Sean was on his way to drop Tori off at the Hotel where her family was staying in. Lucas called him during the trip over. Sean had pulled over to the side of the road to listen. Tori could hear Lucas squawking on the other end of the line, telling Sean about a confrontation with someone named Mia, and the visit with Dole. She remembered hearing somewhere that Mia was Lucas’s sister, and that made her feel a little better.Tori stared out idly, leaning against the passenger window. phoenix sat tall in the back seat and observed his humans.“Honestly, Sean, don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Tori could hear Lucas say on the other end of the phone. “But wanted you to know he’d be talking to Monique. The tat was definitely hers. But here’s the thing. The guy had scars on him, like he was a nut job.”Tori froze in place. Nut job? Who was Monique?“Scars?”“Southern Cross.”Tori saw S

Dr. Hoades clicked the TV on to see if there was any breaking news about the arrest of Dr. Vlad. He was disappointed to find nothing. Then he decided to check for a news update on his computer.Scanning through local live feeds, he still came up short.“Let it ride till morning, Aaron,” his lovely wife said as she walked into the room and stood behind him.“Well, I guess it takes a few hours. I just expected it to be here, since Dole told me Duke had been arrested this afternoon.”“It’ll be there tomorrow,” Rachel said. “Come on, Aaron. Let’s go to bed.”He wiggled his eyebrows at his wife, who had walked backward into the master bedroom and waved to him from the doorway. He was about to close his laptop when he noticed a new email.Something compelled him to take a look at what the email contained. The subject line of the email said, “Thought you might like this.” The sender had some kind

Tori was being hauled from a truck that smelled of gasoline into a chilly, dark covered space, perhaps a garage. As her feet dragged along the floorboards, they snagged a gasoline can and tipped it, sending it crashing to the concrete below. She heard a man’s voice swear. The gasoline smell was almost overpowering.With his arms under her chest, her kidnapper dragged her through a doorway and into a carpeted small space. The room was done up in pink, complete with a set of Barbie Dolls on a French Provincial sideboard that looked like it came out of a little girl’s room.And then it hit her. It did look just like a little girl’s room. A single bed with a hot-pink, fuzzy bedspread, dotted with stuffed animal pillows was in the corner. An overhead chandelier in pink had lit up automatically as they entered the room. The massive arms hoisted her up and onto the bed. She was left in sitting position. She couldn’t feel much of her body below the neck

Sean wouldn’t leave Tori’s side. Paramedics came and tried to push him away, but he almost got heavy with the larger one and barked a “no” they would not soon forget. As usual, Alex was making nice with the local authorities, including Dole, who looked rather pissed.“We caught the guy, Karl. I’d have thought you’d be a little more grateful,” Alex said. The two of them walked off into the night to have a private conversation.Sean helped the paramedics remove Tori to the gurney for transport to the hospital.“I’m fine,” she kept on saying. “Really, I’m fine. You guys don’t have to fuss over me.”“Baby, that was so close. I’m never going to leave you alone again.”Tori giggled.God, how I love that sound!“Sean, come here.” She raised her head up and Sean kissed her. He would have climbed on top of the gurney if the paramedics hadn’t objected. They started pulling him away care

The last ride.*One year later.Duke was on a military aircraft to Antarctica, Marshall had chosen him specially for this mission.He was the only available member of the L.j corp team.Sean and Tori had just gotten married and were on honeymoon, Marshall and Claire were expecting another child and Alex and Joanne were busy running L.j corporation.Earlier that week, they had gotten Intel that Vladimir Jores, the ex-military assassin that the Connery family had used for their dirty deeds, had been spotted in a small rural village there.Vladimir Jores was one of the most wanted criminals on Earth, he had worked for the Connery family for a long time.Doing their dirty jobs and testing their nuclear weapons in poor villages and testing it on children.Ever since L.j corp exposed the Connery family, the police had immediately