He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom. – P.G. Wodehouse

It was a taste of heaven before the trapdoor opened beneath me into hell. – Nessa, after Jase rescued her from Bill Henry

When Jase would look back on the subsequent forty-five seconds, he would see every event cemented into a permanent fixture in his mind. After he heard the crackling of the door, he jerked his head back above the roofline to avoid discovery. Reaching onto his belt, he removed his largest knife from its sheath and held it as discreetly as possible under the edge of the roof using it as a mirror.

The action allowed him to watch undetected as the door swung slowly open and a diminutive male form stepped onto the pebbled pathway between the buildings. Though Jase heard the voice instantly, he needed several seconds to register the meaning of the heavily-accented English.

“I assure you, sir, this is unnecessary,” the little form spoke behind himself into the open doorway. “Please, do not displease the master this way. Leave the woman in the car or in one of our cells. He never brings merchandise into a meeting before the display. It is ungentlemanly.”

Jase heard the responding voice before the face came into view, and every ounce of anger that had simmered during the last few hours threatened to rip him from his observation post and into a confrontation.

“I told you,” came Drew's baritone an instant before the tall man's face ducked under the doorway. “My boss expects trouble, and she is our insurance policy against complications.”

“Yes, sir, but his excellency has asked me to assure you of our security. Please, we have locked cells in the hallway behind you.”

Jase’s heart gave a lurch at the sight of the bound and struggling form of the woman, and when she stumbled to her knees on the gravel, a red haze of ire blinded him. A moment later, Drew grasped the ropes that bound Nessa's hands and wrenched her from the ground.

At her moan of pain, Jase almost leapt from his perch and attacked Drew then and there. One thought, though, jumped into his mind and held him still. Jase had brought his laptop to Bangkok.

Why would Drew have waited so long to tell Nessa of the communication between Amélie and Jase? What if he told her when he found out – once he had hacked the computer Jase brought to Bangkok? Though Jase knew he had not left a trail to follow in Boston, he had no knowledge of what happened once the plane landed in Bangkok.

He had not thought to ask Thomas about the laptop. Not exactly a likely scenario, but if the slightest chance existed that Nessa had come willingly with Drew – maybe as part of a ruse – Jase could not afford to interfere.

Sure, if left to his own devices, Drew would not have possessed the savvy to set up a bait and switch against Bill, but Nessa just might. Everything within him screamed to protect Nessa, but Jase had trained himself to subvert his emotions for the sake of the mission, and he could not afford to change his tactics now. Nessa's safety depended on it.

Jase restrained himself, sucking in a shaky breath the second the door into the main room closed behind the woman he loved. Though he understood her possible reasoning, Jase wavered between anger at Nessa for her reckless interference, frustration at Drew for allowing it, and misery at the thought that Jase might have just watched unmoved while Nessa entered the hornet's nest.

Regardless, Jase now needed to create his two new plans: one where he played a support role in Nessa's plan, and the other in which he took down, not only the ten guards, Bill, Perry, and Amélie, but Drew as well. Jase could easily manage the exterior guards, and when he took one of their guns, the threat of injury could slow down several of the guards inside the room.

For a moment, Jase leaned back against an abutment and raised his face toward the sky. He sighed a deep breath, almost overwhelmed with the current state of affairs. Even with all of his knowledge, experience, and ability, Jase did not know how to handle the personal involvement.

It added an element he had never experience before, and he worried that he would not know which voice to listen to when the moment for action came. After a second, he pushed himself up to a crouch, ready to move. He could spare no time for frustration or weakness.

Returning to the skylight above the meeting room, Jase lay down on the graveled roof and peered deliberately into the crevice. Fortunately, since the room occupied a larger space, it required more ventilation, and the raised mesa stood several inches higher than those in the corridor. Jase had room to lean his head and a good portion of his shoulders into the opening.

The squared edges of the skylight limited his view, but he could easily see the governor from his perch, as well as what would seem a pair of legs belonging to Bill. They extended languidly into the space before their owner, and Jase again recognized the flat square toes of the expensive shoes that Bill favored.

No sign of Nessa, so she probably stood on the perimeter of the room, maybe hidden away behind some divider. Withdrawing his head carefully, making certain not to knock any gravel into the space below, Jase scurried to a nearby skylight that stood above the same room.

He could not see the governor, nor Bill, but he had a clear view of the two men standing guard at the entrance to the room. Still no Nessa. In keeping with the lushness of the chamber, several curtains hung along the wall, and Jase noted with pleasure that one set hung at the doorway into the room, a grandiose span of nearly twenty feet near the northeast corner of the space.

