Chapter Five


Dad said the Waning Moon would be in this vault. It was not.

Dad said the diamonds would be in the other vault. They were in her hand, winking pale pink and yellow and blue in the safety lighting.

Sydney couldn't call anyone, because she'd had to go into the vault without any electronics. So the rest of the scenario - the fundamentally screwed-up scenario - was going to keep unfolding, and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it until after the alarms started going off and she could make her escape from the vault.

Dad, Sydney thought, you are in big, big trouble -

**

"What if I leave you two alone for a while?" Andrew Coleridge slumped in his chair, wine glass emptied one time too many, glancing from Jack to Irina with hangdog eyes. So much, Jack thought, for disguising our connection. Irina always did that - destroyed his capability for artifice, dragged out the secret side of himself for anyone to see. "Business to attend to -"

"Andy, don't be silly," Irina murmured. A few wisps of her dark hair brushed against the skin of her throat as she looked up at Coleridge. "You promised me some attention tonight."

Irina's sexual behavior wasn't his concern, Jack reminded himself. It hadn't been for a long time. Not even during their marriage, apparently.

"Just figured you two might want to talk." Coleridge clearly wanted to be happy that Irina's hand was resting on his arm. But Irina's eyes were on Jack's face - and even now, while he knew he should be doing anything else, Jack was meeting her gaze. She wore an expression he knew well - when she was willing him to know something, to understand a truth unspoken - but damned if he knew what.

"I wouldn't want to interfere with the lady's plans," Jack said. "Wouldn't want to stand in the way of - romance."

"You say that like a dirty word." Irina raised one eyebrow, put a little too much emphasis on the word dirty. "I'm sure you have a special someone you're spending time with these days."

Yes, he realized, she knew about Katya. Yes, she was mad as hell. But - if Jack read her right, and it was just possible that he did - she didn't yet realize that Katya was here in the hotel. Jack weighed the pros and cons, then decided to lay another card on the table. "As a matter of fact, she's waiting right now."

Irina's lips tightened into a line, but she said nothing.

Coleridge stood up, holding his hand out for Jack to shake, preferably on his way out the door. "Listen, you'll e-mail me that information we discussed, right?"

Jack would be e-mailing Andrew Coleridge about the time hell froze over. "Absolutely. Miss Lacroix, it was a pleasure."

"The pleasure was all mine." Irina held out her hand to him. Jack brought it to his mouth and kissed her fingers. Her skin was warm against his lips, and he felt that old, familiar thrill - the same kick to his system he'd known the first night they met, and every night they'd spent together thereafter.

He held her hand one moment too long. Coleridge's eyes narrowed. Jack let go an instant after Irina began pulling away.

"Great meeting you," Coleridge said flatly. "Have fun with that lucky lady of yours, huh?"

"Lucky," Irina repeated. It didn't sound as though she meant it.

**

"Just lucky, I guess!"

Dixon stared at the speaker - Marshall, whom he was not supposed to know and of whom he was now supposed to be very, very suspicious.

In the past twenty minutes, Marshall had accumulated approximately $75,000 worth of chips, not to mention a crowd of admirers and a frowzy, cheap-looking brunette who had draped herself across Marshall's shoulders like a fur stole that had seen better days.

"An extraordinary run of luck, sir," Dixon said.

"About time, huh? After all those bucks I lost earlier tonight?" Marshall was no actor, but his natural personality worked well for this, Dixon thought; both his energy and his nervousness were right for the moment. He looked like a man trying to get away with something - because he couldn't look like anything else.

"Another hand?" Dixon tapped the deck experimentally.

"What do y'all think?" Marshall called out to the group of gamblers huddled around him. They all clapped and cheered, pumping their fists in the air. The tacky brunette hugged him from the back, which made Marshall look panicked for a second or two. "You heard the folks. Shuffle that there deck!"

"Very well." Dixon began looking around for Margo, the pit boss. Should be easy to spot that red hair -

**

"I don't want to listen to the radio any longer." Lauren's temples were throbbing with an incipient headache. This had less to do with the music than with tension, but the music was the part she could do something about.

