Salvation

Part Two

Chapter Fourteen: Smoke and Mirrors

Sark did not go down without a fight.

Jerking a .9 millimeter out of his belt holster, he flung the car door open hard enough to send Dixon sprawling, delivered a powerful kick to the felled man’s groin and took down Flower Shop Lady with a bullet to the thigh.

Then he was off, crashing into the strolling shoppers and harried business people crowding the midday sidewalk.

Two more black-suited agents leapt out of a nondescript SUV across the street and darted into the heavy traffic, angling to cut him off at the next corner. Sark aimed his gun over the crowd and fired twice at them; the agents ducked down behind a stalled taxi as the street erupted in terrified screams.

Shielded momentarily by the sudden chaos, Sark turned to dash down an alley and found himself directly in the path of a large gray sedan racing up it toward him. He didn’t have time to move; the bumper slammed into his left side, throwing him up onto the hood.

His eyes locked with the driver’s through the windshield as the sedan screeched to a halt.

Agent Michael Vaughn.

A tightly-controlled rage unwound in Sark’s gut as he stared at the man who – if Jack could keep her out of federal prison somehow – would, undoubtedly, have Sydney. Pure hatred overcame the urgency to escape. Ignoring the agents plunging desperately through the traffic and frightened bystanders, Sark snarled viciously at his rival, raised the .9 millimeter, and fired once through the glass.

Vaughn ducked just in time, flinging himself onto the steering wheel as the bullet – coming so close to his scalp he had to feel the heat of it – slammed harmlessly into the seat behind his head.

No time for a second shot. Sark rolled off the passenger’s side of the car, crying out as he brought his full weight down on his injured left leg, and limped as quickly as he could down the alley.

The two nameless agents came charging up behind him, raising their guns and shouting for him to stop. Sark ducked behind a dumpster and fired blindly in their direction. Their return fire glanced harmlessly off the rusted metal.

A few tense seconds of silence followed, during which Sark cast around for an escape route. He briefly debated his chances of fleeing down the alley, but the distance was simply too far – their bullets would cut him down before he made it halfway. He stood a better chance of making it to a door cut into the side of the building about twenty feet away; the lock looked flimsy, although with the piercing pain in his left leg - he suspected his ankle was broken – he wondered if he could kick it in.

As always when the situation appeared hopeless, Sark’s brain shifted into a calm, intense clarity and his senses heightened almost painfully. He heard the scuff of patent-leather shoes on the broken pavement as the agents, probably joined by Vaughn and Dixon by now, crept down the alley toward him.

He ignored the pain in his leg and concentrated on his options. If he ran for it, he might be killed. If he stayed here, he would certainly be captured.

The thought of Sydney’s cold, unforgiving eyes did more to persuade him than even the threat of life imprisonment. He would rather face bullets than her accusations.

Drawing in a deep breath, Sark leaned around the dumpster and squeezed off three random shots, sending his pursuers scurrying off to the sides. Only Dixon managed to fire back.

Sark gasped as the bullet tore the gun out of his hand, taking a chunk of his index finger with it. The .9 millimeter clattered to the pavement some yards away, well beyond his reach.

Sark swore under his breath but flung himself into action, closing his mind to the bone scraping around in his ankle as he sprinted toward the door, crossing the distance in a few interminable seconds filled with the horrific expectation of a bullet in the back. He slammed shoulder-first into the door; it gave so easily that he nearly fell as he stumbled inside and kicked it shut behind him.

He found himself in a windowless storage room, black as pitch and crammed with row upon row of floor-to-ceiling shelves, each one overflowing with boxes and bags. Sark winged up a prayer of thanks to whatever twisted deity was watching over him – he couldn’t have imagined a better hiding place.

Their fear of him made his pursuers tentative. Sark imagined them on the other side of the door, drawing straws to see who would push it open first. He smirked at the memory of Vaughn’s terrified face when he saw the gun leveled at his head; that was twice now he’d had the pleasure of making Agent Vaughn’s life flash before his eyes, and, Sark liked to think, the third time just might be the charm.

Easing along the eastern wall, his adrenaline pumping so hard it thoroughly dulled the pain in his leg, Sark forced himself to focus on survival rather than revenge. From the logo on the boxes, he gleaned that he was inside the storage area of a large department store; if he could make it out of this room without being caught – provided the agents ever worked up the nerve to follow him in here – he could shoplift some clothes and disguise himself, then melt away into the crowd.

And Sydney? The thought of her started a curious stinging in the area of his heart. Would he just leave Sydney behind?

Well, first things first. He needed to get himself out. Then he could determine how much trouble she was in – or, rather, how much trouble Jack had been able to keep her out of.

He didn’t delude himself that she would want him once the truth came out, and that stark realization threatened to sap his determination to make it out of this alive. A natural instinct for survival ordered him to shake off the looming despair.

If he lived, who knew what could happen? Anything was possible. Even that she might, someday, forgive him.

The side door finally squeaked open. Still a good ten feet from the exit, Sark froze immediately and waited, listening as three pairs of feet shuffled into the room.

Only three. Someone wasn’t joining the party, and that was troublesome. He preferred knowing where all of his targets were before he struck.

Of course, a more pressing problem was what to strike with, given that his gun was outside in the alley. The nagging pain in his hip and ankle warned him that he wouldn’t fare so well in hand-to-hand combat with three opponents right now. He needed a weapon, and fast.

Once again, some demented guardian angel seemed to be watching over him. The thought had barely materialized when, crouching against the wall, he noticed a cylindrical object inches to his right. Reaching out, he brushed his fingertips over a foot-long piece of jagged, rusty pipe, apparently dropped and forgotten when some old shelf had been removed.

Left there almost as if he were meant to find it. As if fate, or some higher power, wanted him to triumph today.

Such good fortune rarely visited Sark; he relied more on his own wits and prowess than on providence to slip out of life’s tight places. He tried not to read too much into it as he watched two pairs of shoes inching toward him, their owners oblivious to his presence. Across the room, he could hear the third person searching through the rows of shelves for him.

“I think we may have lost him,” one agent whispered hoarsely, less than a foot from Sark’s hiding place.

Idiots. Sark silently sneered at the men’s incompetence. These were the morons Sydney chose to ally herself with? If they came any closer, they were going to fall over him.

The two agents were now at opposite ends of the shelf Sark was hiding behind and closing in on him fast. He noiselessly gathered himself for the attack, the muscles in his back and legs coiling for the spring. In the next second, he leapt to his feet and swung the pipe hard to his left.

It connected solidly with the first agent’s face, flattening his nose. He shrieked in pain as blood spattered Sark’s white oxford. The second agent jerked his gun up but hesitated when his eyes met Sark’s – the mark of a rookie, Sark reflected, bringing the pipe down across the man’s out-stretched forearm. His agonized screams mingled with his comrade’s as the bone snapped and the gun slipped out of his hand.

A real weapon! Sark lunged for it, but the noise had alerted Dixon, who suddenly dove at him out of the darkness. They collided in a fierce tangle of fists and feet, kicking and punching and elbowing, and it might have been a close-matched fight if the pipe hadn’t provided Sark with an unequivocal advantage. He landed a direct hit to Dixon’s knee with it, and the bigger man went down to join his friends in a crumpled heap.

Having worked with Dixon at SD-6, Sark knew he wouldn’t stay down for long, so he didn’t risk going for the gun again. Instead, he dashed through the door leading into the store and crashed into the waiting Agent Vaughn.

The impact sent them both sprawling onto the cheery yellow tile. Vaughn’s gun skidded underneath a large plastic plant, but Sark held firmly onto his pipe. Startled shoppers hurried out of the way as both men regained their feet and faced off like angry lions.

Sark smirked when Vaughn’s eyes darted longingly toward the gun. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, gave the pipe a little twirl, reveling in the smell of the other man’s fear. C’mon, Sark’s eyes challenged, lemme show you what this little British mother-fucker is made of…

Vaughn’s first punch went wide over Sark’s shoulder. Sark swung the pipe with all of his might – hard enough to possibly be a killing blow had it connected with Vaughn’s skull – but his opponent side-stepped enough to diminish some of the force. Nevertheless, Sark was certain he heard a rib crack when the pipe came down across Vaughn’s side.

Unlike the other three, however, Vaughn didn’t succumb to the pain. He was sustained by a fury none of them had; whether it was born of knowing this was the man who had seduced Sydney or the belief that this was the terrorist who had held her against her will, Sark couldn’t be sure, but he read the blunt hatred in Vaughn’s eyes as the other man turned and swung again.

His second punch wasn’t necessarily any harder or better-placed than the first, yet it connected directly with the five-day-old bullet wound in Sark’s shoulder. He managed not to cry out with the pain, but his instinctive grimace fueled Vaughn’s attack, and his obvious limp provided his opponent with a perfect target. He stomped hard on Sark’s injured ankle – if it wasn’t broken before, it sure as hell was now – and Sark, immediately thrown off-balance, stumbled forward toward the wall to brace himself.

But Vaughn, scenting victory, was relentless. He kicked Sark squarely in the small of his back, driving him forward into the wall with terrible force. Sark’s forehead smacked hard against the rough concrete, instantly dazing him.

For one second, his palms splayed against the wall in a weak attempt to hold himself upright, Sark thought the fog in front of his eyes might lift enough for him to turn and fight. But a loud ringing rose to an excruciating crescendo in his ears, blotting out Vaughn’s commands for him to drop the pipe and turn around; then the darkness rushed up to engulf him, and the world spun away into blackness.

* * * *

Sark refused to play the errant suitor for Jack Bristow.

Three hours later, his left ankle enclosed in a bulky cast and his index finger bandaged and his forehead sewn back together by seventeen stitches, Sark faced Sydney’s father across a long metal table in a windowless gray room.

He had seen enough torture rooms to recognize one, but he also refused to show any fear, any hint of trepidation. He lounged as languidly as he could in a stiff-backed metal folding chair, successfully affecting an arrogant, unrepentant smirk.

They had offered him pain medication; he had declined. He needed to be clear and sharp and focused for this interrogation, not muddled by drugs.

The strip search had been almost as humiliating as the forced march past all of the google-eyed agents after his brief stint in the Operation Center’s infirmary. The crutches made it impossible to strut, so he let his penetrating stare and heartless smile do the reminding that he was not a man to fuck with. Unfortunately, the two beefy agents who had overseen his strip search were hardly impressed by his attitude. The memory of their deprecating grins would be seared into Sark’s mind forever – he couldn’t recall the last time his pride had taken such a beating.

Well, he could, but remembering Sydney’s face when his towel slipped away was just too painful at the moment, so he willed his thoughts elsewhere.

They had replaced his thousand-dollar tailored suit with plain black cotton pants – elastic waist, no draw strings and no zippers – and a shapeless black tee-shirt. Apparently someone in the CIA’s wardrobe department overestimated the notorious Mr. Sark’s stature, because the shirt hung almost to his knees. The concrete floors were cold, but they didn’t offer him socks or shoes, and he didn’t ask for any.

Just like he didn’t ask where Sydney was, or if she was all right, even though the questions were about to choke him.

For fifteen long minutes, Jack stared him down; for fifteen minutes, Sark retaliated against the glare with a cocky simper. No way would he give this man the pleasure of asking for anything, not even a glass of water for his parched throat. Sark was very, very good at stand-offs.

Jack broke first.

“Your fate is still being decided in the upper echelons of this Agency,” he announced gravely, to which Sark just arched an unconcerned eyebrow. Was he supposed to beg for mercy? Apparently not, since Jack continued smoothly, his clipped tone the only indication of his pent-up fury, “If it were up to me, we would be performing an interrogation right now.”

Ah, so the torture room was just a scare tactic! For the time being, anyway. Sark widened his grin, letting Jack know that he was on to the game.

When it became obvious that Sark had nothing to add, Jack prompted, “I don’t expect that you will be very cooperative, even if you are offered clemency.”

“If by clemency you mean the opportunity to spend the rest of my life in federal prison, then, no, I don’t expect I will be,” Sark retorted, careful to keep every emotion besides disdain out of his voice. His ankle throbbed, his head ached and his throat begged for water, yet he maintained a superior air, determined to not be broken by these inept government morons.

Not that Jack Bristow was either incapable or stupid. He was, in some ways, the CIA’s male equivalent of Irina. Sark particularly admired his cleverness in planting the time-delay tracking device on her during her extraction – and she had been so certain of the hold she had over him, of the faith he would put in her…

Like he had been with Sydney when he took her to Suratto’s.

The thought of Sydney threatened to undo his cocky façade, so he focused instead on the veins bulging in Jack’s neck. The man was working so hard to suppress his rage that Sark actually feared he might suddenly drop dead from a stroke.

“While there are those who believe you could be useful to this Agency,” Jack informed him, “I am confident that Derevko’s example will be enough to convince them that terrorists like yourself don’t deserve a second chance.” Big surprise there – Sark hardly expected Jack Bristow to be leading the campaign for his release. “However, if you cooperate with us on one rather urgent matter, I might be willing to ask for some leniency in your case.”

An urgent matter. Did this involve Sydney? It was difficult to imagine Jack being so dispassionate about his own daughter, but then again, the man made his living by hiding his true feelings.

Sark caved in to his curiosity. “I assume this has something to do with your daughter.”

“Let me be clear, Mr. Sark.” Jack lurched forward suddenly, nearly causing Sark to flinch. He caught himself in time and folded his arms placidly across his chest instead, managing to look coolly amused by Jack’s ferocity. “Whatever little game you and Irina Derevko were playing with my daughter, it ends now. After today, I intend to see to it that you never see Sydney again.”

“I would expect so,” Sark countered snidely, unable, suddenly, to be coldly distant, “since we’ll probably be on separate cell blocks.”

Oh, he gave it away there, didn’t he? Jack gloated at the subtle admission that Sark was curious about Sydney’s fate. “Actually,” he answered smugly, “Sydney is to be commended for her services to this country in agreeing, at my urging, to work undercover with you and Derevko. She has been fully cleared of any wrong-doing.”

So, Jack saved the day. Sark wanted to be angry about it; he wanted to be bitter that she could walk away from all of it unscathed. Except that wasn’t fair. He knew she loved him, knew he had betrayed her even more deeply than her mother had – how could he possibly think she would walk away from this “unscathed”?

And, deep down, where he didn’t like to dig around too much for fear of what he might discover about himself, Sark was glad she would be free. Even though it meant he would never see her again. Even though it meant another man – most likely the insufferable Agent Vaughn – would hold her at night and wake up with her in the morning.

He supposed he really and truly must love her, because even that horrible thought gave him a bittersweet pleasure. Sydney would be happy; she would be all right. Somehow, that made all of this easier to bear.

But business was on the table, and he needed to focus. Meeting Jack’s gaze as defiantly as he could, he demanded, “So, this urgent matter you referred to? What is it?”

A cloud passed over Jack’s face. “Although I advised her against it, Sydney insisted on questioning you about it herself.”

Holy shit. He was going to have to face her after all.

Sark struggled to remain expressionless as his heart rate tripled and his stomach turned over. Jack fixed him with a menacing glare, warning Sark to take his next words to heart.

“You will refer to my daughter only as Agent Bristow. You will answer her questions politely and respectfully. You will limit your responses only to the information necessary to answer those questions.” He leaned forward slightly, and this time, Sark couldn’t stop himself from easing back from the malice in Jack’s eyes. “Do we understand each other, Mr. Sark?”

At the moment, Sark didn’t trust his voice not to shake, so he just nodded curtly. Jack stared him down for another minute, then pushed back his chair, strode to the door and waved her in.

* * * *

Sark held his breath as Sydney, her eyes red-rimmed from crying and her hands trembling slightly, settled in across from him.

Jack stood like a sentry in front of the closed door. Apparently, he wasn’t trusted to be alone with her.

Or maybe she’s asked not to be left alone with him.

Sark’s arrogance threatened to abandon him entirely when she lifted her gaze to his. The accusations – the pain – the repulsion – and, underneath it all, the love he saw there cut him more deeply than anything she could have said.

Would she ever look at him with that mixture of joy and desire and tenderness again? Would he ever find anything other than contempt in those beautiful eyes?

He steeled himself against the urge to reach for her hands, resting lightly on the table between them, and whisper softly that it was all a lie. That Jack really was a double agent and that this was just part of his ruse to convince her he was loyal.

But the time for deception had passed. He owed her the truth, and he feared he wouldn’t even be able to give her all of that. So he faced her with what he hoped was a passably inscrutable expression – something that concealed the worst of his agony, anyway – and waited for the questions to begin.

When she spoke, her voice was so brittle with anger and hurt that he winced and dropped his eyes back to the table, unable to meet her gaze head-on. “Where is Francie?”

Well, fuck it.

Sark shut his eyes and allowed himself a brief, tiny grimace. He was really fucked now, wasn’t he? Maybe she could have forgiven the lies about Jack; maybe in time she could have forgotten the hell he’d put her through these last few days. But he knew her well enough to know she would never, ever forgive him for the role – peripheral as it was – that he had played in her best friend’s death.

They might as well show him to the gas chamber now, because any hope he had of surviving this meeting had just crashed through the floor.

“Where is she?” Sydney asked again, this time a bit shrilly as the fury worked its way into her voice. Her cheeks were flushed, her fingers clenching and unclenching on the table.

“I would like to say,” he began, glancing at Jack, who grudgingly nodded for him to continue, “that your mother and I had nothing to do with Miss Calfo’s fate. Sloane only brought me in on the plan after the fact.”

And why was he defending Irina again?

Habit, he supposed.

“Where,” Sydney’s voice was suddenly icy cold, like her stare, and Sark sensed that her anger had reached a dangerous level, “is she?”

“Agent Lennox taught us an important lesson.” Sark’s throat rebelled against the next words, but he forced himself to speak evenly and to look her straight in the eye. “Never leave the person being doubled alive.”

Sydney’s mouth twitched; briefly, Sark thought she might the win battle against the tears, but then she pushed away from the table and turned her back to him, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. He started for her instinctively, stopped when Jack advanced on him, waited wordlessly while her father placed a hand on her shoulder and asked if she was all right.

Her tears, as always, sliced through his tough exterior and lay open his very soul. He needed to escape. The walls seemed to be closing in on him, and he was finding it difficult to breathe. His head began to swim; he drew in a deep, shaky breath as a wave of nausea swept over him.

Jack must have heard it, because he turned back to him and frowned with some concern at his prisoner’s sudden pallor. “Water,” he said abruptly.

“What?” Sydney, her face damp with tears, turned and looked at Sark as well. A flash of alarm, of an instinctive desire to comfort him. She blinked it away and glanced back uncertainly at her father.

“Get water,” Jack ordered quietly.

The room was really spinning now, and humiliated as he was to be coming apart like this, Sark couldn’t help but be grateful when Jack laid a steadying hand on his shoulder.

“Lean your head forward,” he commanded gruffly.

Sark obeyed, feeling uncharacteristically meek; he crossed his arms on the table and rested his forehead against them, surprised by how sweaty he was when he was shivering with cold.

Moments later, Sydney returned with a tall glass of cold water. She didn’t meet his eyes when she handed it to him, didn’t let her fingers brush his. Sark drank it down greedily while the father-and-daughter duo huddled in the corner, pretending not to watch him. His head cleared somewhat, though his face and hands still tingled from a strange weakness.

Head injury, he consoled himself. Probably a concussion.

Heart injury, his inner voice retorted. Brought on by ruining any future you might have had with the woman you love.

Placing the glass back on the table, Sark cleared his throat deliberately, letting them know he was strong enough to continue. This time Sydney leaned against the door and Jack sat down across from him, studying him intently.

“You’re certain Miss Calfo was murdered?”

“According to Mr. Sloane, she was.”

“And you have no reason to believe he would lie to you about that?”

Sark shrugged, never having given it much thought before. “I don’t see why he would. There are a good many things he simply chooses not to tell me, but so far as I know, he’s never directly lied to me about anything.”

Jack nodded. Both men avoided looking at Sydney, and for a brief moment, Sark felt strangely united with Jack in a mutual inability to watch her in this much pain. Their eyes locked and a silent understanding passed between the two of them.

They both loved her, more than anything else in the world.

Sark looked away first, dizzy and sick and weak enough to be afraid he might actually burst into tears. “What was done with the body?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know. As I said, I was only informed of the op after the asset was in place.” Sark glanced at Sydney – who was staring at him with nothing short of outright hatred – then at Jack, then back at Sydney, a bit bewildered. “Why are you asking me this? Don’t you have the woman who was doubled in custody?”

Shaking his head, Jack confessed, “She disappeared late last night. She told Will Tippin that she was going out of town for a business conference, and since then, no one has heard from her.”

Sark waited for the next, inevitable question. “Who was she?”

He stripped himself of all the arrogance and faced Jack with total honesty. “I have no idea,” he answered. “I asked Mr. Sloane that myself once, and all he would say was that she was ‘fully capable’ of handling the job.”

Sydney snorted derisively but withheld whatever nasty comment she had about that. Jack considered him until he seemed satisfied that he was hearing the truth. Then he rose. “As I said, your future has yet to be decided. In the meantime, you’ll be moved to a cell in this facility.”

Jack moved for the door, but Sydney stayed where she was, whispered something to him that Sark couldn’t quite catch – something that sounded very much like a request for a moment alone with him. Sark’s heart jumped with the hope of a reconciliation, of at least the chance to tell her how much he loathed himself for hurting her this way.

But Jack shook his head firmly, and although Sark’s stomach plummeted with disappointment, he couldn’t blame the man for wanting to protect her.

Sydney didn’t seem to agree. Her eyes blazed, and she looked ready to argue the point until Jack leaned in close and whispered something that took the fight out of her. Body rigid with the effort of holding herself up under the weight of her grief, Sydney nodded stiffly and left without a backward glance at Sark.

Come back, he wanted to scream after her. Don’t leave me here.

His own grief swelled around him – grief over losing her, grief over losing his freedom for what would probably be forever. He could have wept for the unfairness of it all.

He settled for raking his hands through his hair and heaving a weary sigh.

Following her out, Jack paused in the doorway and turned back to him. Sark again had the weird feeling that they were connected by their love for Sydney, that Jack’s next words were some kind of personal plea for him to make this easier on all of them.

“I strongly suggest that you reconsider your position on cooperating, or our next meeting might not be so pleasant.”

No longer interested in playing the bad guy, Sark just nodded mutely and stared down at his hands, knowing – as Jack knew – that he wouldn’t talk, no matter what they threatened him with. What more did he have to lose?

Sometimes, all a man had left were his pride and his secrets.

* * * *

In the hallway, Sydney slumped against the wall and sucked in big gulps of air, wondering just how many earth-shattering revelations a person could survive in two weeks’ time without suffering permanent psychological damage.

Her father’s hand – strong, reassuring, slightly calloused – closed over her shoulder. She expected to cry, but the tears seemed wrung out of her, for the time being at least.

“I’m so sorry, Dad,” she whispered, her voice catching in her throat.

Jack’s words were rough with emotion. “That’s their game, Sydney. People like Sark and your mother have no real feelings. They play to whatever they believe will get them what they want.”

Jack held her at arm’s length, forcing her to accept his words, to take the pain of the truth in right down to her heart, where it slashed away at the remnants of her sanity. A numbness crept over her again as he continued, “No relationship they have ever had has been real. It’s all just smoke and mirrors.”

Smoke and mirrors. Oh, but if he knew the real magic between her and Sark – if he could see what she saw when she looked at him – he would understand that, even now, she couldn’t hate him.

Despise him, yes. Fantasize about killing him, yes. Hope he spent the rest of his life in a tiny windowless room, yes.

Stop loving him? No.

And now she had to search for the body of her best friend. And break the news to Will that not only was he somehow a part of this sick game her mother and Sloane were playing, but his best friend was dead and the woman he loved was some genetically-engineered replica of her.

A normal life. What would she give for a time machine, for the opportunity to go back and tell that slick bastard who recruited her into SD-6 to shove his little CIA business card up his ass, and just go on with life being shy, insecure, wallflower Sydney Bristow?

Jack was watching her, his face so riddled with concern that she instinctively jumped to reassure him. “What do we do now?” The emptiness in her voice surprised even her.

“We’ll begin a search for – the – body. And for the woman who impersonated her, of course. And naturally Will needs to be debriefed.” He raised his hand against her protest. “Sydney, we have to know what’s been done to him. It’s entirely possible he has committed crimes he isn’t even aware of. And, he may be able to remember something about this woman’s true identity, if we can just get past whatever walls she put up in his mind.”

So, add subjecting Will to grueling interrogations and endless hypnotic regressions to the list of reasons she wanted to put a gun in her mouth right now. It was all so unbelievable and overwhelming and horrifying that Sydney suddenly buckled under it, leaning heavily against her father’s arm and clinging to him when he embraced her.

“I just want to go somewhere and sleep,” she told him, in a very small voice that reminded her of herself as a child.

Jack held on, rocking her gently. For a man who was never comfortable with displays of parental affection, he rose admirably to the occasion, she noted thankfully.

“I think you should take some time off. Go be with Vaughn.”

Sydney jerked back at that, as stricken as if he’d slapped her. Jack lifted his hand, silencing her as he continued, “Sydney, there aren’t many things in this world that I can protect you from. I don’t really feel justified giving you fatherly advice most of the time, considering that you practically raised yourself.”

She started to object but he spoke over her, so she let him finish. “But this is an area that I do know something about. After your mother left, I couldn’t bring myself to trust a woman again. I imagined every woman was Irina Derevko. And, I think, I also couldn’t imagine ever loving someone as much as I loved the woman she pretended to be.”

What did it take for him to confess this to her? Despite her own pain, Sydney’s heart broke for her father as he continued, “I don’t pretend to understand how you could care for a man like Sark, knowing what he is, having seen the things he’s done. But when I saw your mother again for the first time, I realized that, even knowing what she was, it was difficult for me not to believe in the lie.”

Sydney nodded, completely understanding the inability to separate Irina Derevko from Laura Bristow. Didn’t she suffer that turmoil every time she saw her mother? Didn’t she feel the same way with Sark, constantly asking herself who he really was – the tender man who loved her so completely or the cold-blooded killer who routinely ruined people’s lives?

Jack answered the unspoken question for her. “Sark is what he is, Sydney.” His words, though stern, were laced with compassion for the misery in her eyes. “He’s a murderer, and a liar, and an enemy of this country and everything you believe in. People like him and your mother can’t be rehabilitated. They can’t be redeemed. And the people who try to save them are the ones who end up paying in the end.”

He turned her around gently, speaking softly in her ear as Vaughn, walking carefully because of two broken ribs, came down the long corridor toward them. “Vaughn is a good man, Sydney,” Jack told her, and she couldn’t disagree. “And he loves you. Just remember that.”

She remained rooted to the spot, paralyzed with grief and torn between the desire to run into Vaughn’s arms and the urge to run back into the room with Sark, to hold him close and swear she would stand beside him through all of this, regardless of his betrayal.

But Francie was dead – dear god, could she really be? – and Will was about to be traumatized yet again and she had nearly committed treason this morning, all because she had allowed herself to fall in love with the enemy. And Jack saw what she had seen after that day in Madrid when she found herself longing for her next encounter with Sark – Vaughn was her anchor, her rock, her sanity. He might not set her blood on fire with passion, but he never betrayed her, he never set out to hurt her, he never let her down when she needed him.

Vaughn was the road back to the light, the ascent out of the madness she had descended into, the consolation, if not the cure, for her irrational desire to be with Sark. Jack was offering her redemption, a chance to atone for the betrayals she had committed these last few days, a way to reclaim the Sydney she had been before all of this.

“Are you all right?” Vaughn greeted her with his stock question. She squashed the irritation and nodded, moved into his arms when he extended them. He kissed the top of her head. “Your dad explained everything to me. He said he ordered you not to tell me about this all last night.” He tilted her chin up and studied her, his brow furrowed with concern. “I was a little surprised that you obeyed. You don’t usually have a problem with breaking protocol.”

“Vaughn, I’ve done enough to make you almost lose your job the past few months,” Sydney replied, loathing herself for the deception she was now pulling on him.

She glanced over his shoulder at her father’s retreating back. Did Jack realize that, no matter what happened now, some vital part of her relationship with Vaughn would also be based on a lie? Because she could never tell him about Sark, and she could never admit to the crime she’d almost committed this morning. It would just stand there between them, eating away at her, waiting, like a tumor, to be discovered one day and tear their world apart.

Was any relationship ever totally honest, though? Hadn’t losing Danny proven to her that the truth didn’t always set people free?

“Syd, you don’t have to protect me. I want to know everything, no matter what the Agency says, okay?” She nodded, glad when he let it go and just held her. The comfort of a man’s body – even if he wasn’t the man she wanted… “I think I should take you home. You just tossed and turned last night. You have to be exhausted.”

“I need to see about Will first.” Her stomach churned at the thought of his face when she told him about Francie.

Francie…She needed a quiet room and a few hours alone to really grieve for her friend, but she doubted she would be granted that reprieve anytime soon. “Do you know what they’re doing about the search for Francie? And her – double?”

“Kendall’s called a meeting, but Syd, really, you should get some rest. You’re no good to anyone if you don’t take care of yourself.”

Safe, sturdy, predictable Vaughn. She sighed against his chest, gave in to being cared for. “Okay. Take me home.”

He hesitated. She sensed the sudden tension in his muscles and backed up immediately, terrified that, somehow, she had just given away the game. Only his nervous smile reassured her this had nothing to do with her being in love with another man.

When Danny proposed, it had shocked the hell out of her. Perhaps a woman only had to experience it once to see the signs – the anxious smile, the uncertain gaze, the fidgety hands slipping in and out of his pockets.

She revisited the suffocating feeling from Holtz’s apartment the night before. She wanted to walk away, to turn and run down the hall before he could get it out. But the air seeped out of her lungs and her feet froze to the ground, leaving her stranded before him as he slowly – she winced for him at the pain in his fractured ribs – dropped to one knee and produced a small blue-velvet box from his pocket.

“I know this isn’t the best time,” Vaughn began, and she wondered if her horrified expression would make him lose his courage, “but I’ve been carrying this around for weeks, and…Syd, I never want to come that close to losing you again. I acted like an idiot before, questioning how you felt about me. I think it was mostly because I wanted to ask you this so much, and at the same time I was afraid it was just too soon, but…It isn’t too soon. I don’t want to waste another minute.

“So,” he paused, steadying himself with a breath and flipping open the lid to reveal a gorgeous marquis-cut diamond, “Sydney Bristow, will you marry me?”

Oh, the need to run away. The need to escape. The need to flee from this moment and the realization that she would never love anyone the way she loved the man in the next room – the man who could never be who she wanted him to be.

Or could he? If she went back to him, if she refused Vaughn and went with her heart instead of her head, could Sark become the man she had seen in their time alone together?

Another one of those moments when life hinged on which path she took. Jack’s face swam up into her mind’s eye, his expression both desperate and earnest, as if to say, Come back to us, Sydney – take his hand and just come back to us both.

And what choice did she have?

Because Sark was lost to her forever. The fairytale was over and this, like it or not, was reality. This was who she was supposed to be, and who she was supposed to be with.

So she knelt and pulled Vaughn into a gentle kiss – nodding when he asked her if that was a yes – and willed herself to love him back.

Chapter Fifteen: Captivity

I’m not crazy I’m just a little unwell

I know right now you can’t tell

But hang around and maybe then you’ll see

A different side of me

I’m not crazy I’m just a little impaired

I know right now you don’t care

But soon enough you’re gonna think of me

And remember how I used to be

“Crazy,” Matchbox 20

Eight weeks into captivity, Sark understood insanity.

At first, the utter lack of privacy galled him most. The cell – he assumed correctly it was the same one Irina had been held in – was monitored constantly by security cameras and by two armed guards who paced up and down on the other side of the window.

The first time nature forced him to use the small metal toilet, he honestly thought he might die of embarrassment.

Aside from the humiliation of being put on display like a zoo animal, the lack of anything to occupy his typically never-quiet mind threatened made him edgy and grumpy. At least during the first few weeks, the absolute boredom was tempered by the expectation of being summoned for torture or sentenced to execution at any moment. Neither happened.

Twice during the first week Kendall – adept at reading people, Sark saw right away this was a terribly insecure man with a real need to assert his authority – appeared outside the window to request his cooperation. Sark responded by sitting down on the stiff cot and pretending to meditate.

Jack hovered over Kendall’s shoulder during these brief meetings, and Sark avoided direct eye contact with him, regretting his show of weakness that Jack had been privy to on the day of his capture.

Seeing Jack also made him think of Sydney, which Sark tried valiantly not to do, since thoughts of her filled him with a guilt and a longing even more unbearable than the imprisonment. He hadn’t so much as glimpsed her since that first day, and he fully expected Jack to hold true to his word and never allow him to see her again.

He wondered if they had tracked down his L.A. asset yet. He wondered if Francie Calfo’s body had been discovered. He wondered how Irina had reacted to the news of his capture. He wondered about a good many things, not the least of which was what the CIA would decide to do with him – torture him, kill him, or keep him on ice while they waited for his existence to become useful somehow.

The last option disturbed him most.

His true entertainment – and what helped him fend off the darkness for as long as he did – came in the form of Marshall Flinkman, who scurried in, flanked by two armed guards, about halfway through Sark’s third day as a prisoner.

“I need to check you for trackers and transmitters,” he explained, looking both apologetic and terrified.

Sark liked Marshall. He had liked him the moment they met at SD-6; given his affinity for Suratto, he suspected he might have a soft spot for autistic-type geniuses. He placidly endured the numerous scans Marshall performed, leaning heavily on one crutch as the nervous little man ran gadget after gadget over his limbs.

“Gees, they really, you know, that’s a really small bed,” Marshall commented on about his fourth sweep, licking his lips and glancing anxiously over his shoulder at the guards, as if he thought he might not be allowed to speak to the prisoner.

“Not quite the accommodations I’m used to,” Sark admitted, concentrating on remaining perfectly still to put Marshall a bit more at ease. He wavered between amusement and pity for how obviously terrifying Marshall found him. “I’m glad to see the CIA was smart enough to keep you on after SD-6 was destroyed.”

Marshall hesitated with his hand on a sixth scanner, this one a long silver cylinder. He offered Sark a wide if shaky grin. “I have my own desk. I mean, you know, I had my own desk at SD-6 and everyone here has their own desks, but…At least they didn’t put me in a closet or something. Or in prison, you know, ‘cause I was working for the Alliance and all that…”

His voice trailed off when a glint of bemusement flashed into Sark’s eyes. “I told Mr. Sloane we should have recruited you before SD-6 went down,” Sark confessed, in all honesty.

He didn’t add that Sloane’s reply had been some nasty little comment about finally being free of Marshall’s oddities.

Apparently, Marshall wasn’t a man accustomed to much praise, because from that moment on, he became something of a devoted – if extremely tense and jumpy – fan of Sark’s. Sark could only imagine the courage it took for the perpetually nervous little man to ask Kendall’s permission to see him, but somehow he must have summoned it, because twice a week, like clock-work, Marshall appeared outside the glass and chatted frantically for ten minutes, his allotted visiting time.

At the end of the visit, Marshall would hand the guards two tattered paperback science fiction books that had already undergone rigorous CIA scans for weapons and transmitters. Sci fi novels (especially Star Wars serials, which seemed to be Marshall’s obsession) were hardly Sark’s forte, but he appreciated the gesture anyway – more, he suspected, than Marshall would ever know.

Though if he ever got out of this place, Sark fully intended to see to it that Marshall and his elderly mother suddenly received enough cash flow to keep them both comfortable for the rest of their lives. He would find some way to hide it from the CIA, since they wouldn’t condone one of their scientists receiving large payments from a known terrorist, but keeping the CIA in the dark wasn’t usually much of a challenge, really.

By Week Four, Sark found himself actually caring if Bobba Fett killed Han Solo’s son, and that started to frighten him.

He exercised religiously for the first month. Three times a day, thirty minutes each: yoga to wake up his screaming muscles (uncomfortable was a kind description of the cot), a grueling aerobics routine to whittle away the long afternoon, more yoga to wind himself down for sleep. The cast on his ankle made it difficult, but he persevered.

Between those times, he read – he was a voracious reader, so he finished the paperbacks in a few hours but then reread them, over and over – and meditated and paced and glared through the window at the guards.

Yet more and more, the boredom pressed in on him, and he simply couldn’t find enough to fill the endless days. Normally content with four hours of sleep at most, he took to sleeping longer and more frequently, losing himself in dreams of cruising in his Mercedes down a sun-baked highway with the top down, walking naked out into the waves on a deserted stretch of beach, sipping cabernet at a quiet French café.

He dreamed of Sydney, too, but refused to dwell on it. He willed himself not to think of her at all, and mostly succeeded, except in the panicky half-asleep-half-awake moments when he feared he might be forgetting what her voice sounded like.

The highlight of his days became the weekly trip down the hall to the one-stall shower room. He also measured time by it. Every Saturday morning, four guards entered his glass cage, shackled his hands and feet, and shuffled him four doors down to a tiny washroom. It became almost ritualistic – they unlocked the cuffs, stared at him as he stripped out of the black pajama-style tee-shirt and trousers, stood outside the flimsy shower curtain as he scrubbed himself free of a week’s sweat and grime.

Sark didn’t mind dirt. Regardless of what the expensive suits and fine wines suggested, he wasn’t prissy. Still, he reveled in the simple pleasures of working shampoo into his greasy scalp and lathering soap over his sweat-coated skin.

After the shower he dressed in a clean tee-shirt and trousers, all the while under the mocking stare of his captors. It infuriated him at first, their lack of humanity in allowing him even the smallest measure of privacy, but eventually he adapted to it and ignored them. They became invisible.

He shaved at the stainless steel sink next to the shower with four guns aimed at his head. The guards never so much as blinked until he handed the razor back. Then he brushed a week’s worth of fuzz off his teeth, endured a pat-down from the guards who knew he couldn’t possibly have discovered a weapon in the bathroom, and marched in chains back to his cell.

Some highlight, but he anxiously awaited even that small change of pace.

On Day 24, a lab-coated young woman, led in by six armed guards, cut the cast off of his ankle with a small saw. While Sark inspected the withered limb with morbid fascination – creepy to see one ankle shrunken to half the size of the other – she rapidly explained the exercises he needed to do to rebuild the muscles, then practically ran from the room with the guards swarming around her.

Her terror should have thrilled him; instead, it barely phased him. He added the exercises she’d recommended into his work-out routine, though only half-heartedly.

Not like the walk between his cell and the shower room required much mobility. He was beginning to wonder why he even bothered with the exercising, or anything else, really. Why not just sleep until they decided his fate, or he simply became part of the blasted cot?

In Week Five, he stopped eating.

It wasn’t necessarily a conscious choice. The food, while nutritious enough he supposed, hardly appealed to his appetite: gruel-like oatmeal and runny orange juice for breakfast, a small wilted-lettuce salad and either a roast beef (Monday, Wednesday, Friday), ham (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday) or turkey (Sunday) sandwich and a mealy apple for lunch, various flavors of thin soup and canned corn and weak iced tea for supper.

So, on his thirtieth morning in captivity, he simply rolled over, looked at the breakfast tray the guard was holding, turned over again and went back to sleep.

For four days, the hunger offered something to focus on besides the boredom and his growing despair. His insides ached so badly he thought he might cry out sometimes, but he had no desire to surrender to the pain, to break down and wipe clean the trays they continued to carry in every mealtime.

Then the hunger faded, became a dull throb deep down in his belly, and the despair mounted.

He called it despair, but it was perhaps more of a blackness, or a numbness, or possibly a hollowness. He felt strangely detached from himself. Sometimes, when he lay quietly on the cot counting the tiles in the ceiling for what might have been the millionth time, he imagined he was actually on the ceiling looking down at his body on the bed. The giddy, stomach-dropping sensation made him grin, which in turn caused the guards to shift nervously outside his window, no doubt believing he was picturing all the ways he might torture them if he escaped.

But escape, oddly, rarely crossed Sark’s mind. To dwell on it, he supposed, might be the deciding factor that shoved him over the edge into insanity.

On Night 36 of his captivity, he dreamed of Sydney – not an uncommon event, only this dream completely unnerved him. He saw her standing on the balcony of the house he’d bought for them in Australia – please, he couldn’t think about that, he couldn’t remember how safe and loved he’d felt with her there – beckoning to him, her gold-flecked eyes round and laughing. He moved for her, but in the next instant, the world tilted and he was falling, flailing at emptiness as he plummeted deeper into a black abyss.

When he finally hit the bottom, he was standing in Sydney’s living room, staring at her mangled, bloody, decaying corpse stretched out alongside the couch.

His stomach lurched, his heart burst with pain, and he started for her, calling her name in an agonized voice he almost didn’t recognize as his own. Then he backed away in horror as her dead eyes lifted to his and her lips parted around an accusatory hiss.

He woke up in a cold sweat.

That day, he stopped exercising, stopped pacing, stopped meditating. He took to staring at the walls and ceiling blankly, focusing on thinking about nothing. When memories of his time with Sydney or images from that terrifying dream became too insistent to ignore, he would lie down and sleep.

By Week Seven, he was sleeping fifteen hours a day, and still not eating.

Marshall still visited, but Sark no longer made any attempt to interact with him as he had at first. He did, however, read the books Marshall faithfully brought, but now only once. The stack of paperbacks beside the cot grew into a small pyramid.

Jack Bristow came to visit him on Day 50. Sark lounged on the cot, resting his shoulders against the wall and draping his elbows across his drawn-up knees, too weary, suddenly, to stand and walk to the glass.

Finally, he thought woodenly, something has been decided.

Jack’s face was stiff, his voice cold. “I’ve been asked to speak with you concerning this hunger strike you’ve gone on.”

A few weeks ago, Sark would have outright laughed at the idea of counter-attacking his CIA captors with a hunger strike. Playing to their humanity? Hardly his style.

But now, he didn’t give a shit what they thought, so he just shrugged and responded mildly, “Tell them to send me a medium-rare steak and a bottle of merlot, and I’ll eat.”

“We don’t pander to people like you, Mr. Sark. You eat the food that’s provided or you don’t eat.”

“Then don’t bother with it. I hear there are starving children in Africa, so let them make better use of it.”

A twitch in Jack’s cheek told Sark he was close to losing his temper. “Passively committing suicide isn’t quite what I expected out of you, Mr. Sark. I thought you had more fight in you than that,” he bit out, loading the words with contempt.

In another life, sometime before he read his inevitable fate in Sydney’s dead dream-eyes, Sark might have been sufficiently goaded into fighting for survival by that blow to his pride. But what was the use? If Jack Bristow wanted to believe he was a coward, and the CIA suits wanted to believe he was working the pity angle, what the hell did it matter to him? He was barely twenty-three and the rest of his life stretched out before him in an interminable string of empty, tedious, closely-observed days.

He didn’t give a fuck about the spy world anymore. He didn’t give a fuck about anything anymore.

Well, he did about one thing, but he couldn’t have her, so he might as well lie here on his cot and wait to die.

At least death would be a change.

Jack didn’t return, but apparently the powers that be were increasingly concerned with their charge’s welfare, because after that Sark was taken to shower daily. The guards treated him with a mixture of disdain and wary compassion. Sark ignored them.

Sometimes, he didn’t even bathe; he just stood morosely under the tepid spray until they tired of waiting for him and ordered him to come out.

His reflection in the mirror when he shaved grew more gaunt and sallow by the day. His hands shook constantly; his legs were so weak he could hardly shuffle down the hall to the washroom; his eyes lost their sapphire luster; his gums bled profusely when he brushed his teeth. He took a twisted pride in the damage he was inflicting on himself.

What doped-up idiot couldn’t shove a gun in his mouth and eat a bullet in a moment of desperation? Killing himself slowly, over a period of pain-ridden weeks, now this took stamina. This took determination.

Only he couldn’t have cared less, really, whether he lived or died. Perhaps his cells would find some way to survive on the few mouthfuls of water he swallowed everyday. He was beyond caring. He was numb.

Miracles aside, any day now, his kidneys would begin to shut down. The toxins would build up in his bloodstream, and he would drift away into an endless sleep.

He thought of Hamlet: “But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?”

Even hell, he reflected, had to be better than this cage. And maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be hell. Maybe his eternity would be filled with blissful dreams of Sydney and the life they could have shared together.

Or maybe it would be torment, a personal hell designed just for him – helplessly watching her die in some horrific way over and over again, or seeing her living out a full and happy life with Michael-Fucking-Vaughn, or reliving every opportunity he’d passed by to tell her the truth before it came to this.

He recognized that he had crossed the brink of insanity when he found it difficult to care whether terror or joy awaited him in the afterlife.

Then, on Day 57, in Week Eight of his captivity, something happened that quickened Sark once more.

Marshall arrived for his routine ten-minute visit, and even in his starvation-induced stupor Sark noticed how unusually edgy his visitor was. If the unstoppably-twitchy Marshall could seem jumpy, something had to be up; in spite of himself, Sark’s curiosity was piqued.

He closed his eyes and waited for Marshall’s babbling to stop, the signal that his ten minutes was up. He nearly drifted off to sleep listening to the drone of the other man’s voice.

Sometime later, the door opened and a guard tossed two books into his cell. Sark didn’t move, considering whether or not to summon the energy to retrieve them, to sit up and read them.

Oh well. Not like he had anything better to do…

Sark devoured the paperback novels, skimming through some pages when the writing became too technical (or, in some places, too formulaic) to hold his interest. But he was actually reading the climactic battle between Han and a beautiful Imperial assassin quite closely when he flipped a page and found that the paragraph didn’t continue as expected.

It was like watching a movie that suddenly skipped back to the beginning. The book went from page seventy-six to page nine.

Sark sighed, speculating darkly that these books were so terrible not even the publishers cared if they put them together correctly. He flipped to the next page, assuming it was a simple binding error, expecting to find the story continued on page seventy-eight.

Instead, he was on page twenty-three.

That was followed by another page nine, then two page twelves back to back, then page three, page fifteen, page thirteen and page five.

After that, the story suddenly resumed on page seventy-eight.

But that couldn’t be a coincidence. Sark didn’t believe in coincidences; he’d arranged too many of them for unsuspecting victims to be fooled.

