LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD

Rod Massino's Suite – 11:15 PM


"I'm going to make you wish you were dead…"

Rod breathed huskily and stretched out beneath Lily's straddling hold.

"Ooh, I just bet you are. You naughty little rodeo Belle. Go on, ride me!"

She giggled and tied each of his hands with the ribbons from her braided hair. With her hips grinding against the ache at his bulging jeans and her hands firm on his chest as she groped and teased every bit of him over his clothing, Lily hardly noticed the sound of someone screaming in her ear, as if from a short distance. Whoever it was, they were close enough to where her brother was to be picked up on the ear bud.

"Why don't you give an old mafia man a run for his hard earned money, Miss Dixie Stampede."

Lily smiled down at Rod Massino with a biting smirk and then ripped open his shirt without concerns for any of the hand-sewn satin buttons. He growled with sweet anticipation of what was to come next, never wondering for one second why one of Lily's hands had disappeared from his chest. She reached for the handle of her gun, made a little easier this time, in this position, and the second she had pulled it from the holster she heard Tommy's voice soft in her ear, but demanding just the same.

"Lillian, finish Massino off. Do it fast and meet me down here in the lobby, at the Polo Club. I think we've got a problem."

She wanted to know the problem, but realized that the only way she would ever find out, would be to get rid of Rod Massino first. She was kind to him in the process, all things considered, and even gave him a stimulating sort of massage below, while her free hand trained the barrel of her handgun on his neck.

He jilted a little under her body at the touch, knowing all too well what it meant for him.

"I really hate to do this, but you've been dealing with all the wrong guys Rod."

"D-don't p-please," he choked out under the grazing gun's open point. "Isabelle, please."

"My name isn't Isabelle. It's--"

"Lily, let's go!"

At the sound of Tommy's insistent begging, she let the trigger slip wearily under her finger, and watched as it sliced through his jugular, stemming off the carotid artery to spray blood from one side of the white cotton sheets to the other as she fell back from its range. She could hear him gargling for air for all of a second or two, before finally choking on breath alone, and dying a mere two feet from her on the mattress.

She swallowed hard to keep from gagging and then tucked the gun back into her thigh holster, safety on and her heart pounding with the sound of Tom's silent shouting.

"I need you down here with me safely before I can make the call, Lily. Shane and Jeff are already in the lounge here. Hurry up!"

With one last deep breath, she murmured, "I'm coming. I'm coming," as she stumbled in her fancied cowgirl boots to the door of the room, forced her way back into the hall again, and leapt into a sprint for the elevator. Somewhere in the midst of running, she realized that her gun had detached itself from the holster and was nowhere to be seen down the hall. There was no time to bother with it though, not when everything was on the line finally. She wouldn't need it, not with what Tommy had promised would be the result of the evening. It wouldn't be her fighting.

So she just ran, like a murderous Cinderella, vying for her armored pumpkin carriage and blind Prince.


One minute later…


"What are you even talking about? You're losing your mind."

Sands shoved back on the booth's table, sliding out to stand, just as Shane grabbed his arm and tore him into the lobby herself anyway. She wasn't about to risk Tuzla's 'meeting' being interrupted by the man who he had wanted to kill alongside Tommy eight years before.

"I know what I fucking heard, Shane. I know I heard her, IN his room, Massino's."

She shook her head up at him, not understanding his awkward claim.

"Lily's not here, Jeff. She's in San Francisco. What is going on with you all of sudden?"

He gulped with a heavy breath, practically pulling his hair from their follicles as he stumbled back and forth blankly, counting steps between the lobby's empty seating area and the front doors of the hotel itself. It never once appeared odd to any of them, that the check in desk, along with the Club (save for one waitress), was completely deserted. That wasn't hotel standard usually.

But Shane could hardly think to notice with the way Sands' paced in the bowels of pure insanity.

"Jeff, you're just strung out, you miss her. You imagined it--"

"No I didn't," he snapped back at her, throwing his hat clear across the lobby. "It was her. I think I know what my own WIFE sounds like. Especially, under the goddamn circumstances you all have put her in without bothering to tell me!"

