A/N: Me plus boredness in bio = sooner chapters for stories! lol. I'm back, as if you can't tell. I've decided to write all my most important chapters during bio now. It makes life so much more fun. lol. I just want to say that I am continuing this fic. Updates could be spaced out if I can't get them written but I'll try my best.
Hope you like the new chapter.
She hadn't even realized that two shots had been fired, at the same time making them sound as one, until she noticed Vaughn grimacing in pain next to her. Immediately, she abandoned the idea of shooting Sloane again and turned her attention to Vaughn. Her eyes quickly skimmed across his body, trying to find the point of entry for the bullet. She found none, which didn't help her nerves any.
"Vaughn?" She asked quietly, still searching for a wound. How freaking hard can it be to find a bullet wound? When you get shot, you bleed. End of story. I should know, I've been shot enough times to figure that one out. And why the hell aren't you bleeding, Vaughn?!
"I'm fine," Vaughn whispered back, trying to see around her. "Did you...?" He trailed off, trying to think of what exactly to say.
Realizing that she hadn't even bothered to check if she killed or injured or just plain missed one of the men responsible for all the crap she had to put up with in her life, Sydney whirled around. It took less than a second to spot Sloane's bleeding body on the ground. From what she could tell –considering she was at the other end of the hall- her aim had planted a bullet in the son of a bitch's ribcage, just a little bit above his liver. Not bad but she wished that she had done better.
Vaughn could see the anger and hate run through her from behind. He moved his hand just a little to grasp her when a bolt of pain shot through his arm. Biting back a groan of pain, he glanced down at his arm to find a small pool of blood collecting on his sleeve. It just looked like the bullet had skimmed his arm, nothing to be too concerned about. Though it did kind of prove Sydney's point didn't it? Pushing that thought to the back of his mind to be attended to later, Vaughn said, "Sydney?"
Sydney tried not to ignore him but she couldn't help it. She wanted to turn around and grab him by the arm and pull him past the bastard lying at the end of the hall and out of the building and to freedom. But she couldn't make herself move. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't force herself to tear his gaze away from the son of a bitch.
"Sydney?" Vaughn asked, again. He could imagine the thoughts running through her head but she had already fatally wounded the man, there wasn't much else she could do. "Come on, Syd."
Suddenly, she started moving but not the way he intended. He had expected her to turn around and lead him out of there quietly. She did the complete opposite. She took off running down the hall, the guard's gun still in hand. At first, he thought that she was just going to keep running, but she skidded to a stop just before she went past Sloane.
"You son of a bitch!" Sydney hissed, raising the gun to shoot him again. She squeezed the trigger not once, but four more times before the gun ran out of bullets. What kind of cheap crap is this gun? Seven bullets and that's it? She thought throwing the gun at him.
Vaughn watched her with a raised eyebrow and more worrying than he had done the first two years that he had known her. True, she could be tough when needed and she did hate Sloane with a passion for more than one reason but he had never seen her and vicious before.
He would have stayed frozen to the spot, if a small beeping noise hadn't started. Frantically glancing around, he found what where the beeping was emanating from. A small screen, that if you didn't look twice and carefully that second time, you would miss, planted into the wall next to him. It blinked a couple times before a countdown started.
It became clear to him that the building was wired on some form of a failsafe, probably initiated by Sloane before he died. And they had less than two minutes to negotiate their way out of there or be toasted alive.
No words necessary, he took off running in her direction, ignoring his wounded arm's protests and grabbed her arm, pulling her along. She was momentarily dazed at the sudden movement but wasted no time in catching up to Vaughn's speed and surpassing it a little. Nevermind the little fact that he was an injured man but she was in a skirt for Pete's sake!
She guided them out of the building like she had been in it before and knew the floor plan perfectly. She took all the right turns, pausing only for a millisecond where he would have paused for at least a second, wasting precious time. He had no idea where this sudden burst of navigation came from but he would worry about it after they got out and to safety.
