Who Watches the Watcher?
A Highlander novel by Sisiutil
This story is fictional and does not contain any references to any actual persons living or dead. All characters contained in this story who appeared in the Highlander franchise are the property of Warner Media/Davis Panzer Productions, Inc.
Chapter 3: Marshall
Theresa MacNeil followed Marshall's black sedan in her battered old Toyota Celica, careful to keep a couple of cars in between them to avoid being spotted. She'd barely had time to climb into her car before the Immortal had pulled out of Joe's parking lot, but she'd managed to catch up with him. Marshall appeared to be heading towards a seedy part of town—just the area Theresa had hoped to avoid when she'd left Lizzy Knight behind. She gave a resigned sigh as she followed her principal into a decrepit area of the warehouse district. Immortals just seemed attracted to these run-down areas—possibly because they offered a greater measure of anonymity. As a Watcher, she could certainly understand that; staying anonymous was part of her job description too.
Marshall parked his car on a quiet side street. Theresa drove past him and parked out of sight around the next corner. She left her car and reacquired her principal on foot; she peeked around the corner of a building just in time to see him heading through the doors of a dark warehouse, carrying a briefcase. In the dark, her eyes scanned the warehouse, looking for a different entry point. She spotted a side door and made her way towards it.
Theresa entered the warehouse through the side door and waited a few seconds, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dark interior of the building. She spotted a stack of wooden crates a few feet away and walked towards them, intending to use them as her hiding place. Peeking around the crates, she could see Marshall's dark silhouette standing in the middle of an empty part of the warehouse floor.
What the hell is he waiting here for? Another Immortal? she wondered.
Suddenly, a clanging metallic sound from the other end of the warehouse drew her attention. A huge loading bay door lifted upwards, and a sleek black limousine purred into the warehouse. The headlights of the limo illuminated Marshall, who had donned his dark wrap-around sunglasses—presciently, it turned out, as they shielded his eyes from the glare.
The limousine drew within a few feet of the Immortal and stopped; the motor turned off, but the headlights stayed on. The doors on both sides of the limousine opened and four burly men in dark suits got out. Two of them approached Marshall, who placed his briefcase on the concrete floor and raised his arms nonchalantly. The duo stepped forward to frisk the Immortal while a third man held a gun on him. When done, the two friskers nodded back to another man who had remained standing beside the door he had just opened. The man—apparently the one in charge—stepped forward into the headlights' glare.
"You'll have to forgive the intrusion of your person," the man said, though his men kept their guns trained on Marshall. Theresa could now see him a little better. He wore a dark blue suit over a stocky frame. He was the same height as Marshall, but appeared older—in his late 40s. He was balding, his reddish-brown hair cut severely short.
Marshall shrugged. "Can't be too careful these days. A lot of nasty people around."
The man laughed softly at the joke. "You Marshall?" he asked
"Lucas Marshall," he answered with a nod. "You're not Mr. Lewis," he observed flatly, and slowly removed his sunglasses.
The other man opened his hands, palms up, and shrugged slightly. "Were you really expecting him? We don't know you from Adam," he said.
"No, not really," Marshall responded. "In fact, I would have been disappointed if he had shown up tonight."
The other man nodded as if recognizing the wisdom of another professional in his business—whatever his business was. Theresa, observing silently from her hiding place, frowned as she tried to understand what Marshall was doing here with these men, none of whom appeared to be Immortals.
"My name is Mr. Duke," the stocky man in charge said. "I'm one of Mr. Lewis' associates."
"A senior associate, I hope?" Marshall asked.
"As senior as they get," Duke asserted. His deep-set eyes glanced at the briefcase at Marshall's feet. "I take it the sample's in there?"
"Indeed. Be my guest," Marshall said, waving at the briefcase.
"No," Duke answered. "You pick it up, put it on the hood of the car, and open it. No sudden moves. Remember the boys have their guns on you."
"That fact is foremost in my mind," Marshall said as he grabbed the briefcase by its handle and slowly moved towards the car. He placed the briefcase on the front hood and gently eased its latches and then its lid open, stepping back from it as he did so.
Duke eyed one of his men, a dark-haired, olive-complexioned young man in his twenties, and nodded at the briefcase. The man stepped up to the briefcase and shoved his pistol into his hidden shoulder holster beneath his suit jacket. He drew a pocket knife from his pants pocket and cut at the contents of the briefcase. Theresa could just make out a puff of white powder that rose from the briefcase as he did so. The man poked his finger into the briefcase and pulled it back, covered in the same white powder. He placed his finger in his mouth, rolled his tongue around it, and nodded.