The cogs in his mind turned over slowly, rusty from lack of use. He forced himself to concentrate, for the first time in weeks battled back the urge to forget about it and go to sleep. He stood up and paced, trying not to stare at the book on the bed, because the guards, startled by his sudden activity, were immediately on full-alert.

He ran through the strange pagination order again in his mind: 9, 23, 9, 12, 12, 3, 15, 13, 5.

A code.

The ice-cold lunch tray still sat on the small plastic table beside the door. He sat down in front of it and dipped the corner of a brown piece of lettuce into the salad dressing, then used it to slowly write out the letters of the alphabet along the bottom of the tray.

It took him several minutes, because the salad dressing didn’t work too well as ink, but he managed. Then he assigned each letter a number, A through Z labeled one through twenty-six, and his heart actually stumbled in his chest as the message became clear.

Well, of all the unbelievable scenarios in his whole crazy fucked-up world, he would never have imagined this one. Irina had found a way to get to Marshall, had used him as her messenger to give Sark renewed hope.

He smirked out the window at the curious guards, now gathered around it and gawking at him. He smeared the letters out with the piece of lettuce and shoved it in his mouth, too giddy to even shudder as the soggy strip slipped down his throat.

9 – 23 – 9 – 12 – 12 – 3 – 15 – 13 – 5. The sequence ran through his head in a jubilant cadence.

Just beneath it, Irina’s deciphered message soared in his heart: I will come.

* * * *

Shopping alone for a wedding dress was quite possibly the saddest day of Sydney’s life.

She stood in front of the three-way mirror, draped in tulle and lace and silk, watching the other brides-to-be giggle and gush with their mothers and bridesmaids and maids of honor.

She had no mother. And, thanks to the man she loved, she had no best friend to be her bridesmaid.

Francie would have made this all so fun – combing through the endless racks of white gowns, dragging her into Victoria’s Secret to find “honeymoon attire”, parading through the department stores in search of the perfect china pattern.

After eight weeks, they still hadn’t found her body, or the woman who had impersonated her for so many months. Sydney had given up hope of either ever happening.

Francie’s parents knew she was dead – okay, missing, but they all knew what that really meant – but of course they didn’t know the real story. Sydney somehow summoned the fortitude to put them up at her place for three weeks while the LAPD ran down dead-in-lead after dead-in-lead into Francie’s “disappearance” – all thanks to the CIA, who was feverishly conducting their own fruitless investigation into Francie’s death.

Pretending to be beside herself with worry for the best friend she longed to mourn nearly snatched away the remainder of Sydney’s fragile sanity.

When the Calfos finally went home, still clinging to the hope that their daughter might be found alive, Sydney flung herself across Francie’s bed and cried until she threw up. She must have fallen asleep in there, because she woke when Vaughn laid her gently down on her own bed; she almost couldn’t hide her heart-rending disappointment that he wasn’t Sark, that she wasn’t back at the little house in Santa Rosa on that first night waking up to find him depositing her on the bed, to discover that this whole tragic turn of events had been a crazy dream.

And then, of course, there was Will.

He spent four weeks in CIA custody, undergoing, Jack told her, daily hypnotic regressions. The Agency was quickly satisfied that he’d had no knowledge of what he was doing, and that comforted Sydney somewhat, although she blanched at the thought of him being used as some kind of mental roadmap that might help them track down Francie’s killer.

When it became obvious Will either didn’t know much or would never remember what he did know, the Agency released him.

Sydney fixed a small dinner for just the two of them – Vaughn graciously suggested he dine with Weiss that night, let the old friends have the chance to talk – and steeled herself to welcome Will home.

He took one look around the living room and walked back out.

Will stayed at a motel that night. The next day, Sydney and Vaughn packed his things from the apartment and moved him into a condo across town.

Sydney dropped in on him every evening for the first week. Finally, however, the strained conversation and awkward silences became too much for her, and she simply gave up. They avoided each other at work and never saw one another outside of the office. Will wouldn’t say it, she knew, but he blamed her for Francie’s death, for ever involving them in her dangerous, deceitful double life. How could she argue with him when she carried the same guilt?

Vaughn moved in officially eight days after Will moved out.

Sydney devoted herself to him, threw herself into making him feel loved, consciously showered him with affection. They did all the normal couple things – making dinner together, repainting the living room, grocery shopping, taking long evening strolls. She never initiated their love-making, but she never said no when he touched her, even if it was eleven-thirty at night and all she wanted to do was escape into dreams of Sark. She feigned a passion she didn’t feel, feigned a depth of emotion she didn’t feel, and wondered everyday how Vaughn could possibly believe any of it was real.

Was this how her mother had felt with Jack?

The wedding was three weeks away. Jack had suggested they keep it small and make it quick, and because she feared any hesitation on her part would let Vaughn see right through her, Sydney went along with it. She ordered the invitations, hired a caterer, rented a small chapel, watched Vaughn be measured for his tuxedo, picked out the flowers – everything a happily expectant bride would do, except she went about it like a zombie, feeling more panicky and trapped as the day drew unstoppably closer.

She realized, of course, that agreeing to marry him had been a terrible mistake. But she wouldn’t admit it, at least not out-loud, wouldn’t whisper to a single living soul that she felt as if she’d been strapped to the front of a speeding locomotive and couldn’t leap off if she hoped to survive.

The ring on her finger was like a lead weight that ran straight to her heart and squeezed all the feeling out of her.

She was marrying a man she didn’t love, and the man she did love – well, she could never even see him again. Because if she asked to, then Jack would disown her and Vaughn and everyone else would know her kidnapped-by-terrorists story had been a gigantic lie, and her world would crumble around her ears more completely than it already had.

Even though she didn’t see him, even though she didn’t even chance a glimpse at the bank of monitors displaying the video feed from his cell, being in the same building with Sark everyday made it impossible to forget about him. She heard rumors (especially in snatches of whispered conversation between Marshall and her father) that he wasn’t faring so well, and her heart threatened to implode when she imagined him languishing in a cage.

Oh, he deserved it. He deserved far worse than mere imprisonment.

Only…She wanted to protect him. She wanted to march down to his cell and curl up on his cot with him and kiss it all away, all the pain and heartache and division of these last weeks.

An impossible fantasy, obviously, but nonetheless one she couldn’t help being consumed by. Like she was consumed by thoughts of him, every minute of the day, regardless of where she was or what she was doing. She could be peeling potatoes and find herself thinking, What’s Sark doing right now?

Or she could be trying on wedding dresses and be thinking, I wish we had never left our house in Australia.

Mrs. Sydney Sark. Her mouth twisted into a wry, sad grin as she remembered their last night together, when she’d pinned him against the car and cracked his cool reserve with fiery kisses. When he’d told her he loved her.

She still didn’t know his real name. She doubted she ever would.

Loving him felt like a betrayal of Francie; that only made Sydney loathe herself even more, yet she couldn’t close herself off to it, couldn’t compartmentalize what she felt for him. She remembered telling Emily Sloane that she was in an impossible situation – unable to condone the horrible things her husband did, unable to stop loving him and hand him over to a government that would execute him.

Sydney was jarred from her macabre reverie when the salesgirl approached to ask, rather timidly, if she wanted to see anymore styles. The girl seemed intimidated by a bride shopping by herself, or perhaps the uncertainty only masked her pity that someone could be so alone in the world.

Sydney opened her mouth to refuse, but someone beat her to it.

“No thank you. I think we know what we want.”

Sydney couldn’t have been more shocked if her father walked in and announced that he wanted her to marry Sark. Standing casually in the doorway of the dressing room, elegant and poised and completely undisguised in a simple black suit, was her mother.

* * * *

They stared each other down over tall glasses of Chardonnay in a crowded downtown café.

Irina broke first. “Congratulations,” she said evenly, inclining her head toward the ring on Sydney’s finger.

“Thank you.” Sydney’s face felt so stiff she feared it might split down the middle. She barely moved her lips around the words.

What the hell was her mother doing here? How much fucking nerve did it take for her to show up after all the damage she had so deliberately caused?

Well, apparently she knew her daughter pretty well, because Sydney hadn’t wrestled her to the floor of the dressing room and instructed the salesgirl to call 9-1-1. Instead, she’d driven them three blocks to this restaurant, politely ordered wine and salads for them, and was now waiting for Irina to reveal the reason for this very risky visit.

Sydney assumed it had something to do with Sark, and that was the only thing that kept her here. Knowing that Irina knew that only made the desire to break the wine glass over her mother’s head that much harder to resist.

“I have a contact within the CIA.”

Irina’s admission came out so conversationally that Sydney almost missed the importance of it. She stared, uncomprehending – could this possibly be some other convoluted scheme to make her doubt her father’s loyalty, and if it was, could she stop herself from killing this woman here and now? – as Irina went on placidly, “He tells me that Sark is dying.”

Dying.

The word fell heavily between them.

Dying. No one had said “dying”. She’d seen the furrowed brows of the medical staff as they conferred with Kendall, overheard the anxious exchanges between her father and Marshall and Kendall and the guards, so she should have read between the lines, she supposed. But she’d held onto the hope that he would be all right, that he would get through this, somehow.

Apparently, if Irina was concerned enough to show herself in L.A., in public, in broad daylight, the situation was worse than Sydney had feared.

Nevertheless, she refused to be played again by this woman. Her best friend was dead, and her other best friend hated her, and the man she loved was in prison, all because of Irina.

And she wouldn’t admit to her mother that she really did love Sark. Pride dictated that Irina never know how well her scheme had worked.

So Sydney summoned her inner rage for them both – Irina and Sark – and retorted acidly, “And I’m supposed to care about that? After all you two have done?”

“He isn’t a bad man, Sydney.” The softness in Irina’s voice quieted Sydney’s anger, tugged at her instinctive compassion for Sark. Didn’t she know that? Hadn’t she seen his softness? “If anyone is to blame in all of this, it’s me, not him.

“I made a promise to Sark a long time ago that I would take care of him if he took care of me.” She paused, and, as when she’d talked about Sloane, Sydney discerned a trace of hardness in Irina’s voice. “I won’t abandon him, Sydney. But without your help, I can’t do anything besides get both myself and him killed.”

For Christ’s sake, did this woman know what buttons to push with her or what? Sydney steeled herself against the immediate urge to shout that she was in and ask what the plan was; an alarmingly earnest Irina was, in her experience, a lying-through-her-teeth Irina, so she proceeded with caution.

The maternal act wouldn’t cut it with her. She needed honesty.

“What about this ‘contact’ of yours in the CIA?” she tossed back sarcastically. “Isn’t that enough help?”

“He’s already done his part. Now I need someone who can get past your father.”

Well, talk about brutal honesty. Sydney almost flinched at Irina’s out-right admission that she fully expected Sydney to betray Jack again.

She covered her surprise by snapping, “I won’t lie to my father for you any more, do you understand? He’s the only real parent I have.”

Irina looked somewhat stung by that remark, but Sydney didn’t trust any of the emotions that flickered across her mother’s face. The master manipulator knew what her audience wanted to see, and she always delivered.

Still, it was hard to disbelieve the anguish in her eyes when Irina said softly, “I don’t want to ask you to choose between your father and Sark.”

No harsh or witty response leapt to mind at that, so Sydney settled for looking away, afraid the lump building in her throat might escalate into tears if she couldn’t detach herself from this.

Focus. A wanted terrorist is asking for your help, her inner voice – which, over the past two months, she had forced herself to begin listening to rather than cursing – lectured her. Play along, keep her talking, find an angle you can work with her.

No, she wasn’t becoming her mother. Right. The life of the man she loved desperately hung in the balance, and she was contemplating ways to use him to bring Irina down.

Or was she really just terrified at the idea of Sark being free again? Could she simply not trust herself not to run straight to him the moment he set foot in the free world again? She knew Jack didn’t trust her not to do that. He had fast-tracked her and Vaughn’s wedding, she suspected, to prepare for just such a possibility – that Sark might escape.

But she wasn’t married yet, and Irina was offering her the chance to help make that happen.

So she sat back and drank her wine and listened while Irina laid out her plan for rescuing Sark, and when her mother finished, Sydney couldn’t deny that she wanted to do it. She abhorred the thought of him suffering, much as he might have earned the punishment, and she ached for him so badly that every day without him became like her own personal, invisible prison.

Trapped by lies, hemmed in by love. And here was, perhaps, a way out.

Make a deal with the devil, her inner voice suddenly warned, and you will pay the price. You know your father won’t bail you out this time.

Emily Sloane loved an evil man, and that love cost her the ultimate sacrifice.

With that sobering thought, Sydney leveled a cold glare on her mother. “You have done nothing but lie to me from the moment you came into my life. Give me one reason why I should trust you now.”

Irina held her gaze for a moment, considering her. Sydney withstood the scrutiny. At last, her mother blinked, then smiled strangely – was it tenderness or satisfaction Sydney saw there? – and placed the large brown sack she’d been carrying around on the table.

“Open it,” she urged, when Sydney hesitated.

Placing the bag on her lap, Sydney briefly wondered if it might be a bomb or some other weapon, perhaps a Rambaldi device that would burn her face off, but she wasn’t really afraid. She remembered with a quick stab of bittersweet pleasure when she’d unwrapped Sark’s present in Italy to find a replica of the string bikini that started this whole mess.

While nowhere near as amusing, Irina’s gift was, she had to admit, far more moving.

The wedding gown was obviously old, but also very well-kept. Sydney recognized it from the wedding photo of her parents that had hung for years above the mantle in her parents’ house – all the years when she didn’t know about her father’s involvement with the CIA, or that her mother was still alive and an enemy of the United States.

Her mother’s wedding gown.

“I want you to be happy, Sydney.”

The sincerity in Irina’s words brought Sydney’s tear-damp eyes up to hers, and she couldn’t will herself to believe the tears on her mother’s cheeks were fake, though the rational part of her mind insisted they very well could be.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever gone about it in the right way, but I do want you to be happy. And you can’t tell me,” again that slight hardening to Irina’s voice, “that you will ever really be happy so long as you know Sark is hurting.”

That simple truth stole away Sydney’s immediate rejection of the offer, though it didn’t erase all of her doubts about Irina’s intentions.

She wavered for a moment, the elegant gown resting lightly in her lap, the ring nearly digging into her finger, the memory of Sark’s body against hers warming her with a pleasant flush from head to toe.

She couldn’t accept, and she couldn’t refuse, so she chose the only route that seemed possible at the moment.

She asked for time to decide.

Chapter Sixteen: Explosion

It took me by surprise when I saw you standing there

Close enough to touch, breathing the same air

You asked me how I’d been

I guess that’s when I smiled and said just fine

Oh but baby I was lying

What I really meant to say

Is I’m dying here inside

And I miss you more each day,

There’s not a night I haven’t cried

And here’s the honest truth

I’m still in love with you

That’s what I really meant to say

“What I Really Meant to Say”, Cyndi Thompson

The explosion threw Sark three feet forward and lifted him almost a foot off the ground.

He landed on top of Sydney, rolled her over and out of the way as the vault doors slammed shut inches from their feet, then rolled her over again so his body shielded hers from the falling debris. Concrete and metal pelted his back; he buried his face in her hair, winging up a prayer that whatever was good and holy in the universe would help him protect her.

A second explosion ripped through the building moments later. A baseball-sized chunk of rafter glanced off Sark’s temple. Dazed, he heard Sydney gasp as the blood from his scalp sprayed her forehead, but he pinned her tighter to the floor when she tried to wriggle out from underneath him.

“Sark,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with terror.

I know, he wanted to say, feeling the strength seep out of his limbs as the pain in his head intensified. At least we’re together…

Then the falling debris suddenly slackened and stopped altogether, leaving them buried alive in the twisted rubble of the CIA Operations Center.

* * * *

Forty-eight hours earlier, Sark couldn’t have imagined things turning out so badly.

Irina’s message effectively resurrected the old Sark. He ate the slop the CIA provided – albeit in small amounts, because he knew what rich food on a long-deprived stomach could mean, and he refused to suffer that humiliation while under government surveillance – and resumed his exercises and busied his mind with plans for what to do after his escape.

He cursed himself for being so foolish, for allowing his physical strength to wane so dramatically. Whatever Irina’s rescue mission involved, he knew it would ultimately entail him fighting his way out of here, and after nearly four weeks of self-imposed starvation, he barely had the strength to take on Marshall.

So he pushed himself hard with the exercises and trusted that adrenaline would make up for what he lacked in actual strength when the time came.

Sark supposed he should have maintained a gloomy, meek façade to keep his captors from becoming suspicious, but in all honesty, he didn’t give a fuck if they did suspect something. Irina was brilliant; she’d played the CIA for months, played them so expertly they still weren’t absolutely certain what her game had been. She could extract him regardless of any stepped-up security. He had complete and total faith in her.

The daily trips to the shower became mini-missions for Sark. As always when working on an op, his senses shifted into high alert, and his mind catalogued every remotely-pertinent detail about his surroundings. He noted the positions and angles of the cameras, the makes and models of the guards’ guns, the distance between his cell, the shower room, the vault, and the back stairs, the locations of the ceiling air vents – anything and everything that might come into play during his escape.

His trademark smirk and characteristic arrogance returned with his a vengeance. The guards gave him a wide berth, and he sneered at their wariness, reveled in their obvious uncertainty of what to make of his sudden return to life.

The elation did little to assuage his guilt over Sydney, yet he chided himself for almost succumbing to that despair as well. Had he ever not gotten something he wanted? Had he ever been really and truly defeated? Oh, he’d occasionally been delayed, briefly rebuffed, but those were minor set-backs. He eventually came out on top, because he wasn’t burdened by a moral compass the way most people were. He didn’t mind being neck-deep in death and betrayal and scandal if that was the price for success.

He had won Sydney’s heart once. He could do it again.

It no longer concerned him that the entire relationship had been based on a lie. He loved her; he missed her; he wanted her. And soon he would be free, free to win her back, no matter what the cost. His mind whirled through dozens of reunion scenarios, some plausible and others more akin to fantasy, all ending with her slender body pressed tight against his while she showed him how very much she had missed him.

They belonged to each other, plain and simple. Fuck the guilt. Let men like Michael Vaughn mope around and pine away after what they wanted. Sark was a man of action. He would find a way to have her, but this time, he wouldn’t make the mistake of pretending to be anything other than what he was.

He really believed that until, three days after receiving Irina’s covert message, he straightened up from his two hundredth sit-up and found her staring through the glass at him.

His heart dropped heavily into his stomach.

Damn, she was beautiful. His dreams couldn’t come close to matching the almost mystical power of her presence.

There she stood, more elegant than most women ever dreamed of being in just a simple navy-blue suit, her chestnut hair wound up in a French braid and her golden-pink skin free of all but the merest hint of make-up. He was at her mercy again, as naked as that day on Marinus’s yacht.

She had him, heart and soul, right down to his bones. Sark shivered slightly, wondering if she guessed how much control she exerted over him.

No joy to see him, no trepidation about what to say. Those gorgeous dark eyes were as cold and unreadable as her mother’s, Sark noted. She handed her gun over to the guard, who unlocked the door and let her in the cell.

Alone with Sydney.

Well, sort of. If he didn’t count the armed guards in the hall and the surveillance cameras surrounding them.

Sark wiped a fine layer of sweat off his brow with his forearm and gulped down some water from a small plastic bottle, watching her walk toward him until she was less than a foot away.

Her eyes never left his, and he couldn’t help remembering how she had come to him in the pool the first time they made love, so determined and so steady, the same way she approached him now. He briefly entertained the fantasy that she might take him right there on the cot while Kendall and her father and her precious Agent Vaughn looked on in horrified astonishment.

The corner of his mouth twitched up in an involuntary grin as he imagined the guards rushing in to separate their passionate kiss.

Yes, he was back. And feeling very cocky in spite of the huge hole in his heart.

But the grin – and a good deal of the arrogance – disappeared when she extended a sheet of paper toward him. “Do you know what this is?” she demanded coldly, her gaze still boring into his.

Sark wasn’t interested in the paper. It could have been a no-strings-attached presidential pardon for all he cared, suddenly, because his world threatened to fall away from beneath him as he centered in on the delicate diamond ring circling her finger.

Oh, for the love of Christ. Was she really that desperate to convince herself nothing had happened between them?

Sydney lifted her chin defiantly at the indisguisable accusation in his eyes. A violent rage threatened to overcome Sark’s better judgment; he wanted to grab her by the throat and demand an explanation, ask just how the hell she could walk away from him so quickly, how she could pretend he meant nothing to her.

He’d been killing himself over her, and she was picking out china patterns with wuss-boy.

“It’s an execution order.” Sydney, her voice smooth and even, nodded toward the paper he had yet to glance at. She refused to react to his fury, and that enraged Sark even more.

Well, obviously, he wanted to snap back at her. I didn’t think it was a love letter.

Focus, focus, focus, he ordered himself. Letting her know that the thought of her marrying Michael Vaughn – okay, the thought of her marrying anyone other than him – mattered more than his impending doom would destroy whatever footing he still had in this relationship. Much as he loved her, much as he yearned to rip that ring off her finger and kiss her so deeply she forgot Michael Vaughn’s name, right now he had to be the Sark who once threatened to douse her with acid.

He had to regain a measure of control between them if he wanted to survive.

Sark took a moment to compose himself, turning away and splashing cold water on his face at the small metal sink beside the toilet. He used the hem of his shirt to dry his face and disguised a steadying breath as a yawn.

Okay, he could do this – he could play it just as coolly as she did.

When he got out of here, he would contrive a meeting between them and melt that cold exterior she was holding so rigidly in place. Then he’d send Michael-Fucking-Vaughn a postcard from their honeymoon.

But right now, Sydney was all-business, and if he intended to stay alive long enough to be rescued, Sark needed to concentrate on business as well. So he turned back to her and inquired liltingly, “Was offing me part of the prenup?”

Sydney’s eyes clouded with rage. He should have known her well enough to stop there, but Sark couldn’t resist pushing. “I must say, Agent Vaughn doesn’t strike me as the type of man who enjoys competition, but this is a bit extreme.”

He saw the punch coming but let her land it; she’d earned a few good hits after what he’d put her through. Only he’d forgotten how much thinner he was now, and her fist connecting with his gut nearly doubled him over in pain.

An extreme force of pride kept him upright and smirking. Her eyes glinted with fury, but the punch had brought her so close that barely an inch separated their bodies – an inch charged with unmistakable desire.

Her eyes raked over his body, across the well-defined muscles beneath the sweat-sticky shirt, down his lean legs, back up to his mouth, where they lingered for one deliciously-charged second.

Sark’s smirk deepened. She still wanted him. He could work with this.

Sydney stalked away, ostensibly to lay the execution order out on the table for him to read, but really, Sark knew, to put some distance between them before the sparks ignited and they really did give her superiors a show. He followed her, ignoring the tenderness above his belly-button where a fist-shaped bruise was forming. When he sat down, he purposefully brushed his knees against hers under the small table.

She didn’t acknowledge the touch, didn’t blanch as she said, “Your execution is scheduled for five o’clock this afternoon.”

Well, fuck. That could be a problem.

Sark fixed an equally inscrutable expression in place and met her gaze calmly. “Why did they send you in with this?” He swallowed hard around the next words, unable to completely mask his bitterness. “Or did you request the pleasure of being the one to tell me?”

That got to her. The flash of pain in her eyes rekindled his instinctive protectiveness of her; he looked away before he could do something stupid, like reach for her hand and whisper softly that he hadn’t meant that.

Whatever she was feeling, her voice remained toneless, detached. “The order was signed this morning, prior to a very interesting development.”

Sark looked at her again, read the confliction there in her face, noted the quiver in her lips despite the determined set of her jaw. “Irina Derevko contacted me about assisting in your escape. I in turn brought that information to the CIA, and they agreed that you are more useful to us alive.” A beat. “For the moment.”

She folded the paper back over and slipped it into her inside jacket pocket, still expressionless as she finished, “So it seems you’ve earned another day with us.”

Sark’s three-day elation deflated faster than a punctured balloon. Goddamn fucking sloppy mistakes! How could Irina have possibly thought Sydney would agree to help them? Now the CIA knew she planned to extract him, and his chances for survival had just plummeted to nil.

Unless…A flicker of hope fought off the return of despair. Unless she had planned for his. Unless she knew Sydney would go straight to Jack, that they would try to use him to trap her. Unless this was all part of the scheme.

That would be classic Irina, he had to admit, but did he dare hope it could be possible?

Sydney was standing to leave, but his question – laced with just the right amount of hollowness and anger – stopped her. “So I’m to be the bait that lures her in, is that it?”

“As you once told me,” her eyes blazed at him, causing her to resemble Irina so much that Sark nearly smiled, “your talents are many and varied.”

He remembered that morning in Santa Rosa – the whipped cream, the passion in her eyes, the unfulfilled longing between them. The memory stretched between them, and neither seemed able to look away, to pretend none of it had happened.

Sark couldn’t even keep a hint of breathlessness out of his voice as he countered, “And when is all of this supposed to take place?”

Sydney hesitated, debating how much to reveal. He adored the way she chewed lightly on her lower lip when she was indecisive; recalling the graze of those teeth against his lips awakened a stir of desire low in his stomach, and he had to force his eyes away from her mouth.

Even when he was furious with her, he ached for her.

“Tomorrow morning. At ten.”

She paused, suddenly reluctant to go now that the moment had come. He met her gaze, half-hoping she saw that he felt the same – that he too wanted to prolong this opportunity just to be near her – and half-hoping she didn’t.

Abruptly, Sydney turned on her heel and motioned for the guard to let her out. “You’ll be briefed more fully in a few hours,” she announced curtly, then left without so much as a backwards glance.

Sark sank down onto the cot and watched her hurry past the window. He knew her well enough to realize she was fighting back tears; while his entire being revolted at not being able to comfort her, he consoled himself that, after tomorrow, he would either have the chance to make her his again, or he would at least be put out of his misery once and for all.

He closed his eyes and willed Irina to be even more devious than he usually gave her credit for.

* * * *

Sydney decided to betray Sark eight hours after her mother’s surprise visit.

She was soaking in a steamy rose-scented bubble bath, her thoughts spinning so fast she actually felt nauseous and her heart aching so terribly she could barely breathe, when Vaughn slipped quietly into the bathroom and sat down beside the tub.

She berated herself for wanting to tell him to get out. No way could she make love right now; she could hardly force herself to look him in the eye when she was so close to running off with another man.

With Sark.

If she just stopped caring about right and wrong – if she just accepted that her world, unlike Vaughn’s, would never be black and white, and embraced the grayness – if she just admitted that she wanted to be with Sark, damn the costs and the repercussions…

“Syd.”

The catch in Vaughn’s voice wilted her strained smile. He picked her hand up out of the water and stroked it, staring into her eyes so intensely that she blushed. Her heart raced off on a frantic, jumpy rhythm. Did he know? Had he somehow found out about what really happened while she was supposedly “captured” by Sark and Irina?

Was this how Sark had felt every time she walked into a room – like the universe might tilt on its axis at any moment if she came out with a question he simply couldn’t answer?

“Syd,” Vaughn said again, “your dad just called.”

Oh shit. Had someone spotted her and Irina together today? Was she about to be hauled in under suspicion of treason?

Vaughn clutched her damp hand in both of his. Sydney saw the tears glistening in his eyes, and that frightened her; Vaughn had never cried in front of her. She wanted to ask what the hell was wrong, but her voice had apparently abandoned her. All she could do was wait, paralyzed, for him to go on.

“They found Francie’s body, Sydney. The real Francie. They found her tonight.”

And there it was. One moment she was dreaming of escape with Sark – of hours spent wandering the beautiful distant hills behind the house in Australia, of endless nights of passionate love-making in the bedroom that smelled faintly of cedar – and the next she was imagining his execution, plotting the horrific revenge she would take against him on Francie’s behalf.

The grief and the rage blinded her more completely than the tears that flooded her eyes. Vaughn reached for her, and for once she reached back, not out of passion but out of despair; she clung to his neck, sobbed into his shoulder, soaked the front of his shirt with the sudsy bathwater.

“I have to tell you something,” she choked out against Vaughn’s cheek, and thirty minutes later, her father was seated in her living room listening to her repeat the story of Irina’s unexpected proposal.

She censored it for Vaughn, of course, and Jack played along. She watched his face contort painfully when she held up the wedding gown Irina had given her. “She said she wanted me to be happy,” Sydney confessed, looking her father straight in the eye.

“This has to be a new low, even for her,” Vaughn piped up, missing the meaning in Sydney’s words, though it wasn’t lost on Jack; her father knew what Irina had meant – that Sydney would only truly be happy if she were reunited with Sark.

Father and daughter continued to stare at one another as Vaughn went on, “I mean, telling Sydney she’ll die without her help, then giving her that dress. It’s just a whole new level of manipulation, even for Derevko.”

“I agree.” Jack’s fury burned so hot beneath his calm surface that Sydney feared he might spontaneously combust at any moment. “That woman has never given a damn about anyone’s happiness besides her own.”

Well, Sydney wouldn’t argue with him there.

She finally looked away, settled onto the sofa next to Vaughn and pulled her robe tighter around her. Now that the decision was made, now that she had just destroyed Sark’s one and only chance for escape, she felt strangely hollow.

She doubted she would ever be whole again without him, though, so she might as well learn to function around the gnawing emptiness.

“What’s our next move?” she asked, and the next morning, in the Operations Center briefing room, she, Vaughn, Dixon, Marshall, Kendall and Weiss listened as Jack explained just that.

“Derevko’s plan,” Jack told them, standing beside a large television screen upon which the Operation Center’s blueprints were displayed, “is for Sydney to access our ventilation system here,” he pointed to a shaft in a deserted first-floor office, “and release a sleeping gas into the Center. Once all of our agents are unconscious, Derevko and her team would enter the building and proceed to the basement, where Sydney would input the code to unlock Sark’s cell. They would exit by the back door, up these stairs,” he pointed to the staircase directly down from the glass cell, “and be gone before any of us woke up.”

Kendall, never content to sit quietly until the end of a briefing, cleared his throat. “My question is,” and with that Kendall fixed a suspicious glare on Sydney, whose eyes were swollen and red from a night spent crying over Francie, “why does Derevko think Agent Bristow would be willing to help her after she double-crossed her on their last mission together?”

“Irina Derevko’s greatest strength is her ability to manipulate other people’s emotions, but that’s also her greatest weakness,” Jack answered tightly, his jaw working against a controlled fury in a way that reminded Sydney very much of Sark. “She trusts completely in her capacity to make someone care for her so she can exploit that devotion. It’s the mistake she made with me, during her extraction, that enabled me to implant the time-delay tracking device on her.”

Kendall stiffened at the reminder of how Jack had also tricked him on that operation, but Jack ignored it, concluding smoothly, “It’s the same mistake she’s made with Sydney. By telling her that she intends to proceed with the extraction with or without her help, but that without that help she will almost certainly be killed, Derevko believes she can manipulate Sydney into helping her.”

Reluctantly satisfied, Kendall nodded his understanding, and Jack resumed his briefing. “Last night, Agent Bristow contacted Derevko to say she would assist in Sark’s extraction. Tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, Sydney will release this into the ventilation shaft.”

Jack produced a small metal canister and popped the lid off of it, releasing a white smoke into the air; except for Sydney and Vaughn, who had already heard the plan, everyone scrambled to cover their mouths and noses. Jack waved at them to relax. “It’s harmless. We will all pretend to fall asleep, of course, and Derevko will enter the building as planned.”

As the smoke dissipated, Jack admitted, “It’s possible that Derevko may have put some sort of fail-safe in place to account for a double-cross, and since we can’t be certain what that would be, we’ll have to wait until Sydney has Sark out of his cell and they are all at the back door before we make our move. We’ll have a tactical team in the building across the street, and on Sydney’s signal, they will move into the alley. The rest of us will block the other exits and proceed down to the lower level to secure the prisoners.”

He paused. “Any questions?”

Beside her, Vaughn shifted forward. “Derevko said she had a contact within the CIA. What’s being done about that?”

At the far end of the table, Marshall suddenly lurched forward and sloshed hot coffee down his shirt. “Oh oh oh, hot hot hot,” he whimpered, grabbing a stack of papers to his left and frantically mopping up the scalding liquid with them. Sydney bit down a laugh; everyone else either rolled their eyes or looked away, trying not to smile.

“I’m sorry. I’m – it’s the – caffeine. Gets to me. Sorry.” Plucking the damp fabric away from his chest, Marshall turned a sheepish grin on Jack. “Sorry. Go ahead. I’m fine now. Really.”

Turning back to Vaughn, Jack answered, “We’re conducting an investigation, but so far we’ve found no suspects. It’s possible she was bluffing, though we’ll keep looking, of course.”

Dixon rather tentatively raised his hand. “I won’t dispute Sark’s value to Derevko’s operation, but I have to question any motive of hers that seems altruistic. Do we really believe that if she could disable this entire facility her only objective would be to free one man?”

“The Rambaldi artifacts,” Weiss put in, and Dixon nodded, indicating that was what he meant. “The artifacts in the vault. The ones she wanted Sydney to steal in the first place.”

“Obviously, I would never assume that Derevko doesn’t have a hidden agenda,” Jack assured them. “Immediately after her failed attempt to steal the artifacts, we had them moved to a more secure location.”

Dixon was unconvinced. “How can you be sure she doesn’t know about that?”

“Because,” Kendall tabled, “the only people who did, until now, were Jack and I. We moved them out ourselves.” He glared at each one of them in turn. “And that information stays in this room, do you understand me? One word of this leaks out, and I will personally see to it that all of you are tossed out of hear on your asses.”

Sydney almost rolled her eyes at Kendall’s need to assert his authority, but she restrained herself and instead asked the question that was most pressing on her mind. “What precautions are we taking to be sure Sark doesn’t manage to escape somehow? Once he’s out of his cell, anything could happen.”

In her heart of hearts, she didn’t want to ask that question, because she was hoping no one else would have thought of it. But she realized that she had to know, in case the temptation to just slide open the back door and tell him to run for it overwhelmed her in the morning.

“Marshall has taken care of that,” Jack replied, stepping to the side, “so I’ll let him explain.”

Even more jumpy than usual, Marshall leapt to his feet, cuffed at the sweat on his brow and stumbled through his usual awkward greetings, this one involving a very disjointed compliment of Dixon’s jacket. Sydney hid a tiny smile behind her hand, the way she always did when Marshall bumbled around. Some people found it annoying, even embarrassing, but she found it endearing.

Although it reminded her rather painfully of the late Agent Holtz, a.k.a. Freddie Suratto, and made her wonder if Sark’s affinity for Marshall these last eight weeks had anything to do with his guilt over murdering that man.

“Okay, so, this chip,” Marshall, having been ordered harshly by Kendall to get on with it, held up a thumbnail-sized piece of white plastic, “is like a really little and fancy pace-maker. A pace-maker is, you know, that thing they put in people’s hearts to sort of jump-start them if they go into cardiac arrest. Well, my grandma had it done and she said it wasn’t entirely pleasant to be shocked like that, and we had to get rid of her microwave and…”

“Marshall,” Jack interrupted quietly.

“Oh. Right. Sorry.” Marshall licked his lips and drug his sleeve across his brow. Sydney pitied him for being so nervous all the time; he was sweating buckets this morning. “So, anyway, this chip is sort of like that. Only, Mr. Sark doesn’t have a heart problem. So when I implant it in his chest with this,” he held up a device that resembled a nail gun, “if someone pushes the remote detonator for it, the chip will deliver an electric shock that will stop his heart.”

Cold chills snaked down Sydney’s arms. This was really happening, she realized, revisiting that suffocating sensation she’d felt in Suratto’s apartment when she believed Jack’s treachery had just been proven.

She bowed her head slightly, and inconspicuously (she hoped) drew in a few composing breaths.

What the hell had she done? What if something went wrong and Sark died during this – died because of her?

Why hadn’t she just followed her heart and helped Irina rescue him, like she was now desperate to do?

Because he’s the monster who killed your best friend, her inner voice intoned, and Sydney forced herself to listen, to not automatically shut it down by arguing that, technically, Sark hadn’t killed Francie – he’d been brought in on it after the fact.

But that was splitting hairs, and she knew it. He’d contributed to Francie’s death, however peripherally, and for months – even the time they were together – he’d allowed her to be spied on by a complete stranger whom she believed to be her best friend. He’d allowed Will to be turned into a veritable zombie by that imposter.

And all the while, Francie – dear, sweet, goofy Francie – was rotting, hacked up into pieces small enough to fit into a suitcase, dropped off a peer into the dark, cold waters of the Pacific…

“Sydney, Agent Vaughn, Mr. Kendall and I will all have these triggers,” Jack was saying, and that brought Sydney unpleasantly back to reality.

She met Jack’s gaze, unable to disguise her discomfort with the prospect of him holding Sark’s life quite literally in the palm of his hand. Her father’s face, as usual, remained impassive. “The moment it becomes likely that Sark will escape, you are all authorized to use deadly force to stop him.”

“And Derevko?” Dixon countered.

Jack nodded curtly. “These people have to be stopped, by any means necessary.” He glanced sideways at Sydney, adding stonily, “It ends tomorrow.”

With that, they all started to push away from the tables and leave, but Vaughn’s question stopped them: “Who’s going to tell Sark about this?”

Kendall didn’t miss a beat. “I think that job should go to Agent Bristow,” he said, somewhat snidely. “Sydney, I mean, not Jack.”

Sydney stared at him, afraid to refuse and afraid to accept, longing to jerk the pistol out of her belt holster and blow that superior smirk off right along with his bald head. “After all, she is the one who knows Sark best. She should be able to tell if he has something up his sleeve.”

So that was how she ended up in Sark’s cell, confronting him with a bogus execution order, and why she was crying so hard when she fled the Operations Center after that meeting that she ran smack into Will Tippin in the parking garage.

He caught her by the elbow and steadied her. Sydney jerked away, suddenly furious with him for how he had treated her these last few weeks.

Like it was all her fault that Francie was dead – like she should have denied herself any kind of love or friendship in order to be a part of the CIA – like she would ever have intentionally put either one of them in danger -

“Sydney.” Will blocked her path when she started around him. “Sydney, stop. Talk to me.”

“Talk to you?” she flung at him, whirling around so quickly that he took a step back, startled by her anger. She backed him clear up against the wall. “Talk to you? About what, Will? What the fuck am I supposed to say? Francie’s dead and I’m really, really sorry, but I don’t get time to mourn her because tomorrow morning, I have to help put my mother back in prison. Is that what you’d like to talk about? Or do you just want to call me a murderer to my face and get it over with?”

Will gaped at her, too stunned to speak. For an instant Sydney feared she might not be able to control herself, that all of the sorrow and guilt and heartache of the past two months would coil itself into an unstoppable rage and Will would be the unfortunate target, but the pain in his eyes brought her back to herself.

The white-hot fury ebbed, leaving her weak and shivery. “I’m sorry,” was all she found to say.

Will’s throat worked around silent sobs. He reached out and traced her damp cheek with his fingertips, and the tenderness in his touch only made Sydney cry harder.

She stepped into his arms when he opened them. “It’s okay, Syd,” he said into her hair, holding her tight and rocking her gently. “It’s okay. We’ll get through it.”

“Oh, Will.” God, how good would it feel to just sink down to the pavement right here and tell him everything – about Sark and her mother and Vaughn and everything she’d been holding in for so long? She knew Will would listen; she knew he would keep her secrets, even if he couldn’t understand.

But they had enough to deal with just mourning Francie. So all she said was, “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

For the longest time they just stayed that way, two best friends clinging to one another, crying out their anguish in a shadowed corner of a CIA parking garage. And at least for a few moments, Sydney found a measure of peace again.

* * * *

Twelve hours before the planned rescue attempt, Sark had another surprise visitor.

Agent Vaughn.

The glass-enclosed cell was soundproof, but, even half-asleep, Sark sensed someone staring in at him. Irritated – he hated being on display – he rolled over and discovered Sydney’s fiancé standing rigidly on the other side of the glass.

So. The moment had finally come. The moment when they confronted each other, man to man, with no weapons between them besides words.

Maybe it was just the anticipation of what tomorrow would bring, but Sark was feeling lucky tonight.

He didn’t bother to stand when the guard let Vaughn in. Pushing himself up to sit cross-legged on the cot, he stared coolly at Vaughn, who stopped just inside the door. Marshall eased in behind him and hovered nervously in the background.

“I’m here to brief you on tomorrow’s mission,” Vaughn announced stiffly.

As he had on the morning of his capture, Sark scented the other man’s fear of him. He considered how to play this; he knew he was holding the ace – he was, after all, the one Sydney really loved, not Vaughn – but he also didn’t know how dangerous Agent Vaughn could be when pushed.

A twinge in his healed ankle suggested it might be a bit more dangerous than the pretty-boy exterior showed.

“I don’t really see the need,” Sark shrugged, languidly tracing the grooves in the cement bricks beside him, watching Vaughn out of the corner of his eye. The man exuded contempt for him, and that fueled Sark’s arrogance. “I assume you’re not really letting me go, so I’ll just sit back and wait for Irina to become my cellmate.” No attempt to hide the sarcasm.

Vaughn motioned at Marshall, who practically tripped over his own feet as he started forward. Sark arched a questioning eyebrow his way; Marshall stared hard at him, pleading silently for his cooperation.

Sark complied. He rose, obediently removed his shirt when Marshall asked him to, stood unflinching as the nervous little man pressed a strange plastic device above his heart and pulled the trigger.

A momentary sharp pain raced inward from along his breastbone. Glancing down, Sark saw a tiny, square-shaped red mark on his skin.

“What Mr. Flinkman just implanted in your chest is a type of electronic receiver,” Vaughn explained, looking, Sark noted darkly, quite smug.

“And this,” Vaughn held up a small black box with a red button, “is the trigger that connects to it. Several agents have these triggers, including myself and Jack Bristow. If you make any attempt to escape tomorrow, or do anything that endangers the life of any agent in this building, one of us will activate that chip.”

“Let me guess. I’ll explode,” Sark retorted, blatantly unconcerned.

“No, actually the receiver will deliver an electric shock powerful enough to send you into cardiac arrest.”

Well, wasn’t that terribly clever?

Sark pulled his shirt back on. “I’m impressed,” he said, sounding anything but. “Even more creative than a necklace made out of C-4. Or wine laced with a radioactive isotope.”

Vaughn’s glare said plainly that he really hoped Sark gave him a reason to push that red button tomorrow. Yet Sark seriously doubted Jack Bristow would give Vaughn the chance.

One way or another, Sark suspected, Jack intended to see to it that his daughter was free and clear of him forever tomorrow.

Marshall suddenly produced another battered paperback and extended it to Sark, who took it. This one boasted a brand-new Han Solo bookmark stuck in the middle.

He rushed to explain when Sark looked up questioningly at him. “That’s – well – it’s just a little thing I saw, you know, at the bookstore, and thought, Hey! Maybe, you know, it just looked like something you might like,” Marshall ended lamely, indicating the bookmark. Sark’s heart sped up a beat as he read the message in Marshall’s eyes: this was much more than a bookmark.

The little man suddenly whirled on Agent Vaughn, looking terrified. “It’s okay, isn’t it? I already sent it through the scanning process – I have the paperwork if you need to - ”

“It’s all right, Marshall,” Vaughn assured him, a hint of an amused smile playing on his lips. “But we should get going.”

Absolutely terrified to have just broken more than a dozen federal laws – again – Marshall didn’t need to be told twice. He scampered out of the cell ahead of Vaughn, who sized Sark up with one last disapproving glare and started out after him.

“What’s it like?”

Sark’s question halted Vaughn at the door. He glanced back uncertainly, his brow furrowed, his eyes betraying his eagerness to be far, far away from this prisoner.

“What’s what like?” he asked.

Oh, he shouldn’t. And he knew he shouldn’t, not just because of the trouble it might cause, but because it really wasn’t fair to Sydney. Only Sark couldn’t resist. He hated this man; he would have shot him point-blank in the face and walked away without a moment’s regret. Yet right now, all he had were words, so he would have to make those as damaging as bullets.

Leaning a hip against the window sill, Sark folded his arms across his chest and said, “What’s it like knowing she’s only with you because she can’t be with me?”

A muscle spasmed below Vaughn’s right eye. He clenched his fists at his sides; Sark’s simper dared him to go for it, to take the swing and see who would win now that he didn’t have a bullet hole through his shoulder or an injured ankle to contend with.

Vaughn exercised remarkable self-control, however. Or else, as Sark liked to think, he was simply too afraid to do anything more than shoot back, “What’s it like knowing you had to concoct some elaborate lie to get close to her?”

Ouch. Score one for the underwear model.

Sark narrowed his eyes but refused to show how deep that cut. “So I see Sydney told you the truth about her alleged kidnapping. How admirable that you can have such an honest relationship.”

The stillness in Vaughn’s voice almost quieted Sark’s rage – almost. “She didn’t tell me. She didn’t have to. I saw it in her eyes the night she came back.”

Well, wasn’t this the icing on an already fucked-up day? This little sparring match with Agent Vaughn wasn’t going as planned, and Sark disliked the intimate path it was headed down. Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop himself from saying, a tad too curiously, “And yet you’re still with her. Even though you know she doesn’t love you.”

“She doesn’t love you, either. She loves this idea that she has of you, that you could be a good person someday. That she could change you, or save you or something.”

The almost compassionate way Vaughn said it made it impossible for Sark to retaliate with all the brutal, venomous remarks swirling around in his mind. He hated being pitied by this man, but more than that, he feared that Vaughn had hit the truth dead-on.

Could Sydney ever love him for who he was? Could anybody? Or was he so twisted and demoralized that no one would ever look at him – the real him – with anything other than loathing?

Fuck it. The maudlin musings could wait for some private moment. For now, Sark refused to be outdone by his rival.

If brutal honesty was the name of the game, well, he could play that too.

Lifting his chin, he declared defiantly, “The same could be said for how you feel about her, couldn’t it, Agent Vaughn?”

That stung. Vaughn’s glare deepened, prompting Sark to add, “You don’t really know her. Do you think that’s the real Sydney Bristow who lies down with you at night? No. It’s just a mask that she puts on for you, because you can’t handle who she really is.”

“And who,” Vaughn demanded icily, “is she really?”

“An incredibly passionate woman.”

That came out so starkly, so simply, that Vaughn couldn’t argue with it.

