A/N: Deepest apologies for making you all wait so long for this next
chapter. With all the things going on in my life, and the fact that I
haven't been sleeping at all well, I have not been able to concentrate. It
also didn't help that my hard drive failed on me and I had to take time to
rebuild and set up my computer. Too many computer problems lately.
Fortunately I learned long ago the virtues of backing up my data, so I
didn't lose much that couldn't be replaced or recreated. It just wasted
time I could have been using to try to write putting my computer back
together. I hope everyone that celebrated Thanksgiving had a super one,
and that the coming holidays find everyone well and in good spirits. As
always, I really appreciate your reviews (not to mention your patience!).
As Sara and Ian lay in the tangled covers catching their breath, Sara snuggled closer into the circle of Ian's arms. The Witchblade swirled lazily, warmly content against her wrist. She glanced down at her new ring, trying to let it sink in that she and Ian were engaged. Only a few months earlier she had been calling him psycho freak, completely convinced he was as bad as Irons. Now everything was changed. Nothing in her life was ever simple. She wondered why she kept expecting it to be.
"What do you think Irons will say," Sara asked.
"Do you think we should let him know so soon," Ian asked, a little apprehensive. "He just found out two days ago we wanted to live together."
"He'll freak, huh?" she guessed.
"Irons doesn't freak," Ian said, a teasing gleam in his eye. "He's too well bred for that."
"A conniption, then," Sara offered. Ian chuckled.
"I think we should not tell him, for now," Ian observed. "I don't want to risk angering him so that he does something we'll regret."
"But honey, I don't want to take it off." Sara looked disappointed.
"You'd have to take it off for work anyway, my love," he reminded her. "Maybe we should get you a necklace chain and you can wear it that way when you can't have it on your finger."
"Hm," she considered. "I have a small wooden lacquered box it might fit in. I could keep it in my pocket. Chains break too easily, and I worry enough about losing the pendant you gave me. Maybe I should just wear it on my other hand for the party."
"That should work. We'll say it was simply a gift."
"I want to tell Gabriel," Sara said.
"We'll have to have him over for dinner again, then," Ian said.
"If you cook, I guarantee he won't say no," Sara said.
"I'd like to invite Allyson too," Ian told her. She smiled.
"Great idea," Sara said. "She and Gabriel hit it off pretty good when they met at Maxis the other night. That way we can tell both of them at the same time."
"How about Friday night?"
"Perfect," Sara said. "That gives you time to plan a menu and shop, and me time to clean the place up. I haven't given it a thorough going-over in too long."
"So, tomorrow is shopping and cleaning day, Friday is the dinner, and Saturday is the party. What do you want to do today?"
"I hadn't thought about it," Sara admitted. "What do you have in mind?"
"I was hoping we could look at furniture today. You know we need at least one more dresser, and I would really like to get a bookcase if we can figure out a good place to put it."
"That sounds like a good idea," Sara agreed. "Lets hit the shower and get going."
* ***** ***** ***** ***** *
Showered, dressed, several measurements in hand, Sara and Ian headed for the first of the furniture stores they planned to visit that day. The weather was threatening to rain, heavy black clouds turning the day gloomy. Ian parked as close as he could to the store and they went in. They politely refused the salesman's help and prowled the store with their tape measure, trying to come to a compromise on color and style they could both live with. Ian wanted classic rich dark wood, and Sara kept looking at modern glass-and-steel bookcases. They argued good-naturedly through the store, taking notes of model numbers and prices of the pieces they liked.
After going through the contents of three other furniture stores they took a break for a late lunch, going over their lists together. As they were finishing their spaghetti from the Italian café they had chosen Ian paused mid-syllable, going tense. Sara instantly knew something was wrong. The Witchblade swirled angry red and hissed in her mind, confirming her suspicions that someone or something dangerous was nearby. The hairs on the back of her neck went up, and when her eyes met Ian's she found them cold and black, the eyes of a killer.
~What does the Witchblade show you, Sara?~ Ian asked her through their mind- link.
~Nothing,~ she replied. ~Just a warning of danger, anticipation of a fight, maybe.~ She grimaced. She managed to control the bloodlust the Witchblade tried to force on her, but it never ceased trying.