"It's the real deal," he said. "Pure, and high quality. The lab can tell us more..."
Duke held up his hand. "That's all I need to know, Roberto." He turned to Marshall. "You mind telling me how the hell you got that here? The feds and the locals have got things tighter than a virgin's pussy right now."
Marshall smiled. "Do you remember your Aesop's fables?" he asked, making the burly man frown in confusion. "The goose and the golden egg? I'm your goose, Mr. Duke, but I have no intention of giving you an excuse to cut me open. Mr. Lewis, if I've heard correctly, is having trouble bringing in product for his processing facility. I have a pipeline, but no such facility or distribution system. I thought we could do business."
Duke nodded sagely. "It's possible, if you can supply quality merchandise like this to us. It has to meet with Mr. Lewis' approval, of course."
"Of course."
Theresa's eyes widened in shock as she slowly realized what she was witnessing. She let out an exasperated sigh. She'd hoped she would be trading up from the amoral Lizzy Knight, but her new Immortal had turned out to be a common drug-runner. She couldn't help but feel let down. She also wondered how noble Immortals such as Reginald Blount and Duncan MacLeod could have had anything to do with this guy. She realized he must be a deceitful liar on top of everything else. And he was a ruthless head-hunter to boot, if Porter's file was any indication. This assignment was turning out to be a nightmare before the first day was even done. She couldn't imagine it getting any worse. She was wrong.
"Don't move," a male voice said from a few feet behind her. Theresa distinctly heard the clicking of a gun's safety being turned off. She froze. She quickly gauged the distance to the man based on his voice and realized, with no small amount of dread, that he was too far away for her to attack him. "Stand up and raise your hands slowly," the voice ordered, and Theresa obeyed. "Walk towards the car. Take your time. Try anything funny and I'll put a hole in your chest."
Theresa began to walk towards the limousine and the group of men gathered around its front end. She kept her hands raised and tried desperately to think of a way out of this. The man with the gun trained on her remained a safe distance behind her, and she didn't have a weapon herself. Her heart began to pound in her chest as she realized she may not live to see tomorrow's sunrise. As she neared the car, the men there stopped talking and looked towards her.
"Look what I found snooping around," the man behind her said when she stopped at the edge of the pool of light thrown by the limo's headlights.
Duke frowned at her, looking as if he'd just bitten off something sour. "Friend of yours?" he asked Marshall.
The Immortal, who stood barely two yards away, looked at her and frowned. Theresa swallowed. Marshall walked towards her until he stood right in front of her, his gray eyes narrowed and looking her over. His eyes glanced at her raised left wrist. Theresa followed his gaze and saw that her jacket's sleeve had fallen down her forearm, revealing the top half of her Watcher tattoo to his eyes once again. She looked back into the Immortal's cold gray eyes but couldn't read them. Did he know she was a Watcher? And if he did know, was that a good thing or not?
"I was at a bar before I came here," Marshall said suspiciously as he turned back towards Duke. "She was there."
"You think she followed you?" Duke asked sharply.
"I think that's highly probable," Marshall said, nodding slightly.
"That's not good," Duke told him.
"I very much agree," Marshall remarked, looking back at Theresa. She saw no concern, no sympathy in those cold, gray eyes. Theresa remembered the man who'd stood over Lizzy Knight, relishing her pain and torment. She could expect no assistance from him; quite the opposite. The young Watcher could feel sweat running down her back. She swallowed hard. Her throat felt dry.
"Frisk her," Duke ordered, waving one of his henchmen towards her.
The thug, a tall, solidly-built man with long, sandy hair, gave her a leering smile as he walked towards her. Theresa held still as he ran his hands over her body. She wrinkled her nose in disgust when he spent a little too much time frisking her breasts and between her legs. He gave her behind a little too much attention for her liking as well, before he pulled her wallet from her hip pocket. The man walked away from her and handed the wallet to Duke, who quickly glanced through it.
"She's clean," the man said. "No guns, no wires."
"Theresa MacNeil," Duke read from her New York State drivers' license. He grunted angrily when he found no other identification beyond a couple of credit cards. "Who are you workin' for?" he asked, stepping up to her and glowering at her. He grabbed her chin with his big, meaty hand, making her gasp. "You ain't local. You DEA? You with the Columbians? Answer me!" he shouted.
