It was time to leave.

No, it was past time to leave. He had entered the time of vain hope, a futile period, where he prayed something would happen to reverse the failure, which had already occurred.

Darren cycled through the channels on the radio in one final, desperate attempt to find a message from the team. Perhaps they were trying to contact him on a different bandwidth. But of course, they weren't. They all knew exactly what procedures to follow and if none of them had checked in, it could only mean they were dead or captured.

It was fifteen minutes since the point of mission failure.

Conner and Jorgenson were going to have his head.

What would Noelle say when he told her he'd been demoted? Told her he'd been fired? And that was if he got to tell her anything. A year ago he would never have believed SBI capable of it but after everything he'd seen, this failure might just land him in an unmarked grave.

Or would the authorities find him OD'd in his hotel room? In the ultimate act of karma, would they hire the same hitman Darren had used to get rid of Tray Cullen? Cullen's failure to carry out orders led him to that end, why should Darren expect any better?

Pungent sweat soaked his shirt. He would have liked to believe it was a product of the warehouse's poor ventilation and not fear, but he wasn't that good at fooling himself. Darren switched off the radio.

It was time to go.

As though in a dream, he moved through the large vaulted rooms following the last protocol, the task that needed to be done regardless of success. Every forty feet, he stopped and activated the timer on the thermite charges. The intense heat of the bombs would wipe out every trace of the warehouse and its contents. There would be no notes, no serial numbers, no DNA for anyone to find.

Darren should head straight to the airport. Just get on a plane and go. There was a flight that would see him in the air before the bombs in the warehouse went off. But there was also a redeye, which would give him time to collect his things.

Back in the apartment, there was a charcoal gray suit he worn to Madeline's christening, a yellow tie with the blue flower pattern given to him last Father's Day, and a suitcase from the luggage set Noelle's sister had given them as a wedding gift. It was strange what a hold these physical things had on him. As his life crumbled, he clutched on to them and the memories they were charged with. The thought of leaving without them twisted a knife in his guts.

It was a nervous drive, where every red light was an agonizing delay, and every set of headlights in the rear-view was a death squad. The night had lost its color. Every hue had drained away, leaving a hardboiled black and white world, where danger lurked in every shadow.

He reached the Ocotillo Resort and parked behind the strip of decorative cacti and palms shielding the apartments from the highway. He shut off the engine. Darren was shocked by the ragged sound of his own breath in the silence that followed.

Just get in. Grab the stuff. And get out. Do it quick and you'll make the flight, he told himself.

From the car to his second-floor unit, he moved at a pace that varied between a fast walk and a light jog. He took the stairs two at a time. His door was at the end of the open-air gallery. It was a long open stretch and all he could imagine as he passed the blank, uniform doors was the clear shot a sniper would have.

The key was in the lock when the voice spoke. He froze with fear and the total absence of hope, like a gazelle at the watering hole that knew the pouncing lion was already upon him.

"Do exactly as I say unless you want a bullet in your spine." Something hard prodded his lower back. "Open the door and get inside. Slowly."

Darren had been trained in self-defense, hand-to-hand combat, and dealing with all manner of hostile situations. But he wasn't a soldier or a field agent; he was an analyst and he had never been in this type of danger in his life. Instead of thinking of a counterattack, his mind fixated on the image of the bullet tearing into him, leaving him paralyzed or dead.

He fumbled with the lock, twisting it one way and then the other. Panic rose as neither seemed to unlock the stupid thing. It was a woman speaking. So they hadn't gotten the same hitman he had hired. She must have been hiding in the shadow of the vending machines waiting for him to come back.

What death did she have in store for him? A suicide? A botched robbery? Would it be humiliating? Would she stage it so Noelle would be ashamed by his death? Autoerotic asphyxiation? A prostitution deal gone wrong?

It seemed like a miracle when the door finally opened. He almost forgot the directive of "slowly" and rushed in, only stopping himself after the first hasty stride.

"Move." Again he was prodded and he stepped further into the one-room residence. The door closed behind them. "Raise your right hand."

"What?" The order seemed ridiculous. Raise your right hand and repeat after me. That was what you did when reciting an oath not when you were about to die.

"Raise it or I shoot." The voice was crisp. Precise. The dead, emotionless tone of a hired killer.

He put up his hand knowing that each step forward was moving him closer to his own demise but that refusal would only hurry it along.

A handcuff latched around his wrist and the killer yanked his arm down along his back. She rested his hand just above the spot where the gun pushed into him.

"Now your other one."

He raised it into the air.

"No, you idiot. Behind you, so I can cuff it."

As Darren followed the order, he realized this would be his best chance to try and wrestle the gun from her. But the muscles in his arm felt like overcooked noodles. He wasn't sure if it could lift a gun never mind fight for one.

