Three the Hard Way
1995
Duncan MacLeod finished packing his duffel bag and looked to the other man in the room and said, sounding not quite certain himself, "This is your last chance to stay out of this. You know that, right?"
"I know," Joe Dawson nodded his head, sounding more certain about what was about to take place than the 400-year-old Immortal was, "I've known since I first decided this. We've scoured the entire Watcher chronicles, there's never been a Watcher assigned to this guy, getting the tail end of his life won't be much but it'll be better than nothing." He sighed and said, "Nobody knows how old this guy even is, he's smart."
"He's dangerous," Duncan added, "He's eluded the Watchers either as long as he's been alive or as long as they've been in business. Either way he's got to be one of the oldest Immortals alive."
"And he's been leaving one hell of a body count in his midst," Joe replied, "Sounds like this is going to be the fight of the century."
Duncan let out a half snort at the comment, "I still think it'd be a better idea if you didn't come."
"Hey, ain't anybody gonna be looking for a 50 year old man with a cane," Joe insisted, "Way I see it, I'll be as safe as they come."
"Yeah," Duncan returned cynically, "I'm sure the other people he killed said the same thing."
"Still my call to make," Joe told him, and tapped the pocket of his jacket, "Don't worry about me."
"Yeah, yeah, I know."
"I'll meet you downstairs," Joe said as he walked over towards the lift.
"Yeah, fine, I'll be down in a minute," Duncan told him.
"MacLeod," Joe called back to the Immortal, "I know you're going to get this guy, don't worry."
Duncan snorted, might as well say 'don't breathe'.
He waited until he heard the elevator running, then opened his bag and took out an old photograph of Tessa Noel, the woman he'd loved for 12 years, and buried two years ago, the victim of a random drug-related shooting. Wrong place, wrong time, that's all it was, but she was only in the wrong place at the wrong time because being involved with him made her a target to every rogue Immortal out there looking for his head as well as plenty of choice wacko mortals who had it in for him for whatever reasons. It had been a painful, and lonely, transition; Tessa had accepted long ago that children weren't a possibility due to the painful fact that Immortals couldn't have kids. Adoption hadn't really been a possibility either because all they would've been would be more targets for headhunters. As it was, he'd been alone from that time, with occasional intruders into his day-to-day life, mainly his kinsmen Connor, and Joe Dawson, his own personally assigned Watcher, who 'he wasn't supposed to know existed in the first place'. Overall though, it still made for a largely lonely existence, and not for the first time, Duncan wondered if they'd actually made the right decision in not adopting. True, losing Tessa would've been even harder on them, but if it had happened years ago, they would've been grown or largely grown by now and better able to handle it. But, he knew too well from personal experience, no sense obsessing over what was because nothing could turn the clock back to that time to change anything. All he could do now was move forward, which is exactly what he'd tried to do these last two years, that included still continuing to face challenges, and on occasion, track down Immortals who hadn't challenged him, but who were too evil in their indiscriminate slaughtering of innocent people, to be allowed to live. Hence how he came to be in this predicament today, he wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but he knew it had to be done.
Over the last few weeks, Seacouver had been the center of a massive crime wave that had left dozens of people dead, mutilated, beheaded, and it hadn't taken much to figure out it was all the work of one person. The police were searching for a psychotic serial killer, but Duncan knew better, it was an Immortal, one he hadn't crossed paths with before, but also one he'd been able to figure out an established pattern of how this mystery Immortal worked, and from there he figured out a very good educated guess of where he would strike next, so Duncan resolved he would meet the guy head on and end everything then and there, before anymore innocent people got killed. This manhunt was going to be taking him out of the city and he estimated he'd been gone at least three days, and that was just providing everything went according to plan; the irony being he didn't really have a plan, just find the man and kill him.
Joe swung the door shut on his car and waited for MacLeod to exit the dojo so they could leave. When the first murders had made the news, the Watchers went into overdrive to find out if it was one of their subjects. Somehow, everybody actively being watched in the vicinities were all accounted for at the time of the murders and with solid alibis more or less that they were too busy fighting someone else at the time. MacLeod had been hellbent on proving that it was all the work of an Immortal. The question then, how could he track down so many Immortals in this short timeline? The answer, he didn't, he was killing mortals and decapitating them. The next question, why? Nobody in the Watchers had any idea who the guy responsible even was, so they didn't know about him, but that had to suggest he knew enough about the Watchers to make sure they didn't know anything about him. Now, MacLeod finding out about the Watchers was purely bad luck, so far as the Watchers knew, no other Immortals knew about them. So the real question remained, who was this guy, and how did he know so much? Whatever the answers to those were, MacLeod seemed dead set on finding out, and Joe had decided there had to be some merit to this theorizing, and if there was, he was going to be an eyewitness to it so the Watchers could have some answers about it all. He knew very well how much they despised having any Immortal cases walking around out there they were completely in the dark about.
