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I changed the summary, the story took a slightly different route.

Lena crossed under the metal detector and the security guard handed her back her beaded clutch. "Thank you" she said under her breath as she slipped the strap around her wrist and gracefully walked away from the security station. Her heels clicked loudly on the marble floor, she wished she'd had time to add a quieter sole to the shoes but this mission was too rushed. Soon the sound was drowned out by the music coming from the gala. She glanced around at the other guests, everyone was dressed in beautiful evening gowns and tuxedos. She smiled to herself, she might be a bit younger than the average guest at the gala but at least she followed the dress code. The large ballroom opened before her, it was filled with people, all people she didn't know. She moved off to the side so the guests behind her could pass. She took a moment to look around the party, she'd never been to a party like this, but she only allowed herself a moment to stare, had a job to do.

She opened her bag and removed a blutooth and cell phone. She fixed the blutooth on her ear and paged through the apps on her phone. "I'm in the ballroom." She spoke clearly into her blutooth.

"Commence explosive sweep." A voice responded in her ear.

"Copy that."

She finally stopped on an application that detected explosives. Her phone was of course, modified by Alliance intelligence. Her former employer continued to be very useful to her. She set it to vibrate and placed the phone back in her bag.

She glanced across the room again to make sure she wasn't being watched and then slipped into the bathroom to remove three portable explosive detectors from beneath her emerald colored silk dress. She slid them into her clutch and returned to the party.

She lifted her dress carefully as she walked back around the main room. If she'd had a bit more warning she would have had the dress hemmed. It could use about an inch taken off the bottom, but then again she had opted for the slightly lower heels to insure she could walk. She pushed her way up to the crowded bar and slid one of the portable explosive detectors under the bar so it could check guests as they came to get drinks.

She started to follow the parameter of the room and she caught one of the servers and took Hors d'oeuvres from his tray while slipping an explosive detector into his pocket. A few seconds later she felt a hand close around her lower back and a man spoke.

"My dear, you look lost." He was in his mid forties and like every other man at the party was dressed in an impeccably tailored tuxedo. She didn't know him. "I'm Congressman Curey." He announced.

"Pleasure to meet you," She said with a slight embarrassed smile. He introduced himself as a congressman but she didn't recognize his name, state congressman she decided. She needed to lose him quickly and continue her mission, but she didn't want to cause attention by being rude to someone who could very well be a guest of honor.

"Surely, a woman as beautiful as you wouldn't be here alone." He said. She flashed him a cautious smile. She was sure he meant his comment as a form of flattery but it could also be taken as an insult.

"I seem to have misplaced my date." Lena answered coyly.

"His loss is my gain." He said slyly as he grazed his hand along the back strap of her gown. Lena scanned the room quickly, all she needed was a younger man without a date on his arm and she could make him her excuse to leave. "Are you enjoying the party?" He asked

"Yes. It's lovely." She lied, as she continued to search the room.

"You need a drink." He announced.

" I'll have a glass of chardonnay ." She answered quickly. She hoped he would walk to the bar and she could disappear.

"Alright," he said as he slid one hand tightly around her waist and pushed her toward the bar.

Damb, she thought as she realized she couldn't duck out of his grip without causing a scene. He pulled her up to the crowded bar and attempted to flag down one of the bartenders. Lena looked around the room, just one young man without a date, that was all she needed. God! Why was everyone old?"Ah, one moment, he seems to be a bit busy." The congressman joked , Lena smiled softly. "Honestly, I've never seen such a busy bar at one of these events, you'd think we were in a night club!" He exclaimed and Lena nodded. "You know I didn't catch your name."

"Lena." She said, annoyed that she had to give a real name, she hadn't prepared cover for an alias. She hadn't been planning to speak to anyone.

"Lena." He repeated. "That's a beautiful name."

"Thank You." As she said the words, two younger men appeared from the crowd and pushed their way into the bar behind the Senator. The Senator stumbled into Lena and Lena fell back into the man behind her. She might have fallen further if it wasn't for the quick reflexes of the man behind her. He caught her tightly with one arm wrapped around her waist. The senator turned his back to her to yell at the two young men who had pushed him and Lena heard a sharp voice in her ear.

"Let's talk somewhere quieter." A smokey voice growled into her ear. She turned to face him and found his piercing gray eyes were focused on her, and her alone. Michael.

Don't react! She screamed inside her head. She willed her face to remain a blank mask, whether that actually happened or not, only Michael could tell. She allowed Michael to pull her from the bar. There was no running, no hiding. Without a diversion or backup she couldn't escape him in the crowded room. He held her waist and arm tightly as he pulled her forcefully toward the edge of the party. As they neared the edge of the crowd she stopped sharply, she wasn't going to allow him to pull her into a deserted hallway she might never come out of.

