A/N: So, who's in the van? Military police come to arrest Spencer? Paparazzi about to expose the girls' romance? Christine's people coming to keep Ash in line? Ethan, looking to make good on his promise of revenge? Or maybe…

It was a perfect moment and Spencer was lost in it.

So lost that she didn't see a white van turn off of the street and into the alleyway where they were standing.

So lost that she didn't hear the van's engine rev to speed up.

So lost that she didn't hear the shouts of warning from the doorway of the club they had just left.

But the marine was not lost enough to miss the feeling of a body slamming into her, pushing her forward into an equally unaware Ashley and moving both of them out of harm's way.

When she felt her center of gravity shift, that's when Spencer's brain turned back on. She cradled the back of Ashley's head as they hit the pavement together and immediately threw her body over Ashley's to protect her from the unknown threat, whirling her head around to assess the situation and figure out what the hell was going on.

The marine turned just in time to see the van screech to a sudden halt where she and Ashley had just been standing, transferring all of its momentum into Chelsea's body instead and sending her flying backwards to roll limply across the pavement until she hit a dumpster with a second bang.

She didn't get up.

Spencer's heart leapt up into her throat, her mind struggling to keep up with what she was seeing.

Moments later, the marine heard a door slide open on the other side of the van, but was unable to see anything through its blacked out windows. Several pairs of feet crunched onto the sandy pavement of the alleyway as Spencer drew her gun and turned to crouch in front of Ashley who was still lying on the ground, staring wide-eyed at Chelsea's prone form.

Spencer wanted to check on her friend, but the threat of the unidentified van was more immediate. Chelsea had just sacrificed herself to do the job that Spencer had been too distracted to do. The blonde sent a quick prayer to God, hoping that her best friend was still alive, and then set her focus on the matter at hand.

Spencer lifted her free hand to try and radio out through her earpiece for back-up, but was unable to get any sort of signal. She broke into a cold sweat when she realized that she actually hadn't heard any updates from any of the other members of Secret Service team in several minutes.

Someone was jamming their secure signal.

With an ever-tighter grip, Spencer trained her weapon on the side window of the van where she knew a driver was sitting, even if she couldn't see them through the tinted glass. With the rest of the assailants remaining out of sight behind the van, the driver was her only viable target at the moment.

"Step out of the van and identify yourself!" Spencer bellowed. "I'm not going to ask twice!" Aside from the echo of her voice and the distant thumping of bass from the club they had left behind, the alleyway was eerily quiet.

They were alone.

Painfully slowly, the van's driver's side window rolled down, revealing a middle-aged white man with shaggy blonde hair and sunglasses that were out of place in the middle of the night. "I don't think that I am going to do that," he said, "I think you are going to put your gun down, or we will kill the girl." His accent was eastern European, maybe Russian.

Spencer's heart leapt into her throat again at the threat. She risked a quick look back to assure herself that Ashley was still safely behind her.

The man laughed as he watched her obvious panic. "Not that girl," he drawled as he made some sort of signal with his left hand. "This girl."

Appearing suddenly from behind the van as if she had been pushed was Kyla. Her hands were pressed tightly behind her head, mascara was streaking down her cheeks, and her body was quaking with terror. She was trailed closely by a tall, slim woman with a balaclava covering her face holding a military issue pistol to the back of the younger Davies' neck.

Instinctually, Spencer shifted the sight of her gun over to Kyla's captor, calculating whether she could kill the masked woman before she would have time to pull the pistol's trigger.

Upon seeing her sister, Ashley suddenly awoke from her stupor as she began to understand what was going on.

"Kyla!" The First Daughter yelled, scrambling to stand on wobbly legs. She desperately tried to shove past Spencer to get to her baby sister, but Spencer used one arm to hold her back and used the other to keep her weapon firmly trained on the masked woman.

This situation had gone from bad to worse and continued to deteriorate.