Whether the curtains covered an alcove or hung merely inches from the wood, Jase could not tell. Still, they provided him with ample cover to assault the two guards covertly. If the opposite side wore curtains as well, maybe he could use them to access Nessa.

Jase raised up and glided to the space between the two skylights. Peering around him, he calculated as best he could the layout of the room. One wall ran along the alleyway he had earlier surveyed, and Jase deduced that Drew and Nessa most likely had established their position in the room near that wall, though whether behind one of the curtains or in plain sight, Jase didn't know. Neither the governor nor Amélie had acknowledged Nessa's presence.

Pausing, Jase considered his options. He could enter through the alley, but he could not discern what potential exposure lay just inside. Though he had utilized the bustle of a kitchen to mask his presence in Boston, Jase doubted that a “white indian” could easily blend into the Asian domestics that he felt sure carried out any cooking, so he could not sneak through there again.

So his options remained the exterior wall and the kitchen corridor with the main entrance of the meeting room. The main entrance still offered the best strategy. Movement near that door would arouse little notice, the curtains provided plenty of cover, and the door lay only a few feet from the external courtyard Jase had stood in only moments before. With the depth of the darkness, Jase felt little concern about his ability to hide outside.

As he lowered himself back off the roof and into the grassy courtyard, he caught sight of a narrow gravel pathway that ran between the courtyard and the meeting room. It held two doors and was set behind a tall row of thick hedges which rendered it invisible from the ground, at least at night. Jase smiled to himself.

Creeping behind the bushes, Jase waited impatiently for the lone patrol to complete his course past the courtyard and turn on the east side of the building. Armed with a gun, the sentry would need to be disabled instantly to avoid too much noise. The main entrance stood only feet from the little pathway, and Jase figured he could debilitate half of the guards without detection.

After a few minutes, Jase grew impatient. His curiosity about the doors tore at his concentration, so when the guard did not show, Jase decided to pick the locks. When he pressed his ear to the first door, he could discern the warbled voice of the commander as it ebbed through the door. The other door proffered no sound, so Jase quickly picked its lock and eased it open.

It issued forth into a small alcove, but it widened into an apparently unused office rather than the meeting room. When he moved to the second door's lock, he took extra care to make no noise. The moment the door cracked, Jase could understand the words floating through the air on the other side. For a moment, he stood, motionless, and listened for any sign that someone had recognized his presence.

No one even paused, and no shuffling of feet ensued. When he peered through the narrow opening, Jase could see nothing. He opened the door wider and reached his hand to explore the blackness that separated him from the rest of the room. As he had hoped, his fingertips encountered a thick cloth, no doubt the curtains he had spied in other sections of the room.

He eased in through the door, grateful for the darkness outside and the stifling air. As a result, no light would shoot into the room through the open door, and no breeze would stir the curtains. Because of the open skylights, the pressure inside the room did not change either. With a careful motion, Jase grabbed the back side of the curtain at a seam and spread a minute space between the curtains. He could take in the entirety of the room, and still no one saw him or his maneuverings.

As Jase had expected, Drew sat like a king in a leather armchair, almost reclining in relaxed nonchalance. Between Jase and Drew, on the southern wall of the room, stood the little man who had led the pair into the main hall. On Drew's other side, still bound and looking anguished, stood Nessa, numbly staring into the space before her.

A welt stood out on her right cheek, something Jase had not seen from his earlier vantage point on the roof. For an instant, a red glare blinded him, his rage threatening to leap beyond the control of his rational mind. If Drew had hit her, then Drew just might need to die. Even if she had allowed it, they could have found other ways to establish authenticity.

Jase pulled his head back from the doorway, slowly pressing the door shut. With the red swelling on Nessa's cheek, Jase began to doubt the possibility of her complicity with Drew. Though still possible, it grew more unlikely with every glance at Nessa's anguish. Jase knew Nessa, and she did not look as if she were acting.

Creeping down the length of the alleyway, he quickly ascertained that the guards had not yet completed whatever circuit they had begun. Jase cleared the four-foot wrought-iron fence that bound the courtyard, passed up a narrow pathway that led between the kitchen and the great hall, and carefully crept to the exterior doors of the building.

Two guards stood sentry outside the main entrance into the chamber. Leaning against one of the doors, Jase pushed it gently open just enough to allow sound to escape the barrier.

Glancing around him, Jase found nothing that would provide what he needed. He reached into the holster at his waist and pulled out the only pistol he had taken from the rebels, tapping it gently against the fence until the metal rang with a hollow thrumming.

