Valeria was calm as she took a seat in the middle of the makeshift interrogation room, her legs crossed and hands on her knee. With her brows raised and brown eyes wide and shining, she could have been misconstrued as innocent were it not for her worn plate carrier and the blood on the knuckles of her gloves.

Graves looked between her and Alejandro with a concerned crease in his brow. "How do you two know each other?"

"Know is a strong word," snarled the Colonel, weaving back and forth in front of the container door like a caged tiger.

The deceptively innocent Valeria shrugged her shoulders forward, giving her head a puppy-dog tilt as she looked back at Alejandro. "Las palabras fuertes son importantes. ¿Nuestra palabra es nuestra valor, no?- Strong words are important. Our word is our worth, right?"

He bared his white teeth and lunged for her, barely held back when Ghost and Novaleen caught his shoulders. "A la verga, puta, que te voy a matar!- Go to hell, you fucking bitch, I'll kill you!"

"Alejandro, be calm!" Soap stepped between him and the captive, motioning with his hands down. "Take a breath, relax..."

"Yeah?! Yeah..." A hard breath withered his lungs and he rubbed his forehead until the vein running through it settled back down below his skin. "Go on. Tell them."

Valeria's innocent demeanor evaporated to a cool, menacing expression of defiance. "I don't take orders anymore. Even the dogs in Las Almas know not to bark at me."

Alejandro shook his head. "She's ex-military, we served together." Though his expression was hard and burning, his eyes betrayed a hurt locked in their depths.

"Different squads, same unit." Her earthen-brown eyes flickered with the intensity of a wild fire as she looked between Alejandro and Rodolfo standing behind him. "You were the wild ones, hmm, Los Vaquieros? My squad was clean cut señores y señoras."

"Until the raid on the son of La Arana," said Alejandro. "Te recuerdas?- you remember?"

"Me recuerdo perfecto... I remember perfectly..."

"Her team was told to cordon off the city to keep out La Arana's enforcers and prevent the bloodshed."

Valeria knit her brows together. "That's exactly what we did."

"Yeah, you kept out his enforcers, because you were his enforcers, huh?"

"He was escorted to the mountains without incident." Valeria pouted out her bottom lip at him. "Also to prevent bloodshed.

"He was supposed to go to prison," Rodolflo growled.

Valeria was silent and her gaze fell, lips tightening to a frown, and Graves paced around her with long, slow strides. "So you killed him," he deduced. "And then you took over."

"I created a power vacuum... And I filled it. Las Almas needs me."

"Las Almas needs soldiers, not sicarios," Alejandro corrected. "And you... you're a disgrace to the army. You and your brothers."

Graves furrowed his brows and folded his arms. "Why're you doin' this..?"

She glanced over her shoulder at him with a shrug. "You tell me... you're the contractor, no? What you don't do, your competitors will."

Novaleen felt a swell of aggression in her chest. That was bold, comparing Shadow Company to the cartel. She grit her teeth so hard she felt a twinge of pain in her molars.

Before she could snap at Valeria, Ghost stepped from his place in the corner beside her and the single light from the ceiling defined the skull on his face with deep, jagged shadows. "You're a narco helping a terrorist harbour weapons of mass destruction..."

She scanned him up and down and leaned back in her seat. "Terrorism is good for business. It's insurance." He stepped even closer, and her spine straightened, but her expression remained cool and collected. "As long as there is a war on terror, there will be no real war on drugs."

Ghost's eyes remained heavy. "Yeah. Too bad drug lords who help terrorists are also deemed terrorist." His hand fell to his sidearm. "You're not making a good case for yourself, mate."

She swallowed, locking her burning eyes on his. "To find your so-called terrorist, and your missiles, you need me. To prevent bloodshed."

Alejandro violently shook his head. "No. I'm not doing this..."

Soap shrugged, following slowly behind him. "Doesn't change anything."

