Turning to his wife, Kermit tried to shake the filthy memory of Julia's first manipulation out of his mind. "I've given the locals her I.D. so maybe someone will pick her up soon." A futile attempt at best. Julia would have to be hunted by the best.

Wrapping her arms around his chest, Savannah felt the pain of his betrayal. Felt the bile rise in her throat at the stories of Julia's manipulation of the young confused man Kermit had been at the time.

Jim had been taking in the exchange and felt as if he'd walked arrived in the middle of a complex foreign movie. "So what did you do to this witch? Short her alimony?"

He didn't want to answer. Didn't want to share his own part in this nightmare by the insanity of his youth. But Jim deserved something. "I met Julia when I first joined the agency. I was...a mess at the time. Not the picture of maturity. Julia was a psycho disguised as a lover."

Jim couldn't deny the anger that involuntarily seeped into the back of his mind. Anger that some lunatic had followed a thread into their lives. And, briefly, anger at his father for being the link for her.

The feeling quickly faded in the face of the ex-mercenary's shadow of guilt.

"Once a friend dragged me back to my senses, I shed her and her crazed fantasies." Kermit saw the range of emotions play over his son's face. Rage. Accusation. Pity.

"Why would she wait this long to come after you?"

"Who knows why that bitch does anything." Kermit smiled sadly at his son. "Let this be a lesson to you about choosing wisely, Jim." Grabbing his wife's hand, he said, "Thank goodness my taste has improved with age."

Jim fell silent once again. If Vanessa died, her death would mean nothing. Just another notch in the belt of a graceless murderer.

Rubbing tired eyes beneath his glasses, Kermit offered his pointless apologies. "Seems I've done it to you again, Scarlett."

"Done what?" She pulled closer to him.

"Delivered you to my enemies. My idiotic choices threatening my family once again."

Groaning at his chronic guilt, Savannah spoke calmly and firmly. "You were confused. You were only with the loon for six months then you got free from her. Don't beat youself up because some opportunistic psycho used you to get off!"

He couldn't help but smile at her rabid loyalty.

Trying to fill the uncomfortable silence and to change the subject, Savannah hugged him tightly. "'Nessie'?" she asked Kermit. It seemed so uncharacteristic for Kermit to use such a diminutive for Vanessa.

A smile tugged at Kermit's lips and he let it win for Jim's benefit. "I found out that 'Vanessa' wasn't a 'real' name - not in the sense that it was derived from Greek, Hebrew, or Latin like most names. An author...what's his name?...Jonathon Swift cobbled the name together from his girlfriend Esther Van-something-or-other. So I joked to Vanessa that she was named after the Loch Ness monster. It always irritated her, especially when I tended to call her Nessie when I felt...um...." He looked at Savannah uncomfortably.

"...closest to her," she completed, squeezing his arm. "I think that's adorable. What does 'Kermit' mean?"

Kermit smiled. "I knew you'd ask. It's Irish, meaning 'free' or 'without envy.'"

"What's 'Griffin' mean?"

"You don't want to know," Kermit told her with a smile.

Savannah noticed that Jim was oblivious to the light-hearted conversation and moved to his side. "Jim?" She slid a comforting arm around his shoulders. Trying to mother another woman's child. "She's a strong woman. If anyone has a chance, she does."

Jim was too tangled in his own emotions to answer. How could he lose her now? It had taken months for them to build what shaky bond there was between them. Now, he couldn't imagine having that ripped from him. He rested his head on his knuckles and accepted his stepmother's embrace.

"I guess I'll bully the medical staff to find out how they're doing." Kermit rose to confront the nurses. Watching his son in misery twisted his own heart in knots. It reminded him of the grief he felt when he found out about his own mother. He didn't like it that Jim was going through the same pain. "Why don't I get us a cup of coffee?" Savannah asked Jim. "It's just down the hall. Okay?" She read his nod and grabbed her purse.

Moving down the hall and around the corner to the vending machines, Savannah reflected on how much she hated hospitals. Always the site of impending disaster. That smell. The wretched artwork on the walls. Not very comforting.

