On the bright side, now the enemy has a face… Note on Briel’s phone as she waited on the bus.

A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him. -Aesop, Aesop’s Fables

Briel strained her eyes against the darkness to no avail. When Liam pulled her through the door, he leaned against some sturdy object behind him and wrapped both of his arms around Briel's waist, pulling her back to his overheated chest. The contrast between his body and the frigid air in the room pulsated uncomfortably against her skin, and the dank, musty smell of the basement seeped into her head causing it to pound unpleasantly.

For several seconds, neither of them moved, but then Liam reverted to his default mode and began to run his lips over the flesh at the base of her neck. Confusion clouded her mind, but she knew Liam shouldn’t be doing what he was doing.

Unwilling to draw attention to herself and Liam, Briel tried to twist away from him without speaking, but from her position she had little leverage to refuse him without turning it into a fight. Finally, she resorted to hushed words to communicate what she could not physically convey.

“You promised to stop,” she hissed.

Liam's throaty laugh shocked Briel, and her words did not accomplish what she had hoped. Instead, Liam released one of his arms and raised it to her face, firmly restraining her head so that she could not lean away from his lips.

When his other hand moved from its fixed position, Briel determined that she feared the woman outside less than Liam's hormonal urges, and she clearly and loudly commanded him to stop.

“Liam, I appreciate that you’ve come to help me, but I don’t want this. You need to let go of me now.” When he continued his assault on her skin, she knew she had to up the ante. “You need to let go of me unless you want this to turn into a fight.”

Again, Liam laughed, “I’m counting on it.”

Briel felt chills run up her back despite the heat burning through his shirt. What had he meant by that? “Liam,” she leaned away from him. “You still have the card. That woman will come in here.”

“I imagine she will, if she’s still tapped into the feed from your computer. She created a direct link, so it’s pretty easy to monitor.”

With Liam’s lips exploring her neck, Briel had trouble constructing a clear thought, but his last statement hadn’t made sense. “Why would the woman be tapped into the feed from my computer?” she demanded, and she felt Liam’s teeth bare in a grin against her skin. “And how do you know what she did with the link?”

“Because she has been reporting to me. When you took off without telling me, I needed a way to find you again. Without her, I would never have found you.”

Without her…the danger at the airport. He had told Briel that the danger at the airport had given her the opportunity to accept his help. A memory rose in her mind, an echo of Liam’s earlier words.

I’m giving you every opportunity to change your mind, Liam had insisted.

Opportunities. As visions flashed across her memory, Briel turned to ice in Liam’s arms. The past several weeks, since she had broken up with Liam, there had been so many instances that had led her back to him. Opportunities she had rejected to manage on her own.

Every one of them had occurred at the hand of an unknown actor, likely initiated by a hit put out by ProtoComm.

Hadn’t Briel found her answer? Nick? Jase? In retaliation for her rejection? In retaliation for her mistreatment of Felicity?

…trust yourself. Ted had said it. Nick had said it. And Briel had ignored it. She hadn’t trusted herself since Banff, when she realized she was wrong about Felicity Miller, and every decision she had made since then had arisen from her fear, her insecurity. She doubted her instinct and her intelligence, and it had cost her far more than she even knew she had.

Opportunity one: the breakup, followed by the request to “spar with me.”

Opportunity two: Mexico, followed by flowers.

Opportunity three: the fire, followed by Liam’s apartment.

Opportunity four: the woman at the airport, with the hope and expectation that Briel would reach out to Liam for help.

Now Briel realized…because she hadn’t taken advantage of the opportunities afforded her, Liam had come to find her. And now, he had her trapped.

“You know…” Liam spun Briel around so that her face and chest pressed into to the wall, and he pinned her against it with his body. “…you made a real mistake letting an amateur like Nick help you when you should have come and asked me. I had assumed you would, after the kidnapping. I thought that you would seek me out. Instead, you latched on to Nessa.”

Liam hissed the name, and Briel’s ire started to press her panic back to its grave at the realization that she might need to protect her friend. “And then Nessa brought in Jase, which was a disaster for my plan to win you back. The old crush, the ultimate op, someone I couldn’t just blow off and work around. That was after Mexico, but then the fire. The fire was supposed to force you to move in with me, but then Jase and Nessa showed up again. Fortunately, you handed me Nick on a silver platter.”

