Disclaimer: Please see Chapter 1 for full disclaimer, because they're still not mine.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 11

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives. William Dement

Stanley looked like crap the next morning and knew it. Sleep had been an adventure and a half, mostly a revisiting of the night before with a few trips to Alcatraz in-between. Thankfully his dreams hadn't tried to mix the two into one story, or he'd look and feel even worse.

At least no one, not even Carla had seen him this morning. She and Kelsey had headed out early to go horseback riding at a near by ranch and had said goodbye through the bathroom door while he was still getting ready. During a quick breakfast (otherwise known as a bagel and a coffee on the way out the door) he'd managed to phone into the office and had gotten permission to liaison with the Fort Worth police for the day. Thornton was more than happy to send him off someplace that he expected to be both boring and safe.

Stanley called ahead, getting a meeting with a reluctant Captain Dolan for ten o'clock. At the same time he arranged to have the case files available for him to look over while he waited.

Dolan and case files about strange deaths and supernatural bikers. He could only wish for boring and safe. Sadly with his luck, he knew he was unlikely to get it.

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Stephen Lords sipped at a glass of Champaign as he looked out the window of his private jet. Below the city of Fort Worth appeared to revolve, as if on a turntable as they circled the city yet again. Although his expression was placid as he gazed down he was actually highly annoyed. He hadn't wanted to leave New York at this time, especially when things were in such a delicate state, but he'd had little choice.

The report from the team he'd sent to investigate Johnny Blaze, a man who was suddenly looking into things that shouldn't concern him was, disheartening. It was bad enough that the two ninjas he'd sent to the lawyer's place of business in New York had barely made it out with the information he'd required, (he'd really have to consider doing something about Hell's Kitchens guardian angel, the self styled Daredevil at some point. He didn't like it when costumed heroes put their noses in his business) but now the three men he'd assigned to look into Blaze were reporting a battle with a demon, something that Lords, or rather Deathwatch knew a fair bit about, however the creature they described didn't ring any bells with him at the moment.

One of his people came to take his now empty glass and quietly informed him that they would be landing shortly. They didn't wait for their employer to acknowledge what they had said and Lords didn't bother to waste either breath or body movement to do so. He settled back in his seat as they started to descend, looking forward to an enjoyable morning of interrogating minions.

Well, enjoyable for him.

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Stanley scoured the files looking for anything that might connect to last night, but found bupkis, or near enough. A few of the files did talk about the downtown damage and some weird publicity stunt that caused even more damage after that, but there were no descriptions, no eyewitnesses, nothing.

It just wasn't possible.

Captain Dolan had better have a few good answers for that, because it really looked like the man was suppressing evidence.

And speak of the devil, there was the man himself. "Okay, lets do this fast." He didn't bother to sit down.

Stanley looked up him. "You might want to sit Captain, it won't be that fast."

"Look, Blaze..."

"Goodspeed!"

Dolan blinked, startled at the sheer weight of pissed offedness the agent conveyed in his own name.

"Sit."

He sat.

Stanley took a couple of deep breaths. "Yesterday afternoon, Johnny Blaze was mistaken for me by my wife..." Dolan started slightly, surprised that the agent had apparently brought his wife along on a case.

Goodspeed took another calming breath. "Nothing happened, but as you can imagine this made me very uncomfortable. So much so that I decided to visit Mr. Blaze, to discuss the event with him."

"Okay," Dolan said, interested enough in what might have happened at that meeting to encourage Goodspeed to continue.

"During the briefing you had photos of a building wrecked by a motorcycle stunt. However, I can find almost nothing about what happened that night. Why isn't the information available?"

Dolan blinked at the change of subject, and then looked away from him. "Because almost everyone wants to pretend it didn't happen, or at least that it didn't happen the way they saw it happen." He shook his head at the mess. "Why do you want to know about that and what does that have to do with you going to rip Blaze a new one?"

"Last night three..." Not stupid he decided to switch out ninjas for a more generic description. "Three guys jumped me, believing I was Blaze. The only reason I'm not currently a guest of some hospital, or worse is that some...thing on a flaming motorcycle calling itself Ghost Rider stopped them."