"It changes EVERYTHING!" he bellowed. "FUCK! Don't make a deal with her... It won't end well." With nothing but sympathetic looks as his reply, he pushed the metal doors open with a screech and was gone.

Soap's head hung with remorse and he turned his blue eyes on Valeria. "Looks like it's your turn to tell the truth."

She cocked a brow with a mild grin at him but quickly lost it when Graves' breath feathered her ear. "I want the missiles, I want the target, and I want Hassan. And you've got ten seconds or I'm gonna show you the difference between the military and me."

"I don't know the targets. I'm a courier, I move things. And Hassan dropped communications more than 24 hours ago." She rolled her neck to move her face away from his. "I can tell you where to find the missiles. In exchange, when you return, you will let me go. And get the fuck out of Las Almas."

His sinister murmur rose to a gleeful chirp and he grasped her shoulders with a shake. "Deal! Until then..." She gasped as he slid his hands down her arms to her wrists and swiftly tied them to the chair with a cord. "You're stayin' right here."

"Puta...- Fucker..." She sneered at him as he walked away, but he was gone too quickly to spit at him. Her foot stomped on the floor and she rolled her head back with a deep sigh, blowing a loose lock of hair out of her face.

Philip's hand landed on Novaleen's shoulder. "You good?"

"I wanna rock that bitch's shit..."

He laughed and hugged her to his side. "You and me both, sis."

She shook her head with a growl. "That thing she said about being contractors, beating out our competition..."

"I mean, she wasn't wrong..."

"Yeah, but it makes my blood boil. We're not criminals. We aren't harboring terrorists, or smuggling missiles that we shouldn't have into places they shouldn't be, and-"

"Alright, I hear ya, NAG." His voice grew rough and she flinched. "... We're not like Sin Nombre, we're not like the cartel. Don't let what Valeria said get to you." Graves pushed past her and called over Malloy.

Soap and Ghost were both quickly at her side and she avoided their gazes. "What was that about?" Soap asked quietly.

"It's nothing. Philip is just stressed from the last few days, and Valeria aggravated him more."

"Nothin' he didn't bring on himself..." he mused. "Well, hopefully, he uses that aggravation to avoid Valeria. Can't trust him not to kill her during interrogation."

"Might be why he's talking to his other Shadows." Ghost looked toward the rising sun, squinting his eyes against the golden gilt hills. "Nothing we can do for now. Let's rest up and wait to hear when Valeria cracks." Soap nodded and walked away first, but Ghost remained beside Novaleen, his brown eyes scanning her averted face. "You don't seem okay. What did he say to you?"

She turned further away from him. "He didn't say anything, he was just upset."

"Then why are you acting like a kicked dog?"

"He's never snapped at me before..." She finally looked at him and felt an unsteadiness in her stomach. "This isn't like him... I don't know what's happening to him, but I miss him..." A lump started to swell in her throat and she rubbed her eyes.

Before she could start away, he grabbed her wrist. "Do I need to talk to him?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Why do you care, Ghost?"

He screwed up his mouth in disdain under his mask. "He hurt you. I'm looking out for you."

"I don't need you to do that. You wanted nothing to do with me just two days ago, and I went to Philip to look out for me because you hurt me." Novaleen set her brows, slowly withdrawing her wrist from his hand. "Make up your mind, and stop torturing me with this back-and-forth."

It felt like she had hit him in the stomach. "... I'm sorry, Novaleen." She opened her mouth to speak again, but he turned away, heading in the direction Soap had left.

"Estás muy molesto, hermano...- You're pretty upset, brother..."

Alejandro paced in circles with his mouth turned down in a frown when Rodolfo approached him. "Esto no va a salir bien. No podemos confiar en ella.- This isn't going to go well. We can't trust her."

Rodolfo shrugged. "Estoy de acuerdo. Pero si eso significa que salvamos vidas, tenemos que hacerlo.- I agree. But if it means we're saving lives, we have to."