Sark went on, the conviction building behind his words, “So passionate that she’s dangerous. And that’s what both you and her father are determined to quash out of her. Because in those moments when she lets her guard down, you see another woman in her. You see Irina Derevko.”

It had to be nearly impossible, Sark realized, for Agent Vaughn to contain all of that rage within his eyes. What kept him from snapping, from leaping into the vicious hand-to-hand combat Sark was itching for? It had to be more than simple fear.

Perhaps, Sark reflected, it was because Vaughn knew he’d already lost where it really mattered. He’d lost Sydney, whether Sark ever had her again or not.

His opponent defeated, Sark felt deflated once more.

Vaughn walked away, hesitated at the door, seemed to decide he might as well say what had been on his mind for eight weeks. He faced Sark again, only this time, an immense sadness replaced the open hostility.

“If you really loved her, you’d want her to be happy. And safe. You’d understand that loving you would mean she has to give up everyone she loves and sacrifice everything she believes in.”

He looked down, studied his feet, and Sark just stared at him, hating the truth in his words. “But people like you and Irina Derevko don’t really know how to love. All you know is what makes you happy, and that’s all that matters to you.”

Vaughn brought his eyes back up to Sark’s one last time. “If you really loved her, you’d let her go.”

* * * *

Sark lay awake for two hours, staring up unseeingly at his ceiling, too consumed by dark reflections on Agent Vaughn’s parting words to concern himself with the message he knew awaited him in Marshall’s latest gift.

But finally, the will to survive kicked in again.

He spent another hour trying to figure out what secrets the bookmark held. In the end, he discovered it almost by accident when, exhausted and frustrated, he slipped the plastic strip in between the first two pages of the book, ready to give up and go to sleep.

Writing – Irina’ distinctive, looping script – suddenly appeared on the blank first page between the cover and the copyright information.

Well, he had to give her points for ingenuity. The bookmark worked like a simple decoder ring on an invisible-ink message, and the trick, like the one with the encoded message in the pagination, had fooled a dozen CIA analysts.

Sark slid the bookmark along the page until all the ink was visible. Then he read:

“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get you out. I had to deal with Sloane.”

He could hear her voice in his head, whispering to him in her curious accent. He imagined the hint of impatience in her tone when she mentioned Sloane, and it made him grin as he read on:

“First of all, don’t worry about the chip. It’s useless.”

Sark breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Thank God for Marshall.

The message continued:

“I knew Sydney would tell her father about my plan. I counted on it. After your capture, Jack moved the Rambaldi artifacts to a heavily-guarded warehouse outside the city. He should put all of his resources into protecting that location tomorrow, but I know he can’t resist the opportunity to capture me.

“So tomorrow, when I come for you, you and I are really just the decoy to draw all but a skeleton force away from that warehouse. Once Sydney has you out of the cell, we will proceed to the back staircase as planned, but that’s where it all changes. Sloane has an operative who infiltrated the Center late last night and set a series of explosives around the vault doors. Those explosives will detonate at precisely 10:08a.m. That should successfully convince Jack that I still believe the artifacts are in the Center, and it should throw them into enough of a panic to call most of their forces in to contain us. Once the focus is away from the warehouse, Sloane will move in and retrieve the Rambaldi artifacts.

“You will be on your own after that explosion. A gray Ford Taurus will be waiting for you two streets over, in front of a deli called Mama’s Bakery. Get out the back stairs and get away as fast as you can. I hope Sydney will go with you, but I can’t promise she will. I trust that, no matter what, you will see that she is safe before you leave.

“As for myself, I can’t guarantee that I will escape, either. Once you get away, go to the cabin in Nevada and wait for me. If I don’t contact you within twenty-four hours, make arrangements to leave the States.

“Thank you for your loyalty to me. My contact tells me you haven’t breathed a word about our organization. I won’t forget that. Good luck to you.”

Closing his eyes, Sark laid his head back on the pillow and willed himself to focus on victory. If he refused to accept anything other than success tomorrow, it could happen.

Granted, he’d hoped Irina would have a more iron-clad plan than this, but he sensed Sloane’s inept fingerprints all over it. Had it been solely up to Irina, he suspected, her only objective would have been to rescue him – not because he was any more important than the Rambaldi artifacts, but because she was smart enough to know that, when dealing with stakes this high, you only played one angle at a time. Yet most likely Sloane wouldn’t commit any resources to assisting in Sark’s extraction unless it involved a bigger prize than his safe return.

If it didn’t involve Rambaldi, Sloane really didn’t give a fuck about it.

Well, regardless, this was the hand he’d been dealt. Now he just had to find a way to make it work.

He fell asleep with Irina’s message against his heart and Sydney’s face in his mind.

* * * *

Sydney accepted that about a million things could go wrong with this mission.

Like her father deciding to fry Sark just for good measure, for one.

Or Irina ripping out a gun and blowing her away the moment she realized this was another double-cross.

But everything went so smoothly at first, she almost started to believe it could work.

On cue, the tipped-off CIA staff swooned and collapsed in fake sleep as the harmless white gas filled their offices. While Irina and her entourage strode victoriously in through the front lobby, Sydney sprinted down the stairs to the lower level and fired two fake tranquilizer darts into the guards, who also dropped in pretend faints.

She shot Sark a warning look when she spotted his bemused smile through the window. Now was not the time for his smart-ass remarks.

She punched in the code that unlocked his cell as Irina, flanked by a half-dozen heavily-armed men, hurried down the corridor toward them. Sark waited right inside the door and stepped out to meet Sydney the instant it opened.

He grinned wickedly at her. Iin spite of herself, Sydney almost snickered when he cocked an eyebrow at the “sleeping” guards and muttered, “And the Academy Award goes to…”

“Stop it,” she hissed, seconds before Irina reached her elbow.

The look that passed between her mother and Sark caught Sydney off-guard. She knew they were close; she didn’t pretend to fully understand their relationship, though she knew they held a mutual respect for one another.

It was just – she’d never seen her mother look quite so maternal, or Sark look quite so glad to see someone. They didn’t embrace – in fact, they didn’t touch at all, and the look only lasted a moment – but the intimacy was undeniable. Not sensual, but powerful nonetheless. Sydney sensed that these two would die for one another; not in a romantic way, more in the way she would have died for Dixon.

They were partners. It touched and unsettled her all at once.

“We have to move,” Irina barked at them, stalking off down the hallway.

Her armed guards raced ahead of her, intent on clearing the alley of the expected tactical team. “Ten-oh-six,” one man shouted over his shoulder.

“Come on,” Sark said, and grabbed Sydney’s arm. He pulled her roughly down the hallway – so roughly that Sydney suddenly realized things couldn’t be what they seemed.

That look, between him and her mother. He’d made no attempt to warn Irina that this was a trap. That could mean only one thing.

Irina already knew.

They were almost level with the vault when Sydney jerked her arm out of Sark’s grasp, clicked a button on her watch, and shouted into the disguised comm, “Dad, it’s a set-up! They know it’s a trap!”

Irina, who was halfway to the stairs, whipped around. Sydney saw her gaze collide with Sark’s, saw him freeze for one instant, saw a look of horror wash over both of their faces.

Then Irina screamed, “Sark! Get her out of there!”

Sydney didn’t have time to react; she didn’t know if Sark was saving her or attacking her when he suddenly shoved her backward into the closed vault doors, wrapped his fingers painfully tight around her throat and snarled, “The code! Tell me the code to open these doors!”

She rasped in a breath around his vice-like grip. Good god, she never expected him to turn on her like this, realizing she meant nothing to him when compared to a Rambaldi artifact hurt almost worse than his strangle-hold.

Somehow she managed to gasp out, “The artifacts – they aren’t here - ”

“Goddamit, Sydney, the code!” he roared.

She saw a flash of red to his left, turned her head enough despite his grip to spy the small black box beside the door – and suddenly, she understood.

The lower level was about to explode. They couldn’t reach the back stairs in time; their only hope of survival was inside the vault, which was built to withstand an incredibly powerful detonation.

Wrenching away from him, Sydney punched the code furiously into the key-pad beside the vault doors, her entire body shaking so violently she nearly hit the wrong numbers twice.

Seconds later, the doors opened inward. Sark grabbed her around the waist and shoved her inside less than an instant before the world behind them erupted in a firestorm of flames and falling concrete.

Chapter Seventeen: Trapped

I’d pull the sun down from the sky

To light your darkest night

I wouldn’t let one drop of rain

Fall down into your life

Put your heart in my hands

I’d lie for you and that’s the truth

Do anything you ask me to

I’d even sell my soul for you

I’d do it all for you

If you just believe in me

“I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)”, Meatloaf

Sydney’s initial elation over being alive was instantly tempered by three realizations.

First, that nearly everyone she loved - her father, Vaughn, Dixon, Will, even her mother - might be dead.

Second, that she was quite possibly buried alive and facing a slow, horrific death.

And finally, that if her father had survived, he would undoubtedly be activating that chip in Sark’s chest at any moment.

The last thought propelled her into action.

Dazed but not quite unconscious from the chunk of concrete that glanced off his temple, Sark lay heavily on top of her, his forehead resting on the ground beside her ear. Bending her knees, Sydney planted her feet firmly on the floor and used her leg muscles to flip him over, cradling his head in her hands so it didn’t smack against the cement as she rolled him onto his back.

Sark groaned. His eyelids fluttered but remained closed.

The gash on his right temple extended a good two inches and laid the skin open nearly to the bone. Sydney’s heart lurched at the free-flowing blood, yet for the time being, her priority was the chip.

How to remove it with no scalpel, no knife, not even a pair of scissors?

Not to mention no anesthetic.

Her eyes fastened on a sharp-edged sliver of metal amongst the scattered debris.

Not exactly her first choice for performing a mini-operation on the man she loved, but with every passing second the likelihood increased that Jack - or even Vaughn or Kendall - would activate the receiver.

She wasn’t certain she could hear Sark scream when she sliced into his chest, but she knew she couldn’t watch him die.

So she seized the scrap of metal, straddled his hips and shoved the black tee-shirt up to his neck. Her fingers trembled so violently she could hardly hold her make-shift scalpel.

Sark was starting to come around, unfortunately; she’d hoped he could sleep through the pain she was about to inflict on him. He shifted slightly, opened one eye halfway and quirked a tiny, weak smile at her. “Sydney,” he croaked.

The sharpest edge resting against the soft white skin above his heart, Sydney shuddered at what she was about to do. Praying Marshall hadn’t embedded the damn chip too deeply, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Then she cut him.

Sark yelped as the jagged metal tore his skin open. The pain apparently revived him, because he instantly grasped her wrists, effectively immobilizing her, and snarled, “What the hell are you doing, for Christ’s sake?”

But Sydney’s terror that at any moment her father might press that red button exceeded Sark’s strength. She wrenched free of his grip, closed the fingers of her right hand around his throat, and looked him straight in the eye.

“This is going to hurt,” she said, surprising herself with how calm her voice sounded while her heart was hammering in her throat. “But I have to get this chip out before someone decides you violated your agreement not to attempt an escape.”

With that, she plunged her fingers into the open wound.

Sark howled in pain and bucked fiercely beneath her. Sydney - tears streaming down her cheeks, hating herself for how she was hurting him - squeezed his throat until he gagged and quit struggling.

Seconds later, she slid the tiny plastic square out in her bloody fingers.

Eyes shut, face white, jaw clenched, Sark muttered, “Bloody hell,” and twisted away from her onto his side.

He threw up.

Shaking from head to toe with both relief at his safety and horror at what she’d just had to do, Sydney walked away. The chip dropped onto the debris-strewn floor as she sagged against the wall. She cleaned her fingers on her pants, but her hands still stank of blood - Sark’s blood - and the tears spilled over again.

She couldn’t face him. All she could say, with her back to him, was a tearful, “I’m sorry. I had to. I couldn’t - let them -”

His laughter, low and hoarse and mirthless, cut her off.

Sydney swiveled around, uncomprehending, wondering briefly if Sark was experiencing a breakdown like the one she had when he showed her that picture of Will with Sloane. But no, he was truly laughing - stretched out on his back amidst the rubble, blood matting his blonde hair and streaming down his chest to pool around his navel, laughing until tears rolled down his cheeks.

His hollow laughter turned her icy cold, and she considered slapping him out of it the way he had done to her that night at the restaurant. “What,” she demanded stonily, “is so funny?”

In response, Sark held up the trigger she had somehow lost in the fray. He wordlessly pressed the red button.

Sydney looked down at the chip, expecting it to flash or explode or at least vibrate.

Nothing. It just lay there, silent. Harmless.

Her heart twittered. Bending down, she touched the plastic tentatively and glanced back as Sark pushed the button again.

Sydney shook her head in disbelief. Nothing! It didn’t shock her. It didn’t so much as make her fingertips tingle.

“How did you know?” she asked incredulously, staring at his profile a few feet away. “How did you know it wouldn’t work?”

Sark, who had finally stopped laughing, rolled onto his side and smirked at her. “It was never intended to work, Sydney. Your mother saw to that.”

He touched the fingermarks on his neck lightly and added, “Had you given me the chance, I was about to explain that before you performed your little open-heart surgery.”

Well, fuck.

Crouching there, trapped in a tiny vault with no foreseeable way out, staring into his adorably-twinkling blue eyes, Sydney didn’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or bash his head in with a slab of concrete.

Perhaps because she suddenly realized how hopeless it all was - not just being buried down here, but loving this man who was so completely wrong for her - she settled on crying.

She wasn’t aware of Sark moving until he was sitting beside her and gathering her gently into his arms. Sydney leaned into him, grateful for the comforting solidness of his warm body; she wound her arms around his waist, noting how terribly thin he was, and sobbed into his neck.

He smoothed her hair but said nothing. She knew his thoughts had to run where hers did - that this was so like the night they first kissed, and it would be so easy, so very easy, to give into that again -

“Sydney?”

For a moment, Sydney feared some guilt-ridden part of her brain was conjuring up Vaughn’s voice to punish her for those memories. Then she realized it was coming from the severely-damaged watch that contained her comm.

Jerking back from Sark, she was momentarily frozen by the blueness of his searching gaze. His lips, so close, seemed magnetically drawn to hers. For that one second she was completely captivated by him, utterly helpless against her love for him.

He could have taken her right then; she wouldn’t have resisted. Instead, he turned away, and the spell was broken.

Determined to hold onto her fragile self-control - think about Vaughn, dammit, and if that doesn’t work, focus on finding a way out of this tomb - Sydney crossed to the other side of the small vault, achieving the illusion of privacy. “Vaughn,” she said into the comm. “We’re alive. We’re okay -”

But Vaughn’s voice, distant and broken by loud bursts of static, continued over the top of hers, “ - coming to get you -” static “ - a few hours before they break through the -” more static “ - hold on -”

The white noise swallowed his voice completely at that point. Since he obviously couldn’t hear her, and since she knew a rescue team was on the way now, Sydney switched off the busted comm and brushed the dust out of her hair.

So.

Trapped, with Sark, for a few hours. But at least the cavalry was coming, and at least no one would be murdering Sark with a remote trigger. That took care of two of her concerns; she supposed finding out who lived and who died - including her parents - would have to wait until they were rescued.

Glancing over at Sark, Sydney’s apprehension gave way to a familiar anger.

He had known about Irina’s escape plan. He had known Sydney would betray him. He had, once again, allowed her mother to use for her some diabolical design.

Well, she could be better than he was. She could treat him with a cold indifference until the CIA dug them out, and then she would accept that he would never be someone she could trust, no matter how much she loved him. She might even ask her father to move him somewhere else, so she wasn’t tantalizingly close to him everyday. Provided they didn’t issue a real execution order for him this time, that was.

In the meantime, his wounds needed patching, and she refused to be as unfeeling as he and her mother obviously were.

“Take your shirt off,” she ordered brusquely.

Sark arched en eyebrow at her. With his face so gaunt, the gesture appeared even more sarcastic than usual. “No offense, Agent Bristow, but I don’t really feel up to that at the moment.”

“Don’t be perverse,” she snapped, removing her suit jacket and tearing the hem off of the gold tank-top underneath. “I’m going to close up that cut on your chest before you bleed to death.”

Sark fixed his best yeah-I-got-that-Syd smirk on her, pleased to have prompted an exasperated response with his smart-ass remark, and slipped the tee-shirt off.

Sydney’s heart slammed into her ribs. Good Lord, he was thin – how had he suffered these last two months –

Stop it, her inner voice commanded. Think about Francie – and Will – and everyone you know who might be dead right now thanks to this latest scheme of his.

That enabled her to steel herself as she knelt in front of him and tied the gold strip around his chest. She used her jacket to hold pressure on the wound while she inspected the gash on his head. The bleeding there had stopped, but it would need stitches nonetheless.

In spite of herself, Sydney surrendered to the natural impulse to smooth away his pain. Her fingers almost absently trailed down his face; he tensed visibly at her touch and stared intently straight ahead, a touch of color rising in his cheeks.

Oh yes. The wanting was there for her, too – a gnawing ache in her gut made no less intense by the lean muscles in his bare arms and stomach. She longed to ease in closer, turn his chin toward her, graze her lips across his in a tender, welcoming kiss –

Sark’s gaze suddenly locked onto hers, electrically blue and heart-breakingly vulnerable.

“Why are you still here?”

Sydney knew he didn’t mean it literally; obviously, she wasn’t going anywhere until a crew punched through these walls. The question gave her pause. Hadn’t she wondered herself, more and more frequently, what the hell she was still doing with the CIA?

Naturally, however, she didn’t admit that confliction to Sark. Her pride insisted he never know how badly she wanted to run away with him, to disappear and let Sloane and Irina and Rambaldi and the CIA be damned.

Refusing to be daunted by his impossibly beautiful eyes, she answered coolly, “To stop Sloane and my mother from whatever insanity they have planned next.”

His scrutinizing gaze didn’t waver. “And when they’re gone? Will you have done enough then?”

Sydney stiffened at the implication that she, too, had a hidden agenda. “Done enough for what?”

“To make up for those years you unknowingly aided the Alliance, and Sloane.”

Dammit. She hated when he read her so perfectly.

Those eyes – they were inescapable. She had to look away before he laid open her very soul.

Suddenly very interested in his bandage, Sydney replied tersely, “I don’t do this job out of guilt. I do it so all of those innocent people out there,” she waved vaguely at the walls, “can go on living their lives with some measure of peace and security.”

“Bullshit.”

That brought her suddenly-blazing eyes back up to his.

Shrugging at her ire, Sark countered smoothly, “It’s like that ring on your finger. You spend one week fucking me and then have to do penance with Agent Vaughn for the rest of your life.”

Sydney’s slap turned his head and echoed in the tiny room.

“Son of a bitch,” was all she said. Then she stood and stalked away before she completely snapped and strangled him.

Or kissed him. Either one would not have been acceptable.

They sat on opposite sides of the annoyingly small vault and ignored one another for the better part of an hour. Sydney willed herself not to care when he dug a shard of metal out of his ankle and winced.

She also tried valiantly not to remember the welcome weight of his body stretched out on top of hers, or the distinctly musky scent of his soft skin against her cheek, or the suggestive timbre in his voice when he called her ‘Agent Bristow’ again.

Only the more she suppressed those thoughts, the more insistent they became. She finally gave up, shut her eyes, and imagined pinning his arms above his head, punishing him with playful kisses, sliding his pants down and stroking up his thighs to –

“Can I tell you something?”

Sydney, face flushed from the heat of her fantasy, jumped guiltily. She turned what had to be a passion-hazy gaze on him and nodded warily, not sure she was ready to hear whatever he wanted to say.

“I’ve been sitting here thinking of all the things I wanted to say to you if I ever had the chance,” Sark announced quietly, “but now that you’re here, none of them seem…right.”

Sydney’s heart screeched to a halt and then leapt off again in a shaky, stumbling rhythm. She was terrified of what he might say, of what confessions he might make – of what she might confess in return.

Do not, her inner voice warned, under any circumstances, tell this man you love him. He’ll only turn that love against you, like before.

Knowing that didn’t make it any easier not to, though, when he asked, “Don’t you have things to say to me?”

Oh, did she. Millions of things. Starting with how very much she despised him. And missed him.

But she only allowed herself a tight-lipped, “I’d like to know what you had planned for me. You and my mother.”

Sark arched an eyebrow – again. “Planned for you?” he echoed, sounding hurt. “It was hardly as sinister as you make it out.”

What gave him the right to look so wounded?

And why did she care?

Sydney struggled to control the fury only Sark coule create in her when he acted so damn, well, sulky. “Right. Deceiving me into betraying my country and my father wasn’t sinister.”

That stung. A shade of remorse crept into his belligerent stare. Gratified to have him on the ropes, she persisted, “So what was the plan? To go on feeding me lie after lie so I’d keep helping you on this ridiculous Rambaldi quest?”

“That was your mother’s plan, yes.”

Sydney refused to let him deflect the responsibility. “And you? What was your plan?”

“To disappear with you, for good.”

Well, fuck. Again.

How could he appear so unfalteringly honest, so disarmingly forthright? How could he look at her so steadily, inviting her to interrogate him, willing her to take her best shot because he had nothing to hide?

When he exposed himself this way, when he dropped the cocky little act, she saw the flash of true innocence, of real goodness, that had pushed her over the edge from lust to love with him in the first place.

Sydney listened silently, forcing herself to maintain a blank expression, as he went on, “I wanted to get you away from all of this, Sydney. To get you out of this life and into one where we could be happy.” He paused. “And safe.”

She pictured their house in Australia. Their sanctuary. Breakfasting on the balcony at sunrise, a lazy day of slow love-making ahead of them; dancing on the porch in the twilight, surrounded by lightning bugs and fragrant breezes; snuggling on the sofa late at night, caressing each other under the blankets while raindrops drummed against the windows.

To wake up beside him every morning, to lie down with him every night, to love him all the hours in between. A beautiful dream.

But it was, she admitted, an unattainable one.

“How could we do that?”

She meant it to sound condescending, to imply that he should have known better, that it was simply ludicrous; instead, it sounded hopeful, like she wanted to be convinced it could work.

Maybe she did.

Sark watched his fingers trail through the dust beside his leg. He spoke absently, almost to himself, like a child sheepishly explaining some great ambition to a skeptical adult.

“I have money. Plenty of it. More than I could spend in one lifetime, really. More than enough to hide us from your parents, and anyone else who might come looking for us.”

His eyes snapped up to hers, startling in their honesty. “I know how to vanish, Sydney. I could have made it happen.”

She swallowed audibly. Her insides quivered, and goosebumps cascaded down her arms. Those familiar shivers started up again. “Then why send me in here to steal those artifacts? Why not just walk away and never look back?”

“Because,” he answered simply, “I thought if I gave Rambaldi to Irina, she might let me have you.”

Oh, sweet Jesus.

Sydney squeezed her eyes shut tight against the impending tears. When she clenched her fists at her sides, the engagement ring dug into her finger, an unpleasant but necessary reminder that she had already made her choice.

Anyway, none of it was possible now. The government would either lock Sark up and throw away the key, or execute him over this morning’s escapade. Their chance for happiness had slipped past the moment he told her he loved her but let her go on believing his lies.

Or could she forgive him, even now? Even for Francie’s death?

Sark’s voice, gruff with emotion, jarred her back to reality.

“So what happens now?”

She opened her eyes to find him staring at her in that scorching, irresistible way. The way that sent her resistance to him up in smoke. The way that sent her tortured mind off into stomach-softening memories of his bare skin pressed against hers, of his throaty voice calling out her name, of his nimble fingers sliding up into –

“What do you mean?” Sydney asked lamely, her mouth dry and sticky and suddenly very hungry for his.

Desire snaked between them, intensified by their mutual grief. Sark glanced at her bare midriff where the torn tank-top didn’t quite meet her black slacks.

“When we get out of here,” he said, rather thickly.

Damn that British accent.

Damn those baby-blue eyes.

This was insane, and if she didn’t force herself to look away from his mouth, she was going to quit caring and simply maul him.

The fire in his eyes told her how much he wanted her to do just that. It was the same way he’d looked at her in the pool when they first made love – like his passion might send him up in flames if he couldn’t have her.

Think, Sydney! Think of the consequences, her inner voice, disturbingly alarmed, wailed. Don’t be pulled back into this!

“How do they intend to do it?”

Not realizing she had shut her eyes again, Sydney opened them instantly when Sark’s husky voice rumbled in her ear. He was beside her now, leaning against the wall next to her with his elbows resting on his knees and his face turned toward her.

The shreds of Sydney’s remaining willpower threatened to desert her. “Do what?” she all but whispered.

Sadness tinged the longing behind his words. “My execution.”

She shivered. How could he sit there, talking calmly about his own death, and still melt her with his mere presence?

“I don’t know,” was all she could manage.

Almost tentatively, Sark reached out and traced the curve of her jaw with a fingertip. She knew she had to resist, knew she couldn’t possibly give in again, yet her body simply refused to move away when he dipped his mouth oh-so-close to hers.

“Will you miss me?” he breathed.

Sydney opened her mouth to say no.

The words wouldn’t come.

“Because,” his lips actually brushed hers, and still she sat motionless, breathless, speechless, “I want you to get out, Sydney. I want you to get away and be happy.”

Her heart pounded so hard she feared it might rupture against her ribcage. She heard his words, registered them dimly, but her body was screaming for him to shut-up and kiss her already.

Their mouths connected lightly as he murmured, “I need you to be happy, but I don’t think I can be brave about this if you don’t love me.”

Oh god. What was he doing to her? Tears stung her eyes and desire washed over her and pain seared her very soul.

The CIA would kill him now, she was nearly certain. He was too dangerous alive, and he couldn’t be trusted, not after today. And he was asking her – begging her, in his own way – to love him, to give him this one moment before she gave the rest of her life to Vaughn, to say good-bye the way they both needed to.

Sydney was, for better or worse, a stubborn and decisive woman. When she saw there in his face what she’d known deep down all along – that his love for her was real, not a lie or a trick or a game – she made up her mind to allow herself this forbidden moment. To hell with the consequences; she would accept them, whatever they were.

The engagement ring slipped off her finger with one twist and clanged once against the floor.

She held Sark’s gaze as she leaned forward and kissed him as softly as she’d ever kissed anyone, trying to convey with sheer tenderness the enormity of her love for him, the absoluteness of her forgiveness for all he’d done.

His eyelids flickered shut, but a single tear escaped anyway. Watching it track down his dirt-smeared, blood-spattered cheek, Sydney’s heart shattered into a million pieces.

Why did someone so beautiful, so remarkable, so inexplicably innocent have to feel so much pain?

She would destroy that pain, she decided, if it was the last thing she ever did. In her arms, he would know only pleasure.

Lying back, heedless of the metal and concrete covering the floor beneath her, Sydney pulled him down on top of her. She opened her mouth to his tongue; their lips still barely touching, Sark traced the inside of her lips, toyed with the sensitive interior of her cheeks, sighed quietly when she repeated the exploration on him. Their kisses were light and teasing, denying one another the satisfaction they both sought, building a storm of longing between them that promised to explode in a wild tempest of ecstasy.

Sark gave in first. “Please,” he half-moaned against her lips, as her tongue flicked across the corner of his mouth, “please kiss me.”

The firm pressure of his mouth at last digging into hers sent delightful chills down Sydney’s spine. She raked her fingernails down his bare back, grabbed his hips and ground their bodies together. He moaned; she took advantage of his parted lips to slide her tongue inside, repeating her exploration of those velvety recesses while her hands slid over the taut muscles in his chest and stomach.

He was much thinner, yes, but still powerful. He moved over her with a lithe, almost feline grace that drove her mad with desire.

Sark’s lips dropped onto her neck, sucking greedily on her throat. Sydney moved her hands between them, slid down the zipper on her pants and pushed them off her hips; she wrapped her bare legs around his, pulling him tighter into the part of her that ached for him the most.

“I need you,” she growled against his throat, her voice charged with urgency.

Ripping the gold tank-top down the middle, Sark expertly unsnapped the bra where it hooked between her breasts. Sydney arched toward him as his hot kisses moved down her body, teasing across her swollen nipples and down onto her thighs.

His thumb grazed over the silk front of her panties, and she cried out.

He took his time working her underwear down, trailing kisses along her stomach, tickling the insides of her thighs with feather-light touches, until Sydney thought she might explode from wanting.

Just when she was certain she couldn’t stand another moment, he kicked his pants off, lifted her hips slightly off the floor and buried himself in her. His arms slipped beneath her and crushed her to his chest as their bodies joined in a desperate, furious rhythm.

Sydney never dreamed anything could top that first time they made love – so sweet, so intense, so perfect – but this, this was like nothing she’d felt before. Their flesh seemed melded together; the faster and deeper he drove into her, the more urgently she needed him. She heard herself calling out his name over and over, heard his rough, almost agonized breathing in her ear, and everything was spinning and dancing with color behind her eyelids.

When she climaxed, she screamed so loudly it echoed off the thick walls. Sark thrust into her once more, cried out sharply with his own pleasure, and collapsed on top of her.

For several minutes, they lay silently, tangled in one another. Their harsh breathing filled the small room.

At last, Sark pushed up onto an elbow and looked down at her. His handsome face was flushed and shiny with sweat.

“I do love you,” he said, strong and clear. No fear or hesitancy this time, like before.

Sydney swallowed the automatic reply but surrendered to the temptation to kiss his pouty lips. Stretching up, she claimed his damp mouth with hers, eliciting another soft, sexy moan from him when she nipped gently at his crooked bottom lip.

“Sydney,” he began.

“Shh,” she whispered, and tugged his head down onto her shoulder. He snuggled into her, told her to ignore the blood mixing with their sweat from his re-opened chest wound, and hugged her close.

What would she give to stay like this forever? What would she sacrifice to never leave his arms again?

Yet, with the intense physical need for him momentarily quenched, reality closed in on Sydney again. She didn’t regret making love to him; if she shouted down her inner voice for a second, she could admit she didn’t even regret loving him.

What she regretted were the circumstances they found themselves in.

He was a terrorist. She was a CIA agent. However they had gotten this way – whatever choices had been offered or denied them throughout their respective lives – this was where they had ended up. On opposite sides of an ever-widening chasm.

She wondered if, with his head on her chest, Sark heard her heart breaking.

She lowered her face into his soft, damp blonde curls, savored the feel and the smell of him for a moment longer. Then she said, as strongly as she could, “I can’t love you, Sark.”

He flinched. “Can’t, or don’t?”

“Can’t.”

She waited for him to coax. Or argue. Or curse.

He didn’t. He just lay quietly, his breath fanning her skin, his arms locked securely around her. And, content to hold and be held, Sydney let him, until heavy equipment sounded outside the doors.

They dressed each other, kissing and touching exposed skin softly, almost sadly. Sydney’s tank-top was ripped down the middle, so she wore his tee-shirt, hoping her father – and Vaughn – would believe that the torn garment had acted as a bandage for Sark’s wounds.

Vaughn. She had betrayed him today, and now she had another secret to hide from him forever.

Consequences, her inner voice lectured. You agreed to accept them, remember?

And she would. But later. For now, she had only minutes left with Sark, and she intended to savor them.

He zipped her pants up and kissed her cheek gently. Resting his forehead against hers, he stared at her longingly, as if memorizing her and this moment.

The heaviness in his voice surprised her. “Promise me you’ll get yourself away from all of this. You’ve done your part, Sydney. Now just walk away.”

“You’re forgetting,” she answered quietly, nodding down at the ring glittering in the dust. “The CIA is the life Vaughn chose, too.”

To Sydney’s amazement, Sark knelt, polished the ring on his pants, straightened and slipped it back onto her finger.

Those eyes – cold, like when he’d killed Rikkets, but no longer unfeeling.

Haunted.

“If he won’t leave with you, then he’s a fool.”

Oh, dammit to hell, she couldn’t do this. “Sark,” she began, reaching for him.

This time he stepped back, with a finality that chilled Sydney to the core.

“I have nothing left to offer you,” he declared simply. “If you love that man, marry him. If you don’t, then find someone that you can. But it’s time you started living for yourself and stopped carrying around the guilt of your parents’ sins.”

He held her by the shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “You have nothing to atone for, Sydney. It’s time to let it go.”

Machinery squealed outside the door; sparks flew in as the frame began to give way. Sark pulled her into the far corner and placed his palms against the wall on either side of her, shielding her from the flying shards of white-hot metal.

Dipping his head, he whispered in her ear, “Do me one favor?”

Sydney nodded mutely, only barely resisting the urge to take him in her arms again and vow to love him until the end.

“Don’t tell them about the chip. It’ll lead them straight to Marshall.”

Sydney gasped at that revelation, but he didn’t give her a chance to react. Instead, Sark kissed her – roughly, desperately, passionately – and Sydney kissed back, wishing she could freeze them in time and stay with him forever.

He jerked away an instant before the doors crashed in and her father and Vaughn rushed in to save her.

* * * *

Two hours later, alone in an Operations Center conference room, Sark pondered what had happened in the vault.

Madness.

When in God’s name did he become altruistic?

If he wasn’t so certain Jack Bristow would personally be administering his lethal injection, Sark never would have given Sydney up that easily. For fuck’s sake, hadn’t he spent days plotting ways to steal her back from the underwear model? And hadn’t she been more than willing to be seduced, to forgive him, to pick up right where they’d left off?

He shivered at the memory of their fierce love-making. He’d never made love like that – as if he needed to become part of her, to melt into her until it was impossible to separate one from the other.

So why the hell had he blown her off there at the end, when she was ready to declare her undying love?

Because you love her, you miserable bastard, a little voice in his head chided. Because you took that pansy-ass Vaughn’s speech about wanting her to be safe and happy to heart. Because you’re a stupid mother-fucker and you’re letting that nasty little conscience she’s awakened get the better of you.

Well, fuck the selflessness. Sark wanted Sydney to be safe and happy all right – with him. He should have stomped that damn ring into powder and kissed her until Jack burst in and forced them apart.

Not to mention that right now he could have used Sydney’s wiliness to get him out of here before they really did stick a needle in his arm.

Strapped to a chair in not an entirely comfortable position – for one thing, the hole Sydney had dug in his chest hurt like hell, and Vaughn had been sure to wind his arms up awkwardly behind him – Sark nevertheless refused to complain. A guard peeked in at him now and again, but he remained stoic, even when his bare chest and arms turned a mottled purple from the air-conditioned cold. He fully expected to be tortured prior to his execution, so it was time to put his game face on.

The dark-haired agent whose name Sark could never recall – Weiss, that was it, why didn’t they put a fucking name tag on the guy – entered briefly to bandage the wounds in Sark’s head and chest.

Curiosity got the better of Sark. “Did Derevko escape?” he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

Weiss glowered at him. No fear; Sark respected that. “Unfortunately.”

Mostly because he was concerned about Marshall as well, but partly because he simply enjoyed throwing people off-balance, Sark inquired earnestly, “Were any of your agents hurt?”

Taken aback by his concern, Weiss answered warily, “Only the lower level was involved in the explosion. The two guards outside your cell were killed. Everyone else was unharmed.”

Sark grinned mockingly. “Good,” he said cryptically, making it impossible for Weiss to tell if he was glad the guards were dead or relieved that the others escaped unscathed.

Honestly, so long as Sydney and Irina and Marshall were all right, Sark didn’t give a fuck one way or the other. Well, he supposed he might be a tiny bit glad that Jack survived, though only because of the devastation his death would have caused Sydney.

He was really and truly glad, however, that Irina escaped. Not that he expected her survival to benefit him much; even if she wanted to – and he liked to think she would – she couldn’t attempt another extraction anytime soon. And time was something Sark suspected he didn’t have much of.

No, he’d have to get himself out of this one somehow.

He had yet to work that “how” part out when Jack, flanked by Sydney and Vaughn and Kendall, finally arrived.

“Stand him up,” Jack instructed Vaughn, who unlocked Sark’s cuffs and hauled him roughly to his feet.

Sark stood rigid, unflinching, and looked directly at Sydney. She had showered and now wore a plain gray suit, but he wondered if anyone else noticed the tell-tale glow to her skin.

He sincerely hoped Agent Vaughn did.

Jack spoke coldly, his face fixed in its usual impenetrable mask. “The Department of Justice continues to disagree with my assessment that you are an intolerable risk to national security and should be executed immediately.”

Hallelujah for the Department of Justice.

Resisting the flood of relief – his situation was far from secure just yet – Sark arched an eyebrow at Jack, purposefully unconcerned. “I was under the impression that my execution had already been scheduled.”

Kendall, always itching to assert his importance, confessed, “The execution order Agent Bristow showed you was a fake, intended to secure your cooperation in trapping Derevko. It was thought that if you believed your only option for survival was to make yourself useful to us, you might be more willing to play along.”

Well, well, well.

Sark slid an admiring glance toward Sydney. Damn, she’d played that one perfectly; he never dreamed she was lying.

The tiniest hint of a proud smile tugged at her lips. He smirked openly at her then, which brought a charming scarlet tint to her already-rosy cheeks.

Jack subtly stepped between them, forcing Sark to meet his gaze. The hatred there was undeniable.

Sark smirked at him, too. What ya gonna do about it, Jack? All those bureaucrats you report to got your hands tied behind your back on this one?

“My solution to that problem,” Jack announced, his voice so low and flinty Sark strained to hear him, “was simple. Only a handful of people know you survived that escape attempt this morning. It would be completely plausible for your mangled corpse to found amidst the rubble.”

Though outwardly he showed nothing, inwardly Sark shuddered. He expected that the mangling would not occur postmortem.

He’d tortured enough people to know it would not be a nice way to die. Especially with Jack Bristow holding the knife.

His eyes darted over Jack’s shoulder to Sydney, who was staring fixedly at the floor. Would she really let him be killed that way?

More importantly, could she stop it, even if she wanted to?

But Jack wasn’t finished. “Derevko contacted us four hours ago. She claims,” Jack laced that word with malicious disbelief, “that she intended the explosion merely as a distraction, and that it was not meant to be that powerful. If what she says is true, then Sloane double-crossed her, believing she would be caught in the blast and killed, leaving him the sole recipient of the Rambaldi artifacts.”

Goddamn fucking Sloane. Sark prayed for fifteen minutes alone with that back-stabbing bastard and a cattle prod.

His situation, however, was looking up by the moment. Irina was alive and well and scheming, and Sark understood, suddenly, that Jack’s contained fury stemmed from once again being denied the opportunity to remove both Irina and Sark from Sydney’s life.

A deal, Sark realized, had been struck.

He just might come out the winner today after all.

He waited patiently while Jack stepped back and Kendall took over. “We know Irina Derevko cannot be trusted. But for the time being, she’s the lesser of two evils. Sloane successfully raided our warehouse of the Rambaldi pieces, and she claims she can help us get them back. I don’t believe for a second she actually intends to hand them over, yet we can’t pass up the chance for her to lead us to them.”

And she’ll play you like a cheap violin, you pathetic little man, Sark thought.

Ratcheting up the smirk to a whole new level of smugness, Sark sneered, “Fascinating. I fail to see how any of this concerns me, though.”

Kendall and Jack exchanged a resigned look. “Derevko’s one condition for assisting us,” Kendall explained dryly, “was that we release you into her custody immediately.”

Holy shit.

Sark beamed so widely that Kendall had to turn away before he could surrender to the desire to punch him out. Sark’s gaze flashed to Sydney; her face revealed nothing, but her eyes shone in a peculiar way that told him she was possibly more relieved at this turn of events than even he was.

Fuck handing her over to Vaughn for the greater good. Fuck being the better man. Sark was on his way back to freedom, and he wouldn’t leave Sydney behind without a fight.

Jack waved in a guard, who deposited a stack of clothes on the conference table. Sark recognized the expensive suit he’d been stripped of on his first day of captivity, right down to the two-thousand-dollar Rolex.

“Get changed,” Jack commanded icily, his glare failing to freeze over Sark’s triumphant smile. “We leave within the hour.”

At that moment, anything seemed possible to Sark – ripping off the CIA, putting a bullet in Sloane’s ugly face, completing Rambaldi’s work, whisking Sydney off to a desert island for eternity. Irina had come through, against all odds. He had lived to fight another day.

And Mr. Sark was about to be resurrected.

Chapter Eighteen: El Tango

Sydney ordered herself not to react when Sark stepped out of the car at the airfield.

Damn, that boy could wear a suit.

Although he must have been a good twenty pounds heavier when it was tailored for him, the black Armani still accentuated the leanness of his frame, the narrowness of hips, the broadness of his shoulders. Or maybe it was just that he moved with such sensuality and assuredness that he might as well have been naked, because Sydney couldn’t help imagining every inch of ivory skin and every rippling muscle beneath the expensive fabric.

Vaughn stood beside her in slate-gray slacks and a blue oxford, and Sydney tried not to compare the two.

The ring sat heavily on her finger.

Sark had ridden to Irina’s arranged rendezvous point in the back of a black Sedan driven by her father. Marshall, whom Kendall had ordered along for the very likely possibility that they would require a tech-guy in the field, stumbled out behind Sark. If it was possible, Marshall looked even more nervous than usual; his skin was fish-white and coated with sweat. Sark stayed companionably close to him, drawing him into a conversation that Sydney couldn’t hear.

Watching them, she smoothed a neutral expression into place and swallowed the millions of questions she had about how Marshall had become involved in all of this.

Leave it to her mother and Sark to recruit the least-likeliest suspect.

She and Vaughn were already on the tarmac, awaiting her mother’s arrival while the pilot – Irina’s, like the small private jet – prepared for the flight to London. Where they were going was a question Jack had insisted Irina answer before he committed any resources to this operation; the “why”, however, remained a mystery. Sydney assumed it would all be explained once her mother showed up and they got on-board.

A sinking sun gilded the asphalt in hues of crimson and copper, both of which played nicely on the highlights in Sark’s hair as he approached her and Vaughn, Marshall in tow. Sydney noted the cocky swagger to his hips, the victorious twist to his smirk, but most of all the blatant lust in his ice-blue gaze when he looked her up and down admiringly.

She blushed and moved closer to Vaughn, who draped a possessive arm around her shoulders. Silently, she willed Sark to leave it alone, to not put her in an impossible position.

Unfortunately, the condescending look he shot Vaughn told Sydney in no uncertain terms that Sark wasn’t going to make this easy for her.

Normally, being fought over by two gorgeous men would have made Sydney heady with pride. But too much was at stake here; more and more, she understood that Vaughn was her tenuous anchor to the life she was supposed to lead, and the storm of emotions Sark evoked in her threatened to snap that line and send her free-floating into madness.

That realization had hit hard while she showered after being rescued from the vault. Vaughn had driven her home, for once refraining from his usual inquiries into her emotional and physical well-being, and she feared the whole time that he could smell Sark on her. If he had suspicions, though, he kept them to himself, and treated her with a tenderness that only added to the weight of her guilt.

Standing alone under the scalding spray, cleansing herself of the dirt and grime but unable (perhaps unwilling) to scrub away the memory of Sark, Sydney had admitted that she was being very selfish in this relationship with Vaughn. She thought back to what had attracted her to him in the first place, when security concerns forbid her to act on that attraction; she had been enamored by his intellect, his gentleness, his stability, his loyalty. She felt safe with him, as she had with Danny.

The difference was, she had been madly in love with Danny. Really, truly, completely in love with him. All of the Sarks in the world couldn’t have pulled her from his side; it had taken Arvin Sloane and a bullet to do that. Vaughn reminded her of Danny, and, she had reflected while lathering her hair up, that was most likely what had drawn her to him initially.

She accepted that, in time, even without Sark’s interference, their relationship would have disintegrated. Because Vaughn wasn’t Danny. And because she didn’t measure up to the glamorous, infallible picture of her that Vaughn seemed to have.

So, she had asked herself, why not just walk away? Why not take Sark’s advice and find someone (other than him, of course) that she did love?

That was the only right thing to do. He might not be The One for her, but nevertheless Vaughn was a good man, a decent person with a soft smile, a warm heart and a caring nature. He deserved a woman who loved him deeply and wholly, not someone who was, more or less, using him as a buffer between who she knew she was supposed to be and who she feared she might become.

Yet to walk away from Vaughn would be to remove the most tangible barrier between her and Sark; without Vaughn, she would run straight to Sark – she was certain of that much, at least. And the idea of giving herself over to Sark – a cold-blooded, remorseless assassin, a man unapologetically out for his own gain – translated into becoming her mother in Sydney’s mind. She resembled Irina in so many ways: same dark eyes, same slim build, same unbreakable tenacity, same fierce passion. She feared that the same ruthless selfishness lurked somewhere in her as well.

She wondered if that might be what horrified her father so much about the situation, why he pushed her so forcefully toward Vaughn – because Vaughn was the kind of man Sydney (or at least the Sydney she was meant to be) would marry. And Sark was the kind of man Irina would desire.

But even as she had pondered those things, Sydney knew she wouldn’t really step out of the shower, hand the ring back to Vaughn and call the whole thing off. She was too afraid that her father might be right.

So now, as Sark stopped less than a foot away from her, Sydney reaffirmed the vow she had made to herself during that long shower: She would love Vaughn. She would focus on all of his sweet, wonderful, endearing qualities, ignore his flaws, and fall in love with him.

Why did that suddenly seem so foolish when she was staring into Sark’s heart-stopping blue eyes?

He exuded arrogance. Folding his arms across his chest, he flicked a dismissive glance toward Vaughn and focused on her. Just as Sydney was dreading the inevitable smart-ass remark he was about to make, a red Jeep rocketed around the corner and screeched to a halt beside the plane.

Whatever Irina’s shortcomings, bland entrances weren’t one of them. Looking absolutely in-control in black cargo pants and an olive-green knit top, she leapt out from behind the wheel and made a beeline for Sark.

Sydney saw a momentary indecision cross Sark’s handsome face, so fleeting and subtle that anyone else – anyone who didn’t know him the way she did – would have missed it entirely.

It vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He abandoned her and calmly walked to meet Irina.

Their reunion was touching, whether Sydney wanted to admit it or not. Irina rushed toward him in the baking afternoon heat, her enormous dark eyes glistening, and Sark came steadily toward her, as if magnetically drawn. When they reached other, Irina held him at arm’s length and studied him; noting his thinness, she shot a reproving glare at Jack, who stood ramrod-straight and scowling beside the Sedan. Then she cupped Sark’s chin and tilted his head gently to the side to inspect the nine stitches marking his temple.

