Episode 1:

"The Escape"

Part 1

Ten hours after Jack Freed and their chance at redemption went up in smoke, Will Traveler slipped back into the motel room where his friends Jay Burchell and Tyler Fog were sound asleep. They had stolen a car to escape Manhattan before the FBI and NSA shut the island off completely. Will had taken them a safe distance from the city before pulling off at the kind of seedy roadside motel where not even federal agents liked to ask questions.

"Breakfast," Will announced, depositing a bag of doughnuts and three Styrofoam cups of coffee from the greasy spoon next door onto the stained Formica table. He kicked the foot of Jay's bed, then Tyler's. "C'mon, guys, wake up."

Jay sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and stretched. Tyler, however, groaned and pulled the covers over his head. "Five more minutes," came the muffled plea.

"Get up. We've got work to do," Will ordered.

While his friends – if he could still call them that, after everything he had put them through – slept, Will had been putting out feelers as cautiously as he could through his extensive network of contacts and informants. He needed to know what was happening before he made his next move. What he had learned was not going to please either of his friends, but especially not Jay.

Jay walked over to the table and selected a cup of coffee. "How's your side?" he asked, grimacing as he sipped the bitter liquid.

Surprised by the show of concern, Will lied, "It's fine." Actually, the gunshot wound hurt like hell. Luckily, the bullet had gone in and out without doing major damage, though it would have been his own stupid fault if it had torn through his gut and into his spine, mission over right there in the alley. He should have known an FBI agent would have a back-up weapon; he should have checked for an ankle holster. Sloppy, that's what he had been, so he wasn't going to give himself the luxury of self-pity over getting hurt.

Tyler drug himself over to the table and began gulping down coffee and doughnuts without complaint. Like all of them, he looked awful: greasy, disheveled, exhausted. But for a spoiled rich kid, Will reflected, he was handling "roughing it" remarkably well.

Just goes to show how little we really know people…

"So what's up?" Having abandoned the idea of breakfast, Jay was in the midst of his requisite 200 push-ups to start the day. "Were you gone all night?"

"Most of it. I needed to make some calls, and I didn't want to disturb you guys."

Or be overheard. Will was keeping his activities intentionally vague; for their own protection, he wanted to control his friends' access to information, because the less they knew about him, the less likely they were to be targeted by people wanting to hurt him. Knowing how he obtained his information was not necessary for their survival at this point, so Will had decided to keep them in the dark.

Nibbling the edges of a stale doughnut, he went on, "Freed's dead, but we pretty much already knew that, unless he was fire-proof."

"Lemme guess." Jay stood up. "Tyler and I got the credit for another act of homeland terrorism."

Will confirmed this with a nod. "Not unexpected, obviously. But the result is, you two are way too hot to stay out in the open right now. The way the media is painting you makes Timothy McVeigh look like a Boy Scout. You're as likely to be lynched as arrested."

Apparently losing his appetite, Tyler dropped a half-eaten jelly roll onto the sticky tabletop. "What are we gonna do, Will? We don't have any money or a place to hide out, and we can't stay on the run forever stealing cars and holding up in motels."

"You don't have money or hiding places, Tyler. But I do."

"Wait." Jay joined them at the small table, his blue eyes intense in the way Will knew promised a difficult argument. "We can't just go into hiding and hope this all blows over. We don't have the painting anymore, but we do have a copy of Freed's confession on tape. Why not stick to the original plan, go to the press with what we've got? Use the tide of public opinion to help us for a change?"

Choking down a swallow of thick black coffee, Will took a moment to carefully craft his answer. The trust between him and his once-closest friends was too tenuous for him to bank on their unquestioning acceptance of his strategy, yet he was convinced that their lives depended on them doing exactly as he said. So he needed to be very, very persuasive; he had to strike a balance between reminding them that he was the expert on espionage and convincing them that, even though he wasn't the person they had believed him to be, he still cared what happened to them.

"Three things." Will could see Jay mentally preparing counterarguments, and he would have smiled at his friend's innate lawyering if the situation weren't so dire. "First of all, that copy we have of Freed's confession isn't worth shit. Without the original, nobody will believe we didn't doctor the tape, and without the painting, we have no way to corroborate what Freed said.

"Secondly," he held up a hand for Jay to let him go on, "if we put our heads up long enough to get that tape into the hands of a reporter, chances are it'll be enough time for the feds to get a bead on us. Look what happened last night. And we know none of us are going to get a fair shake from the FBI."

Jay was glowering, unable, it seemed, to easily dismiss Will's case. "And the third thing?" he challenged.

"We don't know enough about what we're into yet to make any bold moves." Will had purposefully saved his strongest point for last, and he could see it having the desired impact on his companions: Jay, apparently out of rebuttals, visibly deflated, while Tyler sat up a little straighter and nodded in agreement. "Now, I'm willing to share with you guys everything I know about the Drexler plot and Hometown and Freed, but as far as the Fourth Branch goes, I'm shooting in the dark. One thing I know for sure: In this business, knowledge is power. We find out what Freed was really up to and where we fit into all of that, and we at least stand a chance of getting out of this alive. You guys may even get your futures back."

And maybe I can disappear.

For a few minutes, none of them said anything. The wound in Will's side was throbbing; bone-weary from grief, exhaustion and pain, he shut his tired eyes. Immediately, Maya's accusing face rose up before his eyes. It was all he could do not to cry out.

"So where would we go?" Tyler broke the silence, sounding small and uncertain. "Doesn't the FBI know everywhere you could hide?"

Will opened his eyes and offered a self-congratulating grin to his friends. "Fortunately for us, I wasn't a model agent. Let's just say I planned for contingencies."

"Which is another way of saying you stole money and hoarded it and kept a lot of secrets from the government," Tyler interpreted. Will raised his eyes at his friend's ambivalent tone, and Tyler shrugged. "Hey, man, it's the American way. You think my family got rich by being saints?"