Dolan jumped to his feet, a shocked and at the same time delighted look on his face. "I knew it; I knew he wouldn't get rid of that motorcycle. Damn it, when I find that thing I'm going to nail Blaze's ass to a wall and not even his fancy lawyer will be able to pry him loose this time."

"You think it's Blaze?"

"Yeah, don't you?"

Stanley mulled the thought over for a moment. "You know, I would have, but he, it, whatever, he went and mistook me for Blaze too." He thought it over a little further. "Of course he may have just been using the situation to muddy the waters a bit and make me believe that he, I mean Blaze wasn't involved."

"But you're not sure."

Stanley shook his head and Dolan shifted his gaze up to the ceiling as he thought things through. "Come on, I'll show you what didn't make it into the official files.

--------000--------

Deathwatch pulled his fingers from the wildly keening ninja and let him fall to the floor in a quivering pile. Apparently the pain that almost everyone felt caused by his telepathic invasion was still strong enough to override what was happening in the man's mind, albeit only for a short while.

The other two ninjas in the team had gone through a similar interrogation and he had allowed them to leave after, to recuperate from the experience.

Deathwatch left this man where he lay and moved over to his desk, sitting in the plush chair behind it.

Things... were getting very interesting.

The one reason he was letting the other two members of the team live was that even he thought that being prepared to take down a demon, or whatever that thing was, when all you were doing was a bit of information retrieval and...well information silencing was asking a bit much, even for him.

The fact that they had engaged the creature and then made a successful escape when it became apparent they were not equipped to deal with it showed that their training continued in its usual excellence. It was also further proof that augmenting his troops with 'normal' humans wasn't hurting their performance.

Unfortunately the third man, who had been the group's leader and one of those humans, was a complete loss. His mind was trapped in a loop of every terrible thing he had ever done. Each death at his hands was now running over and over again in his mind, only now he was the victim, continually being hurt and killed by himself.

He should however, prove to be a delicious meal.

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Stanley watched the chase footage taken from a squad car's video camera with an analytical eye. Darn, that bike was fast and despite its hulking presence it was more manoeuvrable than it should have been, hell than any bike should have been. Still, it looked like they'd boxed the Rider into a dead end, so why hadn't they been able to take him into custody?"

Then Stanley's mouth dropped open and he forgot to breathe for a few seconds.

He looked over at Dolan, who had paused the picture while Dr. Goodspeed's mind caught up.

"That can't be possible." No bike could actually drive up a building, not without some kind of elaborate pulley system at least, and not with the ease that Ghost Rider had just pulled off.

"You haven't seen anything yet. Next up is some of the footage shot by a police helicopter."

And the action shifted to the roof of the building. Stanley gaped in further shock as Ghost Rider used that ridiculously impossible chain of his to snag a helicopter and actually pulled it in towards himself, apparently using nothing but body strength to do so.

"And this is him coming back down the building," Dolan said, rather unnecessarily.

More breaking glass and Stanley could see why so much of the concrete was broken in the picture he'd seen before as Ghost Rider landed in front of the building with the power of a small bomb. Chunks of concrete were blown through the air and the area was cloaked by a cloud of dust as some of the cement was powdered by the force of his arrival.

The dust cleared and Ghost Rider sat on his bike, both of them unscathed. Then he got off and started to walk towards something off camera. Stanley got the impression that it was an actual someone that had gotten the Rider's attention. In the background he heard an order to fire, the voice sounding like Dolan's. Another voice, higher pitched and probably female yelled no, but the assembled police officers ignored it and bullets flew.

Ghost Rider obviously took the hits, but they didn't do anything and Stanley remembered the swords that the two ninjas had stabbed him with. The things had caught fire and started to melt almost immediately. Maybe something similar happened to the bullets?

The Rider suddenly gestured and a curtain of flame sprang up between him and the police. Then he was back on his bike, through the blockade, and gone.

Dolan turned of the television and looked over at Stanley. "Well?"

"Okay, I definitely see why none of that is in the official report."

"Thought so."

Stanley opened his mouth to speak, but paused a moment to arrange his scattered thoughts. Once they had more or less fallen into place he continued. "Just after he landed and got off his bike, it looked like he was walking towards someone in particular."

Dolan nodded. "Roxanne Simpson. A reporter, a good one. A pain in the ass, but still a good one." Dolan looked him in the eye. "She's also Johnny Blaze's girlfriend."