It was a fair weathered spring day in Seacouver, which meant the sky rotated between gray clouds and blue sky underneath, the temperature was cool but not intolerable, though the air was thick with moisture and suggested that rain might follow soon. The middle aged Watcher looked around at all the people going about their everyday life with absolutely no regard to the possibility that this killer who had been in the news for weeks could be out among them now, and that any of them might be the next victim.
One of these things is not like the other. Joe suddenly tried to remember what day it was, or rather what day of the week, it was early afternoon, and…still a weekday, meaning all the kids should be in school, and yet here was one who clearly was not. Coming his way on a pair of roller skates was a girl who looked like she might be 12 years old if she was a day, long brownish red hair pulled back into a ponytail, dirty jeans, maroon jacket, headphones over her ears connected to a Walkman on her belt, light blue backpack strapped over her shoulders, arms out at her sides like she was still learning to balance herself on the skates, though it was obvious she'd been doing it a while. He wondered…
"Whoa!"
Either the girl was oblivious with her headphones on or she was just damn careless, she about ran straight into Joe and knocked him down. When she was about six feet past him, she turned on her skates to look back at him and called a halfhearted, "Sorry," before turning front and skating to the corner and turning off behind the block.
Joe wondered, after he had a chance to recover from that near-miss, if the truant officers were still in business and there was anybody to report that kid to?
His attention was drawn to the door of the dojo as Duncan stepped out, sunglasses and overcoat on, duffel bag in hand.
"You're sure about this, Joe?"
"Like I said," the Watcher replied, "Fight of the century, only an idiot would pass it up."
Duncan was seeing he wouldn't be able to talk any sense into the younger man, so he let it go at that and put his bag in the T-bird.
From around the corner, Amanda watched as the two men got in their cars and left. And after they were gone, so was she, she turned on her skates and headed down the back street to find the others. Now she zipped straight by on her skates like a bat out of hell, along the way she nearly collided with several passersby on the street and in the confusion, relieved them of their wallets and any loose money they were carrying, without their knowing. Turning another corner two blocks down, she saw her two friends coming up the street. The oldest of them, a tall, thin boy who looked 13, with short dark hair, pale skin, and a considerably large nose for his age, dressed in a dark gray T-shirt, blue jeans, and black boots. And at his side was the youngest of them all, a short, pudgy faced little boy with red curly hair, dressed in a T-shirt a size too big, a dirty pair of blue jeans, and green sneakers.
"Methos!" Amanda skidded to a stop on her skates just short of knocking both boys down, on her skates she was slightly taller than he was, so she relished wearing them whenever possible because though younger, she liked lording over him, "Methos, come on, they're gone!"
"It's about time," the teen boy replied as he grabbed the younger boy's hand, knelt down and got the kid on his back, and they started for the dojo.
"How long do you think they'll be gone?" Amanda asked.
"Not long enough I'll bet," Methos replied, "But that's irrelevant."
"An elephant?" the red haired boy asked, and looked around, "Where?"
"Not elephant, Richie, irrelevant," Amanda told the boy on Methos' back, "I'll explain it later."
"Oh."
They came to a stop at the front doors and saw a sign stuck to one that said, 'Closed Temporarily Due to Family Emergency'.
"Family emergency my eye," Amanda said as she tried the doors.
Locked. Amanda reached into her jeans pocket and took out a set of lock picks and tried her luck.
Click.
"Open sesame," she smirked as she opened the doors.
"Great, let's get in before someone sees us," Methos said as he put Richie down and the three of them walked in, or rather the boys did, Amanda skated in behind them, and relocked the doors behind her.
"What a place," Richie said as he looked around at the massive interior of the building.
"Come on, over there," Methos pointed to the lift.
"Wait a minute, Methos," Amanda complained, "I need to get my skates off."
