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Title: "Crosshairs"-Original Fiction, Part 1

Author: Waterdancer

Rating: PG for now

Pairing: Original Characters eventually

A/N: Thanks Robin for the quickie beta.  Once an OC or two pop in my head they have a tendency not to leave me alone.  With that being said, I hope you enjoy reading about how Katrina and Basil first met.  These are the two OC's from the epilogue that was never finished.

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Katrina leaned back in the rickety elevator as it made its way to the lowest floor of the old office building. As the doors slid open, nausea washed over her, causing her to grip onto the handrails inside the elevator. Somewhere on the floor, she could hear water dripping from what she assumed was a bad pipe. It smelled worse than death.

 

“And the people you work for keep human beings down here?” she asked as the man who had accompanied her flipped on the flashlight he was carrying.

 

“Until they lose their usefulness,” he muttered as he stepped into the hallway. “Come on.”

 

Katrina palmed the gun hidden beneath her jacket and followed him down the hallway. She could hear her father chastising her for getting into the current situation. “Katrina, dealing with those men is going to lead to nothing but trouble. Your mother and I worry about you alone in Malaysia.” No one knew where she was and if something were to happen to her—no, she wouldn’t think about that.

 

“Tell me more about this man that is being held.” She stepped carefully over a stagnant puddle of water.

 

“Sato did a sweep of the building and found several listening devices. It was traced to a frequency of a building that we were already watching. They found him as he was trying to leave from a second story window.”

 

“Lucas Sato? Bloody hell. Why didn’t he kill him on the spot?”  Katrina rubbed her temples as she thought of the tall Asian man whom she considered one of her biggest mistakes. Romantic entanglements were fine, in her circles they could definitely work out to be a positive with the added resources they brought, but not when the other person was an overzealous sadist. A lifestyle that was definitely not her cup of tea. She shuddered at the memory.

 

“He wanted to, but one of his men suggested that they could get some sort of ransom for him. The equipment he had on him wasn’t your run of the mill surveillance gear. We think he’s intelligence, but he’s not talking.”

 

Katrina nodded as they finally reached a rusted metal door. A low moan from further down the passageway drew her attention. There was too little light to see its origins, but the odor of sewage and mold seemed stronger in that direction. She turned back to the door and frowned. Whatever it was, it wasn’t her concern. “But why contact me? Crossing Lucas is not on my to-do list.”

 

“You pay better,” the man replied with a smirk that was missing a few teeth.

 

“Of course,” she said with a shrug. It always came down to money. “Open the door.”

 

#

 

Basil crouched in a corner of the darkened cell, careful not to make a move as he heard the metal door slide open. The light coming into the room was low, but he could make out two figures. The taller of the two turned slightly, and he could see a shoulder holster underneath the jacket the person had on.

 

“It’s now or never,” he muttered and lunged towards the taller figure. The person never had a chance as he wrapped his restraints around their neck and began to squeeze.

 

“Son of a bitch!” Basil almost stopped at the voice coming from the figure. A woman. His instincts screamed at him to stop--she was a woman after all--but making it out of that room alive overrode his old-fashioned values. “Get off!” the woman choked out as she turned in his arms and shoved a gun into his crotch. “Unless you want to be any less of a man.” 

 

“Back. Off,” the woman said evenly. Basil peered at the woman in his grasp and saw no wavering in her dark colored eyes. He looked over the woman’s shoulder at the man standing by the door and frowned at him. He lifted his arms from around her neck and stepped backwards.

 

“Thank you.”  The woman sheathed the gun and rubbed her throat. “Do you always attack before finding out who you’re dealing with?”

 

“Are you always armed?” Basil asked. He kept his eyes on the woman as she shrugged off her jacket.

 

“In this case, yes. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, mind telling me who you are?”

 

He shook his head at the normalcy in the woman’s voice. Most women would be a jumble of nerves but she was different. Calm and collected.

 

“Why should I? You’ll just report back to Sato. After all, you're an employee of his.”

 

“Me? An employee of Sato’s? Whatever gave you that idea?”  Basil frowned again as a smile spread across her face. The look of amusement almost made him relax.

 

“You’re armed,” he grunted while nodding to her shoulder holster. “And you’re with him.”  Basil pulled at his restraints as he finally recognized the man who had accompanied the woman standing in front of him. He took pleasure in the man jumping back.

 

“Would it help if I wasn’t armed?”  She unsheathed her gun and let the magazine fall to the rusted metal floor. “Ramon, give me the keys to his restraints.”