"What circumstances? What are you talking about?"

"You lied to me, Shy. She was here, the whole time, working the case with you."

Shane was simply amazed at his wild imagination.

"Lily's not working the case with me, or Carter or Andy. She's not here, Sheldon."

With her hand soft on his shaking shoulder, she attempted to calm him down enough to re-focus the situation at hand, and probably would have done a bang up job of it, if all her concentration on her brother hadn't been broken by the sound of a smacking boot heels on the glossy tile floor of the lobby.

Her eyes darted off to where a young woman tumbled down the main stairwell in pink cowgirl boots, dark pigtails flying in her face and a strange sort of western rodeo dress all she had to cover her body. Sands' head turned with the noise as well, but without vision, he could only rely on his other senses. Thankfully, so.

Something struck his nose even at the far distance and Shane cold feel his muscles tense under his suit jacket where she held onto him.

"That's her," he mumbled with a grunt as he pulled away from her hands and started stumbling in the direction the young woman was coming from. "I know it's her. I can smell her perfume. Lily?"

Shane and Andy watched as the girl in question stopped immediately in her tracks, heaving for breath as Sands wandered ever closer to her.

"Lily?" His hand was outstretched towards her, begging her to touch him, to acknowledge that he was right in knowing it was her. But she stood absolutely still, hopeful that something magical might happen, that maybe it was a dream. "Lillian, answer me!"

He was angry, well on his way to being drunk already and tired looking, as if he'd done nothing but think about her for the last 40 hours. Lily felt tears coming to her eyes when he finally stumbled in front of her, his hands reaching her shoulders as he gained firm grounding. Still though, she said nothing.

"Lily," he whispered quietly, harshly, as he let his hands wander over her neck and face. "It was you on the wire tap, in Massino's room."

Nothing but silence he could easily drown in.

"Talk to me," he shook her as her tears fell onto his boots below, "Tell me why you're here, Lily. Why the hell did you lie to me? Did Shane tell you--"

"No," she finally cut him with a firm defense. "Shane had nothing to do with me coming back."

"Then who the fuck did? That Smith guy?"

"There is no Smith. There never was."

He stopped for a moment, almost positive about what he was going to hear next. Just like before, just like with Ajedrez. He was sure she was going to kiss him softly on the lips, then reveal to him that she was working for his enemy all along.

But would that make any sense? A Hanson fighting on Tuzla's side?

"I wanted to tell you everything. I still want to," she whispered with deep sobbing. "But I can't, Jeff. I don't have any choice. You can't know everything that I--"

"Yo guys."

The source of the interruption was found when they all turned to see Carter skipping out of the elevator. He approached them, even as Lily wanted to turn and explain everything to Sands, and even as he wanted to ignore what might have been and just kiss her. But nevertheless, Danny Carter was their prime delay on all things necessary.

There was a single moment of ambivalent silence, where Carter turned his face down to see Lily staring right back at him, and he smiled like a crazed nut.

"Shit, Lily why the hell are you--?"

And then, before she could speak or he could finish or anyone could think to move, that single moment of bliss and epiphany, was blasted away by the coppery zing of a close range firearm as it loosened a bullet and was sent flying directly through the middle of their pow-wow.

Lily screamed before any of them bothered to turn and see the source. Jeff hit the ground before he could grab a hold of her waist and protect her with him. Carter somehow managed to run and throw himself over the long oak top of the lobby's check in desk. Shane and Andy, together, were able to hide in a separated section of the Polo Club, using a table as their only source of barricade or battle trench.

In a matter of seconds, like in the movies, bullets were flying left and right, from handguns, machine guns, rifles and pistols alike. It was a first round test, merely to see who could survive to find out where the source of the original fire was coming from.

Although, they all knew.

Somewhere in the midst of gunfire, where Sands could hardly lift his head from the ground to contemplate shooting, let alone actually cock a gun and fire it, he instead listened to the sound of splintering oak finish, shattering glass from over his head somewhere, cracking marble tile at his sides and screaming from a distant location. He knew that scream though. It was the same one that had sounded the battle initially, the same one he'd heard the morning she was taken from him, bleeding and helpless.