Even Sark looked startled when she suddenly embraced him. Sydney chanced a sideways look at her father, noting that if Jack’s eyes bulged any further they might pop out of his face entirely.

A bit awkwardly, Sark lifted his arms and placed his hands lightly on Irina’s back, tentatively returning the hug. She squeezed him tighter, her chin resting on his shoulder, her eyes closed.

Sydney was standing close enough to hear Irina say softly, “I thought you were dead.” She leaned back, and her next words were almost lost as the plane’s engines roared to life. Sydney couldn’t be sure, but it sounded very much like, “Thank you for protecting her.”

Jack stalked forward, his spine so rigidly straight that only the lower half of his body moved when he walked. “Let’s get going,” he ordered them all, starting up the steps into Irina’s plane without waiting for an invitation.

Vaughn tugged gently on Sydney’s shoulders. She followed him reluctantly, glancing back at her mother and Sark as Irina linked her arm through his and, out-right ignoring everyone else, announced cheerily, “It’s good to have you back. I have so much to tell you.”

* * * *

They stopped to refuel at another private airfield in New York. It wasn’t until they were flying over the Atlantic that Irina finally turned her attention from fussing over Sark to explaining the mission they were about to embark on.

“This man,” Irina declared, producing a glossy black-and-white surveillance photo and passing it to Jack, “is Aaron Winslow.”

Jack handed the picture to Sydney, who observed that the man was almost painfully ordinary: between twenty-five and thirty, prematurely balding, of average height and weight. A completely forgettable face except for the beady, rat-like eyes.

They were seated in a circle in the plane’s surprisingly comfortable cabin. Jack, his spine still unnaturally straight, perched on the edge of a deep-cushioned chair directly across from Irina, who appeared completely relaxed as she sat beside an equally-languid Sark on a small sofa. Marshall fidgeted to Sark’s right; Vaughn and Sydney sat together on a loveseat facing him. A short, low coffee table was positioned in the middle, holding Sark’s empty plate and wine glass.

Irina’s first priority once they boarded, it had seemed, was to feed her too-thin comrade. She had whipped up a cold roastbeef sandwich, a hunk of cheese and a half-bottle of cabernet for him in the small galley without offering anyone else so much as a crumb. After he ate, she had insisted on cleaning his stitches and bandaging a tiny cut on his hand.

Sydney noticed that Sark looked rather uncertain of how to react to the lavish attention. In spite of herself, she thought how much like a lost little boy he was, deep down beneath the heartless façade he assumed.

And, with a twinge of disgust, she thought how expertly Irina manipulated that weakness in him. She treated him like a long-lost son, like a beloved child safely returned to the fold, when it was her scheming that had landed him in harm’s way to begin with.

Focus, Syd, she ordered herself, aware that she was considering both Sark and her mother too openly. Sloane – Rambaldi – the mission. Get your head in the game.

“Mr. Winslow,” Irina was saying, now that they’d all had the opportunity to peruse his photo, “is, quite simply, a fence. He specializes in moving black-market materials across borders and in finding buyers for stolen goods. Sloane is using him to move the Rambaldi artifacts to a secret and secure location.”

“How do you know this?” Jack interrupted, his voice as cold and steely as Sydney had ever heard it.

His eyes dug into Irina, but true to form, she never missed a beat. “Sark acquired many things while he was in Sloane’s company. Such as a very valuable list of Sloane’s most trusted assets.”

She turned a proud smile on Sark, who grinned almost shyly. Sydney’s heart fluttered – why did he have to look so boyishly sexy when he did that? – and earned her another tirade from her inner voice.

Head in the game, Sydney!

“I assumed from the beginning that Sloane would plan to double-cross me,” Irina went on, shrugging as if she fully expected to be back-stabbed by everyone in her life, “so yesterday I put surveillance teams on any of those assets who might prove useful to him in moving those artifacts. This morning, Mr. Winslow received a one-million dollar wire transfer into an off-shore account in the Cayman Islands. He then arranged for an armored car to meet Sloane’s plane at a private airfield in London six hours ago. The only logical conclusion is that he’s helping Sloane move the artifacts.”

Jack nodded, grudgingly accepting her explanation. “Where are the pieces now?”

“I don’t know. My associate unfortunately lost the car in traffic.”

The corner of Jack’s mouth twitched around a deprecatory smirk, and Irina’s shoulders tensed slightly. Sydney forced herself not to roll her eyes. Would her parents ever tire of baiting another?

Hmm, there was an odd parallel between their relationship and hers with Sark…

You have no ‘relationship’ with Sark, her inner voice warned. Got that? No. Relationship. With. Sark.

Glossing over Jack’s unspoken insult of her associate’s incompetence, Irina continued crisply, “Mr. Winslow is staying at the Grey Stone Inn in London tonight. It’s fairly upscale, mostly a tourist attraction. My associate recorded a cell phone call between him and Sloane saying Winslow would be contacted there at noon tomorrow.” She paused. “I’ve already reserved us rooms.”

Jack sneered. “Don’t you think that’s a bit much, staying in the same hotel? Sloane undoubtedly has a surveillance team watching this man’s every move, in case we try to intercept him.”

“Actually,” Irina replied smugly, “Sloane believes Sark and I were killed in the explosion this morning. And that false security is making him very sloppy.”

Sydney hid a grin behind her hand. How her mother had managed that, she didn’t even want to guess. But she had to hand it to Irina – no one out-schemed her. Not even Arvin Sloane.

Far from satisfied, Jack argued, “Nevertheless. Why not simply stake out the hotel instead of being a visible presence there? Sloane is too close to his goal now to start making silly mistakes.”

“You overestimate him.”

Sark spoke with such quiet assurance that all eyes immediately fastened on him. Hooking one arm casually over the back of the sofa, he clarified, “Sloane believes it’s his destiny to complete Rambaldi’s work. He doesn’t think any of us pose a real threat to that. His arrogance is his Achilles heel.”

The look Jack shot Sark said plainly how hypocritical he found that statement. Sark just smirked at him until Jack turned back to Irina, who ended the debate with a firm, “We need to rest, Jack. All of us.” She cut her eyes discreetly toward Sark, and for once, Sydney believed that she might truly be concerned for his welfare; the stitches and oversized suit did make him look rather small and forlorn.

Vaughn cleared his throat, obviously hesitant to draw attention to himself when Jack looked ready to pounce on the first available prey. “How do we get to Winslow tomorrow without tipping Sloane off to our presence?”

“I doubt Sloane himself will be there,” Irina replied. “Such details are beneath him. He’ll send one of his associates to finalize plans for the transport. All we have to do is eavesdrop on that conversation.”

Everyone looked to Marshall, who stared back at them blankly for a second. Then he jerked into action. “Oh! Right! Eavesdropping. Yes. Yeah. I mean, yes, I can, you know, I can probably come up with something for you. For the CIA,” he added too quickly, cowering as his gaze darted away from Irina and over to Jack. “I can – I can do that, Mr. Bristow.”

Had Jack been watching him, he undoubtedly would have picked up on the strangeness of Marshall’s typically-strange behavior. As it was, he was focused too intently on glowering at Sark and Irina to notice.

“Good,” was all he said, and the first part of the plan was decided.

* * * *

It felt good to be back.

Sark dismissed the designer suits and snazzy cars and opulent hotels as a necessary element in his bad-guy mystique. But after two months of wearing shapeless black pajamas, sleeping on a torturously stiff cot and eating cafeteria-style slop, he had to admit that he’d missed the silk shirts and satin sheets and fine wines.

He had also missed his privacy. Nothing like the simple pleasure of showering alone.

Hair still damp from that shower, Sark slipped on his boxers and stretched out on the luxuriously soft bed. He closed his eyes against a killer headache, no doubt brought on by the day’s earlier head injury and compounded by watching Sydney snuggle up to the underwear model during that endless flight.

He half-hoped Irina would drop in to check on him so he could ask her for a cold rag to lay on his forehead. He was too comfortable to go after one himself.

Irina.

What the hell was going on with her, anyway?

At the airfield, he’d chalked her display of maternal concern up to a Laura Bristow Moment played entirely for Jack’s benefit. Until her spontaneous hug, that was.

In spite of himself, Sark felt a warm inner glow just thinking of it. Nice to be shown pure, uncomplicated affection.

But nothing Irina did was pure or uncomplicated. It unnerved him that she might be manipulating him the same way she did Jack and Sydney, feigning a depth of emotion she didn’t feel. Yet, even knowing that, he found more and more that his fuzzy memories of his real mother were jumbled with recollections of Irina.

If it was loyalty she wanted, she already had his. Why play these games?

Sark sighed, sinking further into the thick mattress. A few hours’ sleep, that was what he needed. He was bone-weary. He wanted to dream about Sydney, about their fabulous love-making in the vault only a few short hours ago.

Sydney.

His heart thudded painfully. She was next door right now, with the underwear model. Irina had booked them a room together.

He tried not to be irritated by that, and failed.

Well, who was he kidding? Irina, realistically, would never have intended for Sydney to end up with a man like him. What mother would choose a liar, a thief, a murderer and an internationally-wanted terrorist for her daughter over a suave, heroic and stable man like Michael Vaughn?

Okay, Irina was that sort of mother. But maybe she retained more Laura Bristow qualities than she cared to admit, even to herself.

Or maybe she merely didn’t see any benefit to herself in pursuing Sydney’s love for Sark. Obviously, Sydney would never join their team now; Irina had counted on that when she contacted her about helping him escape. Perhaps that manipulation had outlived its usefulness, and now she just didn’t give a fuck who Sydney loved.

Sark briefly toyed with the idea of asking for her assistance in winning Sydney back, but the prospect of such an awkward and humiliating conversation killed that plan before it ever fully formed. What would he say? Ms. Derevko, I’m in love with your daughter, and I’d like you to tell her that I’m who she belongs with.

Thank you, but no. He would find his own way to get her back.

Lost in thought, Sark was caught off-guard by the turn of a key in his lock. Bolting upright, he seized the .9 millimeter off the nightstand and aimed it at the door, which swung slowly open.

Irina took no notice of the weapon as she sauntered in. “You should be resting,” was all she said, like a mother lecturing an obstinate child, and shut the door behind her.

Sark returned the gun to the nightstand and laid his head back on the pillows. He saw her brow furrow at the now-exposed stitches in his chest, and again, he involuntarily enjoyed being the object of her motherly concern.

He scooted over to make room for her on the bed. She sat gracefully on the edge, the trousers and knit top replaced by a cream-colored silk blouse and a knee-length rose-red skirt. Kicking the matching red pumps off onto the floor, she handed him a large wrapped package.

“A gift,” she answered his questioning look, “for looking after Sydney. And for protecting my other interests while you were in custody.”

All right, something was definitely up. Sark had worked for Irina since he was fourteen, and the only time she had ever given him a gift was his eighteenth birthday. He would never forget following her nervously out into a thick early-morning fog at her vineyard in Italy, wondering if he had been summoned so suddenly for his own execution, to find a fully-loaded black Mercedes awaiting him in the circular drive.

“It’s yours,” Irina had said, beaming at his astonishment. “Now let’s see what she can do.”

They had raced up and down nearly deserted dirt roads until nightfall, then returned to the vineyard for wine and cake with Khasinau on the terrace, the first and only time she had ever so much as acknowledged his birthday. Amidst only a handful of happy memories, that day stood out as one of his best.

He doubted, somehow, that this second gift came with no strings attached. The first one sure as hell hadn’t.

His hesitation puzzled her. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

She looked so eager to see him do so that Sark obeyed; besides, he wasn’t in the habit of refusing his employer. The shiny green paper peeled off easily, revealing a plain white box. Sark removed the lid and grinned with real delight.

Irina met his eyes and grinned back. “I thought you could use something new,” she shrugged, watching him unfold the sable-colored suit. He laid it out on the bed beside him, along with the cerulean shirt and matching black-checked tie.

Sark rarely gave his good looks a second thought – it was just part of him, like his implicit understanding of mathematics and his natural skill as a fighter – but he knew this outfit was designed to bring out all of his best features.

“We’re having dinner, tonight, in the restaurant downstairs,” Irina said, deliberately casual. Sark ran his hand over the rich cotton as she added, “All of us. Jack was reluctant, but he finally agreed.”

Well. Sark couldn’t stop himself from sending Irina a grateful smile as he pictured Agent Vaughn in his lack-luster slacks and button-down.

Maybe Irina was more interested in who Sydney ended up with than he’d thought.

* * * *

The look on Sydney’s face when he walked into the restaurant an hour later made Sark want to carry her straight up the stairs to bed, regardless of what her father or her fiancé had to say about it.

Instant desire. Magnetic chemistry.

She undressed him with her eyes as he pulled Irina’s chair out and settled in beside her. Sark, ever-confident, actually battled down a blush from the heat of Sydney’s gaze. They were seated directly across from one another at the small rectangular table, and for once, he didn’t dare look up at her.

It might have been gratifying for her to leap across the table and take him right there amidst the crockery, but Sark didn’t fancy being shot point-blank in the head by Jack Bristow. So he studied his menu until he sensed her look away.

Then he smirked at Vaughn, who just looked rather pathetically dejected.

Jack’s glare skewered Sark from the other end of the table. Sark avoided looking at him, too, deciding it was best not to push things with spy-daddy while he was already furious with Irina.

Whatever her game was in making Sark the center of attention, Irina kept at it again over dinner. This time, she included Marshall as well; at first, Marshall cringed every time she spoke to him, but by the time the three of them had polished off two bottles of merlot, he was avidly explaining the shortcomings of Star Wars: Episode I to them.

Irina had the ability to make a person feel like the most important thing in the world. Sark had watched her turn that charm on countless times before, for men and women alike; her disarming earnestness, her incredible smile, her remarkable wit, combined with her calculated estimation of what someone needed or wanted to hear, enabled her to win nearly anyone over to her side. Sark would have wagered that charm had saved her life more times than any weapon.

And tonight it was turned on full-force. For Marshall, partially, but mostly, for Sark.

After a few uncertain minutes, he decided to wait out the game and bask in the glow while it lasted.

Across the table, Vaughn and Sydney talked quietly, both looking rather miffed and slightly embarrassed by how blatantly Irina excluded them. Jack cut into his prime rib with a viciousness that nearly made Sark wince and spoke to no one. No one dared speak to him, either, though occasionally Irina tossed him a haughty smile.

The Grey Stone Inn, Sark determined, was definitely for tourists. Specifically dumb-ass, uncultured American tourists who thought anything that was expensive qualified as tasteful. The food was all right, but not superb; the wine was sweet, but not excellent; the service was adequate, but not perfect. He watched for Winslow, yet the man didn’t make an appearance. Either he had better ways to spend a million dollars or he preferred privacy to a dining room full of self-important Wall Street lawyers and Texas oil tycoons.

Aside from the staff, Sark decided he was the only British person in the room.

More than an hour after they arrived, a small orchestra began to warm up on a tiny stage in the east corner, opposite the bar. Sark noticed that a good portion of the once-large dance floor in front of it had been taken up by tables. Perhaps dining and dancing wasn’t a big draw for VIP Americans abroad.

Other than to assume the music would be as mediocre as the rest of the inn, Sark dismissed the band without a second thought until they started their first song.

El Tango. Astor Piazzolla.

Granted, a horrible butchering of Piazzolla’s unorthodox, clangy masterpiece, but still.

Sark’s mind flew back in time, to a sprawling apartment in Florence, where a terribly shy and insecure fifteen-year-old version of himself had watched enviously as Khasinau spun his new enigmatic boss – The Man, who turned out to be a beautiful and ice-cold woman – through a graceful, sensual dance. By then Sark had been proving himself to Irina, mostly as a driver but occasionally as a small-time thief and twice as an assassin, without fail for the better part of a year, and she still usually pretended he wasn’t in the room. He had doubted she even knew his name until Khasinau left that evening and, resetting the CD player, she had beckoned for him to join her.

He recalled her words with absolute clarity: “I’ve been watching you, Sark. You have the skills to go very far in this business. But skill alone won’t get you to the top.” She had placed one of his hands on her waist, tucked her hair behind her ear and guided him through a complicated series of steps.

“ If you want to be in charge someday, if you want to stop taking orders from people like me and start giving your own, then you have to be confident. You have to be absolutely certain of yourself, about everything, all of the time, even when you aren’t.”

She had held his gaze, as earnest as he’d ever seen her up to that point. “Our world is like a dance. If you want to win, you have to tango.”

And then she had shown him how, with a patience and a humor he would never have expected from her. By dawn, he had been whisking her across the living room with the grace of an accomplished dancer.

Now, he looked up to find her eyes locked on him, a mischievous grin tilting up the corners of her mouth. When she really smiled – not a false simper, but a true heart-felt smile – the finely-webbed wrinkles around her eyes crinkled charmingly. Sark realized this was what Sydney would look like one day – still fabulous regardless of her age. Timeless.

Irina cocked her head at him, asking silently if he remembered. His grin told her that he did.

Then she did something totally unexpected. Pushing her chair back, Irina stood and extended a hand to him. “Shall we?” she asked lightly.

Sark hesitated, glancing across the table at Sydney, who looked utterly dumbfounded. He even snuck a look at Jack, and the image of his hand frozen halfway between his mouth and his plate, completely immobilized by rage, would be seared into Sark’s memory forever.

It was Vaughn’s expression of disgust that gave Sark the incentive to stand, take Irina’s hand and lead her out onto the empty dance floor.

Although it had been almost eight years since they danced together, Sark hadn’t forgotten a move, and neither had Irina. Heads turned their way all over the dining room as he slipped one arm around her waist and spun into the fierce, choppy rhythm with her, never missing a step.

Sark wondered, as he so often did, how he looked to these people smiling their way. Like a successful, devoted son with his beautiful, elegant mother, probably. And that, he admitted to himself, was how it felt: like a mother and son who could conquer the world, so long as they stuck together.

That gave him pause. Spinning Irina away from him by one hand and pulling her back in close – which drew some impressed gasps and scattered clapping from their impromptu audience of diners – Sark stared searchingly into her eyes.

Was that the game? Was she afraid that Sydney would ask him to buy immunity from the U.S. government by handing over everything he knew about The Man’s organization?

Well, if she was worrying about that, it put Sark in a tenuous position. Irina might be content to manipulate his loyalty for the time being, but were she ever to seriously doubt him, he knew, she wouldn’t hesitate to execute him as blithely as she had Khasinau.

Ridiculous for her to believe that Jack Bristow might ever allow him such absolution, though.

Equally ridiculous for her to think Sark might ever accept. He wouldn’t betray Irina; he would steal Sydney away from both her and Jack and disappear forever, yes, but he wouldn’t turn her over to the CIA. Not even for Sydney.

Would he?

Despite his tumultuous thoughts, Sark was mindful of their audience, and he put on a good show. So did Irina. By the time the music crashed to a deafening stop, they had earned a robust round of applause from the entire dining room – excepting three people in the corner, of course.

Sark dipped Irina almost to the floor and grinned at her. “That was fun,” he said quietly.

Her hair cascaded prettily around her shoulders when he pulled her back up. “Yes it was,” she agreed, casting a catty smile toward her ex-husband. “But I bet we’re going to get a nice ass-chewing over it.”

Sark couldn’t suppress a snicker as they bowed their way through the maze of tables back to their party.

Marshall, clapping more violently than anyone else in the room, enthused loudly, “That was so cool! I can do the Robot, you know,” he demonstrated a few stiff moves that Sark noticed made Sydney smile in spite of herself, “but that was just, wow, just so awesome.”

His voice trailed off as Jack rose, his eyes shooting daggers at everyone in sight. Irina ignored him and sipped at her wine.

“I suggest,” Jack said acidly, making it clear it was in no way a suggestion but rather a direct order, “that we all go upstairs. Now that you and Mr. Sark,” he managed to make Sark’s name sound profane, and it might have been comical if he weren’t so dangerously furious, “have drawn so much unnecessary attention to us.”

“Jack.” Irina obediently stood with the rest of them and smiled placidly at him. For one moment, Sark thought she might be on the verge of an apology.

Instead, she quipped, “Lighten up,” and sashayed away on a very nervous Marshall’s arm.

Fixing Sark with one last fiery glare, Jack marched off after them, leaving Sark alone with Sydney and Vaughn.

The tension escalated to monumental proportions instantly. Vaughn drew himself up to his full height and locked his arm around Sydney’s waist.

For the first time that evening, Sark allowed himself to fully look Sydney over. He did it mostly to irritate Vaughn, of course, challenging the other man to do something about the hungry way his eyes swept over her slender body, but he also savored the opportunity to drink her in. The simple white dress accentuated her California tan and her muscular frame; she had swept her silky hair up into a loose twist and secured it with a white rose-shaped barrette. He could smell her raspberry shampoo across the table, and suddenly, he wanted very much to be a hell of a lot closer to her.

The steaminess in her gold-flecked eyes told him she wanted the same thing.

“Miss Bristow,” Sark said, heedless of Vaughn’s increasing fury, “would you do me the pleasure of a dance?”

“No.”

To both of their surprise, Vaughn answered for her, and his stony voice left no room for argument. “Good night, Sark,” he added, grasping Sydney by the elbow and steering her away from the table.

Sark watched them go, only mildly gratified when Sydney glanced back quickly at him from the stairs. She didn’t fight Vaughn, didn’t protest being hauled away like an impudent toddler. That was not normal Sydney behavior.

Sitting back down at their table, alone, to polish off the last bottle of wine – fuck Jack’s orders, he didn’t feel like hiding out in his room – Sark pondered the possibility that it might take more than scheming to win Sydney back. He understood, with growing clarity, that at least part of what Vaughn had said to him was true: Sydney loved the man she believed he could be and refused to accept the man Irina had groomed him into. She denied the obvious attraction between them because, at the moment, Sark stood in opposition to all of her iron-clad principles.

But could he be who Sydney wanted? More to the point, did he truly want the safe, ordinary suburban life that Sydney seemed to crave? Or did he want both her and the excitement of this life, dangerous as it was?

Yes, having Sydney might require a lot more than seducing her, or even simply running away with her. It might mean sacrificing everything he had worked for, changing everything he considered himself to be. And suddenly, Sark wasn’t certain he was prepared to do that.

Even for Sydney.

Chapter Nineteen: Bikinis and Towels

A loud bang in Sark’s room next door stopped Sydney cold.

It was eleven-fifteen, forty-five minutes before Sloane’s associate was to meet with Winslow beside the hotel pool. Vaughn was down the hall with Marshall, inspecting whatever gadget their resident genius had concocted to eavesdrop on Winslow’s conversation; her parents were holed up in Jack’s room, ostensibly strategizing but most likely verbally attacking one another; Sydney was painting her toenails a vibrant red to match the color of the bikini she’d be wearing when she planted Marshall’s device on Winslow.

Then, bang! A muffled boom sounded through the thin wall separating her room from Sark’s, and Sydney’s heart skittered to a stop.

Was he okay? Did he need help?

She sat frozen, cross-legged on the bed with the polish brush poised over her left pinky-toe, straining to hear what was happening.

For a moment, nothing. Dead silence.

Then another muffled crash.

Well, fuck it. If someone was attacking Sark, it could be detrimental to their mission, she reasoned, slipping Vaughn’s carelessly-discarded blue oxford on over her bikini. She retrieved her pistol from the bureau and checked that it was loaded. Tip-toeing to the door adjoining their rooms, she hesitated, wondering if Sark had locked his side.

He hadn’t.

The door eased open silently, and Sydney swept the bedroom with her eyes and the gun. The bed was unmade, but that damnable suit he’d worn last night – so help her god, she’d almost pounced on him when he walked into the restaurant wearing that – was folded neatly on the chair beside the bed.

No sign of Sark.

Sydney considered calling out to him. Suppose she walked in on him changing clothes or something? But she didn’t want to risk announcing her presence if someone else – like one of Sloane’s operatives – was in the room, so she crept across the bedroom and peered around the corner.

Her heart sped up, the way it always did when she sensed danger. The bathroom door was closed, but the large Monet-copy on the wall beside it was on the floor, its frame and glass shattered. A small spot of blood stained the cream-colored carpet.

There was no noise inside the bathroom. None. Yet a sliver of light shone under the door. Could Sark be in there, hurt too badly to call for help, or – she swallowed hard – dead?

Or had someone taken him hostage, knocking the picture off the wall during the struggle?

Wishing she had a way to call her father or Vaughn for help, Sydney avoided the glass shards on the carpet as she cautiously approached the bathroom door, her gun leveled at chest-height for anyone who might be waiting on the other side.

The door opened inward. Sydney had learned to value the element of surprise; if someone other than Sark was in there, no need to tip them off that she was coming by bothering with the niceties of actually turning the handle.

Instead, she kicked the door open with one vicious blow and tackled the person inside before he could recover from the surprise.

“Don’t move,” she shouted, wrestling her opponent to the tile floor of the spacious bathroom.

He kicked at her, causing her to lose hold of the gun, which skidded into the corner. One blow between his shoulder blades stilled him, and she snarled, “Where is he?”

From below her came a muffled but familiar voice. “I swear I haven’t done anything with him.”

Well, fuck!

Sydney shut her eyes and sighed. Naturally, the man beneath her, pressed face-first into the tile, was none other than Sark himself.

And – wasn’t just this the perfect beginning to her day – he was wearing only a white towel.

Straddling him, Sydney rocked back far enough on her heels to allow him to roll over. He smirked up at her, his blonde curls damp and messy from his shower, looking impossibly sexy and more than a little amused.

“We really have to stop meeting this way, Agent Bristow,” he quipped.

Wasn’t that the truth? Very aware that she was wearing only a teeny-tiny bikini beneath Vaughn’s open shirt, Sydney realized she needed to get off of him – and far, far away from him – right now.

But fate had just delivered a mostly-naked Sark to her. Who was she to deny fate?

“I heard a crash,” she explained, vaguely aware that her mouth was drifting down toward his.

Sark shifted under her, finding that his hands were trapped at his sides. “Yes,” he murmured, watching her mouth draw closer. “I don’t know what your parents are doing next door, but my wall just shook and that picture fell off.”

Yuck! Her parents? Sydney’s mounting desire for Sark was momentarily derailed by the mortifying prospect of her mother and father working out their aggression by –

Her horror must have been evident on her face, because Sark laughed softly. “I know. Not a pleasant thought, is it?”

“No,” she agreed, once again focused on the lean body beneath hers when the quiet laughter rippled through him. He licked his lips, watching hers; the cloudiness in his gaze created a familiar low-down tickle. Her flat palms moved up his muscular arms, pressing hard, and over onto his ridged stomach, where she tickled him softly with her fingernails. Sark bit that beautifully crooked lower lip, she suspected to contain a moan.

She loved it when he wanted her like this, when he looked absolutely desperate to touch her.

What the hell are you doing? her inner voice screamed. You can’t keep having random sexual encounters with this man. You’re engaged!

That mental slap almost propelled her off of Sark, but he stopped her with a husky, “You were coming to rescue me, I take it.”

Sydney nodded mutely, suddenly paralyzed again.

“So now you have me. What are you going to do with me?”

Slip the knot out of that towel, kiss you until you can’t even breathe, push you so deep inside that we can’t tell where I stop and you start –

Her hands were already working on the first part before she realized what she was doing. And then, she simply didn’t care. The heat between them was all-consuming; the perpetual ache for him that had sky-rocketed when she watched him dancing last night consumed her rational mind. This was who she wanted, who she needed. Abruptly, the rest of it – Vaughn, Rambaldi, the CIA – didn’t matter.

Sark closed his eyes as her fingers tugged at the terrycloth. Sydney’s lips quivered a fraction of an inch above his. And, as when she’d stripped for him in Madrid that day, it should have been a perfectly seductive moment –

Except that, beneath the towel, he was wearing a pair of black swim trunks.

Their eyes met, and they both convulsed into fits of laughter. Sydney dropped onto his chest, her nose against his neck and her hands clutching his upper arms, laughing until her sides hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sincerely, when their laughter subsided. “You just looked so – Well, I couldn’t resist.”

She sat up again, still straddling him, and shook her hair out of her face. The desire was running between them again, but she felt a bit stronger against it now. Strong enough to stand and offer him a hand up off the floor, which he gladly accepted before sitting down heavily on the edge of the porcelain tub.

Sydney noticed the nasty gash on his left foot for the first time. A sliver of glass stuck out of the narrow cut, and she winced when he plucked it out. Blood gushed freely from the wound then.

“Let me,” she said, stopping him as he started for a roll of gauze beside the sink.

Kneeling, Sydney first cleaned the cut with a warm washcloth and then wound the gauze around his foot. Amazing how much sexual tension merely being in each other’s presence could generate; she glanced up to find him watching her with that dangerously smoky gaze, and her feminine pride soared.

She did enjoy having him at her mercy.

“Ever hear of not walking barefoot through broken glass?” she teased, tearing the gauze and tying it off.

Sark grinned wickedly. “I find that my pain is often worth it when you tend to my wounds, Agent Bristow.”

“I think you’re just accident-prone,” Sydney retorted, lightly touching a finger to the stitches in his chest.

Sark tilted his head at her, obviously wondering what she was up to, why she was being so flirtatious. Sydney was wondering that herself. Clearing her throat, she made an effort to sound business-like, and nearly succeeded. “I take it you’re joining me at the pool,” she said.

“You didn’t think Irina would let this go down without someone from her team joining in the fun, did you?”

“I guess not.”

Standing, Sydney crossed to the sink and returned the gauze to the medicine cabinet. She could feel him watching her, and her skin tingled under his hungry eyes. His gaze was like a caress, maddening when she already longed to feel his hands on her.

The smart move would be to leave, now, before this went any further. But she had no idea when she might be alone with him again, and, irrational as it was, she wanted to prolong this bittersweet agony. So she perched on the edge of the sink, folded her arms protectively across her chest, and cast around for an excuse to keep talking. All she could think of was, “Do you have any idea how quickly Sloane could create the Tenth Plague, now that he has all of the Rambaldi pieces?”

Sark’s smirk told her that he found this half-hearted attempt at professionalism amusing. “I hope you aren’t planning to interrogate me, Agent Bristow,” he responded dryly, still seated, “because I have a weakness for you in swimwear.”

Okay, time to end this. Time to bid him adieu, saunter away, and focus this sexually-charged energy into the mission.

Except –

“Well, I did have two things I wanted to ask you,” she heard herself saying, surprised once again by her own sultriness. Why did he bring out this playful vixen side of her?

Why did she allow him to?

“Mmm,” he murmured, eyeing her slender legs appreciatively. “Fire away.”

The sexy purr in his voice nearly destroyed her train of thought. Somehow she managed to ask with perfect calmness, “How did you and my mother recruit Marshall?”

He hesitated, obviously considering whether to answer her or not. Then he shrugged, apparently deciding it couldn’t hurt. “First off, I want it to be clear that I don’t know how Irina obtains her information from inside the CIA.”

Sydney nodding, ignoring the implied, And I wouldn’t tell you if I did. “Go on,” she prompted.

Abruptly standing, Sark retrieved her gun and laid it down beside her. Then he reached around her for his towel, which she had draped over the sink. Sydney’s breath hitched slightly at his nearness. He ignored it and began towel-drying his hair, though he stood just a bit closer than was necessary.

“You know how devoted Marshall is to his mother. Irina used that devotion as her angle. She knew – again, I don’t know how – that he was visiting me, so she convinced him she was worried about me and only wanted updates on how I was fairing. Naturally he was terrified when she first contacted him, but he reluctantly agreed, I imagine because he knew how his mother would feel if she couldn’t help him. As his concern over my condition increased, it was easy for her to persuade him to take it to the next level.”

Sydney wavered between admiration at Irina’s ingenuity and disgust over her ruthless deceptions.

“She offered him money, and he wouldn’t take it,” Sark added, and Sydney adored how immediately defensive he was of their pleasantly neurotic tech-genius. “So you needn’t worry, Sydney. He’s not about to rush off into a life of crime, and,” his voice hardened slightly, a trait she suspected he had picked up from Irina, “I wouldn’t allow him to actually be ‘recruited’, as you say. He’s served his purpose. So far as I’m concerned, no one ever needs to know what role he played in all of this.”

His hair dry, Sark tossed the towel onto the floor and reached around her again, this time for his comb. He brushed his bare chest against her arm, quite deliberately.

Sydney watched, transfixed, as he smoothed the curls into place. There was something deliciously intimate about this; she could almost pretend they were husband and wife, away on vacation, getting ready for a day at the beach together.

Impulsively, she took the comb away from him and ran her fingers through his hair, mussing the curls into the haphazard style she liked best on him. Sark, stiffening slightly, brought his eyes up to hers quizzically.

Oh, she did enjoy catching him off-guard, keeping him off-balance.

She knew her second question would do just that. Concentrating on his hair, she asked, “Why Bean?”

Sark’s mouth twisted down into a puzzled frown. “Pardon me?”

“Bean,” she repeated, with a touch of impatience. She paused with her fingers still tangled in his hair. “Your dog, Bean, remember? You told me about him on the way to Santa Rosa. But you never told me why you named him that. I want to know.”

Sark shook his head. “You can’t be serious.”

“Why not? It’s been bugging me ever since.”

He laughed at her, not maliciously, just in a way that said he would never have expected this kind of behavior from super-spy Sydney Bristow. “All right,” he relented, reaching up to pull her hands out of his hair and onto his shoulders. She allowed this, refusing to be distracted even when he stroked her arms gently. “It was because of my mother, actually. She used to call me String Bean. It was the only term of endearment I knew, so, that was what I named him. Eventually, it shortened to just Bean.”

Sark with a nickname.

Sark with a mother.

Lord, she knew so little about him. He had so many layers, so much more than his cocky, cold-hearted mask even hinted at. Yet, now and again, he peeled those layers away for her – and only for her – to reveal a glimpse of the man underneath.

She wanted to press, to ask about his mother and what had happened to her, but Sark seemed to sense where she was headed, and this time she permitted him to distract her. Sliding his hands along her arms and down her sides to her hips, where they came to rest, he brought his mouth tantalizingly close to hers and whispered, “Is that really all you wanted, Agent Bristow?”

Moment of truth, Syd. Her inner voice returned with an accusatory vengeance. Walk away now, or let him see how irresistible he is. Again.

Who was she kidding? He already knew how irresistible he was. Especially to her.

She met his gaze boldly, unsettled by how much she liked this brazen side of herself. “What if I said yes? Would you try and stop me if I left right now?”

Sark cocked his head to one side, studying her. “Would you be disappointed if I didn’t?”

“Yes,” she admitted. His breath caught slightly when she leaned in, nuzzling his cheek with her nose. He smelled wonderful – a hint of soap on top of his usual manly, musky scent. She breathed against his skin, “What is it about the villain that’s always so attractive?”

Seduction was a game Sark could play with the best of them. Turning his face so that his lips touched the corner of hers, he murmured back, “What is it about that perfect, unattainable girl that’s always so attractive?”

This was going too far. It had already gone too far, but now it was threatening to suck her down into madness again.

She went willingly along for the ride this time.

“It’s what’s forbidden. We always want,” she lifted her chin just enough so that their lips were all but touching, “what we can’t have.”

Sark moved his hands up under the shirt and onto her bare back, pulling her in closer. He felt so good against her – so warm, so lithe, so powerful. Instead of kissing her mouth, which she was desperate for him to do, he lowered his head and feathered kisses down her throat.

“But you can have me, Sydney.” His tongue traced the outline of her ear. Sydney shivered, hooking her ankle around his leg and drawing him closer against her, her arms wrapped tight around his neck.

God, she wanted him. She wanted this. To touch him; to taste him; to smell him. She wanted it more than anything in the world – would have sacrificed anything for it, believed any lie he told, done whatever despicable thing he asked her to do…

His next words stopped her cold.

“But you can’t have him and me both.”

Ouch.

Sydney jerked away from him like he’d slapped her. The nasty retort that jumped to her lips was silenced by the cold accusation in his stony blue gaze: She had walked away from him last night. He’d asked her to dance, and she’d allowed Vaughn to lead her away, upstairs to his bed.

The anger dissipated, replaced by more shame and guilt than she ever felt with Vaughn.

She tried to turn away, but Sark held on, grasping her hips firmly and staring hard into her face. “How do you think it feels,” he demanded, his voice brittle with resentment, “to lie in there all night listening to you make love to him next door?”

Sydney shuddered. “Let me go,” she tried to order, but it came out so meekly that she knew he wouldn’t listen.

“Let you go,” he mimicked nastily. His grip on her waist tightened almost cruelly. He gave her a little shake, causing her hair to fall across her face.

A twinge of fear crept into Sydney’s remorse. She had forgotten what it felt like to be afraid of Sark; she’d forgotten how lethal he could be. That furious glint in his eyes drove home the reminder that, for all of his inner softness, he could still be a deadly opponent.

Well, so could she. Guilt or not, she wasn’t about to be roughed up by anyone.

Bracing her hands against his chest, Sydney shoved hard. She couldn’t free herself of him entirely, yet the distance she put between them was sufficient to allow a knee to his groin if he took the violence any further.

Sark relaxed his grip on her little, looking apologetic when he glanced down at the red marks his fingers had made on her sides. His thumbs stroked those marks gently, though his eyes remained stormy with rage.

Sensing his return to the Sark she could reason with, Sydney repeated, much more firmly, “Let me go, Sark.”

“That’s just the point, Sydney.” His voice dipped with sadness. “I can’t.”

Well, fuck. Again.

After all he had put her through, why did it practically eviscerate her to hurt him? Why did it twist her up in knots inside to remember the pained rejection in his face when she had left the restaurant with Vaughn? Why did it kill her to imagine him lying awake, longing to kick the door down and drag her out of Vaughn’s bed and into his own?

Sydney lowered her forehead onto his shoulder and wrapped her arms tighter around his neck. A hug – just a pure, simple, comforting hug.

Sark resisted briefly, pushing away rather roughly, but she held on. After a moment, he gave in and hugged her back, burying his face in her hair.

“I never meant to hurt you,” Sydney said against his neck. Tears flooded her voice, but for once, she defeated them before they could spill down her cheeks. “I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

Sark sighed, rubbing her back gently. “I’m sorry for earlier. Grabbing you like that. It was uncalled for.”

She half-giggled. “I’m sorry for tackling you.”

He chuckled softly, the sound reverberating in his throat, which was inches from her lips. Sydney steeled herself against the automatic desire to kiss that inviting spot beneath his Adam’s apple; he was right, she couldn’t keep making love to him and then running back to Vaughn.

She had to make up her mind who it was going to be. Because Vaughn wasn’t the only one who deserved to be loved by someone who could give herself to him completely. Sark did, too.

They stepped back from one another at the same time. The longing in his eyes stirred Sydney’s unquenchable desire for him; she hugged Vaughn’s shirt tighter around her, feeling horribly exposed in only her bikini.

“I should go,” she said, without making any effort to leave. “I need to finish getting ready before we go downstairs.”

Furrowing his brow slightly, Sark reached out and held her face gently in his hands. “Yesterday, in the vault, you asked me why I didn’t just leave with you when I had the chance.” She nodded, wondering – and dreading – where this was headed. “Well…What if I asked you now? What if I asked you to go with me, today? Would you come?”

Oh, for the love of Christ.

She couldn’t really be considering saying yes, could she?

Yes, she could.

“Where would we go?” she inquired, turning her cheek into his palm and kissing it softly.

Hope flickered in his eyes. “Anywhere you want.”

“To Australia? Could we go to our house in Australia and stay there forever?”

Sark hesitated, then shook his head. “I didn’t intend that place for a permanent hide-out, Sydney. I was careful when I bought it, of course, but it was only meant for short stays, when no one would miss us. If they were really looking for us, they could find that house.”

“Where, then? Where could we go that they would never find us?”

The hope shifted into resignation as he saw where she was going with this. “I don’t suppose,” he reluctantly admitted, “that any one place would ever be entirely safe. We would have to keep moving, at least at first.” He paused, then confessed, “Probably forever.”

Taking both of his hands in hers, Sydney stepped forward and laid her cheek against his. “I don’t want to live like that, Sark,” she explained, trying to soften the refusal with her touch, trying to convey that she wasn’t refusing him. “Looking over our shoulders everyday, never able to put down roots, always waiting for that moment when the past catches up to us. I couldn’t live that way.” She paused. “And I don’t want to leave my father, and Will, and Dixon. I don’t want to never be able to see them again.”

Unable to disguise his disappointment, Sark asked wearily, “So what do we do? I just walk away and let you marry someone else? We just pretend none of this ever happened?”

Say yes, her inner voice shrieked. Tell him to leave you the hell alone, then go back to your room and forget him!

But hadn’t she been trying to do just that? Hadn’t she tried to accept her father’s unspoken proposal to resume the life she had led before she fell in love with the enemy? She had taken Vaughn’s ring, played the role of the eager bride, thrown herself into her work at the CIA, and none of that had managed to destroy her love for Sark.

Oh, she could keep up the charade, Sydney knew. She could compartmentalize her feelings, feign a love she didn’t have for Vaughn, succeed in every mission the Agency sent her way. But wouldn’t that be to really and truly become her mother? To live out, as her mother had, an elaborate deception designed solely for her own gain?

Just as when Irina had approached her about assisting in Sark’s escape, Sydney was too confused and overwhelmed at the moment to make a choice.

So, as she had then, she did the only thing that she could. Drawing back from him, she planted a soft kiss on his cheek and countered, “I don’t know. Can you give me time to think about it?”

Sark wasn’t a man who liked leaving loose ends. He was decisive, action-oriented, controlling. Yet, even though she could see that he would have preferred a definitive answer right then and there, he accepted that she couldn’t give him that. So he relented with a resigned nod.

A knock on the door adjoining his room and Sydney’s startled them both. “Syd,” Vaughn called from the other side, his voice unreadable, “time to go.”

Her eyes locked with Sark’s for one more instant. Without warning, he ducked his head and kissed her passionately, evoking an immediate response from her; she hauled him closer, molding her body into his, heedless that Vaughn could throw open that door at any second and walk in on them.

Five minutes, she thought, stroking his tongue with hers. Just five minutes…

Sark pulled back, as breathless as she was, and grinned devilishly at the fire in her eyes. “For luck,” he quipped, and squeezed her hand before sauntering out into the hall where the others were waiting.

Damn him. Sydney took a moment to brush her hair into place and catch her breath. Irritated as she was at that parting shot, she couldn’t help grinning at his nerve.

Sark might have agreed to give her time, but, she realized, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to keep on fighting for her.

Chapter Twenty: All That Can Happen At 40,000 Feet

Winslow arrived at the indoor pool exactly ten minutes before twelve.

Sydney and Sark were already seated at a circular patio table next to the one Winslow would be sitting at. By all appearances, they were just another happy couple. Sark had made a few laps in the pool while she bought drinks from the snackbar in the lobby; he now had a towel draped around his shoulders and was sipping on a frozen margarita. He stroked her thigh lightly under the table. Sydney pretended that the touch was only part of their cover, but she knew better.

As they came downstairs, he had leaned in close, touching his nose to the looping red curls of her short wig, and whispered, “I like you as a redhead, Agent Bristow.”

She grinned impulsively at the memory. As if he knew where her thoughts were running, Sark grinned back.

Focus, Sydney! Don’t blow the op just because he’s cute!

If Winslow recognized either one of them, he hid it very well, not giving them so much as a second glance as he took his seat. He wore a tee-shirt and denim shorts, not quite pool attire but not noticeably out of place, either. Sydney thought again how painfully ordinary-looking he was; most likely an asset in his line of work, of course, yet she wondered if it bothered him to never be remembered by anyone.

Obviously, they couldn’t take the gamble that Sloane’s associate, whoever it was, wouldn’t recognize them. Despite Irina’s assurances, Jack insisted that Sloane himself might show up, and he would certainly notice Sark and Sydney at the table next to his.

With Winslow in place, it was time to get moving.

Sydney’s mind skimmed over the plan one last time. Marshall, as usual, had come through; in the hallway outside Sark’s room, he had handed her a miniature, multi-colored umbrella, the kind typically found as a decoration in mixed drinks. “It’s a way-one audio receiver,” he had explained excitedly, giving the umbrella a little twirl. “Just slip it in your drink and leave the glass on your table. It’s good up to twenty feet.”

He had paused, looking slightly anxious. “Just don’t dunk it all the way, okay? ‘Cause that’d probably short it out or something.”

Now, Sydney sipped at her fruity drink – Sex on the Beach, the bartender had called it, grinning suggestively at her – and toyed absently with the miniature umbrella.

“Shall we go back upstairs, dear?” she asked Sark.

Her comm – this time disguised as a pearl earring – came to life. “I got it, Syd. Hear you loud and clear,” Marshall announced.

Her imperceptible nod to Sark brought him to his feet. “Absolutely,” he agreed, with a bit more of a sexual growl than was necessary. Placing a hand lightly on the small of her back, he guided her out into the lobby.

They headed straight for Marshall’s room, where everyone else was already gathered. Marshall sat in front of the card table they had requested from the front desk, wearing a headset and adjusting the knobs on a long metal box. Irina and Jack hovered over his shoulder; Vaughn sat beside him.

“How’re we doing?” Sydney asked Vaughn, stepping into a pair of jeans and pulling a black tank-top on over the red bikini. She discarded the wig onto the dresser and shook her hair out.

“The other guy just arrived,” he reported, without looking at her. Apparently, discovering her in Sark’s room had miffed him quite a bit, because he hadn’t looked directly at her since.

If he knew what had been going on in that room, she reflected, he would really be irate.

Sark sat on Marshall’s bed, looking thoroughly unconcerned now that his role in this stage of the mission was over. Sydney stood between her parents.

“Here we go,” Marshall declared. He flipped a switch on the metal box, and Winslow’s voice rolled out of the speakers.

“…payment in full, as agreed,” he was saying. A pause; Sydney imagined him opening a briefcase and quickly counting his money. Cheesy, of course – Sloane would wire the money, not send it in a briefcase.

However the transaction had been completed, it satisfied Winslow, because he said after a moment, “Very good. Now where would your employer like the cargo shipped?”

Sydney saw Irina glance toward Sark. He appeared to be ignoring them all; the gauze had come off the cut on his foot during his swim, and he was busy replacing it.

“To India. Do you anticipate a problem with customs there?”