Eric Weiss rolled his eyes. "Good thing you're completely in charge here. Oh, hey, wait. You're not. Deal with it."

"It's loud. It could attract attention." She turned to glare at him, her frizzy brown wig obscuring her vision until she brushed it out of the way. This job made up for its many downsides with excitement, generally, but if there was anything less exciting than spending hour upon hour listening to mediocre music with Eric Weiss, Lauren didn't know what it was. "You're only using this as some sort of petty revenge, and for something I didn't even do to you. Pathetic, really."

"Shut up." Weiss apparently had no intention of taking the bait; even the pleasure of a good argument would be denied her.

Lauren sighed and leaned back in her seat. Her hand closed around the green sleeve hanging around her neck, and she felt the key's weight in her hand. One finger dipped inside to brush against cold metal.

"Hey," Weiss said. He was staring at her now, his mood having shifted in an instant. Men. "For the record? If you betray my friends, you betray me."

"How very loyal you are. To take it so personally." Her eyes narrowed. When she'd begun her masquerade in Michael's life, she'd studied Weiss carefully; the best friend was a powerful force to contend with. But she'd never gotten the impression that he fully supported their marriage until rather late in the game.

In fact, not until after Sydney Bristow's return from the "dead," which was just when you might have expected a mutual friend of theirs to withdraw that support. Weiss cared about Michael's well-being, but he cared about Sydney's, too.

Quite a lot, actually.

Lauren's smile couldn't be entirely contained as she said, "You really wanted things to work out for me and Michael, didn't you?"

"Back before I knew you were a lying hosebag, sure." Weiss wanted her to get mad - maybe he, too, just needed an argument to kill the time. He'd get the distraction he wanted. Lauren sized him up: twenty-five pounds heavier than he ought to be, more likely to joke than to be serious, a beer drinker at a loss with a wine list.

"I just wanted to say that I appreciated that, more than you knew." Lauren fixed him in her stare. "Your support for my marriage after Sydney returned - given how much you liked her - it was unexpected."

"Yeah. Well. We all bet on the wrong horse sometimes."

"Interesting that you put it that way - placing a bet. After all, if I were wagering on someone else engaging Sydney's affections - and there were several months when I was - I would have wagered on you."

Weiss opened his mouth as if to speak, then shut it again. His hands tightened around the steering wheel. Bulls-eye.

"Of course, it's not as if she'd ever have considered you while Michael was available." Lauren twirled a few strands of the curly brown wig between her fingers. "Michael's rather more her type. Girls like her don't usually go for guys like you, do they?"

"Hey. Syd's my friend. End of story."

"That is the end of the story, I agree. But that's not the way you wanted it to end, is it? And if I'd only been the person you all thought I was - if my marriage to Michael had worked and survived - why, you might have ended up with Sydney after all. No wonder you're angry at me. I was your only chance, and I ruined it for you."

"Shut. The fuck. Up."

Lauren laughed out loud. "Too bad we didn't figure this out earlier. We might have worked together, you and I. Common goals and all that."

"You listen to me." Weiss leaned into her face, his face a mask of anger she'd never imagined on his round, friendly face. "What I wanted or what I didn't want doesn't matter, and it never did. Syd and Vaughn are my friends, and I want them to be happy, okay? That means playing it straight and staying the hell out of the way."

What a bore, after all. Lauren slumped against the far window and began studying her nails, green sleeve around her neck forgotten. "Someday you'll learn, Mr. Weiss - the only things you get in this life are the things you're willing to steal."

**

"Yeah, yeah, yeah!" Marshall held up his fists as the crowd screamed their approval. "Like stealing candy from a baby! Yessir!"

Dixon frowned forbiddingly as he pushed forward yet another stack of chips. A quick calculation suggested - huh, $100 per red chip, $500 per white, $1000 per blue - whoa, nelly, that was a lot of money, a whole lot, and was this maybe a federal offense? Then again, Marshall thought, they committed a lot of federal offenses in the name of the federal government, and they all seemed to cancel each other out in the end.