~I probably shouldn't tell you this,~ Ian confessed, ~but Irons ordered me to eliminate this threat to you. It looks like it's going to get bloody before it's over.~
~Why do I have the feeling that's an understatement? Sara replied, her mental voice grim. Do what you have to do, love. I'll back you up.~
Ian picked up his glass of water, casually taking a sip as if nothing was wrong, as if there weren't a private conversation going on in his head. Sara followed suit. They pretended nothing was wrong while they finished their lunch, then Ian excused himself to use the restroom. While Sara waited for, then paid the bill, Ian slipped out the back to prowl around, heading for the rooftops to try and identify Sara's stalker. He was sure it was one of the White Bulls, and when he spotted the man too-casually lounging in a doorway across the street from the café with a perfect view of Sara his suspicions were confirmed. He recognized one of Dante's associates, a lesser one, but definitely a Bull. Ian marked the man for a visit later, then returned to the table where Sara was going through the contents of her purse in feigned boredom.
"Ready to go, love," Ian asked. He had shared all his information with Sara already via their mind-link.
"Ready," she replied, tossing a few stray items back into her purse and rising. They casually walked out to the car and got in, Sara driving so Ian could keep an eye on the situation and act quickly if need be. Ian kept track of the Bull following them all the way back to the apartment. When Sara pulled into a parking place in front of their building Ian watched the man following them drive past and around the corner out of sight.
"Sara, go up to the apartment but don't go in. Check the door for tampering, and I'll go up the back way and check the windows."
"You think the Bulls managed to get inside," she asked.
"Not likely, but I don't want to take any chances." Ian smiled, kissed her quickly, then slipped out of the passenger seat and down the alley to the fire escape. Sara went in the front door and took the elevator. Ian had already checked the windows for tampering and let himself in before the elevator delivered Sara to her floor. She didn't see anything wrong with the door, so she let herself in. Ian was prowling around the apartment, double checking everything.
"I have to go out tonight and take care of this," he said.
"I'll come with you," she offered, but he shook his head.
"If you're here, they'll be watching you, and I'll know where to start looking for them. As long as you keep the shades down and the door barred you'll be safe enough here. Until it gets dark, we'll stay put and see what we can find out about our friend from the café."
Sara cleared space on the table while Ian set up the laptop, logging into and out of some very high security databases. They found the man from earlier quickly, and Ian committed everything there was on him to memory. His name was Bryan Harris, a cop from Special Cases who seemed to be on loan to Homicide under special assignment to Dante. There were three other instances of cops on loan to Dante for "special assignments" from various departments in the precinct.
Sara watched Ian carefully for a few minutes as he scanned quickly through the information on each man, hacking effortlessly into high-security databases. Drawing a few conclusions, she turned to Ian with amusement in her eyes.
"You've done this before," she accused.
"Done what," he asked absently, scanning through another file.
"Hacked into the New York Police Department's records to research the White Bulls," she clarified.
"Irons required the information," Ian replied. "Since they were harassing you I got into the habit of keeping an eye on them. I'm not really learning anything I didn't already know here. I'm just verifying that things haven't changed since the last time I looked before I decide what to do."
"Oh," Sara replied. She figured she was better off not knowing exactly what he was doing, or what he was planning. Being a cop, engaged to a world-class assassin, was going to take some compromises, and outright blind faith, on both their parts. She fixed him some coffee, got herself a cup, and curled up with a book while he worked.
After a few hours, when the sun had sunk below the city skyline, Ian stood and stretched. Sara put down her book and stood, slipping into his embrace for a gentle hug and a lingering kiss, then watched him gear up. She was absolutely amazed at how much hardware he could conceal about his person and in his long overcoat. She would have pitied Ian's victims if they weren't so deserving of their fates. Finally equipped, Ian kissed Sara soundly, admonished her once more to stay put, and slipped out the door. She watched him stalk down the hall, a deadly hunter passing silently into the night (or at least the elevator) until he was out of sight. She locked and bolted her door, then turned on the television to pass the time.
* ***** ***** ***** ***** *
Ian opened the door to the roof of Sara's building carefully, checking with every one of his senses to be sure he was alone before passing through the door. He wasn't alone, so he slithered silently through the door and came up behind the man kneeling at the edge of the roof, staring intently down at the fire escape that ran down past Sara's apartment, a rifle with night scope held ready. Ian loomed up behind him, grabbing the gun and snapping the man's neck in one move. He resisted the brief yet intense impulse to do to this man what he had done to Gallo's hitman on the opposite roof not so long ago, leaving the body lying on the tar paper instead. He scanned the rooftops and alleys around the building and spotted two more Bulls, one lurking by the front of Sara's building, the other on the opposite rooftop watching Sara's windows. Ian grinned and took advantage of the handy silenced rifle the dead man had provided, eliminating the threat on the other rooftop with ruthless efficiency.