“That depends. At the borders, no. Customs agents there are easily bought off or tricked. But within the individual states, well, that can be a challenge. Where at in India?”

“My employer has a temple, in the -”

Without warning, Irina jerked a pistol out of her belt holster and fired twice into the metal box. Marshall screamed and nearly toppled out of his chair. Sydney jumped back in surprise. Jack shoved her out of the way and leveled a Colt .45 at Irina’s head.

Vaughn pulled his gun, as well, standing up and aiming over at Sark, who responded by yawning.

Irina lowered her gun to the table and raised her hands, her eyes locked onto Jack’s. “What the hell are you doing?” Jack demanded, keeping his weapon trained on her.

Aside from Sark, Sydney didn’t know anyone who could look more relaxed while staring down the barrel of gun than her mother. “I think we heard enough. You didn’t expect me to let us outlive our usefulness so soon, did you, Jack? I have no desire to be hauled away in handcuffs while you go to India to intercept Sloane.”

Jack’s voice was frigid. “I take it you know where this temple is.”

“I don’t,” Irina replied smoothly, “but Sark does.” She smiled tightly over at Vaughn, adding, “As I said, he learned many valuable things while in Sloane’s company.”

A pregnant pause followed, during which Sydney held her breath, terrified that her father might let his rage get the best of him and put a bullet in her mother’s head. At last, he reluctantly lowered his gun, motioning for Vaughn to do the same.

“If you ever pull a weapon like that again around my agents,” Jack warned her, “I will shoot first and ask questions later.”

Irina nodded curtly. Sydney breathed a sigh of relief as her father continued, “You and Mr. Sark will take us to the artifacts. Once we get there, your services will no longer be required.”

“I hate to disagree,” Sark piped up from the bed, sounding nothing of the sort, “but I think you’ll find that you need us more than ever once we get to India.”

A pulse appeared beneath Jack’s right eye, the only outward indication of how very much he wanted to blast that smirk off Sark’s face. “And why is that?”

“This temple,” Sark explained languidly, “is what they call a bhutastan. In Indian folklore, there are vampiric creatures called bhutas that occasionally choose a particular village to prey upon. The only way to placate them is by building one of these temples and sacrificing victims to it there.”

Marshall, who had recovered from his terror enough to stop cowering but still looked slightly nauseous, ventured tentatively, “Like Huitzilopochtli, in Aztec legends.”

He blushed when everyone turned to him, amazed. “I took a Mesoamerican folklore class my freshman year,” he explained. “It was an elective. Well, actually, I took it because there was this girl, who I never actually talked to, but -”

“So what’s so special about a bhutastan?” Jack broke in to Marshall’s rambling.

“For starters, the one that Sloane is having these artifacts delivered to is hidden very deep in a remote area. Probably one of the least-civilized places in modern India. Simply getting to it will be difficult. Secondly, the temple is ancient, hundreds of years old. There’s a maze of tunnels beneath it. A person could easily become lost down there forever. If they didn’t know where they were going, of course.”

Sark’s smug grin as he concluded said that he knew exactly how to traverse those tunnels.

Unimpressed, Jack turned to Irina. “I find it difficult to believe that Sloane is being so careless. Even if what you say is true and he thinks you and Sark are dead, I doubt he would risk moving the artifacts to a location Sark knew so much about. For all he knows, we could have obtained that information through interrogation weeks ago, while Sark was in our custody.”

“Sloane has no idea that I know about the temple,” Sark said, before Irina could reply. He rose from the bed, ignoring Jack’s icy glare, and crossed to the mini-bar to pour himself a drink. “I downloaded a good deal of information off of his laptop while he was away attending to his wife, after he supposedly murdered her. The location of the temple was one such thing. On one of my trips, I took the time to visit it.”

Sark dumped some Scotch into a glass, swilled it, and downed it one gulp, looking, Sydney noted, rather troubled. “Horrible place,” he added, mostly to himself.

Vaughn spoke quietly to Jack. “If the artifacts are just now being shipped, we have some time. We could check this out through our own channels, see if this place even exists.”

“No,” Jack tabled, looking irritably resigned to the necessity of working a little longer with Irina and Sark. “If we do that, it could tip Sloane off. Right now, we have the advantage, because he doesn’t know how close we are. I don’t want to lose that.”

He turned back to Irina, who, to her credit, did her best to hide the victorious gleam in her eyes. “Do you have a plan for transport?”

“We can fly to Mumbai. I have an associate there who can arrange what we need for getting to the temple.”

“That’s settled, then,” Jack declared, decisive though less than thrilled with this turn of events. “Marshall, get your equipment packed. I need to brief Kendall. Irina, call the airfield and have your plane standing by. We should be ready to leave before nightfall.”

* * * *

Vaughn took it well, all things considered, Sydney decided.

Having discarded the bikini for khakis and a brown tank-top, Sydney moved quietly around the room while she packed. Vaughn was hunched over a file on the bed, continuing to pointedly ignore her.

She didn’t have to feign contriteness; she hated herself for putting him through this. But she was also secretly glad that his stony silence gave her time to prepare what she wanted to say.

Around four-thirty, her father called from his room to say they should meet in the lobby at five. Sydney answered the phone, and the strain in her voice must have been evident because he asked, “Is everything all right?”

“Fine, Daddy,” she assured him, rather guardedly. “We’ll see you then.”

As she hung up, Vaughn inquired coolly, “What time are we leaving?”

“Five,” she replied, then took a deep breath and came to sit beside him on the bed. He didn’t look at her; she found his childishness somewhat annoying, but then again, she couldn’t blame him for being furious.

Wait until he hears what’s coming next, she thought.

“I know you’re upset with me,” she began. Vaughn stopped shuffling papers yet refused to raise his eyes to hers. Sydney placed her hand lightly over his on the bed. Her mouth was so dry from nervousness that she could hardly form words.

“Vaughn, we need to talk.”

He sighed. When he finally looked up at her, Sydney was startled by the jumble of emotions in his face: relief, sadness, dread, anger.

His words shocked her even more. “If you’re about to say that you think we should hold off on this wedding, then I agree.”

Sydney fought down a wave of disappointment. Don’t be that way, Syd, she ordered herself. Don’t be that woman who wants men fighting over her all the time. Be glad that he’s making it easy for you.

“Yes,” she agreed, “I do. I think we’re moving too fast.”

“You know what I think? I think it’s time you cut the bullshit and told me the truth about what’s going on with you and Sark.”

Well. Vaughn had a backbone after all.

Momentarily, Sydney considered denying that anything was “going on” with her and Sark, like she had during their arguments before she went off on that ill-fated mission to find Rikkets. Part of her feared that some twisted need for revenge might send Vaughn straight to Kendall, and then the CIA would know the truth about why she had been in the Operations Center vault that morning eight months ago – not to trap Derevko, as her father had convinced them, but to assist the man she loved in stealing from the U.S. government.

Deep down, though, she knew Vaughn better than that. At the very least, he wouldn’t want Jack to go down for protecting her.

So she offered honestly, “I know it doesn’t make any sense. I know you have to think I’m totally deranged, and sick, and the most disgusting person you’ve ever met. Because that was how I felt about myself when I started – feeling – something for him. But I can’t help it, Vaughn. Whether it’s crazy or wrong or demented, it’s still there.”

Vaughn was full of surprises today. “I don’t think you’re sick, Sydney. I understand what it’s like to want someone that all reason and logic says you can’t be with.”

He looked away; she knew he was talking about her, about all those months when their hearts pulled them together and circumstance pushed them apart. Tears welled up in her eyes again, and she blinked them away forcibly, willing herself to be strong.

As much of a relief as it would be to have this all out in the open with Vaughn, it didn’t make hurting him any easier.

“I do think,” he went on, a little shakily, telling her that he was fighting off his own tears, “that you’re setting yourself up to be disappointed. I think that someone like Sark always has a secondary agenda, for everything.”

Vaughn clasped her hand suddenly and stared hard into her eyes. “They have some plan for you, Syd. Sloane and your mother. Somehow you fit into this whole Rambaldi mess. Or at least they believe you do. And, so far as I’ve seen, Sark doesn’t do anything that he isn’t ordered to do. It’s like they have him programmed or something.”

He gripped her fingers tighter when she tried to turn away from that unsettlingly possibility. “You don’t have to be with me if you don’t want me, Syd. And if he’s what you want, what really makes you happy, then I won’t get in the way. Just – I just don’t want you to get hurt. I want you to be careful.”

Why couldn’t he have simply called her a cheating, lying bitch and stormed out of the room? Why did he have to be so damn understanding and supportive? Why did he have to be so, well, Vaughn?

Sydney blew out a wobbly sigh. When she was with Sark, everything seemed so clear: his passion, his love, his honesty when it came to how he felt about her. Away from him, however, she found it more difficult to reconcile that innate goodness with the horrific things she had seen him do.

But this wasn’t only about Sark. This was about a fundamental problem in her relationship with Vaughn – namely, that she wasn’t in love him. So, regardless of whatever doubts Vaughn had raised about Sark’s sincerity, it was time to end the charade of this engagement.

Slipping the ring off of her finger, Sydney pressed it into Vaughn’s palm. He looked down at it, blinking fast against tears.

“Thank you for understanding,” was all she could find to say.

He caught her wrist when she moved off the bed, and Sydney turned back to him, her heart fluttering at the raw emotion in his eyes. “I can wait for you, Sydney,” he promised, his voice steely with determination. “I can wait for as long as it takes. No matter what, I’m here if you need me. Don’t forget that.”

Wordlessly, Sydney nodded. She slipped out of his grasp, picked up her suitcase and hurried down the stairs to the lobby, trembling the whole way.

Sark, it seemed, wasn’t the only one who was prepared to do battle for her.

* * * *

The flight out of London was much different than the one there.

Sark immediately noticed the absence of the ring on Sydney’s finger when she walked into the lobby, her face swollen from crying, and even a blind person would have picked up on the tension between her and Vaughn during the ride to the airfield. Once onboard, they treated one another with an awkward politeness that fooled no one.

Jack tromped around like a testy old bull, obviously furious that his key move in keeping Sydney away from Sark had been thwarted. Vaughn and Sydney avoided eye contact with him more diligently than with one another, and Marshall cowered every time Jack glanced his way.

Irina just smiled knowingly at Sydney and wisely made no comment.

Sydney was avoiding him, too, Sark noticed. Since he had agreed to give her time to think things over, he left her alone.

An hour into the flight, Irina joined Sark in the galley, where he was perched on the counter nibbling on cheese and crackers. Loose jeans and a white button-down had replaced the swim trunks, but his hair still smelled faintly of chlorine.

She stood across from him, leaning against the opposite counter. It was dark outside the windows now, and the dim fluorescent bulb over the sink – the galley’s only light – cast enough shadows on her face to effectively obscure her expression.

“Are they sleeping?” Sark asked, inclining his head toward the cabin.

“Marshall and Vaughn are. Sydney’s restless.”

“And Jack’s pissed off,” he supplied for her.

She made a sound that could either have been a snort of disapproval or a snicker. “Yes. Understandably. He put a lot of effort into that relationship.”

“Perhaps he should stay out of Sydney’s affairs,” Sark suggested, hoping Irina might take the hint as well.

If she was offended by his subtle reproof, she didn’t show it. “Parents always think they know what’s best for their children. Unfortunately, we usually read that through what’s best for ourselves.” She paused before adding, rather sheepishly, “That doesn’t stop us from meddling, though.”

Sark sensed a Laura Bristow Moment coming on. Tearing off a corner of the cheese, he handed it to her; their fingers brushed lightly when she took it. He noticed a slight change in the atmosphere between them tonight – the air was charged, not with a sexual energy, but with something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Apprehension, maybe?

“I was thinking about Khasinau today.”

That confession floored Sark. Irina Derevko, expressing remorse for something she’d done?

Not to mention that he never knew what to say when she mentioned Khasinau. His own guilt over not forewarning the man of his impending execution remained too sharp.

“Really,” he responded, noncommittally. Best to see where this was headed before he displayed any emotion about it.

“When he first brought you to me, he said that he had considered killing you several times. He knew you would replace him someday. But he also seemed to know that it was inevitable. That you and I were supposed to work together.”

Sark realized he was holding his breath. That sounded eerily similar to how he once told Sydney that they were destined to work together, and it unnerved him.

“You’ve never asked me why I killed him.”

He choked down the last of the cheese with a hearty gulp of wine. “Why did you kill him?” he asked, trying – and failing – to sound nonchalant.

“Because he was going to kill you.”

Sark’s immediate reaction was disbelief. Khasinau? Kill him? That didn’t make any sense. They had been like father and son; Sark had never given Khasinau any reason to want him dead.

Though of course he voiced none of that, Irina picked up on it and persisted, “He saw the bond between you and I. He knew he couldn’t compete with that. He couldn’t accept that anyone but him might be my second in command, so he ordered a hit on you. Something he thought I would never find out about.” After a moment, she added, almost thoughtfully, “He always underestimated me.”

Her matter-of-fact tone eroded some of Sark’s doubt in the truth of her words, yet it did nothing to answer his most pressing question: Why tell him any of this, after all this time? Why did it matter now?

Irina seemed to read his mind on that as well. Taking two steps forward, she caught his wrists and pulled him off the counter. They stood toe-to-toe in the dimly-lit galley, and for once in his life, Sark was truly afraid. Afraid of what came next, of what she was about to confess.

“You see,” Irina explained softly, holding onto his wrists, “I’ve always done more to protect you than you ever knew. Not because of your importance to my organization. When you came to me, you meant nothing to my goals. You were just a little boy. But you were searching for something. For a mother. For unconditional love. I couldn’t give that to you the way you needed, and I’m sorry for that, but I have tried, the only way I knew how, to guide you. To give you what you needed to survive in this world.”

Sark wanted her to stop. He wanted her to start issuing orders, to treat him with that cold reserve she had for so many years. This was the most convincing Laura Bristow Moment he’d ever seen, and he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to disbelieve it if she told him that she loved him, as much as she did Sydney.

He was thankful for the obscuring darkness, since he was certain that confliction was written all over his face.

“When I sent you to Sloane, do you remember what I told you your primary objective was?”

How could he forget? “To protect Sydney.”

“Jack believes my goal in life has always been to complete Rambaldi’s work. And for a long time, it was. Until I had Sydney.”

Irina’s voice softened, took on a wistfulness Sark had never heard from her before. “Motherhood changed me. I was already in love with Jack, but that child, that beautiful little girl, she became the most important thing the first time I felt her move inside of me. I understood that she would be linked to Rambaldi, because I am. It’s part of our destiny. We can’t escape it.

“So my goal changed. It became to protect her. In order to do that, I’ve had to do things I’m not proud of. Things she could never understand, or forgive. Protecting her has meant giving up the possibility of her ever returning my love.”

Irina slipped her hands out of his and stroked the sides of his face. Sark was frozen, wishing he could silence her somehow.

He knew what came next.

“It’s difficult for me to ask you to make the same sacrifice, because I want to protect you, too.”

Sark couldn’t stop himself from demanding, more harshly than he had ever dared when addressing Irina, “Then why make me fall in love with her in the first place, if you’re so concerned about my well-being? Why use me to seduce her into helping you?”

“Like I said, parents don’t always know what’s best for their children. We make mistakes.”

“You thought I would be best for Sydney,” he retorted sarcastically, suddenly very unconcerned about upsetting this dangerous woman.

“No,” Irina corrected softly, “I thought she would be best for you.”

Sark’s heart melted despite his mind’s insistence that this was all a manipulation. Irina Derevko saw him as a pawn, an asset, someone else she could manipulate – not as a son.

Rationality didn’t seem to matter much to him when it came to the Bristow women, though.

Dropping her hands back to her sides, Irina lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, aware that four CIA agents were in the next room. “Not everyone at the CIA is convinced that Sydney is not the woman in Rambaldi’s manuscript. Sloane certainly isn’t. If either he or the CIA are allowed to bring all of the Rambaldi artifacts together, they’re going to realize very quickly that they’re missing one piece.”

“Either you or her,” Sark supplied, the realization dawning on him.

Irina nodded. “You saw what the CIA put her through when they thought she might be part of his Prophecy. They treated her like a lab rat, then threatened to lock her up for the rest of her life. Do you think they’ll hesitate to do even worse if they believe she’s all that stands between them and fulfilling the manuscript? Achieving immortality? You know Sloane wouldn’t.”

Sark’s mind reeled through the horrific possibilities of Sydney being used as some sort of genetic experiment. “So you were telling the truth in Paris, when you told Sydney you want to destroy the Rambaldi artifacts.”

“It’s the only way I know of to protect her, to end this for good so she can get on with her life.”

“Let’s explain that to her, then. When she and I go into that temple, we can destroy everything, and that’ll be the end of it.”

Irina shook her head, eyeing him sadly. “Jack won’t send you two in there alone. You know better than that.”

Okay, she had a point. But still. “I can handle Michael Vaughn, let me assure you.”

“I have no doubt.” She smiled rather coyly at him, and Sark grinned back involuntarily.

Irina became serious again at once. “Of course, if we told her, we’d have to be certain that she would believe us. That she wouldn’t tell Jack what we plan to do. The CIA doesn’t want those artifacts destroyed, and Jack would never accept that I don’t have an ulterior motive. If you honestly believe that she’ll trust you, then tell her what we have to do. Tell her that we can’t allow the CIA to obtain those artifacts.”

Goddamn fucking moments of truth.

Sydney, Sark knew, would want to believe him. She would agonize over it, tear herself apart over it. Yet in the end, she would think back on how he had betrayed her before – how he had tricked her into believing Jack was a traitor, how he had neglected to tell her that her best friend was actually a genetic clone, how he had nearly allowed her to become a wanted terrorist for stealing Rambaldi pieces from the CIA.

And then?

Then she would go to Jack, and they would be fucked.

Irina must have read the decision in his eyes, because she slid her arms around his waist and hugged him gently. This time, Sark welcomed the embrace.

Because he was about to betray Sydney, again. And this time, he knew, it would mean losing her forever.

* * * *

Sydney was half-awake and half-asleep, drifting in that misty realm between reality and dreams, when Sark eased in beside her on the small sofa.

She opened her eyes enough to see that the cabin was totally dark. Vaughn was sprawled in the chair to her left, his head on his shoulder; Marshall lay on the floor beside her, his suit-coat rolled up under his head as a makeshift pillow; Jack had stretched out on the loveseat across from her. They were all sound asleep.

Irina was nowhere to be seen.

She had fallen asleep sitting up. A dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre – her favorite travel reading – was still open on her lap.

Sydney told herself it was mere exhaustion that made her lean into Sark when he slipped an arm around her shoulders. She started to speak, to ask him how close they were to India, but he placed a finger to her lips.

Then, before she could react, his mouth followed his finger, sealing hers with a tender, almost sorrowful kiss.

Sydney’s mind screamed that this was not possible. Her father was sleeping less than two feet away; she could only imagine the chaos that would ensue if he woke up to find her lip-locked with Sark.

Of course, her mind rarely won out when it came to Sark. His kiss was more potent than any wine; the desire went straight to her head, fogging her brain, clouding all the reasons why she should push him away immediately.

The book hit the floor with a muffled thud. Catching the front of his shirt in her hands, Sydney lay back on the sofa and tugged Sark down on top of her, never taking her mouth away from his.

Perhaps the fear of being caught made kissing him more exciting. Or perhaps eight hours without him was simply too long. Whichever, Sydney couldn’t recall ever being quite so aroused by him so fast. And that was saying something.

His breath came in quick gasps against her cheek when she moved her lips onto his neck, sucking forcefully enough to leave a tell-tale mark below his jaw. His hands were between them, pulling down the zipper of her khakis, unbuttoning his jeans. Consumed by his urgency as much as her own, Sydney plunged her tongue into his mouth, bringing her lips to his so violently that their teeth bumped together.

Inside me, was all she could think, hoping that her body writhing underneath his would send that silent message. I want you inside me, now…

Sark didn’t make her wait. She bit his lip fiercely when he shoved her panties down and slipped into her. It was all she could do not to cry out.

Their rough breathing and the soft squeaking of the couch springs filled the stillness. Sydney was certain someone would hear, certain her father or Vaughn or (worse yet, perhaps) Marshall would wake up at any second, but the need for him was so intense that she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Sark tore his mouth from hers and buried his face in the cushion behind her to stifle his moan; Sydney threw her head back and clamped her lips together, screaming inwardly as the pressure built between her legs, sweet and warm and tickling, only enhanced by the soft whimpers Sark was trying so desperately not to make.

Her words from that morning echoed in her mind: It’s what’s forbidden. We always want what we can’t have.

Then the explosion of her pleasure blotted out all thought. If Sark hadn’t crushed his mouth to hers at that exact second, she would have screamed out loud.

In the ensuing silence, Sydney was reminded inexplicably of that delicious moment on Marinus’s yacht when Sark’s towel finally hit the floor. Just like then, she couldn’t hold back a giggle.

“Shh,” Sark whispered, his voice thick with laughter as well. “Sydney, really, I don’t want to be shot with my pants around my ankles. Shh.”

That only made her laugh harder. He kissed her to silence her, working his pants back up to his hips with one hand. She zipped them for him, playfully battling his tongue back into his mouth.

They were so good together, she thought. Every time he touched her – no matter where they were, obviously – it just felt so right.

Sark sat up, and she pulled her khakis back into place before laying her head against his shoulder. He didn’t put his arm around her this time; she understood – he was tired, and so was she, and it would simply cause too many unnecessary problems if Jack were to wake and discover his daughter asleep in Sark’s arms.

So they settled for sitting with their sides pressed together. Sark picked up her hand and laced his fingers through hers. Sydney smiled, wishing she could see his face in the darkness.

“I hope that wasn’t a violation of the agreement we made this morning,” he whispered.

Sydney swallowed another fit of giggles. “I think it was,” she whispered back, “but I forgive you.”

“I promise to behave from here on out.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” she shot back teasingly.

They lapsed into silence for a while. Feeling sleepy again, Sydney laid her head on the back of the sofa and turned slightly toward him, admiring his profile. He was so handsome.

“Sark?”

“Mmm?” He laid his head back, too, bringing their mouths dangerously close again.

So much for behaving himself, Sydney thought wryly, but she didn’t really mind. “What’s going to happen after we get the artifacts tomorrow? I mean, where will you and my mother go?”

“She hasn’t told me.” He paused, obviously hesitant to voice his next question. “Do you think you’ll have made your decision by then?”

“I don’t think I can really figure this out while I’m focused on a mission,” Sydney replied truthfully. Her heart was already decided; it would be so easy, especially with the feel of him lingering inside of her, to say she would be going with him, wherever that ended up being. But she knew she needed to consider the full ramifications of that, of running off with an internationally-wanted terrorist, with an objectivity that she couldn’t possibly manage while on an op.

Or while in his presence, for that matter.

She finally summoned the courage to ask what had been on her mind the entire flight. “If you’re going away tomorrow, though, how will I see you again?”

“If you still want to see me after tomorrow, Sydney, I’ll find you.” His fingers tightened around hers, as if he wanted to anchor her to him. He added meaningfully, “Don’t I always?”

Smiling, Sydney nodded and surrendered to her exhaustion.

Her last clear thought before sleep stole over her completely was that she loved being found by Sark.

Chapter Twenty-One: Ghost Stories

I will meet you in some place

Where the light lends itself to soft repose

I will let you undress me

But I warn you, I have thorns like any rose

And you could hurt me with your bare hands

You could hurt me using the sharp end of what you say

But I am lost to you now

There’s no amount of reason to save me

So break me, take me

Just let me fill your arms again

Break me

I’ll let you make me

Just let me feel your love again

“Break Me”, Jewel

The journey to the temple was long, hot, and bumpy.

Two Humvees had awaited them when they arrived in Mumbai. Sydney marveled at the efficiency of Irina’s associates, which so exceeded that of the clumsy middlemen the CIA often relied on; of course, knowing what Irina would do to someone who delayed her ops naturally provided much more incentive to excel than the CIA could muster.

Along with the vehicles, they had been given military fatigues, olive-green tee-shirts, combat boots, and survival packs containing first-aid kits and three days’ worth of food and water. Six sleeping bags, a set of six two-way radios and an impressive arsenal of automatic weapons had rounded out Irina’s order.

Sydney rode with Sark on the seven-hour trip into the jungle. Marshall hunkered down in the backseat, mouthing silent prayers as the Humvee lurched and rattled over the rutted dirt road. In places, Sydney wouldn’t even have called it a road – it was more like a thin opening between the densely packed trees.

With Jack trying desperately to keep up in the other Humvee, Sark drove recklessly, impossibly fast given the narrowness of the road and the sudden appearance of trees that sprouted up in their path. Had the driver been anyone other than Sark, Sydney would have shared Marshall’s terror; as it was, she trusted that he knew exactly where he was going, that he had memorized this crazy, winding path and all of its obstacles well enough to deliver them safely to their destination.

And he did, but once they arrived they discovered that Sloane’s operatives were already in place. The gunfire erupted the moment Sark turned off the sun-dappled road into a wide clearing about a half-mile from the temple.

Now, Marshall was crouched in a fetal-like position to her right, next to the Humvee’s back tire. Sark had sprinted through the rain of bullets and dived behind a small stand of trees the moment the vehicle rolled to a stop; every now and again she caught a glimpse of his fair hair a few feet away, where he was using a thick-trunked tree as cover.

Jack had squealed the second Humvee to a stop with its bumper touching the back of theirs, creating an effective barrier between them and the onslaught of machine-gun fire from the temple. He and Vaughn knelt behind their Humvee, each one stretching up to fire over the hood whenever their attackers paused to reload. Sydney did the same, grimacing when a bullet whipped past her ear. They were quickly becoming pinned down while Sloane’s men advanced, and that was not good.

Like Sark, Irina had immediately dashed for cover elsewhere. Sydney couldn’t see her, but, judging from the shifting locations of her return-fire, she seemed to be circling around behind their enemies.

So far, Sydney had counted a dozen men, all armed to the teeth. They also had the advantage of higher ground. Nevertheless, Jack’s team was holding its own, the three of them choosing their targets carefully and driving their attackers back each time they advanced.

Ten minutes into the fire-fight, seven corpses were strewn throughout the tall grass between the Humvees and the temple; the odds were evening out, yet Sydney wondered how many more men might be waiting in reserve.

And where was Sloane?

Daylight was fading fast when Irina and Sark – either playing off of some pre-planned strategy or reading each other’s minds – made their move. Less than a mile to the east, sunlight still slanted onto the road they had traveled in on, but here under the jungle’s canopy the last remnants of sunshine were quickly being swallowed by darkness more complete and consuming than any Sydney had ever seen. So she heard rather than saw her mother and Sark charge, screaming wildly and firing continuously as they ran out at the men from opposite sides of the field.

Either they were very brave or very stupid, Sydney mused, forcing herself to stay put. If she ran into the fray, she could accidentally be gunned down by either one of them – not to mention that she couldn’t see a damn thing and would have no idea what she was firing at.

Whatever happened, it was over in seconds, following vicious bursts of staccato gunfire.

“Clear,” Irina shouted, sounding smugly victorious.

Sydney sighed. Knowing her mother, Irina wouldn’t be able to resist rubbing it in that she and Sark had won this round for them.

Marshall slowly lifted his head. “It’s okay to come out now? They’re sure?” he asked her, his voice trembling.

Sydney patted his arm reassuringly. Poor guy, he hadn’t signed on for gun fights. “Yeah, it’s okay now. They’ve secured the area.”

“We’ll see,” Jack said stiffly, joining them with Vaughn in tow. “Vaughn, set up a perimeter. I want to be sure no one is hiding in these trees. Radio in if you find anything even remotely suspicious. Marshall, stay close to me. Let’s go.”

Since she hadn’t been issued a direct order, Sydney followed Jack over to where Irina and Sark were standing amidst the felled bodies. Apparently, a ricochet or a near-miss had scraped Irina’s cheek, because Sark was bandaging it gently.

The tenderness in his touch made Sydney wince with an irrational jealousy, the same way she’d felt when she watched him dance with her mother. Oh, she knew their relationship wasn’t sexual, but she envied how Irina could openly display affection for him while she was so constrained, afraid to raise her father’s ire too much so long as they were in the field.

She also envied, though she didn’t like to admit it, the easy companionship Sark shared with Irina. Their bond was so much stronger than the one between Sydney and her mother, and that hurt.

“Shouldn’t you be scouting for reinforcements?” Jack greeted the victors gruffly.

“We have a prisoner,” Irina replied, smiling at Sark as he taped the bandage in place and stepped back. She nodded at a prone figure seated on the ground behind her. “I thought you would want to question him, so we waited.”

Miffed that she had a solid rebuttal to his reproof, Jack hauled the prisoner to his feet. He was a tall, dark-skinned man, of Middle-Eastern descent wearing, like his dead comrades, a black jumpsuit. He glared defiantly at Jack, who demanded, “Where is Arvin Sloane?”

“You think I’m going to tell you?” the man sneered, in heavily accented English. Definitely Iranian, Sydney decided. He spit at Jack’s feet, and she had to admire his audacity.

Glancing down at the spittle, Jack raised his Colt .45 and aimed it between the man’s eyes. “I’ll ask you once more, and then you stop being useful to me. Where is Arvin Sloane?”

Their prisoner actually laughed. “You’re CIA. You’re not going to shoot me. You have protocol.”

“Well, I’m not CIA,” Sark declared evenly, stepping between the man and Jack, “and I don’t worry about protocol.”

Even in the darkness, Sydney saw the man’s eyes cloud with fear. “Surprised to see me, Abul?” Sark taunted, sliding a wicked-looking hunting knife off of his belt. Abul backed up a step, only to find his escape route blocked by Irina.

Sark advanced on him like a hungry lion, saying blithely, “Well, as they say, rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

With that, Sark seized Abul’s right arm and drove the knife through it. Abul screamed; Sydney gasped; Jack tensed; Marshall gagged.

Gripping the man’s wrist, Sark twisted the knife, whose point had come clear out the other side of Abul’s forearm. Abul moaned something in Arabic. Sydney assumed it was a plea for mercy. She flinched at Sark’s cruelty but understood the necessity of discerning Sloane’s whereabouts quickly.

And hey, Jack had offered the man a chance to cooperate.

“Focus, Abul. Tell me were Sloane is,” Sark commanded, sounding absurdly cordial. Must be a British thing, Sydney decided.

“He’s not here,” Abul insisted, the agony in his voice enough to turn Sydney’s stomach.

Marshall turned his back on the scene and wretched. She laid a gentle hand on his arm, as much to restrain him from running off into the blackness as to comfort him.

Sark jerked the knife sideways, eliciting another howl from his captive. “Don’t insult us, Abul.” Again with the extremely British civility. “Sloane wouldn’t leave an incompetent ape such as yourself in charge of his precious artifacts. Now where is he? In the tunnels? On his way here? Back in Mumbai?”

With each question, Sark wriggled the knife a bit. Sydney feared that if he didn’t quit, she was going to be forced to join Marshall in turning away.

“The artifacts don’t matter anymore,” Abul managed, through gritted teeth. “He did what he needed with them.” A note of smugness crept into the pain in his voice. “His ascension has begun. None of you can stop him now. He has been anointed.”

“Spare us the fanatical bullshit,” Sark snapped. “Where did he go, and why did he leave you here?”

When Abul hesitated, Sark jerked the knife free – Sydney shuddered at the sound of metal scraping against bone – and pressed it firmly to Abul’s neck, tight enough to draw blood.

Their prisoner’s momentary defiance morphed into utter terror instantly. “I don’t know where he went. Why would he tell me? He said to secure the temple and then to leave India. He paid us for our services and said he would be in touch.”

Panic slipped into his voice, and he pleaded, “You know this is how he does business with us, Mr. Sark. We do what we are paid to do and we leave. I know nothing!”

Sark studied him for a moment, his expression unreadable, before looking over Abul’s shoulder at Irina. In the darkness, Sydney couldn’t see her response, but suddenly, Sark drew the blade across Abul’s throat.

For an instant, she thought he had simply done it to scare the man. Then a scarlet stream poured out of his neck. Sydney covered her mouth in horror as Abul slumped to the ground, gurgling on his own blood, and swiftly died.

The coldness in Sark’s eyes flooded Sydney with unwelcome doubts. Maybe Vaughn was right about Sark being “programmed” – she certainly couldn’t imagine any normal person so callously killing another. How could she ever reconcile Sark’s polar extremes: the sincere, passionate man who made love to her so tenderly and the fierce, remorseless killer who saw no intrinsic value in human life?

Sark wiped the blade casually on the tall grass and turned to Jack, who seemed torn between shock and fury. “He was telling the truth. Sloane would never have given them any information about where he was going.”

“Obviously,” Jack responded icily. “But the summary execution of a prisoner is not how we do things in the CIA.”

“Yes, well, as I said, I don’t work for the CIA.” Sark grinned devilishly at Jack as he added, “And I’ll be sure to relay that policy to Mr. Haladki the next time I see him.”

Sydney half-expected her father to punch Sark out for that snide accusation; Jack had long been suspected of murdering Haladki, a CIA agent who mysteriously disappeared after unsettling evidence of his connection to Khasinau surfaced.

Instead of striking him, however, Jack actually returned Sark’s grin, if only for an instant. Sydney nearly dropped her eyeteeth.

Despite her repulsion at what Sark had just done, hope stirred deep down in her heart. Could Jack possibly be softening toward Sark, even the tiniest bit?

As quickly as it had appeared, Jack’s grin vanished, and he was all business again. “What did he mean by ‘securing’ the temple?”

Vaughn chose that moment to join them. “Judging from the grave dug out on the perimeter,” Vaughn announced solemnly, “I’d say he meant waiting to ambush us.”

“But he didn’t know we were coming,” Sydney protested, immediately cutting her eyes to Irina. Was this another set-up?

“He most likely meant moving the artifacts to a more secure location,” Irina put in, ignoring the doubt in Sydney’s face. “Think about what he said. Sloane had already ‘used’ the artifacts, so he must have brought them here to perform some kind of ceremony. But he wouldn’t want to leave them here, if for no other reason than to keep the CIA from somehow running across them.”

They stood in a loose semi-circle under the looming shadow of the temple, which Sydney was growing eager to investigate. Sark’s cryptic comment about it being a ‘horrible place’ had awakened a morbid curiosity in her; if it also had some ritualistic importance to Rambaldi, she was even more interested in finding out about it.

Everyone else seemed ready to disperse as well, but Sark’s quiet, almost hesitant, question stopped them. “Why not just blow the temple up, then, if he no longer needed the artifacts? Why keep them?”

Was it Sydney’s imagination, or did Irina shoot him a warning glare?

Marshall, who had recovered somewhat from his terror at the gun battle and his horror at watching Sark torture a man, offered tentatively, “It’s never a good idea to just go blowing up something of Rambaldi’s.”

They all turned to him, and he took on his usual excited, nervous air. “Well, it’s like, remember, Syd, when you blew up the Circumference and it flooded, like, an entire building? Well, that’s an example of what I’m talking about. A lot of Rambaldi’s work is dangerous, as Agent Vaughn knows, you know, since he almost drowned because of you blowing that thing up – not that you knew that was going to happen, Syd,” he added hastily.

“Point taken,” Jack broke in, sparing them all one of Marshall’s stumbling apologies. “Now, if there aren’t any more questions, I suggest we focus on removing these artifacts and getting out of here before Sloane realizes his team has been compromised.”

* * * *

The temple smelled musty with age.

It was a simple, open-aired structure. Crudely cut stone steps, broken and weathered by time and the elements, led to a broad stone platform atop a small man-made hill. A large stone column stood at each of the four corners, supporting a flat stone roof that towered high overhead. A long, partially rotted wooden cradle hung from a pair of rusted chains bolted to the ceiling.

Nothing spectacular. No altars; no thrones; no idols. That simplicity, Sydney reflected, made it powerful; she could almost imagine spirits swirling around her. She had never much gone in for religious hysteria, yet in this remote jungle, where the air sat heavily on her shoulders and the trees stared down at her knowingly, she experienced a heady sense of the divine.

She told herself she imagined the malice underlying it all, but that reasoning did nothing to alleviate the shivers crawling up her neck.

Something evil was here, she thought, half-amused at her own melodrama, and the essence of it lingers.

Engrossed in macabre musings, she nearly shrieked when a figure appeared out of the darkness on the eastern edge of the platform. She relaxed when Sark’s voice rolled toward her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Rather than denying that he had – she had jumped a mile, and she knew it – Sydney replied, “This place gives me the creeps. Why would Sloane be interested in this?”

“Probably because Rambaldi was.” He stopped with their bodies almost touching, the mysterious cradle a few feet to their right. The darkness was so absolute that all Sydney could see clearly were his eyes, an amazing sapphire-blue against the purple-black night.

Taking her wrist, Sark tilted her thin flashlight beam down. For the first time, Sydney noticed the faded yet unmistakable symbol carved into the stone floor.

Rambaldi’s symbol.

“He hid an artifact here,” Sydney wondered aloud, kneeling and tracing the outline of the engraving. Centuries of mud and grime caked the deep-sunk crevices. “Rambaldi. He hid one of his artifacts here.”

“A page of his manuscript, actually.” Sark knelt beside her. He sounded a bit distant tonight, as if the malevolently reverent atmosphere of the place had affected him as much as it had her. Sydney wished she could see his expression clearly, but the blackness was too deep. “He chose such fascinatingly obscure locations to hide his life’s work.”

They fell silent for a few moments, each lost in their own thoughts. For her part, Sydney was finding it difficult to stay focused on the mission. Even with the continuing sensation that potent unseen forces surrounded her in this ancient place, she was thinking about Sark’s lips, remembering the welcome pressure of his hands running down her body, wishing he would try and steal a kiss while they were alone for a few moments –

Her fluttering heartbeat sounded loud to her in the stillness. She wondered if Sark heard it, because suddenly he turned his most charming smile on her. “Made any decisions yet, Agent Bristow?” he whispered, barely achieving a light-hearted tone.

Oh hell yes, she’d made a decision. The decision that she would like to slip off into the jungle with him for about ten minutes and quench this ache that started up every time he was near. All day, she’d been thinking that he did wonderful things for camouflage pants, and the idea of him in uniform had aroused some delicious fantasies.

“Not yet,” she forced herself to say.

He started to move away, so she took the initiative and stole a kiss from him instead, capturing his mouth softly and tracing the outline of his lips with her tongue. Sark pressed harder, catching her face in his hands and drawing her to him. Sydney gave in to the passion willingly, kissing him with an abandon that could only lead to playing out those fantasies she’d concocted during the ride here.

Can’t get enough of you, she told him with her kiss, as he opened his mouth wider for her silky exploration. Never have enough of you, ever…

“You always taste like strawberries,” Sark breathed, when her lips dropped down to his jaw. “Why is that?”

She loved his pillow talk, always so sweet and unexpected.

“Don’t know,” she murmured, trying to coax him down on top of her. He resisted, so she attacked his mouth again, nipping softly at his bottom lip. Between kisses, she asked, “Why is your lip crooked here?”

“Don’t know,” he said back, surrendering to her. She wrapped her fingers around the curls at the nape of his neck and pulled him down with her. The stone was rough and cold against her back. His hands slipped under her tee-shirt; his thumbs brushed the tips of her breasts beneath the filmy bra, and Sydney arched toward him, smothering a moan by deepening their kiss.

Just as she was approaching the point of no return, that point where it was either take him or be burned alive by desire, voices from the clearing below drifted up to them on the wind, reminding them that they weren’t alone. Did they dare tempt fate twice in twenty-four hours?

Sark sighed against her mouth as he sat up, dragging a hand through his hair. “Sydney,” he began, apologetically.

“It’s okay,” she assured him. She sat up and tucked her hair behind her ears, waiting for her heartbeat to slow to normal. A quick smile of understanding passed between them; much as they wanted each other, too much depended on them all being able to work as a team tomorrow to risk the drama of being caught by either Jack or Vaughn.

The plan was simple. After scouring a four-mile radius for more of Sloane’s operatives, they had made camp at the base of the temple and set up motion sensors around the perimeter. Sark had radioed in the temple’s coordinates to Kendall, who immediately contacted an agent in Ajanta to organize transport for the artifacts.

A team at the L.A. Operations Center would guide the transport units to the temple using satellite surveillance, yet even if they drove all night it would still be midday tomorrow before they arrived. So, in the interest of making a speedy exit before Sloane decided to rescue the Rambaldi pieces, Sark would be leading her and Vaughn down into the tunnels at dawn to bring up the artifacts. Once the transport team arrived, those artifacts would be placed in an armored car and given an armed escort to the airport in Mumbai. Jack, Vaughn, Marshall and Sydney (unless she opted to go with Sark) would fly back to the U.S. with the artifacts, while Sark and Irina went on their merry way.

Sydney tried not to speculate what her father’s reaction would be if, once the trucks were ready to move, she announced that she wouldn’t be going home. She feared it might involve physical violence.

She could worry about that when the time came, though. Like all simple plans, she doubted this one would go off without a hitch.

Irina actually allowing the CIA to walk off with a horde of Rambaldi artifacts would probably be the major sticking point. Sydney hoped her father had an effective back-up plan to counter whatever trick she might pull in the morning.

Sark offered her a hand up. As they surveyed the platform together, Sydney observed, “When you explained this in the hotel, I had a much different picture in mind. I saw it as like a pyramid, or one of those Buddhist shrines maybe.”

Reaching out, Sark swung the cradle gently. Sydney swallowed the urge to shout, Don’t disturb it! For Christ’s sake, what was it about this place that made her remember every gruesome horror movie she’d ever seen?

“Most bhutastans are fairly simple,” Sark explained. “This one is quite elaborate. Few of them have these sorts of columns or such high roofs.”

Sydney was impressed by his knowledge on the subject. He’s nothing if not thorough, she thought, grinning at how applicable that was to all aspects of his life. “I’m a little confused about what it’s for.”

Sark teased, “Sure you’re in the mood for a ghost story, Agent Bristow? You seemed a bit jumpy earlier.”

Sydney dug an elbow into his ribs, thinking that it would be impossible to be frightened with him standing so near. He slipped his arms around her waist from behind, and she leaned back against him, trying not to be distracted by his nearness as he explained, “A bhuta is a kind of vampire, but not the way Europeans think of them. No pale gentleman in a top hat and cape.”

“Good,” Sydney put in, nuzzling his neck with her nose. “I always found Dracula too vulgar to be scary.”

“Don’t interrupt,” Sark ordered, tilting his head away from her mouth. Sydney giggled but allowed him to continue. “The bhuta appears as more of a,” he searched briefly for the right word, “a fairy light, you might say. A willow ‘o the wisp, if you will. It has no tangible form.”

“Then how do they drink blood, if they’re just floating lights?” Sydney asked, playfully baring her teeth at him.

Sark chuckled at her vampire impression and brushed his thumb across her lips. “They don’t drink blood, Sydney. No Dracula, remember?”

“These bhutas aren’t sounding very scary,” Sydney pouted, like a child unhappy with her bedtime story. His light touch had left her lips tingling and hungry for his.

“Well, if you’d let me finish,” Sark complained. She settled back against him and heaved a sigh of mock boredom. “The bhuta have two powers: possession of a living person and reanimation of a corpse. If one enters a live being, that person falls ill and dies. Whenever villages suffered plagues or epidemics, it was often thought that a bhuta was attacking them, moving from one person to the next and killing them. A bit archaic, of course, but quite a clever explanation of illness for people who had no concept of contagions.”

Sydney nodded, feeling sleepy now that she was wrapped securely in his arms. “The other ability, reanimating a corpse, is more gruesome. While inside the corpse, the bhuta attack lone travelers. They disembowel them and eat their intestines and their – excrement.”

The air became cold and menacing again suddenly. All sleepiness was chased away by the unexpected chill; the sensation of unfriendly eyes staring down at her returned, causing Sydney to shudder involuntarily.

Don’t be such a wuss, her inner voice lectured. It’s a myth. A legend. Folklore. Not reality.

But did she imagine it, or did Sark glance rather apprehensively over his shoulder and hug her a tad closer as well?

“Why would someone worship something like that?” Sydney questioned, disgusted by the practice.

“The temples weren’t necessarily for worship,” Sark corrected her. Reaching out, he tipped the cradle toward them. Sydney peered over the side and noted the contents: a knife and a bowl, both rusted from exposure to the elements.

“Offerings to the creature,” Sark told her, causing her to shudder again. “The bowl would have been filled with water on a weekly basis, and the villagers would scatter flowers around here,” he indicated the stone floor, “and leave offerings of food, like bread or fresh meat. They wanted to placate the bhuta, keep it here in the temple so it wouldn’t bother their homes. You see, the cradle is suspended because bhuta can’t touch the ground. They’re unclean spirits and the earth is hallowed, so they’re condemned to wander above it forever. This gave them a resting place. These temples were more about protection of the village than the worship of a deity.”

Amazing the lengths people would go to for those they loved, she thought, not without a trace of irony.

Sark was rubbing her bare arms, trying to warm her skin where the nighttime air had chilled it; he was succeeding, in more ways than one. “And the tunnels?” she asked, a bit huskily.

“Rambaldi made those,” Sark clarified, picking up on her tone and caressing her arms in a decidedly seductive way. “They’re like a maze. An almost impassable labyrinth.”

“You passed them,” Sydney reminded him, lifting her chin toward his. In the moonlight, his blue eyes glowed with a hint of silver, like those of a god.

Sark eyed her lips greedily. “Yes,” he admitted, his usual cockiness somewhat blunted by a longing-induced breathlessness, “but, as you’ve said, my talents are many and varied.”

He dipped his head and she lifted her chin to meet him halfway, loving how weak-kneed she became each time he moved in for a kiss.

Their lips were just about to touch when their radios crackled to life. “Sydney,” Jack’s stern voice came across the air-waves, “I want you both to return to camp. Now.”

Christ, could he see them from all the way down there or something? Like two chastised teenagers, they stepped guiltily apart. Desire hung in the air between them.

After a moment, Sark voiced what they were both thinking, in his typical sardonic manner: “No offense, Sydney, but your father is a real pain in the ass.”

She laughed. “I know. But right now he’s in charge, so we better go.”

Sydney led the way down the steps. Irina, who was crouched over a small campfire feeding dry twigs into it, arched a bemused eyebrow at them but said nothing.