That was his girl's scream and because he knew it, he found himself beginning to crawl in the line of all sorts of fire and flying debris, to get closer to that screech, the sound of that fear in her that he hated and altogether loved at once.

'Keep screaming, baby.' He pleaded with her as he dragged his body across the glassy floor. Sands' was sure he was bleeding, either from this battle or the pressure of landing on his existing wounds so harshly. And yet it didn't matter. Only one thing did to him, 'Scream Lily, help me find you. Just keep screaming…'

"Jeff!"

That was his name. But it wasn't a scream and it wasn't Lily's voice. So he didn't stop when it told him to.

"Stay put, Jeff! DON'T MOVE!"

Oh yeah right, he thought, as if I'm going to obey you like a dog, Shy. I'm going to get her.

The crossfire was killing him, wearing down on every bit of his remaining senses. There were loud guns, weak guns, shouting for resistance, yelling for further murder attempts, pure chaos to add to his already sweltering mind. It wasn't until he heard bare hands on the tile floor from about ten feet away, due north of where he was hobbling on knees and palms, that he stopped completely and listened between the sound of triggers and bullets.

"Jeff, I'm coming!"

"Lily, no!" There was another voice. One more determined than she was, and he didn't like it. "Lily, get back here!"

"Let me go, please! I need to help him--"

Her voice was hushed by a hand over her mouth. But he could still hear her mumbling and desperate crying. Whoever was trying to keep her quiet, wasn't doing a very good job of it, because only a moment later, when Sands felt a bullet refract on the steel heel of his boot, he also heard her voice again, louder, more defiant and closer than he could have dreamed up.

"Jeff, grab my hand! Please! Take my hand!"

He didn't know where her hand was, except away from his. He reached, but found nothing but glass and chips of wood and tile. He crawled a foot closer and still found nothing.

"Lillian, NO! Get back here!"

"No, I have to help him! Tommy, stop!"

And right there, that was the end of his semi-normal, semi-sensible universe. The name radiated through him, even after he felt the touch of her fingers against his, even after he felt the crushing weight of another man's boot on his arm where it attached to hers, even after he realized that the sound of breathing high above him in the center of the sudden silence, was the distorted breathing pattern of a man, a criminal, who had just been caught up on.

His enemy.

He felt Lily's delicate fingers slip away from his and he could only focus on the pain again then. The pain in his lower gut, the pain in his knee, the pain in his arm and his leg and his head, and anywhere else he'd ever been shot or cut or run over or poisoned or drilled or threatened while working for this great American institution they called INTELLIGENCE.

The intelligent thing to do would have been to quit while he was ahead, way back in 1996, when he had the world on a fine string. When he had his best friend, and his girl, and his little sister and his adopted family, and his new town and new life. Back then, when everything was perfect enough to be a dream at any moment.

Maybe I'm dreaming now, he contemplated in the silence, the peace above him, maybe that's what this is. Any minute now, I'll open my eyes and I'll be stretched out on a blanket in the sand, and she'll be there, smiling down at me with a kiss when I wake up. Yeah…

"You might be blind, but I know you can hear me, you little prick."

He felt someone kick his motionless leg with harsh words. That wasn't Lily.

"Thought you'd get your pansy ass team together, Sands? Come after me again. What is this? Some kind of loosely planned retaliation?"

The man laughed, his worst enemy, his nightmare on too many lonely nights. He felt the man smack his face with the end of a long gun, startling him to focus at least on the words, and the sound of his gun then tapping the tile floor gently.

"You've got that sexy minx of a sister firing at me. You've got a kid, what is he, twelve, aiming a rifle at me? You've even got a crazy heroine back there behind the counter, offering you a helping hand in your time of desperate need. How sweet…"

The mocking in Jimmy's voice resonated sickness in his stomach as he coughed up blood, not realizing how or why, but letting it come out anyway. Then he heard a snap of fingers over his head, heard a stomping of boots to the tile, and then heard the thing that he swore would send him to the grave faster than anything else at this point.