"What is THIS?" Will Tippin pushed through the crowd to Marshall's side. "Looks like YOU have had a change of LUCK, my friend!"

"Thanks to you, good buddy!" Marshall pretended to wipe his hands on his jeans, palming the key from his back pocket fairly smoothly, if he did say so himself. He grabbed Will's hand for a shake and pumped it, handing the key off again. "You sure did turn this whole trip around for me, and that's the truth."

"HAPPY to do it, my friend." Will's grin was genuine. "Now, I have a LOVELY lady waiting for me, so you wish ME luck, too, okay?"

"Good luck to you, sir!" Marshall mock-saluted as Will withdrew back into the noise and the crowd. Then he turned back to Dixon - who was now standing next to a red-haired woman who didn't look happy. Dixon didn't either.

Dixon said, "Sir, we're going to have to ask you to step into the back with us."

"What? Did I do something wrong?" Marshall felt butterflies in his stomach, just like he was really breaking the law. Which, in a sense, he was, just not the laws the pit boss thought he was breaking. Or the ones he was going to start breaking with a minute. Man, this field agent stuff got confusing sometimes.

"I'm sure we can clear this up," Dixon said. "If you'll come with us."

"Okey dokey," Marshall said, scooping up his chips.

**

Katya was well into her second glass of champagne when someone knocked on the door. Will, of course, would have a key, which meant that her guest was -

"Jack," she said with a smile, as she opened the door. He was leaning against the doorjamb, wearing a tuxedo - really, Katya thought, men shouldn't be allowed to wear anything else - and glasses that she instantly decided could stay. "Champagne?"

"Thanks, but no." His eyes traveled down her body, taking in her own disguise, and Katya was glad she'd worn the glamorous one first. "I've already had one drink tonight, and that's enough."

She shut the door behind them. "Funny. You look as though you could use another."

"I'd like one. But what I want and what I need are two different things." Jack was still studying her, his appreciation clear. But the low, smoky heat in the room was paired with another kind of energy - something harder and more volatile. Dangerous, perhaps. She found it extremely attractive. "Did we get the key card to the Pleasure Dome?"

"Will has managed his role quite nicely so far." Katya held up the key card, then tucked it into the chest pocket of Jack's tux. "He's lovely, if a little wet behind the ears. Wherever did you find him?"

"He's a friend of Sydney's who got pulled into all of this." Jack stared out the window, down at the Tsunami Casino's Pagoda of Light, still in existence for approximately the next four minutes. "Irina pulled him into this, years ago."

"Irina? Will? Why?"

"I still don't know." When Jack turned back to her, she couldn't see his eyes for the reflection of the Vegas lights in his glasses. "Irina's here."

"Tonight?" Well, that was unexpected.

"She isn't working with Sloane. I'm certain of that."

"Of course she isn't." He might as well have informed her that her sister had not sprouted wings and become an angel. "But what is she doing? Making her own attempt on the Waning Moon?"

"That seems the most likely hypothesis." Jack clasped his hands behind his back. He was quiet for a long time before he said, "You told her about -- us."

"Naturally. We are sisters, after all." Katya didn't get the impression Jack was angry about the revelation; that night, when he'd come to her, she'd thought that Irina eventually being informed was an outcome he not only accepted but desired. "What did she have to say about the subject?"

"Nothing directly. We were never alone.  But she's angry."

Interesting. Katya brushed her hand along Jack's shoulder. "Her response to my last communication was primarily about Nadia, of course, so I'll take your word for it. But you needn't caution me, you know."

"You aren't afraid of Irina, then."

"Are you mad? Of course I'm afraid of Irina, under certain circumstances. But I understand her well enough to know that if she actually tells you she's angry, you're in for an argument, not a fight. If she's planning a more lasting vengeance - she'd never begin by warning you. You'd never see it coming. Honestly, Jack, you were married to her for a decade; I should have thought you'd know this."

"We didn't fight much," Jack said simply.