Vaughn and Jack were conferring over by the Humvees. Marshall already had his sleeping bag laid out, as close to the fire as he could get without igniting himself. He looked terrified, Sydney observed with a pang of sympathy. Nights in the jungle, with the threat of a small army of Sloane’s operatives descending on them before dawn, weren’t part of his job description; if it hadn’t been so urgent for them to find the temple, and such a possibility that Marshall’s tech skills would come in handy out here, they would have left him at the safe-house in Mumbai.

Sark paused to whisper conspiratorially with Irina, so Sydney sat down close to Marshall and smiled at him encouragingly. “I’ve never camped before,” he admitted quietly to her, as if he were parting with some dark secret. “My mother always said it was unnatural to sleep outside when we had a house.”

He winced as an animal cried deep within the surrounding trees. Sydney patted his hand. “Morning will be here before you know it. I’m glad we have you along,” she added, meaning it. Who knew what they might face tomorrow? Marshall’s skills had saved her life on many occasions.

“Really?” Marshall’s grin stretched from ear to ear, goofy and lop-sided and hopelessly endearing. Sydney fought down a giggle, in case he would think she was laughing at him. “Well, I guess I did sort of save us on that one mission.”

“You’ve saved us many times,” she insisted. “And don’t worry. Kendall has us on satellite surveillance. We’d be alerted long before any more of Sloane’s men got here.”

Marshall looked anxious again. “Oh, it’s not that I’m worried about. It’s, well, this place kinda gives me the wiggins, you know?”

Boy, did she. Recalling the eerie chill she’d gotten up at the temple, Sydney nodded wordlessly. Before she could think of any further words of comfort, though, Jack appeared to announce, “Irina and I will be sleeping in shifts. Even with the satellite surveillance, we can’t be too careful. Sydney, Vaughn, Sark, I want you three to get some rest. You have a difficult day ahead tomorrow. You too, Marshall.”

Both Vaughn and Sark moved instinctively to claim the spot beside Sydney. An awkward silence descended as the two rivals silently stared one another down.

Irina defused the situation elegantly by stepping lightly between them and dropping her sleeping bag next to Sydney’s. “I’ll take first watch,” she offered, ignoring the tension.

Sydney breathed a sigh of relief when Vaughn and Sark also let it go. Sark stretched out his sleeping bag next to Irina’s; Vaughn walked around and lay down beside Marshall, leaving Jack the spot between him and Sark.

So Dad can keep them both in line, Sydney mused, and in spite of her torturous confliction about whether to leave with Sark tomorrow, she grinned.

So softly that no one but Sydney could hear her, Irina whispered, “If you want me to trade you places after your father falls asleep, I will.”

For a second, Sydney wasn’t sure how to respond. Then, seeing the teasing laughter dancing in her mother’s eyes, she succumbed to a fit of giggles that Irina joined in.

“Ladies,” Jack called over to them, trying and failing to sound annoyed, “it’s time for sleep.”

“Yes, Jack,” Irina responded contritely. Her eyes held Sydney’s, and they continued to smile at one another for a moment.

Sydney’s smile, and the surprising warmth that had opened up in her heart, lingered long after her mother turned away.

* * * *

Nightmares were not uncommon for Sark. Given the horrors he had seen and the atrocities he had committed, he supposed that was to be expected.

But rarely did he have the same nightmare twice.

That night, however, at the foot of the demonic temple, he dreamed of Sydney’s death, and the dream was exactly the same as the one he’d had while in captivity:

She stood on the balcony of their house in Australia, beckoning to him, her gold-flecked eyes round and laughing. He moved for her, but in the next instant, the world tilted and he was falling, flailing at emptiness as he plummeted deeper into a black abyss.

When he finally hit the bottom, he was standing in Sydney’s living room. Her mangled, bloody corpse was stretched out alongside the couch.

His stomach lurched; his heart burst with pain. Starting for her, he called her name in an agonized voice he almost didn’t recognize as his own.

Then he backed away in horror as her dead eyes lifted to his and her lips parted in an accusatory hiss.

As he had that night in his cell, Sark woke up in a cold sweat. He lay perfectly still, concentrating on controlling his racing heart, hoping he hadn’t cried out in his sleep.

Apparently he had given some indication of his terror, because Vaughn’s voice floated hoarsely out of the darkness: “Are you all right?”

Fuck off, Sark wanted to say. He glanced over to find Jack and Irina both sound asleep – for some reason, Agent Vaughn had assumed guard duty.

“Fine,” he answered, with a stiff politeness. “I thought you were supposed to be resting.”

“Couldn’t sleep.” Vaughn paused, staring into the fire as Sark, suspecting his sleep was over for the night as well, sat up and stretched. “It’s probably just this place, but…I was having strange dreams.”

Sark glanced sharply at him. “About Sydney?” he asked, without really thinking.

A touch of color rose in Vaughn’s cheeks. “Yes,” he admitted, somewhat defensively.

Unable to resist baiting him, Sark pressed, “The sort you can share, or the private sort?”

“A nightmare, really.”

Coincidence, Sark told himself, refusing to be unnerved. Yet he sounded a bit apprehensive when he said, “Same here.”

They both looked at her, and Sark smiled softly. She was so beautiful, especially in her sleep: silky hair spilling around her, lips curving in a delicate smile, cheek resting on her arm.

He found Vaughn watching her with a tenderness that matched his own and looked down, oddly embarrassed.

“Tomorrow,” Vaughn’s words brought Sark’s eyes back up to his, “when we’re down there, in the tunnels I mean, we have to work together.”

Was Agent Vaughn offering a truce? Sark smirked at him. “Don’t like the idea of being led into the unknown with me as your guide, I take it?”

“I basically don’t like the idea of working with you, period.”

Hmm. Perhaps Vaughn had more of a spine than he’d given him credit for, Sark decided, though he could still sense the other man’s fear of him. “Think I might abandon you down there?” he chided.

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“Don’t worry, Agent Vaughn. I find it infinitely more satisfying to win honorably.”

Sark stabbed a pointed look at Sydney, suppressing the urge to add, And you aren’t even in the game anymore, asshole, so why would I bother with you?

They lapsed into silence for a while after that. Sark studied the fire, transfixed by the dancing yellow flames. Truth be told, he was nervous about traipsing through those tunnels again. His first experience down there had been nightmarish enough.

As if reading his thoughts, Vaughn inquired, “How do you know so much about the tunnels anyway?”

Sark hesitated. This wasn’t a story he particularly longed to share with his rival, although he had to admit it would feel nice to tell it to someone. So he confessed, “I actually got lost down there for four days.”

To his credit, Vaughn didn’t snicker. “How’d you get out?”

Wishing he hadn’t been quite so honest, Sark was now forced to admit, “Luck, actually.”

Again, Vaughn held in the derisory laughter that would have been spilling out of Sark had he been in his shoes; the consideration only served to grate on Sark’s nerves, making it an effort to keep his voice even. “I wandered into a – room, if you could call it that.”

He grimaced at the memory and hoped Vaughn had missed that. “It was a torture chamber, from what I could tell. Skeletons everywhere, some so old they were turning to dust. There must have been three dozen bodies.”

The hair on the back of Sark’s neck stood up as he recalled the hideous stacks of bones, some with gooey strips of flesh still attached. Forcing down a shudder, he went on, “In the middle of the room was this stone altar. It had chains on it, at the top and bottom, which I assume were used as restraints for whatever poor bastard got laid out on it.” It was Vaughn’s turn to grimace at that image. “Anyway, in the far corner I saw a shaft of light. It looked like the page of Rambaldi’s manuscript had been hidden in some kind of cubbyhole in the wall, and once it was removed, a passage opened that led straight up out of the tunnels. I came out somewhere over there,” he gestured eastward, “about six miles from here.”

Vaughn was watching him strangely. “I was dreaming about Sydney on a stone altar. Something horrible was in the room with her, and she was screaming, but I couldn’t get to her.”

Goosebumps skated down Sark’s arms. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder, though the sense of some evil presence bearing down on him was almost overwhelming.

We’re scaring ourselves, his mind insisted. It’s the atmosphere here. It lends itself to the fantastic and the macabre.

Obviously searching for a safer topic, Vaughn asked with purposeful lightness, “So if you just got out of there by chance, how are you going to guide us through the maze tomorrow?”

Well, here was a bragging point at last. “I went back down, after I got out. But I went prepared, of course. I tied a rope around my waist and anchored it to the base of the temple, so I could find my way back to my starting point. It took me the best part of a week, but I managed to map out every single tunnel.”

Vaughn was impressed and didn’t appear to mind that Sark could tell. “So you think the artifacts will be in that – room?”

Ah, there was what had been plaguing Sark since Winslow’s conversation at the hotel: the thought of revisiting that horrid place. Pride dictated that he keep the trepidation out of his reply. “It’s the most logical assumption, yes.”

Another short silence followed. Inexplicably, Sark felt compelled to make another confession to Vaughn – something he’d never told anyone.

“When I was down there,” he began, hesitantly, and only the real interest in Vaughn’s eyes convinced him to continue, “when I was lost, I mean, I kept thinking I saw something. It was probably just dehydration and panic,” he was careful to sound dismissive, to disguise the real terror he’d experienced in those tunnels, “but I would see this flash of light moving toward me. It was like it was toying with me, chasing me deeper into the maze. I tried to stand still and let it come to me once or twice, but I – the need to escape it was too powerful.”

Their gazes met and held. In the stillness, the flames crackled loudly; despite the warmth from the fire, Sark was abruptly chilled by an icy breath of air over his neck, and the sudden widening of Vaughn’s eyes told Sark that he had just experienced the same thing.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Vaughn whispered, voicing Sark’s thoughts.

Gradually, the oppressive malice lifted, leaving them both jittery. Releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, Sark attempted to sound nonchalant when he said, “Well, we are here, anyway. And we’ll be gone soon, so…”

He let the sentence trail off, lying back even though he wasn’t the least bit tired anymore. That was quite enough commiseration with his enemy for one night, he decided, perturbed with himself for being so open.

It’s Sydney, he reflected wryly. That damnable empathy of hers is rubbing off on me.

“Sark?”

Sark looked over at Vaughn, expectant, a little nervous of what his rival might have to say.

An almost affable smile crossed Vaughn’s face. “I don’t believe you’ve ever won anything honorably.”

Sark smirked back at him. “We’ll see,” he said, then closed his eyes and waited for the dawn.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Nightmares

Later, Sark would wonder how he could have missed all the warning signs that this was a trap.

Of course, whenever Irina and Sloane were involved, one quickly needed a pen and paper to keep track of the schemes and double-crosses. And his mind, he admitted, had been more on Sydney than on the mission.

They must have been counting on that.

His first clue should have been the most glaringly obvious: that Sloane had abandoned the Rambaldi artifacts. In hindsight, well, it was inexcusable for him to have accepted that, regardless of what Abul said. Sloane never walked away from anything Rambaldi without a fight.

His second clue should have been when Irina decided to implant a tracking device on Sydney.

As Sark, Sydney, and Vaughn prepared to enter the tunnels, Irina pulled Sark aside and crushed a small gold locket in his hand. “Keep this close, and hidden,” she whispered, pretending to clean the stitches in his forehead. “I inserted a transmitter behind Sydney’s shoulder last night while the rest of you were sleeping. If anything goes wrong today, open that locket and it will activate the transmitter.”

Jack was regarding them suspiciously, so Sark swallowed the immediate question as to exactly what might go wrong that would separate him from Sydney. At the moment, he was more focused on never seeing her again after today.

The plan was, Irina had explained on the flight to India, to use the CIA’s help to get the artifacts up out of the tunnels. Once they had the pieces above ground, Irina would release a sleeping gas that her Mumbai associate – the man who provided the Humvees and the survival packs – had secretly included for her. With Jack, Vaughn, and Sydney unconscious, Irina would order Marshall to disable the CIA’s satellite surveillance. She and Sark would then load the artifacts onto one of the Humvees and race to a remote airstrip, where she had a small cargo plane standing by. They would be airborne before the CIA transport team ever arrived at the temple.

One of their more solid plans, Sark noted. The major problem was, of course, that when Sydney woke up, she would believe he had betrayed her again, and the love she was so close to surrendering to would be replaced by an intense hatred.

His third clue that something was terribly amiss was so horrifying that Sark forgave himself for overlooking the importance of it.

He led the way down into the tunnels; Vaughn brought up the rear, and none of them missed the irony of Sydney being caught between them. But everyone was making an effort to be strictly professional this morning, so no one commented on it.

The tunnels were large enough that they could walk upright yet narrow enough that their arms brushed the earthen walls. The place smelled potently of damp soil and age; here and there Sark, who alternated between training his flashlight on the ground and his map, would call back warnings about jutting tree roots or upward slopes to his companions.

Thirty minutes after they descended into the oppressive darkness, Sark stopped and took a long drink from his canteen. Sydney and Vaughn, undoubtedly sensing his apprehension, moved up to join him.

“Are we here?” Vaughn asked, understanding Sark’s reluctance to continue much better than Sydney did.

“Just around this corner,” Sark answered. He avoided Vaughn’s gaze; their almost-friendly exchange the previous evening made it difficult to muster his usual condescension toward his rival, and Sark resisted the idea that he might actually like Vaughn on some level.

As much as he could like a man who looked like a Calvin Klein model and would soon be the most obvious rebound guy for Sydney, that was.

“I’ll go in first,” Sark decided. He wondered, really, where that idea had come from – it seemed to slip out of his mouth of its own accord, because the last thing he wanted to do was enter that horrid room by himself.

That’s the point, his inner voice snapped. You’re not going to let the underwear model see you squirm, are you?

Right. Best to brave it alone and rein in his fear in private. Then he could call them in.

Sydney, oblivious to the horrors Sark had suffered down here, misinterpreted his intentions. “You think Sloane may have set up some kind of booby-trap or something?”

Sark met Vaughn’s eyes over the top of her head. “Possibly,” he said.

“Then no way. We’ll all go in together.” Sydney lifted her chin, daring Sark to argue with her. He had to smile as her infamous stubborn streak reared its ugly head.

“Syd.” Vaughn laid a lightly restraining hand on her arm. “Sark knows what he’s doing. Plus he’s been down here before. He could tell if something was wrong, where we might just blunder into a trap.”

Sydney backed down reluctantly. “Be careful,” she ordered Sark, holding his gaze for a long moment.

Did he imagine the sudden coldness as he stepped up in the doorway? A shudder worked its way down Sark’s back as he cautiously stepped into the Rambaldi Chamber (as he had named the room on his map). His skin crawled from the unpleasant sensation of being watched by dozens of malevolent eyes.

If anything had ever threatened to totally unman the fearless Mr. Sark, this room had to be it.

The pale flashlight beam slowly illuminated the room. He started on the left side, where the manuscript page had been hidden for centuries in a tiny alcove; next to that was the opening of the secret passage that he had used to escape from this hell-hole on his first terrifying visit here.

Swinging the light on around, he noted that the skeletons, once strewn about the room as if they had been left to rot where they fell, were now piled unceremoniously in one corner. When the beam reached the center of the room, Sark saw why, and his heart thudded to a stop.

Emily Sloane’s bloated, rotting corpse lay atop the stone altar.

She had been stripped naked, revealing a crude row of black sutures down her torso. Her internal organs had been removed and placed in small glass jars that lined the altar.

He stared at her, transfixed, paralyzed by the horror of a man digging up his wife’s body, using her in some kind of twisted ritual, and then leaving her in this god-forsaken place.

That, of course, should have been his third clue, the one he was too shocked to pick up on: Sloane would never abandon Emily, not even her corpse. He treated the woman with a reverence that bordered on idolatry.

As it was, before his reeling mind could make that connection, Sark suffered another shock. His feet had carried him forward of their own volition, like a moth drawn to a flame, and as he came nearer he saw, to his horror, that Emily’s eyes were wide open, staring fixedly at the ceiling. Her flesh had already begun to putrefy, filling the small chamber with a sickeningly sweet scent, but those horrible eyes remained intact. They looked almost – accusing.

An icy, invisible hand closed over Sark’s throat, freezing him to the spot.

His dream. This was how Sydney had looked in his dream, just before she opened her eyes and hissed at him.

With that grotesque image in mind, Sark excused himself for screaming in absolute terror when the same sound suddenly emanated from Emily Sloane’s body.

Then she moved.

Sark had already lifted his gun before he realized, in the split second before he fired, that it wasn’t Emily’s body that was hissing or moving: it was a huge black python. The snake had coiled itself around her on the altar, melting so completely into the room’s pitch-blackness that it had been virtually invisible until, sensing Sark’s approach, it lifted itself to hiss at him.

Sark didn’t care. His terrified scream echoing in the chamber, he fired five times into the snake.

Blood and snake-brains splattered the walls. The massive python writhed once before collapsing in a heap onto Emily’s mangled chest.

Shots ringing in his ears and heart hammering wildly, Sark dropped the pistol and turned to flee. But Vaughn and Sydney, alerted by his scream and the gunfire, had come tearing down the tunnel to save him and now met him in the chamber’s doorway.

The instant he saw Sydney’s face, Sark cursed himself. She shouldn’t have to see this; he should have protected her from it. Emily Sloane had been like a mother to her.

He tried to step between her and the horrific scene on the altar, but he reacted too late. The color drained out of her face; her eyes widened in horror, and her knees buckled when she took a tiny step forward.

She reached out blindly for Sark. He caught her and they sank to the ground together.

Sydney clutched his shoulders and stared into his face, too stunned to speak. Sark pulled her to his chest, forcing her head down onto his shoulder, and rocked her, the way he had that night in Italy after they returned from Rikkets’ lab. And as then, he had no real comfort to offer her, so he just smoothed her hair and murmured, “It’s all right, Sydney. I’m here. It’s okay.”

Her silent tears dropped onto his shoulder. Sark shut his eyes and held her tighter. When he found Sloane, so help him, he would take that man apart one piece at a time for this and all the other pain he’d caused Sydney.

Vaughn cleared his throat. Annoyed, Sark flicked an irritated glance up at him, to which Vaughn said softly, almost apologetically, “I think there’s something here you need to see.”

Vaughn’s words seemed to bring Sydney back to herself. She leaned back from Sark, who wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. “I’m taking her out of here,” Sark told Vaughn, his eyes fixed on Sydney’s. “She doesn’t need to see this.”

“I agree,” Vaughn said.

But Sydney, predictably, shook her head. “You aren’t arguing with me on this one,” Sark tabled, taking her elbows and pulling her gently to her feet. He laid a finger over her lips when she started to protest. “No, love. I don’t want you to see this.”

Sydney kissed his finger but stepped back from him. “I’ve already seen it,” she retorted. Before he could stop her, she walked away from him and joined Vaughn at the altar.

Goddamn stubborn Bristow women…

Smoothing over his frustration, Sark stepped over to see what Vaughn was studying so intently.

The thirteen stolen artifacts had been assembled into a key that fit a tiny opening in the front of the stone altar, just below the engraving of Rambaldi’s symbol. Sark had seen that indentation on his first exploration of the chamber but had assumed it was a chip in the stone; now he understood that the manuscript page hidden here was only part of what Rambaldi had buried in this wretched place.

The key had opened a secret chamber within the altar itself, which was apparently hollow on the inside. Sark knelt and shone his flashlight inside.

Empty. Whatever had been there – he was assuming it was a Rambaldi artifact – was gone.

“Something’s missing,” Vaughn announced, as Sark rose. He started to say that, obviously, Sloane would have taken this newly discovered artifact, but then he realized that Vaughn was actually inventorying the jars placed around Emily Sloane.

Sark tried not to look at the corpse and tried not to look like he was, well, trying not to look. “What do you mean?” he asked, afraid he already knew.

“Look. Here’s her heart, her stomach, both of her kidneys, her spleen, her ovaries,” Sark ordered himself not to retch as Vaughn ticked off the disgusting list, “everything. Everything except her liver. Why would they leave that,” Vaughn searched for a diplomatic word, “intact?”

A light went on in Sark’s mind. Abul’s words jumped back at him: His ascension has begun. None of you can stop him now. He has been anointed.

Sydney must have read it in Sark’s face. “He wouldn’t,” she murmured, her voice throaty with repulsion.

“This is Sloane, Sydney. Yes, he would,” Sark shot back, angry with himself for not insisting that she leave.

Vaughn looked from one to the other for a moment, trying to work out on his own what they were talking about. He finally gave up and demanded, “What? What’d I miss?”

“He didn’t leave her liver ‘intact’, Agent Vaughn,” Sark replied, rather derisively. “He ate it.”

Vaughn turned positively green. If the whole situation hadn’t been so sick, and his own stomach hadn’t been bordering on revolt, Sark would have enjoyed that.

“Why would he do that?” Vaughn managed.

Sark resisted the urge to suggest that they talk about this elsewhere – like back up in the daylight, where the fresh air might purge his nostrils of the cloying stench of decay. But if Vaughn could take it, so could he. No way would he compound the humiliation of letting out that terrified scream by admitting that if he stayed in this room much longer he might vomit.

“It’s called endocannibalism,” he began, in a tone that implied Vaughn should have been familiar with the term.

Vaughn ignored the condescension. “Which differs from regular cannibalism how?”

“It was practiced in Latin America. Whenever a member of the tribe died, the survivors would eat that person’s internal organs. It’s been called ‘eating the soul’. It was believed that the deceased would live on in those who partook of their bodies. Some tribes also believed that eating the dead increased their strength and vitality, bringing them one step closer to immortality.”

“We can’t leave her here.”

Sydney spoke quietly, her voice raw with grief. Both men looked at her, and the pain in her eyes wrung Sark’s heart. “We need to cover her up. She wouldn’t want to be seen like this.”

Automatically, both Sark and Vaughn removed their shirts and handed them to Sydney. She motioned for them to turn away; they did, standing side-by-side and turning to face the wall as Sydney gently wrapped the fabric around Emily’s naked corpse.

“Nice shot, by the way,” Vaughn muttered, too low for Sydney to hear. “That snake never stood a chance.”

If it wouldn’t have been entirely inappropriate given the gravity of the moment, Sark would have shot Vaughn in the kneecap and asked if he thought that was a nice shot.

“Okay,” Sydney called to them. “We’re ready.”

Turning back to her, Sark spoke into his radio. “We’re coming up.”

* * * *

Jack and Irina wrapped Emily in a sleeping bag and laid her gently in the back of the Humvee. An awkward silence hung over the clearing; for once, not even Irina had anything enlightening to say. She looked as disgusted by this dark twist in the Rambaldi hunt as the rest of them were.

Sark wandered away, knowing they should get back to work but needing a minute to collect himself. His earlier terror, combined with a mostly sleepless night, had left him edgy.

When he was certain the thick trees screened him from view, he sat down heavily and allowed himself a full-body shudder. Christ, he hoped that would be the worst thing he ever saw; the longer he stayed in this business, the more he became convinced that true evil really did exist. Arvin Sloane personified it.

A twig snapped to his right, and Sark whipped around, gun in hand. Marshall threw his hands up in the air and cried, “I’m sorry, Mr. Sark!”

“Marshall, bloody hell.” Sark lowered the gun and motioned for Marshall to join him. White-faced and trembling, Marshall complied. Sark flashed an apologetic smile at him. “I’m jumpy today. Sorry.”

Marshall nodded tensely. His eyes were red-rimmed. Other men’s tears always made Sark uncomfortable, but he tried to be consoling. “Did you know Mrs. Sloane well?”

“I never met her,” Marshall admitted. “You know, Mr. Sloane wasn’t exactly honest with her about what he did, I don’t think. He wasn’t exactly honest with any of us about what he did.”

He paused, staring down sadly at the ground. So softly that Sark almost missed it, he said, “I wish I could be like you.”

No, you really fucking don’t, Sark wanted to say. Instead, he answered honestly, “I think you’re quite a bit better than I am, Marshall.”

“You don’t have to be nice to me. I know I’m not strong or brave or even very interesting.” Marshall waved off Sark’s automatic protests. “It’s okay. I just wanted to say that I’m glad you got away. And, you know, thanks for not telling anybody what I did. With the books, I mean.”

Sark didn’t have much practice with heart to heart talks, so he struggled for the right words to thank this unlikely friend. “I haven’t met very many really good people in this line of work,” he finally said, surprising himself with his own candor. “Most people always have their own agenda. Something they want in return for whatever favors they do you. But you…You have character, Mr. Flinkman. You have dignity and morality and compassion. I know what agents like Vaughn and Sydney and I do seems very glamorous, but none of it would be possible without people like you, who work behind the scenes with no interest in personal glory. And I’m glad that Sydney has someone like you watching out for her.”

Marshall’s eyes were shining, and Sark was feeling a bit choked up himself. The last thing he needed was for Jack (or, heaven forbid, Vaughn) to catch him in a sentimental embrace with Marshall Flinkman, though, so he quickly stood and headed back toward the clearing.

After a few steps, Sark paused and turned back to say, with perfect solemnity, “But if you ever tire of the CIA, you’ll always be welcome to work for me.”

* * * *

Thirty minutes later, Sark, Vaughn and Sydney returned to the Rambaldi Chamber to retrieve the artifacts.

The artifacts were all small, but the key had to be disassembled before it was removed to keep from breaking the individual pieces. Another ingenious Rambaldi move.

While Sark worked on that, Sydney and Vaughn placed the glass jars containing Emily’s organs into a black duffel bag. No one spoke until they were finished.

Then Sydney said, “Vaughn, could you give us a minute?”

He hesitated. Sark silently challenged him to say no.

“See you up there,” Vaughn said to her at last, shooting Sark a cold glare as he exited with the duffel bag cradled gingerly in his arms.

The moment he left, Sark’s heart screamed, Tell her! Tell her right now what you have to do, and ask her to come with you!

Sydney crossed to him and wound her arms around his neck; Sark wrapped his around her waist. Her kiss was soft, so similar to the way she’d kissed him that day in the vault that he was instantly aroused.

“I love you.”

She breathed those words against his mouth, effectively melting him. Taking one of her hands from behind his neck, he placed her palm on his bare chest, above his heart. She smiled at how rapidly it was fluttering.

“I love you too, Sydney. More than anything.”

They kissed again, slow and tender, each one urging the other closer until their bodies were molded together. The ache deep down inside him was about more than mere lust now, though; he feared that this was good-bye, that even before he had to betray her she was going to tell him that she couldn’t be with him, that she had chosen Vaughn.

Sydney broke the kiss by turning her head slightly and whispering into his ear.

“I’ve decided.”

Sark stopped breathing.

“I’m leaving with you today.”

Well, fuck.

He heard her explaining how she would find a way to convince the CIA – and her father – that Sark had been an innocent victim in all of this, a child snared by Project Christmas and forced into Irina Derevko’s organization before he could understand what the choice would mean. She vowed to persuade them that his assistance in returning the Rambaldi artifacts proved his willingness to make amends for what he had done. She swore she wouldn’t give up until they agreed to pardon him completely and allowed them to return safely to the United States, to L.A.

Her father, Sydney insisted, would help them. Once Jack realized he had to choose between revenge against Sark and never seeing his daughter again, he would find a way to make the CIA accept the terms of a pardon.

By the time she finished, Sark suspected Sydney had nearly talked herself into believing that could happen.

But it didn’t matter. Because he wasn’t handing over any Rambaldi artifacts. After today, Jack Bristow would never stop hunting for him or Irina, and neither would the CIA.

That left Sark with one option: Tell her the plan.

“What do you think?” Sydney prompted, her eyes bright with hope. “It could work. We could make it work.”

Sark held her face in his hands. “Sydney, I have to tell you something. This mission, returning the artifacts to the CIA. We can’t -”

At that moment, a figure filled the doorway. Sark whirled around, prepared to tell Agent Vaughn to go fuck himself, and stopped short.

Smiling victoriously and leveling a .9 millimeter on them was Arvin Sloane.

* * * *

So that was how the takedown happened.

Sark fought, of course. Not with Sloane, who was smart enough to stand aside from his fury, but with six heavily armed men, three of whom would never leave those tunnels.

Sydney fought, too. But in the end, they were simply outnumbered.

One of Sloane’s goons lashed Sark’s wrists together with a rough piece of twine. He did the same to Sydney, only he bound her feet as well, then lifted her like a sack of flour and started out of the room with her.

“Where the fuck are you taking her?” Sark snarled at Sloane.

Sloane smiled knowingly at him. Sark struggled against the twine. Arrogant little prick. When I get loose –

“You know,” Sloane commented thoughtfully, as the man carrying Sydney disappeared around the corner, “I never could have done any of this without you, Mr. Sark.”

Wasn’t this the same speech he had insisted on calling Sydney to make after the Alliance fell? Sark ceased his futile battle with the twine and bore holes into Sloane’s rat-like face with his eyes.

Undaunted by the impotent glare, Sloane continued, “If Irina hadn’t sent you to me, all of this would have been so much more difficult. I had hoped that you would prove to be more loyal than Jack and Sydney, but I can see that your love for Sydney is more powerful than your loyalty to our operation.”

He actually patted Sark’s cheek. “I understand that kind of love, Mr. Sark. I really do. I sacrificed everything for Emily. And I would do it all again.”

“You’re the reason your wife is dead,” Sark snapped back at him, realizing that would probably earn him a few extra days of torture before the inevitable execution. “You’re a sick fucking bastard. And if you hurt Sydney, I’ll -”

“Let’s not make idle threats, Mr. Sark. You’re not in any position to give orders.” Sloane lifted his pistol and pressed the cold metal to Sark’s temple. “I didn’t come down here to trade insults with you. I just wanted to tell you how disappointed I am that you won’t be sharing in my victory, when you were so instrumental to my success. But I suppose your life wouldn’t be worth living without her anyway, would it?”

Sark had faced death before, and although he always remained outwardly stoic, he was more than familiar with the stomach-dropping fear of thinking, This is it, it’s over now.

What he wasn’t familiar with was the screaming in his mind that he had to survive, not for his own sake, but to save Sydney.

In another second, he was going to beg Arvin Sloane to spare him. If he could survive that humiliation, he supposed, he might even survive a bullet to the brain.

“You back-stabbing bastard.”

Sloane paused with his finger on the trigger. Both he and Sark looked to the doorway, where a coldly furious Irina was being restrained by two gigantic guards. Her hands were cuffed in front of her, but she appeared angry enough to bend steel.

“Irina,” Sloane greeted her evenly. His sharp glance at the guard gave away his fear of her even in chains, however. “I told you to restrain her in the vehicle,” he snapped at them.

“I insisted on seeing you,” Irina answered for them. Her eyes met Sark’s across the room, silently asking if he was all right. He nodded, tensing as he waited for her to give him an indication of how they were to escape this fine mess.

Instead, she turned back to Sloane. “I told you I would bring you the artifacts. That was our deal.”

Sark almost choked on surprise. What the – weren’t they supposed to be destroying the artifacts?

“Irina, I know you too well to believe that you would actually deliver Sydney to me.”

Okay, now Sark was completely confused, and more than a little furious. What had Irina’s scheming gotten them into this time?

“You’re a fool,” Irina spat at him. “The CIA has this site on satellite surveillance. They know you’re here. And since your men knocked out the only one of us who knew the codes to disable that satellite, they’ll track us wherever we go from here.”

Sloane considered her for a moment. “You have a back-up plan, Irina. You always do.”

Her smile was frosty, laden with contempt. “Of course. I can disable the satellite.”

“I sense a condition for that.”

“Let Sark live.”

If Sark hadn’t been ready to rip her lying throat out for tricking him – again – he would have kissed her for pulling that out of her sleeve.

Shrugging, Sloane motioned for one of the guards to lead Sark over to the altar. “Tie him down on that,” Sloane instructed, “and then let’s go.”

One look at the blood-soaked altar and Sark planted his feet so firmly the guard couldn’t budge him. “No,” he protested, his voice steely. “Absolutely, no fucking way.”

“Do what he says,” Irina commanded, in a tone that left no room for argument. Sark shot her a fierce look, ready to unleash a string of insults on her, but the plea in her eyes stopped him.

He knew her well enough to recognize that, whatever her actual plan had been (since she obviously hadn’t bothered to share the true version with him), this was not it. And she needed him to live if she – and Sydney – were to have any chance of survival.

Sighing resignedly, Sark climbed onto the stone table, recoiling from the smell of decay that lingered on it. He allowed the guard to chain his hands above his head. His ankles were shackled as well.

The realization that he was about to be left here, helpless, in the dark, in a room he feared more than anything else in the world, closed Sark’s throat over with sudden terror.

What would come for him, here in the darkness?

On his way out, Sloane said to the guards, “Let them say good-bye. Then get her back outside.”

The two men hovered in the doorway as Irina crossed to the altar and leaned down close to Sark’s face; in the obscuring darkness, Sark knew it appeared that she was kissing him.

Her dark eyes begged for his understanding. “It’s the manuscript,” she whispered. “You can destroy all the Rambaldi artifacts you want, but as long as the manuscript survives, Sydney will never be safe.”

She licked her lips, glancing back at the guards, who were straining to hear their words. She dropped her voice even lower. “I had to have something to bargain with. Some way of getting close enough to Sloane to get to that manuscript. I thought offering him the artifacts from the CIA would be enough, but it wasn’t. He wants Sydney. He needs her to finish his work, to complete the Prophecy.”

Sark wanted to say, Why didn’t you just tell me? But there wasn’t time. Instead, he only allowed himself a bitter, “So why is he keeping you alive?”

“Because he can’t be certain which one of us, me or Sydney, is the woman in the Prophecy. Not yet, anyway.”

“Hurry it up,” one of the guards barked at them.

Irina shot him a go-to-hell look and leaned down closer to Sark’s ear. “Jack and Vaughn and Marshall are all still alive. I already had Jack and Vaughn unconscious before Sloane showed up. When they get you out of here, use the locket I gave you this morning. It will activate the tracking device I implanted on Sydney, and Sloane won’t realize it because he’s already scanned her for transmitters.”

She laid one hand gently over his heart, as Sydney had done just minutes before. “I trust you with her life, Sark. When you come for us, you concentrate on her. You get her to safety, even if it means leaving me behind.”

Her eyes lifted his, solemn and sure. “Promise me.”

Good Christ, the charisma of this woman. She had just double-crossed him, lied through her teeth to him for days, used him to endanger Sydney’s life, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to promise her that he would leave her to die.

Instead, he raised his chin and kissed her cheek. “I promise I’ll save both of you,” he whispered in her ear.

* * * *

Sark lay in the darkness for what seemed forever. The chains dug into his wrists and ankles; the cold seeped into his very bones. Once or twice, a flash of light at the corner of his vision threatened to send him out of his mind with fear, yet somehow he survived.

Mostly by berating himself for not connecting all of those clues that might have enabled him to prevent this whole mess.

He thought of Sydney, too, winged up prayers that she would be all right until he could get to her, savored the memory of their last few moments together.

She loved him. She had been prepared to sacrifice everything she knew, everything she loved, to be with him. And he had been ready – more than ready – to forego his loyalty to Irina and tell her their plan.

Their relationship had crossed some sort of hurdle, he realized. They had overcome that barrier of each expecting the other to become a different person before they could be together.

He loved Sydney, just as she was, with all of her morals and principles and idealism; he also loved the playful, brazen side of her that only he seemed to awaken, but he accepted that she was both people. She was a good girl with a dark side.

And Sydney loved him, just as he was, with all of his brutality and arrogance and cynicism; she also loved the gentle, noble side of him that only she seemed to resurrect, but she accepted that he was both people. He was a bad guy with a tender streak.

Now, if he could just save her life, they could work out how to be together. No matter what it took, they would find a way.

If he got to her in time.

Jack, as expected, was furious when he stormed into the Rambaldi Chamber an hour later and shoved a gun in Sark’s face.

“Give me a reason not to blow your head off,” he snarled.

Sark had one. “In my pocket. There’s a necklace, a locket. It’s a receiver for a transmitter that Irina implanted in Sydney’s shoulder. Open it and we can find out where they are.”

Momentarily taken aback, Jack lowered his gun slightly.

“I didn’t know it was a trap,” Sark said quietly, the honesty in his voice undeniable. “I knew Irina didn’t intend to hand those artifacts over to the CIA, but so did you. You had to have planned for it. But I swear, Mr. Bristow, I didn’t know she was working with Sloane.”

Sark swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat and blinked back the unexpected tears stinging his eyes. “I would never do anything that might harm Sydney. I swear.”

As he had on the day of his capture, Sark sensed a connection between himself and Jack. They were, despite their differences, united by an extreme, unfaltering love for Sydney.

That was all, Sark suspected, that kept him alive.

Jack released the chains and helped Sark off the altar. Fingers shaking slightly, Sark slipped the locket into his palm and opened it.

A red light beeped once, indicating that the transmitter had been activated.

“Let’s get this to Marshall. He can figure out how to track her with it,” Jack said.

Sark hesitated, then held the locket out to Jack. “I think you should have this,” he said simply. Not wanting such a proud man to suffer the humiliation of weeping in front of someone, Sark hurried on out of the tunnel.

Inside the locket was a black-and-white picture of a young Jack and Laura Bristow holding an infant Sydney between them.

On the opposite side was a delicate inscription that had seared Sark’s heart with its poignancy: Jack and Irina.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Sacrifice

Sydney knew she could withstand torture. She knew she could survive despite insurmountable odds. She knew she could outwit Arvin Sloane any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

But at the moment, she was wondering why she should bother.

A wry grin twisted her lips. Resistance is futile.

Handcuffed to a chair in a stuffy, windowless room, Sydney bordered on resigning herself to her fate. Whether or not she was the woman in Rambaldi’s Prophecy (she assumed that was why Sloane had kidnapped her), she seemed to have been predestined to spend her entire life suffering because of that goddamn manuscript. Simply being born of the unholy union between Irina Derevko and Jack Bristow had apparently marked her for life-long misery; add to that the use of Project Christmas on her as a child, her recruitment into SD-6 in college, the loss of Danny and Francie to Sloane’s ruthlessness, and now her ill-fated love for Sark, and she didn’t really see the point of fighting anymore.

Vaughn had once shown her an organizational chart of the Alliance, to emphasize the enormous scope of their enemy’s operation. She remembered feeling overwhelmed as she looked at it, questioning how one woman could make a difference against all that evil. But Vaughn’s little map had barely touched the tip of the iceberg. She had chopped off the Alliance’s head, and Sloane and her mother had survived.

Sark’s words from the vault rose up to haunt her: And when they’re gone? Will you have done enough then?

She understood now what he had been trying to tell her. Even if she killed or captured Sloane and Irina, others would take up Rambaldi’s mission. Because she was somehow linked to that manuscript, she would never truly be free of this. She could never return to even the illusion of a normal life.

The handcuffs dug into her wrists and ankles. Sydney was tired, dirty, hungry, and sweaty, but she compartmentalized those physical complaints. She wondered where she was – not just what building but what country. They had subdued her at the temple, then drugged her on the drive back to Mumbai. She had woken up here, in this dark room, less than an hour ago.

She was worried about her father and Vaughn and Marshall. Had they been executed, or had Sloane left them alive? She prayed that they were safe.

As for her mother and Sark, well, Sydney assumed they could scheme their way out of this mess the same way they had schemed their way into it. How could she have been stupid enough to believe that Irina would actually hand those artifacts over to the CIA? How could she have been naïve enough to believe that Sark would disobey Irina’s orders?

Her mother kept choosing Rambaldi over her. And Sark kept choosing Irina over her.

Sydney accepted that her current urge to simply sit quietly while Sloane did as he pleased with her owed a lot to the hollow numbness of discovering just how low she ranked on Sark’s list of priorities. He loved her; she didn’t doubt that. But she suspected that Vaughn was right about him – he was clasped too firmly in Irina’s clutches to ever break free of that life.

Much as she loved him, Sydney was sick of being betrayed. She was fed up with being hurt. And she was unwilling to give herself to a man who placed his own greed and ambitions above everyone and everything. She thought back on her conversation with Jack the day of Sark’s capture:

“What if Mom had taken me when she left, Dad? Would you write me off as a lost cause just because she indoctrinated me into her sick world from the time I was a child?”

“Sydney, if your mother had taken you – if she’d had all those years to program you into a remorseless killer – then, even as much as I love you, I wouldn’t kid myself now that I could ever change you.”

God, the truth hurt.

So here’s your choice, her inner voice piped up, surprisingly vigorous given how listless Sydney felt. Let Arvin Sloane win because you’re heartbroken, or suck it up and do your job. Protect the world from someone who wants to destroy it.

It’s no use, she argued back, suddenly on the verge of tears. No matter what I do, it’ll never be over. There will always be another Arvin Sloane or Irina Derevko to take their place.

No one can defeat all the horror in the world. You fight one battle at a time, and that’s enough.

Sydney sighed. Hadn’t someone once said all that was required for evil men to prevail was for good men to do nothing?

A tingle of that indomitable warrior-spirit crept back into Sydney’s veins. She had used Danny’s death to fuel her determination rather than let it defeat her; that’s what he would have wanted. She could do the same with Francie’s death. She could even do the same with her heartache over Sark.

These were the sorts of people – her mother and Sloane – who had taken an innocent little boy and polluted his soul. Those glimmers of goodness she saw in Sark were who he should have been, who he would have been without their sadistic meddling, who he still struggled to be, at least for her. So she would fight for him, too. She would take revenge for the chances they had stolen away from Danny, from Francie, from Sark, and from herself.

By the time Sloane appeared, Sydney was ready for a fight.

She held her spine rigidly straight as Sloane flipped on the lights, flooding the room with a harsh fluorescent glow, and settled into a stiff-backed chair across from her. Sydney glared at him with unmasked hatred.

Typically, Sloane bestowed a paternal smile on her. “You’ll be glad to know that your father and Agent Vaughn and Mr. Flinkman are all right. I assume the CIA has already collected them from India, probably some hours ago by now.”

Sydney gritted her teeth at his cordiality. “And my mother? And Sark?”

“Your mother made a convincing plea for Mr. Sark’s life. I imagine he is in CIA custody now. Irina has been answering a few of my remaining questions about Rambaldi’s Prophecy.”

Sydney assumed that meant her mother was being tortured. Focus, she ordered herself. Channel the rage, let it help you, not distract you.

“So is that why I’m still alive?” she challenged, testing the strength of the cuffs by bending her ankles forward. They held fast. “Because you think I might be the woman in his Prophecy?”

“There is no ‘might be’ to it, Sydney. You are her,” Sloane tabled, supremely confident. As always when he talked about Rambaldi, he developed a fanatical gleam in his soulless eyes. “We ran some tests on your mother. She has two of the three anomalies Rambaldi mentioned: the specific DNA sequencing and the platelet levels. But the size of her heart is normal, Sydney. So she can’t be that woman. It has to be you. You have all three anomalies.”

Christ, this was all so ridiculous. Sydney fixed Sloane with her most superior smirk. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” He raised a questioning eyebrow at her. “The other part of the Prophecy. About Mt. Sebacio. I went there. I saw those mountains. So unless Rambaldi messed up on that part, I can’t be her.”

Sloane was undaunted. He quoted the passage from memory: “This woman, without pretense, will have had her effect, never having seen the beauty of my sky behind Mt. Sebacio. Perhaps a single glance would have quelled her fire.”

“Right. I went there. I climbed the mountain and looked at the sky behind it. I’m not the woman in his Prophecy.”

“You’re forgetting Rambaldi’s brilliance, Sydney,” Sloane scolded, amused by the certainty of her denial. His unflappable surety grated on Sydney’s nerves. “Listen to the passage carefully: ‘This woman will have had her effect, never having seen the beauty of my sky behind Mt. Sebacio.’ You already had your effect, Sydney, long before you saw that sky.”

Rising, Sloane paced in front of her. Sydney was somewhat frightened by his zealousness, his determination to convince her. “The Prophecy says that the woman will ‘render the greatest power unto utter desolation’. Some people take that to mean that she herself will complete Rambaldi’s work, but they’re wrong. She is only the facilitator of the power that will enable someone else to recognize his vision, to make it a reality.”

Sloane whirled on her, advancing with a wildness in his eyes that left Sydney with no doubts about his insanity. “I have seen things, Sydney,” he whispered, dropping to his knees and staring into her eyes. She was so spellbound by his madness that she couldn’t look away. “When I was not that much older than you are now, I met a man who told me that I was the ‘greatest power’ that Rambaldi referred to. That I would be the one to bring forth his works. I didn’t understand it at the time, I wasn’t even sure I believed it, until after Emily died.”

He pushed away again and resumed his pacing. “Then I sought that man out. I sought him out to kill him, Sydney. I wanted revenge for being sent down a path that would cost me the one thing I love more than anything else in this world: Emily.”

Twisted idea of love, Sydney thought.

“But when I found him, he showed me things. He showed me that Emily’s death was foretold. You see, it was a necessary step on the path to my destiny. Without Emily, I couldn’t be here today. I had to make that sacrifice before I could complete this odyssey.”

Sloane paused and looked at her, obviously expecting a response. Sydney met his gaze coolly. “Emily was worth more than Rambaldi’s manuscript. She was a decent, kind, remarkable woman, and she loved you. She loved you so much that she refused to help us bring you down until we promised not to seek the death penalty for you. Her death was not a ‘sacrifice’. It was a waste.”

As usual, instead of lashing out in fury, Sloane shook his head sadly, disappointed in her continuing resistance. “Sydney, I know that you loved Emily. I know she was like a mother to you. And her death, though in large part your responsibility,” Sydney clamped her lips shut around a nasty response to that, “had to happen.

“You see this?” Sloane reached into the thin briefcase he had carried in and produced a yellowed manuscript page. Sydney recognized it as one of Rambaldi’s writings. “This is the page that led me back to that temple in India. Before I could discover the last link in Rambaldi’s work, I had to take Emily there. Inside that altar was a blank page of the manuscript and a small vial of liquid. Her blood was the key to reading that page, Sydney. Emily’s blood. And once I saw that, I knew that my journey was over. Our journey, Sydney. Our whole lives have led up to this moment.”

It was just too much. Sydney’s temper snapped. “Listen, you crazy son of a bitch, I don’t believe this Rambaldi bullshit. What page of the manuscript told you to eat her liver?”

“It’s part of my ascension, Sydney,” Sloane answered evenly, refusing to react to her anger. “And now Emily is part of me. She’ll always be with me.”

