CB: Dealer's Hand, -I-
"That's some dangerous company you've been keeping, Miss Kaplan."
It was his hands. The sympathetic feeling of the hand he placed on my neck, and the warmth of the gesture. That's what brought me down. The cards left marks in my back on the sheets, clung to sticky skin, and afterwards he bundled the two of us up in the top sheet, cards and all. The slight paper cuts from the edges of the cards didn't seem to matter, not with the rough feel of his hands embracing my bare back. I can still feel them, even now, dressed quickly and bundled into the car.
"My name is Faye. And if you've been keeping as close an eye on me as I think you have, you should know that it's company I've been keeping for quite a while now." I lean back, crossing my legs. The dark haired man who ushered me into the waiting car at the end of the alley is not as completely unaffected by it as he would like to be.
Hiding out together, it was inevitable. In retrospect, it was, perhaps, a mistake. But at the same time I know that it can't have been. It is… what I wanted from him the whole time, since I'd been back. Since he came looking for me.
I wish I'd had time to take a shower. Scent of Spike is clinging to me, and it's distracting. But I don't suppose I really had the time, what with the dark haired man and his cohorts kicking the door in and waving guns around in the air. The scent of a gun is one scent of insistence that even I can't ignore.
The dark haired man sits up a little straighter in the seat opposite me, and the car pulls away from the alley. To my credit, I don't look behind me.
I don't hear any explosions. But they may have just left someone behind to put a bullet in his infuriatingly attractive forehead. Actually, it's not really all that attractive, when I think of it. It's sharp, flat, and harsh.
"So, what's your name?" I ask, finally, tired of sitting in silence and stewing in my own thoughts. Smell invokes memory and if I keep thinking about him I will go crazy.
"Mine?" I give him a pointed look. Even he can't be so slow. "Spencer."
"That's it? Just Spencer?"
"It's all anyone calls me." He lifts a hand to adjust the collar of his shirt.
I have never understood why men who carry guns and exploit people for a living feel the urge to wear a business suit. There's very little business in killing someone. You pull a trigger. They die. Or they bleed and then they die.
"All right then, Spencer… just who are you taking me to see?"
"Your great nephew, Miss Kaplan."
"My great what?"
He gives me a pointed look this time, arching a brow over his brown eyes as though he usually wears sunglasses. "I don't care to repeat myself," he says, ending the conversation. I sigh and close my eyes again. I try to piece together what could've happened so long ago with Spike and the syndicate. The Red Dragons.
But I can't.
I should be able to, but I don't think I can.
And the one question I had to ask him about that I wasted on something else. On someone who isn't alive anymore. A ghost that's no realer than anything else from that time. But then none of that is real anymore. And what's the point in chasing shadows?
Rather than trying to talk to Spencer any more, I turn and look out the window. It's getting dark. We weren't even in hiding a day and we got separated. Some hideout that was. I'm sure when I get back, Spike will tell me that next time he gets to pick where we hide. And then I remember what Spencer said. The White Tigers aren't the only ones after Spike.
"Who else is after Spike?" I ask.
Jolted out of his silent reverence by my voice, Spencer sits up abruptly straight and loosens his collar a little bit.
"You didn't say it just to make me come with you, because you know that wouldn't have worked on me. So spit it out. Who else is after him?" I say what words ought to be the truth, whether they are or not.
"The Red Dragons," comes the hushed reply, as though he's afraid he'll bring up some dangerous and malicious spirit by speaking the name of the other branch of the Syndicate family.
"What?"
"I'm sure your nephew will explain what sort of a situation this really is."
I shake my head, angrily, the only thing in my mind the Chamber where the Red Dragons like to hold their executions. "Give me a straight answer."
He swallows. "I'm not entirely sure, really," he admits with shame in his voice. "All I know is the rumors."
Despite what I ought to have used my question for, to make sense out of what I've apparently chosen to hand fasten myself into, I don't care. I wanted to know the answer to what I asked.
And there are other ways to learn what he would have told me.
"Well then tell me those."