Second-floor study, Shadow Lawn Mansion, New Jersey. February 6, 2021, 8:17 p.m.
"Mel? Mel, can you hear me? Damn it, Melanie! Talk to me."
Slowly, my eyes opened, roused by Cedric's urgent voice shouting in my ear. I would have answered him had a gag not been shoved into my mouth, preventing me from speaking.
It took me a moment to remember what had happened. My head was throbbing and I could feel a slight stickiness stemming from my right temple. Vaguely, I recalled getting clocked in the temple by the huge oaf that had been blocking the doorway.
Not fast enough.
My thoughts were muddled, a groggy mess, but I didn't think that I'd been unconscious long. Maybe just a few minutes. Enough time that my wrists and ankles had been secured with a zip tie but short enough for the blood to still be flowing from the wound on my head.
"Melanie, are you there? Please come in," Cedric begged. "Melanie—what...Shit!"
A burst of jostling on the other end of the comms unit that was still in my ear. Then static.
I couldn't even move my mouth enough to say his name as that communications link between us went silent. It was never a good thing to lose comms with your primary tech analyst on a mission but for it to happen now with me unable to see if he was okay...
A jolt of panic went through me.
Cedric. Not him. Anyone but him.
I just prayed that the rest of our team was safe and that the rest was going according to plan, even without me being there. Dai was smart. When I didn't show in the kitchen, he would realize that something had gone wrong and send people out to find me. And everyone would know immediately that Cedric was down. Even now, through the pounding in my head, I could hear Stefan coming through on the channel, barking orders. Reinforcements would be on Cedric in a second. Even as I thought about it, I knew our perimeter team would be converging on his van to check out the situation.
The thought helped to slow my racing heart. Began to calm that edge of panic and allowed me to take stock of my surroundings fully for the first time.
I hadn't been given the courtesy of a chair as Max had, and instead lay on the ground with my face pressed into the carpet. It was interesting that they hadn't removed the tiny comms device in my ear, especially since I already knew that I'd been disarmed.
Two men – include the broad bald one that had knocked me senseless – were leaning against the wall opposite me. The second man I didn't linger on because I did recognize this face. It was the man who'd been guarding the staircase – the man with the golden Scorpion pin. Daniel's inside team.
If, of course, we hadn't been totally betrayed by them as well.
I could see him staring at me and wondered distantly if he recognized my face. If Daniel had told them that I would be here and to keep an eye out for me.
The one who'd knocked me out said, "She's awake."
"Good," said a cool voice behind me. "I was starting to get bored."
The scrape of a chair against the floor, a tread of footsteps I immediately recognized, the voice that was so familiar to me. When I looked up, I wasn't at all surprised to see who had circled around to stare down at me.
Amelia Grimes. Lia. My best friend. Practically my sister.
Her brown hair had been tightly braided for the op and it hadn't been changed in the few hours we'd been apart since leaving the hotel. Her eyes, normally wide and soft, were as hard and frosty as ice. Even her face seemed different, twisted into this mask of hate.
"Hello, Mel," she purred. To the others, she said, "Help her sit up. But keep her kneeling on the floor where she belongs."
One of the men – the one who'd hit me – chuckled as they approached. Roughly, they shoved me to my knees and I felt one place the cold muzzle of a gun against the back of my head.
"Just in case she gets any ideas," he said with a voice that was like gravel.
"She won't. Isn't that right, Mel?"
I glared at her and tried to sort through his mess in my head. If Lia were here, that meant she had to have left the perimeter team. I couldn't tell by looking at her face if her Scorpion friends had helped extract her from our team and if any of my people were still alive. Or maybe she'd used a nonlethal option to slip away – citing Max's rush to the hospital.
"Nothing to say?" Lia taunted. "Isn't that a first. Luckily, you don't have to say anything because after all of these damned years, it's finally my turn to talk.