Methos pushed the door to the lift up and they got in and he pulled the door down and started the elevator for the top floor. Amanda sat down on the floor and untied her skates. She also yanked the headphones off from around her neck and unclipped her Walkman and stuffed it, and the skates, into her backpack, and took out a beat up pair of sneakers and put them on instead. She also had time enough to take out her earnings for the day and count them.
"$86.75, not bad for a day's work," she boasted.
"Then we can eat?" Richie asked eagerly.
Amanda waved the bills like a fan and said, "We can eat pizza for a week with this."
"Hurray!"
Amanda got to her feet and braced herself against the boys for the sudden stop of the elevator, then helped Methos get the door up so they could enter the loft.
"Man!" she said as they stepped off the elevator, "This place just goes on and on! I think we could get used to this."
"Yeah, that's the problem," Methos reminded her.
Amanda looked around the room and saw a large bed at the far end of it, a living space with a couch in between, and turning around, saw the kitchen right next to the lift, and her eyes lit up like a sign in Las Vegas, and she made a beeline for it and stopped short of colliding with the refrigerator door. She grabbed the handle, threw it open, and her jaw dropped in awe and let out a whoop similar to a war cry, "Oh boy, FOOD!" and proceeded to grab as much of it up in her arms as she could carry in one haul over to the table. The first thing she picked up was a gallon of milk and started drinking it straight from the jug, gulping it down as fast as she could.
"Hey!" Methos said as he and Richie entered the kitchen.
Amanda lowered the lip of the jug from her mouth and said, "Oh, sorry," and held it out to him.
"Never mind, fruitcake," Methos replied snappily as he smacked the jug out of her hand and it fell on the floor and spilled everywhere.
"Way to go, Methos," Amanda said as she knelt down to pick the jug up.
Methos picked up a bag of oranges from the table, cut it open with a knife he was carrying, picked the largest orange he could find, and bit right into it, rind and all. Richie picked up a jar of pickles, worked the lid open, dug out a whole one, bit it in half and about choked on it.
Over the next ten minutes, the three kids ate as much of the food on the table as they were able to swallow and keep down; half the bag of oranges, a small bag of apples, a block of cheese, half the jar of pickles, a jar of green olives, a stick of butter, and the quarter gallon left of the milk.
"Oh-h-h-h," Richie groaned as he sat down, "I ate too much."
"But it sure was good," Amanda said as she looked through the refrigerator, "And there'll be plenty of food for dinner."
"What's in there?" Methos asked.
She eyed the contents on the shelves, "A huge steak, a roast, a pound of bacon, two dozen eggs…" she dug through the crisper, "A bag of carrots…"
"We'll take those and throw them out," Methos said, "What else?"
"Hmmm," Amanda knelt down for a better look at the bottom shelf, "Aha, there's some beer in here."
"Now you're talking my language," Methos said with a smirk on his face and a gleam in his eyes.
"Oh look," Amanda picked up a large plastic container, "A whole tub of radishes." She peeled the lid off and scowled, "These don't look like radishes, they look like fat worms." She set the container on the floor and skidded it over to the red-haired boy, "Knock yourself out, Richie."
"I'm not burping him when he eats all of those," Methos told her as he went over to the fridge, "Give me a beer."
Amanda took one bottle out and gave it to Methos, then took one out for herself. Then, bottle in hand, she explored the rest of the kitchen to see what else there was to eat. On the floor was a 10-pound bag of potatoes, she methodically went from cupboard to cupboard, opening them up and peering inside, "Pepper…cloves…Tabasco sauce…garlic…crackers…cocktail onions…" she trailed off as Methos swiped those out of her hand.
"Must be gin around here somewhere then," he said.
"A bag of rice," Amanda picked up the small bag, felt its weight, then flopped it on the cupboard shelf and picked up another container, "Oatmeal."
"Take that and throw it out too," Methos told her.
"Canned vegetables…canned spinach, canned lima beans, canned peas, canned beets."
"Beets," Methos repeated as if the word was a vulgarity, "Whoever invented them should be drug out into the street and shot."
"How about just beet up?" Amanda quipped.
"Ha-ha," Methos dryly remarked, "A Power Rangers joke, very droll, Amanda, very droll."
"Overall," Amanda told him as she closed the cupboard door, "Should be enough food here to last us well for a couple days." They'd been on such a frantic move that they'd gone without food for the last couple of days, so this was a very good find for them.
"So," she turned to Methos and asked him, "Now what do we do?"