They came to a set of double doors and without thinking twice about it, Sydney kicked the doors open. A sudden blast of cold mountain air hit them as they ran past the doors, just as the faint sounds of the countdown ticking became increasing louder.
"What the hell was that all about?" Sydney demanded, stopping far too close to the building. Vaughn didn't answer her, instead grabbed her arm again, this time holding on tightly, and pulling her a safe distance away from the building. "Vaughn, what the hell-" Her sentence was interrupted by a muffled blast, followed by another louder one, and another and another until the entire building burst into flames, beginning to collapse under its own wait. She stared, utterly shocked and speechless at the flaming building before her gaze made its way over to a, overworked Vaughn and his bleeding arm. Wait, bleeding arm? Oh my God, he's bleeding. "Vaughn, you're hurt."
He glanced down at his wound and tried not to grimace without much luck, "I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're bleeding," She paused to take a closer look at the wound, "And a lot. We need to get you to a hospital."
He shook his head, "No hospitals." She gave him a look that said he was going to a hospital, not buts about it. "I'm serious, Sydney. That'll just raise more questions than either one of us want to answer."
Knowing that he was right, she nodded, reluctantly, "At least let me clean it."
He chuckled lightly before posing the question, "With what exactly?"
Again being bested by Michael Vaughn, Sydney glanced around their location, carefully avoiding the burning building behind them. "There's a convenience store down the road about a mile." She took a step, grabbing onto his good arm, trying to pull him along.
But he stayed rooted to the spot, "How do you know?"
"We're in Winter Park." She answered calmly, pulling on his arm and forcing him to walk with her. "When I needed a break, I would take a weekend off and go to the mountains for a quiet weekend. I used to jog up here when I was in Winter Park."
Vaughn mentally calculated the distance between Winter Park, a ski resort town in the mountains of Colorado and North Glenn, figuring that it was about a hundred miles. Hold the phone a second, a hundred miles? Sloane wasn't that big of an idiot, was he? Isn't it like written in the Bad Guy's Handbook to Kidnapping somewhere that you always take your victim to a foreign country? Sloane would know this without a handbook, so why did he do something so stupid? Was it even really Sloane? He shook off that thought, turning his attention back to Sydney. "Anything to see in Winter Park?"
She smiled, and shook her head, "Not much here besides the ski resort and it's closed this late in the season, not enough snow." She didn't say anymore on the subject and he was content with that.
They walked the rest of the distance in silence until the blinking lights of the convenience store in the near distance. Sydney stopped him outside the store, much to his bewilderment, so she explained. "If you go in there with that bleeding arm, there would be more questions than with the hospital. So why don't I go get the stuff, and you go to the bathroom, it's around the corner, and wait for me there."
Vaughn smiled at her concern for him and nodded along with her plan until he remembered something, "What exactly are you going to use to pay for the stuff?" He assumed that any money she might have had with her was long gone like his wallet.
She smiled, devilishly, something up her sleeve as always, "I know the cashier. One minuscule glimpse of these," She pointed to her chest, "And he'll give me anything I want for free."
"You know I don't like the idea of you using your body for free stuff," He teased, gently.
"And I don't like the idea of you being injured, so we go with my plan." She teased back, bending down to hike up her skirt a little, and rearranging her blouse so it rest a little lower on her chest than it was originally supposed to. "Wish me luck," She said already with a fake smile on her lips. He waited until the store door closed behind her to make his way over to the bathroom around the corner. What was with bathrooms being outside the convenience store in these mountain states?
The door was unlocked, meaning that no one was inside, so he slipped inside, flipping on the lights, and waiting a couple seconds for his eyes to adjust from the complete blackness of the night outside to the florescent lights in the bathroom. It was very dirty, that fact stood out above the rest.
