Disclaimer: I do not own the t.v. series Angel or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I claim all rights to characters of my creation, including, but not limited to, Marguerite and Sarah.
Waiting always made Marguerite antsy. Oh, she was very good at it of course. It had been part of her training. She could sit still and silent from sunset to sunrise, but it still made her jittery inside.
Lindsey, who was beside her, was no better. If anything he was worse.
"Stop fidgeting," the red-haired slayer hissed. Then she listened for a moment. The only sound that reached her ears was the shifting of a homeless man on a bench down the street. She and Lindsey were crouched in the shadows a block away from Wesley's apartment.
"My foot's asleep," he hissed back, "What's got you all worked up?"
"You're a lawyer. Where's your highly developed deductive reasoning?"
"I was a lawyer," he corrected.
"Shut-up," she replied, "I don't want to miss our signal."
Ten minutes later a soft "go" whispered across Marguerite's mind. It was the signal she'd been waiting for. She nodded at her partner in crime and they started down the street as though they were simply out for an evening walk. Anybody who saw them probably wouldn't even remember them the next day, and that was their objective.
When they reached the lobby Marguerite took a moment to survey it, and Lindsey moved to a spot in the corner where he could see the door, but he was hidden by the shadows. Marguerite sent him a "here goes nothing" smile and pulled on a pair of leather gloves she'd had in her back pocket. The last thing she needed was to be leaving finger prints for anybody to find.
Three flights of stairs later she was knocking on Wesley's door. Considering the hour he answered fairly quickly.
"What do you want now?" he frowned. He leaned in the doorway shirtless, a gun dangling from one hand. What was with this man and guns? She took the time to process that it was older and larger than the one he had in his office, but that was it, because it became apparent that he had been drinking. His words weren't slurred, but his breath reeked of liquor. That created a problem. The drugs in the syringe she carried weren't dosed for somebody who was already intoxicated.
"Well?" he demanded when her silence lingered.
Sorry, she offered mentally even as one hand came up to remove the handgun from his grasp, and the other formed a fist. He made, what was, in her opinion, a valiant attempt to stay conscious, but it was futile. His world went black as she hoisted him over her shoulder.
It was awkward going as she made her way down the steps. Not because of the weight, Marguerite probably could have lifted a couple of sumo wrestlers if she had reason to, but because Wesley was a good foot taller than she was. Still, she managed to be fairly graceful. After all, not dropping him was high on her list of priorities. Sarah was going to be royally pissed, but Marguerite hadn't seen a better alternative. A concussion they were equipped to deal with; a drug overdose they were not.
Lindsey wasn't where she'd left him. She resisted the urge to curse out loud. If the Senior Partners still didn't know what was going on and weren't listening in there was the physics employed by Wolfram&Hart. Leaving a vocal imprint wouldn't be a good idea.
Not wanting to waste anymore time Marguerite shouldered open the door and headed for the nondescript mini-van parked at the curb. Opening the back she dumped Wesley inside. Just as she was shutting the hatch a noise behind her caught her attention. She automatically took a defensive stance as she spun around.
"There you are honey!" Lindsey greeted in exaggerated cheerfulness, his southern accent heavy, "I was just tellin' this nice gentleman how darned lost we've gotten ourselves."
A step in front of him was street kid, turned vigilante, turned attorney-at-law Charles Gunn.
"Oh that's wonderful!" Marguerite replied in mock relief. The gears in her head spun as she tried to think of a way out of the situation that would allow them to make a clean get away. Nothing came to mind.
"Does this nice gentleman have a name?" she smiled and took a step forward. She flicked the syringe that was hidden up her sleeve down into her palm. In one smooth motion she slid the plastic cover off, squirted to dispel any air bubbles, and drove the needle into the bare skin above Gunn's collar. Like they said, "in for a penny, in for a pound."