

"There" turned out to be a computer room.

It wasn't a cobbled together room full of computers the way the upstairs server rooms had been. This was a purpose-built facility, full of metal racking bolted to the floor and loaded with computers of every shape and size as well as large monitors, pull-out keyboards, mice and those little boxes with flashing lights that look like something out of Battlestar Galactica – or maybe reminiscent of K.I.T.T. This had not been fitted out on the cheap. This was the real deal. It wouldn't have surprised Derek to find that the door at the back of the room led to a further computer room containing something even more impressive like a Cray.

What Quentin was interested in, however, was the racking along the side wall. Instead of computers, it held some form of storage media, although Derek had never seen its like before. The racks were labelled with their index numbers however, and those Derek had seen before.

They were the numbers from the filing cabinets upstairs. Then he remembered he had also seen the numbers in the server rooms in the mansion.

Quentin saw him look. "I store the unimportant stuff upstairs." He told Derek. "The results of the experiments which didn't work and so on. Down here is the goldmine. Here is where I store my real research." He motioned to the left of the rack. Then he turned. "And here is where I store my other "valuables"." He pointed to the right and Derek saw a smaller selection of disks, labelled in the same format as the "death" files he had discovered above.

"So what do you want from them now?" Derek asked.
Smythe smiled. "I've planned for today." He said arrogantly. "I have everything I need to start over stored on one block of disks." He pulled a block out from the rack. It looked a little like an old VHS case although the data inside was a million times greater. "I'll just take these and then we can go."

"Go where?" Derek asked.

"That's for me to know, and you…never to find out. Our journey together will last only until I no longer need a bargaining chip. Now. If you wouldn't mind." Quentin jerked the gun towards the door they had entered by. Again, Derek moved as instructed.

The professor directed him back along the short corridor to the main hall. He walked behind Derek, the block of disks under his arm, but the gun always trained on the prisoner in front of him. Derek wasn't about to take any chances so he bided his time hoping that at some point there might be an opportunity to distract his captor.

But it wasn't Derek that distracted Quentin.

When Derek opened the door to the main corridor he stepped out into the brighter light – and saw a movement to his right. It wasn't until Quentin was already out of the door and beside him that Derek's brain registered what it was seeing.

Casey and Jazz emerging from a side door further back down the corridor.

It was Jazz who spotted them first, and his cry alerted Quentin to the danger.

"Stop! Police!" Jazz shouted.

Quentin did no such thing.

Instead he pushed Derek across the corridor and through another door marked "Fire Exit". The door clanged behind them.

"Shit!" Jazz and Casey shouted in unison and then also sprinted for the door.

When they reached it, they discovered the space beyond was a wrought iron stairwell, leading up and down. The space was empty but they could hear the clang of feet as they ran upwards. Without a pause both Casey and Jazz started up the stairs in pursuit.

The first flight was taken okay, but Jazz pulled Casey back from the turn and the half-landing…just in time to avoid the gunshot which ricocheted off the metal handrail.

"Thanks." Casey said wryly, holding back slightly now but still determined to push on.

"You're wasted as a doctor." Jazz murmured quietly.

Casey flashed him a grin. "Doctoring has its uses." She said in reply, throwing herself around the corner quickly, her gun covering the space above her.

"Just watch you don't shoot Derek." Jazz reminded her.

Casey glared at him.

"Sorry. Stupid thing to say." Jazz apologised.

Neither of them opened fire, but they were forced to duck a couple more times as they climbed higher. Casey was just wondering how far below ground they were when they reached the next level and she saw the white, stencilled figures on the wall.

"-3". She groaned inwardly.

Jazz noted the numbers too. "Good job we're fit eh?" He commented.
"Speak for yourself." Casey replied wryly.

They climbed another floor and then stopped suddenly as the sound of a fight broke out above them.

Derek was sick of this. He'd been compliant for far too long. While it was just him there wasn't an issue. He would just wait his moment out and then over-power Quentin when he got around to it. He was fairly sure he could over-power him, it was just that during the initial capture and flight the professor had decided to share his thoughts and motivation. Derek wanted to know what was going on. He wanted to understand, just in case Smythe didn't make it out of here alive.

Then he saw Casey and his focus changed. It was one thing to leave the mad man with a gun whilst the only person who could get hurt was Derek. But when Casey was the person pursuing them and Quentin seemed quite happy to open fire on her...well Derek wasn't going to put up with that. He needed to act.

The trouble was then there didn't seem to be an appropriate moment to tackle him. Every time Derek thought it was okay, Smythe shifted slightly and the gun was pointing in Casey's direction. Derek was too concerned about Dead Man's Fingers to take the risk. Even if he killed the guy, how could he be sure that the act wouldn't cause the gun to fire accidentally?

They had reached floor -1 when the only opportunity arose and Derek took it. Quentin's foot slipped on the metal stairs and he stumbled. Derek pounced and the two men struggled on the top step.

To the two people below, it was like watching a fight scene in slow motion. The men's hands grabbed at each other, the gun still firmly on the grasp of Quentin. For a moment they danced a graceless dance on the edge.

It appeared, however, that the professor was actually the stockier of the two and it was his weight that did it.

One extra hard shove and Derek began to fall backwards down the stairs.

Jazz raised his gun and fired upwards.

BANG!

CLANG!

And Derek lost consciousness.

Casey had tried to catch Derek, but he knocked her flat. She heard the loud clang which followed so quickly on the heels of the revolver crack.

And then there was a second body falling, but she ignored it, leaving Professor Quentin Smythe to Jazz. Casey's only concern was Derek.

"He's dead!" Jazz called from somewhere to her left. "Fuck me! I couldn't put a shot like that in a paper target! It went clear through his heart. How's D?"

"Not good." Casey said, bending beside the twisted body of her lover. She placed a hand over his nose and then felt his neck.

"Shit!" She exclaimed and started to straighten him out.

"Should you be moving him like that? He might have broken something."

Casey didn't reply immediately. She was too busy straddling his body and pressing the heel of her hand against Derek's chest.

"Casey?" Jazz's voice sounded almost panicky now.

"He's not breathing and there's no pulse." Casey explained. Her own voice eerily calm even as she started the chest compressions. "Get up to the top and get the paramedics down here. STAT!"

Jazz didn't need telling twice and Casey heard the clang of running feet again as Derek's partner climbed the stairs three at a time.

"Don't do this to me Venturi." She hissed as she pumped. "Not now! I need you too fucking much! There's too much to say…too much you need to know!"

Casey finished the words and lowered her lips to Derek's mouth for the desperate kiss of life.

AN: Do not hate me. I am already three pages in on the final chapter.

I've taken a slight degree of "poetic licence" with history here. To my knowledge, the Underground Railroad ran in only one direction. The rest of history in this was as I researched. There was a gap in time of six years between Prohibition being lifted in Canada and the US (although Ontario was reluctant to lift Prohibition and some towns in the area kept it until the 1970s!). And there were well established rum smuggling operations which took advantage of the Great Lakes for decades.

One more chapter to the end of this part of the story!

There will be a third part which will be a simple plot…no criminals!

Sorry about all the cliff-hangers…