Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears. – Rudyard Kipling

Potential sources for the messages:

Jase Hamilton FBI contact ProtoComm contact Unknown entity Liam Monroe Notepad on Briel’s phone

Several hours into the flight to Paris, something disturbed Briel's light slumber, and she sat up to stretch. Out of habit, she pulled the phone out of her pocket to see the time, though time mattered little on the ten-hour flight. An unusual icon caught her attention. Unfamiliar with the phone, Briel clicked curiously on the newly present picture. Since she had severed ties with her entire company, no one should have her new number. She hadn't contacted Ted from the new number. Yet, when she clicked the icon, a message appeared, its tone ominous.

They'll be waiting for you outside the airport.

Briel's mind began to race. Could Ted have found her already? More importantly what did he mean? How could someone be waiting for her in France?

When she had left Belize, Briel had meticulously safeguarded her route, making sure that no one could trace her to the Millers' refuge. Briel would not prove the source if Bill Henry found them. Though she seemed to have succeeded in avoiding detection there, Briel had somehow blundered to a great enough extent since that she had revealed her location to someone. The unsolicited message on her phone communicated much more than a warning. It told Briel of her utter failure to accomplish what she had always successfully accomplished in the past: self-preservation.

She had no doubt that the mysterious “they” meant ProtoComm or someone involved with ProtoComm, i.e., her teammate. If this were true, then Jack or Henry most likely knew of her excursion to France even if they didn't know its purpose. Which could also mean that someone had tracked her from Mexico. She had to pray that she had messed up in her flights, not before them. She had to pray that no one had tracked her to Belize.

Well, she couldn’t do anything until she got to the train and had few minutes to think. Rather than respond to her warning, Briel began planning her escape from the airport. If she could safely navigate out of the airport, she could disappear into the Parisian masses.

With apparent nonchalance, she began to stroll casually around the aisles of the jet, taking in the faces of the passengers and listening as much as she could to their conversations. More than halfway up the first aisle, near the front of the plane, Briel spotted a young woman with mousy brown hair, wearing a grey t-shirt. Briel paused for only a moment, not wanting to draw undue attention to herself, but she noted that two seats just two rows in front of the woman had no occupants.

Returning to her seat, Briel pulled down her backpack from its perch overhead and seated herself, lowering the table tray and turning on the small television in front of her. For several minutes, she stared unseeingly at the figures on the screen. Then slowly, Briel pulled her backpack up to her lap and began to filter through its contents. She bemoaned the fact that she had been unable to smuggle a gun on board somehow, and she gazed hopelessly into her bag. In reality, it contained nothing that she absolutely needed except for money.

Pulling the knitted purse from its location in the backpack, Briel unfurled the smaller bag and unzipped it. Into it she placed the remaining seven thousand dollars, her forged driver's license, and her passport. Her hand hovered over Nick's mysterious card that lay on the bottom of her backpack. She felt silly for the sentimental pang that stabbed through her as she remembered Belize.

The card, however, she decided to bring despite the memories it stirred. Not because she wanted to remember who gave it to her, she told herself. Instead, Briel told herself that she wanted to avoid the possibility that, in his search for her, Bill Henry might dig deeply enough to find Nick and the Millers in their safe-house in Belize.

I'll burn it as soon as I'm out of the airport, she promised herself.

Having packed her purse, Briel stowed her backpack under the seat in front of her and pulled out the earphones that she had stowed next to the television screen. She plugged them in and, turning the volume to zero, she began to eavesdrop on the voices around her.

“...not at our hotel...”

“Why does it matter to you…?”

“...the view is amazing. We have the best...”

The voices murmured pointlessly. On her walk, Briel had watched for a sign that anyone on board had unduly noticed her presence. No one seemed to have seen her: the unobtrusive, slightly-below-average sized woman. Briel had learned well how to blend in. With her ears attuned, she ascertained that no one in her vicinity talked specifically of her, though several spoke of each other.

Briel reached back under the seat, removing the backpack once more, and grabbed her sweatshirt and grey heather t-shirt from inside. Replacing the backpack, Briel placed the shirt in her purse, her purse over her neck, and then the sweatshirt over all. Briel stood and strolled forward again, making sure to cross through the bathrooms to supply an excuse for her excursion. With the bathroom and flight attendant station obscuring the view between her and her old seat, Briel walked up to the empty seats she had spotted and smiled sheepishly at the lone occupant of the row.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” Briel queried as quietly as possible. “The man next to me is really tall, and I feel cramped against the wall.”

“Of course, sweetie,” the woman replied pleasantly, a slight southern drawl softening her voice even more.