Taking several more minutes to scan and rescan the area around the building, Ian was finally satisfied it was safe to descend and made his way swiftly down the fire escape to the ground. He worked his way unnoticed around the back of the Bull watching the front entrance and eliminated him with a well-placed blade in his back that stopped his heart. As the man slid slowly to the ground Ian walked away as if he had merely been passing by. Noone noticed the body until Ian was out of sight. Wrapping the knife in clean white tissue, he slipped it into an inside pocket to clean later.
Heading through the concealing shadows of night, he made his way to the quiet neighborhood where the new head of the Bulls lived. An older cop with a wife and grown children, Andy Grecco had been with the Bulls since they formed. Grecco was watching television with his wife. Ian slipped inside and waited patiently for almost half an hour for his chance to act. Finally, the wife got up to go to the kitchen, leaving Grecco alone in the living room. Ian eased into position and pulled the trigger. The soft whump of the silenced weapon and the sound of the bullet impacting flesh as it entered Grecco's ear and tore through his brain were lost in the noise of the commercial running on the tv. Ian dropped the shell casing with the mark of the White Bulls onto the carpet by Grecco's feet and slipped out and away before the wife came back in and discovered her husband dead on the couch.
Ian slipped back into the comforting depths of the night, sparing a moment's thought to pity the poor woman he left behind with Grecco's corpse. After a quick phone call to Irons, Ian made his way back to Sara's apartment building to watch from a distance as the police finished investigating the stabbing death of an off-duty cop that had died there earlier. Pretending only a mild curiosity, he walked past the taped-off scene and into Sara's building without raising any eyebrows. Satisfied with the night's work, he returned to the welcoming arms of the woman he loved.
* ***** ***** ***** ***** *
Kenneth Irons brooded over what Ian had reported. Satisfied that Ian was dealing with the threat to Sara, nonetheless he was restless. Something was not quite right. Perhaps it was something in Ian's voice, perhaps it was intuition, Irons didn't know. Resting his forehead against the coolness of his brandy glass, he considered the situation from every possible angle, then decided he was reading more into things than was there. He would watch Ian and Sara closely Saturday night. Until then, Irons was content to wait.
As Sara and Ian lay in the tangled covers catching their breath, Sara snuggled closer into the circle of Ian's arms. The Witchblade swirled lazily, warmly content against her wrist. She glanced down at her new ring, trying to let it sink in that she and Ian were engaged. Only a few months earlier she had been calling him psycho freak, completely convinced he was as bad as Irons. Now everything was changed. Nothing in her life was ever simple. She wondered why she kept expecting it to be.
"What do you think Irons will say," Sara asked.
"Do you think we should let him know so soon," Ian asked, a little apprehensive. "He just found out two days ago we wanted to live together."
"He'll freak, huh?" she guessed.
"Irons doesn't freak," Ian said, a teasing gleam in his eye. "He's too well bred for that."
"A conniption, then," Sara offered. Ian chuckled.
"I think we should not tell him, for now," Ian observed. "I don't want to risk angering him so that he does something we'll regret."
"But honey, I don't want to take it off." Sara looked disappointed.
"You'd have to take it off for work anyway, my love," he reminded her. "Maybe we should get you a necklace chain and you can wear it that way when you can't have it on your finger."
"Hm," she considered. "I have a small wooden lacquered box it might fit in. I could keep it in my pocket. Chains break too easily, and I worry enough about losing the pendant you gave me. Maybe I should just wear it on my other hand for the party."
"That should work. We'll say it was simply a gift."
"I want to tell Gabriel," Sara said.
"We'll have to have him over for dinner again, then," Ian said.
"If you cook, I guarantee he won't say no," Sara said.
"I'd like to invite Allyson too," Ian told her. She smiled.
"Great idea," Sara said. "She and Gabriel hit it off pretty good when they met at Maxis the other night. That way we can tell both of them at the same time."
"How about Friday night?"
"Perfect," Sara said. "That gives you time to plan a menu and shop, and me time to clean the place up. I haven't given it a thorough going-over in too long."