 

“You’re not afraid of me?”

 

“Why should I be? I’m not the one who put you in here,” she answered with another smile. “Ramon. The keys.”

 

“If you let him go, he could escape.”

 

Basil smirked as he noticed that the man was looking at him nervously. “What’re you afraid of? Think I might put a boot to your face?”

 

“I’ll pay you double, and besides, I don’t think it’s me he wants to kill,” she said softly while looking him in the eyes. “Is it?”

 

Basil shook his head and held his arms out. “It’s not; it’s him.”

 

“Good. The keys, Ramon, and I suggest that you don’t dawdle.”  Basil bit back a laugh as the man practically tossed the keys at the woman and darted out of the room.

 

“That was easy enough.” She fumbled with the key to his restraints. As she bent down over his hands, and he noticed that her hair was streaked with dark blue.

 

“Interesting hair,” he mumbled as his restraints were finally loosened. He could feel his circulation improving while he rubbed his bruised wrists. His eyes were now able to see in the small light shining in the room from the hallway, and he scanned the length of the woman standing in front of him. By all appearances, the cargo pants and mid-riff top, she looked like a college student, but as he thought about how quickly she'd drawn her gun—he knew that looks could be deceiving.

 

“It keeps me unique. Now, in response to your earlier comment, I do not work for Sato. I know him, but I am far from being an employee of his.”

 

“Then why were you with that man?”

 

“Ramon told me of a foreigner that was being held here. I pay him for information about any unusual circumstances, and you fit the criteria. Why were you watching Sato's complex?”

 

Basil shook his head and stepped back from the woman with blue hair. “I won’t tell you that until you at least give me your name.”

 

“Well, alright.” She wiped her hands on her black cargo pants and held out her hand. “My name is Katrina Huang, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

 

“Basil Marceau.” He jutted out his hand and shook hers slowly. She smiled at him, and Basil couldn’t help but to smile tentatively at her.

 

“Now that introductions are finished, the complex?”

 

“And what do you do? You say you don’t work for him, but you're armed.” 

 

“I was armed, remember? The magazine is over there." She pointed to the discarded item on the floor. "I deal in false papers. Identifications, passports, forgeries. If you need new papers, I'm your girl. Like I've already said, I've worked with Lucas before, but I've never been an employee of his."

 

"Lucas, is it?" he asked while rocking back on his heels. His mind, although a bit rusty, was going a mile a minute. So far, he knew that the woman standing in front of him worked with the man holding him, but she said his first name with a familiarity that made him think that there was something more there.

 

"Enough about me, Mr. Marceau. Why were you watching that complex? It's important that you are truthful."

 

"Why do you care? I was over-confident, and I was caught," he muttered as he leaned against the wall. The plan had been a wash from the very beginning, but ever the patriot, he took the mission. He was known for taking risks, but this mission had been a no-win situation.

 

"I care because if I'm going to get you out of here, I want to be assured that I'm doing this for a very good reason," she replied.

 

He looked back her and by the look of amusement on her face that he must've looked shocked. "You're going to get me out of here? How?"

 

"I have my methods. So, again, Mr. Marceau, why should I help you?"

 

Basil's mind was racing. Should he tell her the truth?  Could he trust her? Deciding against telling her the entire story, he began to tell her about his daughter and how he hadn't seen her since his wife left him.

 

"And your daughter? She thinks you're dead?" Katrina asked after he finished his story.

 

"From what I've been told, yes," Basil muttered surprised that just mentioning his daughter caused a pang in his heart that he hadn't felt in more than two years.

 

"And there's nothing else? Nothing at all? And what about the surveillance? Why?"

 

"Mrs. Huang, there are some things that I can't talk about and that is one of them. I'm sorry," he said quickly as he noticed her face fall considerably.

 

"No, it's fine. One thing you should know is that it's Ms. Huang, not Mrs. I'm single," she said as she bent down to pick up the magazine for her gun. "If you can be patient for a few more days, I'm going to try to get you out of here."

 

"Wait," Basil started while watching her sheathed her firearm. "You're not coming back? You're the first—"

 

"First what?" she asked as she shrugged on her jacket.

 

Basil inwardly cursed himself for sounding overly eager to her. "You're the first human being that I've been able to talk to since being down here."

 

"Oh."  He could swear by the low light that he caused her to blush. "Well, I'll try to come back tomorrow. Perhaps you can finally tell me what you were up to. Agreed?"

 

He nodded slowly. "Agreed."

 

"Excellent. I'll see you soon, Mr. Marceau."