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    Richard Ryback lifted the antique blade from its showcase and held it up as he locked eyes with his final client of the day.  The swordpoint didn't exactly threaten, but neither did it waver as Rick reached under his desk and pressed a button, locking the front door of his small antique shop and arming the security alarms.  His finger moved slightly and clicked-off the security cameras.  The two were alone, would not be interrupted, and no video record of the subsequent events would ever exist.

    The petite blonde in the rain-dappled trenchcoat didn't flinch as the sword moved downward toward her left wrist, moving aside the sleeve to reveal a blue tattoo.  Rick nodded to himself as the tattoo, a circle surrounding a stylized "W", confirmed what he had suspected.  She was a Watcher.  Not reason enough to kill her; but certainly reason enough to take precautions.

    Watchers had been known to hunt and kill his kind.

    He tried to relax.  It had been over a year-and-a-half since he had had any contact with the Watchers--and even then it had only been Joe Dawson, someone whose loyalty and friendship were beyond question.  The blonde Watcher was a stranger, and therefore a potential threat.

    Rick didn't fear dying--no immortal did.  In fact, Rick had already died several times in the past few years.  There were only two real threats that he worried about:  losing his head to another immortal, or having his head taken by a renegade Watcher.  It was one thing to lose in honorable combat to another immortal; it was quite another thing to have one's lifeforce spilled and wasted by some jealous mortals who had no chance of winning The Prize.  Dozens of immortals had lost their heads to Watchers throughout the years--and Rick had known a couple of them personally.  He vowed that it wasn't going to happen to him.

    "Okay," he said to the blonde, "you're here and we're alone.  What do you want?"

    The blonde was doing pretty well, under the circumstances.  Her big green eyes kept looking into his as she opened her purse and took out a page carefully torn from a magazine.  It showed two motorcycle racers speeding around a track.  In the inset was a close-up shot of one of the racers.  She looked at the close-up, then back at Rick.

    "This is you, right?" she said.  "Richie Ryan, rookie rider, dead at twenty-two?"

    Rick sighed.  Back into The Game, he thought.  He remembered how Duncan had disapproved of his professional racing career, and that because of the publicity surrounding his "death" he couldn't show his face in France for a generation.  It was one of the reasons he had left Paris.  One of the reasons--but not the most important one.

    Rick had relocated to Seacouver nearly two years ago.  Seacouver:  the city of his birth and the city of his first death.  The city where he had discovered his immortality and lost some of his closest friends to untimely deaths.  The city where Duncan had managed to escape The Game for nearly twelve years of relative peace and contentment, running a small antique store with his lover, Tessa Noel--and where they had taken in a teenage delinquent with one foot in the penitentiary, and helped to make him a man.  Where they had molded the young man that Duncan had sensed was an immortal-to-be.

    Rick had hoped to follow in his teacher's footsteps, purchasing the now-derelict location and opening a small shop specializing in historical weaponry, with antique toy soldiers and battle recreations as a sideline.  At first the local children had discovered the soldiers, and then their parents had discovered history's allure in the stories surrounding the weapons.  The store has prospered in the past two years, and he was starting to show a decent profit each month.

    He sighed again.  It looked like two years of quiet were all he was going to get.  Sure, his hair was colored darker now, and styled differently too.  But he couldn't deny who he was to this Watcher; it would be futile.  And Watchers were like cockroaches--where you found one there were undoubtedly dozens running around just out of sight, scurrying hither and yon, furiously recording with their cameras and tape machines, transmitting their Chronicle entries and generally trying to figure out what the immortals were up to.

    If you wanted to track down an immortal, all you had to do was find the right Watchers and follow them to their subject.  It was another reason to avoid them.  More than one immortal had lost The Game because the Watchers had given away his location.  Some  of the Watchers had even knowingly cooperated in the process, upon occasion.

    Better to draw-out the blonde Watcher before revealing anything.   "And you are?--" he asked her.  "Besides the obvious, of course."

    Rick wondered what this one's angle was.  Since Watchers didn't normally march up to their subject and announce their presence, it was clear that this lady had an agenda of her own--or was acting as the pointer for another person in the background.

    She gave a little shrug, as if she hadn't really expected Rick to answer her question.  "You're right to be suspicious, of course.  Your past dealings with the Watchers haven't exactly inspired you to trust us.  I am Michelle LeBrun.  Yes, I am French--as my accent would tell you.  Two years at the Sorbonne, two years at Yale, and two years out of Watcher Training, Class of '97."

