Alias Fan Gillian
Cadet
Awesome chapters. Please write more soon.
Thanks for the PM.
Thanks for the PM.
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Only Hope
- Thread starter kidblink83
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kidblink83
Cadet
Chapter Twenty-Six
She knew that she was making the right decision. One quick plane ride to Paris and this would all be over. She would just explain to him that he was just a little piece of fun on the side while things were slow in the spy world. He had entertained her, but she was bored now.
If she was hurtful enough, maybe he would believe it. Because she sure as hell didn’t.
She hailed the first taxi she could find outside the airport and directed him to the Latin Quarter. She just hoped that Tyler was still staking out that building. Otherwise she was going to have to call in a few favors to get his location, and she didn’t fancy having to come up with a reason why she needed to have the position of a CIA agent who had nothing to do with her current assignments.
Ignoring the hard decisions lying ahead of her when the driver took her to her final destination, she focused instead on another component to her current confusion. Why had the New Directorate wanted her to forget about growing up with Tyler? If she was such an important agent, wouldn’t it be wise to make sure she remembered the man who could possibly kill her? You would think they’d want to protect her.
Then again, there wasn’t much she knew about the New Directorate. She just knew a few contacts within her department and the tech guy. That was all the people she had to know to get her job done. She didn’t even know who made the big calls.
“What is a pretty lady like you doing in the city of love all alone?” the cab driver suddenly asked in not-so-good English, looking at her in his rear view mirror.
She gave him a sweet smile before responding in French. “I’m here to break up with my boyfriend.”
That shut the cab driver up. Good. She didn’t need to make polite conversation at a time like this.
She tried to focus on the exact point where her life had gone so wrong. How had she ended up working for an agency that was doing potentially bad things and not the CIA like both her parents? Why had she let herself be sucked up into the organization while never thinking to ask questions about the people who ran it? When had she decided it was okay to let these people she did not know start putting things into her brain?
God, she could be a complete moron sometimes.
The cab pulled to a stop outside the building she had indicated. This was it. Thanking the driver and giving him a rather handsome tip in hopes he wouldn’t remember this particular passenger and her destination, she stepped out of the car.
Walking into the building, it didn’t take her long to find him. He was on the top floor staring out the window with a pair of binoculars. He wasn’t kidding when he told her this stakeout thing was completely old school. She didn’t even see any computers anywhere. How were you supposed to find out anything without them?
“The CIA is so stuck in the Dark Ages,” she said, making her way across the creaky wooden floor to where he sat.
He put down the binoculars and stared at her a moment before hesitantly asking, “What are you doing here, Ana?”
“I didn’t want to put off seeing you again.” Silently, she applauded herself. That was a good opening. Now if only she could keep up that disaffected, detached tone. Maybe then she wouldn’t start to cry.
“I’m glad you came,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her in between his legs where he sat on a wooden crate. “I missed you.”
“Tyler, we need to talk.”
“I know. I can’t believe you actually took me up on my offer to spend the rest of my time here in Paris together. I thought you were going to get on that flight yesterday. Speaking of, where have you been if you didn’t get on it? That was eighteen hours ago.”
Eighteen hours. God, it felt like an eternity. “I’ve been busy.” She tried to shrug out of his hold, but he wasn’t letting up.
“Well, I’m glad you got un-busy.” He looked up at her, and before she could stop herself, she was kissing him. It was their last kiss, a kiss goodbye, even if he didn’t know it yet.
Before she could prepare herself to pull away from him and end their last embrace, he surprised her by doing so himself. “I have something I want to give you. I wasn’t sure if I was going too fast or if you didn’t feel the same way. But you’re here. So I think that says enough.”
She watched as he riffled through a knapsack that was at his feet. He looked so happy about whatever he was about to do that she couldn’t bear to break his heart. Not at this moment. Maybe she would get the courage after he was done.
“Here,” he said, holding out a small box for her to take.
Okay. She might be a moron when it cam to matters of the spy world and of her heart. But she knew what was in that box without even having to open it. This was not good.
“Tyler, there’s something you have to know.”
“Later.” She watched in horror and in excitement as he opened the box himself.
There it was. The most beautiful ring she had ever seen in her life. It was prettier than the ring her father had given her mother. A good size diamond surrounded by two emeralds that seemed to be the most vibrant shade of green that she had ever seen.
She hadn’t known a heart could melt and break at the same time.
“Tyler. We’ve only known each other for a month. We’ve only been on four dates.”
“I don’t care. You know when it’s the one. And I know. I love you, Ana. I know this is going fast, but I don’t want to sit around and wait for something to come along to tear us apart. Because eventually something will. If we make this commitment, then we’ll have something to fight back with. And frankly I don’t care give a damn about all the obstacles between us. We’ll get through whatever gets thrown our way. Together. So just say yes and we can get started.”
“I… I…” What was she trying to say? I want to with all my heart. You’re crazy. There’s no way I can. It’s too fast. I would if only I wasn’t destined to be your murderer or your victim one of these days. All of those were good options. But instead of any of those, she found herself simply shrugging and saying, “I just can’t.”
“Is this about your mother? Because you’re nothing like her. I understand that.”
Her look of horror obviously wasn’t lost on him as his body suddenly tensed up a little more. “I am everything like my mother. She’s the best person I’ve ever met. I have spent my whole life striving to be more like her.”
Tyler shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why would you want to be like her? She’s done nothing but cause trouble for everyone you love, including me.”
“She never did a thing to hurt you. Everything she did was for our own good. She gave up her whole life to make sure--” Hope paused in the middle of her rant as something occurred to her. “Wait. If you knew who my mother was, then why the hell did you get involved in this? Didn’t you realize how big a mistake seeing me would be? At least I have the whole memory loss card to play. What’s your excuse?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. All I know is that I love you no matter of your past mistakes or the current mistake you’re trying to make. Do you hear me? I love you, Ana Santos.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. Oh god. He didn’t know. He thought she was… “You thought I was Nadia Santos’s daughter?” she yelled. “How stupid can you be?”
Pieces were clicking into place. Tyler had mentioned that he grew up with her cousin. At the time, she had thought it funny that her Aunt Nadia had had a child and didn’t tell anyone. Then there was the whole fact that he was so upset when he found out who he thought her mother was. He really must have been convinced that she was an evil agent if she was the offspring of someone like her aunt.
“If you’re not Nadia’s daughter, then who are you?” Tyler asked.
She suddenly noticed that he was still holding the ring box open in his hands. Slowly, she took it away from him and shut it before handing it back. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Tyler. Some of it I kept secret for your own good and some of it I didn’t even know would affect you. Oh god. My parents are going to kill me.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Well for starters, they think that I’m on vacation in the Belize. They don’t know that I’m currently having a conversation with the one person I have been forbidden to see in the whole gorram world.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Nothing that involves you and I makes any sense.” She sighed and composed herself for a moment before looking up at him. “My name is not Ana. I mean, not really.”
“Okay. Aliases. I understand that.”
“No, you don’t. My real name is Hope Anastasia Lazarey.”
She waited as the weight of her words sunk in. “No.”
“Yes. Which is why I can’t marry you. And why I can’t even talk to you. It’s too dangerous.”
He kept shaking his head. “There’s no way. I would know if you were Hope. I would know. There are so many people watching over me. Someone would have figured it out. You’re just saying this to avoid owning up to your feelings for me.”
“God, I wish that was the reason.”
“I can’t handle this.”
She nodded. “I understand. Let’s not keep talking about it then. I’m going to turn around and leave. Don’t try to contact me. Don’t even think about me. It’s for the best.” She gave him a small smile even though she knew he could see the tears forming in her eyes. It only hurt slightly when he immediately looked away from her.
And that’s when it hit her.
This was really it. This was the end. There wasn’t going to be any type of Hollywood movie ending to this mess.
She gathered up the last bit of courage she had and turned to make her way out of the building. All of the sudden she just wanted to be home with her parents. Things were easier when she didn’t have to be strong.
She flagged down the nearest cab and, even though with all her being she wanted to give one last glance to that window on the top floor that she just knew Tyler was staring down at her from, she slid into the car. “Take me to the airport please.”
“No problem,” the cab driver said.
She stared at the buildings and roads flying past the window, leaving her near-fatal mistake behind her. She would have thought her mind would be racing in an attempt to figure out how she could have gotten so far off the path she thought her life was supposed to take. Instead, her mind was blank. Somewhere along the line, she had shut down.
The cab slid to a stop, and she noticed where they were for the first time. “This isn’t the airport.”
“You didn’t specify which one. This is a small airfield that has private planes take off from its runways.”
“And how the hell is that supposed to help me?”
The driver pointed to the plane sitting in front of him. “There’s a woman on that plane that desperately wants to speak with you. That should help you.”
Hope shook her head. It figures that on the worst day of her life, she would manage to get herself semi-abducted. And damnit if everyone in her life didn’t think she was in the Caribbean.
She knew that she was making the right decision. One quick plane ride to Paris and this would all be over. She would just explain to him that he was just a little piece of fun on the side while things were slow in the spy world. He had entertained her, but she was bored now.
If she was hurtful enough, maybe he would believe it. Because she sure as hell didn’t.
She hailed the first taxi she could find outside the airport and directed him to the Latin Quarter. She just hoped that Tyler was still staking out that building. Otherwise she was going to have to call in a few favors to get his location, and she didn’t fancy having to come up with a reason why she needed to have the position of a CIA agent who had nothing to do with her current assignments.
Ignoring the hard decisions lying ahead of her when the driver took her to her final destination, she focused instead on another component to her current confusion. Why had the New Directorate wanted her to forget about growing up with Tyler? If she was such an important agent, wouldn’t it be wise to make sure she remembered the man who could possibly kill her? You would think they’d want to protect her.
Then again, there wasn’t much she knew about the New Directorate. She just knew a few contacts within her department and the tech guy. That was all the people she had to know to get her job done. She didn’t even know who made the big calls.
“What is a pretty lady like you doing in the city of love all alone?” the cab driver suddenly asked in not-so-good English, looking at her in his rear view mirror.
She gave him a sweet smile before responding in French. “I’m here to break up with my boyfriend.”
That shut the cab driver up. Good. She didn’t need to make polite conversation at a time like this.
She tried to focus on the exact point where her life had gone so wrong. How had she ended up working for an agency that was doing potentially bad things and not the CIA like both her parents? Why had she let herself be sucked up into the organization while never thinking to ask questions about the people who ran it? When had she decided it was okay to let these people she did not know start putting things into her brain?
God, she could be a complete moron sometimes.
The cab pulled to a stop outside the building she had indicated. This was it. Thanking the driver and giving him a rather handsome tip in hopes he wouldn’t remember this particular passenger and her destination, she stepped out of the car.