After the cup had been filled, Savannah took a short sip then made a brief grunt of disgust. "Gross..."

Suddenly, there was a soft but firm grip on her shoulder and the unmistakable nudge of a gun barrel in her back. Gasping at the reflection in the plexiglass before her, she found herself cornered.

"Oh, *sugah*," Julia drawled into her ear, "real coffee too much for your delicate constitution? I can see you now...some cafe o'lait in a china cup with your pinkie out. God...how does he stomach you?"

Assembling the strength of desperation, she shot back over her shoulder, "Get your stinkin' hands off me, you crazy bitch. You won't shoot me right here and I won't go anywhere with you."

"Oooo...she bites!" Julia stood, undaunted. Dressed in the white uniform of a floor nurse. I.D. badge and all. Savannah didn't want to think about what must have happened to the uniform's owner. Softly giggling, Julia instructed her prey. "If you don't come with me, my dear, I WILL shoot you. Then, I'll deliver a special gift to the curly-haired brat you left at home."

Savannah's blood ran cold in her veins as she listened to the insanity dripping into her ear.

"Hmmmm...let me think? What in the world could I find that hates a - what does Kermit call her? Oh, yeah, a *Kitty Kat* as much as I do?" Shoving the gun tighter into Savannah's back, she hummed the nightmare into her neck. "I know! A puppy. A great big pit bull. Just imagine, Savannah, a hundred and twenty pound pit bull clamping down on your little Kat. Squeezing the life out of her and gobbling her up. Yummy."

"No...please don't hurt my baby," she begged. "I'll go...just don't hurt her...please...."

Beaming in her victory, Julia offered her mocking comfort. "Okay, since you asked so nice. Wouldn't be any sport in it now, anyway. MOVE!"

*****

Kermit returned to his son and sat beside him, offering silent comfort. He cleared his throat, not wanting to break the silence. "Ah...Jim? They're operating now. We won't know for a while but there's a good chance. Vanessa has always been strong, health-wise. Where's Savannah?"

"Getting coffee." Jim sat there. He didn't know what to do. He'd never felt like this before. He didn't even know how to talk to Kermit, much less how to express his fear about Vanessa. He wanted to tell Kermit how much he appreciated that Kermit and Savannah was there for him but he didn't have the words. He only hoped that Kermit knew.

"Kid?" Kermit asked tentatively. "How did they get you away from your assignment? Will you be missed?"

Jim managed a smile, remembering the fashion-plate spy in official blues. She'd even looked good in that stuff. "She...." His voice broke so he reached into his pocket and handed the papers to Kermit.

Kermit glanced at them. "Oh...the Colonel White dodge. She needs to choose a new name." Reaching into his pocket for a pen, he asked, "What's your serial number?"

That was enough to drag Jim from his fears. "Serial number? Why?"

"Just tell me."

Jim recited it and Kermit wrote it down on the papers. He then rose and approached a pay phone. Jim got up curiously and followed as Kermit took out his phone card and dialed the number on top of the sheets.

"Commander Thomason, please," Kermit said into the phone.

"What are you doing?" Jim asked only to have Kermit raise his hand for silence. "Shank's my C.O. Thomason is the commander of the base!"

"Commander Thomason," Kermit requested again, obviously talking now to a secretary. A pause. "Who am I? Hedley. C.I.A." Ignoring Jim's open-mouthed expression and a frantic, mouthed 'what are you DOING???', Kermit turned his back on his son. "Commander? Yes. Hedley, C.I.A. We have pulled one of yourofficers from active duty, a Major J. Hellstrom, serial number...."

As Kermit recited his serial number, Jim briefly paced back and forth, heart in his throat. The Commander was a know-it-all ball-buster who was famous for not giving a shit about officers' personal problems. The military was the man's life and didn't understand why the other officers didn't feel the same way. Jim knew only too well what kind of treatment he would get if the Commander knew he wanted to sit by his mommy.