Theresa said nothing. What answer could she give that would satisfy this criminal? She couldn't think of an explanation that would save her anyway. Her rising panic didn't help her thought processes.
Suddenly, Duke released her chin. He pulled his arm back, then viciously backhanded her. Her head spun, her cheek stinging from the blow; it was all she could do to remain on her feet. Duke grabbed her chin with his hand again while she took shallow, strained breaths. He smiled menacingly at her.
"You're pretty," he growled through his smile. "By tomorrow, you won't be. And you'll tell me everything." Theresa watched him warily. She fought off an overwhelming urge to drop to her knees and beg for mercy. Instead, she stood her ground, though her insides were quaking.
"Yes, well, this is all very diverting," Marshall declared, "but business before pleasure, eh?" Duke turned to glare at him. "I think it would be best if we concluded our dealings and left as soon as possible, don't you?" he said calmly.
Duke stared at Marshall for a moment, then nodded. "Fine. But if I find out you're working with her..."
"I assure I'm not," Marshall said. "Now, I have a different product to show you, one I think Mr. Lewis would find most interesting, not to mention profitable. May I?" he said, pointing to the briefcase.
Duke nodded. "Make it quick," he said, looking around warily. "Snoops travel in packs."
"Won't take but a moment," Marshall said as he withdrew a small, round container, about the size, color, and shape of a hockey puck, from inside the briefcase. He held it in his fingers and showed it to Duke with a proud smile on his face.
"What the hell is that?" Duke said with a slight sneer.
"The product is highly perishable, and has to be kept in a stasis container like this. But it's very potent, I assure you. You open it by pressing this button on the side," Marshall explained, and pressed his thumb against the container with an audible click. He looked at Duke and suddenly tossed the container into the air towards him. "Here, catch," he said as the small container flew through the air and every pair of eyes in the vicinity followed it. Every pair but his; Marshall had turned away and had covered his eyes with his left forearm as soon as he'd thrown the container towards Duke.
The flash grenade exploded with a muffled bang and lit up the interior of the dark warehouse with a brightness equivalent to twice that of the sun on a clear summer day. The criminals gathered around the limo screamed and covered their eyes in response, but reacted too late; the flash grenade ensured they would not be able to see anything for several minutes.
Theresa had watched the grenade as well and found herself similarly blinded. She covered her eyes with her hands, then felt someone unceremoniously scoop her up, toss her over his shoulder, and begin to run with her. She couldn't see anything, couldn't see who had grabbed her or where he was taking her, she could only feel his muscular shoulder thumping uncomfortably into her stomach as he ran. She began to wriggle, trying to escape his grip, but he held her firm. She could hear men yelling nearby. A shot was fired, followed by more yelling.
Suddenly she felt cooler night air on her skin and deduced that she was out of the warehouse. She heard a car door open and grunted when the man carrying her shoved her roughly into the passenger seat. She heard the car door slam, heard the man's body rolling over the top of the hood, and then the driver's side door opened and he climbed in. The engine started and she felt the car backing up, spinning around, and heard the tires squeal as they sped away.
Theresa still couldn't see anything. She groped at the passenger side door and found the handle, then started to open the door, intending to throw herself out. Suddenly a strong male hand swatted her hands away from the door.
"Don't be stupid!" Marshall snarled from the driver's seat.
Theresa gasped when she recognized his voice. She froze in her seat, uncertain as to what she should do next. The Watcher's handbook didn't really cover what to do if your assigned Immortal rescues you from certain torture and death at the hands of drug dealers.
"Where are you taking me?" she asked, trying to blink away the spots in front of her eyes.
"Somewhere safe," he answered ambiguously as the car careened around a corner, throwing Theresa against his shoulder. "Put your seatbelt on, will you?" he growled at her. Theresa fumbled over her right shoulder, found the nylon strap, and pulled it across her body. "Jupiter! Do you people have to follow me everywhere?" he exclaimed as she fastened the buckle.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Theresa answered automatically.
That earned her a derisive snort from Marshall. She felt him grab her left wrist, pull back her coat sleeve, and hold her Watcher tattoo in front of her face. She still couldn't see it, but she knew what he was indicating.
"Let's stop playing games, shall we?" Marshall said. "You're a Watcher, evidently my Watcher. Whose bright idea was it to assign a woman to me anyway?"
"Hey!" Theresa objected, "I can handle myself just fine, you sexist jerk!" she said, dropping all pretense of secrecy since there seemed little point to it.