Walking into the building, it didn’t take her long to find him. He was on the top floor staring out the window with a pair of binoculars. He wasn’t kidding when he told her this stakeout thing was completely old school. She didn’t even see any computers anywhere. How were you supposed to find out anything without them?
“The CIA is so stuck in the Dark Ages,” she said, making her way across the creaky wooden floor to where he sat.
He put down the binoculars and stared at her a moment before hesitantly asking, “What are you doing here, Ana?”
“I didn’t want to put off seeing you again.” Silently, she applauded herself. That was a good opening. Now if only she could keep up that disaffected, detached tone. Maybe then she wouldn’t start to cry.
“I’m glad you came,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her in between his legs where he sat on a wooden crate. “I missed you.”
“Tyler, we need to talk.”
“I know. I can’t believe you actually took me up on my offer to spend the rest of my time here in Paris together. I thought you were going to get on that flight yesterday. Speaking of, where have you been if you didn’t get on it? That was eighteen hours ago.”
Eighteen hours. God, it felt like an eternity. “I’ve been busy.” She tried to shrug out of his hold, but he wasn’t letting up.
“Well, I’m glad you got un-busy.” He looked up at her, and before she could stop herself, she was kissing him. It was their last kiss, a kiss goodbye, even if he didn’t know it yet.
Before she could prepare herself to pull away from him and end their last embrace, he surprised her by doing so himself. “I have something I want to give you. I wasn’t sure if I was going too fast or if you didn’t feel the same way. But you’re here. So I think that says enough.”
She watched as he riffled through a knapsack that was at his feet. He looked so happy about whatever he was about to do that she couldn’t bear to break his heart. Not at this moment. Maybe she would get the courage after he was done.
“Here,” he said, holding out a small box for her to take.
Okay. She might be a moron when it cam to matters of the spy world and of her heart. But she knew what was in that box without even having to open it. This was not good.
“Tyler, there’s something you have to know.”
“Later.” She watched in horror and in excitement as he opened the box himself.
There it was. The most beautiful ring she had ever seen in her life. It was prettier than the ring her father had given her mother. A good size diamond surrounded by two emeralds that seemed to be the most vibrant shade of green that she had ever seen.
She hadn’t known a heart could melt and break at the same time.
“Tyler. We’ve only known each other for a month. We’ve only been on four dates.”
“I don’t care. You know when it’s the one. And I know. I love you, Ana. I know this is going fast, but I don’t want to sit around and wait for something to come along to tear us apart. Because eventually something will. If we make this commitment, then we’ll have something to fight back with. And frankly I don’t care give a damn about all the obstacles between us. We’ll get through whatever gets thrown our way. Together. So just say yes and we can get started.”
“I… I…” What was she trying to say? I want to with all my heart. You’re crazy. There’s no way I can. It’s too fast. I would if only I wasn’t destined to be your murderer or your victim one of these days. All of those were good options. But instead of any of those, she found herself simply shrugging and saying, “I just can’t.”
“Is this about your mother? Because you’re nothing like her. I understand that.”
Her look of horror obviously wasn’t lost on him as his body suddenly tensed up a little more. “I am everything like my mother. She’s the best person I’ve ever met. I have spent my whole life striving to be more like her.”
Tyler shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why would you want to be like her? She’s done nothing but cause trouble for everyone you love, including me.”
“She never did a thing to hurt you. Everything she did was for our own good. She gave up her whole life to make sure--” Hope paused in the middle of her rant as something occurred to her. “Wait. If you knew who my mother was, then why the hell did you get involved in this? Didn’t you realize how big a mistake seeing me would be? At least I have the whole memory loss card to play. What’s your excuse?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. All I know is that I love you no matter of your past mistakes or the current mistake you’re trying to make. Do you hear me? I love you, Ana Santos.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. Oh god. He didn’t know. He thought she was… “You thought I was Nadia Santos’s daughter?” she yelled. “How stupid can you be?”
Pieces were clicking into place. Tyler had mentioned that he grew up with her cousin. At the time, she had thought it funny that her Aunt Nadia had had a child and didn’t tell anyone. Then there was the whole fact that he was so upset when he found out who he thought her mother was. He really must have been convinced that she was an evil agent if she was the offspring of someone like her aunt.
“If you’re not Nadia’s daughter, then who are you?” Tyler asked.
She suddenly noticed that he was still holding the ring box open in his hands. Slowly, she took it away from him and shut it before handing it back. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Tyler. Some of it I kept secret for your own good and some of it I didn’t even know would affect you. Oh god. My parents are going to kill me.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Well for starters, they think that I’m on vacation in the Belize. They don’t know that I’m currently having a conversation with the one person I have been forbidden to see in the whole gorram world.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Nothing that involves you and I makes any sense.” She sighed and composed herself for a moment before looking up at him. “My name is not Ana. I mean, not really.”
“Okay. Aliases. I understand that.”
“No, you don’t. My real name is Hope Anastasia Lazarey.”
She waited as the weight of her words sunk in. “No.”
“Yes. Which is why I can’t marry you. And why I can’t even talk to you. It’s too dangerous.”
He kept shaking his head. “There’s no way. I would know if you were Hope. I would know. There are so many people watching over me. Someone would have figured it out. You’re just saying this to avoid owning up to your feelings for me.”
“God, I wish that was the reason.”
“I can’t handle this.”
She nodded. “I understand. Let’s not keep talking about it then. I’m going to turn around and leave. Don’t try to contact me. Don’t even think about me. It’s for the best.” She gave him a small smile even though she knew he could see the tears forming in her eyes. It only hurt slightly when he immediately looked away from her.
And that’s when it hit her.
This was really it. This was the end. There wasn’t going to be any type of Hollywood movie ending to this mess.
She gathered up the last bit of courage she had and turned to make her way out of the building. All of the sudden she just wanted to be home with her parents. Things were easier when she didn’t have to be strong.
She flagged down the nearest cab and, even though with all her being she wanted to give one last glance to that window on the top floor that she just knew Tyler was staring down at her from, she slid into the car. “Take me to the airport please.”
“No problem,” the cab driver said.
She stared at the buildings and roads flying past the window, leaving her near-fatal mistake behind her. She would have thought her mind would be racing in an attempt to figure out how she could have gotten so far off the path she thought her life was supposed to take. Instead, her mind was blank. Somewhere along the line, she had shut down.
The cab slid to a stop, and she noticed where they were for the first time. “This isn’t the airport.”
“You didn’t specify which one. This is a small airfield that has private planes take off from its runways.”
“And how the hell is that supposed to help me?”
The driver pointed to the plane sitting in front of him. “There’s a woman on that plane that desperately wants to speak with you. That should help you.”
Hope shook her head. It figures that on the worst day of her life, she would manage to get herself semi-abducted. And damnit if everyone in her life didn’t think she was in the Caribbean.
kidblink83
Cadet
Author’s note: I wanted to get this chapter out before I go on vacation for two weeks. I’m kind of losing my oomph to write this story so I’m going to do my best to “push out” the rest when I get back.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Just get it done,” Hope screamed into the phone before slamming it down. She was tired of working with such stupid peons. She had a job to do, and they always seemed to be getting in her way. She was being groomed to take over this organization one day soon, and she didn’t want to show any sign of weakness. People couldn’t just walk all over her.
Rubbing her hands through her hair, she sighed and contemplating whether she could escape from the office without anyone noticing.
“Trouble, darling?”
Hope turned to smile at her aunt who hovered in the doorway and shrugged. “Two of our agents are being real pains-in-my-ass. They think that my orders are flexible. They‘re fairly new.”
Nadia laughed and sat down in the chair next to Hope’s desk. “Then it will be no problem to kill them. New agents are easily replaced.”
“Ha ha. Very funny.” She threw the pen in her hand down onto the desk and leaned back in her chair. “So what brings the big boss down to my humble abode? I haven‘t done anything wrong in the past few days to necessitate a visit.”
“Your mother’s trying to rescue you again, Hope. She is relentless in her search to win you back.”
“She has the right to try.”
“You don’t want to be rescued?”
Hope shrugged. “The past couple years with you have been the easiest ones of my whole life. No stupid prophecy to worry about. No people to avoid because they could possibly kill me in some vague, distant future. I just wake up in the morning, do my job, go to sleep, repeat. It’s refreshing.”
“You know this all would be a hell of a lot easier if you didn’t insist upon writing your parents once a week,” Nadia said with a smile.
“I’m not going to write them out of my life. You should understand how important it is to keep your family close to you. You never had a family, and look how you turned out.”
“Very funny,” Nadia said, rolling her eyes and standing up. “If you weren’t my niece, I would personally see you dead for a comment like that.”
“I’m your protégé, too.”
“A choice I regret at least once an hour.”
Hope shook her head. “I still have no idea how you convinced me to work with you.”
“You were nursing a pretty horrible broken heart, kiddo. I just offered you a place to get away for a few months. You’re the one that chose to stay.”
Hope nodded. She really had only intended to take her Aunt Nadia’s offer of escape for a few months until the pain of cutting Tyler Vaughn out of her life got better. It wasn’t like she was oblivious to the fact that Nadia showing up on that plane two years before meant that she had broken out of CIA custody. But the offer had been so tempting.
Nadia would be living a fairly quiet life for the first few months of her newly-acquired freedom. Hope figured she could just stay with her, and then when the pain got better, she would go back and tell her parents what a horribly, stupid mistake she had made. Actually, it was more like a series of horribly stupid mistakes starting with the acceptance of that shady telephone offer of employment and ending with her failing in love with the man whose only destiny seemed to be kill or be killed when it came to her.
The pain hadn’t gone away, though. So she postponed her return for a few more weeks. Those weeks stretched into months which stretched into years.
Now she was settled in and didn’t want to leave. Nadia might have been going about things in the wrong way, but her heart seemed to be in the right place. Hope could sense that.
And she really had no idea how her parents would handle her sudden return.
“I’ve got an itch, Nadia.”
“Oh, the itch. God! Doesn’t it feel good?”
“Not an itch to kill,” Hope said, rolling her eyes.
“Oh. Then what kind of itch?”
“The kind that should have those two newbies shaking in their points.” Hope gave her a wink as she stood up and walked out of the room with a c***y grin plastered across her face.
“She has become hell on wheels,” Nadia said with a laugh. She reached across the desk to pick up the phone. “Conners, I need you to stop my sister’s little inquiries into our business. I’m tired of having to hide Hope from her. And make sure you dispose of those stupid letters she writes her father better. I think she might start to realize that they’re not getting sent out. Take them back to your room and burn them for all I care. Just don’t let her know about it!”
Nadia sighed and sat back in the chair. It was so hard being evil.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
“I’m getting too old for this,” Sydney grumbled quietly to the man walking next to her as they made their way up to the twenty-ninth floor.
“This is the best lead we’ve had on our daughter in two years, Syd.”