Jay was obviously less accepting of Will's sordid past, but he seemed willing to overlook the indiscretions if it would help them now. "So we go into hiding with your money and we use your contacts and your, I don't know, super-spy skills to help us out. And then what? How do we lay low and figure out what Freed's agenda was? Those things seem mutually exclusive to me."

Stay cool. It's all in the delivery.

"Actually," Will fastened his eyes on Jay's, hoping to invoke the closeness they had always shared, "I'm not going with you."

Jay snorted derisively, as if to say, We should have known. Tyler threw his empty Styrofoam cup across the room in frustration. "This is bullshit, Will! You think we're going to take your word that you're not sending us into a trap? You think we trust you?"

"He's got a point," Jay agreed, coolly considering Will. "How do we know you won't be screwing us behind our backs? You've got a history of doing just that."

Will hated that he cared so much about falling so far in their estimation. He had gotten too close; he had created his character too convincingly; he had come to believe that Will Traveler was a real person, someone worthy of love and friendship and trust. Now, because saving their lives was all that really mattered, he scrupulously hid his longing to regain their respect behind a cool exterior that matched Jay's.

"I can't come with you right now. I have to take care of something, something that can't wait, and you guys have to get out of sight and start following up some of my leads – "

Standing, Tyler snapped, "That's where you're wrong, Will. We don't 'have' to do anything you say. You're not our Yoda anymore, man. You can't just go around handing out orders and expect to be obeyed."

"Jay, they've got Kim.

Will generally disliked dramatics, but since the reasoned approach had backfired, he decided to go for it.

Jay instantly paled. "Who has Kim?"

"The FBI."

Will's unspoken "which is the same as saying the people who want us all dead" hung in the air between them. Tyler placed a comforting (or perhaps restraining) hand on Jay's shoulder. "She was arrested last night after you left the club. They've moved her to a secure location. That means they didn't put her in the system," Will explained, driving home the enormity of the situation, "so they can use her against you without exciting anybody's suspicions. Although under the Patriot Act, they can pretty much do whatever they want with her, anyway."

Already on his feet before Will finished speaking, Jay said, "Yeah, well, it worked – they got to me. If I have to turn myself in to protect her – "

Tyler caught Jay's arm, looking frantically to Will for help. "Hang on, Jay, I'm sure Kim is fine."

"They killed his girlfriend, Tyler!" Jay exploded, pointing at Will. Tyler gasped; Jay immediately looked horrified by his own words. Turning to Will, he said quickly, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean…I'm sorry they hurt Maya, Will. I just can't let the same thing happen to Kim."

Hearing Maya's name made Will wince inwardly. Outwardly, he rejoined with no obvious emotion, "Freed killed Maya because she was no more use to him. They got information out of me by making me believe I could save her life, but she was already dead."

"That's-that's awful," Tyler murmured. He looked faintly green.

Will shored up the sorrow threatening to overwhelm him. He would mourn Maya when the time came; for now, he had to undo the damage he had done to the only other people in the world he cared about. Stopping Jay from turning himself in and convincing both he and Tyler to go into hiding was paramount to that plan.

"The point is," he said to Jay, keeping his gaze and his voice level, "as long as they think Kim is useful to them, she's safe. For now, she's not in immediate danger, but we can't leave her there. So you two are going to disappear and start opening some backdoor channels, and I'm going to get Kim and bring her to you. Then we can all figure this out together."

The fight Will had known was coming was written all over Jay's face. "No way. I'm going with you."

Calmly, Will pulled the .9 millimeter from his waistband and handed it handle-first to Jay, who accepted it with a puzzled frown. "How fast can you aim that, shoot it, and reload it?"

"Not very fast."

"Can you hit a moving target? Can you provide covering fire? Returning fire?"

"I don't know. Probably not."

"What about disabling an alarm system? Or hot-wiring a car? Or killing a man with nothing but your hands? How much do you know about any of that, Jay?"

Jay's eyes were bright with tears. "She's my whole world, man. I may not know what you know, but I can't not go."

"That's why you have to not go." Will took the gun back and returned it to its readily-accessible position. He reached out and placed a tentative hand on Jay's shoulder, relieved when his friend didn't jerk away. "I promise you, I swear to you, I won't let anything happen to Kim. But I can't get her out safely and worry about you at the same time."

An obvious struggle was going on inside Jay, one Will could appreciate: If the tables were turned, he couldn't have put Maya's fate in another man's hands. Especially not one who had proven himself a traitor of superb quality.

At last, Jay's inner battle ended, and he relented with a wordless nod. Before his friend could change his mind, Will sprang into action.

"Okay. I found you a new vehicle – a white Chevy pick-up, right over there." He pointed to a full-size truck he had stolen earlier that morning from where its owners had left it out of gas along the highway. "You're going to head north and keep heading north until you get to Maine, way up at the top of the state to a little town called Springstown. I have a house there, well off the beaten path. Probably no one will even notice you're there. I keep it stocked with food and supplies, so you should be able to lay low until I can get to you."

Tyler was hurriedly gathering up the jackets, shirts and socks they had discarded around the room the night before. "And those leads you want us to look into? What about those?"

Will produced a sheet of paper from his back pocket and handed it to Jay. It was crammed with names, dates, and numbers. "That's all the info I could get last night about Freed's connections and the people who may have been involved with the Drexler plot. There's also some stuff about Hometown on there, the people I know were part of it. The house has got computers and the Internet. Just don't do anything illegal online and you should be able to research all of that without popping up on anybody's radar."

He motioned for Jay to turn the paper over, where he had written a long series of numbers. "That top number is the number of a bank account in Augusta. It has one-hundred million dollars in it."

Tyler whistled. "Quite a nest egg, Will. And here you always made me pay for everything."

For one moment, Will was almost able to forget that everything had changed between them. As he had for two years, he nearly convinced himself that they were all just roommates and best friends – bright young men, rising stars with the world wide open and waiting for them.

But that was never true, not for me. So what's the use in missing what I never had to begin with?

