Felicity was glad to be alone in the office. Mark had left shortly after Jace, making sure she knew where everything was at and doing one last check of the facilities for intruders.

Coast was clear.

Given her level of fury over Jace going rogue, it was for the best. Otherwise, she would’ve said or done something she’d regret. He’d known how important this mission was to her and he’d still taken off on his own, disobeyed her direct orders. And yes, he’d said it was to protect her, but… dammit.

She shook her head and paced the room. She’d been in enough relationships with men who treated her like some precious flower who couldn’t fend for herself. Like it wasn’t bad enough she had to prove herself every day at the Bureau. Equal rights might be preached in public, but behind closed doors there were still bastions of male-only brotherhood and the FBI was certainly one of them.

What hurt the most though was that she’d thought Jace was different. Thought he respected her and trusted her enough to know she could take care of herself. Not that she didn’t appreciate his concern, but….

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out to see a text from Jace.

Fingertips itching to type back a response, Felicity sighed. No. Better to leave it as is until they could talk this mess out and see where they stood.

She tucked the device back into her pocket then checked her service revolver. Locked and loaded. Ready for action, as Ted used to say. She’d thought about him a lot since he’d gone back to DC alone and planned to call and check in on him as soon as this whole mess was over. She hoped he was doing okay and that things were progressing with that teaching job he wanted. The guy was a natural when it came to relating to people. He’d make a great instructor at the academy.

CREAK!

Felicity squinted up at the ceiling again, tamping down the flutter of fear that tickled through her gut. There went that pipe again. Mark had warned her it might act up and not to go shooting holes through the ceiling, thinking it was the boogeyman or Quinn.

Sighing, she flopped down on the sofa once more to wait.

Her instincts told her Quinn would show up. It was only a matter of time.

Hopefully not too much time, though.

The guy had to be jonesing about now. His money gal was gone, it was time for another kill, and now he had some pesky federal agent trying to ruin his bliss.

CREAK, CREAK, THUD!

That sound was new. Felicity frowned up at the ceiling. She’d heard the creaking several times before, but not the thud. Nerves on edge, she pushed to her feet once more and placed her hand atop the butt of her gun. This was stupid. She was getting paranoid, sitting around waiting for Quinn to show up.

Frustrated, she walked the room again. She’d reached the window behind Jace’s desk when all hell broke loose behind her.

THUD, THUD, CRRRAAAASHHHH!

Feet from where she stood near the end of Jace’s desk, the whole ceiling collapsed on top of her. Something hard struck her in the head and she thought she might’ve blacked out for a moment. When she came to, eerie quiet had descended over the office again, with only the occasional creak from the still faulty pipes, now exposed through the ceiling, and the occasional tap-tap of drywall raining down from above.

Coughing and waving a hand in front of her face to clear the dust, Felicity squinted upward to see a gaping hole where the ceiling had been and piles of debris around her on the floor. She started to push herself up, only to feel a sharp stabbing pain in her right shoulder. She’d fallen hard on it and now it throbbed and refused to move.

Dislocated? Broken? She wasn’t sure. All she did know was that it hurt like hell and it put her in a really shitty spot, defense-wise. She was right-handed.

From the middle of the chaos, beneath a large chunk of drywall, rose a person. A man, from what she could discern through the haze. Her heart sank even as it kicked into high gear, and more adrenaline dumped into her veins.

Kevin Quinn.

He was covered in streaks of white from the busted drywall and blood seeped from a cut on his cheek. He smiled at her, a slow sinister affair chock full of crazy. His glasses sat crooked on his face from the accident, only adding to his off-kilter persona. He must’ve been hiding in the attic this whole time and fallen through when he’d tried to leave. “Thought I’d drop in and see you, Agent Belasko. Heard you’ve been looking for me.”

With her left hand, she fumbled for her revolver only to find it gone. It must’ve fallen out of her holster during the chaos. Not that she’d be able to get off a decent round in her predicament, but having a weapon was better than having no protection.

Well, shit.

Kevin Quinn stepped closer, speaking to her in a weird, friendly tone. “I’d hoped you’d leave California with your partner Ted, Agent Belasko. Hoped we could avoid this unpleasantness. But no. You had to go and be stubborn. I’m not a bad guy. But this is what you’ve forced me to do.”

Stopping near her and crouching down, he traced his fingers over Jace’s medal of commendation from the SEALs that had fallen from the desktop as if he touched a holy relic, his expression an odd mix of reverence and hate.

“That's gonna be your downfall one of these days, you know. Stubbornness.” He blinked several times, frowning down at her. “Yep,” he said, adjusted his glasses then looked up at the ceiling he’d destroyed. “You're a hard nut to crack, Agent. Gave me no choice.”

