A/N So, thank you everybody for staying with me so long. I have been away for a very long time and for that I apologise. I'm back with two options though. This feels to me like a last chapter, but I'm not sure how it feels to you. Let me know if you wish to see more of what happens, or if maybe it should be a different story. Thanks to all those who keep up with me and special thanks to a special British woman who has helped me a long with the language. You know who you are ;-)

Have a good week everybody and let me know what you think of this

Lk

Chapter forty, Warning Signs

''Miss Duncan, are you sure you understood this... person's motives?'' The blond man sighed, looking at Sabrina across the table. Kelly shot her warning look, fearing some kind of angry reaction but Sabrina looked weary.

''Look...'' She said to the man. ''It is what I've been telling you for three weeks since we returned in LA. I fear that they are planning a terrorist attack, I'm not sure where or when.'' She leaned back on her seat and shook her head. In the past three weeks she had been contacted multiple times by anti-terrorist squads, first the police and now this guy, Jerald Butler, from the government. She, Hope and the other Angels had repeated their story multiple times. Now, repeating it for the hundredth time it felt like chewing on stale pop corn. So annoying that she was close to disbelieving it herself.

''Yet when we reached Death Valley we found no traces of this so called organization.'' He insisted.

''You found the bodies of all those people in the school!'' Sabrina jumped, her mind racing back to Alice's body dropping dead on the floor. ''How do you explain that?'' She asked sarcastically. She was tired, tired of explaining herself to him over and over again. Over ten people had vanished from Death Valley along with the armed men and women under the Commander. Their bodies had never been found.

''What guarantees me you didn't have anything to do with this?'' He said, coolly, his features the shape sharp mask as the first time Sabrina had seen him.

''That is enough.'' Sabrina raised herself in a fluid motion and walked outside. She knew Kelly would be right behind her, she had had enough of Butler also, so she used her alone time to look out the window. She inspected the city underneath, bright and sunny as California always is. She was considering a vacation somewhere cold, hopefully soon. The heat that had been blissful and soothing now only served to remind her of Death Valley, of walking through empty streets and looking at dead bodies. She considered once more how close she and the rest of the team had come to becoming just that, dead bodies themselves. She wasn't sure she had the energy to do this again, maybe she should pursue a career behind a safe office desk.

Just as she had thought Kelly opened the door and exited the room, quickly searching the corridor with her gaze. She found Sabrina almost immediately and walked up to her, her side barely touching hers for some time, offering the comfort of another presence.

''We've done everything we could, Bri.'' She said softly. ''We've warned them to the best of our abilities. Let me take you home now, you still need rest.''

Sabrina turned to her, her frown turning to a gentle smile. ''Do you think it's enough?''

''It's all we can do.'' Kelly reached and patted her shoulder. ''We're only human.'' She sighed, watching her friend's face. During the last three weeks most of the cuts and bruises on them had healed but she still could see sometimes the pain in Sabrina's posture and the way Kris sometimes eyes the room so intensely you'd think she could see something the rest couldn't. Kelly was right, this was all they could do now, sit and wait until the time was right and the enemy was within striking distance. The Aryan was going to surface soon, and every single one of them could feel it. It was a matter of weeks, if not days.

They had kept in touch with Hope, Sabrina had even offered her a place to stay in LA and she had agreed. Despite the tension between them she still wanted to know how Alice had spent her last minutes. They had never found her body either and sometimes she could persuade herself she was, after all, alive.

She knew it was a lie.

Each of them had left a part of themselves in Death Valley. For her it just happened to be Alice.