Not even ten minutes later, Sydney knocked once before entering the bathroom, a small plastic bag full of simple medical supplies in hand. "Sit." She instructed, pointing to the toilet which thankfully had the lid down. Vaughn did as he was told as she set the bag on the sink counter and began to take things out of it. "Take off your shirt." She added. He did as he was told, again, and waited until she turned around, a small gasp escaping her lips as she spot his bare chest before smiling.
He watched as she took some gauze, wet it and brushed the face dirt off his wound. Then satisfied with that, she took another strip of gauze and coated it in antiseptic. She grimaced along with him when she touched the piece of gauze to his arm, eliciting a small 'hiss' from Vaughn. "I'm sorry," She whispered, lifting the gauze from one spot and placing on another.
"It's fine," He answered, looking away from her so she would see his pained expression.
He's too cute when he tries to hide that he's in pain. She shook her head and turned back to the sink, thankfully taking the piece of gauze with her. Unable to find a trash can, she just tossed it back into the bag, and lifted a large bandage box off its place on the counter. Spreading some antibacterial cream on it to keep the wound clean, she turned from the counter and back to him before pressing the bandage onto his arm. She twisted awkwardly behind her to grab the bandage tape needed to hold the bandage onto his arm and proceeded to tape it to his arm.
"There, that should do until you get something better." She said, stepping back and tossing everything, no matter if it had been used or not, into the bag.
He reached for his shirt with his good arm and stood up to put it on, "When we get back to L.A., I'll go see a doctor."
She visibly flinched when he said 'we' and 'L.A.' He doesn't honestly think that I'm going to go back to L.A. does he? Back to the spy world and all the lies and crap I had to put up with? Not to mention my dad. She turned and met his eyes. The look of hope in them told her that was exactly what he was thinking, except maybe the spy part and the lies and crap and most likely her dad. So basically he just expected her to go back to L.A. with him.
"Is something wrong?" He asked, noticing her flinch and her troubled expression.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly before answering, "Vaughn, I'm not going back to L.A."
A/N: I know, I didn't spend a lot of time on the 'who was the bad guy kidnapper' thing but I was so excited to get to the S/V loving, in a sense, that I kinda just sped that up and please don't hate me because of it.
Agent Flamingo- Now I have that song stuck in my head. 'Syd and Vaughn sittin in a tree'. that's okay, it's a cool song. I really hope that you liked this chapter. Be brutally honest if you hated it.
Heidi- I know, cliffhangers can be evil but they keep me writing so they can't be that bad can they? Me writing equal more chapters sooner. And that's good. lol.
ProvidenceSea- I know. me and my cliffhangers. we should get married! lol. i know that makes like no sense but whatever. me in a weird mood.
TheUptownGirl- Like I could ever have Syd and Vaughn seriously hurt or killed. I love them. Maybe I could, but it would always end up happy in the end.
cg's-gal-72689- I know you don't like cliffhangers but they keep me writing so learn to like them. lol.
Loozy- Still loving the more! more! more! more! thing. so funny!
Erin- How's 13 days sound? Better than 3 weeks and it's one day before 2. lol. I'm glad they made up too.
rainluver- Thank you for the hugs, except the one you took away. lol. Hugs back! ::hug:: yes, school is evil but i'm going to work around it now. That's cool that you're in a band. I'm not musical at all, except maybe singing but even then, not that great.
Julia- What worked? lol. Me happy they made up too.
Charmed-angel4- I dunno. When should we? It doesn't matter anyway, we'd both forget and miss it, so we could be mad at each other without even knowing it. lol. that's does not make a lot of sense.
Fair Cate- Finally, I get someone to compliment the cliffhanger instead of calling it evil. lol. a hug for you! ::hug::.
Grouchy- lol, i know what you mean about the hecticness of school but i'm just going to have to work around it.
daisyduke947- What was rude?
Ren201- But I want to read your stories! I like to read the stories of people that review my stories. spread the love a little. We should change kidnapper to spynapper. that's a way cooler word than kidnapper. i mean, they're not children. they're spy damnit! lol.