“And are you ever going to stop talking?” She spat the words with as much sarcasm as she could manage with her cheek pressed into the wall. Briel was done. “Why does it feel like you’re arresting me, Liam? Or is this another opportunity?”

Her stress had brought out her more belligerent tendencies, and while she condemned her own idiocy, she let her anger at herself stir rage against Liam. You handed me Nick on a silver platter, Liam had claimed. It had been Liam who had given Nick’s name to Vico. How Liam had known how to find the man, Briel had no idea, but it made so much more sense to think of Liam’s betraying her than that Nick had done it.

If anyone else had come to her, describing behavior like Liam had engaged in since she broke up with him, Briel would have advised them to sprint fast and far. Because Briel thought herself far too suspicious as a rule, she had discounted her instincts with Liam – negated the alarm bells that would have set her off on behalf of a friend or client.

Instead, Briel had ignored herself. And in so doing, she had indeed, handed over Nick. A monument to her absolute stupidity. Besides her disgust at willful ignoring of the very obvious difference in the two men’s characters, Briel castigated herself for her willful determination to find fault with Nick.

Apparently, she had been so set on rejecting him that she had made up imaginary reasons he had wronged her. Compared to the very obvious reality of Liam’s sick campaign against her, the difference between him and Nick seemed plainly apparent.

When she thought of her last words to Nick, she cringed internally. I can’t…trust anything you say at this point… Ironically, the best thing that could have grown out of the exchange would be if Nick had decided to mistrust her, too.

She prayed, without much faith, that the cruelty of her accusations might finally convince Nick to let go of his attachment for her. Not that it would help him. More than her peril at the hands of Liam, Briel found herself terrified of one thing: she had exposed Nick and the Miller family to Liam and all of ProtoComm.

When Liam stepped away so he could spin her to face him, he bared his teeth, and Briel recognize the base and animalistic soul she had always spied inside him. He slid both of his arms into a vice grip behind her.

“You know, I can't believe you thought I was thick-headed…” Liam murmured. “It's really funny. In reality, I turned out smarter than Mr. High-IQ Computer guy.” He pressed his mouth back onto her neck as she tried to pry his arms from around her.

I guess he’s not going to stop talking…“Stop, Liam,” she grunted straining against his hold.

“Oh, right. Sorry…” he feigned agreement. “I’ll stop talking.”

For the first time Briel could remember, she felt an almost overwhelming panic. She had been so afraid to trust the Millers or Nick, yet she had been the one they shouldn’t trust. She had led an enemy to them. And now Briel could do nothing to help them.

She could do nothing to help herself. Maybe Jase would come to Felicity’s rescue. Maybe he and she kept in touch. The possibility was a fantasy.

Liam leaned back, and Briel shivered at his expression when their eyes met.

“No more talking.” He pounded his mouth onto hers for the third time since cornering her in the basement. Unlike the other times, though, he lifted her off of the ground, rendering her impotent to fight back.

Briel didn’t know how to resist him. For several seconds her mind went blank while his hands roamed over her back and his mouth devoured hers. Strangely, once she had given up fighting and softened all her resistance, Liam relaxed his arms and lowered her to the ground. For one moment, she lay immobile in his grasp.

When her mind awoke, though, her fury was back, and her voice lowered dangerously. “Liam, don't ever do that again.” Her tone grew stronger as her breath returned.

Finally, an emotion that Briel had sensed brewing beneath Liam's calm surfaced, rearing its malevolent head and lashing out at her. His teeth seemed to bare, and his shoulders to hunch. The shock of it spoiled Briel's usual control. Instead of staring steadily into his enraged eyes, she cowered just slightly, which drew a laugh from him.

“Scared, Briel? I thought you never got scared.” He grabbed her upper arms with his hands and glared at her. “It's about time for you to feel some fear. No matter how much danger I made for you, you wouldn’t ask for help. I couldn’t make you afraid enough. Well, now you should be afraid,” he yelled loudly, wrenching her from her position in front of him and shoving her toward the mystery door across the room. “Where do you get off treating me like that? Dumping me for a faceless computer? For a fantasy? Because you think you’re smarter than me. Well, who is trapped underground and completely at my mercy?”

“Keep yelling, by all means,” Briel goaded him. “I wouldn't mind if you brought the entire occupancy of the bar in here to witness your outburst.”

“I'm not particularly worried about the bar clientèle. I pick my settings very carefully. No one here cares what I do to a stranger in a basement; this fight is between you and me.”

