he escape was a horrific failure. When Mac and Li Ann arrived at the safe in the flour mill, intending to steal some money and run, Michael was waiting for them with backup and guns.

They almost made it out together, but Mac got trapped on the wrong side of the laser beams in the corridor connecting the gun room to the flour mill.

"I know I made you wait too long for this," he said desperately to Li Ann, "but I love you. Go."

Li Ann disappeared from his view, and he waved his hand through the laser beam to shut the doors at either end of the corridor.

Moments later, he felt the building rock in a massive explosion. The corridor he was in was essentially a thick steel box; it saved his life.

A couple hours later he was rescued, and arrested.

Hong Kong, February 1998

After eighteen long months in jail, Mac was visited by a red-haired woman who offered to get him out of jail if he'd work for her—and threatened to let him out anyway if he wouldn't work for her, knowing that he'd be dead within a day on the streets. His will to live was relatively strong that day. He agreed to work for her.

Vancouver, Canada, February 1998

Mac had been at the Agency in Vancouver only a few minutes when he looked down a corridor and glimpsed Li Ann. She was alive! And she was in Vancouver!

He went to Li Ann's apartment to surprise her. He was surprised first, by another man. He thought that the man had been sent by the Tangs to kill him—until, in the middle of fighting him, Mac glimpsed a photo of Li Ann and that man, embracing.

Li Ann came home and interrupted the fight. "Mac, you're alive," she gasped.

"Yeah, well, for the time being," he said, on the floor with the other man and a couple of guns.

"You know this guy?" the stranger asked Li Ann.

"What are you doing to Victor?" Li Ann asked Mac.

"Victor?" Mac repeated. "Who's Victor?"

"He's my fiancé," Li Ann said.

The Tangs were trying to expand into Vancouver, and the Director pitted her new team against Michael himself. Mac broke into Michael's office and convinced him that he wanted to come back to him, back to the Family. Michael agreed to take him back—but the price was Li Ann.

In the final confrontation on a Vancouver pier, Michael drove his car off the dock rather than run into Li Ann. Mac and Li Ann grieved for him, despite and because of everything that had happened between them.

Vancouver, Canada, March 1998

The Director walked into the briefing room and clapped her hands twice. "Time to pack your bags, children," she said. "I'm taking you back to Toronto."

"About time," Vic muttered under his breath.

"Whoa, wait," Mac said. "Toronto? Ontario?"

"Good knowlege of Canadian geography," Vic noted. "I'm impressed. And shocked. Mostly shocked."

The Director arched an eyebrow in Mac's direction. "Do you have an objection to Toronto?"

"You said we'd be working on the Pacific Rim," Mac reminded her. "Last I checked, Toronto was not on the Pacific Rim."

"Oh, damn," the Director said mildly. "Did I lie to you again? I really am compulsive."

Toronto, Canada, May 1998

Li Ann and Mac had to pretend to be married, for a case. It was like a dream come true for Mac—except that it sucked. They bickered constantly.

Li Ann hated the experience so much that she decided marriage was a bad idea in general, and she broke off her engagement to Vic.

Toronto, Canada, June 1998

Mac came home one day and found William Ramsey looking through his kitchen cupboards.

Mac wasn't going to trust him, not this time. And then he did. Of course. It was like six years ago, all over again. And William lied to him again, and left again. He left Mac a good-bye video, care of the Director. Mac watched it alone. It didn't say much.

Toronto, Canada, November 1998

Mac thought he was over Li Ann. He really did. He'd even tried to marry someone else (it hadn't worked out). Then he nearly died of poisoning, and in the moments when he thought he was dead, all he could think of was Li Ann.

He still loved her. Desperately.

Toronto, Canada, December 1998

Michael was alive.

The godfather had plans to dismantle the Tang family's criminal holdings. Others in the family did not like these plans. Tang soldiers assassinated the godfather right before Mac and Li Ann's eyes. They were reunited with Michael at the side of their dying father.

Following the Director's orders, Vic, Mac and Li Ann helped Michael regain control of the Tangs. Then the Director asked Michael for help on another case, involving an assassin named Pucci.

Michael seemed to have reformed—but he had his own agenda. He needed Mac to trust him so that he could betray Mac as deeply as Mac had betrayed him. When Mac finally said that he trusted Michael, Michael sucker-punched him, shot a light fixture down on top of him, and left him to die in a warehouse that was about to explode. Then Michael tried to rewrite the past by running down Li Ann with his car. This time, she saw that he wouldn't turn away at the last minute, so she shot him. The car swerved and crashed and exploded. Michael did not survive.

Vic and Li Ann managed to pull Mac out of the warehouse, seconds before the explosion. They were singed and bruised, but otherwise unhurt. When they reached the Director, she greeted them calmly, hiding the pain she was in from her gunshot wound. She didn't let them know she'd already been grieving their deaths.

She told them that she expected them in the briefing room as usual at 9 am the next day, and she sent them home.

End Interlude

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Continued in Part III