Brusquely, Will commanded, "If something happens and you have to run, go to Augusta. The account is in the name Dean Moriarty. That password," he pointed to the second series of numbers, "will allow you to take or transfer however much you need. Tyler, you know how to get money into off-shore accounts and all that, right?"

Tyler smirked. "No self-respecting venture capitalist doesn't."

Jay tucked the paper into his pocket. "You sure this is how you want to do this, Will? We can go with you. We don't have to split up."

"No. I work better alone." Will hesitated, uncertain how much right he had to say what he felt he needed to. He decided to risk it. "Besides, you guys need to get out of harm's way. No matter what I thought I was fighting for, I never should have put you there in the first place."

Two years of loving one another like brothers did not, Will instantly saw, easily fade away. His words hardly came close to redressing the wrong he had done Jay and Tyler, and the pain he would still have to put them through if they were to prove their innocence and reclaim their lives. Yet at the slightest show of remorse, they both rushed to assure him, in their own ways, that while he wasn't wholly forgiven, he could be.

"Don't worry about it, man," Tyler offered, shouldering his satchel. "At least you didn't blow us up. You get points for that."

"I gotta say, this is turning out to be one hell of a road trip, though," Jay put in with a wry smile. "Next time, I don't think we're going to put you in charge of planning, Will."

Will shook his head. The goodness inside other people, when he felt himself to be largely hollow and empty underneath his chameleon exterior, never ceased to amaze him. Someday, he hoped Jay and Tyler would know how much their willingness to forgive meant to him.

"Just get to Springstown and lay low, okay? I'll come to you as soon as I have Kim. And guys," he added, drawing them up short at the door, "don't trust anybody but each other."

Part 2

Kim Doherty didn't know which was worse: being terrified of what would happen to her next or realizing what a fool she had been for trusting the FBI. What a naïve little girl I am, she chided herself, pacing the dingy room where she was currently confined. Apparently, truth and justice were not the real concerns of the FBI – more like "money" and "power."

Okay, so probably that was unfair. Agent Marlow seemed like a decent person. But Chambers, now, he was not one of the good guys. Nor were the meatheads he had guarding her, who seemed to do nothing besides crack their knuckles threateningly and leer at her whenever they peered in to be sure she was alive.

At least they hadn't hurt her – or touched her, even, which she confessed to herself she was very worried about. The room wasn't exactly the Ritz, but it was clean and surprisingly comfortable; it held a bed with fresh sheets, a desk with a reading lamp and several outdated copies of People and Newsweek, an ancient mini-fridge stocked with bottled water, and – most importantly – her own bathroom that locked from the inside. Kim had already made use of the shower and, when exhaustion finally overcame fear, the bed.

Her first day of captivity behind her, Kim was starting to go a little stir-crazy. Her room had no windows; she hadn't heard a sound from the other side of the locked door since around midnight, when one of the meatheads had peeked in at her. She was hungry, bored, and frightened, and for a woman unaccustomed to being out of control, all of that was combining to really piss her off.

To both distract herself and pretend she was doing something useful, Kim sat at the desk turning over and over in her mind everything Jay had told her concerning Will, trying to make it fit with the person she had known for two years. The only conclusion she could come to was that Will Traveler was an exceptional spy, because no matter how hard she tried, she could recall nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary in his behavior. He was infallibly charming, polite, and interesting, if perhaps a bit wild and adventurous; Kim had always found his affable nature and tendency toward sudden rebellions endearing, actually. Except for one nagging memory, she could bring to mind nothing to suggest that Will was anyone other than Will…

It had happened about seven months ago, shortly after Thanksgiving. Tyler had been away for the weekend at some distant cousin's elaborate wedding in Martha's Vineyard, and Jay had been in New Orleans speaking at a conference on the legal ramifications of Hurricane Katrina. Jay had called Kim on her way home from class to ask if she would drop by The Castle (as the boys referred to their graduate housing pad) to email him a back-up copy of his speech; he had saved the speech to his laptop, he told her in a panic, and then, in his nervous excitement, had forgotten to take the laptop with him. Sympathetic to his nerves, Kim had readily agreed to do him such a small favor.

She thought the house was empty. Will didn't own a car (Tyler always furnished things like that for the three of them) but the house was totally dark in the gathering late-fall dusk. Besides, she had been fairly certain Will's chemical engineering lab met on Tuesday evenings. She let herself into the house with the spare key Jay had given her and flipped on the living room light to find Will, wearing nothing but battered pair of faded jeans, napping on the couch.

He immediately sat up, blinking sleep out of his eyes and stretching. Kim felt her face turn brick-red; she was a little uncomfortable about having a key to The Castle anyway, seeing as how it wasn't only Jay's house, and she rarely came over when Jay wasn't home for that very reason. So surprising Will asleep and half-naked deeply embarrassed her.

"I'm so sorry," she sputtered, taking a step back toward the front door. "I didn't realize you were home."

"It's okay, Kim." Will smiled at her, looking cute and sleepy with his soft, sandy-colored hair mussed. He glanced at the clock and groaned. "Shit, I just slept through my lab."

He stood up and turned toward the kitchen, saying, "You want something to drink?"

Kim gasped. On Will's right side, along his ribcage, was a large, angry, purple-black bruise. "My God," she cried, forgetting her discomfiture and rushing over to him. "What happened to you, Will?"

He glanced down at the bruise. "Oh, that." He smiled ruefully. "I decided to try my hand at boxing classes, and this guy I was partnered with got a little carried away with the sparring."

"Weren't you wearing pads?" Kim couldn't help noticing that the bruise was rather suspiciously boot-shaped. "Jesus, Will, did he kick you? Or stomp on you? Are your ribs broken?"

Instinctively, she placed her hand on Will's bare side, feeling for fractures. "Did you have a doctor look at this?" Kim demanded, raising her eyes to his.

At that moment, she became acutely aware of several unsettling facts all at once: She and Will were alone in the house; he was not wearing a shirt; she was touching his warm, bare skin; they were close enough that if she stretched up slightly on her tip-toes, their mouths would touch; no one would ever know if she…just…

Will seemed to be aware of these things, too, because his blue-green eyes had darkened to a deep azure. Eyes on hers, he gave a nervous little cough. "I think I'm okay, really, Kim. Like I said, the guy got carried away."