“Thanks.”

Briel settled herself comfortably in the seat and pretended to prepare for slumber. Leaning her seat back, Briel could just see the mousy brown-haired woman behind her from her peripheral vision. She could clearly hear the woman's conversation with the man beside her.

“...but I really don't want to,” Briel heard the woman say.

“Why not?” the man replied. “You have nothing to tie you down. You might as well stay as long as you want.”

“I'll miss my family, though. We're very close.”

“Have you asked your family? You'll be with your own grandmother. If you were my daughter, I would want you to take the opportunity. Once you get married, have kids, get a job, it won't ever be so easy to move to another country for any length of time.”

“True. But I'll still have to think about it. I haven't been here since I was seven, and I'm not even sure I want to stay in France past the two weeks. There are too many other places I want to see.”

Two weeks. Briel felt slightly guilty for involving the poor girl, but the girl would not be in any danger, just inconvenience. In fact, Briel comforted herself with the thought that most people would not even mind the inconvenience if familiarized with Briel's circumstances. Maybe the negative experience for the girl would encourage her to return to her family sooner. In her gut, Briel had begun to sense that maybe relationships trumped experiences and even independence.

For several hours, Briel merely closed her eyes and feigned sleep while she listened occasionally to the woman behind her. Her eyes closed, she began playing back the last few days in her mind. It seemed so unlikely that she would have enjoyed the domestic tranquility of the Miller's, but with all the things that she had purposely avoided in life, Briel had not realized some of the pleasures she had missed.

Though Felicity seemed subdued, she also seemed satisfied – somehow expressing the fact that her contentment ran deeper for the sacrifices it cost. Nick Alexander's frustrating insight kept Briel on her toes, sharpening her mind and dizzying her normally quick intellect, and somehow, the experience attracted her. Nick’s and Felicity’s parents were still patient and considerate of each other after at least thirty-five years, so apparently it happened on occasion. Not for Felicity. And not for Briel’s parents. But for some people.

Briel had held her paradigm for far too long to release it in the name of Nick Alexander, though. When a though flitted through her mind, she smiled. A little Nick inoculation…She pulled out her phone a woke it up.

I'd hack the transportation system, ground all air traffic, and immobilize the rental car fleets.

The memory of the words injected into Briel’s mind, and she lowered the phone to her lap, staring at the pattern on the back of the seat in front of her. Nick’s words had stirred a different memory, one wrapped in the trauma of kidnapping, but now that her mind searched for stimulation, it seemed intent on making connections.

I could hack into an airline and purchase tickets for you. Ted had offered to hack an airline. Briel had dismissed his claim…just like she had dismissed Nick’s.

All at once, conversations began to flit across her mind’s eye, and Briel sat up disconcertedly in her seat.

You might, for one minute, relax and let someone in! Nick’s unsolicited advice.

At the time, the words had vexed Briel. She felt irritated that so many people had told her to relax. If I relax, I die, she had answered. No, that was not what she had said to Nick. She had said to Ted after his directive to “breathe and think.”

Her thoughts resembled the calculations of a computer monitor, words and images flickering rapidly across the screen of her thoughts.

You're a Linux guy, Briel had asserted in her first conversation with Ted.

Linux. The operating system of computer nerds. But there was something else she associated with Linux. Felicity had said it to Nick. I doubt he’s as paranoid as you. He probably doesn’t carry around his entire operating system on a pin drive. The reference would have slipped by most people unnoticed, but Briel had more exposure to computer terminology than the average person. The only man Briel knew who carried his operating system on a pin drive was Davis Anderson, and Davis was a Linux developer. Plus, she had heard the reference from enough of her coworkers in the past that she had asked and received confirmation of the practice.

Nick had cracked the computer program that had allowed Briel to retrieve the ProtoComm information, so he must be an elite hacker, despite his self-deprecation. Ted had managed to tunnel his way through enough high security computer systems to find Briel, someone who had access to the best security processes and who wasn't even really supposed to exist.

If she believed them, both of them were elite class hackers.

Felicity, at least, had supported Nick’s hacker credentials, and Briel remembered her shock in Banff at all the information Felicity had found access to when she needed to confront Bill Henry. She had claimed it came from Nick.

Whether or not Ted could ground airlines, he had tunneled his way into the high-security network of the team, so he could boast some pretty impressive skills.

Nick also seemed to know details about Briel's dilemma that she had only shared with Ted: her danger, her problems with teammates, that she had been kidnapped in Mexico...

Both had offered inexplicable references to Nessa.