A pause as Kermit listened. "That can't be helped," he said, a tone of boredom in his voice. "You'll have to get someone else." Another pause. "The Major is unavailable. His expertise is needed. One of our agents was injured while collecting valuable information and we believe the Major can help in deciphering such information. He is to remain here until our agent can recover enough to relate the information." Another pause. "That's classified, Commander." Pause. "That's classified, too. Look, Commander, this is a courtesy call. If you'll look up my authorization - JZR 9-3412 - you'll discover I have all the right I need." Another pause. "It takes as long as it takes. You will be notified upon the completion of this assignment."

Kermit hung up to look at a stunned Major Hellstrom. "What...what is JZR...whatever?"

"I have no idea," Kermit told him, handing him the papers. "Don't worry, he won't look it up."

"I'll need new orders cut for all that..."

"That's no problem. I have a friend who'll do that."

Jim looked at his father with a combination of awe and amazement. "How long can I-?"

"Until the agent can deliver her information to you, of course," Kermit grinned. "I wouldn't push it beyond a month, though. After that time, he might start calling around." Dropping his voice to speak with an official tone, he continued. "Major, in the interests of security, I'm telling the hospital staff that the agent in question is your mother, thus giving you unlimited access to the agent when she wakes up. You understand the need for such subterfuge, don't you?"

Jim smiled. *I love you,* he thought, since he could not vocalize such feelings, especially in a crowded hospital corridor.

Kermit dropped the tone and looked at his son with something akin to tenderness, but then looked away. He also could not convey complex father-son feelings in a crowded corridor. Clearing his throat, he looked around. "Where the hell is Savannah? She should have been back by now. Where'd she go for coffee, Brazil? Which way did she go?"

Jim pointed to a corridor and the two walked over, spotting the coffee machine at once. No Savannah. Kermit suppressed a wave of fear as he approached the machine. He saw the discarded and full styrofoam coffee cup in the trash and could smell Savannah's perfume, knowing that she had been here. "She's in trouble," he muttered, looking around. He saw the door with the green exit sign and began to give chase.

*****

*Stay calm. Wait for an opening.* Savannah stepped carefully down the stairs, nudged forward by the barrel of Julia's weapon. She was surely walking to her death if she didn't think clearly. Shortly, she'd be missed and Kermit would follow. All she had to do was stay alive. Forcefully ignoring the lunatic breathing down her neck, Savannah focused on her training. Kermit's warnings and lessons. The movements she'd learned in countless hours with Caine. *Do the unexpected.*

"Down there, pretty." Julia's face was aglow with the anticipation of the kill. Even after so many, this kill had a joy to it that was personal. One more out of the way. Reaching the bend of the staircase landing, she suddenly felt her prisoner double over. "Oh, Christ! Don't throw up. Go out with a touch of pride!"

As Julia leaned over to yank Savannah upright, her victim flung her body backward. The momentum carried them both down the remaining four stairs and onto the floor. Scrambling with adrenaline charged reflexes, the kidnap victim clawed out from under her tormentor and searched for the weapon that had clattered to the concrete floor.

In the dim lighting, the prize eluded her grasp. Blindly she scraped the flooring for the gun. Ignoring the stirring body draped over her legs. Suddenly, the weight was lifted. Before Savannah could find her legs, white orthopedic shoes kicked the gun just out of reach then landed in her ribs. Breath fled from her lungs as Julia pulled her to her knees.

"Just for that...I'm going to...really mess up...your face," Julia spit between panting breaths. Holding the butt of her gun safely in her palm once more, she taunted, "No open casket for you!"

The Griffin sarcasm was contagious. Clutching her side, Savannah returned, "Yeah, but at least I made it more interesting."

"Don't do me any more favors!"

Swallowing the panic, Savannah asked, "You could at least explain before you kill me. I assume you HAVE an explanation."

"It's time for him to come home."

*****

As the ex-mercenary and his son moved silently through the heating units and clutter of the basement, they could hear Julia's mad ravings. Hear Savannah buying time. Accepting the taunts and feeding Julia's revelations. She knewKermit would find her.

*That's right, baby. Stay alive,* Kermit thought as the options clicked through his mind.

"Julia, why would you want to hurt him? I don't understand." Savannah looked up from her knees before Julia.