She hastily stepped away from him, blushing deeply. "Well, I hope you gave as good as you got," she managed. Will reached around the back of the couch and slipped his shirt on, yet the awkwardness remained. "I'm really just here to get something off Jay's computer…"

And that was how they had left it. She had rushed upstairs to email Jay and had hastily left. They had never spoken of the incident, and Kim had chalked it up to "one of those things" – Will was very good-looking, after all, and the moment had just been weirdly intimate, probably because she was missing Jay and he was half-asleep. Now, however, sitting in a cell-like room with the entire country believing her boyfriend was a terrorist, she couldn't help wondering if Will had deliberately traded on his sensuality to throw her off the scent of something more sinister than an overzealous sparring partner.

Some girlfriend I am. I get turned on by my boyfriend's best friend and end up too hormonal to suspect that he really wasn't what he seemed…

The clock by the bed read 9:45am. Unable to stand being alone with her troubling thoughts for another minute, Kim was nearly ready to pound on the door and demand to see Chambers. Thus far, she'd been compliant out of fear that if she resisted they would torture her (or worse), but by this point, she figured if they hadn't interrogated her they weren't going to. She had taken a few bold steps toward the door when suddenly a key turned in the deadbolt and one of the meathead agents glared in at her.

"Time to come out, princess," he sneered.

Okay, fuckhead, you wanna play – let's play.

Righteous anger (or possibly adrenaline) surged through Kim. She drew herself up to her full height and, head held high, marched past the agent without showing the slightest hint of fear. The outer room, which she had only glimpsed as they rushed her in the other night, was empty except for a long metal table with two folding chairs. In one of those sat a pretty, terrified-looking brunette with her wrists bound.

Meathead One, as Kim mentally tagged the agent who had summoned her, grabbed her roughly by the arm and drug her over to the table. "You know this girl, princess?"

The girl looked up pleadingly into Kim's eyes. Kim tried to reassure her with a level gaze. To the agent, she said honestly, "I've never seen her in my life."

"That true?" Meathead Two appeared out of the shadows, addressing the brunette.

"I don't know her," the brunette said, her voice shaking but controlled. "I don't understand, what is happening? What did I do?"

"You fucked the wrong guy," Meathead Two answered coldly. Kim flinched at his crudeness. What was going on here? What did this terrified girl have to do with anything?

But the girl seemed to suddenly understand, for the color drained from her face. "You-you mean that bomber guy? I didn't know – he came into the bar where I worked, I just thought, I mean, he looked kind of like him but I didn't think he'd be out walking around like that…"

Meathead Two suddenly swung his fist directly into the girl's face. Kim screamed before she could stop herself. The girl began to sob.

"Stop it," Kim pleaded, twisting in her captor's vice-like grip. "Just stop it. Don't hurt her."

"Shut-up unless you want some of the same," Meathead One warned.

Blood pouring from her nose, the brunette raised her chin rather defiantly. "You can't do this," she declared, glaring at each of her captors in turn. "I know my rights. Yeah, I should've called the cops, but you can't – "

"Sweetness, we can do whatever the hell we want with you," Meathead Two intoned. He casually lit a cigarette and perched on the edge of the metal table. "You aided and abetted a terrorist. That means you got no rights anymore. Ever heard of the Patriot Act?"

Kim couldn't stand back and let them torture some innocent girl without at least trying to intervene, though admittedly, her power was limited. "Who was it?" she asked the girl. "Which one?"

"Fog." The brunette swallowed nervously. "Tyler Fog."

"See? Your boyfriend can keep it in his pants," Meathead One whispered in Kim's ear. She cringed at his touch, afraid the situation was about to seriously dissolve around her.

Meathead Two flipped open a manila file folder lying beside him on the table. "Megan Elizabeth Schultz," he read off. "No prior arrests, not even a speeding ticket. Shame you had to get mixed up in this mess, Megan."

"It's Liz," the brunette corrected automatically. "Nobody calls me Megan, just Liz."

"Okay, Liz." Meathead Two took a long drag off his cigarette, slowly blew out the smoke and knelt beside her chair. Kim could tell the girl was terrified; Kim's own heart was beating so hard she could feel a pulse fluttering in her throat. "Now, I want you to tell me where Tyler Fog went when he got done screwing you."

"Nice," Kim muttered, rolling her eyes at the agent's phrasing.

Liz darted a helpless glance at Kim. "I-I woke up, and he was going through some stuff on my computer, and I realized, really looking at him, you know, that he had to be that bomber guy. I asked him, and he said he was, and then he just…left. I was so scared, I thought he would kill me or something, but he just walked out the – "

Liz's words ended in an agonized scream as, to Kim's horror, the agent pressed the lit end of his cigarette into her slender arm and held it there. "Stop it!" Kim shrieked, fighting for all she was worth to free herself as the scream went on and on. "Stop it, you sick bastard, she doesn't know anything!"

"Get away from her."

The deathly-quiet voice behind Kim brought an instant silence to the room. Meathead Two had leapt away from his prey, whose scream became a soft, sobbing moan; Meathead One jerked Kim around in front of him as a human shield.

Will.

Kim didn't know what to feel when she saw Will Traveler standing just inside the room, a wicked-looking handgun trained calmly on the agent who had been torturing Liz. A tumult of emotions rose up in her: fury, loathing, revulsion, terror – yet overwhelming any of them was an inexplicable sense of relief.

The thought ran wildly across her mind that everything would be okay now. She was safe.

Safe? With the man who framed your boyfriend and his best friend for a terrorist attack?

Stepping farther into the room, Will motioned with his gun for the agent holding Kim to release her. "Let go of Doherty, right now."

Meathead One snorted. "I don't know how you think you are, kid, but you need to find another party before you get hurt."

"I'm only going to ask you one more time. Let go of her arm and move away."

"Fuck you, kid," Meathead One shot back.