Both had pointed out the annoying tell with her lips and her tightened jaw.

I've never met anyone more competent than you, Ted had assured her.

I’ve never met anyone as competent as you are, Nick had confirmed.

Ted was Nick.

For one second, Briel's world turned upside down. She had so grown to count on the innocent adrenaline rush from her little game with Ted. How could she transfer that imaginary fascination to the reality of Nick? The one person she had determined above all others to avoid had managed to weasel his way into her life, and she had let herself grow dependent on him. Not only that, she had made herself vulnerable to him.

I’m a complete idiot! she chastised herself.

She should have suspected Nick immediately. Of all of her acquaintance, he had the most expertise with computers, and she had the closest relationship with him, albeit as part of a mission. Just make believe, she had always told herself. Still, how could she have missed the connection until now? She must have repressed the thought, unwilling to rekindle the past few months. Though she had sensed a connection almost from the beginning with Ted, she had preferred him as the mysterious stranger. With Nick, Briel would have to make real decisions with actual consequences.

Unlike her peers, Briel had never indulged herself in flights of fancy, preferring to inure herself to the pain of reality by rejecting romantic illusions. Yet, here she had allowed herself to fall into a pattern of reckless, whimsical notions that promoted irrationality.

She replayed an earlier statement of Ted's, recasting it in the voice of Nick: I had hoped that you wouldn't start dating anyone else for a while. Not before I could see you. It almost sounded like he still cared about her.

Though Briel tried to stay calm, her head sank to her hands as she mentally renamed each interchange with Ted as belonging to Nick. In light of her new information, Briel's mind dragged her unwillingly to ponder her experience with him so far. She had never allowed herself to admit the allure of Nick's appearance, but she remembered clearly the shape of the lean, lanky frame that had stood in silhouette against the Belizean horizon. His muscles were of the wiry sort, but clearly defined. Briel shook her head to dispel the ridiculous vision she had just perused. She didn’t care about a man just because he was attractive, or she would have stayed with Liam.

For a long time, Briel had purposely repressed her conversation with Nessa concerning Nick - how “gorgeous” Nessa considered him. Briel couldn't admit to Nessa how accurate this description seemed, especially because to Briel, the appeal went far beyond the superficial.

She remembered how charmed she had felt in Phoenix when Nick tried to avert his sky-blue eyes lest Briel notice his appraising glances at her. At the time, she had written her pleasure off as the usual euphoria from exercising her power over the opposite sex. It was the usual euphoria, right? she asked herself, willing it to be true. She had not allowed her mind to dwell on the possibilities, only to enjoy the moment.

Sitting on the plane, disgusted with herself, Briel pondered her own idiocy. How had she let herself assume that he would just accept her refusal of his advances and disappear into her past? His easygoing nature had never equaled complacency. Not only did Nick seem to know everything about her, including her country of origin – Briel rolled her eyes again at the thought - but he also possessed capabilities that separated him from the general populace. His knowledge of computer systems and analysis set him aside from basically anyone Briel knew: his assistance with the ProtoComm data proved this. Not to mention his promise to ground airplane flights and disable car fleets.

Stop thinking about him! she commanded herself. Every thought she had funneled toward Nick Alexander. For an immeasurable instant, Briel felt like crying in frustration, a weakness which – except for one other time with Nick – she had not allowed herself in years. Closing her eyes, she accepted the possibility that she had always known Ted's identity but had denied it to avoid considering how she really felt about him. She didn't have time to beat herself up, though. Nick had just warned her about danger in Paris, and she would be a fool not to consider the possibilities.

Instead of allow herself any more self-condemnation or criticism, Briel chose to force the unsolvable dilemma out of her mind. She peered around her and began to take stock of her environment.

To her relief, a new circumstance made her unable to focus on Nick Alexander. The time had come for her to move. The mousy-haired woman from two rows back stood up and reached over her head. For several seconds, she fumbled in the overhead bin. She brought out a large hard-cover book, then sat back down and started to read.

Having carefully watched the girl's movement, Briel sat up and smiled at the grandmotherly neighbor, then stretched and yawned as if to shake off the stiffness of sleep. Rising, Briel moved back to the restrooms and peered cautiously around the corner at her original seat. The man in the adjacent spot appeared to sleep soundly, so Briel strolled casually past her row and knelt down to the floor to adjust her shoestring. Listening intently, she heard the steady in and out breathing of the sleeping man and stood slowly, turning back to her seat and retrieving her backpack from underneath.