"You're insufferable, did you know that?" she asked. "Honestly. I remember the first day we met at Oaks Academy and I thought you were nice. A little shy, nervous perhaps. But then you just got...annoying. You were good at everything so naturally and it never made sense. Not when there were legacies like me who got overshadowed because of you and the way that you hogged all of the attention the professors had to give.
"I told myself it was fine," Lia said as she paced a bit. "That I could live with it because you had no one in your life and it was so sad. And then, what do you know, you're not a nobody but a legacy like me. Except your parents are two of the most notoriously irritating people in the history of espionage. Well, I guess 'are' isn't correct since your mom is dead. Guess I should be saying 'was'."
Lia shrugged as if it didn't particularly matter. I tracked her with my eyes as she continued pacing. "I wondered – okay hoped – that Scorpion would take you out when they started hunting you down to get back at your dad. I thought I could make it work in my favour. Lose my biggest competition and stop a known terrorist group at the same time...It was like a dream come true. But then you lived and your dad escaped and what should have been easy was not."
She opened her mouth to continue but was cut off by the opening of the study room door. Lia turned to watch as three men entered – two carrying drawn guns like the men behind me and one with his wrists bound whose eyes widened with fear and relief when he saw me.
I didn't know if I was relieved or terrified to see Cedric stumbling towards me. Relief because he was still alive. Terrified because he and I were likely to die in this room together.
"Oh good," Lia crooned as Cedric was shoved to the floor a few feet away from me. One of the men who'd entered with him stood behind him, a gun drawn and centred on Cedric. "The lovebirds are together at last."
Cedric's eyes bored into me but my attention was diverted again as another person entered the room.
Petite with dark curly hair and green eyes that normally glittered with excitement and were now ridden with malice.
Tasha.
"Nice of you to finally show up," Lia grumbled to Tasha. "I was beginning to think that you weren't going to show."
"Thought you could use a few minutes alone," Tasha said with an unconcerned shrug. "Besides, it took longer than I expected to get here from the hotel. And this one tried to fight back. Unsuccessfully, but it did take a couple of extra minutes to subdue him properly." She jerked her head at Cedric who was staring at them both balefully.
Tasha turned her attention to me. "Hello, Melanie." Her voice was calm, neutral. As if we were discussing the weather.
"Where's your sister?" Lia asked.
"On her way. She'll be here shortly. Izzy had a few things to take care of downstairs first before joining us."
Tasha was Izzy Savalas' sister. She was the one they called Dama de la Muerte. Lady Death. All of the final puzzle pieces were beginning to fall into place. I didn't have time to process the dread and horror. Those emotions I shoved down, compartmentalizing them for later.
If there was a later.
As I stared at them, Tasha reached out to shove the gag down and out of my mouth. "I figured you might have a couple of questions. Anything you want to ask, Melanie?"
I should have said nothing. To not give her the power she wanted to express over me. The fact that she had answers and I had none. But keeping Tasha talking could give me time for reinforcements to arrive.
"Why?" I asked her.
"Surely you know the answer," Tasha said with a roll of her eyes and a sigh of exasperation. "You killed my mother before I even had a chance to know her. I was in Spain when you shot her. We were meeting for the first time. My dad had kept me away from her until then, you see. Didn't want me to fall under her influence, or something. He got what he wanted in the end because after years of searching for her, I found her only as you ended her life.
"Izzy met me instead before you managed to get her locked up. When she told me what happened...what you had done...I knew that you had to feel the same kind of pain that I felt at losing a mother. It took a while but I managed to contact an assassin by the name of James Hawke who we both know that you're familiar with. Did he tell you that he murdered your mom?"
"He did," I said.
Tasha smiled in a self-assured way. "Of course, I didn't know at the time that the people we all thought were your parents were really just impersonators. Your aunt and uncle did a good job of burying all connections with your biological parents. Not good enough, I'm afraid since we got to your dad too, but good. For a while.
"Now, after we got your aunt and uncle out of the picture, I was prepared to call us square. But Izzy didn't think that you'd hurt enough yet and she said that you would be so useful for Scorpion's cause. I didn't really care about that at the start, I'll admit. But once I learned what they were truly about, I realized that they were where I belonged.
