"Where the hell is Solange?" Cassie said in a panic, taking a few running steps back across the bridge. "Did anyone see her go?"

"Not a thing," Ian said, his jaw set in a grim line.

Dragging a hand over her face, Cassie inhaled through her nose and clenched her teeth. "Could the Ocelotl have gotten her?" she asked, her voice tired.

Standing beside her, Cutter gave a low hum and stroked the rough growth of stubble on his chin. "Somethin' tells me that if Tristan's lads had gotten the drop on her, they wouldn't have hesitated to put a bullet in all of our backs."

"Then why…" Cassie pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. "Why would she have run off? It doesn't make sense for her to be working with them, not with everything that's happened so far." Growling in frustration, she added under her breath, "Goddammit Solange! Why do you have to be the world's worst client?"

"And she had the backpack," Ian noted, raking a hand through his hair, "which means she's got the mirror, too."

With a sigh of resignation, Cassie's eyes slid over to the entrance of the cave. "Maybe she went looking for the service entrance I came through." Taking the map, Cassie yanked the rubber band off and unrolled it. Her eyes narrowed searchingly as she studied the layout of the Ocelotl base. "If Solange was planning this and didn't just get captured behind our backs, she would have been going over the map when we had it open to find a route through on her own. And if I was her, I would cut through this part of the base and then over to the shrine." Cassie traced the path with her index finger.

Ian, who was looking over Cassie's shoulder at the map, nodded thoughtfully. "I see what you mean. The Ocelotl will probably all be going either to the inlet looking for us, or toward the clearing itself to prepare for whatever ritual is going down tonight."

He was close enough to Cassie that she felt his breath on her neck when he spoke, and despite the circumstances Cassie felt a flutter in her chest as she looked at him. "Exactly," she said, pushing the feelings aside for the time being. "Which means that- if there was any safe shot at getting through Tristan's base, it would be right down the middle."

"…at least until she gets to the shrine," Cutter observed. "Even if by some miracle she makes it that far without getting caught, it'll still mean sod all when she stumbles right into the middle of the hornet's nest." He made a face and added, "Altogether, I'm going to give her plan an 'A' on enthusiasm, but a 'D' on cohesive and well-thought-out strategy."

"Alright." Cassie snapped her fingers as her swirling thoughts coalesced into a plan. "I'm going to go after Solange. Seeing as our boat got blown up, I think you two should track down a way to get us out of here. I have a feeling this is all about to hit the fan in a big way, and it would be smart to have a quick escape ready."

Cutter raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, that sounds lovely." Holding up a finger as if he had just thought of it, he added, "Counterpoint: it would also be smart for us all to make it out of this alive."

"Exactly," Ian agreed, narrowing his eyes and looking skeptically at Cassie. "You just caught back up to us after the diving fiasco, and for you to go straight into the middle of the base is just..." He shook his head. "Tristan may have his reasons to keep Solange alive, but it's pretty clear he has no problem with killing us now that he has what he needs."

Cassie huffed in disbelief. "Guys, I'll be fine!" she objected. "Besides- I'm the stealthiest one out of all of us."

Cutter looked askance. "Are you though?"

Cassie looked almost offended. "Seriously?! I'm totally the stealthiest!" she protested. "I'm the fastest, the smallest-"

"Are you calling me fat?"

Cassie rolled her eyes. "And I'm plenty capable of handling myself. I mean, I not only just snuck off of Tristan's ship, I also set fire to it on my way out!"

"Which is exactly the kind of thing," Cutter interjected, "that would go under the 'not stealthy' column!"

Cassie huffed and looked over at Ian for help. "We gotta do something, and fast. The more time we waste talking about this, the further into trouble Solange gets."

Ian frowned and looked away, digging one heel into the ground in frustration. "She's right," he finally said, relenting. "We have to make a move, and fast. Charlie and I will go get a vehicle- maybe make some noise to draw the attention away from you and Solange." He glanced at Cutter, who shrugged reluctantly.

"Fine," Cutter said with a sigh. "But if we're splitting up, let's use these." He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a small black case. Opening it, he produced three earpieces and passed one each to Cassie and Ian. "At least we'll know if you get into trouble."

Cassie took the device from him and put it in her ear, giving Cutter a wry smile. "Or, more likely, if you do," she said. Cutter rolled his eyes at her and shot Ian a look. As Cassie turned away and started back toward the cave entrance, she suddenly felt a hand grab hers and she turned to see Ian looking at her. Meeting her eyes, he awkwardly ran his tongue over his lips and cleared his throat.