As she moved back toward her new seat, she paused to stow her own bag into the overhead bin shared by her row and the two behind it. A quick inventory of the bin showed her several business-like rolling carry-ons, a large, floppy bag with paisley and plaid, and a nondescript backpack. Surreptitiously, she took in the faces of the people who shared the bin in question. Her own neighbor definitely appeared the knitting, grandmotherly type, and Briel immediately assumed that the paisley number belonged to her. Behind her row, Briel saw two women and a man, dressed in business suits and discussing the price of oil. This left only the mousy-brown girl and her friendly neighbor. Closing the bin, Briel assessed each person she had seen and decided that the backpack most likely belonged to the girl.

The book Briel now held in her hands appeared similar to the other woman's hardback. Having paused at the restroom on her way back to the seat, Briel had changed into her own greyish shirt underneath the sweatshirt, and she now began to stare at the pages of her book. Finished with her reconnaissance, Briel found herself with even more time, time which dragged on longer as she tried not to focus on Nick and his new identity. The task before her managed barely to demand her entire resources. After what seemed an eternity, the pilot announced that the plane had begun its final descent, and that the flight attendants would be bringing around customs forms for everyone to complete.

As soon as she held the paper in her hands, Briel rose to her feet and sauntered back to her backpack, opening the bin and reaching over her head. Several other passengers did the same. Instead of reaching into her own backpack, Briel carefully dragged the mousy-brown lady's bag across the bin until it rested next to Briel's purse. She opened the outer pocket of the woman's backpack and zipped it back as quickly, not seeing what she needed. Then, one more pocket back, Briel spied a red passport folder stuffed among some other papers with the words Hotel Novotel printed across the top. She pushed the girl's pack to the back of the bin, guaranteeing that the girl would need extra time to dig it out. Having transferred the red passport to her own backpack, Briel grabbed her own bag and lowered it to her seat, now holding a pen in her hand in plain sight as an excuse for the time at the bin.

Seated securely in her seat, Briel glanced at the red passport, noting the woman's name and address and copying them to her own customs form. Francoise Palpant, 22 years old, Briel thought with amusement. She found it ironic that this very American-looking girl would provide Briel with a French passport and a very French-sounding name.

Her form filled out, Briel settled into her seat to await the landing of the plane. The rough bounce of the landing gear on the pavement sent a tittering wave of comments and laughs through the cabin and a sudden humming of motion as people set up and realigned all their belongings in preparation for debarking. Briel merely reached into her backpack and removed the passport, transferring it to her little purse and pushing her backpack as far under the seat in front of her as it would go. If the elderly woman beside her noticed, she didn't belie her cognition. She just stared out at the approaching airport dock.

When the sign turned off, Briel rose gingerly from her seat, stretching in mock nonchalance, and strolled a few seats forward until several passengers rose from their own seats to remove the luggage overhead. Behind her, three people separated Briel from the woman whose passport she had stolen. Ahead of her, a few other passengers separated her from escape. She needed to hurry off the plane, but she waited patiently until the others exited in front of her, her need for speed deferring to her desire to avoid attention.

Just as she entered the gangway, she heard a frustrated huff from behind her and a confused, “It's not here. It was right in this pocket.”

Briel didn't wait to see how much attention the girl drew. Instead, she hurried as quickly as concealment would allow her to move down the gangway and into the airport. If she could make it past security quickly, Briel knew she could melt into obscurity, and fortunately for her, her speed had beat the lines to the security desk before most of the other passengers were off the airplane. Briel had her substitute passport stamped, and she headed toward the luggage bay.

On this last stop before freedom, Briel needed only show the customs form to the lone security agent and exit to a taxi. In front of her, rows of black, moving belts twirled around, depositing their packages into the hands of waiting passengers. Scattered around the cavernous room, several security agents and airport employees smiled at, directed, and chastised the various passengers as they exited the planes. From the corner of her eye, the waving of a hand caught Briel's attention. Without turning fully around, she looked toward the movement and recognized the woman who had shared her row on the airplane.

After a moment, several dark-clad shapes joined the woman's form, and Briel realized that the woman's action had drawn the attention of security officials. Ducking casually behind a pillar, Briel peeked back toward the woman and watched as the woman gestured in Briel's direction. The woman's hands held Briel's backpack. Too late, Briel headed swiftly across the final stretch of space toward the exit.

“Arrêt!” a deep voice commanded from across the room.

For one moment, Briel pretended that she did not realize to whom the man spoke, but before she could make it past the checkpoints, another security agent responded to the first one's demeanor and stepped commandingly in front of Briel.

“Mademoiselle, pourriez-vous aller avec moi, s'il vous plait ?”