“I know.” She smiled demurely as a few people passed them by. “I still don’t want to believe my sister did this.”
“She definitely got her father’s genes.”
“I could kill Sloane for still screwing up my life even when he’s been dead for years. The bastard’s hurting me from the grave.”
Sark squeezed his wife’s arm lightly and pointed towards a room on their left. “Take a deep breath. We’ve already made it so far. We found out that Hope’s been working for some shady organization.”
“Which begs me to wonder for the millionth time why we didn’t see through her ‘I work at a bank’ cover. It was so simple.”
“We both didn’t think she could possibly be lying like you had done yourself in your first few years as a spy.”
Sydney took a seat at the computer terminal and started typing away. “This system is way too easy to hack. It isn’t Nadia’s work.”
“This is just a splinter cell with little to no contact with the big boss. It’s not going to be that good. Security will be loose, but that means we don’t have to shoot anyone. No shooting is always good.”
“Got it!” Sydney yelled, thrusting her fist into the air in glee. “Nadia’s been holding her in… oh god. She’s in Mexico. That’s so damn close.”
“All right. We’ll put in a call to Jack and Irina. With a little back-up on our side, we should have Hope back within the day.”
“Do you think that Nadia’s hurt her?”
Sark gave her a sad smile but shook his head. “No. Your sister might have her priorities slightly skewed, but she’s not a bad person. Hope’s blood to her. Plus, I think keeping our daughter safe but out of your reach hurts more.”
“Sometimes I find myself glad that Nadia took her. That maybe she‘s finally gotten a reprieve from the prophecy that‘s ruled her life. My psychotic sister has managed to give her the one thing I‘ve always wanted her to have. And I know at least Hope’s safe, I guess. ”
“That’s completely warped logic.”
“You’re right,” Sydney said, popping a disk out of the terminal and storming out of the room. “I think I’ll just kill her then.”
“No, you’re not,” Sark whispered to himself, cleaning up the evidence that they were ever there. “But that’s why I love you.”
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Tyler dropped his bags just inside the front door of his parent’s house in Fiji. He hadn’t been back here to see them or Jim in over a year. Sometimes it felt like every part of his life was just pointing out the mistakes he had made. Everything was so damned caught up in this prophecy.
“Is that you, Ty?” he heard his mother call from the kitchen.
“Yeah. My plane landed early. Something about a good wind out of the north.”
Lauren walked into the hall and smiled at him. “You look good. The CIA’s treating you well.”
“Try to say it like you really mean it,” Tyler said, rolling his eyes as he gave him mother a kiss on the cheek.
“You know that I always hated the idea of you following in our footsteps. You already have enough stress to deal with without worrying about going on missions.”
“Mom, could we please not talk about that damn prophecy?”
“All right, all right.” Lauren held up her hands. “No more prophecy talk.”
“You started in already?” Michael Vaughn said with a laugh as he came in through the back door. “I thought I told you to play it cool so that he wouldn’t run away screaming.”
“I was trying, Michael. But he’s my son. I’m worried about him especially with the new developments.”
“New developments?” Tyler said, giving them a funny look. “What new developments? And why have I heard nothing of these new developments?”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about,” Vaughn pointed out.
“I didn’t want to talk about it if nothing had changed, but since you seem to think something has changed, then yes, I want to talk about it.”
“Well, it’s about Hope Lazarey.”
Tyler tried to stay calm. He knew in talking about the prophecy, they would be spending a lot of time talking about Hope. Or Ana, as he still thought of her. “The woman that’s supposed to kill me?”
“Or you could kill her,” Lauren said. When both her son and her husband shot her a look, she shrugged. “I like to think positively even if it’s slightly morbid and screwed up. Sue me for not wanting my only son to die.”
Tyler let out a laugh. “So what’s going on with Hope?”
“Well, she’s dropped off the charts.”
“What?” he felt himself practically yell. “What do you mean she’s dropped off the charts?”
“About two years ago she was on vacation in Belize and she never came back. Everyone’s been keeping it quiet.”
Tyler suddenly remembered her cover story during the time she spent with him in Paris two years earlier. Oh god. She must have disappeared right after they broke it off. He tried to shut out his thoughts as he focused on what his parents were finally telling him. “Don’t you think you should have included me? I could have done something to help.”
Lauren gave him a funny look. “Her parents have been trying to locate her. That should be enough for now, honey.”
“She’s been gone for two years!” Tyler screamed. “She could be in danger as we speak, and no one seems to care.”
Lauren and Vaughn exchanged a look out of the corners of their eyes. “Am I missing something?” Lauren asked finally.
Tyler let out a sigh and walked into the living, sitting on the edge of a chair and placing his hands in his head. His parents just let him sit there as they hovered around the door, wondering what had just happened to their son.
“Ty?” Vaughn said after a few minutes.
“I love her, Dad.” He looked up and gave them a small smile. “I know you think I’ve been holding stuff back from you the past few years, and you’ve been right. Only it’s not what you thought. I met a girl in the field. Her name was Ana. I fell in love with her. It was quick and hit me hard. I asked her to marry me.”
“What?” Lauren screamed as she stomped into the room and took her own seat in a chair, head in hands.
“Like I said, it went fast.”
“And why did we never meet this girl?”
“Because the day I proposed, she told me her name wasn’t really Ana.”
“Hope,” Vaughn said with a laugh. “She must take after her mother with the good aliases.”
“Don’t joke right now,” Lauren warned.
“She must have disappeared later that day. I should have known that she wouldn’t just drop off the face of the earth completely.”
“So you fell in love with the girl who’s going to kill you?” Vaughn asked.
“Or that he’s going to kill,” Lauren said through her hands which were still securely covering her face.
“I did. And now she’s in trouble.” Tyler stood up. “Tell me how to get in contact with Sydney and Julian Lazarey. I’m going to help them find her.”
Vaughn didn’t say a word. He just grabbed a piece of paper off the coffee table and wrote down a number. “This is Syd’s cell. Just call her and explain as best you can. She’ll welcome your help.”
“Don’t you think they’re going to be a little weary of mixing the two halves of the prophecy together?” Lauren asked as Tyler grabbed the paper out of his father’s hands.
“Syd’s always loved playing with danger. That kind of thing never changes.” Vaughn looked over at his son. “So I guess this means you’re not going to be sticking around Fiji?”
“I have things to do. I promise to keep you up to date,” Tyler said, shaking his head as he walked out of the room.
This life was getting to be a little too much with its twists and turns.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Just get it done,” Hope screamed into the phone before slamming it down. She was tired of working with such stupid peons. She had a job to do, and they always seemed to be getting in her way. She was being groomed to take over this organization one day soon, and she didn’t want to show any sign of weakness. People couldn’t just walk all over her.
Rubbing her hands through her hair, she sighed and contemplating whether she could escape from the office without anyone noticing.
“Trouble, darling?”
Hope turned to smile at her aunt who hovered in the doorway and shrugged. “Two of our agents are being real pains-in-my-ass. They think that my orders are flexible. They‘re fairly new.”
Nadia laughed and sat down in the chair next to Hope’s desk. “Then it will be no problem to kill them. New agents are easily replaced.”
“Ha ha. Very funny.” She threw the pen in her hand down onto the desk and leaned back in her chair. “So what brings the big boss down to my humble abode? I haven‘t done anything wrong in the past few days to necessitate a visit.”
“Your mother’s trying to rescue you again, Hope. She is relentless in her search to win you back.”
“She has the right to try.”
“You don’t want to be rescued?”
Hope shrugged. “The past couple years with you have been the easiest ones of my whole life. No stupid prophecy to worry about. No people to avoid because they could possibly kill me in some vague, distant future. I just wake up in the morning, do my job, go to sleep, repeat. It’s refreshing.”
“You know this all would be a hell of a lot easier if you didn’t insist upon writing your parents once a week,” Nadia said with a smile.
“I’m not going to write them out of my life. You should understand how important it is to keep your family close to you. You never had a family, and look how you turned out.”
“Very funny,” Nadia said, rolling her eyes and standing up. “If you weren’t my niece, I would personally see you dead for a comment like that.”
“I’m your protégé, too.”
“A choice I regret at least once an hour.”
Hope shook her head. “I still have no idea how you convinced me to work with you.”
“You were nursing a pretty horrible broken heart, kiddo. I just offered you a place to get away for a few months. You’re the one that chose to stay.”
Hope nodded. She really had only intended to take her Aunt Nadia’s offer of escape for a few months until the pain of cutting Tyler Vaughn out of her life got better. It wasn’t like she was oblivious to the fact that Nadia showing up on that plane two years before meant that she had broken out of CIA custody. But the offer had been so tempting.
Nadia would be living a fairly quiet life for the first few months of her newly-acquired freedom. Hope figured she could just stay with her, and then when the pain got better, she would go back and tell her parents what a horribly, stupid mistake she had made. Actually, it was more like a series of horribly stupid mistakes starting with the acceptance of that shady telephone offer of employment and ending with her failing in love with the man whose only destiny seemed to be kill or be killed when it came to her.
The pain hadn’t gone away, though. So she postponed her return for a few more weeks. Those weeks stretched into months which stretched into years.
Now she was settled in and didn’t want to leave. Nadia might have been going about things in the wrong way, but her heart seemed to be in the right place. Hope could sense that.
And she really had no idea how her parents would handle her sudden return.
“I’ve got an itch, Nadia.”
“Oh, the itch. God! Doesn’t it feel good?”
“Not an itch to kill,” Hope said, rolling her eyes.
“Oh. Then what kind of itch?”
“The kind that should have those two newbies shaking in their points.” Hope gave her a wink as she stood up and walked out of the room with a c***y grin plastered across her face.
“She has become hell on wheels,” Nadia said with a laugh. She reached across the desk to pick up the phone. “Conners, I need you to stop my sister’s little inquiries into our business. I’m tired of having to hide Hope from her. And make sure you dispose of those stupid letters she writes her father better. I think she might start to realize that they’re not getting sent out. Take them back to your room and burn them for all I care. Just don’t let her know about it!”
Nadia sighed and sat back in the chair. It was so hard being evil.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
“I’m getting too old for this,” Sydney grumbled quietly to the man walking next to her as they made their way up to the twenty-ninth floor.
“This is the best lead we’ve had on our daughter in two years, Syd.”
“I know.” She smiled demurely as a few people passed them by. “I still don’t want to believe my sister did this.”
“She definitely got her father’s genes.”
“I could kill Sloane for still screwing up my life even when he’s been dead for years. The bastard’s hurting me from the grave.”
Sark squeezed his wife’s arm lightly and pointed towards a room on their left. “Take a deep breath. We’ve already made it so far. We found out that Hope’s been working for some shady organization.”
“Which begs me to wonder for the millionth time why we didn’t see through her ‘I work at a bank’ cover. It was so simple.”