How easily he sums it all up, Katya thought. Jack Bristow was not an eloquent man, but she understood more, in that moment, than she ever had before. Her contentious little sister - it was almost unbelievable that anybody could be with her for ten years and not fight with her much, not unless -

This situation needed careful consideration; it was possible her calculations were ill-founded.

But it was easier to think when she hadn't had two glasses of champagne, and Jack wasn't wearing a tuxedo and those glasses, and when he wasn't leaning down to her, bringing his face to hers. The energy in the room, the dark volatility Katya still couldn't evaluate or control, had changed direction. It was wrapped around her now, binding her closer to Jack.

"Will's coming back soon," Katya said, when his mouth was only a few inches from her own.

Jack only moved nearer, so that his breath was warm against her lips. "But not yet."

**

"Counting cards is a serious violation of casino policy." Dixon was surprised Margo was letting him handle this so far, but so much the better. It allowed him to set the pace. They were all seated in a control room, surrounded by surveillance screens and blinking sensor lights -- just him, Marshall, the pit boss and one security guard who was about ten years too old and 30 pounds too fat to put up much of a fight.

"What do you mean, countin' cards?" Marshall shrugged. "There's always 52 of them, ain't there?"

Dixon glanced at Margo, who rolled her eyes. Such nice eyes she had. He said, "Counting cards refers to using the ability to keep track of cards within a deck and accurately predict which ones have been dealt and will be dealt."

"Oh, heck. I couldn't do that. Keep track of all them numbers and spades and clubs and such-like?" Marshall's face was so open, so utterly innocent, that even Dixon might have believed him, if he'd never seen Marshall decrypt a 10-variable security code within 15 seconds. "Just got on a hot streak, that's all. It was that rich guy's chips. I think they brought the rich with 'em."

"What you describe isn't impossible," Dixon replied. "But it's statistically very improbable."

Marshall folded his hands across his chest. "Well, answer me this. If I knew every hand before it was played, then how come I lost all that money at the beginning of the night?"

Margo leaned forward then, red hair swinging down from her shoulders. "To throw us off your tracks, maybe?"

She was taking charge. That meant they didn't have a very big window of opportunity left. Dixon's eyes darted over to a clock in the corner of a nearby computer screen, and he breathed out in relief. They only had to last another minute or so.

"Off my tracks?" Marshall grimaced.

"It's an obvious move," Margo said. "An amateur's move. Just like winning that much at one table in one sitting." She shook her head and began walking toward the phone, the one she would use to call the police. Dixon looked at the clock again. Come on, he thought. Come on -

"Ma'am, I swear to God, I didn't mean no trouble," Marshall pleaded.

"I'm sure trouble isn't what you wanted," Margo replied. "But it's what you've got."

The door slammed open, and Julian Sark walked in. "Did I hear something about trouble?"

Before the security guard could begin to react, Sark pulled a tranq gun from his jacket and fired. The darts hit the guard in the neck, and Dixon caught the man's arm before he collapsed to the ground.

Sark said, "Step away from the phone, miss. Don't be afraid. This should ultimately prove no more than a minor inconvenience."

Margo's eyes traveled from Sark, to Dixon, to Marshall; the realization that the others in the room were unsurprised was immediate. Dixon sighed. "Sorry about this." The first woman I've been attracted to in years, he thought, and I'm robbing her.

"No offense, but you're a little late," Marshall said, moving to the computer keyboard to start hacking through the security systems. "Maybe in the underworld or whatever you would call it, punctuality doesn't matter, but here in the - well, you know, where I work -"

"Talk less," Dixon said. "Work more."

She backed away from the phone, but her face was hard. "Within five minutes, security will have detected a break in our routines, and they'll take action."

Sark smiled. "Not if we give them something far more dramatic to take action about." He held up his cell phone, then put his thumb on the blinking red panel and pressed down hard.

**

The Pagoda of Light exploded in a blaze of golden fire. Jack broke the kiss with Katya as the windows shuddered in their panes and flame licked up several stories above their heads. How much C4 had Sark used? Perhaps the man's reputation for subtlety was overstated.

"My God," Katya breathed; he still held her in his arms. "That's going to bring out every police officer for a hundred kilometers."