At the word “fight”, something stirred in Briel, and her anxiety fled. Fighting was her wheelhouse. Even in her precarious position, Briel began to glow in anger. Not only had Liam personally imposed on her, Liam had threatened innocent people. Not only that, but she had kicked Nick out of her life again based on a lie.

When Liam reached for her face once again, Briel did not lose her resolve. He tried to weave his fingers in her hair as if to pull her back into a kiss, murmuring even as he leaned in. “You act so rational, but your loyalties are insane.” His eyes bore into hers with a jealousy that spoke the word more clearly than his lips. Insane.

For weeks, she had worried over Bill Henry, had tortured herself over how to stand against someone with his power. Now, instead of some heartless tyrant, Briel found that she owed all her misery to a jilted lover. The entire escapade was about Nick. Liam’s jealousy of Nick.

“I told you,” she insisted through closed teeth, “not to do that again!”

As she spoke, Briel wrapped both of her hands around the hand that stroked her hair. Bringing her knee up rapidly, she unleashed its force on Liam's groin, then she twisted the arm whose hand she held behind him, spinning him until his face almost banged into the crates that had supported his weight. To complete the effect, she kicked him from behind, launching his face into the crates he had so nearly avoided.

Like a jaguar readied to strike, Liam turned on Briel, grinning with eager anticipation.

“I'm so glad you did that,” he asserted, lashing out at her with a fist that grazed her right cheek. She just managed to jerk her head to avoid a full blow.

“This has been building for a while, hasn't it,” she quipped back at him, landing a kick in the center of his stomach. The blow didn't seem to hurt him, but it knocked him off balance, and Briel aimed a follow-up front kick to connect with his face. Too quick, Liam grabbed her foot, shoving her backwards and sending her sprawling across the room.

“What is going on in here?” a female voice begged furiously. “The manager is threatening to come down himself and call the gendarmerie.”

Shocked by the interruption, Briel slid behind a large keg which rested in a darkened shadow near where she had fallen. Her mind raced uncontrollably. The woman's voice brought several pieces together, throwing a new light on Briel's previous paradigm of thought.

With no doubt, Briel knew that she clearly recognized the voice of Alodie, Anne-Laure's new acquaintance. Briel also knew, without the visual input that had skewed her assessment before, that she had heard the new voice in her prison in Mexico. Even the thickly-accented English could not obscure the tone.

Briel examined Alodie, preparing if necessary to confront her and remove her from play. Liam obviously held similar ideas, because he spouted angrily at Alodie, “Get out of here, Amélie. I can handle this. You told me this place would work, now make it work.”

Amélie! Briel almost couldn't breathe, her shock so overwhelmed her. Amélie knew Jase, and he might have handed her information, whether wittingly or unwittingly. Also, she had a connection to Bill Henry, and she could easily have followed Briel to M. Vico. Amélie completed the circuit.

As Briel had conjectured at one point, there were two people masquerading as Ted – more like they had highjacked Ted. Amélie and Liam. They had conspired to capture Briel in Mexico, they had managed access to Briel’s computer – certainly Liam didn’t have that kind of expertise by himself. Amélie had backtraced the signal from Briel’s computer to find Nick in Belize and to find the tracker.

And Liam had followed up on the intel. Also, now that she could see only the silhouette of the woman's figure and face, Briel could easily correlate Amélie with the flight attendant in the airport. Unfortunately, Briel had no time to examine the repercussions of her newfound knowledge – not in the constriction of a stone basement.

Cat-like, Liam crouched, staring into the darkness before Briel. She knew that he could not see her, but her hiding spaces were sparse, so he had to assume her location. Even with the precariousness of her circumstances, or more accurately because of them, every nerve in Briel's body stood strung adeptly on edge, poised to react. For the few moments of battle, her mind and body would not require direction, trained as they were for every eventuality.

Amélie stood in statuesque relief against the stone wall, completely removed from the fray before her. For the time being Briel would disregard the French woman's presence. Briel could make out the downy head of Liam glowing against the blackness as he crept ever closer to her refuge. She tightened her muscles in preparation, watching the angle of escape grow as Liam closed the gap between himself and Briel.

With each step, she tensed more, and he inched closer.

“Come on, Briel. I won't hurt you,” Liam's cold voice pierced the darkness. Though his words spoke promise, they both knew that he merely baited her, working to draw her from her hiding place. “You know,” his voice moved to her left, placing him more directly in her path to the door, “You should have left things the way they were. Was it really that bad dating me?” his voice had stopped midway between Briel and the door.