"I WANT IT BACK!!! You don't know how that part of him feels. You're just a sick weakling who can't understand the sheer beauty of rage and pain." Julia paced back and forth before her intended victim. "I was in control of his beast, little girl. ME!"

"What...what do you mean?" The madness was lost on Savannah.

"Becaaaauuuuuse, I could summon it whenever I wanted. Especially in his sleep." Julia knelt down beside the frightened woman to revel her sickness."You see, pretty, I knew the triggers. I could get him to kill when he wanted to show mercy. Force violence when he didn't want it. And the sex....Sometimes I could just wait for the nightmares to come on their own. Sometimes I'd just hold a ticking clock up to his ear and out it would come.

"I'd give him a sharp slap and he would roar out of his sleep into me." Julia was biting her lip with lust at the memory. "Anger and pain and a touch of fear. All for me. Bet you've never had sex like that, pretty? You've turned him into some poetry spouting lover boy. He needs me!"

"But...but...you left him after one of those nights." Savannah was simultaneously trying to stall and understand the evil that had held onto her husband so tightly in the form of this woman.

Kermit had thrown Julia from their bed after she shook him from the hell of a nightmare. Slamming her into the wall and inadvertently, giving himself an escape route from her insane manipulations.

Cruelly using Savannah's blonde head as a prop to help her stand, she continued, "I made a mistake. When he broke my arm, all that apologizing and begging he did made me sick so I left for a while. It gave that bastard Blaisdell a chance to pull him away from me. Then...THEY RUINED EVERYTHING. Had me tossed out of the agency. Threw me out. I had to go freelance to survive...."

"You seemed to have managed." Kermit stepped out of the shadows.

Julia grabbed Savannah's head and plastered it to her leg. Gun held to the top of her skull. "Oh, so you've decided to join the party. Good, Griffin."

"Where have you been? I lost track of you after the divorce." Slowly, he was working his way forward as Jim tried to maneuver himself behind her.

"Well...here and there. I hooked up with a mutual friend of ours. Ericson."Julia laughed out loud when the mere mention of that name made her prisoner jump. "Oh, I forgot. Pretty here almost had a chance to be *intimate* with my old boyfriend. What a shame he was interrupted. You missed a real treat. He was nearly as good as Kermit here. But, not quite."

Jim moved silently. Never moving his eyes from the target. He didn't understand the exchange between his father and the lunatic welding a pistol at his stepmother nor could he quite believe everything he did understand. But he did understand Savannah's reaction. Sickening terror. He was determined that this insane bitch wasn't going to take his mother and his father's wife from them.

"Let her go, Julia." He took two more steps forward and halted as Julia grinningly tapped his wife's head with the gun barrel. "I'm here now. Take me and execute me if you'll let her go."

Julia and Savannah both turned to him in shock. Then Julia laughed. "You thought I was gunning for you? No, Kermit," she minced, talking as if to a child, "I was gunning for HER." She poked Savannah again with the barrel. "And Vanessa. And baby boy Jimmy."

Licking her lips in anticipation, she reveled in the gasp from her audience as she added, "Even that bright little toddler of yours. Thought about Marilyn and her litter but just ran out of time before pretty here stepped up the schedule. But never you. I want you all to myself."

Kermit couldn't suppress his surprise. "But...the emails said...."

"I said I was going to destroy what you knew as your life. All that ties you to that stupid little town in the Midwest. All the weakness in your life. You'll thank me when you come back to the life we had."

Kermit shook his head. He couldn't remember when he'd been so far off in motive. The dedication. The snake. It was for Savannah all along, not him. And Kat. His jaw hardened as he thought of his girls as a target for Julia. "What if I don't want that or you? You've wasted your efforts...especially since all I want to do is to kill you. Now. Right here," he growled in the dimly lit space.

Practically salivating with insane delight, Julia purred, "It's 'till death do us part', Kermit. Remember?!" Elevating her voice to an emphatic screech and jerking Savannah's hair once more, she yelled, "AND I'M NOT DEAD YET!!!!"

"YET, being the operative word, Julia!" Kermit flinched at the crazed obsession.