“There’s no way you can get away with this, Mr. Quinn. You know that, right?” Felicity hoped to keep him talking long enough to grab her gun from the floor. “Kim Rigsdale turned on you. Told us everything. We’ve got enough to convict you and put you in prison for life.”

“Ah, Kim.” He snorted. “Such a stupid bitch. Always thought she was better than me. And please, call me Kevin. It’s the least I can offer you, under the circumstances.”

“Under what circumstances?” she asked. Keep him talking. Keep him talking.

“Agent Belasko, don’t play me for a fool. We both know that these could quite possibly be your last moments on earth. Do you really want to spend them asking stupid questions?”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Say what?” He sneered. “That I killed all those SEALs? You already know I did. That’s why you’re here. So you must get off on other people’s misfortune, huh? You dirty, dirty girl.”

He poked her injured shoulder and she bit back a scream.

The bastard would pay for that, one way or another.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did that hurt?” The mock apology in his tone made her want to kick him in the nuts. “In case you were wondering, I’ve been hiding up in that attic since I evaded those two idiots at the gas station.” He shook his head. “So hard to get good help these days, isn’t it?”

“What’s your plan, Kevin?” Felicity struggled to sit upright, gritting her teeth at the agony ripping through her shoulder. Yep. Dislocated, given the odd angle her arm was resting at against her side. “You going to kill me now too?”

The phone in her blazer pocket continued to buzz periodically from Jace’s text. If only she could get a message to him, let him know Quinn was here so he could call for law enforcement back up.

“Unfortunately, yeah. You and your boyfriend have royally fucked up everything for me.” He grabbed an unopened bottle of water that had rolled to a stop near his feet from the toppled refrigerator that had sat near Mark’s desk and cracked open the lid to take a swig. “You two just had to keep sticking your noses in where they didn’t belong. Oh, yeah. I’ve been watching you both too. Tapped your phones, traced your calls. Spyware is so easy to buy on the Internet these days. Funny though, for a trained FBI agent and an ex-SEAL hotshot, neither of you seemed to have any idea you were under surveillance. Either that or you wanted me to track you here. Haven’t figured out which one yet.”

“Go to hell.”

“Maybe I should let you text Jace Stevens so you can lure him back here and I can ask him about it myself?”

“You’ll never find him.”

“I’m betting he’s slouched in that piece of shit hunting stand of his in the woods right now. Waiting for his chance to blow my brains out. Should I wave?” He bent slightly and waggled his fingers toward the far window across the room. Felicity took the opportunity to do a visual search of the area around her for her missing gun. She spotted the tip of the barrel peeking out from beneath the edge of Jace’s desk.

“I’d be careful if I were you,” she said, inching slightly to the side to hide the weapon from Kevin’s view. “Jace was a top marksman for his SEAL team.”

“Right. Isn’t he just the fucking golden boy, huh?” Quinn’s tone turned sarcastic. “Such a worthless, arrogant loser. He never could spot genius.”

“The genius being you?” Taking jabs at a total lunatic probably wasn’t the wisest move, but Felicity was done playing nice with this asshole.

“Damn straight.” He put the water bottle down and moved closer to her, grabbing her right knee to keep her in place on the ground with her back against the desk as he pulled a Bowie knife from under his brown corduroy sport coat. The blade gleamed wickedly in the dust-dimmed room. “Do you know I scored higher than any other recruit in my class on the written portion of the exam? Did that matter to those fucking dicks on the admission committee? Nope. Denied.” A small muscle ticked near his jaw and his eyes narrowed, the knife waving around wildly in his grip. “Should’ve known better than to trust the government after what they did to my brother.”

“That’s right.” She gave him a cold smile, egging him on as she carefully slid her left hand behind her to feel for her gun. “They messed Ed up pretty good didn’t they.”

Faster than a blink, he had her by the throat, slamming her head back against the desk so hard she saw stars. He squeezed tighter and tighter, severing her oxygen supply. She kicked at him, tried to punch him with her left hand, but to no avail. He straddled her legs with his and easily pinned her non-dominate arm down with his free hand. “Don’t you ever talk about my brother, you filthy bitch.”

“Fuck you,” Felicity managed to squeak out, biding her time. From the corner of her eye, she could still see the end of the gun barrel poking out from beneath the desk. She needed to keep him distracted, keep him talking, keep awake and conscious until she could reach it.

Kevin Quinn scowled down at her, the menace in his expression slowly disappearing beneath his benign mask again. He released her neck slowly and sat back, trapping her ankles and feet below his butt and crossed his arms, the knife edge still glimmering. “You want to know the real reason I killed those SEALs?”

She nodded, rubbing her throat with her left hand. Her right arm had gone strangely numb, indicating possible nerve damage. Marvelous. At least she’d gotten a bit closer to her gun. The tip of the barrel now poked her hard in the left hip.