Slowly, he increased the force of his stroke until the metal rang out clearly and reverberated with an unmistakably unnatural sound. He rapidly hid himself within the bushes of the hedge, several feet from the pathway, and waited to see whether one or both of the guards would come to investigate.

Within seconds, a lone man pushed the door the rest of the way open and turned his head to take in the courtyard. He could not see Jase's hiding place, and Jase heard the man raise his voice to shout back into the hallway. After sliding the rest of the way into the courtyard, the man pushed the door gently back into place and began to traverse the covered walkway that connected the building with its neighbor.

Jase purposely rattled the bushes, withdrawing from within them into the graveled alleyway and stepping into the most shadowed recess in the corner. For several seconds, he watched the feet of his enemy creep closer as the man walked along the hedges to their southern end.

As soon as the man stepped within Jase's reach, Jase lunged out of the bushes, grabbing his adversary around the throat and applying just enough pressure to ensure the man's silence. A step in the corridor sent Jase scurrying back into the shadows with his prey, and since the man ceased struggling, Jase lowered him to the ground, quickly restraining his hands. He wouldn’t wake up for half an hour, and Jase hoped he could finish his task before then.

Only a few seconds later, the step he had heard was followed by the first guard’s partner, and Jase dispatched him in a similar fashion, leaning him into the corner with his comrade.

Shaking himself, Jase stood and regrouped, now sneaking up to the open door so he could peek inside. Any minute now, the sentry that guarded the exterior of the building would return, having completed his circuit, and Jase needed to enter the main room before that happened. The coast clear, Jase glided along the interior wall, securing the door behind him.

From the time he knocked out those guards, Jase had only minutes to proceed before all hell would break loose. As it now stood, the guards that milled around Aung Sun's compound had done so stealthily, not wanting to alert Bill of any possible danger.

They still had no solid proof that they had an enemy within their midst, and betraying weakness to their guest might cost their leader a deal with a wealthy American. As soon as the guards discovered their fettered colleagues, they would surely raise the intensity of their pursuit. He had to get to Nessa as quickly as possible.

When Jase reached the massive double-doors which led into the main chamber, he used his knife to break the seal on the doorway. Unlike the previous time, when he gently cracked one of the doors open, a breath of wind rushed from the chamber, and Jase prayed that the curtains inside would not stir. At first, nothing happened, and Jase leaned his ear to the door to hear the interchange taking place inside.

“...a token of our agreement,” came Bill's voice. “You understand, we could not bring you a weapon; our contact inside China would not part with anything until I had spoken to you directly.”

A mumbled reply that he couldn’t make out floated to Jase’s ears before Bill continued.

“The pictures we have provided will have to suffice. We can guarantee that the technology we bring you will revolutionize the way that you are able to communicate with your ally to the east. As a token of our agreement, we would like to offer you merchandise that will prove very lucrative to you in the meantime.”

A heavily accented voice responded deferentially. “Please, Mr. Henry. We have no need of assurances from you. Our contacts satisfy us as to your reliability, and we stand to gain much from your generosity.”

Jase felt nauseous at the decorum wasted upon such a despicable human being, but he didn't spend his energy on a pointless exercise. For the first time, he fully recognized the enormity of the task before him. Not only did he have to fend off at least two more guards, Jase had to confront two trained agents, possibly three, with Bill and the governor standing by to lend aid to Jase's adversaries. Hopefully, chaos would direct its forces in Jase's favor.

Steeling himself, Jase gazed through the crack into the room. From his vantage point, the curtains blocked the majority of the view, but Jase recognized with disgust a lilting French tone, the timbre hinting at subtle amusement.

“Je pense que c'est meilleur pour moi si elle va avec le commandant. Si elle n'est pas avec notre ami, peut-être il peut penser meilleur. Il est fou maintenant.”

He is crazy right now, she had sneered. Jase couldn't restrain a silent laugh. Though Amélie played coy, he often wondered just how far her obsession with him ran. He would not ever call it affection; affection required that she wish his benefit along with hers.

For Amélie, any connection to him held its power through its benefit for her alone. Since Nessa, Jase had ceased to hold any real value for Amélie because he had abandoned their unspoken contract of mutual self-gratification. Jase now officially cared more about someone else than about himself. For the first time since Meg, he realized.

He had felt moments of selflessness over the years – with Felicity, he knew, and with a few others – but they had all passed fleetingly into oblivion after an initial impulse. With Nessa, Jase could not care less about himself if he could help her.

