Damon awoke to the feel of his shoulders being wrenched clear out of their sockets and excruciating pain in his toes as he was dragged over what felt like cut glass. He groaned.
"You awake, buddy?" Ric said. "Can you walk?"
Damon tried to speak as Ric let him go. He gripped Ric's arm, swaying. They were in the alley behind the Grill Hotel's pool, heading for the street.
"Elena," Damon grated.
Ric looped his arm around his shoulders. "Come on."
"I have to get back there."
"You can't," Ric said. "Place is full of muscle. Mikaelson's and Jazzman's both. How do you feel? Anything broken?"
"Nah." Damon's thoughts raced back to the scene on the porch. He would let go of the rail just as soon as he saw the tendons in the back of the guard's hand activate, escaping the bullet by milliseconds. He hadn't counted on blacking out. He had meant to slip back in.
"How long was I out?"
"Minute or two," Ric said. "Good job, by the way. You did it—you identified Jazzman. John Lee Gilbert. We have got Associates assembling. Don't worry about Elena, we are taking him down."
They came to the corner of the alley.
"Hold up," Ric muttered. He moved to the end of the alley, checking the street.
Damon tried to focus through the pain. Keep it together, he told himself. "I have to get back in there."
"I can't let you do that. We will draw him out and take him the right way," Ric said. "Look at me."
Damon looked at him.
Ric pulled up his eyelids, one after another. "You have a concussion. You will feel more stable in a bit. But your feet—bare feet—"
"Give me your piece. I have to get her out of there," Damon said.
"Don't be an idiot." Ric grabbed his shirt. "Jazzman isn't going to kill your girl. Look what he went through to keep her on ice. We need her right where she is, occupying his attention."
"I have to—"
"No!" Ric shook him, face close enough to kiss him. "You busted open his identity, Damon. You did it—you just saved a shitload of lives. Do you want to jeopardize that? This situation couldn't be more perfect—John will be focused on her."
"No—"
"Yes," Ric barked. "We are almost there. You remember what you always say? Anybody can carry out a plan when things go right. We Associates have the balls to stay the course when things go to hell."
Things were definitely going to hell.
"We almost have it," Ric said. "We will win."
Maybe. But Damon felt like he was still back in that dark jungle, unable to get to the people he loved. All he could see was the fear in Elena's eyes when she talked about John. And now John had her. He tried to shake out of Ric's grip.
"Don't make me fight you," Ric growled. "This is my mission and I won't let you mess it up, got it?"
"Stop!" Guards were pouring down the alley from the other direction.
"Damn it," Ric said. "Let's go." Damon and Ric slipped out onto the street, practically running, a pack of guards hot on their ass.
The two of them were across the street like a shot. They hit the ground and rolled behind a car. Pain speared through Damon's entire body. Still woozy.
Damon pulled out Shane's Sig. He peeked over the car trunk and took some shots at shadows. His aim was all off. Still dizzy. Ric shot from the other side.
"Do we have backup?" Damon asked.
"On their way," Ric said. "Everyone else is ten minutes away. We can take them. Jazzman doesn't need to know we have a small army in town."
"I have to go back there."
"Not possible," Ric said.
"I will grab Elena and bring down Jazzman myself," Damon said. "The TZ's biometric security is all voice. Voice. I can crack into that, but I have to get her out of there first. I have to go back for her."
"How about you break the security after we have Jazzman?"
"I have to go back!"
Ric holstered up. "Let's scatter."
Damon took a shot at a darkened doorway as Ric ran to a nearby car and he followed Ric closely.
Somebody shot from a fire escape above and they rolled under a truck. A nearby pop and a hiss. Another pop and a hiss. Shooting out the tires. The truck body lowered.
"Dammit," Ric said.
"Now or never," Damon rolled out and started shooting. They ran, covering themselves with wild shots. Amazing how a fire-fight cut your wooziness and pain. They slipped around a corner.
Ric slid to the ground. "I'm hit."
"Where?"
"My left leg."
"Keep up pressure. I have got you."
A guard came around the corner, clearly not expecting them to be waiting there. Damon grabbed him and head-butted him. The man crumpled in his arms. He kept him upright, using his body as a shield, shooting at the rest of the oncoming guards. The guard he held jerked in his arms.
Shot.