“We both didn’t think she could possibly be lying like you had done yourself in your first few years as a spy.”
Sydney took a seat at the computer terminal and started typing away. “This system is way too easy to hack. It isn’t Nadia’s work.”
“This is just a splinter cell with little to no contact with the big boss. It’s not going to be that good. Security will be loose, but that means we don’t have to shoot anyone. No shooting is always good.”
“Got it!” Sydney yelled, thrusting her fist into the air in glee. “Nadia’s been holding her in… oh god. She’s in Mexico. That’s so damn close.”
“All right. We’ll put in a call to Jack and Irina. With a little back-up on our side, we should have Hope back within the day.”
“Do you think that Nadia’s hurt her?”
Sark gave her a sad smile but shook his head. “No. Your sister might have her priorities slightly skewed, but she’s not a bad person. Hope’s blood to her. Plus, I think keeping our daughter safe but out of your reach hurts more.”
“Sometimes I find myself glad that Nadia took her. That maybe she‘s finally gotten a reprieve from the prophecy that‘s ruled her life. My psychotic sister has managed to give her the one thing I‘ve always wanted her to have. And I know at least Hope’s safe, I guess. ”
“That’s completely warped logic.”
“You’re right,” Sydney said, popping a disk out of the terminal and storming out of the room. “I think I’ll just kill her then.”
“No, you’re not,” Sark whispered to himself, cleaning up the evidence that they were ever there. “But that’s why I love you.”
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Tyler dropped his bags just inside the front door of his parent’s house in Fiji. He hadn’t been back here to see them or Jim in over a year. Sometimes it felt like every part of his life was just pointing out the mistakes he had made. Everything was so damned caught up in this prophecy.
“Is that you, Ty?” he heard his mother call from the kitchen.
“Yeah. My plane landed early. Something about a good wind out of the north.”
Lauren walked into the hall and smiled at him. “You look good. The CIA’s treating you well.”
“Try to say it like you really mean it,” Tyler said, rolling his eyes as he gave him mother a kiss on the cheek.
“You know that I always hated the idea of you following in our footsteps. You already have enough stress to deal with without worrying about going on missions.”
“Mom, could we please not talk about that damn prophecy?”
“All right, all right.” Lauren held up her hands. “No more prophecy talk.”
“You started in already?” Michael Vaughn said with a laugh as he came in through the back door. “I thought I told you to play it cool so that he wouldn’t run away screaming.”
“I was trying, Michael. But he’s my son. I’m worried about him especially with the new developments.”
“New developments?” Tyler said, giving them a funny look. “What new developments? And why have I heard nothing of these new developments?”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about,” Vaughn pointed out.
“I didn’t want to talk about it if nothing had changed, but since you seem to think something has changed, then yes, I want to talk about it.”
“Well, it’s about Hope Lazarey.”
Tyler tried to stay calm. He knew in talking about the prophecy, they would be spending a lot of time talking about Hope. Or Ana, as he still thought of her. “The woman that’s supposed to kill me?”
“Or you could kill her,” Lauren said. When both her son and her husband shot her a look, she shrugged. “I like to think positively even if it’s slightly morbid and screwed up. Sue me for not wanting my only son to die.”
Tyler let out a laugh. “So what’s going on with Hope?”
“Well, she’s dropped off the charts.”
“What?” he felt himself practically yell. “What do you mean she’s dropped off the charts?”
“About two years ago she was on vacation in Belize and she never came back. Everyone’s been keeping it quiet.”
Tyler suddenly remembered her cover story during the time she spent with him in Paris two years earlier. Oh god. She must have disappeared right after they broke it off. He tried to shut out his thoughts as he focused on what his parents were finally telling him. “Don’t you think you should have included me? I could have done something to help.”
Lauren gave him a funny look. “Her parents have been trying to locate her. That should be enough for now, honey.”
“She’s been gone for two years!” Tyler screamed. “She could be in danger as we speak, and no one seems to care.”
Lauren and Vaughn exchanged a look out of the corners of their eyes. “Am I missing something?” Lauren asked finally.
Tyler let out a sigh and walked into the living, sitting on the edge of a chair and placing his hands in his head. His parents just let him sit there as they hovered around the door, wondering what had just happened to their son.
“Ty?” Vaughn said after a few minutes.
“I love her, Dad.” He looked up and gave them a small smile. “I know you think I’ve been holding stuff back from you the past few years, and you’ve been right. Only it’s not what you thought. I met a girl in the field. Her name was Ana. I fell in love with her. It was quick and hit me hard. I asked her to marry me.”
“What?” Lauren screamed as she stomped into the room and took her own seat in a chair, head in hands.
“Like I said, it went fast.”
“And why did we never meet this girl?”
“Because the day I proposed, she told me her name wasn’t really Ana.”
“Hope,” Vaughn said with a laugh. “She must take after her mother with the good aliases.”
“Don’t joke right now,” Lauren warned.
“She must have disappeared later that day. I should have known that she wouldn’t just drop off the face of the earth completely.”
“So you fell in love with the girl who’s going to kill you?” Vaughn asked.
“Or that he’s going to kill,” Lauren said through her hands which were still securely covering her face.
“I did. And now she’s in trouble.” Tyler stood up. “Tell me how to get in contact with Sydney and Julian Lazarey. I’m going to help them find her.”
Vaughn didn’t say a word. He just grabbed a piece of paper off the coffee table and wrote down a number. “This is Syd’s cell. Just call her and explain as best you can. She’ll welcome your help.”
“Don’t you think they’re going to be a little weary of mixing the two halves of the prophecy together?” Lauren asked as Tyler grabbed the paper out of his father’s hands.
“Syd’s always loved playing with danger. That kind of thing never changes.” Vaughn looked over at his son. “So I guess this means you’re not going to be sticking around Fiji?”
“I have things to do. I promise to keep you up to date,” Tyler said, shaking his head as he walked out of the room.
This life was getting to be a little too much with its twists and turns.
Alias Fan Gillian
Cadet
Awesome chapters. Please write more soon.
Thanks for the PM.
Thanks for the PM.
kidblink83
Cadet
Author‘s note: Well, I‘ve learned something. I‘m not the type of person who can just abandon a story unfinished. I lost my oomph for this about two months ago, but something in me just pushed to finish it even though the muse was gone. I hope you all enjoyed the story. I guess you can say it’s my farewell to the Alias ’verse.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Tyler Vaughn watched as the van he was riding in went through puddle after puddle. Water seemed to be coming in through all the open cracks and crevices of the hunk of junk the team had gotten as a ride. He sighed and looked at the people in the van around him. They were your typical CIA grunts. Usually just there to make sure the hotshot agent didn’t get killed or anything.
It was rather funny, the idea of him being a hotshot agent.
Throughout training, all he had ever wanted to be was like his father. The agent that backed up everyone else. The one that made sure the job got done while others took the glory by doing high risk moves. He wanted to be the reliable guy who kept the others alive.
Didn’t happen that way.
Over the past few months, he had been forced into being a slightly loose cannon. He had to be the one to perform all the crazy stunts that got things done, that kept people from being killed and put the precious artifacts in the hands of the good guys. It was only by drawing more attention to himself that he could truly do all the things that were necessary.
It was ironic when his coworkers joked about how much he was acting like one of the CIA’s best agents, Sydney Bristow. If they only knew.
Tyler had been working with Sydney and her husband, Julian Lazarey, in order to find Hope. He had become a semi-double agent, if you wanted to get technical about it. Sydney’s mother, Irina Derevko, had offered him temporary employment with her agency until Hope could be found. He accepted, knowing that he couldn’t tell one soul at the CIA what he was doing. Because that would leave too many loose ends, too many ways that their efforts could go wrong.
So he had started getting himself put on missions that were in the same cities where Hope might be. Or, if she was gone already when he arrived, Tyler tried to weasel out information from any contact he could find about why Hope had been in that city.
Sydney and Sark had first pinpointed their daughter in Mexico, but that turned out to be a slight bust. By the time they got to the facility where they thought Hope was being held, it was deserted. Nadia had left behind a note to tauntingly let them know that it was Hope’s decision to be with her aunt.
That information almost broke all of them.
The Hope they knew, or Ana in Tyler’s case, would never chose to have a life like Nadia’s. She knew that the things her aunt did were wrong. There was no way she would find the same pleasure and satisfaction from them.
Letting out another breath, Tyler turned back to stare out the window as the rain poured down.
Seattle. It was the next city on his list. There had been a rumor that there was a big drug corporation in the area that was dabbling in the creation of a new biological weapon. Two days earlier, the weapon had been completed, and the corporation was shopping for a buyer. It was the kind of thing Nadia Santos would never allow to happen without the corporation feeling her presence.
And since this weapon seemed to be the real thing, Nadia wouldn’t just send in some goon to do the “negotiating”. No. She would send someone important.
Tyler closed his eyes and leaned his head against the cool glass. All he could was hope that this time they were right. Because something was horribly wrong with Hope if she was willingly working alongside her aunt. And she needed someone to find her before she slipped in too deep.
At the very least, he owed her that much.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Hope gave the man sitting across from her the best seductive grin she could muster. She hated having to turn on her sex appeal to get things done, but it looked like this guy wasn’t budging. She had promised her aunt that she wouldn’t return home without something to show for her trip. The past few missions Nadia had sent her on had resulted in the acquisition of absolutely nothing. Hope hated to fail.
“Mr. Daveros, I think we need to get down to business. My employer is interested in purchasing that little gadget you’ve been cooking up in your lab. Why don’t we talk price?”
“I am not sure your employer is the type of person who I want to be entering into business with,” the middle-aged man answered with a sly grin.
Hope narrowed her eyes. This guy was turning out to be kind of sleazy. It was her duty to knock that stupid greasy grin off his face. Reaching down, she pulled a disk out of her pocked and slid it across the table. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll make those doubts disappear right quick.”
“What is this?” he asked, picking up the disk.
“Proof that I haven’t killed your family. Yet.” Hope watched the man pale at her words. “Listen. I don’t want to do it, but I will if you force me to. Take a minute before making up your mind. Go verify the information I’ve given you. Then you can come back in here and we’ll get down to business.”
Hope watched him fight to keep himself from bursting out in anger. Eventually, he must have felt the wisdom in her words because his chair screeched against the floor as he pushed himself away from the table. Giving her one last angry look, he excused himself and left the room to presumably figure out if she was telling the truth.
She almost wished it was a lie, but the proof of what she had done was right in front of her eyes. The black gloves she had put on before showing up to the meeting hid the blood that covered her left hand. Mrs. Daveros had gotten a little frisky when she was kidnapping them in Vancouver early that morning, and Hope had been forced to give her a nasty blow to the back of the head.
