After a grueling session with the council and a very unpleasant hour enduring Aryn's wrath, Ejan was frustrated and furious as he slammed open the door to his suite and yanked at his tie. He didn't bother turning on the light, just strode across the sitting room and into his bedroom, trying unsuccessfully to vent his anger on his apparel.

HOW DARE THEY try to regulate my social life?! HOW DARE THEY?! I'll spend time with whoever I wish to! What I do with that time is none of their concern. Riya is a woman, and I am a man; what does it matter what her occupation is? She isn't a spy! She's done enough work for them to know she isn't a spy! And it's none of their god be damned business who I choose to spend my time with! I'm not even sleeping with the woman! They obviously don't know as much as they believe.

He'd defended himself with much the same argument, and had met stout disbelief. Their lack of respect for him had been the greatest sting; how could he function as an effective member of the council if they didn't trust his judgement? And worst, the worst part, his own sister, his own flesh and blood had stabbed him in the back, voicing in front of everyone her disapproval of his association with Riya. His own sister.

Damn you, Aryn.

Barefoot and collar undone, he emerged from his bedroom and headed for his private wet bar. Ejan wasn't much of a drinker, but Aryn hated it, and right now he felt the need to prove his independence. He made it almost halfway before he spotted a figure seated in the corner of his room, so still he had to look twice to make sure it wasn't a trick of lighting. He froze. It was too dark for him to make out who it was, but after this evening, Ejan was ready for almost anything.

He breathed in, and a faint scent of juniper betrayed his intruder's identity and transformed his adrenaline from fear to excitement.

Hello, Ejan.

She'd been seated in the corner of his room for hours, but still she didn't move, just sat there calmly with her pistol in her lap and her hands folded neatly over it. She was a ghost of white in the shaded, dim room, the weapon and her eyes the only dark imperfections she bore, and the faintest trace of anticipation rippled briefly over her perfect, blank expression.

I do not drink while I am working.

Lifting the glass, he turned around as casually as he could. His vision had improved after a few minutes in the dark room, and he could make out her outline now, the white of her clothing and hair, and the dark mass in her lap. He wondered if it was the one he'd given her. Would she do that, he wondered? Would she kill him with his own kindness? And was it the hand of the Council on the grip of her pistol or her own?

"I am sorry I had to leave you both on such short notice. There were pressing matters I had to attend to here." He could almost make out her face now, silver hair surrounding golden skin, deep blue eyes masquerading as black. He knew her features well enough to fill them in. When they'd first met, before he knew her well enough to know his interest would likely come to naught, he'd dreamed of them. In fact, many of his dreams had been very like this - alone with her, a gun in her hand...of course, he hadn't usually painted himself as the target. But on at least one score, Aryn was wrong; he'd known what he was getting into, and rather than trying to think of a way to get out of it, his mind insisted on filling in the details the dark had stolen from him - the delicate point of her chin, the almost invisible eyebrows - and he sighed and set his drink down untouched.

She hadn't intended to smile; in fact, she thought she was doing rather well, staying expressionless while they bantered back and forth. It wasn't fitting for her to be so amused, and she'd imagined this moment as cold, business-like, one professional to another and both of them understanding why it must be done. She hadn't expected him to be so entertaining, and before she knew it, she was smiling.

He took one look at her face and she realized what she was doing, and she instantly lost the grin, but they both knew it had been there.

It was fleeting, but it was there, and it lit up her face beautifully. He'd never seen her smile before, and whatever nervousness he'd been feeling unreasonably decided it was no longer needed and gave its room to his new interest in getting her to smile again.

"Funny. This is not how I imagined it, either. I had been hoping you might run."

With this in mind, she placed a firm hand on her pistol and clicked off the safety. He stopped, right there in front of her, his hand still extended... and then she holstered her gun in its place behind her back and stood without his assistance.

"I have never killed someone in such a manner," she mused reflectively. "And you have never died. Perhaps it is a night to try new things."

He nodded, and edged forward just enough. "If I must die," he said in a low voice, "I would prefer that the method please you." Their distance was closer than intimate, and her eyes were dark, fathomless. He couldn't see himself reflected in them. "I would die content," he whispered, "if it would make you smile."

And then he kissed her.

He kissed her.

Riya had never been kissed before.

Only once before had she been so surprised, and that had been into laughter, not passivity. She should have been furious and fought him away, done something, anything, but having absolutely no artifice in place to deal with a kiss and absolutely no experience in manners such as this, she just stood there while his lips touched hers.