"I think you will put your gun down Carlin," the man in the van told her casually, as if they were discussing the weather. He ran his palms up and down along the sides of the steering wheel as he spoke. "See I would love to have both Davies girls, but tonight I was only planning on taking the one," he gestured to Kyla. "You and big sister had been doing such a good job of holding one another's attention – you were supposed to dead already, except for mama bear over there," now he gestured to Chelsea's body, which still hadn't moved.

Spencer fought the urge to shiver. This man knew her name. He knew they would be here tonight.

This was planned.

"So: I can shoot one of your Davies right now and continue on with my original plan," The driver made a brief hand signal again before three more gunmen appeared from behind the van, their weapons trained on Spencer and Ashley, "…Or you can be a good girl and toss your weapon to one of my associates and I'll take the 2-for-1 deal."

"Spencer…" Ashley whispered behind her, no further words necessary to make the message clear that they were to do nothing that could lead to Kyla getting hurt.

Everything in Spencer's training told her that if she let these men take the Davies girls, there was a 99% chance that they would never make it home alive. But Spencer also knew that if she did not lower her weapon, there was a 100% chance that they would shoot her and probably Ashley or Kyla too.

With Chelsea down and no backup to rely on, now the protection of both Davies girls fell to Spencer alone. She was their last line of defense, and for now, keeping them alive was Spencer's only priority.

After a moment's hesitation, the marine tossed her gun along the pavement toward one of the masked assailants who quickly snatched it up and stuffed it into the waistband of her pants.

"You made the right choice. Your girls might even make it out of this alive." The blonde man had the nerve to smile from behind his sunglasses. "But that is going to depend on a lot of things." To his henchmen, the man barked in Russian: "Secure the hostages."

Hostages.

The word was jarring, and for a second Spencer doubted her decision. The men moved forward with military precision, keeping their weapons trained on all three girls without missing a beat. They moved to Ashley and Kyla first, forcing their hands behind their backs and securing them with zip ties.

Spencer took the moment to study their attackers, her mind racing through hundreds of security briefs, trying to figure out who she was up against.

The group's use of Russian narrowed the options down quite a bit. Most of the assailants were wearing masks, but the ring leader's face was brazenly visible aside from his sunglasses. His facial features and choice of dress was distinctly eastern European.

"Spencer?" Ashley whined as she was being muscled away toward the van. This time the fear was evident in her voice.

The marine turned her focus back on the girls. "Ashley, Kyla – It's going to be okay. I promise." She tried to reassure her friends as best she could given the situation, even as a gag was stuffed into each of their mouths. "Just do whatever they say. You're going to come out of this. You are going to be okay." Spencer held Ashley's watery gaze as long as she could before a black bag was thrown her head and Kyla's. It was only a matter of seconds before the Davies sisters were secured and tossed into the back of the unmarked van.

"What about this one Nikolai?" one of the henchmen asked the man in the driver's seat, gesturing to Spencer with his gun.

Nikolai looked thoughtful for a moment, smoothing his palms over the steering wheel again. "Take her along too. Can't hurt to have one more bargaining chip."

Spencer readied herself for a fight as second henchman stepped forward to attempt to secure her hands but before he came too close, the woman in the balaclava stopped him. "That's not going to be enough with this one, believe me. Knock her out."

Before Spencer could place the familiar female voice, the heavy weight of a gun butt crashed into her left temple and she blacked out before her body even hit the ground.

Ashley couldn't fight the tremble running through her body as she tried to steady her breath against the obstructive gag in her mouth. The back of the van had no seats and the kidnappers had thrown her on the cool metal floor. No matter how hard she tried, she could not see anything through the dark sack over her head, and the thick material muffled all sound.

She jumped as a warm shoulder bumped into her own, but even without her sight she recognized the familiar form of her baby sister now resting against her side.

She shifted her tied-together hands to the left, fumbling until she was able to find Kyla's and lace their fingers together.

Kyla returned her gentle squeeze, and Ashley relaxed to know that her baby sister was safely by her side for the moment.

But Spencer was another story. Outside of the van she heard the sickening crunch of metal meeting bone and then the sound of a body hitting the ground.

"Spencer!" Ashley tried to call out against the fabric of the gag, but it just came out as a muffled hum.