Hope shuddered at the memory, and the concept of kidnapper-victim relations that she had been taught in agent training suddenly came to the top of her mind. It was a phenomenon how if a kidnapper treated their hostages with politeness and respect, eventually the hostages started feeling their kidnapper’s plight. They began to sympathize and even took actions to help the kidnapper achieve their goal. She had never understood that concept until now.
Working with her aunt in the beginning had constituted no worse deeds than she had done in her whole history as an agent. She had just been the overseer on a lot of operations. Her hands didn’t even get dirty.
And then slowly but surely, she started taking a more active role. She started seeing the perspective that Nadia was coming from. She began to understand why this missions had to be completed, why these actions had to be taken.
She started to believe in what she was doing.
And the world had sucked her in and away from everything she had ever known and held dear.
Here she was. Without family or friends. Without backing by a legitimate government agency. Without the normal values and morals she had been raised on.
And most of the time, it didn’t even feel wrong.
Hope was pulled away from her thoughts as Mr. Daveros entered the room again. He was holding a black case in his left hand. She had a feeling she knew what that was.
“How much is your employer offering?” Daveros asked as he stopped right beside her chair.
“Two million.” Hope gestured to the case she had set down by her chair earlier in the meeting. “Up front.”
“Fine. Whatever it takes for you to release my wife and children.”
Hope stood up and took the case out of his hand. “That’s very accommodating of you.” She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a small piece of paper. “The location of your family. It’s been great. I’ll be sure to let my employer know what a nice businessman you are.”
“I never want to see your face nor any of your co-workers within a mile of my house or my business. Do you hear me?”
Hope nodded as she walked towards the exit. “Just stop making products my boss might want and I promise you’ll never see me again.”
She didn’t pause in her steps until she heard the door click behind her and she was in the elevator heading to the ground floor. Her cell phone rang as soon as the elevator door slid shut. “How did you know that I was done?”
“I’m the head of this agency,” Nadia said with a laugh. “I know everything.”
“I got the bio weapon. I even saved you three million dollars.”
“And that is why I sent you on this one. How did you get Daveros to crack?”
“I kidnapped his family and told him I would kill them if he didn’t sell me the drug.”
“You could have just taken it from him at no cost.”
“I figured if we paid him he wouldn’t be looking for revenge. Now he has his family back and a nice little nest egg to retire on.”
“Your threat? What would you have done if he didn’t sell you the drug?”
“That didn’t happen.”
“But what if it had?”
“I don’t know. I probably would have just taken out everyone in the room and found where they were keeping the drug. It was confirmed to be in the building after all.”
“You wouldn’t have made good on your threat?”
“His wife and children were innocents. They don’t even really know Daddy’s job entails making biological weapons and selling them to the highest bidder.”
Nadia sighed. “That’s what makes you weak, Hope. I had really thought you would have grown out of having these pathetic feelings of remorse and guilt. They’re the markings of a horribly inadequate agent.”
“You wanted me to kill the family?”
“It would have been right to send him a message that it’s not good to get in my way, Hope. If you were smart, you would have seen that.” Hope felt a shiver course through her body as her aunt let out a small, restrained laugh. “Which is why I had to do it myself.”
“Do what?”
“Send him a message. You did use the normal holding facilities at our complex in Detroit, didn’t you?”
Horror dawned on Hope as she realized what had happened. “You killed the family.”
“I did what you were too weak to do.”
“I promised him his family would be safe now that he handed the drug over.”
“Then he’s in for a rather messy surprise when he goes to the address you gave him.”
The call cut off abruptly as Nadia hung up on her niece. At that precise moment, the elevator reached its destination and let out a happy ding which caused Hope to fling her cell phone against the wall as hard as she could. Its shattering into pieces did nothing to help the rage or the guilt or the sudden urge to cry. All that and more was washing over her.
People stared at her, but it didn’t really matter. She was already in control of her emotions. This was part of the game she had chosen to play. Actions had repercussions, and she could see why Nadia had done what she did.
It was the right move.
Nadia was correct in thinking that Hope just wasn’t strong enough to make the call.
She should be grateful that her aunt was watching out for her.
Hope calmly walked through the lobby of Daveros Tech, trying to ignore the small voice in the back of her head that was screaming at her to wake up and realize she was being slowly brainwashed. She had more important things to do than start worrying about the decisions she had made. After all, she still had the newly acquired bio weapon. There was a drop-off that had to be done if she was going to finish her assignment.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Hope stood on top of the office building that was the meeting point Nadia had given her. True to form, it was pouring down rain, and Hope was already getting plenty pissed off at not having the foresight to bring some sort of umbrella with her. That would be the second mistake she made on this mission.
The first was showing her mark mercy in not killing his family. She had had plenty of time to think it over on the drive over. Daveros had not been the picture of cooperation, and that could not be tolerated in the world she lived in. Because if you met up with one second of trouble when the timing was off, you were dead.
The family had had to die. It was the only way to teach those watching that Hope Lazarey demanded their respect if not their fear.
Hope looked down as the band on her wrist beeped. The motion detectors she had set up in the stairwell were going off in a signal that her contact was on his way up to meet her. A sense of relief and accomplishment washed over her, and it suddenly dawned on her how easy her life had become. For years, she had been living in the grey zone. Now things were black and white.
Being able to take things at face value even if they made her cringe at times kept her from thinking about all the parts of her life she was willing leaving behind. She missed her family like crazy, but it wasn’t like they had really tried to find her. Because she wasn’t hiding out. In fact, she kept purposefully putting herself in the spotlight.
But still no one ever showed up.
She heard her contact step out onto the roof and was about to turn to face him when her heart suddenly froze at the sound of his voice.
“Hello, Ana. Or are you going by Hope again these days?” Tyler said, stepping out into the rain.
No one from her old life had ever showed up to find her.
Until now, that is.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Tyler Vaughn watched as the van he was riding in went through puddle after puddle. Water seemed to be coming in through all the open cracks and crevices of the hunk of junk the team had gotten as a ride. He sighed and looked at the people in the van around him. They were your typical CIA grunts. Usually just there to make sure the hotshot agent didn’t get killed or anything.
It was rather funny, the idea of him being a hotshot agent.
Throughout training, all he had ever wanted to be was like his father. The agent that backed up everyone else. The one that made sure the job got done while others took the glory by doing high risk moves. He wanted to be the reliable guy who kept the others alive.
Didn’t happen that way.
Over the past few months, he had been forced into being a slightly loose cannon. He had to be the one to perform all the crazy stunts that got things done, that kept people from being killed and put the precious artifacts in the hands of the good guys. It was only by drawing more attention to himself that he could truly do all the things that were necessary.
It was ironic when his coworkers joked about how much he was acting like one of the CIA’s best agents, Sydney Bristow. If they only knew.
Tyler had been working with Sydney and her husband, Julian Lazarey, in order to find Hope. He had become a semi-double agent, if you wanted to get technical about it. Sydney’s mother, Irina Derevko, had offered him temporary employment with her agency until Hope could be found. He accepted, knowing that he couldn’t tell one soul at the CIA what he was doing. Because that would leave too many loose ends, too many ways that their efforts could go wrong.
So he had started getting himself put on missions that were in the same cities where Hope might be. Or, if she was gone already when he arrived, Tyler tried to weasel out information from any contact he could find about why Hope had been in that city.
Sydney and Sark had first pinpointed their daughter in Mexico, but that turned out to be a slight bust. By the time they got to the facility where they thought Hope was being held, it was deserted. Nadia had left behind a note to tauntingly let them know that it was Hope’s decision to be with her aunt.
That information almost broke all of them.
The Hope they knew, or Ana in Tyler’s case, would never chose to have a life like Nadia’s. She knew that the things her aunt did were wrong. There was no way she would find the same pleasure and satisfaction from them.
Letting out another breath, Tyler turned back to stare out the window as the rain poured down.
Seattle. It was the next city on his list. There had been a rumor that there was a big drug corporation in the area that was dabbling in the creation of a new biological weapon. Two days earlier, the weapon had been completed, and the corporation was shopping for a buyer. It was the kind of thing Nadia Santos would never allow to happen without the corporation feeling her presence.
And since this weapon seemed to be the real thing, Nadia wouldn’t just send in some goon to do the “negotiating”. No. She would send someone important.
Tyler closed his eyes and leaned his head against the cool glass. All he could was hope that this time they were right. Because something was horribly wrong with Hope if she was willingly working alongside her aunt. And she needed someone to find her before she slipped in too deep.
At the very least, he owed her that much.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Hope gave the man sitting across from her the best seductive grin she could muster. She hated having to turn on her sex appeal to get things done, but it looked like this guy wasn’t budging. She had promised her aunt that she wouldn’t return home without something to show for her trip. The past few missions Nadia had sent her on had resulted in the acquisition of absolutely nothing. Hope hated to fail.
“Mr. Daveros, I think we need to get down to business. My employer is interested in purchasing that little gadget you’ve been cooking up in your lab. Why don’t we talk price?”
“I am not sure your employer is the type of person who I want to be entering into business with,” the middle-aged man answered with a sly grin.
Hope narrowed her eyes. This guy was turning out to be kind of sleazy. It was her duty to knock that stupid greasy grin off his face. Reaching down, she pulled a disk out of her pocked and slid it across the table. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll make those doubts disappear right quick.”
“What is this?” he asked, picking up the disk.
“Proof that I haven’t killed your family. Yet.” Hope watched the man pale at her words. “Listen. I don’t want to do it, but I will if you force me to. Take a minute before making up your mind. Go verify the information I’ve given you. Then you can come back in here and we’ll get down to business.”
Hope watched him fight to keep himself from bursting out in anger. Eventually, he must have felt the wisdom in her words because his chair screeched against the floor as he pushed himself away from the table. Giving her one last angry look, he excused himself and left the room to presumably figure out if she was telling the truth.
She almost wished it was a lie, but the proof of what she had done was right in front of her eyes. The black gloves she had put on before showing up to the meeting hid the blood that covered her left hand. Mrs. Daveros had gotten a little frisky when she was kidnapping them in Vancouver early that morning, and Hope had been forced to give her a nasty blow to the back of the head.
Hope shuddered at the memory, and the concept of kidnapper-victim relations that she had been taught in agent training suddenly came to the top of her mind. It was a phenomenon how if a kidnapper treated their hostages with politeness and respect, eventually the hostages started feeling their kidnapper’s plight. They began to sympathize and even took actions to help the kidnapper achieve their goal. She had never understood that concept until now.
Working with her aunt in the beginning had constituted no worse deeds than she had done in her whole history as an agent. She had just been the overseer on a lot of operations. Her hands didn’t even get dirty.
And then slowly but surely, she started taking a more active role. She started seeing the perspective that Nadia was coming from. She began to understand why this missions had to be completed, why these actions had to be taken.
She started to believe in what she was doing.
And the world had sucked her in and away from everything she had ever known and held dear.