He heard that scream again, this time, echoing across the empty lobby, blood curdling and bone vibrating in motion. He tried to wriggle against Tuzla's boot, but couldn't move and couldn't get to her.

"Look at you, you're halfway to the grave already. I may as well just put you down like a useless horse. You won't win me any money. I can't bet on you anymore, can I?"

There was another crunch of the bone in his upper arm as he grunted out with clenched teeth.

"Don't bother saving your energy to get to her. We're bringing your girl to you. Your hero…"

There was a shuffle of more boots, a whimpering that landed inches from him, on the floor at his side. He could smell her perfume, could taste her fear and feel her tears falling down onto his neck and chin.

"She is a pretty thing. What do you think boys?"

He was offering her up to his own posse, but there were only three pleasurable chuckles and sighs as response above him. He had envisioned Tuzla battling with more man power than that.

"Your girl is trembling in my hands, Sands. Here," he taunted, taking Sands' hand and pressing it to the space over Lily's heart, where it beat furiously, pumping like mad against his palm, murdering him with wretched thought alone. "She feels like she's scared, huh? Scared that she might die because of you. Scared that I might know who she is, after all. Scared that she might have to sit right here at your side, and watch as I slowly…" Jimmy began to slide the sharp edge of a blade down the side of Sands' face, his neck, then down his chest as it slightly cut through his dress shirt, "…cut you into pieces."

Sands let his hand fall from Lily's chest when she began to shake uncontrollably, stirring only worse images into his head.

"I don't know. Maybe I should let all of your friends watch while I cut her to pieces instead. And I'll let you lie right there, and just listen. Listen to the sound of metal searing her soft flesh," Sands could sense the blade pricking at Lily's skin as Tuzla spoke, "You'll be able to hear everything. The sound of her organs failing one by one. The sound of her blood trickling onto the floor, pooling all around where you are, motionless, unable to stop it. Then I'll let you listen to the sound of her heart as it hits the marble floor."

There was a choking sound above him, like lips to the palm of a hand. It was Lily, ready to vomit, ready to give in.

"We'll see if a heart really does stop beating once it's removed from the body. What do you say? Want to experiment for a while? You've got time, eh?"

He struggled against the hold on his arm, on his legs too. He tried to move his face away to stop the heated pain of Tuzla's words, of his breath on his face. He listened to the sound of a stronger man than him, carrying Lily off from the ground where he was stuck. He heard her whimpers, her vile breathing, leading him to wonder the worst of things.

And then somewhere, at an unimaginable proximity, on his own hand, his other hand, the free one, he felt that present coolness twisting about on his finger. Gold. A promise. It was an oath.

"In sickness and in health," he mumbled breathlessly as Jimmy laughed above him.

"In sickness and in health? Practicing for your 72 virgins?"

Sands spit out more blood onto his suit, uncaring whether it ended up there or not.

"Leave her alone. She has nothing--" he hacked more, his glasses finally falling off his face completely to reveal his scars to the surrounding men, "—Lily had nothing to do with this."

"Oh no? Lillian Hanson, younger sister to Thomas Hanson, CIA psychologist, 29 year old revenge seeker. You're telling me she's an innocent cocktail to this soiree of mine? How many of my men am I going to find dead in their rooms upstairs? Huh?"

He said nothing. This was the part where he himself was lost as to how she ended up as a disguising mafia assassin.

"She's here to raise that stupid cop brother of hers from the dead. Isn't that right, sweetheart?!" He shouted overhead, back towards Lily, who had nothing to say. "She crashed the party, no different than you. She seduced my two best moles into their rooms, drank their alcohol and then blew their fucking brains out. Sounding familiar to you yet, Jeffery?"

"What? What are you fucking talking about?"

Jimmy grunted with a snap of his fingers and rose on his boots.

"Watch this asshole. Don't let him up. And you princess," Lily felt herself being tugged at first by her braided pigtails, and then she was lifted into Tuzla's strong arms and carried off in the direction that Shane, Andy and Carter had all been in at one point. "Oh Shanie, darling?!"