"So, tomorrow is shopping and cleaning day, Friday is the dinner, and Saturday is the party. What do you want to do today?"
"I hadn't thought about it," Sara admitted. "What do you have in mind?"
"I was hoping we could look at furniture today. You know we need at least one more dresser, and I would really like to get a bookcase if we can figure out a good place to put it."
"That sounds like a good idea," Sara agreed. "Lets hit the shower and get going."
* ***** ***** ***** ***** *
Showered, dressed, several measurements in hand, Sara and Ian headed for the first of the furniture stores they planned to visit that day. The weather was threatening to rain, heavy black clouds turning the day gloomy. Ian parked as close as he could to the store and they went in. They politely refused the salesman's help and prowled the store with their tape measure, trying to come to a compromise on color and style they could both live with. Ian wanted classic rich dark wood, and Sara kept looking at modern glass-and-steel bookcases. They argued good-naturedly through the store, taking notes of model numbers and prices of the pieces they liked.
After going through the contents of three other furniture stores they took a break for a late lunch, going over their lists together. As they were finishing their spaghetti from the Italian café they had chosen Ian paused mid-syllable, going tense. Sara instantly knew something was wrong. The Witchblade swirled angry red and hissed in her mind, confirming her suspicions that someone or something dangerous was nearby. The hairs on the back of her neck went up, and when her eyes met Ian's she found them cold and black, the eyes of a killer.
~What does the Witchblade show you, Sara?~ Ian asked her through their mind- link.
~Nothing,~ she replied. ~Just a warning of danger, anticipation of a fight, maybe.~ She grimaced. She managed to control the bloodlust the Witchblade tried to force on her, but it never ceased trying.
~I probably shouldn't tell you this,~ Ian confessed, ~but Irons ordered me to eliminate this threat to you. It looks like it's going to get bloody before it's over.~
~Why do I have the feeling that's an understatement? Sara replied, her mental voice grim. Do what you have to do, love. I'll back you up.~
Ian picked up his glass of water, casually taking a sip as if nothing was wrong, as if there weren't a private conversation going on in his head. Sara followed suit. They pretended nothing was wrong while they finished their lunch, then Ian excused himself to use the restroom. While Sara waited for, then paid the bill, Ian slipped out the back to prowl around, heading for the rooftops to try and identify Sara's stalker. He was sure it was one of the White Bulls, and when he spotted the man too-casually lounging in a doorway across the street from the café with a perfect view of Sara his suspicions were confirmed. He recognized one of Dante's associates, a lesser one, but definitely a Bull. Ian marked the man for a visit later, then returned to the table where Sara was going through the contents of her purse in feigned boredom.
"Ready to go, love," Ian asked. He had shared all his information with Sara already via their mind-link.
"Ready," she replied, tossing a few stray items back into her purse and rising. They casually walked out to the car and got in, Sara driving so Ian could keep an eye on the situation and act quickly if need be. Ian kept track of the Bull following them all the way back to the apartment. When Sara pulled into a parking place in front of their building Ian watched the man following them drive past and around the corner out of sight.
"Sara, go up to the apartment but don't go in. Check the door for tampering, and I'll go up the back way and check the windows."
"You think the Bulls managed to get inside," she asked.
"Not likely, but I don't want to take any chances." Ian smiled, kissed her quickly, then slipped out of the passenger seat and down the alley to the fire escape. Sara went in the front door and took the elevator. Ian had already checked the windows for tampering and let himself in before the elevator delivered Sara to her floor. She didn't see anything wrong with the door, so she let herself in. Ian was prowling around the apartment, double checking everything.
"I have to go out tonight and take care of this," he said.
"I'll come with you," she offered, but he shook his head.
"If you're here, they'll be watching you, and I'll know where to start looking for them. As long as you keep the shades down and the door barred you'll be safe enough here. Until it gets dark, we'll stay put and see what we can find out about our friend from the café."
Sara cleared space on the table while Ian set up the laptop, logging into and out of some very high security databases. They found the man from earlier quickly, and Ian committed everything there was on him to memory. His name was Bryan Harris, a cop from Special Cases who seemed to be on loan to Homicide under special assignment to Dante. There were three other instances of cops on loan to Dante for "special assignments" from various departments in the precinct.