As he processed the rest of Amélie's words, Jase's breathing raced with his fury. It's better for me if she goes with the commandant, Amélie had asserted. Of course, the words should not have surprised him, but they confirmed her complete complicity in detaining Nessa.

Even worse, Amélie somehow still thought that Jase might return to ProtoComm, and therefore his relationship with her. She had so cauterized her conscience that she would hand her rival over into cruel slavery out of base jealousy, and she so misunderstood Jase that she thought he wouldn't care.

Feeling a sudden rush of violence, Jase stepped back from the door to cool his head lest he act foolishly and harm Nessa in the process. A gentle creak of the door as he moved it pressed Jase against the wall, and he waited coldly until a guard stuck his head beyond the wood.

As Jase had done before, he grasped the guard around the neck, debilitating him within seconds. The continuous parade of guards made Jase reconsider his current course. Regardless of how many guards Jase subdued, as soon as he appeared in the room, Nessa would become a target for Bill - fodder to control Jase.

Had he put Nessa in greater danger with his earlier caution? Perhaps he should have grabbed her from the alleyway. If they had known Jase stood ready to fight with them, Drew and Nessa might have developed a different plan. If Drew had actually kidnapped Nessa, Jase could have gotten her away and out of harm's way.

As Jase stood deliberating in the hallway, a sudden movement and a shout wrenched him from all thought. In the doorway to the exterior of the building, a silhouette blackened the gaping rectangle that had before contained only a vague shadowy darkness.

Almost instantly, the shape charged at Jase, and just as the two collided, the big wooden door into the chamber wrenched open, and another form entered the fray.

Damn, Jase cursed. So much for minimizing collateral damage. Why hadn’t they just shot him? Gunfire would spook the client, Jase realized. Well, better for Jase.

He planted a fist across one man's jaw while he swung his leg to land squarely on the other man's right side. Though neither went down, both stumbled, and Jase continued his forward momentum, pummeling the man whose jaw he had just belted. When the second man approached from behind, Jase ducked his head and shoulders into the first man's midsection, lifting him up and over and into the second man, who had just raised his fist to strike Jase.

Twisting swiftly, Jase assessed the positions of the men's weapons. He laid a blow across the cheek of the uppermost soldier; the two guards having stumbled to the ground when Jase threw them together. While the man reeled from Jase's blow, Jase pulled his knife from his belt, slicing across the strap that held the man's automatic rifle to his midsection. Almost instantly, Jase held the gun pointed at the two men.

With his free hand, Jase motioned to the second guard to hand over his own rifle, and with both weapons secure, Jase forced the men out into the courtyard. With a little difficulty, the men cleared the hedge into the alleyway, and Jase supervised as one man manacled the other. Then, Jase crossed their wrists behind their backs. Neither could free himself.

He quickly released the magazine and patted down the guards for others. Finding none, he cleared the chambers and tossed the rifles into the bushes, holding onto the ammo. The guns were impractical to hold onto while he was climbing.

Returning to the glass doors, he peered through to the hallway and watched intently for the remaining guard who had stood inside the great hall. Instead of a guard, however, Perry appeared and Jase sneered at the sight.

So, one guard remained in the chamber along with the governor, Bill, Amélie, Drew, and Nessa. Jase did not consider the small servant he had spied earlier as an adversary in any way. Jase felt confident that, if he used stealth, he could slip past Perry, but how would that take? Long enough for Bill to hurt Nessa or sent her out as bait?

Rather than waste time, Jase dashed across the courtyard into the open, luring Perry into an immediate battle. Of course, Perry knew better than to attack Jase in hand to hand, so the smaller operative resorted instead to his firearm, discharging several shots in Jase's general direction. So much for stealth.

Jase lunged behind a pillar, and Perry crossed openly across the courtyard, striding cockily toward Jase's hiding place. Did he think Jase would enter such a situation unarmed? Or did he think that Jase wouldn't shoot his long-time acquaintance. Either way, the man was delusional.

When Perry approached the pillar, Jase could hear the crunch of the grass under the adversary's feet and prepared to aim and fire in quick succession. Jase leaned from behind the rounded concrete and fired his gun twice, once into each of Perry's legs.

Perry screamed in pain, and before he could recover, which Jase knew would only take a few seconds, Jase bashed Perry up the side of the head, stunning the smaller man long enough for Jase to wrench his arms behind him.

Within seconds, Jase had dragged Perry across the courtyard to the alleyway, yanking a zip tie from his belt and using it to bind Perry's arms. Though Jase hated to waste a moment, he cut a sleeve off of another soldier's shirt and, ripping it in two, quickly secured bandages on Perry's legs.