Damon felt the man's blood warm on his own face. He shot again and again. Their attackers dropped and scattered.
He had to get to Elena. Damon pulled the dead man back around the corner, lowered him to the ground, and knelt by Ric. "Where is the truck?"
"Too far."
"Like hell. Are you putting pressure on it? Are you able to do that?"
"Of course."
Damon ripped off part of the guard's jacket and folded it into a pad for Ric to hold. He pocketed the guard's gun and crouched. "Grab around my neck."
Ric looped an arm around Damon's neck as Damon grabbed his legs and shoulders. He stood with Ric in his arms, fighting to keep his balance. "The truck. Where?"
"Three blocks north."
Damon took off, arms straining, head pounding, toes screaming. He saw sparkles on the dark pavement ahead and knew he would be going through glass, but he couldn't stop. He rounded a corner and a truck roared up.
The Association.
Damon ran around to the passenger side, opened the door, and heaved Ric in.
"Come on," A black man urged. "Get in."
"I can't do that," Damon said.
"Are you crazy?" Ric barked.
No. He was sane for maybe the first time in years. People he loved had been on that train, and he couldn't save them. He could save Elena.
He would save her.
"This is you messing up the mission. This is you declaring war on Wes," Ric bit out. "This is you ending things with the Association, Damon."
He shut the door with a glance at the black man. The dark watchmaker wouldn't oppose him. Damon slapped the top of the truck and the truck squealed out.
Damon melted into the shadows. Seconds later, a pair of cars sped up the dark street after them. Damon levelled Shane's piece and shot out the tires.
One. Two.
Convenient to have that silencer on there. They might not guess he was still out there. He wiped his face and squinted down at his bloody, torn-up feet.
The pain he could bear, it was the footprints that would sink him.
He ran back to where the dead guard lay. Nobody had found him yet. In another hour the city would wake up, and the cops would be all over this.
He pulled off the man's boots, conscious that he had taken this man's life. That this man had people who loved him waiting at home. It was Damon former self's thought.
Bad time to have his former self's thoughts.
Damon shoved on the socks and then the boots. The pain was fire and ice.
He grabbed the guard's gun and checked the magazine. Mostly full. He stowed it and slipped through the dark sidewalks until he reached the neon-lit strip across from the hotel. Alarms had been raised. He recognized two of the Mikaelson brothers flanked by guards. He could get by the clerks, but not the Mikaelson. He reversed course, considering the liquor hatch. Finally he decided to scale the back porches again. A stupid move.
Which is why they might not be expecting it.
He slipped into the pool area and hid behind a fat palm. A lone guard was out there smoking. Damon threw a rock into a dark corner and waited for the man to pass by. As soon as he was near, Damon jumped on him, covering his mouth and cracking his gun out of his hand with a neat arm destruction, then he smashed the man's head into a post, and locked him to the fence with his own cuffs. The man was out, but he gagged him all the same and rushed off.
He headed to the side and began to scale the drainage pipe. When he got to the fourth floor, he stole into a room and out into the hall, taking the stairwell all the way to the roof.
Damon pushed open the door; nobody up top, as he had expected. The night was curiously still so high above the din of dogs and traffic, and the sky was growing pale in the east. Flocks of carrion-eating birds flapped energetically around, as if they knew about the killing that had happened, the killing that would come.
Ric had a point; he was throwing everything over with this move. Damon told himself that he could save Elena and stop the TZ. It didn't have to be an either/or.
He looked around for something to use as a rope. Bar towels. He ripped a few of them in half and knotted them together. He tied an end to a post and lowered himself to the honeymoon suite balcony two floors down.
The curtains were drawn, but they were filmy. He could just make out a figure sitting on the edge of the bed, bathed in the blue glow of a TV. Too large for Elena. John? One of John's men?
Damon pulled Elena's gun from his pocket and took Shane's piece from his waistband; his next moves were critical; he had to be perfectly quiet so as not to alert the man—or the guards who were no doubt roaming the hall. He slid the balcony door open just enough to get a view in—along with the barrel of his gun.
It wasn't Elena or John sitting there; it was a blonde man. And there, curled up in the far corner, knees hugged to her chest, was Elena, wearing some sort of white negligee. Her eyes widened as she spotted him.
"Hey, Trevor." She stood up. "I'm hungry."