"That's the idea." As the initial burst of the explosion diminished, Jack could see that auxiliary damage appeared minor - so far.

"Won't they suspect terrorism?" Her hand was warm against the back of his neck. "That will bring down security levels we don't want to deal with."

"They'll suspect it for about 10 minutes," Jack replied. "Then someone from CIA headquarters is going to call LVPD and explain that they're certain, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that it's domestic vandalism, no more. They're already phoning the national networks, to ensure there's no major coverage or widespread panic."

"So you create chaos that will take them hours to undo, while dismissing any sense of panic that would give urgency to their actions. Clever."

"I have some good ideas," Jack said, leaning down to kiss her again.

"That's not one of them." Katya pushed him back, her hands firm against his chest. "I let you use me once, Jack. That doesn't mean I've given you license to do so anytime your masculinity feels bruised."

Her words stung, mostly because Jack felt the truth of them. "Katya - I didn't intend to -"

"To use me, that night? Of course you did, and I encouraged you." Against all expectation, her expression was playful instead of pained. "I wanted it; you needed it. I haven't any regrets - and I mean to keep it that way. Whatever happens between us from now on will be about you and me. Not about you and Irina."

Jack had tried to tell himself that he didn't give a damn about watching Irina walk away, her arm in Coleridge's. He had been trying hard not to think about the chance that she was taking Coleridge to bed later tonight, or even right now -

Well. Maybe not now that there had been an explosion across the street. Seemed like just the sort of thing security would contact the Xanadu's owner about.

Grimly satisfied, Jack allowed himself a smile - then realized Katya was rolling her eyes at him. Could all the Derevko women read his mind? Thank God he'd never met Elena.

"I'm sorry," he said. "This situation is - confusing."

"To say the least." Katya glanced down at the still-blazing remains of the Pagoda of Light. "I don't mind it, though." When he raised one eyebrow, she laughed. "All the plotting and planning and scheming we have to do to stay alive? I rather like introducing an element of pure chaos."

Jack felt relatively certain nobody had ever thought of him that way before. "We shouldn't talk about chaos until this robbery is over."

"Don't worry," she said, patting his arm. The touch, simple and nonsexual, was more comforting than their kisses had been. "To judge from the timing of the explosion, everything's going according to plan."

**

Marshall frowned as he ran the calculations again, then again. Was it possible he was off his game? Mr. Sark standing there with two guns - it didn't exactly help his concentration, even if they were only tranq guns, because even tranqs hurt, as he remembered very well from his first mission -

"Is there a problem?" Dixon was still wearing his satiny red dealer's vest; he'd just finished tying the very angry pit boss into her chair. Too bad, Marshall thought. She seemed like a nice lady.

"I just can't confirm the contents of the vault," Marshall admitted. "We cracked the code before, but they have a secondary layer of on-site scrambling - which, by the way, ma'am, is really smart, so tell your IT guys, big ol' thumbs-up from me." The pit boss just scowled.

Sark sighed and tapped his watch. "Did I spend the day setting explosives so we could sit here and bicker? Security are as distracted right now as they will ever be. If we're to begin setting off alarms, we should begin now."

"You got it," Marshall said, ignoring the various firewalls and typing in the command OVERRIDE.

**

Red lights began to flash inside the vault. A siren began to wail. Sydney, already wild with impatience, leaped into action.

Literally: She jumped from the top of the chip barrels to grab one of the lower beams in her hands, then swung her feet up, hard, into the grate for the air vent. This would normally have set off every alarm in the place - but they were already going off.

Bare feet stinging, Sydney managed to wriggle her way into the air vent. The diamonds, in their heavy-clasped pouch, were slung around one wrist; she'd taken them anyway, to create the illusion of two robberies instead of one.  Her instinct to preserve the original plan lived on, even though it might be in even more wreckage than she knew --

Stop worrying, she told herself. Just get to Dixon and Marshall. That's your only job. Because they're about to hand the Waning Moon to Sark, and they don't even know it.

**

"Goddamn!" The head of security stared at the various blinking red lights on the panel before him. "Something's going on inside the building."

