Admission would only earn her a one-way ticket to prison—and leave the man she'd come here to stop with a free and easy road to success. A very powerful intuition was screaming at Brenna that her enemy—all humanity's enemy—would waste no time, now that the SAS was on the job. It wasn't logical, not even remotely. Logic said he'd simply sit back on his own forged and impeccable credentials and smile while the SAS locked her up. But intuition said otherwise. Intuition whispered, He'll move now and throw blame on you, Brenna, so what are you going to do to stop it, eh?

She turned the key in the ignition and put the car into a smooth reverse in the crowded carpark, then set out for the lab. Whatever he planned, he would do it tonight. Sitting at the pub all evening with a crowd of eyewitnesses would get her an alibi, but what good was that if he blew the entire future to hell while she earned it? She thought of Terrance Beckett, alone in a silent lab office, working like a fiend to prepare them all for the next trip into time, and shivered.

There was a gun in her cottage, the most illegal thing she owned, urged on her by her own grandmother, for safety's sake on a mission like this. Not for assassination, no. Her job was to identify the Orange mole, so that others could take him out—under circumstances that would not throw suspicion on the IRA. This was a covert ops job of the most delicate kind ever undertaken by the Irish Republican Army Provisionals and one of the very few where publicity was the very last thing they wanted. Enough to get the job done.

But the bloody SAS had thrown everyone's timetables into disarray.

Brenna was torn between the desire to drive back to the cottage to slip the gun into her pocket and the equally powerful desire to drive to the Firth of Forth and throw it into the bay. An impossible situation. It had been from the outset. And dithering about it would do no one any good. Get on with it, she told herself fiercely, hating the tremors in her hands.

She drove carefully, swinging off the main highway onto the access road, windscreen wipers slapping with futile energy at the downpour hammering the glass, and finally pulled to a halt beside her temporary home, the drab and repulsively ugly cottage assigned to her by Terrance Beckett. None of the others had returned from the pub, yet. Only Beckett's car was visible, in front of his own cottage, the one closest to the main lab building. No way to tell if he were in bed or still working, since the lights in his cottage were off and there were no windows in the lab to reveal a telltale glow.

She shut off her car and dashed across to unlock the cottage door, wiping water from her face despite the overhang protecting the door from the elements. She switched on a single light and stood irresolute for a moment, gazing bleakly at her belongings scattered through the room. There was less of her personality in this cottage than there had been in her dorm room at University. Old habits, consciously set aside for the move to Dublin and the declaration of independence from the organization she'd finally found the courage to repudiate, had returned to haunt her, as familiar as her own skin and far more disturbing. Brenna's face twisted, half bitter recrimination, half grief. Once Cumann Na Mbann... They had you for life, whether you willed it or no. Insanity, to stand here wishing like hell she'd walked a different road as a girl.

Pride and hatred. They solved nothing. Unfortunately, neither did walking away from the trouble. God knew exactly how hard she'd tried that. What, then, was the answer, when the other side refused to put down its weapons and be reasonable? When, backed into a political corner and snarling like a wounded dog, the other side viewed your very existence as a threat to their survival? Who could win a war like that? She'd told that SAS captain no more than God's honest truth. Nobody won in Northern Ireland. Brenna slid open the drawer, hands trembling as she gazed down at the gun hidden there.

A Russian-made 9mm Makarov, sleek and semiautomatic, sixteen centimeters long. Small enough to conceal in a sturdy coat pocket, large enough to pack a lethal punch. Smuggled in from God alone knew where and brought south across the border into Dublin by her own grandmother. And carried in her luggage from Dublin to Scotland, reminder of why she was here and of the ugliness that had erupted once again, threatening her life and her world. 'Tis no answer! Brenna's very soul screamed the protest. Yet what choice did she have? He must be stopped.

Headlamps flashed past outside the window, sending her eight centimeters off the floor. Her heart thundered into the hollow of her throat. The SAS captain, come to search her rooms? Brenna caught her breath on a ragged gasp and switched off the lamp before slipping over to her window to peer out through the murk and the rain. She knew the car which rolled to a stop at the cottage next to hers, knew the man who climbed out into the raw night, who glanced toward her abruptly darkened window before turning and heading toward the lab, crossing the road at an easy jog. Damn, damn, damn! He was making his move and she was out of position, wasn't ready... And there was no time to call in the Provos team that was supposed to make this hit...

She stuck the gun into her coat pocket, hands shaking, made sure of her own ID card to get through the security door, headed into the wind and the downpour at a run, slithering through puddles and mud and filth. She had a longer way to run than he'd had, her cottage being farther than his. She fumbled the card at the reader, had to grope through muck to find it, wiped it against her skirt and got it, shaking, through the reader. The door clicked and released and she yanked it open, jerking the gun from her pocket and slipping inside. She slid the Makarov's safety downward with her thumb, ready to fire with a simple double-action, first pull of the trigger. He had a good five-minute lead on her...

She caught the sharp, coppery smell of death instants before his fist caught the side of her head. Brenna crumpled into blackness, knowing only the terror of defeat.

The telephone shrilled somewhere close to Stirling's ear, shattering sleep and jangling his nerves. He groped in the unfamiliar darkness, fumbling the receiver onto the floor with his wrist cast. He tried to read the time on the bedside clock as he searched along the cord to find the handset again. Bloody murder! Two-thirty a.m.?

"H'lo?"

"Captain Stirling!" He didn't recognize the voice.

"Who is this?" he demanded, coming slightly more awake as the panic in that voice hit home.

"It's Marc Blundell. Dear God, you have to come at once! We're sending a car for you, there's been a disaster at the lab."

That woke him up. "What kind of disaster?"

Blundell gulped, voice shaking. "It's... it's Dr. Beckett. Someone's killed him."

Oh, sweet Jesus... "Get that bloody car here yesterday!" Stirling was already out of bed and moving. "And for God's sake, no one leaves the building! No one in or out, except me."

"But—"

"But what?" He already had his uniform buttoned and was slinging on his gunbelt with the ease of long familiarity.

"The constables..." Blundell quavered. "We'll have to contact the police—"

"Like bloody hell you will! Nobody! Got that? Not even the local bobby, not until I've seen everything firsthand!"

The project liaison gulped audibly over the line. "Yes, sir. Oh, God, please get here quickly! There's more—I daren't say what over an unsecured phone line."

Stirling snarled under his breath. Worse he did not need. "The car's just pulled up," he muttered as headlamps stabbed past the curtains in his cottage window, sending shadows swinging wildly. "I'll be there in five minutes."