“Ryan!”

Jade’s voice was nearly shrill. Most days, she was able to keep a lid on the two children she’d inherited from Ryan’s brother, but today apparently it wasn’t going to be the case. Fresh snow had fallen the night before--a *lot* of it--and Mick and Nuala were vibrating at her feet, eager to take their sleds out and harass llamas and the like.

“Mommy, Elmore’s got his snowmobile--”

“Mommy, Da said we could go ice fishing--”

“Mommy, Auntie Deb said Elmore was a lunatic--”

“Mommy, why would Da go fishing for ice--”

“Mommy, can I--”

“Mommy, could we--”

“Mommy--”

“Mommy--”

“Ryaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!”

Jade strode through the living room and down the hall, carrying her paint box and her canvas board. She’d been attempting to secure some private time before the children exploded into the room, quite innocently, and she didn’t have the heart to simply tell them to go play.

On the other hand, she felt like she was losing her mind from all the noise and constant demands, and where In the hell was their crazy-ass father? When did *he* have to put in his share of children-minding and grunt work?

“Lass?”

As always, Ryan appeared out of nowhere, quiet and smiling softly. He carried a shoebox under one arm.

And, as usual, Jade was not as soft.

“Where have *you* been?” She was more blunt than ;she meant to be, but she took none of it back. Ryan was unfazed.

“About. What’s the matter, wee one?”

Calm. He always made her feel calm, even when life was most hectic. All he had to do was walk into the room. She couldn’t explain it, and didn’t try. It just… was.

That, and he was used to her occasional mood swings and anxiety. Ryan knew her deeper than she often let him see.

“Could you take the twins out for a couple of hours? I’m…” going crazy, she thought.

Two faces shined brightly up at their father. Jade swore she could feel the vibrations from the two children through the floor.

“Yes, please DA!”

“Pleeeease? The snow’s so pretty…”

“Och, aye. No harm in it. I’ll get me camera. Mick, wear that hat your mother bought for ye…”

The children raced to their rooms, while Ryan smiled at Jade again.

“Thanks, boyo. I really mean that.”

Ryan shook his head once, then stepped forward and kissed her on the forehead.

“Go draw magnificent things, love.”

Jade snorted and pushed him away. “Yeah, you Omhadon, get outta here.”

With Ryan and the twins having taken their leave of her, Jade settled down on the couch in the family room with her pencils. The couch faced an enormous picture window that opened up onto the immense backyard. The snow was beautiful, just like the children had pointed out so innocently. So were Ryan and the kids, throwing snowballs at each other, and Uncle Elmore, who she noticed was gearing up his huge snowmobile, urged on, it seemed, by Ryan and the twins.

Snowmobile?!?

Jade leapt to her feet and made it halfway across the room before she stopped herself.

“No,” she said aloud. Hewey, parked on the front doormat, raised his head. “Ryan is their father and Elmore would never put them in danger. Just relax.”

She closed her eyes and waited for her heart rate to slow back to normal. After a few deep breaths, she opened her eyes again.

Elmore was sliding Mick in front of him on the snowmobile.

Jade let out a frustrated yowl and stomped out of the family room, determined not to get involved is the boys’ (and girl’s) playtime.

“I’m going to *relax*,” she told herself.

From outside, the deep throated growl of the snowmobile reached her, as if she were standing next to a cage full of angry, hungry lions. Everywhere she went in the huge house, she could hear the blasted thing, and it just made not throwing open the door and dragging them all inside by their ears that much harder.

Downstairs, in what used to be the basement, the noise was muffled, but still there. She couldn’t if the men were having too much fun paying attention to the children and not their driving, and someone hit a tree, an there was a fire, an explosion, bones broken, blood--

“Damnit!”

She stopped in the hallway and flung open the first door she came to--

--and forgot what she had been thinking about.

Bill’s office.

How in hell had she gotten in to Bill’s office? He always kept it locked.

Deb had said once that it had been soundproofed.

Bill’s office… and the Lord of the Manor was stuck in North Minnesota with Sammy.

Hm. This had possibilities.

Jade walked slowly inside the dark room, feeling as if she’d blasphemed a sacred place. The room itself was deadly quiet, and she let out a yelp when the door slowly clicked closed behind her.

She felt around for a wall switch and when she did, the room blinked to fluorescent life. The walls were new white and bare, the desk, an immense oak thing, was Spartan. A very small, back, sexy computer with no recognizable brand markings anywhere rested to the left, and tall rows of file cabinets stood at attention on the back wall.

Three phones on his desk, a dark green blotter with abstract doodles, and a very unused black ashtray with a picture of the Navy goat in silver at the bottom.

Jade’s hand itched with discovery.

*Nope*, she thought, locking the door behind her and walking, slowly, to the far wall, across from Bill’s desk. There was a wide amount of unused floor there; she merely had to roll the rug up a certain amount and push the desk chair against the bulk to keep it from unrolling over the white linoleum again.

And there she sat for a wide expanse of nothing, merely staring at the blank canvas board, as before.

Her ass ached. The floor was too damn hard, concrete below. It was cold, as well.

Jade broke open the paint box and seized the first tube of acrylic her fingers found.

Her eyes scanned the floor again, and she noticed a slight break in the linoleum. A thin line, ending in a sharp ninety degree angle.