"So, we kidnapped your brother, tried to take you in Paris, I helped you all the way along to rescuing your father from that miserable prison."
"You shot Daniel."
Tasha groaned, prompting Lia to chuckle. "He was so useless. The entire time you were in that mountain, he was fretting about you. I had to shoot him just to shut him up. Of course, he didn't die. Then or when I planted the bomb in the hospital."
"Why did you try to kill him?" I asked, unable to help myself. "He was innocent. He had no hand in any of this."
"That wasn't my call," Tasha said. "It was Izzy. And she did it because she could. Because we wanted to you to hurt. Since you have so little regard for your own life, it was the only way we thought that we could really get to you, Melanie."
I forced myself not to look at Cedric as dawning realization washed over me. They wanted to hurt people to get to me. Wes was far away. Jack was deep underground. They could have brought in Daniel again, knowing that we had a history, but they'd taken the extra effort to grab Cedric from the surveillance truck.
I had a very bad idea about where this was all heading. From the way that Cedric had grown impossibly still, I knew that his thoughts were mirroring my own.
"And now?" I asked. "You're having an amnesiatic or blackmailed Daniel working for you just to hurt me? You could have killed him outright but you didn't. You've kept him alive for five years. I want to know why."
Tasha smiled and for the first time I felt as if I were staring at Lady Death and not the friend I knew. "Because killing Daniel when you already thought him dead served no purpose. But he'll be joining us soon once Izzy grabs him from downstairs."
Her plan began to take form in my thoughts. Kill Cedric and Daniel, the two men who I had loved in my life – both of which I'd never said the words back to. They'd make me watch as they bled out on the floor, the life fading from their eyes.
"You're going to kill them and then kill me. That's your grand plan?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. Better than steady – dry, almost mocking. "Seriously? No offence, but after five years of hiding from Scorpion, I kind of expected more."
It had been the right thing to say for Tasha's eyes turned impossibly colder. Her face tightened but I turned to Lia. "And you turned all dark side because I was better at you in school? That seems like an extreme overreaction."
Lia whipped a gun out of a holster at her side and pointed it at me even as Tasha snarled at her to put it down. Lia did no such thing, keeping it aimed right at me. The safety was off, there was a fully loaded clip and a bullet in the chamber.
"I joined Scorpion to stop you, Melanie. You're a poison and you don't even realize it. Everyone gets hurt protecting you. Saving you. How many people died because of you in Paris five years ago, Mel? My dad almost did. Do you remember that? Your aunt and uncle died because of you. Your cousin got kidnapped and had his toe severed because of you. And Patrick? Your ex-boyfriend who saved your ass in Bristol when you went to rescue Wes. You left him to die on a rooftop alone so that you could make a grand escape. That's not even counting the twenty or so agents here tonight who came because you asked them and who are all going to die in this building."
Lia leaned in close to me, her voice dropping low as her eyes searched mine. "Safe as houses, my dad used to say. You and I just talked about his famous catchphrase a few days ago, remember? He never said this in front of you, but he'd always say to me, 'Lia, stay with Melanie. That girl is safe as houses. She'll protect you.' Clearly, he never knew the real you. Because you, Melanie Briar, are about as safe as houses in a fucking tsunami."
"Put the gun away, Amelia," Tasha said. "Before you do something stupid."
"Why should I? You want her dead just as much as I do."
"True." My eyes flicked to Tasha who shrugged. "But Izzy wants you alive, Mel. Be thankful."
I snorted, going for nonchalance even with Lia's gun still in my face. "Why should I be thankful for a delayed death? Since that's surely what your sister is waiting to give me, right? If she's anything like the way you're acting right now, I guess I'm in for some long monologue followed by a bit of torture and a slow, painful death right?"