She tried to push back to her feet, not really knowing what she of all people was going to do to help the Marine, but feeling compelled to try anyway.

A rough shove pushed her back down onto her butt, and she fell over onto what Ashley assumed was Kyla's lap.

"Sit the fuck down," came a distinctly female voice from across the other side of the van. "Don't make more trouble for yourself."

Moments later there was another loud thud as something was tossed into the back of the van with them. Ashley felt her surroundings bounce slightly as the rest of their attackers jumped back into the vehicle and the side door slid closed with a slam.

"Okay," the woman cried, "Poydem!"

Ashley fell sideways into Kyla again as the van accelerated forward with a screech of tires. It took until that moment for Ashley to appreciate what was happening.

She and her sister were being kidnapped. Really, truly kidnapped by people that had tried to kill her and Spencer, and who had probably already killed Chelsea.

The only reason anyone would go after them, Ashley realized with a sinking feeling, was to try and get something out of their mother – their mother who happened to be the president of the United States and a woman who was loathe to give anyone else anything that they wanted if it wasn't in her best interest.

No matter what Spencer had promised, Ashley didn't believe that this was going to be okay. She and Kyla were on their own now, and Spencer was probably bleeding to death back in the alley of that stupid club that Ashley had dragged them all out to because she had been feeling self-destructive.

This was all her fault – all of the people she loved in this world were hurting because of her reckless decisions. Ashley felt herself beginning to hyperventilate, fighting to take deep breaths around the gag covering her airway. She brought her knees to her chest, trying to pull herself together and be strong. Beside her she felt Kyla rubbing her thumb across the back of Ashley's hand, trying to soothe her, but Ashley couldn't control the terrible thoughts racing through her mind.

She was starting to get light-headed from her rapid breathing as the van took a sharp left turn and something heavy and warm rolled over onto the top of her feet. Long hair tickled the sensitive skin at her ankles.

It took her a few moments, but eventually Ashley's scattered mind recognized the fact that this limp, heavy form was a person, and that this person was probably Spencer.

A hesitant shift of her foot over to where she estimated the person's torso should be confirmed that they were warm, and they were breathing.

Spencer was alive. Spencer was with them.

As the minutes ticked by into hours, and the kidnappers around them chattered quietly in Russian, Ashley felt herself slipping in to a bizarre kind of trance.

She fought to keep her breathing even with the rise and fall of the chest resting against her foot.

In and out. In and out.

It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay.

Being held a gunpoint made a girl think a lot of about the regrets in her life.

Kyla had a pretty good number of regrets, but oddly enough, the one that was bothering her the most right now was the decision to drop out of Russian class after Russian 261.

With her hands tied, her mouth gagged, and her head covered, Kyla had only the feeling of Ashley's shoulder against her own and the sound of the kidnappers mumbling around her to ground her to the moment and to stop her from thinking about the imaging of Chelsea's body clanging into that empty dumpster.

At one point Kyla's Russian had almost been conversational level. She'd taken the classes believing that Russian would be a good language to know if she ever got into a career in international politics one day. Sadly, however, when it had come down to sophomore year, she'd chosen to move forward with Arabic instead of Russian.

Now, she was lucky if she understood 50% of what was being said around her between the hum of the engine and her limited vocabulary. She knew how to order a bowel of borsch at a restaurant, but no one ever taught you the terms you might need to know in the event that you were kidnapped and tied up in the back of a van on the way to god knows where.

They should really rethink those textbooks.

Now that Ashley seemed to be calming down next to her, Kyla was able to focus in on the conversation between the man and the woman up at the front of the van. She had a feeling that they were the ring leaders, and the ones most likely be talking about the kind of information that Kyla might want to know.

"I told you this would work," the woman was saying, a hint of smugness in her voice. "I just needed the right time and the right place."

"It took you long enough," the man named Nikolai replied with a grunt, "but I am proud of you daughter. Did you get their bags?"

"Yes, I have them here."

"Did you…" Kyla didn't understand the rest of the question.