Here she was. Without family or friends. Without backing by a legitimate government agency. Without the normal values and morals she had been raised on.
And most of the time, it didn’t even feel wrong.
Hope was pulled away from her thoughts as Mr. Daveros entered the room again. He was holding a black case in his left hand. She had a feeling she knew what that was.
“How much is your employer offering?” Daveros asked as he stopped right beside her chair.
“Two million.” Hope gestured to the case she had set down by her chair earlier in the meeting. “Up front.”
“Fine. Whatever it takes for you to release my wife and children.”
Hope stood up and took the case out of his hand. “That’s very accommodating of you.” She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a small piece of paper. “The location of your family. It’s been great. I’ll be sure to let my employer know what a nice businessman you are.”
“I never want to see your face nor any of your co-workers within a mile of my house or my business. Do you hear me?”
Hope nodded as she walked towards the exit. “Just stop making products my boss might want and I promise you’ll never see me again.”
She didn’t pause in her steps until she heard the door click behind her and she was in the elevator heading to the ground floor. Her cell phone rang as soon as the elevator door slid shut. “How did you know that I was done?”
“I’m the head of this agency,” Nadia said with a laugh. “I know everything.”
“I got the bio weapon. I even saved you three million dollars.”
“And that is why I sent you on this one. How did you get Daveros to crack?”
“I kidnapped his family and told him I would kill them if he didn’t sell me the drug.”
“You could have just taken it from him at no cost.”
“I figured if we paid him he wouldn’t be looking for revenge. Now he has his family back and a nice little nest egg to retire on.”
“Your threat? What would you have done if he didn’t sell you the drug?”
“That didn’t happen.”
“But what if it had?”
“I don’t know. I probably would have just taken out everyone in the room and found where they were keeping the drug. It was confirmed to be in the building after all.”
“You wouldn’t have made good on your threat?”
“His wife and children were innocents. They don’t even really know Daddy’s job entails making biological weapons and selling them to the highest bidder.”
Nadia sighed. “That’s what makes you weak, Hope. I had really thought you would have grown out of having these pathetic feelings of remorse and guilt. They’re the markings of a horribly inadequate agent.”
“You wanted me to kill the family?”
“It would have been right to send him a message that it’s not good to get in my way, Hope. If you were smart, you would have seen that.” Hope felt a shiver course through her body as her aunt let out a small, restrained laugh. “Which is why I had to do it myself.”
“Do what?”
“Send him a message. You did use the normal holding facilities at our complex in Detroit, didn’t you?”
Horror dawned on Hope as she realized what had happened. “You killed the family.”
“I did what you were too weak to do.”
“I promised him his family would be safe now that he handed the drug over.”
“Then he’s in for a rather messy surprise when he goes to the address you gave him.”
The call cut off abruptly as Nadia hung up on her niece. At that precise moment, the elevator reached its destination and let out a happy ding which caused Hope to fling her cell phone against the wall as hard as she could. Its shattering into pieces did nothing to help the rage or the guilt or the sudden urge to cry. All that and more was washing over her.
People stared at her, but it didn’t really matter. She was already in control of her emotions. This was part of the game she had chosen to play. Actions had repercussions, and she could see why Nadia had done what she did.
It was the right move.
Nadia was correct in thinking that Hope just wasn’t strong enough to make the call.
She should be grateful that her aunt was watching out for her.
Hope calmly walked through the lobby of Daveros Tech, trying to ignore the small voice in the back of her head that was screaming at her to wake up and realize she was being slowly brainwashed. She had more important things to do than start worrying about the decisions she had made. After all, she still had the newly acquired bio weapon. There was a drop-off that had to be done if she was going to finish her assignment.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Hope stood on top of the office building that was the meeting point Nadia had given her. True to form, it was pouring down rain, and Hope was already getting plenty pissed off at not having the foresight to bring some sort of umbrella with her. That would be the second mistake she made on this mission.
The first was showing her mark mercy in not killing his family. She had had plenty of time to think it over on the drive over. Daveros had not been the picture of cooperation, and that could not be tolerated in the world she lived in. Because if you met up with one second of trouble when the timing was off, you were dead.
The family had had to die. It was the only way to teach those watching that Hope Lazarey demanded their respect if not their fear.
Hope looked down as the band on her wrist beeped. The motion detectors she had set up in the stairwell were going off in a signal that her contact was on his way up to meet her. A sense of relief and accomplishment washed over her, and it suddenly dawned on her how easy her life had become. For years, she had been living in the grey zone. Now things were black and white.
Being able to take things at face value even if they made her cringe at times kept her from thinking about all the parts of her life she was willing leaving behind. She missed her family like crazy, but it wasn’t like they had really tried to find her. Because she wasn’t hiding out. In fact, she kept purposefully putting herself in the spotlight.
But still no one ever showed up.
She heard her contact step out onto the roof and was about to turn to face him when her heart suddenly froze at the sound of his voice.
“Hello, Ana. Or are you going by Hope again these days?” Tyler said, stepping out into the rain.
No one from her old life had ever showed up to find her.
Until now, that is.
sexcivaughn14
welcome home
awww!!!! that was great!!! i loved this story
kidblink83
Cadet
Chapter Twenty-nine
Hope squinted through the rain to stare at the man in front of her. “What do you think you’re doing, Tyler?”
“I have been trying to find you for two years, Hope,” he said taking a step towards her.
Hope’s heart jumped at the idea that Tyler might actually have cared enough to try to find her when she went mission, but her rationality immediately took over. She had left him high and dry, broken his heart and dropped him like he meant nothing to her. Which meant he was lying. Nothing new when push came to shove. Tired of the people in her life abusing her, she felt she had no choice but to pull out her gun and aim it at his heart. “Do you actually think I’m going to believe that? If you had wanted to find me, it wouldn’t have taken you two years. I have not been holed up in some remote outpost in Timbuktu.”
Tyler stopped in his tracks and held his hands up. He wasn’t surprised that she was leery of him. Obviously something had gone down that kept her away from her family for two years. With the world they lived in, she had probably gone through extensive brainwashing or something. He watched as her gaze fell from his face to the small black case sitting down by her feet, and things began to add up. “You think I’m here for the biological weapon?”
“Aren’t you? I knew the CIA would send someone to try to take this away from me. Just never figured it would be you.” Her voice faltered slightly at the end, and she let out a small laugh to cover it up. “You don’t understand that I can’t give this to you. I can’t trust that it will stay in the right hands.”
“You don’t think the CIA is trustworthy? Your parents work for the CIA.”
“I haven’t talked to my parents in two years,” Hope yelled. “Why would bringing them into this change anything?”
“What did she do to you?” Tyler said, staring at her with a mixture of surprise and disgust in his eyes.
“My Aunt Nadia, if that is the she you’re referring to, did nothing to me. My parents, however? They haven’t tried to speak to me for two years, Tyler. All trust I ever had for them went out the window when I started realizing they abandoned me. It was as clear as day. They found out the mess I had gotten myself into, and they abandoned me. And before you start thinking about doing something stupid, I’m just as good of an agent as you remember. This talking isn’t distracting me one bit.”
“That would be good to know if trying to distract was number one on my list instead of trying to get you to see reason and put down the damn gun.”
“All right then, Tyler. I’ll give you your shot. Convince me.”
“You’ve got it all wrong about me and about your parents. They had been searching alongside me the whole time you‘ve been missing. They’ve devoted every hour of every day to figuring out where Nadia Santos took you. We‘ve been trying to get you back this whole time.”
“Not good enough,” she said, shaking her head. “You’ve given me no reason to believe you. I would have known if you were trying to find me.”
Tyler sighed. “This would be so much easier if you would just put down the gun? I’m not here to fight.”
“Yes, you are,” Hope said, even though she did slide the gun back into the holster at her side. “You just don’t realize it.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Hope took a deep breath and knew that in two seconds she was going to have to make a decision. She had felt this moment coming for two years. God. She didn’t want to have to do this.
“Answer me, Hope.”
Tyler’s demand brought her away from her thoughts and back to the here and now. Glaring at him, she made her decision and held her hands up to gesture all around. “Don’t you see? This is it, Tyler. This is the moment.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You can’t have forgotten the prophecy. It’s the only reason why I left you that day in Paris. It’s the only reason my family seems to have disowned me. I don’t make good decisions and because of that, one of us has to die.”
“You’re not even making sense,” Tyler yelled through the rain as he started inching towards her again.
“It all makes too much sense.” She swept the water out of her eyes and sent him a pleading look. “I knew the next time I saw you that our time would run out. We‘ve been putting this off for years.”
“I am not going to fight you, Hope.”
“Then you’re going to be the one to die.” Without warning, Hope reached out with her right fist and connected with his jaw. His feet tried to get purchase on the wet cement roof, but there was just too much rain. Tyler ended up in a heap at her feet. “This won’t work unless you fight back.”
Hope grabbed Tyler by the collar of his jacket, lifting him up a few inches before using her fist to push him back down. She tried to blank out the memory of what she was doing even as it was happening. This was a day she had been scared of since forever, and she just wanted it to be over with. Things would be easier if this was just all over.
Tyler kicked his leg out to meet the back of her knee, and she found herself face down on the wet ground next to him. He rolled so that he had her arms pinned to the cold ground. “Why are you doing this?” Tyler hissed.
“Because you can’t escape destiny,” she yelled into his face before lunging forward to butt her head straight into his noise. There was a small crack, and Tyler immediately knew she had broken it. He pushed the blood away from where it was trickling into his mouth and pulled himself to his feet.
“I am not going to fight you to the death just because some ancient Italian man said that’s what I should do.”
“He’s not the one in charge of this.”
“Then who is?”
Hope could feel the tears begin to fall down her cheek and was suddenly very glad that the rain wasn’t letting up. “We’re in charge of it. It’s our responsibility, our burden.”
Tyler shook his head and took a step closer to her, holding his arms wide open. “I love you, Hope. I never stopped. So if you think killing me will help you fix whatever’s broken inside of you, then do it. I don’t care.”
His words made her heart break in two. She had had a feeling that nothing between them had changed in all the time they had been apart.
At any rate when it came to their feelings for one another, nothing had changed. Everything else had shifted away from the norm a long time ago. Practically since her birth, Hope had learned to make the hard choices. This was just another choice like all the others. At least that’s what she kept telling herself.
The only problem was this particular hard choice was forcing her to kill the man she loved. And he sure as hell wasn’t making it easy by just standing there like an open target. Hope willed her hand to stop shaking as she reached into the holster at her side and pulled out the gun, pointing it at Tyler again. “You would just let me shoot you?”
“If it’s really something you think you could do, then yeah.”
“You don’t know the kind of person I am, Tyler.”
“You’re not a monster.”
“Actually, I think I’ve slowly become one, but to stay on point, that’s not the part of me you have to worry about.” She clicked the safety off. “My compassion is what kills in the end.”
