This was originally supposed to be part of chapter 29, but it had been getting rather long so I decided to break it up.

ALEC

He decided to start off simple, with the platitude question that each of them must have seen coming. "Alright..." he began, eyes narrowed forward with a mask of ice. This was the beginning of his interrogation. "Who are you?"

He was met with a chuckle. This coming from the man, who had an unnerving glint in his eyes.

"Now why would we answer you that?" he wondered out loud, his voice strangely casual, as if he were simply jeering with a long time friend.

Which was far from the case here.

Alec narrowed his eyes. "Because, I'm the one holding the gun," he answered with emphasis.

The man eyes the barrel of the gun trained down on him with a flash of devious humour, as if it were no more than a water gun that Alec had pointed at his chest. But he shrugged his shoulders nonetheless and replied with, "Fair enough."

"Names?" Alec said, his chilled glare not letting up in the slightest. He didn't know why, but the two before him gave him the worst kind of uneasy feeling—and it didn't settle well with him. He needed to know why.

"Since you asked so nicely..." the man chuckled again, but his eyes had lost a hint of their previous glinting. Each of the strangers seemed to be analyzing something, their eyes like unreadable panels of glass, reflecting his own expressions back at him.

"Why don't you quit stalling already?" Maize suddenly cut in, though her tone was lined with a hint of devious humour as she smirked knowingly at each of the two in turn. "That, or I'll just spit it out myself."

"You know of us?" This time it was the woman who spoke, sounding amused. There was a look in her eyes as she analyzed Maize, but the bounty Hunter either didn't mind or didn't care—either way, she remained unfazed.

Maize kept her composure cool, and the smirk hadn't left her face in the slightest. "Silan and Luke Sokolov, am I right? Or at least, those are the aliases you two go by. Originally Russian trained mercenaries now international deploy agents for hire. I hear a few things here and there in my line of work and I do my research. Word is you two are the real deal...So, by all means, what are you doing here—chasing after our lot? Surely, we're nothing like any of the high-level targets you've gone after before?" she questioned almost playfully. "This must be quite the bore."

Alec stared at her. Evidently, she was more well informed than he thought. Hell, he hadn't even known that bit of information.

"I'm impressed," the one called Silan smiled. "I didn't think a simple bounty hunter from Brooklyn would know these things..."

The look on her face was evident enough, a look that said; we do our research as well.

"I tend to be the exception when it comes to what people think," Maize responded without disconcerting. Silan smiled.

"I bet." Something about those words were off. "So, speaking as two women in such a similar line of work, I'm sure it is recognized that this is not personal," she said.

Maize stated, "If it's not so personal, care to tell me who hired you?"

"That is personal."

"To you?"

"To you."

Maize went silent before she regained herself. "Pissed someone off did we? Well, I can't say that's surprising. We have been being very evasive lately."

"You may be well informed but it also seems you've gotten the wrong impression," Luke chuckled.

"Care to enlighten us then?" Alec replied tersely. He didn't miss the tense look shot at the male from his sibling. It seemed to silence him, and she was the one who answered.

"I don't think your partner would appreciate that," came her taunting response.

Maize frowned. "Me? No, no, please, I'd like to know just as much as he does—what the hell you think you're talking about," she stated.

"Well, then I'm regretful to say that I have been ordered to keep quiet."

Maize was no longer smirking at this point. "You weren't trying to kill us." It was a statement, not a question. "I've read the files on you two. If you wanted to shoot us off the road we would be dead already. So, why aren't we?"

Silan and Luke each had the same look in their eyes, dark, cunning, and taunting—like they knew something they didn't, something they should. "We wanted to have a face-to-face talk before that happened."

"That so?" Maize retorted.

"And we got what we wanted."

"Did you?" Alec began. "Because we've just barely started."

Silan's smile returned.

"I'm afraid there won't be time for that," she said. Then Alec saw a flash of movement in her hand.

This entire time she had been using their conversation as a distraction, to hide what she had been trying to retrieve. Behind the strands of ash-blond hair, an object that had been hidden behind her head flashed under the light of the sun. Black and metallic.

He and Maize realized this too late.

"Something you should know—our employer sends his regards."

Those were the last words Alec heard, though he couldn't comprehend them. And he didn't even get the chance to try before the flash grenade was released to the ground with a bang and an explosion of blinding light consumed his vision.

He and Maize instantly fell kneeling to the ground, blind and disoriented, ears screaming from the proximity the grenade had gone off.

They couldn't see as the assassins threw themselves back into their car and began to push the engine into overdrive as they back out to free their vehicle.

A force knocked into him from the side a split second before the roar of the SUV engine filled his ears over the ringing, the black vehicle tearing past the place he had been about to get hit as he fell on his back out of the way with a weight on his chest. Within a few short moments, the sound was nothing more than a distant echo getting further down the road.

They had gotten away.

Alec's ears were still ringing and he saw white along the corners of his vision as he forced his eyes to open once again. The grit of the road jabbed into his back through the fabric of his shirt, but he didn't register the pain. He was far too distracted with the light weight that was still laying on his chest. Maize too squinted open her eyes and blinked a few times with disorientation before she pushed her upper body off of his and looked down at him, breathing like she was still trying to catch her breath, and adrenaline induced spark in her eyes.

"Saved your life," she breathed with a ghost of a smirk.

"Thanks for that," he said breathlessly.

She looked out down the road. "They got away," she said.

Alec paused, and let out a deep sigh. "Well shit."

"Agreed."

He frowned. "Why didn't they kill us?"

Maize scoffed and looked down at him with a pointed expression. "You nearly got run-over just now. I'd say that's pretty close to an attempt to kill us."

"No, that was them making an escape," he stated seriously. "I mean, why didn't they kill us just now? Not that I'm complaining or anything, it's just the fact that they had a solid opportunity after they threw that flash grenade."

"I'm not sure," Maize answered, looking out. "But I wasn't lying when I said they were both high-end. If I had to guess, the reason they didn't kill us...was because they were never really supposed to."

"I was given the impression they were only supposed to hold off killing us until after they got their talk—which makes no sense to me because I have no clue what they could have possibly gotten out of that."

"Me either. But like I said, if their true mission was to kill us, we wouldn't be talking right now."

Her statement left them in several moments of tense silence between the two, processing their facts.

"So..." Alec broke it, staring forward and giving her a pointed look to dissolve the tension. "Are you going to get off me eventually or am I stuck like this?"

Maize looked down at him, to herself still hovering over him, and then back to him. The realization of their current position seemed to only just hit her now.

Immediately, her reaction was to roll her eyes and he caught the repeated word 'idiot' being muttered under her breath as she pushed herself off his chest and got to her feet, dusting herself off.

He followed suit, trying not to laugh at her obvious attempt to hide her embarrassment at being caught in such a compromising position on top of him. But his voice was strained with the weight of their situation. "So, someone else just tried to kill us and our car's a little totalled..." he started, "but on the bright side, we're not dead yet," he said with sarcastic optimism, dragging a hand through his hair as he sighed.

Then he looked at Maize, catching the thoughtful look that crossed her face.

"What are you thinking?" he asked. He had long ago picked up on her expressions, and she was definitely debating something in her head.

She was quiet for a moment before she sighed exasperatedly, resting her hands on her hips in an opposed manner to what she was about to answer.

"I'm thinking I'll be using that last resort after all."