"It's, um- nice to see you made it out all that bullshit alive." Ian faltered and scratched the back of his head. "I'm hoping it stays that way?"

A half-smile tugged at Cassie's lips as she looked into his eyes. "Such a romantic," she teased. "I promise. Don't forget-" she said, looping her finger through the ouroboros hanging from her neck and holding it up. "This legend has to keep going."

Ian laughed softly and let go of her hand. "You got me there. Legends never die."

Once she made it through the cave and back into the crawl space, Cassie backtracked until she came to a vent cover that had been recently kicked out. She squeezed through the opening into an empty room and crossed to the door, carefully stepping over the fallen vent cover as she did. Turning the knob, Cassie was about to push open the door when she was stopped by the sound of heavy footsteps and voices echoing outside. Drawing her pistol, Cassie waited while a group of Ocelotl soldiers ran past, only risking stepping out when the noise had fully faded.

"No corpses yet," she murmured into her earpiece as she scanned both ways down the empty corridor outside.

"That's a good sign," Cutter replied.

Gun still at the ready, Cassie jogged quietly along while keeping an eye out for guards. "Is it just me," she said in a low voice, pausing to visually clear a room before pressing onward, "or do we collectively have the world's lowest bar to clear as far as what we'll take for a good sign?"

From Ian and Cutter's end, there was the scuffle of branches and foliage being cleared away and then Ian's response, "I like to think we're 'easy to please'."

Cassie pushed open a set of solid steel doors and entered a small room at the corner of two corridors. Moving quickly through, she peered through the window in the opposite door and froze when she saw a group of half a dozen Ocelotl running her direction. Immediately she turned around, only to watch one of the doors in the hallway behind her swing open, admitting a second group of soldiers into the corridor and effectively blocking her retreat. Neither group had yet seen her, but both were headed in her direction and set to converge in a matter of moments in the very room in which Cassie stood.

Shit! she thought frantically. Casting her eyes around the room, she spotted a vent cover low in the corner. "Yeah, I guess you're right," Cassie said into her earpiece as she dashed over and crouched in front of it. "Sometimes all I need to be happy is some decent HVAC." She hinged open the cover, slipped into the vent, and softly shut it behind her just as the doors on either end of the room burst open and Ocelotl swarmed in from both sides. Cassie held her breath and watched as the two waves of soldiers met in the middle and stopped to have an animated exchange in Spanish, most of which eluded her.

"Why do I get the feeling that statement isn't as innocent as it sounds?" Ian grumbled over the earpice.

The Ocelotl squadrons finished their conversation, tossed hurried salutes at each other, then headed off in opposite directions, leaving Cassie alone. She peered through the vent cover, watching the retreating backs of the Ocelotl as they disappeared down the corridor, and decided to stick to the air ducts for the time being. "I have no idea what you're talking about," Cassie said playfully as she turned and crawled through the vent.

"'Go treasure hunting', they said. 'It'll be fun', they said." Cutter struggled through a thick patch of undergrowth and grimaced as sharp thorns and branches scratched at his clothes and skin.

Ian raised an eyebrow. "Man, I gotta say- if someone actually said that to you, and you believed them- that's on you."

Cutter grunted indistinctly, then pushed a limb aside and let it go before Ian had passed. Ian only barely managed to duck under it.

"Thanks for that," Ian muttered sarcastically.

Cutter glanced back. "What are you complaining about? You're fine, mate."

"That almost hit me in the face!"

"Eh," the Englishman shrugged. "It's not like you're gettin' by on your looks anyways."

"Charlie!" Cassie sighed in their earpieces.

Cutter jumped down from a low ledge. "How are things going, luv?"

"Seen a few goons so far, but I'm staying out of sight," Cassie replied. "They're definitely worked up about something."

"Keep an eye out," Ian said as he climbed over a fallen pine. "I'd guess we have less than an hour of daylight left."

Sweeping aside a tangle of vines and brush, Ian stepped out onto a rock shelf that overlooked a valley. Cutter stepped out beside him and gave a low whistle. "Well," said the Englishman. "Would you look at that."

In the valley below was a weathered looking outbuilding beside a huge cylindrical fuel tank, with several jeeps parked around it. A handful of Ocelotl milled about, some of them fueling up the vehicles or under the hood checking the fluids, while two of them stood off to the side engaged in what appeared to be a heated argument. Ian and Cutter crouched low to avoid being spotted, and Ian whispered, "There's our ride."