"Wait until John gets back," the man grumbled, eyes glued to the tube. A .22 lay next to his thigh. He could snap it up in an instant.
Elena moved toward the man, stopping at the dresser. Her cheekbone and throat were bright pink. Rage surged through Damon.
The man turned his attention to her. "You are not to leave that corner." He moved his hand to his gun. "Get back."
She flicked her eyes to Damon.
Damn.
The man—Trevor—jumped up from the bed, grabbing his gun. At that very instant, Elena flew at him with something silver in her hand; she was a blur in a white negligee—with a hammer. She brought it down onto the man's head with such crushing force, such a loud thwock, even Damon winced.
Trevor staggered into a lamp. Damon rushed in and caught the man and the lamp. He righted the lamp and eased the man down quietly. Blood poured from the back of his crushed skull.
"Elena! Are you okay?" He went to her, wrapped her in his arms.
Elena gaped at the man on the floor. "Is he dead?" She was fraying—he could tell by her voice.
"He is out of commission, that is the important thing," Damon whispered into her hair. "Where is John?"
"I don't know. He got some calls a while back and left. Thank heavens."
Calls. Probably about what happened out on the street.
Elena looked nervously out at the porch. "We have to get out."
"Don't worry, you are not going out that way again. Who is this guy?" he asked.
"John's right hand man. Is he dead?"
"Yes, but we will pretend he is not." Damon pulled Trevor's body into the chair and sat him there, upright as possible. He had her put on her shoes and socks, and then stood behind Trevor in his chair, holding her gun to his head. "Hit the ground when they enter."
Elena slung on her backpack and waited, gun to the man's head. He didn't like that she had to stand there staring at the crushed back of Trevor's skull, but there was nothing to be done about it.
Damon slipped to the side of the door. "A little help," he grated out.
The door opened and three guards came in, all focused on her with her gun. They called for her to drop it. She ducked.
Damon picked them off with Shane's Sig. One, two, three. "Come on!" He and Elena ran out into the hall. More men were coming. "The elevators! Go for the elevators!"
Elena ran for the west elevator bank with Damon right behind her.
She hit the button and turned to see Finn and three of John's guys barrelling toward them.
A ding behind her. The elevator doors squeaked open.
Damon pushed her inside. "Hit the button for the 15th floor, and keep it there, got it? If I'm not down there in five minutes, you get out whatever way you can."
"What about you?"
Damon punched the first of John's guys, knocking him out cold, then swung an elbow into the jaw of another, sending him backward with a sickening crack. "Do it, Elena!"
Elena backed into the elevator as another guy flew at Damon. Damon fought with small, fierce movements that ended with the guys on the floor. She couldn't believe what she was seeing; he was like a force of nature.
She stabbed the button.
A gunshot sounded as the doors slid shut.
She didn't dare to breathe as the elevator lights flashed to the 16th floor, then the 15th. It was all she could do not to make it head back up, to help him. But what could she do? Her help would probably only hurt him.
The 15th floor hall was empty, thank goodness. Elena held the door open to keep the elevator there, blood racing, ears ringing. She couldn't get the image of Trevor's bloody head out of her mind, the wound had been dark with globs of blood and she didn't want to think of what else; it made her want to throw up, standing there behind him in that chair. She couldn't forget the way his skull gave in under the hammer—it was like a physical memory, living in her hand, her arm. Yes, he would have killed Damon. It didn't make it any less horrible.
She strained to hear sounds, anything that would tell her what was going on. Damon had broken her out and fought so gallantly, but even a machine like Damon couldn't survive a full onslaught of John's men. He wasn't a machine. He wasn't a monster.
She had the urge to cry for him.
A grey-haired man with a suitcase approached. She felt naked in her lingerie. "Down?" he asked.
"No," she said. "You can't come in."
He looked at her accusingly. "I need to go to the lobby."
"Take the other elevator."
He pushed the down button, and then frowned at her. "You wait out here for the next one."
Elena showed him her gun. She didn't point it at him or anything. You didn't need to do that with regular people. The man backed away. She could hear him calling somebody on his cell phone as he left her line of sight. Heading down the stairwell, probably. Alerting the desk. Crazed woman with a gun.
Her blood raced when she realized that the sounds above had ceased.
Damn it. Where was Damon? He had asked her to wait five minutes. She would wait a hell of a lot longer than that.