“Listen to yourself! You are insane. I would never help you complete Rambaldi’s work. Never. None of this can be true.”

“But you’ve already helped me, Sydney.”

Sloane settled back in his chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His smile was deceptively kind. “Those years that you worked for me at SD-6, before the unfortunate incident with Danny that made you turn against me, you provided me with more valuable information about Rambaldi than you ever knew. Because of your work, Sydney, I grew in standing with the Alliance. I rose to a point where I could take them down and be free to complete Rambaldi’s work. So you see, my dear,” he placed his hands on her knees, and Sydney jerked away, “you already had your ‘effect’, long before you saw Mt. Sebacio. You’ve made all of this possible.”

Sydney shut her eyes. He’s insane, she consoled herself, refusing to accept any of this nonsense as truth. You don’t believe in this Rambaldi crap. Focus on getting out of here.

She opened her eyes as Sloane spoke again. “You see this vial?” He held up a small glass jar filled with a blue liquid. “This is the key to immortality, Sydney.”

Her voice was frigid. “So drink it and let me the hell out of here.”

If he didn’t wipe that benevolent smile off of his face, Sydney was going to kick his teeth in.

“I always thought of you as my daughter,” Sloane declared. Sydney suppressed the urge to retch. “It isn’t any easier for me to sacrifice you than it was for me to sacrifice Emily. I hope you know that.”

Sydney tensed. Sacrifice her? “I thought your ‘odyssey’ was over. I thought that bottle held what you’ve been searching for. What else am I supposed to do?”

“We’ve created the Tenth Plague,” Sloane announced, causing Sydney’s blood to run instantly cold. Christ, was he going to test it on her? “The formula was contained in the page that Emily’s blood decoded.”

Sloane knelt in front of her again, the jar clutched in his hand. “This vial is a poison. When you drink it, your organs will shut down almost immediately. All except your liver.”

Sydney shuddered. Was he going to eat her liver, too?

“You see, Sydney, today we think of the heart as being connected to human emotions, but Rambaldi knew that the liver was really the seat of the human soul. The key to all disease and to all cures. After you drink this, we will extract your liver and use those cells to create the vaccine against the Tenth Plague. Anyone who takes that vaccine will be immortal, Sydney. Impervious to disease and old age. That’s your destiny, my dear. Think of all the lives you’re going to save.”

She wanted to scream, Think of all the lives you’re going to end! You have to realize that this is madness!

But words had deserted her. Whether or not Rambaldi’s work proved true, she was going to die here.

Standing, Sloane declared, “We have a few last preparations to make. I’ll leave you alone for a while, to come to terms with everything.”

He paused in the doorway and looked back at her. The sincere regret in his eyes turned Sydney’s stomach. “I am sorry it had to end this way, Sydney,” he said simply, and left.

* * * *

Seventeen hours after Sydney’s capture, Sark was leaping out of a helicopter onto the roof of a huge compound in the jungles of Brazil.

He still wore military fatigues and combat boots, but added to those were a flack jacket, a bullet-proof vest and an Uzi. Sark was dressed for battle and more than ready for the fight.

Jack and Vaughn stepped out of the helicopter behind him. “The signal’s still strong,” Sark informed them over the whirr of the chopper blades. He pointed to a green dot on the small digital scanner he held; the dot indicated Sydney’s location, based on the tracking device Irina had planted on her.

Jack nodded. Turning to wave the pilot away from the compound, he shouted, “Let’s move!”

They had at least achieved the element of surprise. Alerted by the sudden appearance of a helicopter, Sloane’s men were racing up to the roof when they encountered Sark, Vaughn and Jack on the stairwell.

“Back,” Sark barked at his companions, tugging a grenade off his belt. The guards scattered as the live bomb fell among them, but too late; the blast effectively cleared the stairs of enemies, and the three men plunged ahead, Sark leading the way.

Kendall, to his credit, had wanted to send in a massive assault team – though, Sark suspected, his motivation was more to capture Sloane and Irina than to save Sydney. Jack, of course, had refused to wait.

“Fine,” Kendall had said, sounding resigned to the fact that Jack would do whatever he pleased. “But you take along enough explosive to blow that place to hell, Jack. I want this threat to national security stopped, for good.”

Sark could only imagine the security Sloane would have on this compound, where Sydney, all of the Rambaldi artifacts and the manuscript were housed. Jack also knew they would face impossible odds; owing to that, he had put Marshall on a plane back to the U.S. as soon as they reached Mumbai. Then he had stonily announced that neither Sark nor Vaughn were under any obligation to accompany him, but he was going after Sydney.

Neither of them had hesitated to join him.

Now they battled their way through a maze of winding white corridors, focused on the green dot that drew steadily nearer. Judging from the biting scent of antiseptic and the red bins marked “biohazard” Sark decided they were in some type of medical facility.

He only prayed they weren’t too late to save Sydney.

They were five feet from the room she was being held in when they encountered their first real obstacle. As they turned the last corner, they faced a veritable army: two dozen heavily armed men.

“Down,” Sark shouted over his shoulder, ducking back as their opponents opened fire. Jack and Vaughn rolled to the opposite side of the hallway.

Bullets tore chunks out of the wall next to Sark’s face. He ignored the gunfire and concentrated on finding an alternate route, his eyes sweeping back down the corridor for another way to reach Sydney.

They settled on an air vent in the ceiling halfway down the hall.

“Jack,” Sark said, motioning toward the vent.

Hesitating briefly, Jack finally nodded. “Go,” he commanded, sliding across the hall to take Sark’s place at the corner. He leaned out and squeezed off two shots. “Vaughn, help him get up there. Then get back here and help me keep them busy.”

Clambering onto Vaughn’s shoulders, Sark jerked the cover off of the vent and hoisted himself up into it. The metal edge cut his palms; he wiped the blood off on his jacket and slung the Uzi onto his back, crawling belly-down along the narrow steel tunnel.

When he was directly above the green dot, Sark stopped and drew in a breath. No vent opened into the room where she was being held, apparently, which left him with two possibilities: go back and look for another way in, or blast his way out.

He pulled a second grenade off of his belt, dropped it, and scrambled back down the shaft. Five seconds later, the explosion ripped the metal apart, dropping Sark into the room an instant before a fireball shot over his head.

Sark didn’t have time to contemplate that narrow escape. The moment he landed, four men tackled him. Sark, flat on his back, shoved the Uzi into one man’s belly and fired; the bullets tore through him and into a second man. He kicked his way out from under the corpses and attacked the other two, bashing one in the face with the gun-handle and laying the other one low with a vicious series of kicks to the abdomen.

He was bloodied and panting when his eyes finally fell on Sydney.

She was strapped to a gurney in the center of the room. Her clothes had been replaced by a green hospital gown, and her wrists and ankles were tied down with leather restraints. For one terrible instant, with her face obscured from the explosion’s lingering smoke, he thought she was dead.

Then she twisted as far onto her side as she could and grinned at him, her beautiful dark eyes glistening with tears.

“You found me,” she whispered.

“I found you,” he replied, jerking back into action. The restraints fell away in seconds; she sat up and grabbed him by the shoulders, hugging him to her. Sark could feel her heart hammering beneath the thin cotton gown.

God, how he wanted to stay there forever, just holding her. But now wasn’t the time for emotional reunions.

Grabbing her hand, Sark pulled her off the gurney and swiftly checked her for injuries. She appeared to have none. “Can you fight?” he asked.

Sydney’s quick smirk answered that question. She retrieved a weapon off one of the fallen guards as Sark crossed to the massive steel door and listened closely. It sounded as if the battle continued to rage in the hall.

Time to even the odds, he decided, tugging his third and final grenade loose.

“Get back,” he commanded Sydney, who obediently moved into the far corner.

Crossing his fingers that he wouldn’t be blown to bits the second he opened the door, Sark flung it open, hurled the grenade into the hall and slammed the door shut. Even through all those layers of steel, he felt the explosion.

A tense moment passed. Then Jack shouted from the other side, “We’re clear!”

Sydney ran into her father’s arms amidst the corpses and debris littering the corridor. Sark, noticing that her gown was held together only by flimsy strings at the neck and waist, shrugged out of his camouflage jacket and draped it around her shoulders.

Jack kissed the top of her head. “All right, let’s get you home.”

“Wait,” Sydney ordered, refusing to budge. “Sloane has the Tenth Plague. The virus is somewhere here in this building.”

Vaughn patted the duffle bag containing the explosives. “Got it covered, Syd,” he assured her. “We just have to set these and we’re out of here.”

“I’m not leaving Mom,” Sydney told her dad.

Sark tensed – could he leave Irina? – but his worries were needless. “Of course we aren’t,” Jack replied. “We just have to find where she’s being held, and quickly.”

Naturally, Sydney was prepared. “A cell on the third floor,” she announced, then grinned at the admiring stares all three bestowed on her. “Hey, I kept my ears open, and Sloane’s guards didn’t know I speak Spanish.”

While Sydney and Jack raced to the third floor to rescue Irina, Sark and Vaughn dashed to the first floor to set the explosives. They encountered surprisingly little resistance. Sloane must have believed their small force was only a precursor to the hordes of CIA agents that were about to descend on his compound; he was undoubtedly salvaging what he could and getting the hell out of Dodge.

No matter. The CIA had the compound under satellite surveillance and would track him wherever he went.

Sark and Vaughn made short work of the explosives, taping C-4 to strategically-placed support walls and stringing the wires back to a main trigger. Once they were airborne again, they would use a remote detonator to bring the huge building crashing down, burying the Tenth Plague inside of it.

And hopefully Sloane as well, though Sark doubted they would get that lucky.

Sark flipped up the red lever that armed the bomb as Vaughn said into his comm, “Boy Scout ready for extraction.”

“Copy that, Boy Scout,” the pilot replied. “Returning for extraction.”

Sark couldn’t resist a jibe; his elation over saving Sydney and stopping Sloane brought out the mischievousness in him. “Boy Scout, huh?” he taunted, following Vaughn up the stairs toward the roof. “I’m sure there’s a story there.”

“There is,” Vaughn retorted, “and if we make it out of here, I might even tell it to you.”

The brotherhood of battle, Sark reflected, shaking his head at his own softness. It can make even the worst of enemies into friends.

Jack, Sydney and Irina awaited them on the roof. Sark blanched at Irina’s condition: swollen, blackened right eye, busted lips, bloody nose, broken fingers on her left hand. Jack was supporting her, holding her tight against him, suggesting she was too weak to stand on her own.

She smiled crookedly at Sark. “You three make a good team,” she told him quietly, her gaze sweeping over him, Jack and Vaughn. “I bet the CIA offers you a position over this.”

Sark snorted. “Right after they give you the Congressional Medal of Honor, maybe.”

But he had to admit, as the helicopter descended several feet away, that Irina had raised an interesting question. Now that they were headed back to the United States, what would happen to him and Irina? They had broken their word to help the CIA recover the Rambaldi artifacts. Had they survived all of this only to end up in prison cells again?

He supposed they would have to worry about that later, because now they needed to move. Jack swept Irina up in his arms, carrying her like a child, and motioned for the other three to go on ahead. Sark took Sydney’s arm and hurried along with her and Vaughn to the chopper; Vaughn stepped up first and pulled Sydney in.

As Sark turned to ask Jack if he needed help getting Irina inside, his heart froze. He opened his mouth to call a warning a second too late.

They had been careless, leaving their backs exposed in their confidence, and they paid for it now. A guard popped open the door of the stairwell and sprayed the rooftop with bullets.

Jack went down in a heap with Irina under him.

Dropping flat onto his belly, Sark raised his Uzi and returned fire. The guard moved too slowly; his bullet-riddled body jerked and twitched and finally crashed back into the stairwell.

“Dad!” Sydney screamed, starting out of the chopper.

“No,” Sark snapped, shoving her back inside. “I’ll get them.” To the pilot, he shouted, “Get ready to go!”

Vaughn leaned out of the chopper with his weapon raised, prepared to take down any other enemies who appeared. Sark, heart in his throat, rushed across to Irina and Jack, who were sprawled about three feet away.

Irina was already pushing herself up. “I’m not hurt,” she told him, “but Jack is.”

Sark rolled Sydney’s father over and heaved a sigh of relief. Three bullets had slammed into his calves, two in the right and one in the left; Jack hissed in pain, but Sark knew the wounds weren’t life-threatening.

“I’m all right,” Jack said, through clenched teeth. “Just get me up.”

Irina stood, shrugging off Sark’s offer of help, and stumbled toward the helicopter on her own. “Damnably stubborn, isn’t she?” Jack observed dryly, as Sark slipped an arm under him and hauled him to his feet. His breath caught around the pain. “I suppose you’ve learned that about Sydney, too.”

Mildly amused and slightly uncomfortable to be having such an intimate conversation with Jack Bristow, Sark helped him limp forward. Jack leaned heavily into him, but Sark was stronger than he looked and supported the bigger man’s weight easily, trying to hurry without causing Jack too much pain. “She can be difficult,” he admitted.

“The trick is to always let them believe they’re right.” Jack sucked in a breath as he brought down too much weight on his right leg.

A flicker of hope kindled in Sark’s soul. Was Jack implying that he would allow Sark to be with his daughter?

Before that question could be answered, they had reached the helicopter. Sydney and Vaughn pulled Jack inside; Irina moved over to him immediately, cradling him in her arms, and Sydney settled herself in on the other side of him, asking if he was all right. Sark paused to memorize that moment: the Bristow family, together as they should have been.

He climbed inside. As they lifted off, Vaughn turned to Jack, holding up the detonator. “Ready?”

Jack came as close to smiling as he ever did. “Blow it to hell, Agent Vaughn.”

They all grinned in satisfaction – even Irina – as Vaughn pushed the button.

And nothing happened.

* * * *

Sark dashed back down the stairwell, leaping over the bodies left from their first entrance, until he crashed through the door to the first floor.

Goddamn fucking CIA! Couldn’t even make a bloody bomb properly!

Vaughn, radioing from the helicopter that waited on the roof, asked over the comm, “Can you see the problem?”

The problem is you fucking people don’t know how to do anything right, Sark silently retorted, inspecting the main trigger. So far as he could see, nothing was wrong with the bomb; that had to mean the trouble was with the remote detonator. He said as much.

“Kendall just radioed that a convoy is heading our way,” Vaughn reported. “Their ETA is two minutes. We think it’s more of Sloane’s men, sent back to recover the virus.”

Sark sighed. It never could be easy, could it? “I’m setting the timer for four minutes. See you in two.”

Manually arming the device, Sark mentally chided Sloane for running away. The CIA’s satellite surveillance had spotted him leaving while they were rescuing Sydney; apparently, he had been in too big a hurry to save anything other than the manuscript. Now that he realized the CIA hadn’t arrived in force, however, he was doing what he could to prevent the destruction of his life’s work.

The manuscript, of course, would be all he needed to recreate Rambaldi’s work. But this was a major set back to those plans, considering that everything else related to Rambaldi would be buried under a pile of rubble and ash in three minutes and forty-six seconds.

Sark sprinted back up the stairwell, his thoughts on the future. The CIA would need help to bring down Sloane. Perhaps it was time for him and Irina to stop fighting them and help them accomplish that goal; once they took out Sloane, they could determine what – if any – threat those in the upper levels of the Agency posed to Sydney. Sark knew that if any of them intended to harm her, he and Irina would have plenty of help to protect her.

Yes, it only made sense to work with the CIA, for the time being anyway. And during that time, he could show Jack that he deserved a chance to be with Sydney. Maybe they could get their happy ending after all…

That thought had no more than crossed his mind when, as he crossed the third floor landing, a bullet zipped past his cheek.

Sark immediately dropped and fired back down the stairs toward his unseen assailant. He heard pounding footsteps and raised voices coming his way. Swearing, he checked his watch.

Two minutes and fifty-one seconds. The helicopter would need a full two minutes to get clear or it would be pulled down by the blast.

Another bullet whipped by him, and Sark debated his options. If he charged back down there, he might be able to wipe them out with the Uzi, but then he would never make it to the roof before the helicopter had to take off; if he ran for it, he might be shot down before he took two steps.

If he stayed here, though, he was definitely going to be blown up.

So he took his chances. Squeezing the trigger, he fired blindly down the stairs and leapt to his feet, racing upward. His thighs burned from the exertion; his heart slammed against his ribs as his adrenaline surged. He was almost at the fourth floor landing – two more floors to go –

The bullet tore into the back of his knee and pitched him forward, eliciting a feral cry of pain. Sark fell hard onto his chest. Training kicked in and he rolled over, sending a vicious volley into his pursuers that brought them up short.

But it was too late. He had two minutes and ten seconds before that bomb went off, and he would never reach the roof in ten seconds; if they waited for him, all of them would die – Sydney, Irina, Jack, even the insufferable Vaughn.

Sark shut his eyes. He had faced death before, of course, yet he had always believed, even while staring down the barrel of a gun, that it wasn’t his time. That somehow, he would find a way out. That it wouldn’t ever really happen to him.

He didn’t feel that way now.

His pursuers were regrouping below. Sark opened his eyes and spoke quietly into his comm. “I’m hit,” he said evenly, sounding amazingly calm. “I can’t get to you in time. Go.”

A beat. Then Vaughn’s voice, rough with – could it have been sorrow? “I’m coming down for you.”

Sark almost laughed at the idea of being rescued by Agent Vaughn, his mortal enemy. “There’s no time.” He paused, picturing Sydney’s white, horrified face as she realized he wasn’t coming back to her.

Softly, he pleaded, “Get her out of here, Vaughn. Now.”

That did it. Sark could only imagine what it took for Jack, Irina and Vaughn to hold Sydney inside that helicopter as it lifted off, but they managed somehow. He watched through a small window above the landing as the chopper flew past, headed north.

So this was it.

A Spanish-accented voice called up from below, “Throw down your weapon! Do it now!”

Sark laughed mirthlessly. “You stupid fuck,” he shouted back. “This whole place is about to explode!”

He heard a flurry of movement below and grinned as his opponents tripped over one another in a desperate scramble for the exit, four floors below. It was some consolation that they would not make it.

The pain in his leg was dulled, as if the nerves between it and his brain had been disconnected. Sark drug himself over to the window and sat with his back against the cold cement wall, staring up into the beautiful blue sky.

One minute, three seconds.

He had always considered it cliché when people described their lives flashing in front of their eyes. Now, he closed his and willed his mind back, back, back to the things he wanted to remember.

Khasinau reading Huckleberry Finn to him when he was six years old and suffering from an earache.

Irina teaching him to dance, her dark hair floating around her shoulders and her warm laughter rolling over him.

Irina riding beside him in the Mercedes she had bought him for his eighteenth birthday, giggling like a school girl as he raced around hairpin curves and tore down deserted gravel roads.

Sydney grinning devilishly when that blasted towel finally slipped to the floor.

Sydney watching him over her shoulder, fire in those amazing dark eyes, as she inched her shirt up over her head in that stuffy attic.

Sydney tilting her chin up to him for their first kiss.

Sydney swimming toward him, steady and determined, looking at him with such love that he couldn’t even move, couldn’t even breathe.

Sydney.

Sark realized he was crying, silent tears rolling down his dirt-smeared cheeks. He opened his eyes.

Twenty seconds.

Would she come back for him? He dismissed the question immediately Of course she would. Sydney wouldn’t leave his body here to rot in the jungle. She would take him back to L.A., bury him in a pretty, serene spot and bring him flowers once a week.

Fifteen seconds.

What name would they put on the tombstone? If he had any regrets, it was that Sydney had never known his real name.

Ten seconds.

Not that they would have much left to bury; what the explosion didn’t incinerate, the building would collapse on. That realization made Sark shudder.

And then he thought, The window.

His heart stumbled, leaping with a tiny hope. Yes, it was four floors. Yes, he would probably break his neck. But at the very least, his body wouldn’t be buried beneath a few tons of metal and concrete.

At the very most, he might survive.

Grabbing the windowsill, Sark pulled himself to his feet, whimpering as he brought his full weight down on his right leg. Blood ran freely down to his ankle. Ignoring it, he limped back two steps, lifted the Uzi and fired into the glass.

Six seconds.

If he were to have any hope of surviving not only the initial blast but the building’s collapse, he had to dive out far enough to put some distance between himself and the compound. Sark gritted his teeth as he backed down five stairs, the pain in his shattered kneecap almost more than he could bear.

Four seconds.

He screamed with the agony and the terror as he took off at a dead run for the window. His hands caught the sill, scraping through the broken glass; he hoisted himself over, planted his feet firmly on the ledge for a split second, and pushed off as hard as he could.

Sark sailed out into the warm afternoon air as a firestorm erupted behind him.

Chapter Twenty-Four: When The Smoke Clears

As the helicopter started to lift off, Sydney tried to fight her way out of it. She struggled free of Jack’s iron grip and pummeled Vaughn with her fists; when they were ten feet in the air, she made it to the edge, but before she could jump Vaughn seized her around the waist and held on fiercely despite her kicks and punches.

“Let me go!” Sydney screamed, dangling facedown half-out of the helicopter as the pilot veered to the north. “Goddamn you, Vaughn, I’m not leaving him!”

“It’s him or all of us, Syd,” Vaughn shouted over the roar of the blades.

Wrenching free of him, she flipped over and looked desperately to Jack, whose anguished expression reflected much more than physical pain. “Dad,” she pleaded, the tears flooding her voice as the helicopter rose higher, “we can’t let him die.”

In response, Jack barked to the pilot, “Keep going!” The pilot, who seemed to have no intention of turning back anyway, took them higher.

Sydney let out a guttural howl of desperation and rolled back over, palms braced on the edge. She stared down helplessly as the compound slipped farther away.

Oh God, this can’t be happening… Please don’t let this be really happening…

The explosion tipped the chopper forward, nearly knocking Sydney out the door. The ground below disappeared beneath a towering plume of black smoke. Her scream filled the air, louder even than the engine and the blades – one long, piercing wail: “NO!”

It was happening. Sark was dead. He was gone.

Vaguely, Sydney was aware of Vaughn tugging her back inside by the shoulders, of Irina shaking with silent tears, of Jack gathering her in his arms and smoothing her hair. They were all talking to her, telling her it would be all right, but the sounds were muted, as if the blast had punctured her eardrums.

Then the grief overtook her and she sank into her father’s solid chest, sobbing over and over, “Oh, Daddy, he’s gone. Daddy, he’s gone.”

She would never see that adorably infuriating smirk again. Never feel his arms around her again. Never hear that silky British accent again. Never stare into his twinkling blue eyes again. Never crush his mouth beneath hers, never snuggle down into his side, never drink in his musky scent, never wake up to his soft smile again.

The flight to the hospital in Porto Alegre could have taken hours or days. Tucked into Jack’s side, Sydney languished in a grief-induced stupor, numb and hollow and cold. Vaughn slouched against the opposite wall, staring dully out into the afternoon sky; she noted the tight set to his jaw that suggested he was struggling with his own conflicting emotions.

Using strips of gauze from the helicopter’s first-aid kit, Irina had bound the wounds in Jack’s legs as best she could. Now, she was cradled in his other arm, her head resting on his shoulder. She was turned toward Sydney with her eyes were closed; every now and then her face would spasm and more tears would seep out from under her eyelids, but mostly she lay perfectly still.

Jack held them both as tightly as he could.

They would never walk down the beach together at night. They would never cook dinner together and talk about their days. He would never wait anxiously at the altar as she walked down the aisle on Jack’s arm to meet him. She would never hold their baby in her arms and smile in wonderment at what they had made together.

I don’t even know his name, she realized, and succumbed to another round of shaking sobs that left her weak and shivering.

The pilot’s voice drifted to her out of a fog: “We’re here.”

Sydney pushed herself up and looked around. The helicopter had landed on a wide, sunny roof, and a small army of doctors and nurses were rushing toward them with a gurney. Vaughn jumped down and helped Sydney and Irina out of the way so the medical team could lift Jack onto the stretcher.

For the first time, Sydney realized how much pain her father must have been in during that flight. “Will he be okay?” she asked the nearest doctor, racing with them toward the elevator. A rush of wind created by the chopper blades whipped her hair across her face.

“Probably needs surgery,” the doctor replied, glancing over Jack’s legs. “But he’ll be fine.”

In the elevator, Sydney clutched Jack’s hand. “You’re going to be okay, Dad,” she promised him, tears threatening to choke her when she spoke.

Jack reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. He nodded wordlessly.

The doors opened and they were running again, rushing down the hall toward a curtained room. Sydney, Irina and Vaughn were shuffled to the side as the nurses stripped Jack’s shirt off and hooked him up to a dozen machines. One nurse barked questions about his medical history at Irina, who answered each one softly without ever taking her eyes off Jack.

Sydney didn’t realize Vaughn had left until he suddenly reappeared at her shoulder. He handed her a pair of green scrubs to replace the thin cotton gown she wore.

“The pilot won’t go back,” he informed her quietly. “But I’ve secured a Jeep. It’ll take about three hours to get back to the compound.”

Sydney searched his face, too astonished to speak. Vaughn was going back for Sark?

He read the question in her eyes and shrugged, looking away. “He was part of our team,” he said simply. “I’m not leaving him out there.”

“My dad,” Sydney started to say, indicating that she couldn’t leave Jack while he was injured.

But Jack had overheard and cut her off. Lifting himself onto an elbow, he waved away a nurse who tried to push him back down and said tersely, “You go with Vaughn, Sydney. Both of you,” he added, looking at Irina. He raised a hand against their protests. “I’m going to be fine. Go – do what needs to be done.”

Irina went to him, leaned down and whispered something in his ear that Sydney couldn’t hear. When she pulled back, they both had tears in their eyes, and Jack nodded curtly.

Sydney kissed his cheek lightly. “I love you, Dad,” she told him, torn between remaining at his side and going back for Sark.

“I’ll see you in a few hours,” Jack replied. He caught her hand as she moved away. “Sydney…take care of your mother.”

* * * *

On the way back to the compound they rode in virtual silence through the growing darkness. Vaughn drove. Kendall already had a team on-site to contain any traces of the Tenth Plague virus that might have survived the explosion; Weiss, watching them on satellite view, directed them to the compound from the Operations Center in L.A.

Irina sat in the back. Every now and again, Sydney would glance at her in the rearview mirror and tear up at her mother’s stricken expression. Once their eyes met in the mirror, and they shared a quick, sad smile.

We both lost him, Sydney thought, swallowing hard around the ever-present lump in her throat. We both loved him, and he died to save us.

The cold night air made Sydney shrug deeper into the camouflage jacket Sark had slipped around her shoulders during her rescue. His scent lingered on it; she closed her eyes, inhaling as deeply as she could, and pictured another nighttime highway: the road to their house in Australia. She remembered with a bittersweet agony the exuberance of those few days when she and Sark had just been two people in love, before the reality of their lives closed in on them again.

Looking back on it now, all the problems between them – so important just hours before, when she was alone in that windowless room and forcing herself to accept that she could never be with him – seemed trivial. Why had they wasted so much time? Why had they allowed anything to keep them apart?

Just one more moment with him. Just one more chance to tell him I love him, the real him, scars and flaws and lies and all. Just one last embrace, one last kiss, one last touch.

It struck her, suddenly, that she had thought almost exactly the same thing when Danny was murdered. The ache inside her now reopened those old wounds, too. So much loss, so much pain, so much death.

Tears slipped silently down her cheeks. She couldn’t quite accept that this was real; a world without Sark was an alien concept to her suddenly. For two years she had half-expected, maybe even half-hoped, to see him around every corner, to encounter him on every mission, and now he was gone. Forever.

“This is it.”

Vaughn’s quiet pronouncement jerked Sydney back to reality. Acrid smoke stung her eyes and burned her throat; in the darkness, the remains of the compound appeared as a twisted hulk of concrete and steel.

Any last vestiges of hope deserted her. No one could have survived inside of that.

A man in military fatigues rushed over to meet them. “We have clearance,” Vaughn called, lifting his hands as the guard shone his flashlight into the Jeep. “I’m Agent Michael Vaughn, and this is Agent Sydney Bristow. We have authorization from Director Kendall to be here.”

“We’ve been expecting you,” the guard assured him, opening the door for Sydney. She offered him a weak smile.

Irina stepped out behind Sydney. “What about Arvin Sloane?” she demanded of the guard, who regarded her warily, obviously knowing who she was and not happy that she was unrestrained. She ignored it. “They were tracking him. Did they find him?”

Reluctantly, the guard shook his head. “The satellite surveillance tracked him to an airfield west of here, and they followed the plane to Buenos Aires. But when our team met it on the ground, it wasn’t Sloane. It was a decoy.”

In the midst of her grief, Sydney found it difficult to care that Sloane had escaped. “We’re looking for a man,” she broke in. “He was working with us, and he was in the building when it…exploded.”

The guard nodded. “Right. We found four survivors, but none that were inside the building. I’ll take you to the medical tent now.”

None that were inside the building. Sydney fought down tears. Well, she hadn’t really dared to hope, had she?

“What about – remains?” Vaughn inquired, falling into step beside the guard. Uniformed men and women rushed back and forth around them, calling to one another amidst the rubble. Many, Sydney noted, wore biohazard suits. “We’d like to at least collect the body.”

“That could take a few days,” the guard admitted. “And I don’t think it’s a high priority on the Agency’s list. We’re just supposed to clear the site of any traces of that virus and return home.”

Fuck the Agency, Sydney thought. She would take Sark’s body home if she had to dig through the rubble alone with her bare hands.

A large green tent had been pitched about a quarter-mile from the compound to serve as a field hospital. Sydney ducked inside behind the guard and recoiled from the stench of blood and death.

A half-dozen medics hurried back and forth under the harsh yellow glow of several tall lights that had been set up around the walls. Trailed by her mother and Vaughn, Sydney moved down the center aisle, her stomach churning and her legs shaking.

The four patients had been placed on cots covered with starched white sheets. The first was already in a body bag. The second was burned beyond recognition; a nurse was checking his pulse and shaking her head silently at a doctor. The third was a young, dark-skinned man whose neck was wrapped in a cervical collar.

At the end of the row, in the most dimly-lit corner, was the fourth bed, surrounded by doctors. Sydney shut her eyes and drew in a deep breath.

It’s not him, she told herself. You know it can’t be.

“Doctor,” she called quietly. One of the men turned around. “We’re looking for a man -”

“Sydney?”

She actually cried out when that familiar British accent, weak and plaintive and pained, rose from behind the doctors. They cleared a path for her as she dashed to the bedside, laughing and crying at the same time.

She crushed Sark in a hug before she even looked at the extent of his injuries. “I love you,” she whispered in his ear, barely able to get the words out through her tears. She smothered the side of his face with kisses, sinking her nose into his blonde curls. “I love you so much.”

“Sydney,” Sark murmured again. He sounded groggy and weak, she suspected from whatever pain medicine they were giving him. His blue eyes were glassy. He reached for her hand and held on tight, as if to convince himself she was real. “You’re here?”

“Yes, I’m here. I’m here,” she assured him.

Drawing back, Sydney felt her heart plummet again as she took a better look at him. Oh, Jesus, he was hurt badly.

His face was swollen and bruised. A sling supported his right arm; tape wound around his bare torso secured several broken ribs. Gashes, some sutured shut, and more purple-black bruises covered his chest and arms. The sheet was pulled up to his waist, but the doctors had it folded back from his right leg, which was wrapped in a bloody bandage from above the knee down to the ankle.

A young man in blue scrubs shook Sydney’s hand and introduced himself as Dr. Lawson. “Didn’t realize this was one of ours,” he commented, glancing over Sark’s chart. “No one told us we had any agents down in the field.”

Irina moved around to the other side of the bed and stroked Sark’s cheek. He managed a faint smile for her. “Took you long enough,” he scolded hoarsely.

Irina laughed, though her cheeks were damp with tears. “I knew you could look after yourself,” she replied lightly.

Sark grinned, then shut his eyes and stiffened against a wave of pain. “How is he?” Irina asked the doctor, her eyes on Sark.

Dr. Lawson launched into a quick run-down of Sark’s condition, sounding amazed at how well his patient was faring. “He took quite a bit of shrapnel in his back, but we were able to remove all of it. He doesn’t appear to have any spinal chord injuries. He was fairly coherent before we started pumping in the morphine, so aside from a concussion I doubt he suffered any sort of brain damage. His right arm was fractured in two places, at the wrist and the elbow. We’ve immobilized it, as you see, but he’ll need surgery to set it properly. All the ribs on his right side were broken. Luckily, the ultrasound didn’t indicate any internal bleeding, though I’d really like to get him in for an MRI before we rule out a ruptured spleen.

“But that leg…” Dr. Lawson shook his head. “First off, he took a bullet behind the knee that basically blew apart the kneecap. And then it was caught under a huge beam. I thought we were never going to get him out from under it. The bone’s just been – shattered. He’ll need to see an orthopedic surgeon, but…I don’t know if they can rebuild it.”

Sark mumbled something unintelligible at that. His eyes were closed; he seemed to be fighting sleep – and losing.

Sydney shuddered. “What are you saying?”

“It’ll probably have to be amputated.”

That definitely tempered the elation of finding him alive, though Sydney reminded herself that minutes ago she had believed him gone forever. If he had to lose a leg, they would deal with it. He was alive. Nothing else mattered.

“Other than that, he’s all right?” Irina pressed, smoothing the hair off of Sark’s forehead. Sydney smiled at her tenderness.

Dr. Lawson tapped a finger against his lips. “Well, he lost a lot of blood. Right now we’re treating him for shock and blood loss, and giving him antibiotics to fight off any infections in those wounds.” He indicated the two IVs snaking into both of Sark’s arms, one holding a bag of bright-red blood and the other a clear liquid. “But his vitals are stable, so as long as we get him to a surgeon for that leg fairly quickly, he should be fine. I’ve already called for a medical airlift to take him to the hospital in Porto Alegre. They’ll be here within the hour.”

Vaughn, who had been talking quietly into his cell phone a few feet away, crossed to them and asked to speak to Sydney alone. She kissed Sark’s cheek, whispering to him that she would be right back. He nodded sleepily.

She followed Vaughn into the corner. His expression told her this wasn’t good news. “Is it Dad?” she asked, her stomach dropping.

“Your dad’s fine,” he assured her. “I just spoke to Kendall, and he said the hospital told them Jack is out of surgery and doing great. It’ll be a while before he’s up and around again, though. They’re going to fly him back to L.A. as soon as the doctors say it’s safe to move him.”

Sydney breathed a sigh of relief. So far, the horror of this day had been blunted; Sark was alive, her father would recover, and Sloane’s plans had been thwarted.

But Vaughn wasn’t finished. “Kendall also ordered me to place Derevko and Sark under arrest.”

“What?” Sydney battled down a wave of panic. She’d just gotten him back – they couldn’t take him away from her again! “I could maybe see Derevko, but Vaughn, look at him.” She gestured toward the bloodied figure on the bed. “He’s hurt. He needs doctors, not handcuffs.”

“Kendall said to have him transported to the base at Manta, Ecuador, for medical attention. He wants them under full military guard the moment they get there. After that, he and your mother are on a plane back to L.A.” Vaughn hesitated, looking grim. “Syd, he said they’re going to seek the death penalty for them both.”

This could not be happening. Granted, Irina had intended to betray the CIA again in India, and while the thought of her mother being executed naturally horrified Sydney, she could understand Kendall’s reasoning in pursuing a capital charge given her history. But not for Sark. Didn’t his sacrifice today count for anything? For Christ’s sake, he had nearly died to stop Sloane and save three agents!

Sydney shook with a contained fury and faced Vaughn coldly, fully prepared to fight him before she allowed Sark to be shipped off for execution. “So what are you going to do?”

“What do you think I should do?”

It was an honest question, reflecting the inner turmoil Vaughn was suffering. That realization effectively defused some of Sydney’s wrath – though not toward Kendall. She suddenly felt bad for Vaughn, caught in the middle of an impossible situation. “I don’t want you to risk your job. I’ll go back and talk to my father, see what he has to say.”

“There isn’t time for that. The military transport will be here in thirty minutes.”

Vaughn picked up Sydney’s hand and stared searchingly into her eyes. “Do you love him?” He interrupted her automatic response, his voice thick with emotion. “No, Syd, I mean do you really love him. Not someone that you think he could be, or someone that you wish he was, but him.”

She hated the pain her answer would cause Vaughn, but she answered strongly, leaving no room for doubt. “Yes. I love him.”

They looked at each other for a long while, memories and regrets hanging between them. Sydney sensed tears coming on again, these for the suffering she had put Vaughn through. And he’s still here, she thought, with a wave of immeasurable gratitude toward him. He’s stood by me, just like he said he would.

Apparently reaching a decision, Vaughn abruptly dropped her hands and returned to Sark’s bedside. “We have a matter of national security to discuss,” he informed Dr. Lawson. “Could you excuse us?”

As the doctor moved away, Sydney lifted Sark’s limp hand to her lips and kissed it. He was sleeping peacefully now; she marveled at how handsome he was, even under all those bruises. No way was anyone locking him up in a cage again – she would fight to the death to keep him free.

Vaughn addressed Irina. “If I gave you the Jeep, could you get him out of here and to a doctor fast?”

Irina gaped at him. So did Sydney. He was letting them both go?

“Yes,” Irina answered, after a beat. “I have an associate in Curitiba that can help us.” She tilted her head quizzically at Vaughn. “But why would you do that for us?”

“I wouldn’t,” he replied woodenly. “I’m doing it for Sydney.”

Irina accepted that. Within minutes, Vaughn had the Jeep backed up to the medical tent and recruited three medics to move Sark out to it. He groaned softly when they lifted him but stayed, mercifully, asleep.

“Where are you taking him?” Dr. Lawson demanded, rushing out to the Jeep. “He’s in no state to be bounced all over these roads! The Medivac chopper will be here -”

“I have orders,” Vaughn snapped, cutting him off with an authority that startled even Sydney. “This is a matter of urgent national security. Where I’m taking him is classified.”

He softened his voice a bit, stepping in closer and laying a hand on Dr. Lawson’s shoulder. “You’ve done your job, Doctor. Now let me do mine.”

After a short, uncertain pause, Dr. Lawson nodded apologetically. “Right. Sorry.” He shook Vaughn’s hand, then Sydney’s. “Hey, good luck to you, all right?”

They thanked him and climbed into the Jeep, Vaughn behind the wheel. “We’ll drive you to the perimeter,” Vaughn told Irina, “so no one here asks any more questions.”

Sydney rode in the back with Sark, cradling his head in her lap. His hair was silky in her fingers; she stroked his forehead and his cheeks, willing him to feel her touch even in his sleep, to know how completely he was loved.

When they were two miles from the compound, Vaughn pulled off the road and killed the engine. Irina twisted around to face Sydney. “Come with us,” she said.

That decision had been eating Sydney alive, and only one thing held her back. She shook her head. “I have to go back to Dad. I can’t just leave him when he’s hurt.”

“Sloane is still out there. He could still come for you,” Irina insisted. “If you come with me, I can protect you.”

Vaughn shifted uncomfortably at the suggestion that he – and the rest of Sydney’s friends, like Dixon and Weiss and her father – were not adequate protection.

“I know you would.” Sydney held her mother’s gaze. “I have people watching out for me, Mom. I have good friends, people who love me and would never let anything happen to me. I’ll be all right.”

True to her usual stubbornness, Irina persisted. “What about Sark? He’ll be devastated if he wakes up and you’re not with him.” For once, Sydney didn’t doubt her mother’s disarming sincerity as she added, “You know you love him, Sydney. You’ve seen how much he loves you, how much he would sacrifice for you. Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Don’t let pride and anger keep you apart.”

Sydney reached up and clasped her mother’s hand. She wanted to go with Sark now, of course, but she knew Irina would take care of him. For the time being, Sydney needed to do the same for her father, and she knew instinctively that Sark would understand.

“It’s not about that, Mom. I just – I need to be with Dad right now. He needs someone, and there’s no one else but me.”

Mother and daughter stared at one another for a long moment. Insects sang in the darkness; a breeze wafted the lingering smoke toward them from the compound, mingling with the sweet floral aromas of the jungle. Suddenly, Sydney felt more connected to her mother – and more at peace with that connection – than she ever had.

Vaughn broke the spell. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding it, “but if you’re going, you have to go, before somebody back there figures out that you weren’t supposed to leave.”

Resignedly, Irina nodded. To Sydney, she said, “What should I tell Sark, when he wakes up?”

“Tell him I have to take care of Dad. Tell him…” Sydney searched for words, for some message that would convey that she held to her decision at the temple: she wanted to be with Sark, damn the consequences. Almost losing him had made her realize how little the rest of it mattered, and she intended to see to it that she never suffered those regrets again.

They would be together, whatever it took, no matter what stood in the way. Providence had returned him to her today; now it was up to her to hold onto him. She just needed to let him know that she would come to him as soon as she could, and then she would never leave his side again.

Sark’s words from the plane drifted into her mind: I’ll find you. Don’t I always?

Smiling, Sydney squeezed her mother’s hand. “Tell him I’ll find him,” she said.

I still feel the same

Though everything has changed

The pain it cost, now I feel lost inside of my own name

But I keep running

I am running

I keep living for the day that I’m with you

And I am waiting

I am waiting

I keep waiting for the day that I’m with you

“Out of Breath”, Lifehouse

Chapter Twenty-Five: Ten Months

Never again would I turn away from you

I’m so heavy tonight

But your love is all right

And I do believe

That not everything is gonna be the way

You think it ought to be

It seems like every time I try to make it right

It all comes down on me

Please say honestly

You won’t give up on me

And I shall believe

I shall believe

“I Shall Believe,” Sheryl Crow

For the next ten months, Sydney went through the motions of living.

She continued working, mourned Francie, nursed her father back to health, even moved into a new house, but inside she was forcing herself through the next minute, the next hour, the next day, until she could be with Sark.

Life, of course, went on, whether she wanted it to or not. First, she and Vaughn faced a tough inquiry into just how Irina Derevko and her badly-wounded comrade had ‘escaped’ from that compound; Vaughn took the brunt of the blame, insisting that Sydney had been too distraught over her father’s condition to fully understand what was happening. He claimed that Derevko had convinced him she could lead the CIA to Sloane if he released her, so he had decided to take a chance and trust her.

Kendall wanted blood. He probably would have gotten it if Jack hadn’t asked to be wheeled into the hearing to testify. How could the committee either fire or imprison Vaughn with a real-and-true wounded war hero speaking up on his behalf, attesting to what a stellar agent Vaughn was, arguing that he of all people knew the strengths of Irina Derevko’s manipulative powers?

They placed an official reprimand in Vaughn’s file and suspended him for a month. Considering that he could have ended up in federal prison for treason, Sydney knew he got off easy, but she still felt terrible that he alone took the fall for a decision they had both made. A decision, she knew, he had settled on solely for her benefit.

Vaughn told her not to worry about it. He took a three-week vacation to Honolulu and came back tanned and refreshed.

Their relationship remained awkward and strained, despite Sydney’s best efforts to overcome the tension. She was more than grateful to Vaughn for giving Sark and her mother a second chance, for standing by her even after she broke his heart, and she wanted to be his friend. It took her a while to accept that at the least he needed time and at the most he might never be able to get past their break-up. So she treated him with a warm professionalism at work and waited for him to come around.

Will assured her that Vaughn would come around. Will. Now there was someone who earned his stripes as her friend after her return.

Jack had stayed in the hospital in Porto Alegre for a week before the doctors decided he could be safely moved; Sydney had stayed with him, sleeping in a cot in his room despite Jack’s pleas for her to rent a hotel room so she could really rest. At the time, sleep had been unwelcome anyway, because it only brought dreams of Sark that made her waking hours without him that much harder to bear.

When they flew into LAX, Will was waiting for them, with a wheelchair-equipped rental van and a big “Welcome Home Jack” banner. He had already built temporary ramps up to Jack’s front door and installed a motorized lift in Jack’s downstairs bathroom to accommodate the weeks her father would be wheelchair-bound until his legs began to heal.

Sydney could have kissed Will for his thoughtfulness, but he didn’t stop there. He insisted that he and Sydney rotate weeks of taking Jack to his physical therapy sessions, forced her to come out with him once a week rather than sit at home alone every evening, and surprised her with some small, goofy gift, like butterfly-shaped barrettes or Bugs Bunny slippers, every couple of days. Will, she realized, truly was one of the best friends she’d ever had.

He also took her to Francie’s grave. While she was chasing after Sloane, the Calfos had buried their daughter’s remains. To them, and everyone outside of the CIA, Francie’s murder remained an unsolved mystery.

Kneeling beside her best friend’s grave, Sydney silently apologized to Francie for the years of deceit and vowed to track down the man responsible for her death – Sloane – even if it took the rest of her life.

“She never really knew me,” Sydney commented softly to Will, who knelt beside her with a comforting arm around her shoulders. “She never knew what I really do.”

“Your job isn’t who you are, Syd,” Will argued, his voice low and rough with emotion. “Francie knew you. She knew you were one of her best friends in the whole world. She knew you would have done anything to help her or support her or protect her. She didn’t have to know anything else.”

Sydney turned into his shoulder and cried, long and hard, for Francie. Will held her until the tears finally stopped.

Afterwards, they shared a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Wavy Gravy in Will’s living room, reminisced about their happiest and craziest times with Francie, and laughed and cried until the wee hours. It didn’t heal the hole in Sydney’s heart instantly, but it was a start.

Sydney received her first message concerning Sark the following morning, eight days after returning home from Brazil. The message came from Irina, disguised as a junk email, and Sydney knew what it was the second she saw it because she always filtered out junk email.

Sent through an encrypted server, the message said simply that Sark was recovering. The doctors had been able to save his leg, though they doubted he would ever walk on it again; because so much of the bone had been smashed, they had inserted an internal prosthesis in its place. That was then secured to his kneecap and ankle with metal bolts and screws. By the time Sydney received that first message, Sark had already undergone two surgeries, and would need, the message said, at least four more to fully rebuild the leg.

Irina didn’t reveal their location. While Sydney understood, even realized it was for the best, every cell in her body yearned to abandon the CIA and the hunt for Sloane and even Jack and go to Sark. She suspected that her mother had anticipated that reaction and had therefore made it impossible for her to act on the impulse.