He started to swing his gun onto Will, but he had barely twitched when Will fired. Kim screamed; the heat of the bullet whipped past her ear, and a split-second later, she was ducking a gruesome shower of blood and brains.

"Shit!" Meathead Two lunged for his own gun, still holstered at his hip. Will lowered the muzzle of his weapon and shot the man in the kneecap. With a gut-wrenching scream, the agent collapsed on the floor, writhing in pain.

Will immediately turned to Kim and held out one hand in a conciliatory gesture. "Kim, I know you're furious with me and you've got no reason to believe anything I say, but I'm here to take you to Jay."

Kim did believe him. He was right, she had no reason to; maybe years of counting him a close friend, the voice of reason in Jay's life compared to Tyler's constant trouble-making, the rock their small group had clung to through every crisis, maybe all of that was why for the last week she hadn't been able to convince herself that Will Traveler was the enemy. Seeing him now – somber, tired, and brave – she knew she probably never would.

"Are you hurt?" Will approached cautiously, as if prepared for her to strike him, one eye still on the wounded agent.

"No." Kim glanced at the doorway. "Is Jay with you? And Tyler? Do you know if they're all right?"

"They're safe, and that's where we need to get you." Will nodded toward Liz, who was crying softly. "Untie her and let's get going."

Kim quickly moved to release Liz, whose wrists were bound with duct tape. "You're going to be all right," she soothed the girl, who looked frightfully young and vulnerable with tears tracking down her olive-skinned cheeks. "Can you stand up?"

Liz nodded. Kim helped her to her feet, hugging her close to reassure the younger woman that everything was all right. She turned to where Will was kneeling over the wounded agent and said, "Shouldn't we get out of here?"

Will's expression was unreadable. Without preamble, he pressed the gun into the other man's belly and pulled the trigger. The gunshot made Kim jump and Liz scream.

"Fuck!" the agent roared, clutching the hole in his abdomen, blood streaming between his fingers. "Oh, you fucker, mother-"

"Shut up." Will's command drove the agent's shouts into mutterings. "Look at me. I need you to focus."

With supreme effort, the agent managed to drag his eyes up to Will's face. Will went on smoothly, as if he had not just gut-shot another person, "I imagine your friends will be arriving in ten minutes or so, once you and your partner don't check in as scheduled. That's a nasty wound, but I think you can hold on that long, don't you?"

"Fuck you," the man managed through clenched teeth. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm coming to that." Will's voice was so cold, Kim felt the hair all over her body stand up. "I want you to give your boss a message for me, okay? You tell him the biggest mistake of his pathetic little life was trying to kill me and my friends. You tell him that anyone who messes with the people I care about is going to die just like you – slowly."

Liz was trembling so violently Kim almost couldn't keep her upright. "Will, we need to go," she pleaded. "She's hurt."

As if coming back to himself, Will scooped up the agent's gun and tucked it into the pocket of his well-worn brown leather jacket. His own weapon he stowed in a hip holster hidden by his untucked button-down shirt. "I've got her," he said, slipping an arm around Liz's waist. "C'mon, I've got a car in the alley."

Kim had no time to ask the dozens of questions tumbling through her brain as Will loaded Liz in the backseat of a large gray sedan. Kim climbed in with her while Will steered out into traffic.

"How bad is she?" he asked, his eyes on Kim's in the rearview mirror.

"I think he broke her nose, and she's got a bad burn here on this arm." Kim smoothed Liz's thick dark curls, murmuring soothing words of comfort. "I think she's mostly in shock from being tortured. If she could rest…"

Will's eyes moved to the injured girl. "Liz, have you ever taken Valium before?"

Shaking so hard her teeth chattered, Liz said, "N-n-n-o. What's th-th-that?"

"It's to help you relax. So you can sleep." Will handed a black satchel – one Kim recognized with a jolt from two years of seeing him pack it back and forth to class – over the seat to Kim. "In the side pocket. Give her one."

Liz thankfully accepted the pill, and within minutes, she was completely unconscious. Kim gently laid her out across the backseat and climbed up front beside Will.

"Are you okay?" she asked him. The numbness of shock from her terrifying ordeal was beginning to wear off, and in its place emotions were rising that Kim wasn't certain how to handle.

Looking surprised that she would care, Will nodded. "Relatively speaking. Look, Kim, I know you're – "

She slapped him. It happened so suddenly it even surprised Kim: Will's head jerked to the side, and she almost expected him to hit back. He didn't. He just calmly steered the car over to the side of the freeway, plucked a tissue from the console between the seats, and dabbed it at his split top lip.

"Better?" he asked, sounding bemused.

Kim burst into tears. Before she knew what she was doing, she threw her arms around Will's neck and hugged him tightly. Following a moment of understandable astonishment, he wrapped his arms around her waist and held her as closely as he could across the front seat.

"I thought, when I saw the bombing, I thought you were dead, and then everything with Jay and Tyler happened," she sobbed into his neck. She hated herself for losing control like this, yet all of the bottled-up emotions of the last week simply came rushing out of their own accord. "And then Jay, he said, you…But I couldn't believe it, Will, and now…Thank God you're okay."

"Shh," Will said into her hair, rubbing her back. "I know it's a lot to take in, Kim. I'm sorry. Goddamn, I'm sorry." He pushed her back gently, holding her at arm's length so he could look her straight in the eyes. She noted again how exhausted he looked, his pretty blue-green eyes smudged with bruised-looking shadows. "You have every right to hate me, Kim, but you have to trust me right now. I've got to get us out of the city. It's too dangerous here."

Kim was too overwrought to argue anymore. All of the fight seemed to have been leeched out of her with her slap. "I do trust you, Will," she admitted, rather guiltily. She touched her fingertips to the side of his face, where a red mark was forming. "I'm sorry I hit you."

He grinned as he put the car in gear and rejoined the midday traffic. "I earned it. You and Jay, though – he beat the shit out of me, too."

"Jay?" Kim was startled. She couldn't imagine Jay hitting anyone, especially not their Will.