“You really are crazy, like Amélie said,” Perry gasped with pain. “Only a fool would leave me alive.”

Unfazed, Jase pointed his rifle toward one of Perry's wounds. “You might want to shut your mouth, or I may wise up quickly.” Jase glared down as the sandy heap of humanity gritted his teeth in pain. “Bite this,” Jase grinned before shoving another piece of cut cloth into the mouth of his persistent nemesis. “It'll make you feel better. Or it will at least make me feel better.”

Jase didn't waste a moment, certain that when Perry delayed in returning, Bill would know the extent of the trouble he faced and would start manipulating Nessa to protect himself. My boss expects trouble, Drew had said. And she is our insurance policy against complications. An effective policy.

Rather than return to the main entrance, Jase returned to the alleyway where the men still sat bound together. He would have preferred to enter through the original alleyway where he had seen Nessa, but the trek across the roof or around the perimeter would require too much time. Jase had no more time.

As the situation escalated, Jase realized that he would have to stop concerning himself with collateral damage. Not that he would aim for the cooking staff or use the prisoners as shields for himself, but if a man wore a uniform or carried a gun, he would qualify as a target – conscripted or not.

Still, while he slinked along the shrouded path, Jase filtered through some of his tactics that would debilitate without proving fatal.

Jase made his way to the alley's meeting room door, not bothering to break the seal before gently pushing it open. He had to risk his advantage of surprise because speed had become of paramount importance. As soon as he felt sure that no one waited in ambush on the other side of the door, Jase crept inside. He controlled his breath as he caught sight of Drew.

If Jase read Nessa's expression correctly, she had not agreed to accompany him from the room. Drew's left hand grasped Nessa's restraints, almost dragging her behind him. With angry determination, the man stalked toward the main doors with his captive in tow. As Jase had expected, Bill had sent Drew into action.

Bill and the governor scurried to the southern wall of the room, while Amélie and the remaining guard flanked the “important” men in a defensive formation. The small servant reached his hand for the doorknob to return to the alley from which he had come.

Strategically, Jase could have discerned several successful strategies, but only if his lone intention lay in apprehending Bill. Jase's focus had shifted materially from his initial one, though. His focus currently fought with all of her strength against a man who weighed nearly twice her weight. With a deafening yell, Jase rushed Drew, intent to stun the larger man by surprise and sheer force of will.

“Get down,” Drew cried across the room. Jase looked to Nessa for any sign that Drew acted duplicitously, but the look that she leveled at Drew removed any doubt from Jase's mind as to his former friend's intentions. Nessa hated Drew. Fortunately for both Jase and Nessa, the knowledge of her position empowered Jase, and he refocused all his attention on attacking Drew.

Though Drew had initially reached for his gun, Jase saw the sandy-haired op shift the trajectory of that hand and the other hand joined its motion. Both clasped Nessa by the hair, shoving her to the ground directly in Jase's path. He could possibly have dodged her falling form, but Drew had thrown her in such a way that she would have had no protection from the fall, her hands bound tightly behind her back.

Instead, Jase threw himself beneath her, taking the full force of her descent. To feel her skin on his again enlivened him, infusing new fuel into his ire. Before Jase could react, though, his so-called friend had raised a gun, leveling it coldly at Jase's head.

Jase could not manage any type of rapid-attack, pinned as he was by Nessa, and so he instead opted to delay Drew's attack. “Whoa,” Jase feigned conciliation. “Just don't hurt her, and I won't cause any problems. I’ll give you the positions of the rest of my team.”

Though Jase kept himself poised to strike, ready to lash out with his feet if Drew appeared trigger happy, he raised his hands as if in surrender. By the time he had finished speaking, Nessa had struggled to her feet, and she came to a standstill at Jase's side.

“Shit!” Drew complained, and Jase knew that the traitor realized how a team meant they needed Jase for intel. Drew also had to know that if he shot Nessa, he would get nothing from Jase. It wasn’t security, but it was better than letting Drew think Jase was alone. “He says he has a team, Mr. Henry,” Drew informed sullenly.

From his post against the southern wall, Bill turned, his movement visible in Jase's peripheral vision. Jase adjusted toward the movement and focused on Bill while covertly keeping Drew in sight.

“I'm highly disappointed in you, Jase,” Bill leered, stepping from his position against the wall and back toward the center of the room. Time for him to reassert his dominance, Jase silently mocked. Amélie mirrored Bill's movement while the three Burmese men looked ready to flee. “After all this time and all of your potential, you lose sight of the objective.”