Muffled thumps from high above.
What did it mean? She ran her forefinger over the dots on her gun grip.
A bang on the elevator ceiling. The panel opened. Feet in boots appeared. Damon! He lowered himself in.
"Oh, thank goodness," Elena said.
His hair was half in his eyes, and a sheen of sweat and grime covered his face.
"Thank you," she said.
"End of a small hall. Highly defensible. It forces them to attack one at a time." He stripped off his guard's jacket. "It is dirty, I'm afraid but you are so obvious in that."
"Thanks." Elena pulled it on over the white negligee she had been made to change into, trying not to think too hard about what the stains were. His brown shirt was ragged and bloody, and he sounded slightly out of breath as he ripped wires from the elevator panel. But the bleakness in his eyes was what scared her.
Because Damon had killed more people. Elena thought about his confession. I have killed fourteen people. It was probably more like twenty now.
She put her hand on his arm. "Thank you." There was nothing to say but that.
The elevator started going down, all the way down past the lobby level, past LL1 and all the way to LL2. You needed a key for LL2. Unless you were Damon, apparently.
The car stopped with a jolt in the pit of the hotel.
"Come on, then," Damon said. They raced through the basement corridors. "They won't expect us to be down here."
"The night guards!" Elena whispered.
"They will be drowsy," he said.
They ran through the lower level maze.
You could hear a mobile phone ringtone as they neared the room. One of the guards was stirring, the other fast asleep. A man lay on the floor, cuffed to a pipe. They hurried on.
Minutes later, they were emerging out the liquor hatch into the balmy haze of early morning. Shouts echoed around the neighbourhood.
"This way." He pointed. They set off running.
"No Mystic Palace?"
"Too much heat," he said.
They headed up the back streets toward the canopied entrance of a market, closed for the night.
"Through here," Damon said, pulling her around the sawhorse barrier over the protests of a vegetable seller setting up shop. They raced through the narrow lane between tents. "Out here," Damon whispered. They snuck behind a generator and slipped out the side, onto a small, dark street.
"Walk normally, but keep to the shadows," he said.
It was hard to walk normally when all Elena wanted to do was run, but she trusted Damon. His shirt hung open, and his chest glistened with sweat, rising and falling as he breathed.
"You used to have a white T-shirt," she said.
"You know how white shows stains."
Damon wouldn't have made the joke if he could see the blood on him. But he had a point—thank goodness the material was dark.
On they went. One block, then another. Damon seemed to be limping. Elena eyed his boots. "Are you sure you are okay?"
"I'm fine," he whispered. "Smile."
Elena smiled at a man pulling aside the gates of a café.
They turned onto another street. Two motorbikes buzzed by. A few cars zoomed up and down. People on the early shifts, she thought. The entryway lights of a massive apartment complex flickered off as the rosy sky brightened.
"That blue Mercedes heading this way," Damon muttered. "It keeps showing up. Probably John's guys."
Pulse racing, Elena bowed her head and turned her eyes discreetly to a car with smoked-glass windows.
"Don't look! Good God, stop looking so alert."
"Stop looking alert?" Elena felt madly, painfully alert. How could she not be? John'd had her. She had killed Trevor with a hammer. And her brother…
"Think of something else." Damon said. "I can believe they have found us."
"John always has good help," she said.
"They will be waiting for backup," he said casually, as if to model the mood he wanted out of her. "Stay cool."
Damon didn't understand: she couldn't just disconnect like that.
"If they think we see them, they will come out after us," he added.
The car slowed, blocking the vehicles behind it. Honks filled the muggy morning.
"Not good," Damon muttered. "See that alley? Get ready to dart in." Then, "Now!" They darted into the alley and ran. They turned onto another street, then another, heading into smaller, more out-of-the-way lanes with uneven sidewalks and shabbier storefronts, all still gated against the night.
Damon stopped in front of a rusty gate and guided Elena into the shadowy corner. "Be small." He crouched and started fussing with the lock. Elena peered inside at what appeared to be an abandoned shop, nothing more than a gaping garage-like stall, empty except for tables and crates stacked in the back. Damon swore, and then he smashed the rusted old lock with the butt of his gun and lifted the gate a couple of feet. They scooted under. Once they were inside he pulled it back down.