"Of course," the woman replied, "I did it as soon as we caught them. I did not want the Secret Service to be able to follow." They probably were talking about disabling the tracking devices that the Secret Service insisted on keeping on the Davies' phones.

"Good girl," the man said. "Give me one of the phones. I want to call her."

It didn't take long for Kyla to learn who it was they wanted to call. She could almost picture the blonde man holding her sparkly pink iPhone to his ear.

"Ah, Madame president," the man spoke in lightly accented English now. "I am afraid it is not Kyla calling to bother you at this hour. Consider me calling on her behalf."

Kyla cringed, imagining what sort of greeting her mother must have given upon presumably being woken up in the middle of the night by one of her daughters. Beside her, she felt her sister stiffen and grip her fingers tighter.

There was a pregnant pause as the rest of the occupants of the van quieted down to listen in on the one-sided conversation going on up in the front.

"Oh no, Madame President," the man chuckled. "I wouldn't say that I am one of Kyla's friends. I would like for us to be friends though. My name is Nikolai."

There was another long pause, and Kyla assumed that her mother was probably spouting back some sort of snarky reply.

"No, no, Madame President, we could indeed be friends. You see, we share a common interest - we both want back people who are dear to us, but who have been taken from us."

The hum of the engine's van picked up, and Kyla imagined that they were merging onto a highway. She didn't understand why there were no sirens, why there were no helicopters. Where was the Secret Service, and how had these people gotten around them in the first place?

"I have your daughters, Christine Davies. I imagine this will be confirmed by your security staff in a matter of minutes. That is all you need to know for now. In a few hours, you will receive a text message from this phone with a number for you to call. We will discuss our terms at that time. No sooner. Do not bother trying to trace this phone Madame President, it will be a waste of your time. I look forward to working with you."

"I've done my part now, Papa, the rest of this is on you." The woman at the front told Nikolai when he hung up the phone.

"Yes Carmen," Nikolai replied, "I suppose it is."

"Wake up Carlin,"

Spencer woke just enough to try to pull away from the hand none-too-gently slapping her face. She found that it not only hurt to move her head, but that the rest of her body was fixed firmly in place.

"Wake up chica, or you're going to miss the whole thing."

"Carmen?" Spencer forced herself into consciousness upon recognizing her ex's voice. She struggled to open her left eye through the stickiness of dried blood that had dripped down from her head wound.

It took her a moment, but when the memory of the kidnapping finally cleared itself from the fog of her throbbing head, Spencer jerked awake.

The first thing she saw was Carmen Sanchez shaking her head at her with a half-smile. "Welcome back to the land of the living." Spencer moved to stretch out the tightness in her shoulders, only to have her progress abruptly halted by ropes cutting into her wrists.

Adrenaline immediately began to pump through her veins as Spencer took in her new surroundings.

The marine found that she was in a cavernous, dimly lit room. It was very old and of primarily wooden construction with large columns spaced throughout to support the ceiling. If Spencer had to guess, it looked like some sort of abandoned factory. There were small windows spaced along the top of each of the walls, but they had all been covered with newspaper and the world outside behind them appeared dark.

Just over Carmen's shoulder, she could see that several tables and chairs had been pushed together to fall into a ring of light created by a handful of construction lamps that had been lined along the floor. Extension cords fanned from all directions, trailing into a pool of wires powering what looked like several computers and a large flat screen monitor perched on one of the desks.

It only took a moment for Spencer's eyes to find Ashley's. She and Kyla were sitting side-by-side in two chairs that were set up in front of a camera on a tripod. Their blindfolds had been removed, but their gags were still in place. Ashley's face was tear-stained, but unmarked. The girls looked shaken, but unharmed.

The rest of their assailants were sitting around one of the tables, checking their weapons and eating from what looked like a box of pastries. They were relaxed, and had not yet seemed to notice that she was awake.

Spencer found that she had been tied securely to one of the wooden columns, ropes tightly binding her wrists around behind her and her ankles together at the front. Her shoulders were sore because they had been holding her unconscious body upright and preventing her from falling forward onto her face. She relieved some of the pressure on them by engaging her core and pulling herself upright to stand more firmly on her two feet.