He rounded on her and decided to question her in the open. "Why are you here?" He asked quickly, Lena remained silent as she tried to figure a way out of the situation. "Answer me!" he snapped. Lena stared directly back in his eyes but remained stoic. She counted to ten before he spoke again. "That was your chance." He grasped her by the arm and again, dragged her toward the hallway.

"Let me go!" she said loudly "Damb-it Michael, we're on the same side tonight!" he stopped suddenly and spun around to face her again. His eyes bore into her again. She'd said too much… she shouldn't know his name. Lena swallowed hard and sunk away from him, he didn't release her.

"How-" He began to say, but stopped as Lena heard clearly in her blutooth the radio message he was receiving in his.

"Michael, I've got the bomb. Sub level B, utility room B349." An unknown female voice rang in Lena's ear.

"Copy that." His eyes darted around the outskirts of the crowd behind Lena. He wasn't aware that Lena had heard the same communication.

"There's a timer!" The woman shrieked into her radio. "Six minutes, thirty seconds!" suddenly his grip redoubled on her arm and he pulled her in another direction.

Lena instinctually resisted, but Michael spoke again. "I'm not going to kill you." He snapped, and for some unknown reason Lena believed him. She allowed him to pull her from the party and into a staircase. He reached up, tapped his ear piece and spoke."Birkhoff?" he commanded. "ETA on the bomb squad?"

"Nine minutes…. We're on our own." Birkhoff relayed, Micheal pressed the blutooth again and spoke to the female agent.

"Laura, I'm on my way. What are you looking at?"

Lena listened to the woman recite the technical aspects of the bomb as she and Michael stomped down the stairs to the lower floor. From description relayed through her blutooth, Lena came up with her own plan of how she could disarm the bomb.

When they reached the room Michael wasted no time in instructing the female agent to take Lena back to the extraction point. He handcuffed her and handed a gun to the agent.

"Wait!" Lena shouted as the woman began to pull her from the room. "I can disarm that bomb!"

"Take her away." Michael answered dismissively as he turned to the fuse box that held the bomb. The woman placed the barrel of the gun to Lena's head and pulled her from the room.

As the woman walked Lena back through the hallway she had just walked with Michael, she listened closely to her ear piece. She heard her Blutooth follow the communication to another radio frequency. The other agent showed no sign that she was hearing the same communications Lena was. Michael was getting instructions from Birkhoff about how to disarm the bomb. She evaluated every step Birkhoff was relaying, was that what she would have done? If not would it still work? Each time the answer was yes.

"Ok." She heard Michael answer, there was a hint of uncertainty in his voice. "I don't see a secondary power source.

"Ok, Good that makes it simpler." Birkhoff answered.

"Birkhoff, this might be beyond me."Michael quietly confessed.

"No, You've got this Michael. Just listen." She heard Birkhoff respond in a strangely affirming tone. He repeated his directions to Michael, and Lena realized. They were missing a step.

Without a second thought she took down the woman escorting her. She kicked her from behind her knees and wrestled her to the ground. Michael had handcuffed her but in his haste he had not cuffed her behind her back, this allowed her to fight with her hands. The gun went skidding across the floor, but Lena managed to knock out her escort with a well placed punch. She left the girl in the middle of the hall, retrieved the gun and ran back down the hallway to the door. She pulled her cell phone from her clutch and quickly found her application that would jam all radio frequencies in and out of the room. She pressed the tiny icon placed the cell phone on the ground and opened the door to the mechanical room.

"Back away!" She yelled at Michael. He was turned away from her but she could almost hear his eyes rolling in his head. One hand held a wire cutter and the other was fumbling with his ear piece.

"I can't do that." He growled making no movement away from the bomb.

"I need to get a look at that charge. And you need to move far enough away to let me do my job."

"I'm not going to argue with you." He said definitively, he didn't move away from the bomb.

"There's a motion detector, probably looped into the power source. You need to deactivate that before you even attempt to remove the charge from the wall."

"I don't see a motion detector."

"Trust me."

"how do you know?"

"Cause if I was going to build a bomb like that, I'd put one on. Wouldn't you?"she argued

"I have a difficult time thinking like a terrorist." He sneered as he leaned in closer to the bomb to look for a wire.

"Well you need to, that's the only way to stay ahead."

"it takes one to know one." he sneered

"It's there." She decided to ignore his last comment though it made her blood boil. She finally got close enough that she could see the charge for herself around Michael. "The blue wire there, that's a false lead."

"How do you know?"