"Back here." He led her to the back of the space, where he arranged the crates into a small wall. They hunkered down behind them in the dark.
Elena leaned up against the concrete block wall. "I will never be able to repay you for this. For everything. Two times now—"
"Don't," Damon said softly. "You don't have to."
"No, I was going to die back there. A death worse than…"
"Than death?"
"Yeah," she whispered.
"A death worse than death. You have been spending too much time with that John."
"That is not funny."
"I know."
Elena checked in her backpack and almost wanted to cry when she saw Amy in there, coffee mug, dirt, and fragile stalk still intact. Amy the fighter. Amy had survived the trip.
"Got a phone in there?"
Elena handed over her phone. Damon set to taking the back off and pulling out the battery, then he put it back together and made a call. There he sat, wounded and fierce and magnificent beside her, conversing in half sentences and grunts the way you do with somebody you know very well.
She peered out at the street through a gap in the small wall of crates. No doubt Damon had intended for there to be a gap. He thought five moves ahead on everything.
Traffic had picked up now that the sun was up, and people walked by now and then.
Her mind felt electric with crisscrossing threads of thought: her brother in trouble or worse. John was out of jail and after her. The Mikaelson. And had Caroline been in on it?
"Caroline saved me," Elena said when Damon was off. "We were friends in Richmond and she helped me when I needed it most. Why would she save me just to betray me?"
"How long were you friends?"
"Just a few weeks, but…" Shivers crept over her. "No way was it all arranged, if that is what you are getting at. No way was she playing me from the start."
He looked down and started texting. "Maybe she was, Elena. The Mikaelson brothers work with your step uncle. Think about it."
Thinking about it made Elena feel sick. She had poured her heart out to Caroline—she had confided in her.
Damon shifted his feet as he typed, moving them carefully one way, then another, brow furrowed. At one point he winced.
"Your feet—"
"I'm fine." He shut off the phone.
Elena didn't know what to do with this man who seemed to think words could cover everything, this man who lay injured on cell floors making jokes about how many stars the hotel should get instead of saying, Help me. Hold my hand. It hurts.
"All that jerky attitude in the basement. You could have told me what you were doing. You could have let me in."
Damon gave her a look.
"And I know he is not dead," Elena said. "My brother is not dead."
Damon said nothing.
"I bet you anything John did some computer shenanigans where he took over the account from Jeremy and locked him out. Maybe he has been fake emailing to Jeremy just like he has been fake emailing with me. Maybe Jeremy is out there thinking, this doesn't sound like Elena."
"That is one scenario."
"One scenario," she repeated. "Thanks a lot, Professor Devil. I wasn't sure if that was one scenario, so that is real helpful."
"I won't insult you by telling you that is what I think. If you want a companion who will say everything just the way you want, I would suggest a ventriloquist's dummy." Damon pulled the back off again. "Though I can't recommend them in fire-fights."
"He is alive, dammit."
"Elena…"
"Don't bother," Elena snapped. "You like a precise word. Like dead. Can't get more precise than dead."
"No, you can't." He whispered this like it stung. It surprised her; he seemed so impenetrable to her with his hard fortress and his cool humour. Elena had the urge to tear his walls down, to get inside. That man she had connected with that night hadn't been fake. Had he?
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"You could be tracked. I don't see anything obvious, but…" Damon replaced the back. "Stay there." He crept away from their post behind the crates and slid through the shadows along the wall to the gate. When a truck passed, he hurled the phone onto its bed.
Her phone. Gone. Just like that. Elena hugged her knees to her chest, trying to blot out the sound of the hammer connecting with Trevor's head, the way the vibrations had travelled up her arm as his skull gave way with a crunch. She had taken a life. And her brother might be dead, her home was gone, her best friend had been her enemy all along. All exploded in a flash of violence.
"I hated that phone anyways," she said when Damon came back. "I didn't need that phone." And then she began to laugh. It wasn't even funny, and here she was laughing like a lunatic.
The next thing she knew, she was sobbing—great, heaving, all-consuming sobs.
She felt strong arms wrap around her. "Elena."
Elena pushed her face into his neck as Damon pulled her in tight. "I'm sorry," She sobbed into his solid frame.
"No, it is okay. It is okay." He held her tightly, rubbing circles on her back. It felt comforting to be held by him, to have him rub her back. Just a stupid thing like that. "Shhh," he said.
