Sorry About That

When you're a spy, knowledge is power. If you come up against something that you don't understand, the rule is to disengage, cover up all evidence of your existence, fall back to safety and quickly gather the intelligence necessary to accomplish your goals. Fiona, of course, doesn't bother with rules, Michael Westen thought as he listened to her nearly unbelievable story again.

"Assuming for a moment that what you believe her watch did is true, why didn't you get out of there?" he calmly said to the only woman other than his mother who had ever threatened that trademark calm of his.

"Michael! I told you, she witnessed me taking care of business. I had to know, one way or the other.." biting her lip and looking down at her high-heel shod feet she continued, "I think maybe I made a mistake, when I realized she wasn't with the Colombians, I kind of felt bad for shooting her."

"Kind of..Fi?" Putting his arm around her shoulders and drawing her into a hug, "And how did Sam get involved?"

"You know Sam's always going on about the conspiracy theories and the 'truth is out there' people, so If anyone would understand what was happening or knew who would understand, it would be Sam. And, by that time the doctor couldn't do anything else for her anyway," she reasoned drawing in his scent as she snuggled into his arms.

"We should go to ground and lay low for a few days. If something doesn't meet the eye, you should always assume others may have a vested interest in it and then back off until you know all of the players in the game."

"Michael, there are a few things that I might like you to try to teach me something about, but spy etiquette certainly isn't one of them." She licked her tongue along his neck, and then obviously got annoyed when he turned away from her to grab his cell phone and place a call.

"Hey, Mikey, what's up?" Sam's gruff but happy voice answered as he cringed when the overhanging branches on this supposed road slid along the paint of his girlfriend's car.

"Did you take care of that thing for Fiona?"

"Ya it's all handled, Mike." The happiness in his voice dimming down a little. "I got the package to a friend of mine, I'm on my way home now."

"Tell me about this friend, Sam," Michael commanded as he tried not to watch as Fiona rubbed some phantom spots on her long bare legs and nearly succeeding in damaging his calmness yet again.

"Let's just say that he's an old school friend, Mike, like thirty years ago in a jungle far away kind of friend," Sam answered carefully.

"And what about Fiona's package, Sam?" he said softly so that she wouldn't hear him.

Letting out a deep sigh Sam responded quietly, "It's not good news, Mike, I know she messed up this one but my guy's an expert in these kind of things and he said there was no chance, that before I even got out of his driveway it would be over. He's taking care of disposal for me...Tell her I'm sorry but it was too late to do anything."

"Damn," Michael said knowing Fiona had picked up on his conversation and was currently trying not to look ashamed of herself...

--------------------------

Odell Gassaway had lived a very long time. He couldn't remember where his ancestors were from but he did have flashes of coming to America in a wooden ship, so it was probably somewhere in Europe given his pale complexion. He ran a hand through the long braids of his red hair and untangled them from the long braids of his red beard, and wondered for a moment why he had thought about his ancestors after all of these years.

Oh yes he remembered, my grandfather was some kind of medicine man or sorcerer or something; I wonder if he would have known the mystery behind the inert form laying on his Loa altar. It's not that he hadn't seen strange things in his life, why he could remember helping the local natives fight dark beasts and he could recall the first vampire that he had ever met, in fact he had married that vampire, he relived thoughts about advancing technology and world wars, the first time a sorcerer had tried to kill him and even now, he served as a mystic for the local Swamp Wolf Pack.

So Odell thought that the days of him being stupefied by anything were centuries behind him, again that was until he had seen the woman, if in fact that was actually what she was, that his one time comrade Sam had brought to him less than an hour ago.

An hour, so little time that he couldn't even really comprehend it anymore, his life passed in seasons, not allowing so insignificant an amount of time as an hour to affect him. But she had, she didn't fit with his, he had thought, vast knowledge of the world. Ages ago, he had learned how to see a person's entire life played out for his mind upon meeting them for the first time. He could watch the procession of life all the way back to their mother's womb. He immediately knew everything, who he could trust, what they were hiding, how they became the people that they were, but when he had seen the near dead woman, her life had played out for him like all of the others but for only a handful of years...and then amazingly, she simply didn't exist. Oh he could see how reality had tried to correct the anomaly and had woven a story for her but he knew that it wasn't real, somehow this creature had just appeared from nowhere like she had walked out of the abyss.