When he pulled away she stared at him, her eyes dark and bottomless and empty, and she was as disbelieving as when she had been wounded. Incomprehension, childlike or otherwise, left her motionless, and it took a long, long moment before she realized what he had done.

No one has done such a thing.

That led to darker thoughts, bloody thoughts, and her expression instantly closed in upon itself. There had been a time, long ago, when all she had to trade was herself, but that time had passed and she was no longer powerless. If he had hoped to barter for his life, he had chosen the wrong currency, and her hand reached behind her back to grasp the pistol and bring it up to point at him.

"I would die content, if it would make you smile."

"I may not have killed you." She steadied the gun. "Someone else would have asked the price of his head. You could have offered me enough to decline. I am not so loyal to your Wolves as to forgo money over duty."

The bullet missed him by the barest margin, and only because she moved at the last moment and let empty air claim her anger instead of his face. There was an instant where they stared at one another, unblinking and focused with a desperate concentration, and then she broke it before she could regret her decision. Her hand shook when she tucked the pistol into its place, and she moved away, pausing in the doorway only to speak, but without looking at him.

"I will kill you if I see you again."

"I will kill you if I see you again."

He turned slowly towards the outside, leaned on the railing and breathed in the night air. Somewhere out in the dark, there was the distant sound of a motorcycle starting, but he couldn't spot it. A few seconds of engine noise were all he heard to mark her departure, and when it had faded away he let his knees drop him to a sitting position on the balcony and leaned against the metal bars. His room was dark and empty, but there was a shell casing on the carpet just inside it. He had not dreamed this encounter. He couldn't grasp how close he'd come to dying; it was too close for him to see properly. He looked at his door. She'd left it open. Ghosts did not use doors.

And Riya, despite his unconscious expectations, was no ghost. Her lips had been warm and alive, not cold and intangible. Her body would have been too, if he'd dared to embrace her. For all the time he'd spent at her side, Riya had been distant and inhuman, with only the barest suggestion of a sense of humor. In only a few moments, he had learned just how human she was. And she hadn't killed him. She could have - she'd wanted to - and she hadn't.

He moved up the walk. Liam was not here to sightsee. He was here to cut a deal. And he was at a distinct disadvantage, because there were only a handful of people in the organization that could give him what he wanted, and the only man angry enough with the council to defy them and give it to him was Alejandro de Altamira.

Liam rang the bell when he reached the porch, and waited. A maid admitted him, and informed him that he was expected, and that Señor de Altamira was in his study. She led the way.

The study was on the second floor, looking down on the garden. The maid entered first, announcing him. He did not hear a reply, but the maid emerged again. "Entrate, señor," the maid said when she emerged.

Why do you run from me, Koketsu?

The distant doorbell rang, and he frowned. He didn't want to be interrupted right now, but he'd agreed to meet with Hansen for a good reason, and if he wished to continue his search at a later time, he had to deal with the matters at hand first. He finished reading Eric's email and was typing in an order to keep looking when his guest appeared in the doorway of his study.

"Good to know the whole world isn't starving under the IF's leadership."

Ejan smiled wryly at his computer screen. "We can't all be martyrs, señor. It wouldn't be good for business." He sent the message off and turned to face the ex-IF officer. They all looked the same to him, these turncoats; they all had the same build, the same carriage, the same hardness about the eyes. The mold of the International Fleet was hard to break; even those who escaped it wore the look for the rest of their lives.

The computer beeped and shut itself off and he stood and crossed the room, his hand extended. Hansen's grip was firm and cool, and after sharing a handshake he gestured for the man to have a seat before shutting the door to his study and walking to the bar.

"I'm just a businessman, señor. What do you need from me?"

"A business transaction," Liam said. "Rumor has it you've been in contact with an operative calling herself Noir. A private contractor of considerable talent, I hear. Except that the council isn't exactly renting her out for parties, if you follow me. I need a professional, the best money can buy, and I hear she's it. So I need to get in contact with her, through channels that won't upset her.

When Riya ran away, he had nothing better to do than to find out who it was that had brought her to his room. It wasn't just that they'd tried to kill him, though that was certainly a large portion of it. It was that for a few moments, he thought she'd come on her own, and Ejan despised being misled, in matters of the heart or otherwise. It didn't bother him that Hansen had picked out the service he'd wanted in return; anyone who knew the goings on in the upper eschelons could surely have made an educated guess. Riya was still a sore subject with him, however, and he hedged a bit.

But if all went well, that wouldn't be an issue at all.

His smile faded, replaced by reservation.