"Carmen," she hissed to her fellow marine, "What are you doing?" She didn't know how the woman had gotten here, but she definitely should not be standing around in plain sight, wasting time bothering with her. "Get out of here before they see you, go get some help!"

A flicker of hope lit in her chest. She wasn't alone in this. They could get the girls out of here.

"Sorry Spence, that's not really how this is playing out." Carmen replied, looking somewhat uneasy with her admission.

"What do you mean?" Spencer asked, eyes searching the smokey brown ones in front of her. But Spencer had been trained to read body language, to analyze situations quickly without the need for conscious thought.

"You know what I mean Carlin." Carmen replied evenly.

Carmen was with the kidnappers. Spencer smarted from the betrayal – Carmen's betrayal of her, her country and her oath. "That's why you've been trying to get close to me these past few months," she challenged, "You didn't want to get back together. You wanted to get access to the Davies."

"It's nothing personal chica," Spencer cringed as Carmen ran the back of her hand along Spencer's jaw. "But damn you for making this harder than it had to be. I fought hard to try and get that security detail at the White House. I was so pissed when I found out that I had been passed over in spite of all the connections I had spent years developing in the Marine Corps. But then General Amos picked you, and I thought maybe the stars were aligning after all. If you had just… come back to me when I first ran into you again, I could have gotten what I needed… it didn't have to be this way."

Spencer felt her blood begin to boil. Carmen had wanted to use her to get to Ashley and Kyla, but now she had gotten to them anyway. "Traitor," Spencer hissed out between gritted teeth, "How can you just stand there, betraying everything I've ever cared about, and pretend like you intended to do me any sort of favor, like you ever cared!?"

Carmen took a half a step back, tugging at the balaclava that was pulled down around her neck. "I cared Spencer." Carmen said. "But this is bigger than you and me."

"Carmen!" a voice called from the other side of the factory. Both marines turned to find Nikolai striding across the room, waving Carmen over to him. "Come! It's almost time."

Carmen held Spencer's gaze for one more pregnant moment before turning away to join him in front of the table of laptops. "You sent the text message?" she asked, slipping into perfectly accented Russian.

"Yes." Nikolai replied, fiddling with the settings on the large computer monitor before it sprung to life, displaying the view coming in through the camera trained on the Davies girls. The man shuffled over to stand in front of the camera, shifting around to find the right angle to show himself in the foreground of the shot, but still reveal the Davies in the background behind him.

He was taking a moment to adjust his hair when he was interrupted by a mumbling behind him.

He turned around to raise an eyebrow and stared at Ashley where she sat tied in her chair, clearly trying to talk expressively around her gag.

Oh God, Spencer thought to herself. She knew that look. Whatever Ashley was trying to say, she knew that Nikolai was not going to like it.

"You have something to say girl?" Nikolai asked with a trace of humor.

Ashley nodded emphatically.

Nikolai was curious enough to shrug and lean forward to tug the First Daughter's gag out of her mouth. "Then speak," he acquiesced.

Ashley took a moment to roll her tongue around in her mouth, obviously trying to get the taste of the fabric off of it. She caught Spencer's eye over the man's shoulder and gave her a little smirk that told Spencer all she needed to know about what was about the happen.

When she spoke, she was oddly calm, and Spencer recognized her media persona. "I just wanted to tell you that it's not going to work."

Nikolai let out a patronizing bark of a laugh. "Girl, your mother is about to call in here to yield to my terms. I already have you and your sister, pulled right out from underneath the Secret Service's nose. I will get what I want."

Ashley merely snorted in return. "Clearly, you have never tried to negotiate with my mother. Good luck with that. But that's not what I was talking about."

The man squinted at her, leaning forward a little, intrigued. "Then what were you talking about?"

"I meant that you trying to make your hair look like anything other than a hung-over transvestite who got their weave caught in blender – that's not going to work."