There was no response, only silence, as Jimmy carried Lily around with him, his thick hand covering her mouth as he looked over countertops, down lobby corridors and under destroyed tables in the lounge. But there was no one.

"Shane Sands! You're not going to get very far. Did I fail to mention…" he paused and shifted around on his boots, just as Lily heard the chiming bell of the distant elevator in the silence. "…that as of 11:08…I own the hotel, baby cakes!"

There was a swish of metal doors. There was a single cock of a gun, then another, and another, until Tuzla had completely spun around with Lily in his arms to see three bodies emerging from the elevator. He watched with Lily struggling and screaming in his arms, as they came back into the center of the destroyed lobby, each of them pointing a gun at one of Jimmy's men, who in turn, drew guns on them the same.

"You bought this hotel, Jimmy," Shane smirked as she stumbled closer between where he stood with Lily and where the man standing above Jeff on the floor was. "And you didn't think to ask about what kind of fire exits it offered guests first?"

"Guests? Try intruders."

"Oh no," she teased wildly, playing with the trigger of her rifle, "We're paying customers. And if this is how you plan on welcoming all of your guests, man, this isn't going to be a very popular place of lodging."

Tuzla just grinned at her, squeezing Lily tighter, although she squirmed to get away.

"Let her go."

"What for?"

"Equal combat."

"Ha," he chuckled as he walked back around through the alley of aimed guns, to where Sands laid unmoving, practically bleeding to death. "Don't you know yet Shanie?" He dropped Lily down to the floor, half falling on top of Jeff in the process, before Jimmy stood to block them from view again and stare into the barrel end of Shane's gun.

"Love is a battlefield, baby."

She clenched her teeth together, aiming ever more forcefully towards him. Carter had a gun trained on two of Tuzla's men, and Andy on the last. Lily though, clinging to Jeff on the floor, trying to keep focusing on his breathing, his heart beating still, couldn't figure out where Tommy had disappeared to. Part of her wanted to believe that maybe she had gone insane like Jeff, and that maybe he was never there at all, that perhaps she'd concocted this elaborate scheme to help Shane all on her own.

Maybe Tom really was dead.

"We're equal now. Sands' is down, blind as a fucking bat, and more than ready to say his farewell." Jimmy stepped aside only an inch so that Lily could look up at Shane with teary vision and pleading eyes. "Agent Carter over here is more than capable of dueling it out with my new guys. Your Rookie has a good enough handle against Pauli over there. And then here we are. You and me Shane. This is what you always wanted, your own case. Your own takedown."

"I want you dead."

He laughed out loud, "Join the club. Get in line. Take a number."

Then, from out of the crowd, like a great omen, or irrepressible spirit, or worse, an oppressed ghoul at the center of the agency's brains, came the voice of reason. Finally.

"Now serving number four, Jimmy."

Lily couldn't see him, but she knew. And something in the way Jeff stirred beneath her hand, told her, that somehow, against all his sanity, he knew then too.

There was a gun facing the scene, a hand attached to it from over a high wall near the front doors of the hotel, but there was no face, no mold.

"Who's that? Another underage agent, come to play bullet tag?"

"No," the voice bellowed loudly in an echo, "It's fate, come a knockin' again."

Jimmy was entertained by the looks of it. He was laughing in the face of danger, in the face of two guns raised in aim at him, without a single weapon residing in his own hands. Lily wondered if this was his overconfidence or his acceptance of eventual defeat. Either way it seemed odd.

"There are 60 Federal cars waiting outside for you, Jim. They're putting on a light show and everything, their overjoyed to finally be meeting you. Either way, you're leaving this hotel dead, tonight. Whether it's under a white sheet or chained to a bench in the back of a white truck, that'll be your choice."

There was a sigh, but not of fear, more so of wonderment at the shouting voice.

"What a lovely speech that was, John Wayne," Tuzla began to applaud as his goons laughed around him and overhead of Lily, taunting her only hope. "Come now, let us see your charming face, the face of a hero. Or, maybe you can provide us with a bullet finally. Get this little party of ours started down here. What do you say?"