She sat back on her hunches and stared at the break. An irregularity in the vinyl? Really large pieces of tile? Bad patterning?

Jade dropped the paint into the box and shook her head from the thoughts that were lingering, seized another tube.

Bill could make you *think* that he was a grunge-sort of James Bond.

She finally abandoned the paint in lieu of the curious break in the surface of the floor. With the carpet peeled farther back, she did indeed see that the lines formed a cut square in the flooring about three feet by three feet. Jade took one of her painting knives and pried underneath the flooring, and it popped up, unattached to the concrete sub-floor beneath.

There was a very dungeon-like iron ring imbedded in the floor in the dead-centre middle of the square of block, and she gave it a sharp tug. It gave way with a groan, smelling not of wet cellar, but of sawdust and new lumber. A sturdy, simple, polished wooden ladder led down into the darkness.

---

“This one was a bayonet, nearly sliced off my kneecap. I was only laid up for thirty0two hours, while they put my leg back together. Scared the shit out of the VC, me coming at em after they thought they killed me.”

“Hell, Dawg, that ain’t nothing…”

Halfway through Sam’s Icehouse beer stash, the Deputy had decided that he could beat his brother at five card stud. The meal had long since been over, ad the two had started on the beer, avoiding the long overdue talk that both of them wanted to have, but neither knew how to begin.

So, it began as silent beer, evolving into poker and insults, and progressing to loser-fetches-beer-from-cellar (a big c0ontri9butor to the drunkenness--the games were somewhat short, save for the name calling and general growling), and ending where they were now, which was one-upping each other with nasty scars and semi-true stories.

“Lookit this. It’s a beaut’. An eighteen inch machete, right through my thigh. A few inches west and Rainer wouldn’t be here.”

“:At least Deb wouldn’t have to deal with the dirty old squid schlock.”

“Hey, fuck you, man. Whazzat?”

“Put on your glasses, granddad. What, this?” Sam pointed to a slightly pinkish patch of round skin on the back of his hand.

“Yeah, looks like you went as J.C. on Halloween.”

“Bamboo stick. Nearly fell on it.”

“Always were a damn klutz”

“Hell with your ass. Get another beer, ya loser.”

“Fuck you, I will.”

“Yeah, so…”

Bill dropped his hand and grunted as he rose. Sam fixed his gaze on him.

“What about that one?”

Bill’s fingers traced the fading outline of the strange scar on his bare abdomen, the one he’d received in India, or so he believed.

“Said you’d tell me sometime. Seems like good a time as any.”

A long, thoughtful silence, then.

“I’ll need more than one beer. Maybe two.”

Sam nodded. Stinking drunk sounded fine to him at that moment. The longer he stayed in that little cabin, the less he could shake Beth from his thoughts. The more he drank, the less she talked. Problem was, the more the drank, the more the man in front of him felt like Eliot.

Bill came back upstairs with a six pack under each arm.

“Long story,” he explained.

--

George Cole was, by nature, a quiet man. It was his only true gift, the one thing he’d not had to work like a bastard to perfect. He just… was.

At a very early age, his mother had noticed this preternatural stillness. Often, she wouldn’t realize he was in the room until she’d been an occupant for several minutes. Aside from that and his cold, hooded eyes, he’d had the look of an angel.

He’d added the cruel smile and the hard, thick muscle later in life.

If anyone had looked out the side windows of the small, warm cabin, they might have detected the small tendril of whitish vapor that could have come from the exhalations of a man eight hundred yards away, resting behind an ice bank.

Keeping still for long periods of time tended to keep Cole alive, especially when dealing with men like the ones he waited on.

In the past he’d made rash judgments borne of anger and what passes as fear to a reptile such as George Cole. The last Charlie Foxtrot had been once such example, leaving him empty handed and, yet again, giving Strannix and Company a chance at him again.

He was getting tired of failure.

As much as Cole wanted to be staring into Strannix’ face as the man died, as much as Cole wanted to torture him by leaving pieces of the loud-mouthed, foul-tempered woman on the man’s doorstep, as much as he longed to disembowel Strannix’ little spawn, listening to it scream as it’s father begged him to stop--it all seemed to be pure fantasy.

Besides, his employers were getting antsy. They wanted Strannix dead, and early on, they hadn’t cared *how* Cole did it, they just wanted it done. Now, since he had failed so many times, they were going to move on.

Cole had requested this one final chance to round up his prey. He found he’d had to fall back and rely on the most basic of tactics, so incredibly simple. No theatrics or ‘best laid plans of mice and men’ bullshit.

Cole shifted slightly, making sure to keep his feet planted in the right position, his body flattened to the ground. Again, as he had for the space of a small eternity, he blinked his eyes into focus and went back to peering through the high-powered scope which was mounted to a bolt-action semi-automatic sniper rifle, complete with silencer. And if that doesn’t work, he thought darkly, I have my .45 Colt Commander and my k-bar.

But he didn’t want it to come to that. There were two in the cabin, and while Cole estimated that he could take either Gerard, or better yet, Strannix, the both of them together would be more of an opposition than he’d want to tackle.

Two shots. He wanted them both outside, far enough from the safety of the cabin that they couldn’t make it back within the time between shots. Two quick soft point rounds would turn them both to hamburger.

Then his employers wouldn’t come for *him*, as well.

TO BE CONTINUED… SOONISH… I PROMISE… REALLY… !