    Rick tried to frown, but found it surprisingly difficult when he looked into Michelle's green eyes.  Still, his guard was up and his voice suspicious as he said, "Nice to meet you, Watcher Michelle from France.  A real pleasure."  Michelle's smile faded as Rick continued, "And you're here in Seacouver on vacation from the Watchers, I take it?  Lovely vacation weather we're having--nice gray skies and lots of rain.  Did you just happen to wander into my store while doing some shopping?  What an amazing coincidence!"

    Michelle's eyes flashed green fire for a moment, then she gave an exasperated sigh of her own.  "Are you always this unpleasant?" she asked, "so ... American?"

    "Only to Watchers I don't know," Rick replied, "--and only when they don't state their business." He had never been much of a verbal fencer, preferring to speak directly from his heart--but he had no problem with the kind of fencing that tended to cost one of the participants a life.  He rapped the sword on the desk to emphasize the point.

    "My business is Watcher business, and it concerns you, as well!" she said.  "That is, if you're the one in the photograph, the Richie Ryan who died on the racetrack in Paris in 1995.  The one who came back to life, only to die again at that same racetrack in 1997!  The one who supposedly had his head taken by his teacher, Duncan MacLeod!"

    With her outburst, Rick felt the sword relax in his hand. At some level he felt he could trust Michelle.  He could intellectualize it and decide that she knew too much about him--and revealed it too casually--to be a real threat.  Or maybe the combination of damp blonde hair and French accent reminded him of Tessa.  Whatever.  He told himself that she had to be one of the good guys.  Could she be a messenger from Joe?  Or better yet, maybe she had a message from former Watcher "Adam Pierson" who was known to a select few as Methos, the eldest immortal.  Rick missed them both.

    "Okay, Michelle," he said.  "Let's suppose that you've found your man.  You've found Richie Ryan; now what do you want with me?"

    "Not so fast!  I need some proof first.  Prove to me that you're an immortal."

    Rick rolled his eyes.  Did she actually expect him to stick the sword through his heart or something?  He held out his arm and drew the swordblade across it, leaving a bloody wound.  Michelle gasped, then stared as the wound quickly closed.  Within a minute Rick's arm was unmarked except for an already-fading bluish bruise and the stains of his blood.

    "Satisfied?" he asked.  Michelle shuddered and nodded, green eyes still focused on his arm.  Her former vehemence seemed to have deserted her.  Rick almost felt sorry for her, except that she wasn't acting like a Watcher--she was acting like a mortal who had just seen the impossible.  And the inconsistency rekindled some of his former suspicions.  "C'mon," he urged, "tell me what it's all about.  Why are you here?"

    "Well," she started, then hesitated.  "It is a long story.  Now that I know who you are, it makes the whole story even more difficult to explain."  She managed a faint smile and tried to toss her damp hair.  "Maybe we could discuss it over dinner?"

    "Dinner sounds good," he replied with a faint smile of his own.  He thought, public places make good meeting places.  "I know a place down by the waterfront that does Alaskan halibut with a mango salsa that's sweet and wild at the same time.  It's called SouthSeas.  You do seafood?"

    "Am I not French?" she asked.

    "So you are, Michelle LeBrun," Rick said.  "So you are indeed.  Shall we say dinner at eight?"

    "Dinner at eight it shall be.  Meet you there, Richie?"

    "Wouldn't have it any other way, Michelle."  He paused for a moment.  "But please--it's Rick now.  Richie Ryan's the kid who loved to race bikes.  Rick Ryback drives a Sport Utility Vehicle."  She nodded.

    Rick decided to press a little bit.  "Wanna give me a little hint about what brings a novice Watcher across half the globe to find a dead man?  C'mon, just a leetle hint, cherie, please?"

    Michelle hesitated, the looked up at him.  "It's about Duncan MacLeod.  He's disappeared again, and we need to find him.  He's the key."

    "We?" Rick asked.  "Who is we?"

    "We is all of us, Watchers and immortals alike.  MacLeod is the key to saving us all."

    "What are you talking about?"  Rick fired back.  "You're talking nonsense."

    She rose up and spoke into his ear.  "Tonight, Rick," she whispered.  "All shall be revealed over dinner.  I shall tell you about the situation we are in, and you shall tell me how you fooled so many people into thinking you were dead.  And together, we will find Duncan MacLeod and save the Watchers from ruin.  Be patient until tonight."

    Saying that, she reached under Rick's desk and unlocked the front door.  As the lock clicked open, she patted Rick on the cheek and walked out of the store into the Seacouver rain.

******