The Colonel halted his gait and locked eyes with him. "Rudy, no te quiero en la próxima misión.- Rudy, I doing want you on the next mission."

His brows jerked upward, his mouth parting in surprise. "¿Qué? ¿Por qué?- What? Why??"

Alejandro grasped his shoulder, pulling him closer with his voice low. "Ve a la casa segura cuando nos vayamos. Si es seguro volver, te llamaré. Si no, necesito a alguien que pueda cuidar de mi familia si me pasa algo.- Go to the safe house when we leave. If it's safe to return, I'll call you. If not, I need someone who can take care of my family if something happens to me."

"Me estás preocupando, Alejandro.- You're worrying me, Alejandro," said Rodolfo, the lines in his face deepening with a frown. "¿Qué crees que va a pasar?- What do you think will happen?"

"No lo sé, pero la idea de Graves y Valeria del mismo lado suena peligrosa. No confío en ninguno de ellos...- I don't know, but the thought of Graves and Valeria on the same side sounds dangerous. I don't trust either of them..."

Graves stepped into the shipping container with a glass of water so cold that it began to perspire the moment the door closed behind him. "So, in exchange for a glass of water, you'll tell me what I want to know?"

Valeria crossed her ankles and shot him a challenging smirk. "Yes. Give me that water, and I'll tell you where the missile is."

He paused short of her mouth and held the cup close to his chest. "Missile..?"

"That is what you're looking for, no?"

"Oh, yeah, it is, I just figured..."

Her eyes narrowed and her smile turned crooked. "You figured nothing, estúpido- stupid. You know you're missing three missiles just as well as I do. Tell me, how did the Russians get them from you, hmm? Did they steal them, or did you willingly hand them over? Either way, this looks bad for you."

The glass shattered on the floor and he grasped her chair, laying her nearly on her back. "It's none of your fuckin' business how we lost our missiles, what is your business is how I get them back." His free hand wrapped around her throat with a firm squeeze. "Now you can keep fuckin' around, or you can start talking."

Valeria struggled around his grip, trying not to choke, and she managed to sneer. "No one but Hassan and I know where those missiles are, and neither of us knows where Hassan is. You need me, pandejo."

His grip softened and moved up to her jaw, pulling her face closer. "You're right, so tell me where they are, or this is about to be much harder for me."

She blew a strand of hair out of her face and smiled. "You know, I saved your ass back there."

"What are you talking about?"

"I could have told your little friends what happened, and I didn't; I still could if I wanted. You should be thankful." Graves frowned, his brow forming a deep crease, and she smiled brightly. "Oohh, what's the matter? You don't like being at someone else's mercy?"

"Fuck you!" He squeezed her face tighter and she winced. "Tell me where the goddamn missiles are!"

"How about, I tell you where one missile is and when you come back, I'll consider telling you where the other one is."

"Alejandro will know when I don't cut you loose..."

Her smile was so sly, it made him sick. "Indeed. If there's one thing I know about Alejandro, he may be a naive hopeful, but he's not stupid."

"None of them can know I lost the missiles. I'll have to make a coverup."

"Exactly."

He set her chair back on its legs and tilted his head. "... Go on."

"I want Los Vaqueros out of my way, and you want to save your people from destruction. You get Alejandro's men off this base and take them out; once he and his people are gone, come back to me and I will tell you where the last missile is. Then we can go our separate ways."

He sighed, eyes flickering back and forth in silent pondering. "... Tell me where one missile is."

She felt a flutter of excitement in her gut. "300 nautical miles into the Gulf of Mexico. It's an old oil rig, we use it for deadrops. You'll know it's the right one when you see a cargo ship anchored 500 meters northwest of it."

He straightened his plate carrier on his frame and gave her a stiff nod. "Copy that."

As he stalked away she did her best to wet her lips with a dry tongue. "Do me a favor, Commander, and send one of your men back with another glass of water. You spilled mine."