Tasha offered me a smirk. "Where's the fun in killing you at all, Melanie? Izzy and I talked about it a few times over the years. The best way to kill you. To finally have our mother's killer meet the same fate. And then we realized that the best way to torture you, is to not kill you at all. But killing everyone you've ever cared about and then having to live with the guilt of knowing that they're only dead because they know you...That seemed almost like a fitting punishment."
"You really are a psychopath," Cedric said. He glanced at me – eyes hard and flat as he tried to think his way out of this mess – and added, "How didn't you see through this nutcase?"
"What can I say? People change when they leave high school."
I shrugged and for a moment, I almost thought that Tasha was going to rip the gun out of Lia's hand and shoot me herself. Instead, just as she opened her mouth to speak, she was distracted by someone speaking in a comms unit she had in her ear.
Tasha shot a baleful look at me and took a few steps away, closer towards the door. "What do you mean you can't find him?" she hissed. A pause as she listened to whoever was on the other end. "You arrived with him and now you've lost him? Get the Esposito's to look for them and then get up here."
Daniel. They could only be talking about him. I didn't know if it was good that he'd disappeared, but it was better that Tasha and Izzy had no clue where he was. If anything, it could buy us time and keep him safe.
Lia stared down at me, those blue eyes as strong and unwavering as the gun in her hand. "Safe as houses," she said again. To anyone else, it might have sounded mocking.
"Safe as houses," I repeated.
A slight curve to her lips. Then her eyes still on me, she adjust the aim of the gun and pulled the trigger.
And one of the men behind me– the one who'd been holding the gun to my head – fell lifeless to the floor. No one had the chance to react before chaos erupted.
My wrists and ankles were bound but I wasn't completely useless. I jabbed my bound hands backward, elbows connecting with a sensitive spot on the second Scorpion goon behind me. As he doubled over, I reached for the gun that had fallen free of the other Scorpion agent's hand and prepared to shoot but my efforts weren't even needed. For as I scooped up the weapon, a door to the study opened.
The floorplan of this study was identical to the one above it. There were doors on both sides and behind door number two housed a wondrous surprise.
Daniel entered, flanked by Dai. They both were armed and their first shots connected each with a Scorpion agent. The men fell, expressions of shock evident on their faces as they did, as if this had never been an anticipated outcome. Daniel sent off a shot in Tasha's direction but she disappeared, slipping out the other door as she whirled away, and the bullet collided only with the wooden doorframe.
But then, before any of the rest of us could move, that final enemy agent – the one that had been standing behind Cedric with a gun locked and loaded on his target – fired off a shot that connected with expert precision into Cedric's back.
"No!" I gasped. The air went out of me and the word was little more than a breathy whisper.
Cedric jerked once, his eyes growing wide as he started to topple. Lia was there, lunging forward as she went to soften his fall to the ground. Dai fired again and the Scorpion man died.
Daniel was instantly behind me, untying my bonds as Dai started applying pressure to Cedric's wound. I scrambled over to them the second my wrists and ankles were free to survey the damage for myself.
"Oh god," I whispered, the words barely forming as they passed my lips.
Cedric's eyes were already closed, his breathing shallow. A pool of blood had started forming around him but there was no exit wound. The bullet had lodged somewhere inside of him.
"We've got to get him to a hospital now or he's not going to make it," Dai said.
His hands were coated red with Cedric's blood. Even as he spoke, I began peeling off the catering company shirt I'd been wearing, leaving me in a white tank-top and the bulletproof vest I'd been wearing beneath. Dai ripped the shirt from my hand and pressed it against Cedric's wound.
Daniel added, "We have to go after Tasha as well. She'll be meeting with Izzy and things are going to go bad very quickly. We have a very limited window where we can play offense and it's closing really quickly."
Dai looked at me and quirked an eyebrow towards Daniel as if to say 'Who's this guy?' Wondering how I knew him, clearly. It didn't seem that they'd had much time to chat as they'd coordinated their attack.
We had seconds to make a plan. Maybe less because Cedric was growing paler. I had no time to process this – no time to wonder if he would die here and now in my arms.