“Oh, I understand your objective, Bill,” Jase began, always aware of Nessa's presence at his side. “Money and power. So simplistic, really. A little short-sighted for someone of your position and intelligence.”

“Vae victus,” Bill chuckled. “When you have as much power as I do, you gain a new perspective on things. My position and intelligence are worthless without money and power.”

Jase felt Drew's hand grasping his shoulder, an exertion of power, but Jase refused to acknowledge the gesture. “So what's your excuse, Drew?” Jase began. “Not enough money and power on the right side?” Jase resisted ever-so slightly against the hand as Drew reached for his enemy's arm to restrain it. Disheartened, Jase worked to remain rational. He should have no serious trouble managing the situation, but Nessa's danger blurred his normally ice-cold reason.

In the next instant, however, Jase felt Drew's grip wrenched from its perch on his shoulder, and Jase turned at the sound of the loud thump that denoted a felled blow. To Jase's surprise, Nessa had grasped a floor lamp by its stem, and Drew lay on the ground at her feet. Relief washed through Jase, but he didn't pause to feel it.

Though she had stunned Drew, Nessa had not incapacitated him, and Jase wasted no time in grabbing Nessa's arm, now bound in front of her, and dashing with her across the room toward the main door.

Drew reached for their feet, but Jase landed a kick on the man's cheek, and the force threw Drew back several inches. Before Amélie could draw her pistol, Jase had pulled Nessa beyond the curtains. Still, a series of bullets zinged through the thick material before Jase pulled Nessa out the door.

Jase sprinted out the exterior door, lifting Nessa over the fence and rounding the corner back to the west. His knowledge of the compound offered him a distinct advantage over Drew, though not over the guards Though Jase's trajectory kept him within close proximity to the room where his enemies now stood, it also meant the shortest distance to a secluded location where he could free Nessa and the two could plan her escape.

As Jase had suspected, Drew burst out the main entrance within a few seconds, hard on their heels. Once Jase had dragged Nessa to the west end of the exterior of the meeting room, he pulled her past the alleyway where he had first encountered her. At that instant, Amélie burst out of one of the alley's doors.

“Jase, arrêt!” she commanded, and Jase sneered internally at the plaintive tone of her request. Even after all she had done, Amélie seemed to harbor some confidence in Jase's affection for her.

Not slowing, Jase raced past the alleyway, Nessa in tow, and continued along the western edge of the compound. As soon as he could manage it, he pressed Nessa against the wall behind a narrow outcropping, no more than two feet deep. Despite their circumstances, Jase inhaled Nessa's scent, reveling in the way his cheek pressed against hers.

“Stay still,” he commanded her, and she leaned her head back so he could see when she rolled her eyes at him. Jase had to smirk.

He unsheathed his knife and quickly sliced through the bonds on her hands, reaching his arms behind her for space to cut the cloth of the gag. For a moment, he melted into the sensation of having his arms around her.

From his position, Jase could hear the clamoring of feet and the shouting of commands, but he felt certain that all the noise arose from a good distance away, at least thirty yards. He needed only a moment to wrap around the next corner where he could help Nessa through the window that he had entered hours before - his first incursion into the compound.

Moving quickly, Jase spanned the distance to the window and helped Nessa up the water spout and onto the ledge. He immediately followed. By the time he scrambled over the ledge, Nessa had already dropped into the empty room.

“Hurry,” she commanded as he lowered himself into the room, and Jase fell directly into her space, his body missing hers by no more than an inch.

“Miss me?” he grinned, his recovery of Nessa making him giddy. Jase knew that they had yet to escape, but he felt confident in his ability to control factors now that he didn't have to worry about what his enemies did with Nessa while he worked. He forced himself to be satisfied with tracing his lips across her cheek before he pulled away and began planning.

“First thing,” he began, “is that I have to get you out of here.”

Though Jase felt certain that he could direct her to the secret egress through the rebels' tunnels, he did not know how much time he could spare in taking her there himself. Surely, he trusted her ability enough to let her traverse the open space between the compound and the woods edge.

“I'm not leaving you, you idiot!” she chastised, adopting a vitriol not natural to her character. “The fact that you insisted on undertaking this alone is the whole reason I have been dragged here as a prisoner. If you had let me work with you, we could be done with this. Instead, I got beat up by my ex-boyfriend, and you had to run out on your mission to 'save me.' Now, I assume you're still planning on going through with this ridiculous plan?” Her eyes, nearly black in the darkness, glinted in irritation at the last statement.