Except he's not really "our" Will, is he? He could be anybody.

"He's had a tough week," Will reminded her. He glanced in the backseat at Liz. "What's her story?"

"Somehow or other she got tangled up with Tyler. I don't think she knows anything."

"Too late for that now." Will looked grim. "She either stays with us or she'll be dead before nightfall."

Kim shuddered. Another life, ruined because of whatever Will had drug them all into…

She stared out the windshield at the city disappearing behind them. "I'm going on faith right now, Will, but I expect you to tell me everything very, very soon, you know that, right? I need to know what the hell is going on, what my life has been turned upside down over."

Will didn't argue. "You got it. Hang in just a little longer, Kim. This'll all be over soon, I promise."

Part 3

By dusk, Tyler and Jay had reached Will's hideout, an old two-storey farmhouse set so far back in the woods they never would have discovered its existence without Will's map. As it was, they nearly turned back twice, but in the end the rutted two-lane road hemmed in on both sides by tall trees and thick underbrush turned out to lead where Will had said it would.

Tyler parked the stolen pick-up in the empty barn, where it would be hidden from sight in the highly unlikely event that anyone stumbled onto their hideout. Will had given explicit instructions for precautions they were supposed to take, however, and hiding the truck was one of them, so the two friends complied.

The walk from the barn to the house unnerved Tyler. In the gathering twilight, the surrounding woods looked ominous and eerie; he kept imagining dozens of eyes peering out at him from the lengthening shadows. Jay seemed to feel exposed, too, because he matched Tyler's quickened pace to the back door, where a key hidden beneath a faded welcome mat gave them entrance to the kitchen.

Swiftly, Jay punched in the security code Will had given them to disarm the house's alarm system. "Christ," Jay muttered, glancing toward the living room where a bank of monitors was set up against one wall. "He's got surveillance on the entire perimeter, doesn't he? Even inside the barn."

Tyler, who was accustomed to lots of security around his father, found the closed-circuit feeds less impressive – and paranoid – than Jay. "Looks like Will's got reason to watch his back to me," he observed. "Let's see if he really keeps this place stocked, shall we? I'm starving."

A thin layer of dust coated the kitchen counters, but the electricity worked and the faucet, after hiccupping for a moment, produced clean, hot water. The refrigerator was empty, giving Tyler a momentary panic, until he opened the pantry beside the stove and discovered that Will had indeed left them well-provisioned with non-perishables like macaroni, soup, canned fruits and vegetables, spaghetti, powdered milk, juice mixes, bottled water and – Tyler grinned – several bottles of wine and a dozen cases of Heineken, Will's favorite beer.

"Never be without your beer," he remarked to Jay, holding out a bottle to his friend. "What should we drink to?"

Jay hesitated. "To surviving."

"Fuck that. To revenge." Tyler popped the top on his beer and drank deeply, longing to swim away from this nightmare on a river of alcohol. He caught Jay's disapproving look, however, and placed the beer on the counter; much as he hated to admit it, Jay was probably right – getting drunk wasn't smart while they were running for their lives.

Although I really can't think of a better time to be drunk…

They walked through the house together, as if reassuring themselves that they were alone and safe. Tyler was jumpy. He kept glancing nervously at the curtained windows, imagining guns aimed at him from the other side, or faces pressed to the glass. He felt a little better after discovering a cache of weapons in an upstairs closet – apparently, Will was prepared to fight off a small army if necessary – and better still after finding that the house was equipped with phone and Internet. If worse came to worse, they could at least call for help. Provided they could figure out who was on their side, of course.

Food was priority one to Tyler, though, so before they delved into Will's list of leads, Tyler and Jay fixed macaroni and ate it while sipping beer at the kitchen table. The fare so reminded Tyler of countless other "bachelor meals," as Kim called the roommates' not-quite-square, beer-and-pizza diet, that he experienced an overwhelming sense of grief for the life they had led, the friendship they had shared.

Jay's thoughts seemed to be running along the same lines. "It was weird, seeing Will like that, wasn't it?"

"You mean, pointing a gun at an FBI agent and poking his own guts back in after getting shot? Yeah, that was new," Tyler retorted dryly. "Definitely not an improvement over the old Will."

"I feel weird even calling him that," Jay admitted. He polished off his beer and glanced nervously at the clock. "You think he'd have called by now."

Tyler felt for Jay. He knew how much his friend loved Kim, although personally, Tyler thought Jay had settled down way too early. Not that it mattered now…

"I'm sure they're fine," he said, meaning it. "One thing about this new Will, he looks like he can take care of himself."

"Yeah, but he's in over his head, even he admitted that." Jay ran a hand through his hair, looking exhausted. Tyler didn't bother suggesting that they sleep; he knew Jay wouldn't rest until Kim was back in his arms. "Maybe we ought to get started on those leads he left us. See if we can figure this mess out."

Had he been cruel enough to destroy Jay's hopefulness, Tyler would have admitted that he harbored serious doubts about the possibility of bringing down the Fourth Branch, whatever that was. Tyler had the benefit (if one wanted to call it that) of having grown up around powerful, power-hungry men like Jack Freed. Hell, his father was one such man. And Tyler knew in his bones that men like Freed did not topple easily from their thrones. Their whole lives were spent not just accruing but securing power, money, and privilege, surrounding themselves by people who would, for love or profit, do anything, no matter how despicable, to protect them. They were like spiders sitting inside big, fat webs, nigh untouchable to anyone who wasn't a bigger, meaner spider.

And who are we? An idealistic lawyer-to-be, a stupid rich kid, and a disavowed spy. Not exactly the stuff nightmares are made of…

The computer was in the living room, facing the bank of monitors. Tyler pulled a kitchen chair up beside Jay, who sat in the over-sized rolling desk chair with Will's list on the desk in front of him. It suddenly struck Tyler how impersonal the house was: No pictures, no books, no socks left lying about. He wasn't sure why, but somehow, he had thought the hideout, whenever they reached it, might offer some clues as to who Will Traveler really was.