"Oh yes, you were handling yourself very well back there," Marshall agreed sarcastically as he changed gears. "You were about to be raped, tortured, mutilated, and killed. Nice work!"
"Well if I'd known I was following a drug dealer around, I would have treated the situation a little differently," she snapped.
Marshall grunted angrily. "I'm not a drug dealer," he told her.
"Oh, sorry, drug supplier," Theresa said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "World of difference, I'm sure."
Marshall surprised and annoyed her by suddenly bursting into amused laughter. "You've got spirit," he said as she scowled, still blinded, at the windshield in front of her. "No sense of self-preservation, but spirit to spare."
"All right, whatever, " Theresa snapped. "Just take me home, okay?"
"No," Marshall told her. "First, I don't know where your home is, and before you try to tell me, second, they have your wallet, remember? They'll figure out where you live and come looking for you."
Theresa groaned and let her head fall into her hands. I don't believe this, she thought. This is an unmitigated disaster. At least for Joe, it was several years before MacLeod found him. I didn't last twenty-four hours with Marshall! And now I have a gang of drug dealers who want to kill me! I'm going to set a record for how fast I'm going to get thrown out of the Watchers...
"Where are you taking me?" she asked again with a resigned sigh. She lifted her head and noticed that she could see a little better. Dark spots still swam in and out of her vision, but she could sort of make out the lights of cars on the street.
"I told you, someplace where you'll be safe," Marshall responded. He paused. "Where the hell is Porter?" he asked. Though still blinded, Theresa's eyes went wide. How could he know that Mick Porter had been his Watcher?
"Mick Porter is dead," she said flatly.
"What!?" Marshall snapped. "How?"
"Lizzy Knight. A stray shot," Theresa answered. She heard Marshall exhale loudly beside her.
"Damn," he whispered. Theresa frowned at that. She was surprised he cared about Porter at all. Then she realized he had just saved her life; why on earth did he give a rat's ass about her either? Not that she minded, given the circumstances.
Her vision had, for the most part, returned to her now. She noticed that they were several blocks away from the location of the meeting they'd fled, but still in the warehouse district. Suddenly Marshall cut his lights and turned down an alley. Theresa gasped as her still-afflicted vision prevented her from seeing anything but darkness. Marshall turned his car again and steered it through the rear garage door of yet another anonymous, abandoned warehouse. He pushed the button on a remote garage door opener clipped to the drivers' side sun visor, and Theresa heard a large metal door rattle down behind them.
The car went down a ramp inside the warehouse that led to a basement level. Marshall parked the car, got out, and signaled for Theresa to do the same. She opened her door, stepped out, and looked around, blinking and squinting, at the small, dingy parking area. It was lit by a single florescent light, amber with age and dirt, that flickered and buzzed in the ceiling. The smell of dank concrete filled her nostrils. She looked over at Marshall as he opened the trunk and pulled out his two swords, and her eyebrows raised dubiously.
"This is a safe place?" she asked.
"None safer," Marshall assured her as he walked towards a heavy metal door a few feet away. He put a key into a large, formidable padlock, opened it, then gave the door a heavy shove, using his full body weight to roll it aside. Once opened, he beckoned a hesitant Theresa towards the doorway.
The young Watcher stepped into the dim entryway. Marshall reached past her, brushing her shoulder and making her flinch. He found a light switch and flicked it on. Theresa's eyes widened in surprise at what the lights revealed.
She found herself in the entrance of what looked like a modern loft, but with no windows. She walked forward into a large living room, roughly twenty feet square. The concrete walls and ceiling were covered with a terra cotta plaster, and the gray concrete floors were clean and covered, for the most part, by large Persian carpets and runners. A three-seat couch and a chaise lounge with clean, modern lines, covered with off-white natural canvas fabric, sat on two sides of a glass-topped coffee table. The couch sat a few feet in front of two large black velvet curtains that hung from the top of the ten-foot high ceiling to the floor, covering a third of that wall.
Behind the chaise was a small, square dining table with four chairs, and beyond it was a raised counter that separated the living and dining area from the kitchen. The kitchen itself appeared small but functional, and contained stainless-steel appliances and plain modern cabinets painted dark red. To the right the hallway continued, and Theresa could make out three doorways; the one straight ahead, at the end of the hall, was a bathroom; the other two, she assumed, led to bedrooms.
"Pretty nice for this part of town," she commented. She turned to look at Marshall as he closed the heavy metal door and secured it with the padlock. She felt a nervous twinge in her stomach. "Locking me in?" she asked as nonchalantly as she could manage.