And, Sydney consoled herself, for the time being, her place was in L.A., searching for Sloane and seeing her father through his painful, arduous recovery.

Her apartment, however, was too empty without Francie and held too many memories of her short engagement to Vaughn. Seven weeks after she handed Sark over to her mother’s care, Sydney bought a small house across the street from her father. Will, Marshall, Dixon and Diane helped her move, while Jack (by this time out of the wheelchair and hobbling around on crutches) barked orders at everyone.

Her first night there was a little lonely, but Sydney knew it was time to get on with things, to get on with life, despite the weird limbo she found herself in as she waited to join Sark. The house felt like a tangible step toward that.

Vaughn came by a few evenings later with a housewarming gift: a gorgeous handmade quilt. Sydney draped it over the couch and made them coffee, which they drank on the wooden deck overlooking her small backyard.

“How was Hawaii?” she asked him, grinning at his lingering tan.

“Relaxing.” Vaughn stared out toward the pink-tinged clouds, avoiding her eyes. Deliberately casual, he said, “I ran into Alice the other day in the grocery store.”

Sydney ordered herself not to wince with an instinctive jealousy. Yes, she was in love with Sark, but she doubted anyone ever found it easy to watch an old lover move on. “How is she?”

“She’s good. You know, she had a rough time after her father died. I wasn’t really there for her like I should have been.” Vaughn glanced at her, and the unspoken because I was in love with you hung there between them.

“Are you going to see her again?” Sydney congratulated herself for sounding hopeful that he would. Deep down, she was hopeful; she wanted Vaughn to be happy, and her brief encounters with Alice had left her with the impression of a kind, decent woman who truly cared for him.

Vaughn shrugged. For a moment, Sydney thought he was going to let the subject drop, but then he faced her full-on and finally came around to the real reason for his visit.

“I don’t want to do what I did to her before, Syd. I don’t want to lead her on and then walk away the moment you become available.” He paused, and Sydney held her breath, praying he wouldn’t make her reject him again. “So I just need to know if there’s any chance of that happening.”

She answered as gently as she could. Putting her coffee mug down on the patio table, she picked up Vaughn’s hand and clasped it in both of hers. “No. There isn’t.”

They stayed that way for a while, as the shadows deepened and the pink in the clouds turned to a gold-flecked crimson, staring into one another’s eyes with his hand folded in hers. At last, Vaughn nodded, and Sydney didn’t stop him when he leaned in for a good-bye kiss. It was soft and sweet, tender without being sensual, and though she knew their friendship would take time to rebuild, she felt much more at peace about Vaughn after he left.

The second email message from Irina arrived a week after Sydney’s move. By that time, Sark had undergone his seventh and final surgery and was, according to her mother, making slow progress on learning how to walk with his semi-artificial limb. Again she gave no clue as to where they were hiding.

The next day, a warm Saturday morning on which Sydney planned to clean her house and putter about in her flower garden, she received her first message from Sark himself – a bouquet of two dozen roses ordered from an online flower shop. The card contained perhaps the sweetest and simplest love letter she had ever received:

I love you. I miss you. I dream of you every night and wake with the feel of you around me. You sustain me.

She pressed the card to her chest, over her heart, drank in the scent of the roses and grinned so broadly her cheeks hurt.

After that, his messages arrived like clockwork once a month, always on a Saturday. The short but heart-melting sentiments were delivered with a bouquet of flowers – orchids, carnations, roses, tulips, always different yet always beautiful – from an assortment of Internet floral shops. Sydney tucked the cards away in a small cedar-lined box and pressed one flower from every arrangement between the thick pages of The Collected Works of William Shakespeare.

When the longing for him became more than she could bear, she would take out those cards and flowers, spread them across her bedroom floor and drift into memories of soft blonde curls and sparkling blue eyes.

Sydney debated who to share those messages with. To show them to Vaughn would have been cruel. To show them to Dixon might have compromised her position with the Agency, since she doubted he would understand her love for Sark. To show them to Will would have been terribly awkward, considering the role Sark had played in Francie’s death, in the ensuing months Will spent as a veritable zombie under her double’s control, and in Will’s torture in Taipei.

So she chose to share them with the two people she knew would both care and understand: Marshall and Jack.

Marshall, Sydney was relieved to see, was none the worse for his hair-raising experiences in India. Nor did he seem eager to repeat his brush with treason. The CIA remained in the dark about his assistance to Irina in Sark’s failed escape attempt; in fact, Sydney believed she was the only person within the Agency who knew about his involvement.

They talked about it once, over iced mochas at a quiet coffee bar when she shared Sark’s first message with him, and Sydney couldn’t help but be impressed by Marshall’s ingenuity in using the Star Wars novels to convey Irina’s messages.

The coffee became a monthly ritual for them. On their fourth such visit, six months after Sydney had parted with Sark, Marshall revealed that he had received his own message from Sark: a full set of mint-condition, first-series Star Wars action figures.

“I checked it out on e-Bay, and it’s worth close to a million dollars,” Marshall whispered to her, hunching over his coffee and grinning from ear-to-ear.

So, Sydney reflected ruefully, Sark had found a way to repay the favor after all, by a means that the CIA would never suspect. “Are you going to sell it?” she asked, unable to suppress her own wide smile.

Marshall stared at her like she’d just committed sacrilege. “No way! I mean, it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever owned!”

She couldn’t wait to tell Sark that he had spent nearly a million dollars on a set of toys that would collect dust in Marshall’s room at his mother’s house. She suspected, though, that he would simply be glad Marshall had liked the gift.

For his part, Jack remained less-than-enthusiastic about Sydney’s determination to keep Sark in her life.

During his long weeks of physical therapy, when Jack would return home with barely enough energy to hobble from the car into the house, Sydney fixed him supper every evening; they grew accustomed to the nightly dinners, and the tradition, now that she lived just across the street, continued even after he regained the full use of his legs. Jack would sit at the kitchen table sipping iced tea while Sydney bustled around him cooking, and afterwards they would do the dishes together. Usually they chatted about work, or gossiped about mutual friends like Dixon and Weiss, or griped about Kendall, or discussed the best pesticide to kill the bag-worms on her shrubs – normal, everyday things, nothing earth-shattering.

Sometimes, however, the conversation would turn serious. Jack struggled with parenting, Sydney knew; for so much of her life he had been a stranger, and now that she was a grown woman, he hesitated to assume a paternal role. Yet the situation with Sark prompted him to warn her of the dangers she was facing.

“Sark hasn’t been pardoned by this government, Sydney,” Jack reminded her one night, not long after Sark’s fifth message arrived. “He’s still a fugitive. A wanted terrorist. Not wanted just here in the U.S., but abroad as well. What kind of life can you expect to have with him?”

“You fought for Vaughn,” Sydney challenged him. “Sark nearly died to save us. You wouldn’t fight for him?”

Sighing, Jack dried his damp hands on the dishtowel, took her by the shoulders and looked her squarely in the eye. “In Brazil, I saw a glimpse of what you tried to tell me about Sark, that he could have been someone else had he been given a chance. But as long as he continues to work for your mother, then no, I’m not convinced that he deserves absolution.”

He didn’t have to add, or my daughter.

“He’s not working with her, Dad,” Sydney argued, sensing the frailty of her own argument and wishing she had a better way to convince him. “He’s hurt. She’s taking care of him.”

Jack arched an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced. “And when he’s well? What are his plans then?”

Sydney hated to admit that she didn’t know.

Despite the unwelcome doubts Jack had raised, Sydney held to the decision she had made in Brazil. If she started to waver, if she started to question her choice, all she needed to do was recall those terrible hours when she had believed Sark was dead and her resolve was reaffirmed. They loved one another; the rest of it, although certainly not unimportant, was not sufficient to keep them apart. They could meet each other halfway, carve out a life that would work for both of them.

She clung to that hope, yet the endless days without him were like torture. She lay awake at night concocting plans for convincing the Department of Justice to absolve him of his crimes or, if that didn’t work, ways of persuading the CIA to let him atone for his wrongs by working with them to capture Sloane. When every scenario began to seem impossible, she gave herself over to fantasies of running away with him, of returning to their house in Australia and maintaining clandestine contact with her father and Will and Marshall.

Then, at long last, shortly after the New Year, came the day Sydney had been living for: the day when Sark found her.

It started out badly. For ten months, the CIA had searched fruitlessly for Sloane. They feared what havoc he might wreak now that he had unlocked the manuscript’s secrets for creating the Tenth Plague, yet that terror was tempered by the knowledge that, without Sydney, he couldn’t vaccinate himself or anyone else against the virus and therefore would not be unleashing it on the world, obviously.

Sydney shuddered to think what might have happened if Sark, her father and Vaughn hadn’t rescued her from that compound in Brazil. The containment team had returned from the jungle with a small sample of the virus that had survived the explosion, and the horrific way the lab rats they tested it on died chilled Sydney to the bone. It was as if all of their internal organs simply liquefied, and they bled to death within several agonizing minutes.

When she hadn’t been consumed by thoughts of Sark, Sydney had done a lot of soul-searching as to how much of the Rambaldi Prophecy she believed. She couldn’t say with absolute honesty that she accepted that the Prophecy was real, yet she couldn’t completely negate it either, given the fact that Rambaldi had created an ink that could be read only after exposure to Emily Sloane’s blood more than five hundred years before her birth.

What prevented her from being a true believer, really, was that in Brazil, she had been entirely in Sloane’s clutches. If she was the woman in the Prophecy, why had he been prevented from using her to complete Rambaldi’s work that day?

An unsettling answer to that nagging question arrived on a crisp January morning.

Kendall called a sudden meeting soon after Sydney sat down at her desk. Joining him, Vaughn, Marshall, Dixon, Weiss and her father in the briefing room, Sydney could tell from Kendall’s expression that this news was not good.

“We lost an agent last night, in Lima, Peru,” Kendall began. All eyes hit the table; Sydney offered up a quick prayer for a fallen comrade’s soul. “He was gunned down in an alley outside his hotel. He went to Lima last week following an anonymous tip that a former lieutenant in Derevko’s organization was initiating a meeting between her and Sloane.”

Sydney swallowed the immediate question as to why she had not been informed of that intel. She saw that same query reflected in Jack’s eyes but decided not to read into it. For ten months the CIA had tracked down dead-end lead after dead-end lead, and it would have been impossible to keep even those in the inner circle appraised of every single one of them.

Jack must have drawn the same conclusion, because he stayed quiet as Kendall continued, “When our agent failed to check in as planned, we contacted the local authorities, learned about the murder of a John Doe and put two and two together. The recovery team sent to pick up the body searched his hotel room, and they found this tape.”

Kendall picked up a remote control and turned on the large television beside him. Sydney blinked in astonishment as a grainy surveillance video showed Arvin Sloane entering a crowded restaurant and sitting down across from a devastatingly beautiful brunette – Irina Derevko.

They talked for several minutes; the tape didn’t include sound, but Sydney surmised from their expressions that the conversation was heated. The exchange ended with Sloane sliding a vial across the table to Irina. She glared at him for a moment, then pocketed it and stalked away.

Kendall stopped the tape. “Mr. Flinkman has already analyzed this video,” he said, nodding for Marshall to take over.

For once, Marshall was too grave to bother about any stuttering introductions. “I enhanced the video here,” he explained, rewinding the tape and pausing it as Sloane handed the vial to Irina. “I figured, you know, maybe the vial might be marked or something, or maybe I could see what was in it. Well, the feed was really too grainy to see what was in it – probably because the restaurant uses a slow-speed camera, which, you know, that’s fine for their purposes, but it’s like those ‘real crime’ shows you see where the image kind of skips forward, so the robbers are lifting their guns in one frame and running out the door in the next -”

As Marshall started to pantomime his description, Jack cleared his throat. “Right,” Marshall said, getting back to business with a lopsided apologetic grin. “Okay, well, I couldn’t see what was in the vial, but I could see what was on it.”

He clicked a few buttons on the remote, and suddenly, the vial appeared on-screen, the image enlarged to at least thirty times its original size.

Sydney’s throat went dry. The vial, which looked suspiciously like a tube of blood, had a small white label attached to it. That label read ‘S. Bristow’.

A somber silence descended. Sydney fought back tears. How could her mother do this? How could she unite with Sloane – again? After all he’d done?

And more importantly, was Sark still playing on Irina’s team?

Jack spoke first. He remained expressionless, but his stony voice betrayed his rage. “I’m assuming that’s a vial of Sydney’s blood,” he said, prompting Marshall to confirm it.

“At the moment, that’s our best guess,” Marshall replied.

All eyes went to Sydney, who slowly nodded. “They drew my blood in Brazil, while they were preparing me for that…procedure.”

The reminder of her close encounter with death intensified the gravity within the room. Sydney felt the weight of a whole new disaster bearing down on her shoulders.

“What would they want with a vial of my blood?” she wondered aloud, to no one in particular.

But Marshall had an answer – a gruesome one. “My theory is to clone you.”

Weiss made an odd choking noise that reflected exactly what Sydney was feeling. “What?” he sputtered. “They’re cloning Sydney? Why the hell would they do that?”

“Quite simple, really.” Jack spoke softly, his words heavy with a combination of sorrow and disgust and disappointment. Sydney’s heart ached for him; she knew the locket Irina had given Sark in India had left her father hoping that she would prove herself worthy of his love. “Derevko is determined to complete Rambaldi’s work, but she refuses to do so by sacrificing Sydney’s life. And Sloane has learned that Derevko is too formidable an opponent to work against. So what they need is a woman who is Sydney, with the physical anomalies and the DNA sequence Rambaldi predicted, yet who is not Sydney.”

“A clone,” Vaughn murmured.

“A clone,” Jack tabled.

A clone. Sydney was so sickened and horrified that she barely heard Kendall explain that the CIA had found no traces of Derevko or Sloane in Lima, and no indication of where either had been before the meeting or where either had gone afterwards. They might have this new intel concerning their plans, but the CIA was no closer to capturing them than they had been before.

Sydney took the rest of the day off. Not even the typically insensitive Kendall questioned her need for some time to herself.

Driving home, she willed herself to believe that Sark was not involved. The tape hadn’t shown him participating in the meeting, and Kendall hadn’t once mentioned his name, suggesting none of their intel had included him. But was it possible for her mother to be involved in a scheme that Sark wasn’t backing her up on?

A bouquet of daffodils awaited her on the porch when she arrived home. Sydney leapt out of the car and raced up the steps; it was a Wednesday, not the day she usually received messages from Sark. Her fingers trembled as she ripped open the card, praying that he would offer some evidence of his innocence in this new madness.

The top of the card contained a strange phrase that Sydney almost dismissed as a mistake. Studying it, however, she kicked back into graduate student mode and recognized it as a bibliographic citation for a newspaper article: Wade, Jennifer. ‘Thatcher family curse strikes again.’ New York Times 21 Jan. 1994, natl ed.: A1.

Beneath that were the sweetest words she’d ever read:

I found you. Please come home.

Chapter Twenty-Six: Resolution

Maybe redemption has stories to tell

Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell

Where can you run to escape from yourself

Where you gonna go

Where you gonna go

Salvation is here

“Dare You To Move,” Switchfoot

Twenty-four hours later, Sydney rented a car at the airport in Melbourne under the alias Amanda Thatcher.

Back in L.A., the air carried a January chill, but here in Australia it was summertime. She drove west under a blazing sun, windows down and radio blaring. Yet she didn’t feel the warm breeze or hear the pounding music, because her mind was focused on her destination.

Sark.

She was going home. To their house, to their sanctuary. Home to Sark.

After receiving the long-awaited invitation, she had called her father. When Jack arrived, she had shown him the card and told him that she was going.

“It could be a trap, Sydney,” he had warned her.

Sydney had faced him with a steely determination. “Sark would never let anyone hurt me.”

Jack had swallowed hard, she suspected to keep himself from reminding her of all the awful things Sark had done as much to fight back the tears glistening in his eyes. “You know how I feel about this. Sark is still a fugitive and the CIA would construe your relationship with him as an act of treason, precluding you from ever returning to this country. Not to mention that common sense would dictate you not go running off to him, alone, with the intel we just received from Peru. However,” Jack had raised a hand to silence her protest, “I realize that logic doesn’t necessarily apply in this kind of situation. So all I will say is this: I know I haven’t always been an exemplary father to you in the past, Sydney, but you’re still my daughter, and no one is taking you away from me.”

She had pulled him into a fierce hug and whispered, “Then help me find a way to bring him back with me, Dad.”

A fork in the road ahead forced Sydney to pull onto the shoulder and consult the map Sark had included with his brief note. She slipped her sunglasses off and massaged her tired eyes; she had taken a red-eye from L.A. to Honolulu and immediately hopped on another flight to Melbourne, and only the consuming need to be in Sark’s arms again kept her driving.

On the plane from Hawaii, Sydney had checked her email on her laptop to find that Jack did have a plan for allowing her the best of both worlds – a life with Sark that included her life in L.A., with her friends and her father and her work. She willed herself to believe that it could happen, that they could pull it off.

Jack’s email had also included a copy of the New York Times article Sark’s last message had referred her to. Reading it, Sydney had suddenly understood why it was so important. It wasn’t just any news story; it was Sark’s story.

She recognized the name Thatcher from a gorgeous diamond necklace her father had given her for her sixteenth birthday. The Thatchers owned a diamond empire stretching back to the nineteenth century, when an ambitious general in their family had staked a claim on the diamond trade in colonial Africa. The article referred to the so-called “Thatcher Family Curse”, sort of England’s version of the “Kennedy Curse”. These wealthy, beautiful people – billionaires by the late twentieth-century – seemed plagued by constant disaster, from murders to insanity to mysterious illness.

That curse, it seemed, had claimed its final victim nine years ago. The article detailed the unexplained disappearance of the sole surviving heir to the Thatcher fortune, Jonathan Ambrose Thatcher III, from an elite boarding school near Canterbury. At the time the piece was written, 1994, the Thatcher family had dwindled to two members: Jonathan Ambrose Thatcher II and his fourteen-year-old son. Loraine Thatcher, the boy’s mother, had died in a horrific (and rather mysterious) one-car accident before his third birthday.

In March of 1994, Jonathan Thatcher II, who by all accounts had been wasting away from grief ever since his wife’s tragic death, committed suicide; less than a month later, just days after the lawyers signed billions over to Jonathan Thatcher III, the boy – and his inheritance – vanished into thin air.

Sydney smiled as she turned onto a familiar stretch of highway. The sun sank below the horizon ahead of her, washing the bare fields on either side in rosy hues. She remembered Sark explaining his plan for their escape, when he had been trying to convince her to run away with him: “I have money. Plenty of it. More than I could spend in one lifetime, really.”

He hadn’t been exaggerating. The article listed Jonathan Ambrose Thatcher III’s inheritance at just over twelve billion dollars.

The miles rolled past, wrapped in the delicious anticipation of holding her beloved again, of kissing him again, of tangling her fingers in his silky hair again. She wondered, with a pang of nervousness, how badly injured Sark still was; none of his messages had ever discussed his recovery.

What would she say if he rolled out to meet her in a wheelchair?

Hello, I love you, I’ve missed you so much I thought my heart might actually implode. The same as she would say if he walked out to meet her on two sturdy legs.

By the time Sydney turned off onto the long gravel drive, night had fallen. She recalled with perfect clarity the first time she had ridden down this road, with Sark’s hand on her knee and the fireflies dancing alongside them. At the time she had believed nothing could ever transcend that moment, that she would never be more in love with him than she was right then if they lived a thousand years. She knew now that she had been wrong, because this time, there were no lies between them. There were no games to be played.

She was coming to Sark, knowing exactly who – and what – he was.

Unless he’s still working with Irina, her nasty inner voice had to throw in, as the car rolled to a stop at the end of the drive.

The house was exactly as she remembered it: peeling paint, overgrown weeds, rickety porch steps. Sydney realized as she stepped out of the car that this was where she had wanted to be all these months; as she had before, she felt instantly at home here, as if this was the one place on earth where she truly and absolutely belonged.

She made it to the foot of the steps before the door opened.

Home.

The word rang in Sydney’s mind as she stared at Sark, bathed in the soft yellow glow of the porch light. His hair was a tad shorter than the last time she had seen him, but still tousled. His body was as lean and muscular as ever beneath a loose-fitting pair of faded jeans and a partially unbuttoned white oxford. His eyes were still fantastically blue; his smile was still adorably crooked; his face was still incredibly handsome.

The only significant difference was the silver-handled black cane he was leaning heavily on.

Tears flooded Sydney’s eyes and words deserted her. For ten months, she had imagined this moment, ached for this moment, lived for this moment – and now that she was here, she couldn’t force a single syllable out of her mouth.

So she let actions speak for her. In three long strides she ascended the porch steps, caught Sark by the front of the shirt and pulled him into a bruising kiss.

The hand that wasn’t gripping his cane slid around her waist and hauled her closer against him, matching her passion with an ardency of his own. His tongue against hers set Sydney’s blood on fire; she pushed him back inside the house without breaking the kiss, moving so fast that he dropped his cane, but it didn’t matter because she fell to the floor on top of him in the living room. She straddled him and popped open the remaining buttons on his shirt, drinking from his lips like a woman dying of thirst.

Sark freed his mouth from hers long enough to rasp out, “Do you want – possibly the bedroom would be better -”

“This is good for me,” Sydney answered, equally breathless, nearly pushed over the edge by that sexy accent. God, she’d forgotten what just his voice could do to her…

His jeans and boxers followed the shirt onto the floor, and Sydney focused on kissing every inch of his body as quickly as she could. Aside from the porch light and a faint glow from upstairs, the house was totally dark, yet her lips and fingers noted the puckered scars along his right leg..

“Sydney,” Sark gasped, when her hand closed around his hardness. He caught her by the shoulders and hauled her back up his body, capturing her lips as he rolled her over and started undressing her.

They were both nearly frantic with passion. “Let me,” Sydney whispered, when his fingers fumbled with the clasp on her bra. Sark dipped his head and sucked lightly on her stomach; when she tossed her bra aside, he turned the same attention on her breasts, dragging a low moan out of her.

“Please…just…please,” she managed, digging her nails into his shoulder.

Sark’s mouth descended on hers again as he pushed inside. Sydney arched toward him, crying out from the sudden fullness between her legs – oh, she had missed this, his touch, his kiss, his body pressing down into hers, his scent all around her…

For once, Sydney didn’t want Sark to take his time. She wanted fulfillment. Grinding her hips into his, she forced him into a furious rhythm; her lips slid along his neck, tasting the delicious saltiness of his sweat, sucking and nibbling and licking until the ecstasy built inside of her and she threw her head back, away from his, and called out his name in a long, desperate cry.

They fell back together on the hardwood floor, both gasping for air and drenched in sweat. Sydney felt his heart beating wildly against her chest, and the realization that she was with him again – finally, finally with him again – suddenly hit her.

She wrapped her arms around his body as far as they would go and squeezed him as tightly as she could, burying her face in his neck.

“I love you,” she said, and was surprised to find that she was crying.

Sark rolled onto his back and settled her into the crook of his arm. “I love you,” he said back, brushing her tears away with his fingertips and tilting her chin up toward him. She noted the devilish sparkle in his blue eyes, wondered how she could ever have survived so many months without seeing it. “And that was one hell of a greeting, Agent Bristow.”

They succumbed to a fit of laughter that left them both weak. Then they lay quietly together for a while, naked in the darkness on the floor, until she finally sat up and smiled down at him.

“I missed you.”

“I could tell.” Sark laughed when she swatted his chest playfully. “I missed you, too.”

Sydney collected their clothes. Sark pushed himself up into a sitting position and leaned back against the coffee table, watching her, a contented smile playing on his lips.

Deep down, Sydney believed that Sark was on her side. But she also accepted the possibility that, given his history, he could still be working for her mother. So, while they dressed, she asked casually, “Where’s Mom?”

If he found it odd that she should ask, Sark hid it very well. “I’m not exactly sure, but she said something about Peru. She seemed to be getting cabin fever about two weeks ago, so I told her I was perfectly fine and didn’t need any more baby-sitting. Anyway, I was anxious to get here and see you.”

An unsettling thought struck Sydney, yet she tried to sound nonchalant, not to hint at her sudden trepidation. “Did you tell her where we were going?” The last thing she needed was for Sloane and Irina to come barging in here and take her hostage again…

“No. This is our place, Sydney. I haven’t told anyone about it.” Sark pushed a hand through his hair and studied her intently. “There’s something you aren’t telling me. I don’t want that. I don’t want secrets between us anymore.”

Neither did she. And any lingering doubts about his honesty had just been dispelled by those words. So she said, “Yes, there is something, but it can wait until morning.”

For a moment Sark looked prepared to push the issue, then decided to let it go with a shrug. “Could you hand me my cane? I’m helpless as a bloody turtle on its back without the thing.”

Now that raised some interesting possibilities. “Really?” Sydney grinned playfully and crawled toward him, making no attempt to hand him the cane, which lay beside the door where he’d dropped it.

Sark fixed her with his sternest glare. “Sydney, behave. Hand me the cane.”

He sighed with mock resignation when she settled herself onto his lap and began unbuttoning the shirt he’d just put back on. “Does it matter to you all that I’m injured?”

“You seemed pretty healthy a few minutes ago.” Sydney kissed down his neck; he laid his head back on the coffee table, exposing his throat for her. Her lips moved onto his chest. “Besides, I like having you at my mercy.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of making it to the bed this time, either.” His breath caught in his throat when she shifted her hips into his.

“I think the couch might be doable. It’s close.”

As Sark surrendered again to her soft kisses and tender caresses, Sydney determined to push all thoughts of Arvin Sloane and Irina Derevko and Rambaldi and the CIA out of her mind until tomorrow. They could deal with the future and all of its problems in the morning; tonight was just for them.

* * * *

Sark had scars now.

Sydney traced them in the moonlight while he slept, his body curved toward hers and his face half-buried in the pillow. Rikkets’ bullet had left identical circular puckerings on either side of his shoulder; the knife-wound he’d received during that fight had left a jagged ridge above his navel. A fine white line creased his forehead from the slab of concrete that had smashed into his temple on the day of his escape attempt. Another pale mark above his heart reminded Sydney of the chip she had dug out of his chest that same day. An assortment of small scars – some rough, some smooth, most too tiny to be noticeable, all white and slightly raised – covered his back and chest, a result of the shrapnel that had pelted him when the compound exploded in Brazil.

The worst ones, of course, were on his leg.

The scars read like a testament to his suffering over the last ten months. The surgeons had made two broad incisions extending from his knee to his ankle, one along his shin and the other down the back of his calf; the scars were deep and black, the skin around them sunken and rough to the touch.

When Sydney had finally returned his cane to him, she had forced herself not to comment as she watched him limp slowly to the kitchen, half-dragging the right leg behind him. She knew he wouldn’t want pity, not even hers, so she swallowed the tears and reminded herself that it was enough for him to be alive.

Despite the limited use of his leg and his reliance on the cane, Sark seemed quite self-sufficient. Sydney had watched from the kitchen table – he ordered her to rest, said she looked exhausted from her flight – as he bustled around fixing them dinner; he never stumbled, never asked for help, never dropped so much as a crumb.

If he was in pain, he didn’t show it. Listening eagerly while she filled him in on the last ten months of her life, he had laughed about Marshall’s reaction to his gift, pressed for details about Jack’s recovery, grunted with slight satisfaction about Vaughn being suspended on his account. While she talked, Sydney had marveled at how well he compensated for the injury, not just mentally but physically. For a man whose life had often depended on his physical prowess, Sark seemed perfectly happy, not bitter about the handicap in the least.

Sark had caught her staring and quirked a wry grin, made some smart-ass remark about still being just as good on his feet as he was on his back. She had laughed, but even though he assured her that he would gain more mobility in the leg, she knew that they both knew it wasn’t true.

This has to be enough for the CIA, she thought now, settling back in beside him on the bed and dropping a light kiss on his shoulder. Sark smiled softly in his sleep. They have to see that he’s suffered enough. He’s sacrificed enough. He’s earned some peace.

Although her heart was heavy with fear of what the next day would bring, Sydney finally gave in to the exhaustion. Her last thought as she drifted off to sleep was to wonder if Irina had at last set Sark free because she, too, realized that he deserved redemption.

* * * *

Sark woke with Sydney in his arms and decided he was the luckiest man in the world.

For ten months, since he first awoke in a private Paris hospital, he had dreamed of waking up next to her. Through the endless surgeries and the ensuing torturous recovery at Irina’s mansion in the French countryside, that dream had sustained him, had given him a reason to keep fighting.

And now she was here. He touched her face to be certain she was real; she opened her sleepy dark eyes and smiled at him.

“Hi,” she whispered.

“Hi.” He traced her high cheekbones and her delicate jaw with his fingers, memorizing the feel of her.

They had made love three more times after that first desperate tumble, though they had slowed down considerably after that and gotten reacquainted with the sensitive spots on one another’s bodies. After a second time on the couch they had paused for supper, and then Sydney had taken him straight up the stairs to bed. Just thinking about it aroused him again.

Sydney giggled when he wrapped his legs around hers and moved in for a passionate kiss. “You’re impossible,” she teased, tilting her head to the side so he could kiss down her neck. “A girl could wear herself out trying to keep up with you.”

“And all of this on a wooden leg,” he quipped.

Her laughter died away at that. Sark sighed, cursing himself for being so flippant when his injury obviously upset her. “I’m sorry,” he said softly, kissing her mouth again, this time tenderly.

“Does it still hurt?”

He started to say no, then remembered they weren’t keeping secrets anymore. “Yes. Not terribly, though.” And speaking of secrets… “Now, what was this thing you weren’t telling me last night?”

“Can I ask you a question first?”

“I do believe you’re stalling, Agent Bristow.”

Sydney smacked him with her pillow, and Sark laughed. God, he’d missed her. “All right, all right. Fire away.”

“Do I call you Jon or Jonathan?”

Oh, yes. His name. Sark propped himself up on an elbow and rested his chin against his palm. “Neither, actually. You see, I was named after my father and my grandfather, so by the time I came along we had a Jonathan and a Jon. My mother deplored the name ‘Johnny’, or so my father once told me, so I always went by my middle name.”

“Ambrose.” Sydney tested the name on her lips.

Sark nodded, insanely pleased that she seemed to like it. Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Though at school that always seemed a bit stuffy. We all had names like Harold Manchester Winslow The Seventeenth,” Sydney giggled at that, “so we gave each other nicknames. ‘Ambrose’ got shortened to ‘Ross’ before I was five years old.”

Her eyes widened slightly, puzzling him. “What is it? Did I say something wrong?”

Sydney bit her lip, smiling rather wistfully. “Do you remember that day, at that little café, when I didn’t recognize you? Before we ever went to Santa Rosa or any of that?”

How could he forget? “Of course. You thought I was some stranger who was hitting on you.”

“Well, when I didn’t know who you were, I thought you looked like a Ross.”

They grinned at each other. “I think you’ve always known me quite well, Sydney, even before you really knew me,” Sark admitted, meaning it.

That sobered Sydney abruptly. Sensing that they were at last coming around to this big secret she’d been keeping, Sark waited patiently – though albeit tensely – for her to find the right words.

Please don’t let it be something we can’t fix, he found himself praying. Please don’t let her be leaving me again.

“Would you be angry at me if I had told my father where I was going?”

The question surprised him. Christ, was that it? Sark almost laughed with relief. “No. I’m quite glad you didn’t go running off without telling him, actually. I’m not up to having Jack Bristow crash through that bedroom door looking to execute me for kidnapping his daughter.”

“And what if he was coming here, today?”

Sark frowned at that, suspecting the secret was more complicated than her telling Jack about their sanctuary. “I suppose I would ask why.”

So Sydney told him. She told him that Irina had gone back to Sloane; she told him that they were planning to clone her to complete Rambaldi’s work; she told him about the evidence the CIA had of this, about the murdered agent and the video tape.

Sark’s heart fell into his toes as she talked. When she finished, he kicked the covers off, pulled his jeans on, and snatched up his cane from beside the bed.

Sydney placed a gentle hand on his shoulder from behind before he could rise, saying sadly, “I’m sorry. I wanted it to be over, too. I wanted her to be on my side for once.”

“I don’t believe it.” Sark jerked away from her and stood, suddenly impatient with the cane and furious with how slowly he moved. He wanted to stomp across the room and slam the bedroom door, but instead he limped feebly around the bed and was intercepted by Sydney, clad only in his white oxford and her satin underwear, before he made it halfway to the door.

She stood in front of him and grabbed the hand that held his cane. The pain in her eyes calmed his sudden rage more than anything. He stopped, allowed her to stroke his face with the back of her hand.

“I know you love her,” Sydney said gently. “So do I, in spite of everything. And I think that she probably loves us both, in her own way. She just – Rambaldi is like an addiction for her. She’ll never stop trying to make that Prophecy come true. We have to accept that.”

Possibly, Sydney was right. Recalling Irina’s growing restlessness over the last few weeks – such a change from her patient, loving care ever since his injury – Sark realized that he should have known something was wrong, that he shouldn’t have been placated by her reassurances that she was simply worried about what Sloane might be up to. Once again, he had been too focused on Sydney to recognize the clues staring him in the face: the late-night meetings, the clandestine emails, the hushed phone conversations.

And if all of that wasn’t enough, her farewell, Sark now saw, should have tipped him off. Drawing him into a long embrace – still a rare thing for them, despite all they’d shared – Irina had whispered, “If you need me, I’ll come back. All you have to do is ask.”

At the time, of course, Sark had thought she was referring to his injury. Now, he realized she had been saying good-bye with the understanding that the next time they met they would most likely be on opposing sides. Sark would never betray Sydney again, and Irina had to know that; she hadn’t even asked him to join her, hadn’t even hinted that she intended to reunite with Sloane, hadn’t even alluded to a lingering interest in finishing Rambaldi’s work.

Sark wanted to hate Irina for this new deception, only…only he remembered her face on the flight to India, her earnestness as she insisted that her true motivation was to protect Sydney: “Jack believes my goal in life has always been to complete Rambaldi’s work. And for a long time, it was. Until I had Sydney. Motherhood changed me. So my goal changed. It became to protect her. In order to do that I’ve had to do things I’m not proud of. Things she could never understand, or forgive.”

Was this one of those things? Or had Irina simply discovered a way to have both of her goals fulfilled: completing Rambaldi’s work without harming Sydney?

Sydney led Sark back over to the bed, and they sat down together. His anger ebbed, leaving him strangely hollow, something he never thought he could feel with Sydney’s loving arms around him.

“Why is your father coming here?” he asked at length, suspecting he already knew.

She tucked her hair behind her ears, and Sark willed himself not to think of how much she resembled Irina when she did that. “To offer you a deal.”

Naturally. “Let me guess. I assist the CIA in stopping whatever Sloane and your mother have planned, and in return, I get immunity.”

“Close. But not just immunity. A full pardon.”

Sark blanched. “How did your father manage that?”

Sydney smiled proudly. “Dad’s like a war hero since we got back from Brazil. When he walks into a room, everybody shuts up to see if he has anything to say.” Sark couldn’t help but grin as he imagined the bullish Jack Bristow being hero-worshipped by a crop of green agents. “And he sent for your school records, from England, to prove to the CIA that you really were an innocent victim, because of something they started – Project Christmas.”

Sark supposed the added threat of Jack taking the story of Jonathan Ambrose Thatcher III being brainwashed by a black-ops CIA program to the tabloids had helped his case at least a little, but he kept that to himself.

When Sydney went to shower, Sark noticed that she didn’t ask him if he was going to take the deal. He wondered if that meant she was totally convinced that he would or that she thought he needed time to think it over.

What’s there to think about? Sark asked himself, making his way carefully down the stairs. His leg was stiff this morning, undoubtedly the result of their wild lovemaking last night. You love Sydney. You were lost without her all those months. And Irina didn’t involve you in this latest scheme for a reason – she knows where you belong, and it’s not with her. It’s with her daughter.

Yes, he argued back, wobbling into the kitchen, but that shouldn’t mean I have to betray her.

Sark stopped short as he rounded the corner and found Jack Bristow calmly sipping coffee at their kitchen table.

They eyed one another for a moment. Sark wished heartily that he’d bothered to slip on a shirt before coming downstairs. Not that he’d expected to find Sydney’s father making himself at home in the kitchen, but still, it was desperately awkward to face Jack Bristow half-naked when he’d just left his daughter’s bed.

“I made coffee,” Jack finally said, by way of greeting.

Sark crossed to the counter, suddenly embarrassed by how jerkily he moved with the cane. He ordered himself not to blush as he poured a cup of coffee and settled in across from Jack, who was watching him with an almost indiscernible trace of sympathy.

Luckily, Jack was too old school for heart-to-heart talks. He cut right to the chase, pushing an officially-sealed-and-stamped document across the table toward Sark. “Your official pardon,” he said simply, as if it were the morning paper. “Sign it and we can all go back to L.A.”

The pen Jack handed him felt like a lead weight in Sark’s fingers. He stared at the paper unseeingly.

“Our world is like a dance. If you want to win, you have to tango.”

Irina’s words from that long-ago night when she had taught him to dance haunted Sark. Yes, she had betrayed him; yes, she had lied to him; yes, she had used him shamelessly for years. But she was the only mother he really remembered. And for the past ten months, she had been a mother to him, in the truest sense of the word, never leaving his side and never giving up on him and never allowing him to quit, even when the pain threatened to drive him out of his mind.

While their relationship had definitely become closer since Sark fell in love with Sydney, he admitted that Irina had done her best to take care of him over the years. She could have stolen his inheritance when Khasinau brought him to her; instead, she had shown him how to hide the money so it would always be there when he needed it. She could have treated him like a robot, expecting him to take her orders and think no further than that; instead, she had fostered his intelligence, his natural athletic skill, his inherent curiosity, grooming him into an equal rather than a subordinate.

Sark knew Irina well enough to understand that she must have had a plan for him all along or she wouldn’t have bothered with him. Part of that plan, of course, had been to help her achieve her goals concerning Rambaldi while protecting Sydney. Yet he now wondered if she hadn’t always had another a plan, a plan that she had put into motion when she asked him to recruit Sydney into their organization – a plan for him to be with her daughter, to love her, to take care of her, to cherish her. A plan for him to be loved by Sydney in return.

If that was the case, Sark realized, then Irina must have known it would come to this. She must have known that he would one day have to choose between his loyalty to her and his love for Sydney.

“When you came to me, you meant nothing to my goals. You were just a little boy. But you were searching for something. For a mother. I couldn’t give that to you the way you needed, and I’m sorry for that, but I have tried, the only way I knew how, to guide you. To give you what you needed to survive in this world.”

And there it was. Irina had tried to prepare him for this moment, not to sway his decision in her favor, but to enable him to choose his own path, at last.

Jack was studying him, practically drilling holes in him with his eyes, so Sark lowered the pen and looked him straight in the eye. “I get the feeling – quite understandably, of course – that you don’t like me,” Sark observed evenly. “And I’m wondering how much of a problem that’s going to be since I’m madly in love with your daughter.”

If his frankness startled Jack, he covered admirably. “I like you better than Vaughn.”

Sark knew his mouth must have dropped open at that, because Jack nearly smiled. One corner of his mouth actually lifted upwards, the closest Sark had ever seen him come to a full-fledged grin.

“I see a lot of myself in you, Mr. Thatcher.” Sark noted the use of his name, Jack’s subtle way of saying that his secrets were all out in the open now. “Especially in your desire to protect Sydney.”

Jack leaned forward, the momentary half-smile replaced by a frown of intensity. “There are no ultimatums here. If you choose not to sign that pardon, it doesn’t mean that you’re returning to CIA custody. It simply means, as far as the government will ever know, that I was never able to locate you.”

No way would Jack make it that easy for him. “And Sydney? You’re just going to send her off with a wanted terrorist?”

“You seem like an intelligent man. You should have realized long ago that I would never let anyone take my daughter away from me.” Jack’s voice was low and flinty, perhaps more dangerous than Sark had ever heard it. “If anyone were to try, I would track that person to the ends of the earth, if it took the rest of my life and cost me ever penny I have.”

The idea of being hunted mercilessly by an enraged Jack Bristow dispelled any plans Sark retained of spiriting Sydney off. That brought him back to his choice.

If anyone could understand his confliction at this moment, Sark knew it was Jack Bristow. He wanted to ask for advice; he wanted to confess that he simply didn’t know how to choose between Sydney and Irina. But before he could summon the courage, Jack offered his thoughts freely.

“Those snatches of goodness you see in Irina are real.”

Sark lifted his eyes to Jack’s, intrigued, mentally scrolling through years of Laura Bristow Moments. Jack went on, “I have spent thirty years asking myself how I could have been fooled so completely by that woman. For a long time I chalked it up to youthful ignorance. But when I was almost pulled in by her manipulations again even now, even after all the heartache she’s caused and the hell she’s put our daughter through, I had to dig deeper than that. And then I realized her deceptions come with a trace of true sincerity.”

Reaching into his pocket, Jack produced the locket Irina had given Sark in India. He opened it and laid it on the table, gazing sadly at the image of the family that had been stolen from him by Irina’s treachery. “Somewhere inside of her, there is goodness. There is compassion, and tenderness, and love, and warmth, and all of those things that she is so adept at manipulating people with. On some level, her lies are the truth.

“The goodness that I see in Sydney is a reflection of her mother.” Jack shook his head slightly, as if he still had difficulty accepting that revelation. “For years I watched Sydney for signs of the same manipulative qualities, the same capacity for ruthless deception, until I finally realized that the influence Irina had on her was much different than that. She took the best of herself and passed it on to Sydney in the short time she had to be her mother.”

And she did the opposite with me, Sark wanted to say, but didn’t.

“What Irina’s true motivations are, I don’t think we’ll ever really know,” Jack concluded, snapping the locket shut and returning it to his pocket. “She may believe that she is protecting Sydney in some way, but that doesn’t negate the fact that if Sloane is allowed to unleash this Tenth Plague on the world, millions of people – possibly billions of people – will die. That is not something I can allow to happen. Neither can Sydney.”

The implied question was, of course, Can you?

Sark picked the pen up again and toyed with it. He understood that he was being offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not only to start over with a clean slate, but to give Sydney the life she deserved, a life that could include her father and her friends and her career at the CIA rather than one that would demand she sacrifice all of that just for him.

Their happy ending was within reach. All Sark had to do was sign on the dotted line.

Well, that wasn’t quite all, of course.

This pardon was contingent on him fulfilling his end of the deal: stopping Sloane and Irina from completing Rambaldi’s work, or at least doing his utmost to help the CIA in that endeavor. In the meantime, Sark realized he would be kept under close surveillance, and many people would be hoping against hope that he took one misstep so they could lock him up and throw away the key.

He also acknowledged that, though Jack seemed to be thawing towards him, other people in Sydney’s life might never accept him. Like Will Tippin, for instance. And he would be working with people, such as Vaughn and Dixon, who had once been his dire enemies.

The pardon was not the easy way out, that was for sure.

At that moment, Sydney breezed into the kitchen. Her hair was damp from her shower and she wore only the barest hint of make-up, but her beauty took Sark’s breath away.

She loves me, he thought, struck again by how amazing she was. Someone so beautiful, so good, so incredible, loves me.

Thankfully, Sydney was fully clothed. Sark doubted Jack’s tolerance of the situation could have withstood his daughter appearing in nothing but his old shirt.

Sydney did a double take when she saw her father, blushed slightly, and flashed Sark a quick, questioning glance as she kissed Jack’s cheek.

We’ve been playing nicely, Sark told her with his smirk.

“There’s a plane standing by for us at a nearby airfield,” Jack told them, his eyes on Sark. Sydney poured herself a cup of coffee and scooted her chair up next to Sark’s, entwining her ankles with his beneath the table. “I told the pilot we would be there in one hour.”

Abruptly, Jack rose. “I’ll give you a minute to talk,” he announced, and walked out onto the porch.

Sydney was reading the pardon over Sark’s shoulder. “You haven’t signed it.” She tried to keep her voice neutral, but she couldn’t hide the apprehension.

Turning to face her, Sark cupped Sydney’s chin in his hand and gazed into her dark eyes. “I want to ask you something first.”

She nodded, almost hesitantly, and he knew she was afraid – afraid that he was going to walk away from her again, afraid that he would choose Irina over her. “That day, on Marinus’ yacht…You and I were hardly friends at that point. Why did you almost kiss me?”

Sark wasn’t certain why everything hinged on her answer. Possibly because he needed a reason, an honest-to-god undeniable reason, to betray Irina, when it felt so wrong.

Sydney slid onto his lap and kissed him softly on the mouth, sending shivers down Sark’s spine. “You challenged me,” she explained, with simple honesty. “I would always tell myself that I despised you, that you were everything I abhorred in a person, but every time we ended up either working together or facing off against one another, I didn’t want it to end. You really pissed me off sometimes,” Sark grinned at that, “but you also brought out a side of me that everyone else in my life wanted to pretend wasn’t there. My father, Vaughn, Will, even Francie, they all had this idea of me that was so perfect I could never live up to it. But with you, I could just – I could just be Sydney. I was drawn to that, to you, even when I knew I couldn’t be.”

Sark started to speak, but Sydney laid a finger against his lips. “If you can’t sign that,” she nodded toward the pardon, “I understand. I know it doesn’t mean you don’t love me. And I think you should know, before you decide what to do, that I won’t ever leave you again. If you can’t come back to L.A. with me, then I’ll leave here with you.”

Sark was moved. It occurred to him that he hadn’t fully understood until that second just how much Sydney loved him.

Sealing his lips with one last, tender kiss, Sydney stood up. “I’m going out to talk to Dad. Take your time.”

Sark watched her walk away, considering. He had enough money to hide them, he knew, but in his heart he had already decided against that; he couldn’t ask Sydney to sacrifice everything she loved in her life for his sake, even though she would have done it.

So the choice was, really, to go back with her to L.A., to join with the CIA against Irina, or to leave here now, alone.

He looked back down at the paper in front of him, touched a finger to his lips where the warmth of her mouth lingered, and made his decision.

Yes, the road to salvation would be a long and bumpy one. But the only other road before him led away from Sydney, and Sark couldn’t accept that.

So he lifted the pen, signed his name – his real name – to the pardon and walked out to join Sydney and her father.

The End

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