"Shut your mouth!" Nikolai roared, and in the blink of an eye he had backhanded Ashley so hard that the chair she was tied to crashed over sideways, taking Ashley with it. He turned away, cursing to his men. "Deal with that. And Ivan, get to the camera!"

Spencer closed her eyes, wincing in sympathy as the sound of the blow echoed through the factory. Leave it to Ashley Davies to antagonize the leader of an armed and dangerous terrorist group for the sole purpose of trying to pretend that she wasn't actually terrified.

When the henchmen got her sitting back up-right and re-gagged, Spencer was relieved to see that she was stunned, but appeared to be okay.

Don't do that again! Spencer tried to tell Ashley with her eyes. Ashley merely gave a little shrug, glancing furtively over to Kyla.

With a start, Spencer realized that Ashley had been more than just trying to annoy her captures. She had been setting herself up to be the difficult one – the one that Nikolai would be glad to get rid of if he decided that he only needed one Davies captive.

She was trying to protect Kyla.

Everyone in the room jumped a little as a ringing noise came through the speakers on the computers. Up on the monitor, a video chat request had popped onto the screen.

"It's time!" Nikolai called to his team in Russian. He moved over to one of the tables to snatch up a gun before returning to stand in front of the camera.

Spencer's brain was screaming for her to find a way out of this. She was not about to let Ashley become a martyr to protect her sister. Her instincts, however, told Spencer that for now there was nothing she could do except wait for the right opportunity to attack, and her heart – her heart wouldn't let her take her eyes off of Ashley.

She looked so afraid, in spite of her recent bravado. Spencer could see how hard she was struggling to control her breathing. She could just make out the reds and purples of a bruise beginning to settle in where the man had struck her face.

Spencer wished she could hold her close and tell her everything was going to be okay, but she couldn't, and it probably wouldn't.

And still, the marine found herself rubbing her wrists raw trying to work her way out of the ropes that tied her to the pole. She felt a warm drip of blood as the friction tore more at her skin than the fibers of the rope.

It might be hopeless, but she had to try.

The sound of ringing continued to echo through the factory as everyone waited for the video chat to connect. Spencer knew that the connection was probably slowed by the fact that someone at the White House was working to get a trace in place. Somehow she didn't think their captors would have left themselves vulnerable to tracing after all the careful planning it was obvious that they had done.

It occurred to Spencer that she didn't know how long it had been since they were taken. She wondered if anyone had found Chelsea yet – she wondered if there was even anything left of Chelsea to find.

Finally, after what felt like a thousand years, President Davies' face appeared on the flat screen. She was fully dressed and made up, despite the late hour. She looked completely calm – only the wrinkles in her brow revealed that this conversation was any different from others that she might have that day.

"Good evening Madame President," Nikolai said in English.

Christine merely rolled her eyes. "Nikolai Uricef. I suppose I should be honored to speak with the second in command of the infamous Archangels?"

The Archangels were the Kyrgyzstani weapons dealers that Colonel Michaels had been warning them about during their first few months on assignment at the White House. Their threat level had been downgraded in the past several weeks, since no new intelligence had been collected on their movements, but apparently they had been an active threat after all. In fact, one of their agents had literally been invited to the White House.

Spencer clenched her fists. Someone in intelligence had better be ready to answer for this.

Nikolai looked pleased that the leader of the free world knew who he was. "The pleasure is all mine, Madame President. Whoever would have guessed that two individuals such as ourselves, from such different walks of life, would come together for a conversation such as this?"

"Get on with it Uricef," Christine bristled.

"Have you considered my offer?" Spencer could see his face more clearly in the corner of the screen, and he was smiling. It was as if he trying to negotiate for cheaper patio furniture at a yard sale.

President Davies did not waiver. "There is nothing to consider. The United States does not negotiate with terrorists." She took a moment to re-square her shoulders. "At any cost. I will not release your brother Abraham from Guantanamo Bay, and I most certainly will not abandon a dozen Tomahawks to your possession."

Spencer's heart sunk a little lower. They expected the release of a high-profile international terrorist, and multimillion dollar surface-to-surface missiles?