"It is more than one scenario," Elena blurted out. "It is my brother."
"I know," Damon whispered into her hair, tightening his hold, rocking her slightly. "You are right."
"He could be alive."
"Yes."
"Why can't you say so?"
Such a long silence passed, she wasn't sure he heard. Then, "I don't want to give you false hope."
"He might be alive. How is that false hope if we don't know?"
"You are right, that is just me," Damon whispered. "Just me. Bottom line is we don't know."
Just me. Elena tried to imagine Damon full of hope for something; she found she couldn't. "Sounds like you had some experience with false hope."
Damon said nothing.
"Tell me," she said. "Let me in."
"Don't," he said simply.
"You have to let me in."
"No, you have to trust me," he said.
"How can I trust you if you won't let me in?"
"This is not the time," he said.
"This is exactly the time—"
Damon pulled away, finger at his lips. Had somebody found them? He put his attention back to the front.
A ratcheting sound. The gate. Somebody out there.
Her blood raced.
He put his lips to her hair. "Breathe."
The sound stopped. There was shouting. Then nothing. So they had only pulled it up a little bit and then left.
Elena squeezed her eyes shut as the moments ticked on.
"It is okay," he whispered after a bit. "Somebody is out searching the neighbourhood."
"What are we going to do?"
"My people are coming. That's who I called." Damon pulled the magazines out of the guns—hers, the one with a silencer, and the one he had taken from Trevor. Just one bullet between all three.
"Crap," she whispered.
"You can get a good deal of mileage from an empty gun." Damon was animated, alert. "Tell me more about John. He is military?"
"Army Major. Then he went into military contracting. Moving parts and solvents. What is going on? What did he do?"
"Let's just say, he is moving some very dangerous parts and solvents." Damon kept an eye out front, quizzing her about John, his guys, and his travel habits. He drew a picture in the dirty floor with a nail and asked if she had ever seen any such tattoos on John's guys. Elena had seen one of them, a clawed snake.
She knew what he was doing: he was keeping her out with all these questions. Staying on the surface, but she wouldn't believe that man from the first night was an act. She wanted that man back. She meant to get him back.
A dog barked outside the gate and Elena stiffened. Soon there were two dogs, maybe three dogs.
"Strays," Damon whispered.
"Strays telling everybody in the neighbourhood we are in here," Elena whispered back.
"Dogs bark," he squeezed her hand. "At cats, at rats."
"And people." The barking grew louder.
"Don't let them smell your fear," he whispered.
"How am I supposed to do that when they won't shut up? They are causing my fear."
"Take control of your thoughts—take it back from those dogs."
"Right."
The barking kept on, biting into her nerves, growing more and more frenzied, telling the world they were there.
Elena shut her eyes. "I can't."
Footsteps. A sudden car honk made her nearly jump clear out of her skin.
"All just sounds," Damon whispered. More footsteps. The barking calmed then started back up. Damon tipped the gun up. "All just sounds."
"We have to drive them off."
"That will make it worse."
"We can't just sit here."
"We can and we will." He rested a heavy hand on her arm and fixed on her eyes. "The dogs' vocal cords vibrate, sending pressure waves through the air," he said coolly. "Nothing more. You understand?"
Elena nodded. Waves.
"If you make it into parts, it is easier to deal with. Sound alone can't hurt you."
Something clicked into place, then. "That is what you do," she said.
"What?"
"You rob the meaning out of things by cracking them into pieces."
Damon twisted up his lips, as if amused, an expression that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Cracking things into pieces lets you understand more."
"Maybe so, but that is not what you are up to. I think you chop things up to control them. And with these dogs. Nothing but waves, my ass."
A glint appeared in Damon's eye. "So I chop them into bunk designed to hornswoggle folks, you mean?"
"Your jokes. All your words and your jokes, they keep you on the surface. You pretend like there is nothing underneath, but guess what?" Elena jabbed his chest with her finger. "Guess what?"
He wrapped his fingers around hers, eyes dangerous. "What?"
"There is something underneath."
Damon drew her close and whispered into her ear, "Are you putting that in your one-star review?" His lips caressed the shell of her ear as he spoke, sending sparks all through her. "You can't know how I'm looking forward to reading it."
"I will write it," Elena said, her breath was going shallow. "Because it is not enough for me. I'm not a satisfied customer, Professor Devil."