A single moment of silence passed by, like it had so many times already. But this one was different, this one was commanding, suddenly ready for war. Lily saw an old blue cap poke out over the ledge of the wall Tommy was behind and she gulped, before she heard three separate shouts ring out in the general direction of the hat.

It didn't move though. It remained still.

And that's when she, and only she, saw a half dozen fingers poke out from around the end of the wall closest to where Jimmy stood, aimlessly looking towards the unmoving hat.

It was one second. Like a strike of lighting. Like a heartbeat. And then, one shot.

"Ah, fuck!" It was Tuzla screaming in front of her, and it was his blood that was covering the floor in an instant, his bone protruding from his pants leg as he tumbled down to the ground on his knees, with wavering balance.

When Lily's eyes moved from the blood pooling at Sands feet from Jimmy's leg, they moved only to Shane once, before she heard the sound of a bullet from directly next to her ear. It was from a gun she didn't know existed. It was in the hand of a man that protruded in mystery from the inside of his coat.

It was a third arm.

She thought she was dreaming it, but before she had the chance to wonder, she heard the battle ensue overhead. Lily fell against Jeff, trying to cover him, protect him from any more harm. And surprisingly, she felt him regain enough strength to turn over and cover her entire body instead.

There were a million bullets fired, at least. Each of them handled one of Tuzla's men, firing at whatever limbs they could, gaining the masked assistance of a specialized poltergeist, of a ghost, somewhere in their midst still. Tommy was around, Lily could feel him, every time she heard a large body fall, the body of one of Jimmy's men, she knew.

She counted them. ONE...TWO…THREE…

At three there was stillness. Peace. Nothing but the sound of her and Jeff's own breathing.

She looked up from under him to see scattered bodies. At first they were all unmoving, then one shifted and sat up. Carter. A second one grunted with pain in a leg and leant up. Andy. And a third, after the longest minute of Lily's life, crawled to weakened knees and coughed her way back to life.

Her sister. Her best friend. Shane.

But in an instant, blocking her view was the bloodied face of a man. Lily screamed, all in time for Jeff to rise up and lift his gun in the general direction of where he heard the labored breathing, the choking of blood and the gurgling of bodily fluids. It was a dying man, a half killed enemy, but it wasn't done. It wasn't his job to finish. It wasn't Shane's or Carter's or Andy's job.

He patted the ground under him and behind, touching Lily's legs, waist, until he found her hand and pulled her closer. He placed both of her hands on the handle of the gun in his hand, his breath warm on her neck as she shivered in his arms, at the sight, at the pinnacle of her lifetime rivalry.

"Do it. He wants you to," Jeff whispered tiredly in her ear, holding her hands tightly over the gun, guiding her to pull the trigger. "He's waiting for you to finish it, Lily."

Shane and the guys laid scattered in their own distress, but ignoring the pain for the power of the scene in the middle of the floor. It couldn't have been longer than thirty seconds, the entire thing, but it felt like it could have gone on forever.

"I hope to God…that when that fucker is looking into the barrel of a gun this week, that you're the one holding the trigger back. That's what I hope."

"Where will you be?"

"Me?"

"I'll be right here, like this. Making sure you follow through. I'll be watching your back, kid."

"Shoot him, Lillian. Get Tommy back."

His voice in her head was rattling, almost the same as the gun when she finally forced her finger down on the trigger and watched the bullet fly through Tuzla's heart, sending him right back down to the floor for good.

And almost as soon as it was taken care of, almost as soon as the score was settled, the world set into place properly, Tommy running towards Shane and Carter and Andy for assistance, the Feds storming in through the already broken glass doors of the lobby, and almost as soon as Lily felt herself fill up completely again, she noticed Jeff's hands slide away from hers on the gun.

He hit the floor. Just like Jimmy.

"Jeff?"

She tried to shake him awake.

"Jeff, no. Jeff, stop it! Come back to me!"

She punched his chest, listened to the sound of his weakening heart, and felt only one thing before she cried and screamed herself into blackness with him.

She felt a kiss on the top of her head. That way that only Jeff Sands knew to kiss her in moments of utter endearment and pride.