"You aren't the first upstart to think of icing the old bastards. So if you want them out of the way, you have only a few options. One, you can do it yourself. Good luck, and have fun. Two, you can send off for someone who doesn't get a heavy Christmas card from the council every year. Trust me when I say you're going to have to go pretty far down the talent ladder to find one. Or three, you can get someone you know to arrange it for you, without bringing mercs into it. Now I know of at least one pro you're familiar with, who happens to be a merc but is far too expensive to buy off, who might help you. But then again, if you could have done that, why wouldn't you have already? So I'm willing to bet that she's not an option.

The area immediately around the entrance was empty, but after he left that tiny bubble of space it was work to push his way through the crowd to the bar. The music in the place was just one shade softer than deafening, the kind of thumping rave music that made body language far easier to understand than the spoken word.

He didn't like not knowing who he was looking for, but that was apparently one of the conditions his potential tracker had insisted on, and he was too much in need to decline over something that small.

For months, he'd searched for her by himself, using only the avenues the Wolves already had open. When that failed, he turned to private agents, but that was equally fruitless; either they found nothing or mysteriously quit, refusing to offer him a reason and declining any further attempt to employ them. It was getting harder to find qualified personnel, but this time his contact had assured him that the job would get done. It had even been hinted at that this particular tracker had met Riya before, but Ejan had heard this before. Everyone claimed to have met Riya, but Ejan could always tell the liars from the truth-tellers. The liars were still breathing.

He took one of the few empty stools and waved at the bartender before glancing around the room. He didn't know when the man was going to show, but he didn't want to waste his entire evening. The atmosphere was thick with smoke and the dance floor was packed with figures and impossible to see past, but he could make out the rest of the people seated at the bar, and one of them was a redhead in a dangerously short black miniskirt and a corset-style red halter top that matched her hair remarkably well.

He passed the bartender a generous amount of money and shouted in his ear.

"Envíe otro lo que ella está bebiendo a la señorita en rojo, de por favor, y uno para mí."

The man nodded and moved away, and Ejan looked the place over for any new arrivals as he walked over and took the seat next to the girl. She smiled at him innocently and he grinned back. The drinks were delivered, and he was rewarded with a little more of her attention. Any tracker worth his salt, he decided, could find him in a crowded bar. There was no reason for him to go out of his way to look for his future employee.

He was almost late. He had a few minutes left to find her. Maybe she should have picked a more obvious meeting place. There was the overdone rose routine at a cafe... but she would have shot herself in the foot before she'd agree to that. Ejan. She had a basic idea what he looked like but she wasn't pressed for business enough to actually get off of the stool to search around the bar for him. If he didn't find her then it wouldn't be a huge deal. She had ten oher jobs lined up but she'd been told that this one would be worth her while.

She was drawing little circles in her water glass when sensed someone sit down beside her. She rolled her eyes. Another one to be chased off. Once this meeting was over she contemplated going off and finding someone to have a little fun with but the pickings were slim from what she'd seen so far. She'd have to wait until she went back to Germany or France.

She gave him a small smile not sure how she wanted to scare him off. Although, he was pretty cute. Maybe she didn't want to scare him off completely. Maybe build it up, excuse herself when Ejan showed up for the meeting and then recontinued the conversation. And if Ejan never showed up then the evening wouldn't have been a complete waste of time. She would have had her fun.

"Have you been in Madrid long, señorita?"

"I regret that this is my first visit, señorita. I too am here on business, but perhaps I could take you someplace more pleasant after that business is concluded. To dinner, perhaps? I know a few places near here." She just gave him a small smile.

She sat there for a moment picking at her fingernails and studied him. She couldn't make up her mind on whether or not he would be any fun to play with when business was all completed. Sure he was handsome... and obviously rich since he was seeking her services... but she still wasn't sure. He seemed far too overconfident despite the fact that he obviously hadn't gotten any for a while.. but she still had a dinner... on him of course... that she could use to decide if pursuing anything beyond business was even worth the time.

While he was incredibly hot Asuka only had the patience to do a job... not get one. She just finished her last job the day before and was bored to death. She didn't want to wait any longer for another job. Not to mention her contact told her that he paid pretty well. Money was nice too. She wanted to get some new guns but she wasn't about to spend what she earned from the last couple of jobs, those would go to her emergency fund... since she spent some of it on a vacation to jamaca a month ago... But she wanted another job. Something challenging so she wouldn't be bored anymore.

Then she asked about the task at hand, and he looked out through the window of the restaurant at the midnight blue sky and forgot everything for a second or two.

She kinda missed the girl. She'd learned a bit even from the short time she spent with her. Although she could never learn Riya's patience. It would be nice to see Riya again.. although.. what if that one girl was still there. Well.. she'd find out pretty quickly.