Once he was secured, she pushed his shoulder, shoving him forward to create space between them.

"Turn around."

He had planned to turn very slowly, but when he caught a glimpse of his assailant, he was so horrified he spun to get a better look.

The woman was covered in blood. Soaked in it. Her face was a mask of dried specks that were slowly flaking off.

Oh my God, she's going to butcher me.

There was a moment of blind terror and a fuzzy pain spread across the surface of his body. It felt as though his molecules were preparing to flee like vermin saving themselves from a doomed ship. It took a second but rational thought began to reassert itself: no one SBI hired would show up covered in blood.

Recognition hit him like a kick to the groin. He knew that face. He'd studied it. Darren wished very much that it had been a contract killer instead.

"Barbara Gadaskinas? Or do you prefer Gracie now?" His voice was so shaky it wavered in pitch, squeaking and grinding through the words.

"Good. You know who I am." Barbara stood there like something vomited up by a horror movie, the gun in her hand aimed squarely at his heart. The pistol was a SIG Sauer. Darren knew because he had bought a crate of them for the assault team. It must be one from that shipment. She must have taken it from one of those highly trained men. The image of her taking it from the corpse of her victim played in his mind.

She continued, "And I know exactly who you are."

"I'm nobody." It was ridiculous but he strained against the handcuffs not to try and escape but because his body wanted his hands free to make pleading gestures. The horrors in her records came back to him in graphic detail. The patients she'd killed in secret. The brutal murder of that poor hospital administrator. All the deaths and maiming she had wrought on other prisoners.

"No, you're not nobody. You're the man who had someone I cared about killed. I think it's only fair that I kill someone you care about."

He wanted to stay stoic and silent. He wanted to follow his training and give her no information. But out came pathetic whines. "No. I'm sorry. Please. No."

"Darren Raymond Palmer born April 30th, 1980." She droned out the information like she had learned it by rote. "Daughters: Carrie Ann, age eight and Madeline Lexis, age four." Barbara ran her tongue over her lips. With her unblinking eyes and scales of blood, she looked every bit the serpent. "I'm going to give you a choice, a choice you weren't so kind as to offer me which one do you want me to kill?"

Darren had thought he'd known terror He thought he had already experienced it several times that night, but at the mention of his princess, he finally knew what true terror really was. His body was robbed of warmth and he was left with the chill of an open grave on his skin and the stomach-churning stench of death and rot in his mind. He was sinking into a pit. There was nothing he wouldn't be willing to do to claw his way out of it.

"No. Anything but that. Kill me instead." He crumpled to his knees. Without the balance of his arms, he pitched forward and landed on his face. Darren didn't care. He ground his forehead into the carpet and wept. "Please. Not them. They're innocent. Have a heart."

But she had no heart. He'd read the psyche evaluations from her trial. There were no human emotions in that insect-like brain of hers.

"Listen to me. I want you to understand this. I'm going to leave you here. You will be bound and gagged. In a few days, I'll come back. If you're still alive, I will present you with the skin of one of your daughters. You can pick which one you want. Or you can let me make the choice. Not an easy decision. I imagine the smaller one will be less work, but the older one would likely stay conscious longer."

This couldn't be happening.

"Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh God. Please. I'll do anything. Anything you want."

This shouldn't be happening. Not to me. Not to my sweet girls.

"You can't simply bargain your way out of this. You have nothing I want besides your misery."

It should be someone else. There were others that deserved this more.

"It wasn't me. I'm just a link in a chain, a pawn." He used all his strength to pull his face up off the floor so she could see him as he spoke. "You want the people in charge, the ones with power. Not me. I was just ordered to send those men. You want the people I work for. There are also people you work for, who betrayed you. Take them. I'll tell you who they all are. Just leave my family out of it."

Barbara ran a crimson hand over her head, slicking back her hair. It was the first time she moved since he had turned around. She didn't speak for a long time and with each second that passed a little more hope died inside of him.

"I can't imagine getting to the people in SBI or the government will be anywhere near as easy as it was to get to you. It wouldn't happen tonight or in the next couple of days. It would take time before they were all tracked down. And they won't be easy to hurt either. They're probably armed or have bodyguards. Am I right?"

"Yes, but I could..." Barbara cut him off with a shush and a wave of the gun.

"So I'll give you a new deal, my little worm. Your children can live for as long as you work for me. You will go back to your masters at SBI, but you'll report to me. You are going to help me destroy every last one of them. Does that work for you?"

Darren nodded emphatically.

***

Author's Note: I don't have a lot to say on the scene. By now you either are cheering Barbara on or seeing her as a villain. Maybe both. If this section leaves you with anything, I hope it's thoughts about the possibility of Barbara and Jorgenson being put on a collision course for Book Two.