Beat up? Jase fumed. For a moment, he had to restrain himself from charging back into the fray with the sole purpose of destroying Drew Pearson. The fact that the man laid a finger on Nessa disqualified him from the right to possess limbs.

Instead of succumbing to the urge, however, he dragged Nessa into his arms, squeezing as tightly as he could without adding his own insult to her extant injury. When he spoke, his voice barely escaped, he had to restrain himself tight enough to control the fury that had sprung suddenly to life at the thought of her suffering.

“I'm so sorry,” he whispered into her ear, his breath pressing hot from his throat and running down her cheek. “I just keep hurting you, and all I want is to protect you. I've never wanted to keep anyone safe the way I want to keep you safe.”

The silence breathed for several seconds before Jase heard Nessa, her breath hitching slightly. Too his horror, Jase thought he heard a quiet sob escape her lips. The sounds and smells of the building around him melted into oblivion for a heartbeat as Jase heard the audible proof of her pain.

He wanted to cry himself. Instead, they stood entwined for a few seconds, and Jase's lips found the tender skin on her temple, his hand involuntarily running its way through her hair on the opposite side and pressing her gently to him.

She didn't move for several minutes, and Jase could hear the whispers of her crying as he held her. His shirt sleeve grew damp from her tears. A pang in his gut, Jase just held her listening to her slowly calming breaths. After she had ceased to shake, she ran her own hands up his back, and to Jase's surprise, she turned her mouth to meet his own.

Jase’s flesh quivered as the sensation ripped through him. When her mouth met his, his muscles clinched, and the hand in her hair transformed from a gentle caress into a savage entangling. Lost in the heat emanating from her, Jase completely forgot Bill and danger, and Nessa seemed as abandoned as Jase himself.

A sudden eruption of gunfire wrenched them both from their enraptured state and propelled them into immediate action. Reacting instinctively, Jase turned to the door and pushed Nessa behind him.

“Bastard!” she accused as she stepped back from him, panting.

For a second, Jase felt as shocked at her outburst as he had felt at the gunfire. “What...?” he fumbled for words.

“Quit trying to save me, and let me help you!” she commanded, her passion morphing into a sudden fury.

Jase didn't know whether the color in her cheeks and the spark in her eye grew from their stolen moment of passion or from her anger, but she looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her - especially her red lips, swollen from their kiss. Grabbing her by the waist and the back of the neck, he wrenched her behind a large bureau that protected them momentarily from the line of the door, and he once again pounded his mouth onto hers, tasting its sweetness.

Having satisfied his sudden burst of excitement, Jase grabbed Nessa's hand and yanked her toward the window they had entered. Someone with a gun stood outside the door into the corridor, and had begun pummeling the door with bullets in an attempt to shatter the lock. Jase felt a marked surprise at the fact that the door had not yet caved.

Clambering up through the window, Jase pressed himself flat against the roof's surface and lowered his head and shoulders back into the room below. He grasped Nessa by the arms and pulled her up through the window beside him.

Turning back toward the open grounds of the compound, Jase noted several guards now scattered across the grass and sliding around the walls of the building. No doubt, the governor had put the call out to all the guards, and now Jase saw as many as half a dozen from his vantage point alone.

He pointed silently to the guards, and Nessa nodded. Signaling for her to go up, Jase led her onto the roof he had earlier traversed. As of yet, no one had breached the roof, and Jase felt confident that the higher vantage point offered them a distinct advantage.

Jase had debilitated only Perry; the other guards Jase had restrained would have now joined the search. Damn, he cursed silently. How had the mission gone so incredibly wrong? All he wanted to do was to capture a criminal, something he had done a thousand times. Now he stood to lose said criminal, and he had placed the woman he loved in an indefensible situation.

No time for regrets – not now.

A plan began to formulate in Jase's brain, a long shot, but better than anything else he could manage. The mission had to transform from apprehension of Bill to escape for Nessa, and Jase had a promising idea for her egress.

Dragging Nessa to the north side of the building, he sent her to the west while he took the east and, they counted the guards. When they came back together, Nessa signaled that she had seen only one guard. Jase had encountered three, but two had stood in the small courtyard that he had used as base for his earlier confrontations. These would be hindered by the fence that would at least slow them down.

To his dismay, however, the greatest barrier to their escape lay not in the guards, but in a high facade that stood almost six feet above the surface of the front roof, an architectural detail meant for decorative rather than practical purposes. The barrier raised their drop from a manageable ten feet to a relatively dangerous sixteen, and Jase did not know Nessa's abilities well enough to ensure that she wouldn't injure herself in the drop.