"Because it just is," She answered exasperatedly. "The red one is a suppressor wire, you need to ground that before you cut the white wire which is the primary detonator."

She watched as Michael raised his wire cutters toward the red wire. "NO!" She shouted causing him to drop the wire cutters on the ground. As he bent down to retrieve them she hit him in the back of the head with the hilt of the gun, knocking him to the floor. "Weren't you listening!" she barked as she stepped over his body, "Deactivate the motion detector" she cut two green wires at the top of the charge, "then ground the suppressor wire. Then, cut the blue wire to the detonator. She finished by snapping the blue wire. When the timer turned off at 2:46 seconds she relaxed. She took a deep breath then turned and pointed the gun back at Michael. Michael looked on from the floor where he clutched the back of his bleeding head.

"Who do you work for?" He asked

"You know I can't tell you that."

"You're CIA." He said, it was a statement not a question.

"I'm freelance." Lena lied.

"And you jammed my com. So I couldn't call for back-up."

"I jammed both our coms, so that we didn't accidently remote detonate the bomb."

"And now you'll have to kill me,"

"Not today." She said. There was a long pause as Lena continued to keep the gun pointed at Michael, safety off. He stared back into her eyes. He wasn't afraid, she wondered if he was afraid of anything after losing so much. She realized he really did look like her brother, she was surprised she hadn't recognized him instantly. His appearance hadn't changed that much. His voice had changed, apparently that rebellious smoking phase hadn't been so much of a phase as a new lifestyle. His face was older, weathered, and she could see the stress in his eyes but it was still her brother's face. She didn't know what to say. She couldn't tell him who she was. He'd probably never believe her, and if he did believe her it might break him. She knew he could never maintain her cover.

"Close your eyes." She heard his voice say inside her head, one of those unbeckoned memories from her past was fighting its way into her conscious mind. She listened to the voices but focused on keeping her eyes open and her mind alert. This was not the time to sink into a memory. "Come on kid, trust me" she could almost feel his hands on her face again, cover her eyes, just like they had done over fifteen years ago. "Ready, one, two… three!" She felt her stomach jump, and she knew that if she actually closed her eyes she would might actually see what Michael had surprised her with that day. "Happy Sixth Birthday, Claire."

Her eyes started to burn ever so slightly. No, she thought, she would not cry. She looked at the gun in her hands it had sunk about a centimeter.

"Go." He whispered almost inaudibly. She looked back from the gun to his face. She wasn't sure if she'd actually heard him or if that too had been in her head. But then he repeated himself and she saw his lips move. "Just go."

"Hi" she called as she opened the door to his apartment and flipped on the light switch in the kitchen. "Sorry I'm late, I needed to run back to my apartment and grab clothes."

"It's fine, I just got home too." Birkhoff called from the living room. She pulled off her long black wool coat and draped it over one of his chairs. She stepped through the kitchen and into the doorway to the living room.

"Not even gonna get up to say hello?" She teased.

"Babe, I'm beat," he confessed as he rolled his head away from the tv to look at her. His eyes stopped on her, she blushed. "You look…" He paused as he stood up from the couch and crossed the room. The silk green dress had caught him by surprise. "Stunning." He finished as he slid his arms around her waist and kissed her gently. Lena broke into a huge smile. She felt like a small child who wanted to show off their new dress by wearing it every day. The dress did make her feel beautiful. "What's the occasion?" he asked.

"I got invited to this gala… fundraiser…thing tonight. We've done some security work for a local business man who had an extra seat at his table. It was black tie." She explained as she tugged slightly at the dress.

"Why didn't I know about this?"

"Cause you've been working the last 72 hours straight. It was kinda last minute." She said with a smile.

"Wow…" he whispered under his breath. Still eyeing the dress, and the plunging neckline. "Wait. Where was this thing?"

"At the museum." She answered innocently.

"The museum! Tonight?" his back arched.

"Yea…" she trailed off "Why?"

"No reason!" he answered nervously, "I'm just glad you're back safe."

"Always worried about my safety." She teased with a smile as she slid his hand off her waist and reached for her bag. "How dangerous could a museum be?" She turned away from him and walked toward the bedroom to change.

You may or may not remember that Lena has a kick-ass blutooth device that intercepts division's (and any other company using radio communication) communications. It was introduced in chapter 3.

I hope you all enjoyed, please review! It really makes me happy!

So there will be a brief hiatus from the story, I'm going to Montana to volunteer as a consultant for a summer program for underprivileged kiddos and I won't be back until July 5th. I'm gonna try really hard to post another chapter before I leave but we all know I suck at quick updates. For about two and a half weeks I won't be able to write at all. So if I don't die white water rafting I'll get back to the story when I'm home.