“I needed to send a message,” Kevin continued. “Make people see the military for the miserable lowlife criminals they really are. Make them see that these young guys they take in through their recruitment centers are nothing but brainwashed lambs led to the slaughter. All the US cares about is bodies on the field, more fingers to pull the trigger. They don’t care about the people they hurt, the people they kill, the people whose lives they destroy. So I thought, what better way to create a stir and bring awareness to the problem than start murdering their poster children?”

“Lovely.” She struggled beneath him, hoping to put her weapon within reaching distance of her left hand.

Quinn smiled. “I thought so. Except murder wouldn’t really help me. It would only make them more sympathetic to the public who so blindly worships them. So I decided I had to make it look like these guys were offing themselves, you know? Like they couldn’t live with the guilt of what they’d done for the military, the lies and the horror, anymore. I need to expose the bullshit rhetoric the military spews out for what it was.”

“Well, at least you got that part right.” Felicity stared at him. “This sure does sound like bullshit.”

Crazy bastard laughed, as if he was having a wonderful time.

“So you hate the government. Hate the military,” she prodded.

“The military? Yeah. The government? Nah. They’re just the liars. And you? You’re a liar too, Agent Belasko.” He took another drink from his water bottle then tilted his head. “Why do you keep glancing down? Looking for something?”

“No,” she said, wincing as she jostled her right arm and discovered it wasn’t as numb as she’d thought.

Pins and needles prickled through her ankles and feet as her circulation dwindled beneath Kevin’s weight. He wasn’t a big guy, height-wise, but he was solid muscle. “I’m afraid the only way you’re getting out of here now is in a body bag, Agent. Unless you cooperate.”

“Cooperate how?”

“First, you’re going to call your bosses back in DC and tell them you made a mistake. That these suicides were just that. Suicides. Then you’re going to pull some strings to get me out of the country and on a plane to South America. Then, maybe, I’ll let you live.”

“I can't do that. My boss will know I’m lying.”

He frowned, pressing his weight harder against her now cramping legs. A whimper escaped her before she could stop it. “Right. So, what you’re telling me then is that you’re useless and I should go ahead and put you out of your misery now, Agent? Is that it?”

Felicity met Kevin Quinn’s gaze directly, malevolent insanity sparking bright in his eyes. Much as she wanted to bring this guy in alive and make him stand trial for all his crimes, she realized now that might not be possible.

“Come on now, Agent.” Quinn chuckled. “What happened to your Bureau’s famous motto? Fidelity, bravery, integrity? You know I won’t stop with the SEALs. I’ll keep on killing and killing. Maybe I’ll even get to your friends in DC. Take things nationwide. I’ve been meaning to expand for a while now anyway. I’d have to find new financing though, with Kim out of the picture.” He leaned into her again, closer and closer until his nose nudged her ear and his rank breath ghosted hot against her cheek. “As a matter of fact, how about I murder old Ted next, as a trial run. He’s going to be sent out to pasture soon anyway, right? Why not put the old coot out of his misery now and save the taxpayers his pension money, eh?” His evil chuckle rattled her clear to her bones. What a fucking sicko. Then Kevin moved back slightly, so he was face to face with her again. “Better yet, how about I take out your boyfriend? One more SEAL before I hit the road. Yeah, that’s it. He’ll make a fine capstone to these glorious deaths.”

“Get off me.” If only she could free her legs, knee him in the groin. Or slam her left elbow into his nose, drive that brittle cartilage straight into his brain. Except he had a hard grip on her one good arm, she couldn’t feel her feet anymore and her right shoulder hurt like a motherfucker. Things were not looking good.

He held his knife in front of her face, smiling again. “I’d make it quick, Agent. I promise. They don’t talk about that aspect of SEAL training, but I know so many ways to kill a person that it would make your head spin. I can make it fast, slow, or anything in between.”

The tip of the gun pressed hard against her butt and she took a deep breath.

So, it would come down to this then.

If she were lucky, she’d have one shot, one chance to put a bullet in this asshole before he stabbed her through the heart or slit her throat. Not the best odds ever, but she’d take what she could get. Eyes closed, she said a quick prayer then eased her fingertips over to the gun.

“What’s the matter, Agent Belasko?” Kevin said, patting her cheek lightly. “Don’t tell me a big, bad FBI warrior like yourself is going to pass out on me.”

“No.” Felicity exhaled and palmed her weapon, doing her best not to move too much until she was ready to draw her gun. “I’m not really the squeamish type.”

“I bet not.” He lowered his blade so that the tip rested against her injured right arm. “Shall we test that theory?”

Felicity pulled the gun from beneath her just as he drew his blade across her right bicep, slicing open her skin. The cut wasn’t deep but it was painful as hell, throwing off her already compromised aim. Her shot went wide, missing Kevin and striking the wall on the far side of the room.

They struggled for the gun and Kevin knocked her sideways, pinning her to the ground.