"Try not to crash this one through a wall," Cutter grumbled back.

"Uh, hey guys?" came Cassie's voice in their ears. "The Ocelotl are loading up a bunch of helicopters in here. And Tristan's looking insufferably smug."

"What?" hissed Ian, drawing back behind a boulder. "Where are you?"

"In the ventilation shaft over top of a big hangar. There's like a half a dozen helicopters getting ready to take off and Tristan is talking to one of his head guys about something. I haven't seen…" Cassie trailed off suddenly and Ian gave Cutter a worried look. "Wait- I see her! It's Solange!"

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Ian sighed wearily. "And just how friendly does she look with the bad guys?"

Cassie hummed. "Well, judging by the handcuffs- not very." She paused, then added, "Uh, I mean… unless she's into that kind of stuff, I guess."

Cutter clucked in mock reproach. "For shame, darling. What would your parents say if they heard you talking like that?"

"Have you met my dad?" Cassie deadpanned.

"Touché."

"I need to get down there and help her. But there is a LOT of them." Ian heard Cassie give a huff of frustration, then she continued, "I need some sort of distraction!"

Peering over the top of the boulder, Ian scanned over the scene below and spotted a drum of fuel off to one side. "A distraction, huh?" Pulling out his pistol, he loaded a fresh clip and racked the slide. "Those are my specialty."

Cutter's brows furrowed in concern, and he watched as Ian lined up his sights with the explosive barrel. "Oh, for the love of-"

Inside the ventilation shaft, Cassie watched helplessly through the grate as a handcuffed Solange Cortés was brought into the room by a pair of brawny goons and shoved towards a helicopter that was preparing to take off. As they passed by Tristan, Solange managed to shake free from the men holding her and she turned to the Ocelotl leader in a pure rage. "You!" she hissed, with more venom than Cassie had ever heard from her before. "You killed my father, stole his life's work, stole the Smoking Mirror…" She snarled in disgust. "When will it ever be enough for you?"

"Enough?" Tristan laughed humorlessly, his heavily tattooed face dark and foreboding as he stared her down pitilessly. "Oh, Cortés- the world is not enough."

Solange growled, then- in an act of pure defiance- she spit in Tristan's face. One of the goons punched her, sending Solange sprawling on the floor before roughly yanking her up by her hair again and pushed her onward. Tristan wiped the spit from his face and momentarily glared at Solange before his expression returned to one of self-satisfied smugness. "We'll be going soon, Miss Cortés," he called after her as she was loaded onto the helicopter. "We have a score for the ages to settle!"

The crash of a door being thrown open echoed through the hangar, and Cassie watched as a lone Ocelotl soldier ran up to Tristan and blurted, "Sir! There's been an explosion at the fueling station!"

Tristan's lip curled in disdain. "Is it Drake?"

"No sir," the man said. "It's the two men. They took the soldiers preparing the jeeps by surprise."

Cassie smiled to herself as Tristan and his subordinate finished their conversation and the Ocelotl leader boarded the waiting helicopter. "An explosion," she said appreciatively. "Nice work, Foss!"

"Don't encourage him," Cutter remarked dryly. In the background, Cassie could hear gunfire. "I'm afraid for my life as it is."

Glancing back through the grate on the vent, Cassie saw that the hangar had mostly cleared out. As a tug hooked on to Tristan's chopper and began pulling it out onto the pad, Cassie edged forward and pushed on the grate. "It won't budge," she murmured, and tucked her head to look behind her.

As her weight shifted, there was a sudden and low groan, and Cassie felt a pop in a joint in the duct by her foot. Her eyes went wide as she watched the vent begin to separate at the seams under the strain she was putting on it. "Oh crap."

The air duct caved, dropping Cassie out the end and dumping her into the room below amidst a cacophony of metallic screeching and creaking. She landed on her back on a tabletop, the impact briefly stunning her before she rolled off onto her feet and found that she had come down in the middle of a small office off the side of the hangar. On reflex, Cassie drew her pistol and stood in a half-crouch, her heart beating wildly in her chest as she waited for soldiers to come bursting in. None came, and after a few moments Cassie straightened up and stepped cautiously up to the door. "Well," she said as she reached for the knob. "I guess all the ruckus of the choppers really did me a favor there."