Briel risked sliding to her right to the other side of the casks from Liam. “I could have protected you from Henry instead of handing you over to him.” Though her movement increased her distance from escape, she counted on the advantage of the darkness. By the time he would realize that she had rushed him, the force of his blow could not fall as strongly as a head-on assault. “But when someone is on my team, I’m for them 1,000%. If not, I am set 1,000% on their utter destruction.

With a shiver, Briel crouched lower, glancing around her for some object she could use to strike Liam. She saw nothing so returned her gaze to her attacker. She strained her eyes noting every degree that he turned, and waited until he faced the side of the casks opposite from Briel's location.

Crouching into the tightest coil she could manage, she sprung forward, leaping the distance between their bodies in an instant. In anticipation of his response, she threw her leg into a side kick, recovering quickly on the rebound and recalibrating her trajectory toward the door.

“Stop her!” Liam shouted at Amélie.

“I do not fight,” the response came, and Briel almost allowed herself to laugh at the irony before she saw the form of Liam barrel towards her. Grabbing Amélie, Briel threw the woman into Liam's path and lunged toward the door.

The smell of freedom assaulted her senses as she reached to grasp the handle, but Liam had recovered and latched onto her ankle, yanking her backwards at the same time that he leaped forward. They crashed to the floor together, battering against the wall in the narrow crevice that held the doorway, and Liam came to rest with all of his weight crushing Briel to the ground. A feral laugh escaped his lips. Every part of her ached.

“Oh, God, Briel. You are amazing.” He grinned savagely at her, illuminated as he was by the light that crept under the door. “And so heartless, to throw that poor woman in my way.”

Briel turned her head to avoid his gaze, his breath, the lips that he had so recently forced upon her. Though her own breath came in gasps, her tone did not waver. “Don’t insult her,” Briel spat with all the vitriol she could manage, “She’s twice the man you are.”

Again, Liam laughed, burying his face in Briel's hair. “So clever, ma chère. Isn't that what the old man called you? He's a cold devil, much more heartless than I would imagine anyone could be so close to the grave. I knew he would have trouble keeping you in his apartment until I got there – you’re too nervous to sit still very long.”

Leaning up, Liam straddled Briel, pinning her wrists beneath his hands and plunging his face into shadow again. “Where are those restraints?” he asked toward Amélie. Briel glared icily up at his shadow, sure that he could make out her expression by the light cast under the door.

His response ascertained that he could see her, as the sardonic smile returned, and he jeered at her, “You know, your attitude has always been my favorite part.” Leaning his mouth back down to her ear, he pressed his body fully against her and whispered, “So bring it,” before gently nipping her earlobe and rising once again.

At that moment Amélie attempted to hand the restraints to Liam, and Briel began flailing wildly with her legs, intent on striking anyone or anything that came within their range. Amélie recoiled as Briel had assumed she would.

“I am not coming near that animal,” Amélie complained, refusing to approach the pair.

“Fine, throw them, then.” Liam commanded, irritated.

Watching carefully, Briel gauged as Amélie leaned forward and threw the unseen object into the air underhanded. Staring at the trajectory of the motion, Briel waited, tensed, until the moment when Liam had to lift slightly to snatch it from the air, releasing one hand that held her.

With all her might, she twisted at the exact moment of his weakness, slamming her free elbow with all her force into his exposed crotch and shoving him sideways away from her. Though she succeeded in pushing him off of her, his involuntary reflex swung his hand down toward her, and he used the motion to his advantage, arresting her sideways movement and limiting the force with which she could displace him.

“Rrraaagh, bitch!” he exclaimed, his voice guttural with the pain. He raised his free hand and brought it down, open handed, onto Briel's cheek. The pain stung her eyes and blinded her momentarily, but she could not let the sting immobilize her.

Futilely, she struggled to crawl from under him, but Liam finished the motion Briel had begun, pressing her raised shoulder to the ground so that she now lay on her stomach. Retaking his position astride her, he pulled her arms back and placed one hand on both of her arms pressing her firmly against the ground.

Huffing with the effort, Liam yanked the restraints off of the floor, snapping first one and then the other restraint onto Briel's ever-struggling form.

Her strength temporarily spent, Briel ceased her battle, knowing that she should preserve her resources until another opportunity presented itself to escape. Though she recognized her disadvantage, she had yet to lose all hope.