Her heart racing, Briel adorned her face with a look of confusion. The French passport rose to her remembrance, and she answered the men in French.

“Oui, bien sûr. Quelle est le problème ?” Briel responded ingenuously, though she knew very well what the problem was.

“No problem,” the man continued in French. “Did you forget your backpack on the plane?” He pointed to Briel's backpack, held aloft by a fellow agent, as he spoke.

Briel watched the man's face carefully, trying to ascertain whether he held suspicions regarding her, but his expression seemed innocuous. Her ears suddenly became aware of a whining female tone, and the words spiked Briel's rate of respiration.

“I don't know what happened to my passport. When I left America, I placed it in my backpack. Now it is gone!” the lament carried across the vast room to Briel's ears.

Briel cringed internally. At all costs, she must get through the gate before the woman whose row she had shared could differentiate between Briel and her look-alike.

A sudden motion from the window to her left caught Briel's attention. Beyond a row of deco, white plastic chairs stood a woman's form, tall and clad in blue with the tell-tale scarf of the Air France flight attendants. She had another scarf draped over her head, but Briel could make out underneath the cloth an ear piece with a green light, and the woman's mouth moved rapidly as she glanced sideways at Briel's look-alike.

Making sure to adopt her thickest French accent, Briel smiled graciously at the security officer in front of her and said, “Thank you, sir. That is not mine. All I brought on the plane was my purse.”

Now the guard stared disbelievingly at her.

“May I see your passport?”

The flight attendant from the window glided swiftly to the sliding doors and, unobserved, approached the security guard who now interrogated the poor girl from the plane.

“Of course,” Briel replied stiffly to her own guard and, reaching into her purse, she handed him the passport of Francoise Palpant.

As the man shifted his eyes repeatedly between the passport and Briel's face, Briel tried very hard not to grit her teeth or tense her hands. He seemed to narrow his eyes in dissatisfaction.

“You were identified by the woman who brought us the backpack.”

“I did not sit next to a woman,” Briel insisted. “I sat next to a man. Perhaps the woman was mistaken. I am not the only young lady on the flight.”

“Perhaps,” the guard replied skeptically.

“In fact,” Briel continued, infusing her voice with as much nonchalance as she could, “that woman over there looks very like me. Perhaps you should ask about her.” Briel pointed to the young woman whose passport she had stolen. With the strange scarfed woman that now watched, the more security Briel could provide the real Francoise Palpant, the better. Briel only needed to span the ten feet between where she now stood and the last security checkpoint. As the guard turned to follow her pointed finger, Briel backed several steps toward her egress. The guard spoke into his communicator.

“Benoit, would you ask the woman to your left if she lost a backpack?” he asked a fellow guard.

Briel continued to back slowly, turning finally to step in front of a large man who waited in the line to pass through the gate. Only two people before her. To her relief, Briel watched the observing flight attendant back away from the scene with the mousy-haired lady, and the uniformed woman spoke into her Bluetooth as she headed directly back out the doors.

“Her passport is missing?” Briel heard the guard say just as she handed her form to the woman at the gate.

“Mademoiselle?” he turned and called in Briel's direction. “She's gone,” he exclaimed. He called in to all the guards to watch for a woman fitting Briel's description, but the woman at the gate had handed Briel's form back, and Briel hurried out the door.

“Mademoiselle! Arrêt ! Arrêt !” the guard shouted again as he spotted her fleeing steps. Briel continued as if she hadn't heard.

“She's exiting the south exit from arrivals. Stop her and hold her until I can get there,” Briel heard behind her and echoed in another communicator to her left. Turning to her right, she hurriedly melted into the crowd as best she could, aware as she did that the flight attendant had transferred her focus from the baggage area to the bustling courtyard where passengers purchased tickets for the gare.

“Arrêt! Arrêt !” a chorus of guards had joined the pursuit.

Briel broke into a jog, thankful again that her diminutive stature aided her skill at concealment. Behind her, the tumult escalated as the soldiers that patrolled the airport with their FAMAS assault rifles added their shouts of “Arrêt!” Just ahead Briel spotted a group of hurried tourists bent on catching a train and fell in with them, running, until she reached the gare. The train rumbled to a stop, and Briel pushed into the center of the crowd which jostled into the car. As the doors closed, several security personnel began a descent down the escalator, but the train grumbled to life, and Briel released her breath in a low, steady stream. Glancing back toward the upper platform, Briel stared up into the face of the flight attendant, almost completely obscured by the scarf and a pair of large shaded sunglasses. The woman no doubt stared directly back at Briel.