Just before her hand closed on the knob, the door was flung open from the other side and two Ocelotl goons stepped in, nearly colliding with each other in the narrow doorway. Her eyes met theirs, and for a fraction of a second no one moved while a look of shock passed over the faces of all three.

The goon in front reacted first, raising his gun to fire. Cassie grabbed his wrist and yanked him past her, and then immediately kicked the second goon squarely in the stomach. A shot rang out from the first goon's gun as he stumbled into the room, the bullet embedding itself harmlessly into the wall behind Cassie, who pistol-whipped him into the door frame. The goon's head struck the metal with a sickening crack, and he crumpled unconscious to the floor. "Sorry to drop in unannounced!" Cassie said as she fired off a shot to finish off the second goon.

"How's that 'stealth' thing working out?" Cutter asked through her earpiece, the question dripping with sarcasm.

The hangar was in an uproar as Cassie stepped through. A group of a half a dozen men on the far side were running towards her and shouting, while on the helipad Tristan appeared in the open side door of his chopper and briefly locked eyes with Cassie, glowering as one of his men hit the button to begin closing the huge overhead bay door. "It was textbook," Cassie said in answer to Cutter's snark, "until about thirty seconds ago." A line of bullets strafed the ground only a few feet away, and Cassie dove towards one of the helicopter tugs, rolling into cover behind it and then blind firing a few rounds over the top.

"Yes," Cutter drawled in her ear. "It sounds like you've made some new friends."

The goon by the bay door suddenly appeared around the back end of the tug and pointed a gun at her. Before he could fire, Cassie landed a heavy punch to his gut, kneed him in the groin, and then slammed his head down on the wheel well. The man slithered bonelessly to ground. "They're not playing very nice though," Cassie answered, ducking down again as another wave of gunfire ricocheted around her. "I think I'm going to take my ball and go home."

Voice crackling over the incessant, percussive sounds of combat coming from their end, Ian chimed in, "What's happening?"

"Cass says she's going to take her balls and go home," Cutter supplied.

Ian made a sound like he was clearing his throat. "Well, this just got awkward…"

Cassie glanced toward the hangar's rapidly closing bay door- now only a few feet from the ground- and grimaced. "You two are incorrigible!" she muttered, then reached around the back end of the tug and grabbed the spare propane tank from its holder. A bullet struck only a hair's breadth from her hand, and she immediately drew back, pulling the tank with her.

"How about 'irreplaceable'?" Cutter asked.

Taking a quick, furtive look over the top of the tug, Cassie tossed the tank out, sending it rolling towards her assailants. The gunfire briefly lulled in response, and Cassie took the opportunity to sprint for the door, dropping and rolling under it with only inches to spare. A shout went up from the goons inside, and Cassie- still lying on her side- turned back towards the hangar, lined up a shot through the sliver of a gap between the door and the helipad, and fired off a single bullet into the propane tank. The bay door closed with a dull thud a split-second before a massive explosion shook the building, making the hangar door bulge outward.

"Jesus," Ian said. "That sounded permanent."

Her ears still ringing, Cassie got unsteadily to her feet and turned. "Just doing some light remodeling," she said, wiping the sweat from her brow. She looked up, shielding her eyes from the setting sun as well as the grit being raised by the prop wash, and saw Tristan's helicopter about twenty feet overhead and steadily rising. "Not on my watch!" Cassie yelled determinedly at the fleeing Ocelotl as she took the grappling hook off her belt. Swinging it in two quick, tight circles, Cassie released the end, which sailed gracefully upward and hooked onto the landing skid of the chopper. "Ha!" she crowed, grinning triumphantly. "First try!"

The line was pulled taut as the chopper continued to rise, and Cassie was yanked bodily from the helipad. "Whoa!" she cried, her heart leaping into her throat as she swung haphazardly out towards the rainforest and almost smashed into a tree.

"Is it all working out over there?" Cutter asked dryly.

"Just barely!" Cassie replied, kicking her feet to control her swing as she began to climb. "It got pretty sketchy there for a second, but I think-"

The view suddenly opened as Cassie was lifted over the tops of the Yucatan Peninsula's lush foliage, her words dying on her lips as she realized just how many helicopters were clustered around her like vultures circling a carcass. A pit settled in Cassie's gut as she looked on, and one of the choppers appeared alongside, hovering nearly level with her line of sight. An brawny, angry-looking goon stepped up to the open side and trained an assault rifle on her.

"Well, on second thought-" Cassie laughed nervously and swallowed a lump in her throat. "Lemme get back with you on that."