"Something besides the explosion?" Vaughn tried to look skeptical.

"The south vault - somebody's trying an override."

Vaughn was relieved; Sydney was in the north vault, and that meant she was taking care of everything, just the way she needed to. Just the way she always did. Why had she ever called him her guardian angel? She didn't need one, and he ought to be glad about that. "Could just be somebody panicking."

"Maybe. Maybe not. The camera feeds are still haywire." The head of security frowned, then said, "I can't spare more than a few guys with all that hell across the street, but I'm taking a few guys down there."

"Do it. I've got it here." As soon as the man had left, Vaughn went to the storage locker and jimmied it open; a few security badges were stored within, as well as the odd wristwatch or class ring - lost at poker, Vaughn suspected. Following Jack's instructions, he removed the black-and-gray box that would contain the VIP passes for their escape and clipped it to his belt. His entire mission had taken less than ninety seconds to complete.

Good work, Vaughn thought. With effort and a whole lot of therapy, someday you might be able to handle undercover ops that last a whole hour.

That was it. He had nothing else to contribute, no more to offer. From this point on, Vaughn's only duty was to be sure Marshall and Dixon got out of their vault on time, in order to help them get away after doing the hard stuff.

Nobody else needed him. Sydney didn't need him.

But then again - Vaughn thought about Sydney as she had been when he and Will had helped her into the chip barrel. She had no weapons, no means of radio communication, not even a pair of shoes.

If it really didn't matter what he did, then why not back her up? Even if she didn't need it, just to show her that - whatever else was going on his brain, no matter how little help he could be to her - he still wanted to keep her safe.

I'll just go to the vault, he decided. After I'm done with everything else. Couldn't hurt.

**

Weiss had thought that his crush on Sydney couldn't hurt more than it did back in the beginning - back when she had just returned, and her feelings were so raw, and he spent night after night helping her drink herself into a comfortable oblivion and no further. He'd bandaged his wounds, even halfway convinced himself they weren't real. It had been easy, telling himself that his confusion was just a slightly stronger version of her own, just two lonely people spending too much time together.

And then Lauren fucking Reed came along and ripped the gauze away.

He watched the Pagoda of Light burning across the street; it was already surrounded by half a dozen fire trucks and at least as many police cars. The clouds of smoke billowing out pulsed with red and blue light.

"Julian does good work," Lauren said, smiling at the destruction. "In every way."

Thanks for that mental picture, Weiss thought. "Never guessed you guys would keep up your end of the bargain." Which they had, so far - no sign of any Ace of Diamonds anywhere.

Lauren laughed. "I'm glad we could surprise you."

**

Sloane imagined that the shuddering of the windowpanes behind the glass a few minutes ago had been the explosion of the Pagoda of Light; he hadn't bothered drawing back the curtains to see.

Despite his plans, he had half-hoped that Jack Bristow would return, that they would have an opportunity to talk without others in the room. Jack was not a man without regrets. Surely, given time to reflect and recover, he would come to understand how alike they were - more alike than Jack could ever have known before.

They had been seduced and captivated by the same woman. They had each been betrayed on the most primal level. They each had daughters who were their only true reasons for going on - and those daughters were still far too distant from them. Sloane knew better than to believe that the closeness between Sydney and her father was anything other than temporary; after seeing the depthless anger and hurt in Nadia's eyes, he understood just how deep the rifts between father and child could be.

Only Jack could ever understand. Someday, Sloane hoped, after the Rambaldi revelations were seen in full, Jack would understand. And then they could talk as they had in the old days.

But that time was far in the future, and until then, Sloane had certain necessary tasks to perform.

A rapping at the door made Sloane smile; he opened it and smiled at his guest. "So pleased you could make it."

Olivia Reed wore white and a shark's smile. "I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Tell me before we go any further - do you need them all alive?"

"Sydney and Jack Bristow are not to be harmed," Sloane replied. "The rest is up to you."

"Good." She set her case on Sloane's bed and flipped it open to reveal an array of weapons. "I like to improvise."

**

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