"Dissatisfied?" Damon tightened his hand on her finger and pulled her closer. "In every way?"
"Yes," she said, face heating.
Damon pulled away and gazed into her eyes. Elena knew what he was thinking—the night of the dragon.
His gaze intensified, like he might kiss her.
Her eyes dropped to his lips. "I want what is underneath."
"Too bad." He let go.
"I won't accept—"
Damon raised his eyebrows, nodded his head toward the front.
"What?"
He put a hand to his ear.
Silence.
The barking had stopped. Relief flooded through her. "Oh."
"You see? It worked. We thought of something else. And now here is my guy." Damon rose and moved up along the shadowed side of the stall toward the front where a dark figure stood. If she hadn't known somebody was there, she wouldn't have seen him. The brief flash of glasses could have been the reflection of sunshine off chrome.
The ratcheting sound was nearly imperceptible when he pulled the gate up. A man slipped in. Damon's guy? He seemed to have gotten there awfully fast.
Damon and the man clasped each other's shoulders with affection. Together they slipped back along the wall and behind the crates next to her, stealthy as ghosts.
Damon introduced the man as Tanner
Tanner had short dark hair and glasses and inky eyelashes—he could get a job as a model in a heartbeat, she thought, though the way he moved told her he was every bit as lethal as Damon. And these two had clearly exchanged stealthy-walking recipes.
"That was fast," Damon whispered as Tanner pulled a wig and a cap from his bag.
"I'm not here," Tanner said with intensity, handing him a knit cap. "I was in the neighbourhood saying goodbye to an old friend and I heard it over the line."
"Ah," Damon said, like that was hugely significant.
"Yes," Tanner said simply.
"How is Ric?"
"He will be fine, but you have a problem. Wes is sending a few Associates to get you two to a safe house."
"What is the problem?"
"I believe you are looking at a Seattle-style exchange."
Damon stiffened. "What about my angle? We can get Jazzman's real voice now. I can break that security and take control of the TZ. I just need some quiet, some samples, some—"
"You are being pulled out."
Damon sucked in a breath. Elena realized she had never heard Damon surprised, but he was surprised by this. "He can't pull me out."
"I thought you would want to know," Tanner added.
"Damn right I would want to know." Damon grabbed a wig and shoved it into Elena's hands. "Put this on. We are leaving." He pulled the knit cap over his head, tucked in his hair, and grabbed the gun Tanner held out to him, pulling out the magazine and shoving it back in. He handed her gun to Tanner and Tanner gave him another. They were like a NASCAR pit crew, these two, with their guns and bullets.
"What is a Seattle-style exchange?" Elena asked.
"A bad idea, that's what." Damon shoved Elena's gun in her bag. "Let her have your Sig, Tanner. She shoots."
Tanner pulled a black weapon from his ankle holster and set it in her hand. It was heavy as hell. "For you," he said. "Be ready for its kick and it will treat you fine." He looked into her eyes like he really wanted her to get that, to be safe.
"Thanks," Elena said.
"You good with that one?" Damon asked.
"I'm good," she said.
"I'm parked a block down," Tanner said. "Blue Toyota. I saw Little Hussein's men roaming around five minutes ago, but the coast was clear when I came in."
"Little Hussein's men," Damon said, as if it meant worlds.
"Wes isn't the only one thinking about an exchange," Tanner said. "And it is only going to get worse. Every dealer out there wants to be a hero for Jazzman."
"All the decent holes will be staked out," Damon said.
Tanner nodded and they went on, gathering stuff up.
Elena looked at her socks and tennis shoes and the dirty hem of the white lingerie, hating that these men were excluding her, talking over her head. She had lost so much, felt so alone. She needed Damon to let her in; couldn't he see that? She needed to know somebody else was with her—not some military type or whatever he was, but another soul.
Another walker on the moon.
Moments later, Damon and Tanner headed out; Elena was to wait at the front, watching from the shadows, ready to duck under the gate and slip into the car when it rolled by.
They ambled down the sidewalk with the loose walk of fighters, soft and relaxed, but with a kind of weightlessness, as if they could spring into furious action at any instant. She had the sense of them as a duo, like they had been through things together. They both had that warrior intensity. That high-functioning intelligence.
Fighters. Could that be all there was to him?