Sara watched Ian carefully for a few minutes as he scanned quickly through the information on each man, hacking effortlessly into high-security databases. Drawing a few conclusions, she turned to Ian with amusement in her eyes.
"You've done this before," she accused.
"Done what," he asked absently, scanning through another file.
"Hacked into the New York Police Department's records to research the White Bulls," she clarified.
"Irons required the information," Ian replied. "Since they were harassing you I got into the habit of keeping an eye on them. I'm not really learning anything I didn't already know here. I'm just verifying that things haven't changed since the last time I looked before I decide what to do."
"Oh," Sara replied. She figured she was better off not knowing exactly what he was doing, or what he was planning. Being a cop, engaged to a world-class assassin, was going to take some compromises, and outright blind faith, on both their parts. She fixed him some coffee, got herself a cup, and curled up with a book while he worked.
After a few hours, when the sun had sunk below the city skyline, Ian stood and stretched. Sara put down her book and stood, slipping into his embrace for a gentle hug and a lingering kiss, then watched him gear up. She was absolutely amazed at how much hardware he could conceal about his person and in his long overcoat. She would have pitied Ian's victims if they weren't so deserving of their fates. Finally equipped, Ian kissed Sara soundly, admonished her once more to stay put, and slipped out the door. She watched him stalk down the hall, a deadly hunter passing silently into the night (or at least the elevator) until he was out of sight. She locked and bolted her door, then turned on the television to pass the time.
* ***** ***** ***** ***** *
Ian opened the door to the roof of Sara's building carefully, checking with every one of his senses to be sure he was alone before passing through the door. He wasn't alone, so he slithered silently through the door and came up behind the man kneeling at the edge of the roof, staring intently down at the fire escape that ran down past Sara's apartment, a rifle with night scope held ready. Ian loomed up behind him, grabbing the gun and snapping the man's neck in one move. He resisted the brief yet intense impulse to do to this man what he had done to Gallo's hitman on the opposite roof not so long ago, leaving the body lying on the tar paper instead. He scanned the rooftops and alleys around the building and spotted two more Bulls, one lurking by the front of Sara's building, the other on the opposite rooftop watching Sara's windows. Ian grinned and took advantage of the handy silenced rifle the dead man had provided, eliminating the threat on the other rooftop with ruthless efficiency.
Taking several more minutes to scan and rescan the area around the building, Ian was finally satisfied it was safe to descend and made his way swiftly down the fire escape to the ground. He worked his way unnoticed around the back of the Bull watching the front entrance and eliminated him with a well-placed blade in his back that stopped his heart. As the man slid slowly to the ground Ian walked away as if he had merely been passing by. Noone noticed the body until Ian was out of sight. Wrapping the knife in clean white tissue, he slipped it into an inside pocket to clean later.
Heading through the concealing shadows of night, he made his way to the quiet neighborhood where the new head of the Bulls lived. An older cop with a wife and grown children, Andy Grecco had been with the Bulls since they formed. Grecco was watching television with his wife. Ian slipped inside and waited patiently for almost half an hour for his chance to act. Finally, the wife got up to go to the kitchen, leaving Grecco alone in the living room. Ian eased into position and pulled the trigger. The soft whump of the silenced weapon and the sound of the bullet impacting flesh as it entered Grecco's ear and tore through his brain were lost in the noise of the commercial running on the tv. Ian dropped the shell casing with the mark of the White Bulls onto the carpet by Grecco's feet and slipped out and away before the wife came back in and discovered her husband dead on the couch.
Ian slipped back into the comforting depths of the night, sparing a moment's thought to pity the poor woman he left behind with Grecco's corpse. After a quick phone call to Irons, Ian made his way back to Sara's apartment building to watch from a distance as the police finished investigating the stabbing death of an off-duty cop that had died there earlier. Pretending only a mild curiosity, he walked past the taped-off scene and into Sara's building without raising any eyebrows. Satisfied with the night's work, he returned to the welcoming arms of the woman he loved.
* ***** ***** ***** ***** *
Kenneth Irons brooded over what Ian had reported. Satisfied that Ian was dealing with the threat to Sara, nonetheless he was restless. Something was not quite right. Perhaps it was something in Ian's voice, perhaps it was intuition, Irons didn't know. Resting his forehead against the coolness of his brandy glass, he considered the situation from every possible angle, then decided he was reading more into things than was there. He would watch Ian and Sara closely Saturday night. Until then, Irons was content to wait.