Lia and I looked at each other. There would be time later to talk about what had happened here between us. The important thing was that I knew she could be trusted. Not just because of what had happened here in this room, but because of the private note Daniel had left for me in that storage locker. The one I'd burnt to a crisp.
We are safe as houses, he'd written. Five words that had changed my entire outlook. Because those five words were the only ones he could have said that would have made me trust Lia implicitly. In his writing them to me, Daniel had indicated that at some point during his time with Scorpion, he'd heard the backstory to those words. Which could only mean that he and Lia had been working together and had lied to me about it.
I'd held out hope for the past three days that somehow Tasha hadn't betrayed us. That she hadn't been the one deceiving us all along. But through the process of elimination – with Cedric and Lia mostly trusted and Max isolated and unable to inform anyone on our new plans – Tasha was really the only one whose allegiances I couldn't verify.
We had tried to distance her from the mission as much as we could – delegating her to surveillance from the hotel. Cedric had even asked one of the CIA agents who'd joined us for the op to stay behind and keep an eye on her.
I didn't want to think about that agent now – didn't want to wonder if they were still alive or if Tasha had eliminated them too. And I sure as hell didn't have time to get the entire story of how Lia had gotten herself involved in Tasha's schemes. Not as Cedric was dying and Tasha and Izzy were meeting up somewhere in this very building.
"Call it, Melanie," Lia said.
Dai's eyebrows crinkled and I got the feeling that he was about to ask a question but thought better of it as he turned back to Cedric.
Into my comms, I said, "De Luca, give me an update. What's happening out there."
Stefan's response was immediate. "Thank fuck. Where the hell have you been? Janssen's missing. They grabbed him out of the surveillance truck and–"
"I've got him. Give me an update. How are we doing?"
"We've secured the perimeter. The only ones out here right now are us. All teams are in position and ready to infiltrate on your call."
"Copy. I need an extraction team right now. Janssen's down, GSW to the back and no exit wound. He's in rough shape and if we don't get him to a hospital, he's gonna bleed out on this very expensive carpet."
"On it. Where are you?"
"Second floor study.
"Roger that. On our way to you."
I glanced at Dai. "I need you to get back to the kitchens to rally the assault team. By now, our infiltration team should have arrived with the rest of the guests and should be in the ballroom. Once they sit down to start serving dinner, we go. I need you leading this through before it falls apart."
Dai nodded firmly. "What about Cedric?"
"I've got it," Daniel's associate said. He'd been standing stoically, carefully monitoring the situation and watching the doors at the same time.
"You have medical training?" Dai asked over his shoulder.
"Just what I've picked up over the years. But I can apply pressure and help get him out. There's an old stairwell on this floor – used to be used by the servants and workers of the house. Goes straight downstairs. It'll be easier than trying to get him out through the window."
They switched places, the other man applying pressure to the wound on Cedric's back just as Dai stepped away.
"Go," I said to Dai.
"Be careful," he murmured back and rushed to the door.
Daniel looked at me, his eyes burning with intensity. "I'll stay here with Joby. We'll get Cedric to safety and come back if we can to help. You and Lia go after Tasha and Izzy. We don't have time to discuss this."
"Okay." Into the comms, I said, "De Luca, I'm handing my communication with you off to an asset of mine. He's going to coordinate the extraction while I tie up a few things here. We think we've got a solution so you don't need to make it to the second floor."
"Copy that."
Before I had the chance to hand off my communications unit and microphone to Daniel, Lia had already removed her own.
"We have to go," Lia said urgently, already on her feet and striding to the door.
"I'll keep Cedric safe," Daniel promised me, nodding towards the door. His eyes burned with intensity, sincerity.
"Keep yourself safe, too," I said. "We're not going to make this a thing where we keep separating on missions and make it five years before seeing each other."
His lips quirked up in a quick smile. "Promise."
We had no more time for goodbyes. On my way to the door, I stooped to grab one of the discarded guns from Tasha's deceased Scorpion lackeys. Lia had already done the same.
"Let's go," I said.
It was time to end, this once and for all.