He could see the waiting limo, driver resting languidly inside. The door stood open, and the driver chatted unconcernedly with a pretty Asian domestic who had obviously just exited the building.

Exited not from the front, Jase realized, but from a camouflaged doorway near the northwest corner of the building. Turning from his surveillance of the front, Jase stared at the belching chimneys and smiled.

Though he had earlier shunned the kitchen, remaining undetected his main objective, the bustle of preparations and the mass of humanity would now serve him well. Jase doubted that many of the “servants” felt any great affection for the governor, and Nessa's presence would no doubt soften them toward the fleeing pair.

Over the kitchen, the chimneys took the place of the skylights that littered the rest of the roof. Jase could not use them to access the kitchen. He had already seen at least six guards on the western side of the compound and would not go that route unless as last resort.

Climbing up the two-foot step to the roof over the main chamber, Jase stayed away from the western edge lest guards spot him and invade his current refuge. He wouldn't use the alleyway where he had spotted Nessa - it would prove a deathtrap if someone found him there.

Jase pulled Nessa toward the east end of the room and peered over into the government official's large private courtyard, pondering the strategic advantages of the space. The plants provided ample camouflage, and Jase knew of at least three routes of egress through the yard, each placing him into a different strategic position.

In the worst case, Jase could shoot his way through any window to escape into one of the hallways. He peered over the edge and mapped out the fastest and best route into the corridor that led to the kitchen. He reached to his belt and pulled off a smoke bomb.

Sighting a soft mound of dirt, he yanked out the pin before dropping it into the courtyard. Not that it would accomplish much, but if someone entered through one of the other doors, the smoke would limit their visibility, and Jase had a clear vision in his mind of the path he wanted to traverse. Once the smoke had infused the area, he climbed back to where Nessa crouched and whispered the plan.

They inched to the edge of the roof, and, grasping her one last time, he pulled her into another kiss before plunging down a sturdy branch and into the northwest corner of the garden. Nessa followed him, and the pair crouched immediately behind a shrub.

As Jase inched toward the one window that he knew led into the alcove in the main room, Nessa glided noiselessly behind him, and Jase couldn't help but admire her cat-like stealth. No one had spotted them as of yet, and Jase began to plan the trek through the kitchen, certain that his presence with Nessa would stir up a measure of anxiety.

Truthfully, the sheer shock of seeing the foreigners in their midst would probably immobilize most of the workers. Jase didn't relish the idea of inflicting any harm on the innocent people he might encounter in the kitchen.

Don't get ahead of yourself, he chastised, his mind bringing back the image of the room he now sought to enter. From his perspective outside the window, Jase could ascertain that the governor had indeed left. No guards had returned to post at the room's main entrance, but Jase didn't like the fact that he could see only a portion of the room. Nessa's warmth behind him reminded him that he could not just barrel through, guns blazing, lest she go down in the crossfire.

All at once, Jase and Nessa whirled around in unison, a rustling behind them slicing through their minds and setting them on edge. Jase repositioned himself with his back to the wall and pressed Nessa beside him, his arm restraining her.

After several seconds of breathless silence, Jase sighed in relief when he spied a Siamese cat peak its head above the hovering smoke and leap from one branch to another several feet above their heads.

When Jase turned back to the window, he delicately broke the seal before prying it open. Motioning to Nessa to stay put, he slipped in through the window and peered around the corner. As he had expected, a lone guard marched militantly along the length of the hall, glancing into each window that he encountered. The man now marched along the westernmost wall toward Jase.

Patiently, Jase counted the seconds until he felt certain that the soldier stood within only a few feet. Jase sprung from his hiding place, surprised at the impassivity of the guard as Jase leapt upon him. Though Jase had encountered the paralysis of shock in his victims before, he did not expect it from a seasoned soldier. He thought of Thet, of how they forced his daughter into work.

What might a man do if his family were threatened?

After shackling the man's wrists and disarming him, Jase yanked off the man's belt and wrapped it around the captive's feet. Jase stood and glanced around the space, making sure that his initial assessment would prove accurate. As he had expected, he saw no sign of human presence.

Jase strode back to the window, climbing back into the alcove and lowering his legs out the window into the courtyard. He held Nessa's freedom almost within his grasp. He leaned his head back through the window to motion Nessa to follow him.

“Hi, Jase.” With the faded smoke dancing around him, a specter Drew Pearson’s flashed a Cheshire grin above Nessa’s enraged visage.