"Ooooo...that's the Kermit I miss so much. The killer." Dropping to her knees once again beside her hostage, Julia descended into a twisted memory. "That reminds me of that time in Costa Rica. Remember, Kermit? Oh, Savannah...he was breathtakingly evil. We must have killed five or six security guards before we got to the target." Julia's chest heaved in her excitement. "He would twist their necks and snap them in two and there was always my favorite...the piano wire."

Kermit wanted to vomit as Julia licked her lips in the rapture of violence. He couldn't look into his wife's eyes.

"Then," she crooned into Savannah's ear, "when we reached the target, he didn't want to kill him. He lost the blood lust. But...." the insanity gleamed from her eyes, "I simply whispered 'kill him' into his ear - just like that little inner voice he feared was telling him - and he pounded the cowering worm into the tile flooring of his own office."

Disgust rose into his throat at the memory. Just some low-level bureaucrat who knew too much. He didn't have to kill him. He'd already retrieved the information. And *she* had pushed him over the edge. The memory burned fresh in his consciousness. Shamefully so.

Julia rose in one smooth motion. Pulling her hostage with her and never moving the gun from her head. "Then, pretty, do you know what we did? Do you? I said DO YOU??!!!"

Savannah shook her head and focused on Kermit's glasses.

"We had mind-blowing sex. With that simpering coward's blood still on Kermit's hands. And I WANT THAT BACK!!!"

Kermit remembered that assignment all too well. Julia had been the only one delighted with his performance on that one....

*****

"When you are sent in, Griffin, that doesn't mean you can kill who you want at any time for any reason!!!" his superior screamed at him. "You are NOT 007 - licensed to kill any fucking time you feel like it!!!"

"Judgment call!" Kermit shot back. Hell take him if he was going to sit back and take it.

"YOU DON'T HAVE A JUDGMENT! YOU DO WHAT WE FUCKING TELL YOU!!!" Leroy yelled in his face. "You have a problem with that, you tell us and we'll send someone out to take care of YOU!!!"

Kermit's blood ran cold. He knew Leroy meant it. He knew the Agency could do it anytime they wanted. Who knows - they might have the pull to make Blaisdell do the job. Kermit inwardly winced. *What would Paul think of you now?* he thought, not really wanting to know the answer.

"Look, hotshot," Leroy continued in a more reasonable tone of voice, "you don't just go off half-cocked and do what you want. We don't tell you half the information we know. We expect you to do what you went in there to do. That lowly businessman you beat to death in two minutes eliminated about eight months of hard work. He was one we were trying to recruit as a mole but he was the skittish type. He would have cracked if we threatened or bullied him and would have ran if we confronted him. We were using the soft approach with him, lulling him into a sense of friendship to get him to trust us. Why? Glad you asked. He's the cousin of the vice-president. Didn't know that, did you, hotshot? Yet, with one lunatic tantrum, you eliminated a prime candidate for information that could have made the difference in hundreds of lives. Hope you're proud of yourself."

Kermit could only sit there, stunned at the magnitude of his error. He'd never dreamed....

"Get out," Leroy told him. "Resign yourself to shit detail for a while and I'd better not hear any complaints."

Kermit arose from his chair and left without a sound. He walked down the corridor in a daze, only to run into Julia.

"Hey, lover," she greeted, happily twisting her new wedding ring. The ceremony in Central America had been quick and the woman was filled with pride at her ability to prod her lover into a commitment.

Seeing the look on his face as he walked past, she stopped him. "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong?!" he asked her incredulously. "WHAT'S WRONG?!! That guy I killed was an informant, that's what's wrong! I fucked up-!"

"Kermit, there's lots more informants out there. Don't worry about it," she crooned, wrapping her arms around him. "Don't let them rattle you."

"But-"

"It's not important," she enunciated in his face. "Trust me."

She began to stroke his back and he felt himself melting into her embrace. It was true that she had been in the Agency longer than him. "But, Julia," he mused, "what if...what if I can't keep a lid on it...?"

"It's okay," she assured him. "*I* like it...I'll watch over you. Don't worry...."

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