“As long as it’s you pulling that trigger, I can accept it. I knew from the moment I found out you were the one in the prophecy with me that it would come down to this. And I knew that in the end I was going to be the one to die.”
The sides of his mouth quipped up in the tiny start of a smile as he gave his shoulders a small shrug.
That little movement was what finally made the dam break inside of her. She had been holding so much inside, compartmentalizing it, that she didn’t know which way was up or down. Her mind shifted to the day in Paris when she had stepped onto a plane and changed her life.
Nadia had told Hope she would protect her from every having to go through this hardship. She offered her niece a place she could stay where she would never have to see Tyler Vaughn again. It made sense in her head at the time. If Hope never saw Tyler, then the whole possibility of the prophecy coming true would be eliminated. That’s all she ever wanted. She just wanted to be free.
Things had gone well for the first few months under her Aunt Nadia’s care.
Then Hope started getting in a little too deep for her liking. She tried to pull out, tried to turn things back into what they had once been. That’s when the subtle threats had started. Nadia definitely hadn’t held a gun to her head and demanded she stay. In fact, Hope didn’t even realize she was being manipulated with small comments on the side until it was too late.
Only a few weeks earlier, she had finally pieced it together. Nadia had been slowly but surely threatening everyone Hope loved. It was a small slip here like Nadia absentmindedly wondering if Will Tippin’s children were doing well. It was a random piece of intel coming across her desk informing the organization that it would be really easy to get through the CIA security to eliminate CIA Director Jack Bristow.
Then, six days ago, Hope had faltered on a mission causing Nadia’s organization to take a massive hit. Her aunt had walked right up to her desk and laid it all out. Nadia told Hope if she kept screwing up, then she would make sure that Hope encountered Tyler in the field. On that day, Nadia assured her that there would be agents with their guns trained on Nadia’s parents, her grandparents, people she cared about like Will and Amy Tippin and their families. They would die if she couldn’t be strong.
Hope had looked right at her and said that doesn’t give Tyler a motivation to kill her. Nadia had simply laughed and told her not to worry about that. Lauren and Michael Vaughn and Agent Jim Lennox would be under watch by her men, too. Whoever let themselves be killed could look forward to spending eternity with their family. Nadia would make sure of that.
All this exploded into her mind at once and Hope felt all her strength, all her resolve, drain out of her. Her grip on the gun faltered and she slid to the ground. The rain was still falling hard, but it was no longer enough to mask her tears.
“What’s happening?” Tyler asked, kneeling down beside her. “What is going on that you’re not telling me?”
“We have to do this,” she whispered. “There’s no other way to make it stop.”
“Make what stop?”
“The pain,” she said, reaching out to grab the gun again. “It’s the only way that this pain can end.”
Tyler stared in confusion as she reached her hand forward and offered him the gun. He tentatively took it, hoping that she wasn’t asking him to do what he thought she was. “The CIA will be lenient on you since you’re giving up.”
Hope shook her head and bit her lip as the nervousness kicked in. She knew he was going to make her spell it out. “I’m not surrendering, Tyler, and you know it.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“I’m asking you to end my pain. I can’t take it anymore. This is the only solution we have left.”
“I’m not going to shoot you.”
“If I shoot myself, it won’t end. You have to be the one,” she pleaded. “Please. You said you loved me. Prove it.”
“We’re not some modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Killing is not a sign of love.”
Hope decided it was time to use her ace in the hole motivator. “Our families will die if you don’t. Nadia will kill them all if one of us is not left behind on this roof tonight.”
“She doesn’t have the power.”
Hope shook her head while a slightly mocking laugh escaped her lips. “Oh, she has the power. And she’ll do it, too. So we don’t have a way around this.”
“Hope, our families are both comprised of the best spies in the business. They are not just going to sit back and let themselves be killed. Nadia’s been feeding you a pack of lies if she said she was capable of that.”
“You don’t understand,” Hope insisted.
“I think I do. You aren’t the only one that Nadia’s been threatening.”
“What?”
“I’ve been receiving threats from her for two years. Ever since the day you disappeared, she’s been warning me to drop the search for you, to give up. She told me she would kill my family, my friends, anyone I’ve ever loved.” Tyler let out a laugh. “I told her to go to hell.”
“That was stupid.”
“I’m not about to let anyone have control of my life. Not some ex-Argentinean spy and not some old Italian philosopher.” Tyler looked down at the gun before clicking the clip out of it. He held it up for Hope to see before flinging it away. It skidded to a stop along the wet pavement on the other half of the rooftop. “Neither one of us is going to die tonight.”
“We can’t escape fate.”
“But we can change it.”
Hope looked at him in confusion as he stood up and offered his hand. “I don’t understand.”
Tyler pulled her to her feet beside him and smiled. “Rambaldi didn’t count on us falling in love. He couldn’t even predict that.”
“You think that because we feel in love the prophecy’s null and void now?” She shook her head. “You’re an idiot.”
“A correct idiot. You and I fell in love. There is no way we’re going to kill each other voluntarily. The only thing that leaves is an accident, and that doesn’t sound like such a bad way to go.”
“You’ve thought this out,” Hope noted.
“I’ve had two years to figure out what I could say to get you to come back to me. I figured that you’d bring up the prophecy at some points so I had to come up with a way around it. Did it work?”
“Well I’m not running to pick up the bullets.”
“Good,” he said. His hands slid down to grab her waist and pull her in close to me. “So.”
“So?”
“Do you think you’ll marry me now?” Tyler asked as he leaned down to brush a kiss across where her neck met her shoulder. He could feel her shiver against him and shifted up to press his lips against hers. The rain had soaked them through, and at the moment, he didn’t even care.
Hope laughed against the pressure of his mouth and pushed him lightly away. “You didn’t even wait for my answer, Tyler.”
“You don’t really have to say it. You didn’t kill me. I’m pretty sure in the spy world that can be interpreted as a yes.”
“What about Nadia?”
“You give me some insider information, I’m sure there are plenty of people who would love to go out on a mission to pick her up.”
“And she won’t see it coming?”
“Well, she thinks you and I are fighting to the death right now. That’s got to take a few hours at least. She won’t be expecting it.”
“You really thought of everything.”
“Couldn’t let you weasel your way out of this again,” he said, quirking his eyebrow at her. “You do have a habit of doing that. And lying. You lie a lot, too.”
“I promise I’ll stop.”
“No you won’t.” He slipped his hand down into hers and began to pull her towards the door to the stairwell. “But I don’t really mind. It kept my mind off the fact that I was doomed since birth.”
“Not anymore,” Hope said, leaning against his arm as he slid it around her shoulders.
Epilogue
Hope Vaughn stood amidst her family as the sun shined down upon them. She sat down on the ground and rested her hand on the gravestone nearby as she watched the beautiful sight in front of her. Her two daughters were talking with their Uncle Will. Her son was playing with his own children in the open grassy space, and she laughed as she heard Lauren yell for them to be careful. Her eyes scanned across the horizon until they fell upon her parents as they silently held hands in front of the grave of her grandparents. Jack and Irina had been gone for over twenty years, but it still hurt. They would have loved to see the way their family had grown over the years.
Smiling she looked down at the bouquet of flowers in her hand. “Well, we did it, Ty. We proved that stuffy Italian philosopher wrong for all those years, didn’t we?” She set the flowers down to rest against the gravestone. “We had forty good years that no one ever thought we could have.”
“Grandma Hope?”
Hope looked up to see the smile of her great-granddaughter Isabel staring back at her. She patted the ground next to her, and the little girl sat down. “What’s the matter, honey?” Hope asked, reaching out to grasp Isabel’s hand.
“Do you miss Grandpa Tyler?”
“As much as I did when he died a year ago, sweetheart. But I’m also grateful that I had so much time with him.”
That seemed to satisfy the little girl as she bounced to her feet, presumably to go play with her uncles.
The sun lit up the inscription on the gravestone.
Love can conquer all as long as there is hope to share.
Hope squinted through the rain to stare at the man in front of her. “What do you think you’re doing, Tyler?”
“I have been trying to find you for two years, Hope,” he said taking a step towards her.
Hope’s heart jumped at the idea that Tyler might actually have cared enough to try to find her when she went mission, but her rationality immediately took over. She had left him high and dry, broken his heart and dropped him like he meant nothing to her. Which meant he was lying. Nothing new when push came to shove. Tired of the people in her life abusing her, she felt she had no choice but to pull out her gun and aim it at his heart. “Do you actually think I’m going to believe that? If you had wanted to find me, it wouldn’t have taken you two years. I have not been holed up in some remote outpost in Timbuktu.”
Tyler stopped in his tracks and held his hands up. He wasn’t surprised that she was leery of him. Obviously something had gone down that kept her away from her family for two years. With the world they lived in, she had probably gone through extensive brainwashing or something. He watched as her gaze fell from his face to the small black case sitting down by her feet, and things began to add up. “You think I’m here for the biological weapon?”
“Aren’t you? I knew the CIA would send someone to try to take this away from me. Just never figured it would be you.” Her voice faltered slightly at the end, and she let out a small laugh to cover it up. “You don’t understand that I can’t give this to you. I can’t trust that it will stay in the right hands.”
“You don’t think the CIA is trustworthy? Your parents work for the CIA.”
“I haven’t talked to my parents in two years,” Hope yelled. “Why would bringing them into this change anything?”
“What did she do to you?” Tyler said, staring at her with a mixture of surprise and disgust in his eyes.
“My Aunt Nadia, if that is the she you’re referring to, did nothing to me. My parents, however? They haven’t tried to speak to me for two years, Tyler. All trust I ever had for them went out the window when I started realizing they abandoned me. It was as clear as day. They found out the mess I had gotten myself into, and they abandoned me. And before you start thinking about doing something stupid, I’m just as good of an agent as you remember. This talking isn’t distracting me one bit.”
“That would be good to know if trying to distract was number one on my list instead of trying to get you to see reason and put down the damn gun.”
“All right then, Tyler. I’ll give you your shot. Convince me.”
“You’ve got it all wrong about me and about your parents. They had been searching alongside me the whole time you‘ve been missing. They’ve devoted every hour of every day to figuring out where Nadia Santos took you. We‘ve been trying to get you back this whole time.”
“Not good enough,” she said, shaking her head. “You’ve given me no reason to believe you. I would have known if you were trying to find me.”
Tyler sighed. “This would be so much easier if you would just put down the gun? I’m not here to fight.”
“Yes, you are,” Hope said, even though she did slide the gun back into the holster at her side. “You just don’t realize it.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Hope took a deep breath and knew that in two seconds she was going to have to make a decision. She had felt this moment coming for two years. God. She didn’t want to have to do this.
“Answer me, Hope.”