Even more confusing, if that was even possible, her body and mind gave him no clues to this mystery. Odell was many things in his life but among the most powerful of his abilities was his connection to the Loa. The tourists could talk about Voodoo and Santeria but he was the high priest of Vaduan and there were NO mysteries to one of his power. No, an hour was not sufficient to solve this, if for no other reason, he had to know her secrets just so that he wouldn't spend the next thousand years wondering about them. Moving away from his altar, he quickly started to grab items from his shelves and cupboards.

---------------------------------

Sergeant George Delucia had hauled just about anything you could imagine in his twenty-one year career in the United States Air Force, serving as a load-master for most of that time. But what sat in his C130 Hercules's belly right now had to be the most unusual.

The division general herself had called and ordered his crew and his bird to accommodate whatever these people needed, if they wanted to fly to the moon, the pilots would just have to figure out how to get the old girl to go that high. That was unprecedented by itself but then the people were awfully unique too. There were four of them, three women, all outrageously fine, and one guy who was so somber you could practically see a black hole around his head.

Sarge had thought about joking with them to try to lighten the mood but one look into the eyes of the little blond fox had him absolutely convinced that she would break important things off of his anatomy had he tried.

Finally the ramp clanged as it hit the tarmac at Homestead Air Force Base and the four hunters descended down onto the concrete. The preponderance of denim, silk, leather, sunglasses and duffel bags might have given someone viewing from a distance the impression that these were Soldier of Fortune posers but anyone in their vicinity felt somewhere in the deep primal recesses of their minds that these four were the Horsemen of Doom if you will. They were contained violence and barely restrained lethality, the human subconscious had learned long ago that survival meant staying away from dangers like that and even if they didn't know why, the other people on the tarmac shied away from them as they strode shoulder to shoulder in the bright morning sunlight.

"Willow can't find her," the small blond said completely without emotion.

"Buffy," one of the two brunettes immediately sprang to her lover's defense. "She said there was some kind of interference around this area that must be blocking the spell attempts."

The other brunette stopped causing all of them to and turned to face Buffy, tucking a strand of golden hair away from her eyes and behind her ear before leaning in and giving her a quick kiss. "Red is bringing all of our assets online, as soon as that network is built, there is no amount of interference in creation that could withstand that kind of brute power. By tomorrow morning at the latest, she'll be able to locate her."

"Thanks, Faith," Buffy said attempting a fake smile before replying. "But we don't have to wait for that, Will found traces of her and we can tear this town upside down until she shakes loose."

"There's the vehicles Courtney appropriated for us." Kennedy pointed down the tarmac where two Honda motorcycles, one big black suburban with dark tinted windows, and a silver Ferrari, with a driver standing beside it of course, sat waiting for the four of them.

"Kennedy, go check the girl's house out, the address is in your PDA," Buffy commanded as everyone prepared for their orders. "Faith, check out the trace Willow detected downtown. I'm going to the airport and, Xander....what are you going to do, Xander?" Buffy moved to take her, hanging by a thread, brother-in-law into a slayer strong hug.

"I know she's pregnant, Buffy, I made Willow tell me.," he nearly whispered as tears fell from his real eye.

"Xan, We ARE going to get her back. We will! She is going to be fine, complaining, asking us what took us so long, asking what day it is...come on you know how this works. We've been here before. It will be alright, I refuse to let anything happen to her and Willie will have a little brother or sister and you can be so happy that you could name either of them after me if you wanted too..." And now lines of tears were falling down her face also. Hardening her emotions and willing her tears to stop, she grabbed his shoulders and almost yelled, "What are you going to do, Alexander LaVelle Harris?"

"I'm going to kill anyone that stands between me and my wife."