Maybe this is the clue: He isn't really anybody.

The sense of loss threatened to engulf Tyler again. He had counted on Will in ways he wasn't sure even Jay could understand; of all the people Tyler had ever known, only Will had seemed to take him truly at face value, without caring one iota about the money or connections Tyler could provide. Over the last two years, they had sat over beers in The Castle's kitchen late into the night many times discussing Tyler's complicated relationship to his father. Now, Tyler knew logically those conversations had been nothing more than part of the mission to Will – what was it he had said about his dead father story, that it had made Jay "identify" with him? – yet he couldn't shake the suspicion that Will had actually cared, and that the biggest part of him still did.

It was like trying to figure out where fire stopped and smoke began, discerning who Will was and who he had pretended to be. Tyler wasn't certain even Will knew that.

"Here we go." Jay had typed the name "Vivian Buchanan" into Google and returned dozens of hits. "Vivian Buchanan, CEO of Belenus Pharmaceuticals, based in Miami," Jay read off the screen, skimming through the headlines. Suddenly, he stopped and clicked on a link, groaning as the page opened. "Holy shit."

Tyler knew the feeling. Less than forty-eight hours ago, he had confronted incontrovertible proof of his father's involvement with Freed while staring at a computer screen. Somehow, seeing Vivian Buchanan, a WASP-ish middle-aged woman, shaking hands with Freed at an AIDS benefit on the society pages of the Miami Herald didn't shake him up too badly.

"Looks like we've got our first lead," he mused, clapping Jay on the back. "So…How about another beer?"

Part 4

Agent Jan Marlow spent her partner's funeral fighting the impulse to leap over the casket and attack Fred Chambers. She barely heard the priest's eulogy; she perfunctorily hugged Borjes' mother and sisters; she scarcely noticed the military salute at the graveside. All of her grief was channeled into rage at the man whom she knew had ordered her own murder and whom she strongly suspected was the real culprit behind Borjes' death.

It was only afterwards, sitting behind the wheel of her car in her garage, that the enormity of both her loss and the predicament she was in hit Marlow full-force.

The priest's words echoed in her ears: "Guillermo Borjes served his country with honor and distinction, both with the military and with the FBI. He will be remembered by all as a hero."

No, she wanted to say. He'll be remembered as a friend. A damn good friend. And maybe something more, if we hadn't been so professional all the time…

That way lay madness, Marlow knew, so she slammed the lid on such thoughts. Whatever feelings she had hidden from Borjes, they wouldn't help her to survive, and she was determined not to let Chambers win. That meant staying alive.

Numb with grief and the exhaustion of the past week, Marlow climbed out of her car and stepped into her kitchen, thinking longingly of a hot shower and a glass of wine. If she could relax a little, maybe she could find some perspective –

"Agent Marlow, please don't be alarmed."

Hand on the light-switch, Marlow automatically reached for the gun holstered at her hip only to recall a second later that she had not worn her side-arm to the funeral. Not only would it have been highly inappropriate, she hadn't trusted herself not to blow Chambers' head off during the service. Now, she cursed herself for foolishly believing Chambers wouldn't make another attempt on her life so soon after Borjes' death.

"Please, turn on the light," the intruder said kindly.

Marlow flipped the switch and slowly turned, expecting to find a gun trained on her. But the woman standing beside her kitchen table appeared to be unarmed, and her hands were raised in the universal posture of surrender.

"Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?" Marlow demanded, her voice brittle with trepidation. She edged toward the kitchen counter, where her .25-caliber pistol lay just where she had left it that morning.

The woman made no move to stop her. "I'm sorry we have to meet like this. My name is Kaitlyn Westbrook. I'm a CIA operative."

Marlow snatched up the gun, checked that it was loaded, and without hesitation trained it on the woman. "Put your hands on top of your head and lace your fingers together," she commanded. The woman obeyed. "Now get on your knees and put your forehead to the floor. Do Not Move."

Uncomplaining, the woman patiently submitted to being frisked. She carried no weapons, not even a can of pepper-spray. Satisfied yet still wary, Marlow ordered her to stand and move into the living room, where she waved her onto the sofa and seated herself in a fan-backed chair.

"CIA, huh?" Marlow, taking in the woman's self-possession, almost believed her. She was probably in her mid- to late-thirties, although she was so trim and athletic she could easily have passed for a much younger woman if she hadn't looked so thoroughly exhausted at the moment. Her long, wavy blondish-brown hair was pulled back in a sensible ponytail, but even that and her non-descript jeans and white tee-shirt couldn't disguise her attractiveness. Still, she was obviously trying very, very hard to blend in with a crowd.

"And what does a CIA operative want with me?"

"I know you've been investigating the Drexler bombing. I know you have your doubts about Jay Burchell and Tyler Fog's guilt."

Sensing dangerous waters, Marlow decided to be noncommittal. For all she knew, this woman worked for or with Chambers. Could he be trying a new tactic, perhaps attempting to frame Marlow for allowing Burchell and Fog to escape? She wouldn't put it past him, not at this point. Hell, she wouldn't have put it past him before, he was such a weasel.

"Burchell and Fog are our primary suspects, but yes, I think the Drexler bombing may be more complicated than just a plot between the two of them." Marlow held the woman's gaze. "But this is an FBI matter, not CIA."

"Technically, yes."

"Legally, you mean." Marlow refused to be daunted by the lurking authority of the Central Intelligence Agency; she worked for an equally powerful bureau. "What did you say your name was again?"

"Kaitlyn Westbrook."

"Maybe we should call your supervisor, Agent Westbrook, and see if the CIA has sanctioned this visit."

"No one at the CIA will confirm my identity. I'm black ops."

Marlow experienced a momentary panic. She knew whatever Will Traveler had involved his friends in was big, possibly even huge, yet she could never have anticipated finding herself in a face-to-face interview with a black ops CIA operative. If the woman was who she said she was, of course, and Marlow couldn't help rejoining with some skepticism, "Pretty convenient to give yourself an identity I can't confirm, 'Agent' Westbrook."