Tyler’s demand brought her away from her thoughts and back to the here and now. Glaring at him, she made her decision and held her hands up to gesture all around. “Don’t you see? This is it, Tyler. This is the moment.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You can’t have forgotten the prophecy. It’s the only reason why I left you that day in Paris. It’s the only reason my family seems to have disowned me. I don’t make good decisions and because of that, one of us has to die.”
“You’re not even making sense,” Tyler yelled through the rain as he started inching towards her again.
“It all makes too much sense.” She swept the water out of her eyes and sent him a pleading look. “I knew the next time I saw you that our time would run out. We‘ve been putting this off for years.”
“I am not going to fight you, Hope.”
“Then you’re going to be the one to die.” Without warning, Hope reached out with her right fist and connected with his jaw. His feet tried to get purchase on the wet cement roof, but there was just too much rain. Tyler ended up in a heap at her feet. “This won’t work unless you fight back.”
Hope grabbed Tyler by the collar of his jacket, lifting him up a few inches before using her fist to push him back down. She tried to blank out the memory of what she was doing even as it was happening. This was a day she had been scared of since forever, and she just wanted it to be over with. Things would be easier if this was just all over.
Tyler kicked his leg out to meet the back of her knee, and she found herself face down on the wet ground next to him. He rolled so that he had her arms pinned to the cold ground. “Why are you doing this?” Tyler hissed.
“Because you can’t escape destiny,” she yelled into his face before lunging forward to butt her head straight into his noise. There was a small crack, and Tyler immediately knew she had broken it. He pushed the blood away from where it was trickling into his mouth and pulled himself to his feet.
“I am not going to fight you to the death just because some ancient Italian man said that’s what I should do.”
“He’s not the one in charge of this.”
“Then who is?”
Hope could feel the tears begin to fall down her cheek and was suddenly very glad that the rain wasn’t letting up. “We’re in charge of it. It’s our responsibility, our burden.”
Tyler shook his head and took a step closer to her, holding his arms wide open. “I love you, Hope. I never stopped. So if you think killing me will help you fix whatever’s broken inside of you, then do it. I don’t care.”
His words made her heart break in two. She had had a feeling that nothing between them had changed in all the time they had been apart.
At any rate when it came to their feelings for one another, nothing had changed. Everything else had shifted away from the norm a long time ago. Practically since her birth, Hope had learned to make the hard choices. This was just another choice like all the others. At least that’s what she kept telling herself.
The only problem was this particular hard choice was forcing her to kill the man she loved. And he sure as hell wasn’t making it easy by just standing there like an open target. Hope willed her hand to stop shaking as she reached into the holster at her side and pulled out the gun, pointing it at Tyler again. “You would just let me shoot you?”
“If it’s really something you think you could do, then yeah.”
“You don’t know the kind of person I am, Tyler.”
“You’re not a monster.”
“Actually, I think I’ve slowly become one, but to stay on point, that’s not the part of me you have to worry about.” She clicked the safety off. “My compassion is what kills in the end.”
“As long as it’s you pulling that trigger, I can accept it. I knew from the moment I found out you were the one in the prophecy with me that it would come down to this. And I knew that in the end I was going to be the one to die.”
The sides of his mouth quipped up in the tiny start of a smile as he gave his shoulders a small shrug.
That little movement was what finally made the dam break inside of her. She had been holding so much inside, compartmentalizing it, that she didn’t know which way was up or down. Her mind shifted to the day in Paris when she had stepped onto a plane and changed her life.
Nadia had told Hope she would protect her from every having to go through this hardship. She offered her niece a place she could stay where she would never have to see Tyler Vaughn again. It made sense in her head at the time. If Hope never saw Tyler, then the whole possibility of the prophecy coming true would be eliminated. That’s all she ever wanted. She just wanted to be free.
Things had gone well for the first few months under her Aunt Nadia’s care.
Then Hope started getting in a little too deep for her liking. She tried to pull out, tried to turn things back into what they had once been. That’s when the subtle threats had started. Nadia definitely hadn’t held a gun to her head and demanded she stay. In fact, Hope didn’t even realize she was being manipulated with small comments on the side until it was too late.
Only a few weeks earlier, she had finally pieced it together. Nadia had been slowly but surely threatening everyone Hope loved. It was a small slip here like Nadia absentmindedly wondering if Will Tippin’s children were doing well. It was a random piece of intel coming across her desk informing the organization that it would be really easy to get through the CIA security to eliminate CIA Director Jack Bristow.
Then, six days ago, Hope had faltered on a mission causing Nadia’s organization to take a massive hit. Her aunt had walked right up to her desk and laid it all out. Nadia told Hope if she kept screwing up, then she would make sure that Hope encountered Tyler in the field. On that day, Nadia assured her that there would be agents with their guns trained on Nadia’s parents, her grandparents, people she cared about like Will and Amy Tippin and their families. They would die if she couldn’t be strong.
Hope had looked right at her and said that doesn’t give Tyler a motivation to kill her. Nadia had simply laughed and told her not to worry about that. Lauren and Michael Vaughn and Agent Jim Lennox would be under watch by her men, too. Whoever let themselves be killed could look forward to spending eternity with their family. Nadia would make sure of that.
All this exploded into her mind at once and Hope felt all her strength, all her resolve, drain out of her. Her grip on the gun faltered and she slid to the ground. The rain was still falling hard, but it was no longer enough to mask her tears.
“What’s happening?” Tyler asked, kneeling down beside her. “What is going on that you’re not telling me?”
“We have to do this,” she whispered. “There’s no other way to make it stop.”
“Make what stop?”
“The pain,” she said, reaching out to grab the gun again. “It’s the only way that this pain can end.”
Tyler stared in confusion as she reached her hand forward and offered him the gun. He tentatively took it, hoping that she wasn’t asking him to do what he thought she was. “The CIA will be lenient on you since you’re giving up.”
Hope shook her head and bit her lip as the nervousness kicked in. She knew he was going to make her spell it out. “I’m not surrendering, Tyler, and you know it.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“I’m asking you to end my pain. I can’t take it anymore. This is the only solution we have left.”
“I’m not going to shoot you.”
“If I shoot myself, it won’t end. You have to be the one,” she pleaded. “Please. You said you loved me. Prove it.”
“We’re not some modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Killing is not a sign of love.”
Hope decided it was time to use her ace in the hole motivator. “Our families will die if you don’t. Nadia will kill them all if one of us is not left behind on this roof tonight.”
“She doesn’t have the power.”
Hope shook her head while a slightly mocking laugh escaped her lips. “Oh, she has the power. And she’ll do it, too. So we don’t have a way around this.”
“Hope, our families are both comprised of the best spies in the business. They are not just going to sit back and let themselves be killed. Nadia’s been feeding you a pack of lies if she said she was capable of that.”
“You don’t understand,” Hope insisted.
“I think I do. You aren’t the only one that Nadia’s been threatening.”
“What?”
“I’ve been receiving threats from her for two years. Ever since the day you disappeared, she’s been warning me to drop the search for you, to give up. She told me she would kill my family, my friends, anyone I’ve ever loved.” Tyler let out a laugh. “I told her to go to hell.”
“That was stupid.”
“I’m not about to let anyone have control of my life. Not some ex-Argentinean spy and not some old Italian philosopher.” Tyler looked down at the gun before clicking the clip out of it. He held it up for Hope to see before flinging it away. It skidded to a stop along the wet pavement on the other half of the rooftop. “Neither one of us is going to die tonight.”
“We can’t escape fate.”
“But we can change it.”
Hope looked at him in confusion as he stood up and offered his hand. “I don’t understand.”
Tyler pulled her to her feet beside him and smiled. “Rambaldi didn’t count on us falling in love. He couldn’t even predict that.”
“You think that because we feel in love the prophecy’s null and void now?” She shook her head. “You’re an idiot.”
“A correct idiot. You and I fell in love. There is no way we’re going to kill each other voluntarily. The only thing that leaves is an accident, and that doesn’t sound like such a bad way to go.”
“You’ve thought this out,” Hope noted.
“I’ve had two years to figure out what I could say to get you to come back to me. I figured that you’d bring up the prophecy at some points so I had to come up with a way around it. Did it work?”
“Well I’m not running to pick up the bullets.”
“Good,” he said. His hands slid down to grab her waist and pull her in close to me. “So.”
“So?”
“Do you think you’ll marry me now?” Tyler asked as he leaned down to brush a kiss across where her neck met her shoulder. He could feel her shiver against him and shifted up to press his lips against hers. The rain had soaked them through, and at the moment, he didn’t even care.
Hope laughed against the pressure of his mouth and pushed him lightly away. “You didn’t even wait for my answer, Tyler.”
“You don’t really have to say it. You didn’t kill me. I’m pretty sure in the spy world that can be interpreted as a yes.”
“What about Nadia?”
“You give me some insider information, I’m sure there are plenty of people who would love to go out on a mission to pick her up.”
“And she won’t see it coming?”
“Well, she thinks you and I are fighting to the death right now. That’s got to take a few hours at least. She won’t be expecting it.”
“You really thought of everything.”
“Couldn’t let you weasel your way out of this again,” he said, quirking his eyebrow at her. “You do have a habit of doing that. And lying. You lie a lot, too.”
“I promise I’ll stop.”
“No you won’t.” He slipped his hand down into hers and began to pull her towards the door to the stairwell. “But I don’t really mind. It kept my mind off the fact that I was doomed since birth.”
“Not anymore,” Hope said, leaning against his arm as he slid it around her shoulders.
Epilogue
Hope Vaughn stood amidst her family as the sun shined down upon them. She sat down on the ground and rested her hand on the gravestone nearby as she watched the beautiful sight in front of her. Her two daughters were talking with their Uncle Will. Her son was playing with his own children in the open grassy space, and she laughed as she heard Lauren yell for them to be careful. Her eyes scanned across the horizon until they fell upon her parents as they silently held hands in front of the grave of her grandparents. Jack and Irina had been gone for over twenty years, but it still hurt. They would have loved to see the way their family had grown over the years.
Smiling she looked down at the bouquet of flowers in her hand. “Well, we did it, Ty. We proved that stuffy Italian philosopher wrong for all those years, didn’t we?” She set the flowers down to rest against the gravestone. “We had forty good years that no one ever thought we could have.”
“Grandma Hope?”
Hope looked up to see the smile of her great-granddaughter Isabel staring back at her. She patted the ground next to her, and the little girl sat down. “What’s the matter, honey?” Hope asked, reaching out to grasp Isabel’s hand.
“Do you miss Grandpa Tyler?”
“As much as I did when he died a year ago, sweetheart. But I’m also grateful that I had so much time with him.”
That seemed to satisfy the little girl as she bounced to her feet, presumably to go play with her uncles.
The sun lit up the inscription on the gravestone.
Love can conquer all as long as there is hope to share.
Alias Fan Gillian
Cadet
Excellent ending.