She knew that President Davies could give no other response, but it still shocked her. As a military officer, she knew that sometimes you had to make tough choices, personal sacrifices. Logistically, the President's stance was sound. The lives of two girls could never hold as much value as the thousands that might be killed if the terrorists' demands were met and weapons of incredible force were handed over to very dangerous men.

But as a girl in love, a part of her roared that there should be nothing more valuable to a woman than the lives of her only daughters. They were just two young people who had barely begun their lives. They had done nothing wrong other than to be related to the wrong person. How could President Davies be so cold? As a soldier, Spencer knew her life was forfeit. She had accepted that a long time ago, but Kyla and Ashley hadn't signed up for this. And now President Davies was willing to let them be pawns – to be murdered or worse without the bat of an eye?

Spencer shock her head, wincing as it throbbed.

She had to stop thinking like that. The President was playing hard ball, buying time. It was the only move she could make. She had to believe that somewhere, her love for her two daughters would prevent her from doing anything too rash.

Nikolai was angry. The hand that held the gun, invisible in the window that the President could see, was shaking now. "You think I will not do it? You think I will not hurt them?" His voice shook too. He swore loudly in Russian before darting back and dragging Kyla and her chair into the foreground of the frame. He stood behind her, one arm wrapped around her neck and the other holding the gun to her head.

Kyla's eyes were wide and Spencer could hear her sobbing beneath the muffle of the gag. The man was practically drilling a hole into her temple with the barrel.

Behind them Ashley struggled against her bonds, screaming into her gag, trying in vain to protect her little sister. Spencer pulled futilely at the ropes again, but she would never get to the man in time if he chose to kill Kyla.

Part of her knew, however, that this was just a scare tactic. She could see that Nikolai had not yet taken the safety off the weapon, and besides, he still had another bargaining chip with which to make his point before he needed to start spilling Davies blood.

"It will be easy!" He growled to the camera. "So easy to pull the trigger and show you how your baby daughter looks with her brain on the inside out." Kyla strained to pull away from the pressure of the barrel.

The President waivered, seeing Kyla struggle. "Wait!" she cried. "Wait, let's talk about this…"

Maybe she did still love her daughters after all.

"No no, I wanted to talk, and you said that you did not want to talk," Nikolai rambled. The man was clearly more than a little off his rocker, Spencer decided. "For now, the time for talking is over." He was spitting as he spoke. "Maybe you need more time to think. Maybe you need proof to show you that I will do as I say. Their lives mean nothing to me!"

"Carmen!" Carmen raised an eyebrow, waiting for his command. Nikolai spouted off something in Russian too quickly for Spencer's basic-training level of Russian comprehension to understand. Carmen seemed to understand though, because she reached behind and pulled a pistol out from the waistband of her pants and moved to stand next to the man that Spencer could now see shared enough of her likeness to be her father.

The henchman manning the camera swiveled the device on its tripod and adjusted it to widen the frame.

Nikolai turned back to address the president and gestured over his shoulder. Spencer could see that her own body was now visible in the frame behind him and Carmen. The President's jaw was clenched tightly, but the slip of emotion she has shown before was gone now.

"This girl is young and pretty too, eh?" He and Carmen turned to look back in Spencer's direction for a moment, but all Spencer could see was Ashley, who was thrashing harder than ever to try to free herself. Spencer caught her eyes and held them, silently urging her to calm down. Her own heart was in her throat. "I read her file. Spencer Carlin. Twenty-two years old. Marine Sergeant. Likes figure skating and mint Oreo ice cream cones."

Neither of those last too facts were in her file -it was more of Carmen's betrayals.

"She's proud to be an American," Nikolai laughed, nodding to Carmen, who then raised her weapon to level it at Spencer's chest. "An American life is nothing," Nikolai finished.

Spencer heard the sharp report of three gunshots before her body could even register the pain.

Ashley's face was the last thing she saw when she felt her heart stop.

A/N: Well. That took a turn, didn't it? Thanks for all of your kind reviews. One of the main things that keeps me going in writing this is imagining what your reactions are going to be at the end of each chapter, and you guys never disappoint!