The woman smiled sympathetically. "I know I've put you in an impossible position, Agent Marlow. It's not something I wanted to do. But I don't have any other choice. I don't know who else to turn to." She licked her lips, looking frightened – what worried Marlow was that she seemed to be trying not to. "I don't know how far up the ladder this plot goes, but I'm afraid it might be all the way."

A heavy silence descended between them. Marlow was torn between believing the woman and dismissing her as either a plant or a fraud. She could imagine Chambers wanting to feel out how much she knew, yet this seemed an impractical way for him to do so; surely if he wanted to pry information out of a seasoned agent like Marlow, he wouldn't try to make her buy some cloak-and-dagger story about government conspiracies. The very absurdity of the woman's claims lent them an odd sort of credence.

Apparently reading Marlow's continued silence as encouraging, the woman went on, "I can't offer you proof of who I am, Agent Marlow, but I can prove myself to you, if you'll hear me out."

Marlow considered this. What could be the harm in listening to an unarmed woman, even if she was spinning a ridiculous tale? She settled back in the chair, keeping her gun in her lap but turning the muzzle away toward the wall. "All right," she conceded. "I'm listening."

The woman took a deep, steady breath, as if preparing to lay bare secrets she had held in for years. "Fifteen years ago, I joined the CIA as a clandestine operative. Ten years ago, I was assigned to a black ops mission – totally off the books – to investigate a group known as the Fourth Branch."

Marlow held up a hand. "The Fourth Branch…Doesn't that refer to the will of the people keeping the other three branches of government in line?"

"Historically, yes," the so-called Agent Westbrook replied. "But this group is much different than that. We – the CIA – had reason to believe that very powerful, very influential people at the highest levels of government, industry and society were part of this group, and that they were using their money, power and influence to perpetuate acts of war and terror against American targets at home and abroad, with the intention of manipulating public sentiment and thereby public policy."

Conspiracy theory bullshit.

Marlow's disbelief must have shown on her face, because Westbrook smirked. "I know. It sounds like something out of a bad Tom Clancy novel, doesn't it? I thought so, too, until I went undercover as an assistant to Jack Freed."

Freed – the Homeland Security director who had been obliterated in a car bombing, another act of domestic terrorism blamed on Burchell and Fog…

Though why they would risk staying in the city to murder a high-ranking Homeland Security official when they could be safe in Mexico or Canada by now is beyond me…

Marlow sat up a little straighter. "Ten years ago," she mused, "Freed would have been…"

"Deputy Director of the FBI," Westbrook supplied, nodding. "I was assigned to investigate how he was using his authority in that position, whether or not he had any connections to this Fourth Branch. And what I found was…terrifying."

Marlow tried to wrap her mind around the possibility that the very agency she worked for, the agency she had devoted her life to and that her closest friend had given his life for, was actually behind the crimes she tried to prevent. She was unsettled by how easy it was to entertain this possibility given what she knew about Chambers, a company man through-and-through.

"Like I said, for the last ten years, I've been on a deep cover assignment," Westbrook was saying. "I impressed Freed, convinced him to bring me into his circle of confidantes. When he left the FBI for Homeland Security, I and several other associates followed him – off the books and off the record, like most of our employment had been for him. I'd built quite a case against Freed before then, but after he left the FBI, things really started to get scary."

Marlow interrupted, mind spinning. "If you had a case against Freed, why not take him down? Maybe all of this could have been prevented, the Drexler and…" She stopped, picturing Borjes' dark eyes smiling at her across his desk.

Westbrook stared down at her hands folded in her lap. She looked tired and sad. "I followed orders. And my orders were to keep using my relationship with Freed to build a case against other members of the Fourth Branch. No matter how much he trusted me, Freed always played his cards close to the chest – in ten years, I learned a lot about the Fourth Branch, but he would have been the only person I could prove was involved in anything illegal, let alone treasonous.

"But it felt wrong," she admitted, her voice dipping slightly, rough with emotion. "To let him do…the things he was doing. To let him keep planning, and plotting, knowing everyday that soon at least one of those plots was going to be carried out."

"You mean the Drexler."

Westbrook nodded. "You see, Agent Marlow, I was one of Will Traveler's handlers."

Marlow nearly fell off of her chair. She pictured a handsome young man in an alleyway, coolly pointing a gun at her head; she saw again Jay Burchell's tortured blue eyes, heard the desperation in Tyler Fog's voice. Will Traveler, the lynch-pin in all of this, had been in this woman's employ?

"Who is he?" Marlow demanded. "And how is he connected to all of this?"

Westbrook's expression took on a faraway look that gave Marlow pause, reminding her of her own illicit feelings for a partner. "I met the man who calls himself Will Traveler four years ago. He was one of the most gifted operatives I've ever encountered. He was also a patriot, a true believer, and Freed used that against him. He used it against a lot of people who thought they were working for the good of the country."

She passed a hand over her eyes. "Agent Marlow, if I keep talking, if I keep telling you this, you have to know I'm putting you in a tremendous amount of danger."

Recalling bullets whipping past her head inside a tastefully-decorated suburban home, Marlow bit back a sour grin. "I'm up for it."

"Are you sure?" Westbrook raised her periwinkle-blue eyes to Marlow's brown ones, her pretty face clouded. "I'm here because I'm on the run, not just from the Fourth Branch, but from the CIA. I faked my own death, Agent Marlow, but not very convincingly – before long, people are going to figure out that I'm still alive, and those people are going to want to shut me up, along with anybody I've talked to."

Marlow shivered involuntarily. To have the power of the FBI, CIA, and this Fourth Branch come down on her…She was good, but not that good.

"So what do you want me to help you do?" she demanded. "Why come to me?"

Westbrook considered for a moment, as if debating whether she should reveal her endgame. At last, seeming to resign herself to the fact that her fate was in Marlow's hands, she said simply, "You're the only person I trust to help me find the one man who may be able to fix all of this."

Marlow didn't have to wait for Westbrook to say it; she already knew. "Will Traveler."