"Just so you don't do anything stupid like running off and getting killed," Marshall told her. He walked down the hall and disappeared for a moment into one of the bedrooms, then reemerged without his swords. "Relax," he said, "I have no intention of harming you. I just want to keep you safe and eventually get you out of my hair. Sooner rather than later, I'm hoping. "
"Yeah, I guess you don't want me interfering in your drug running any more," she said sharply, crossing her arms.
Marshall's thick brows rose. "I told you, I'm not..."
"Save it," Theresa said, cutting him off and waving her hands at him dismissively. "I really don't care," she said. She walked into the living room and flopped down onto the couch with a sigh, crossing her arms again angrily.
Marshall followed her into the living room and tossed off his long leather coat, letting it fall onto the couch beside Theresa. She looked at it in disgust and slid down the couch a little further from it. Marshall frowned at her reaction and walked into the kitchen.
"Can I get you anything to drink?" he asked as he opened the fridge.
"I don't want anything from you," Theresa said sullenly.
Marshall slammed the door of the fridge closed and turned around to glare at her. "Well, I am so sorry to be such a disappointment to you, little Miss Watcher!" he said angrily. She glared right back at him. "Might I remind you that I saved your miserable life tonight? You'd think you could be a little gracious!"
"Saved my life?" Theresa shouted back at him, rising to her feet. "You've ruined my life! I think I set a new Watcher record for getting spotted! And now I have a bunch of thugs who are going to ransack my apartment, and they'll probably find my Chronicles!"
Marshall shrugged. "If they read them at all, they'll probably just think you're a lunatic," he said.
"Oh, thank you!" Theresa exclaimed sarcastically. "That makes me feel so much better! A gang of drug dealers thinks I'm a crazy narc!" she cried, throwing her hands in the air. "What a hoot! I'll be run out of the Watchers as a laughing stock!"
Again, Marshall shrugged. "Doesn't seem to me like you're cut out for it," he remarked with one eyebrow raised.
Theresa's eyes went wide with fury and she stormed towards him. "Go to hell, you goddamn bastard!" she yelled, but Marshall stood his ground, staring back at her. "You...you...freak of nature!" she spat out, shaking an accusing finger at him.
At that, the Immortal smiled and nodded. "Ah, yes. Your true feelings at last. No wonder Horton was able to recruit so many of you to his cause," he said with a sneer.
His remarks felt like a slap in the face to her. Never mind the shock that this man knew so much about the Watchers. Theresa despised Horton and his ideas; he had betrayed everything the Watchers stood for. To be lumped in with him...
"No," she said, raising a hand to object and shaking her head, "I didn't mean..."
"Oh, I think you did mean it," Marshall said, cutting her off. Theresa turned around, her fury dissipating. She walked back to the couch and collapsed onto it.
"No, I didn't," she insisted. She rubbed her open hands over her face, then dropped them to her lap. "I was lashing out. Look, I'm frightened. And I'm angry. And, yeah, I'm disappointed," she said, looking over her shoulder at him. She shook her head and sighed. "You know who I was watching before you? Lizzy Knight. I saw you take her worthless head, and I was glad when I saw it roll across the pavement. But you know what? You're no better than her! Maybe you play by the rules with other Immortals, but with us, you play by your own! And they're dirty as hell! Jesus Christ, you're dealing drugs! Do you even care about the misery and death you're causing?"
Marshall did not respond, said nothing to defend himself. He only watched her silently, his gray eyes unreadable.
"And now I've messed up this assignment so bad, I'm sure to get thrown out of the Watchers." She laughed bitterly. "Assuming you or your drug-dealing friends don't kill me!" She turned and looked at him as if she were looking at the contents of a sewer. "But you know what? I'm looking forward to leaving the Watchers now. I don't want to watch you people anymore. You make me sick. I regret that I became a Watcher at all, because I wish I had never known scum like you existed."
The two of them sat for several moments in silence, saying nothing once Theresa had said her piece. Eventually Marshall stood up.
"The first door on your right down the hall is a spare bedroom," he told her. "You can use it tonight. Tomorrow I'll take you to MacLeod's Watcher...Dawson. He'll know what to do."
With that, the Immortal walked down the hall to his own bedroom, leaving Theresa in the desolate silence of the living room. A few minutes later, she went to the spare bedroom and shut the door. It had a lock. She secured it.