Bounty Hunter Diaries: Chapter 12: Plan B
A/N: Helloo my lovely and loyal readers. Here is Chapter 12 in all its un-beta'd glory. It's short, but I thought I should get it out there before I marked the 1 year of no-updating anniversary in August. Sorry I suck. Anyway, enjoy. The plot bunnies have taken over!
Rated for cursing, sexual overtones and Dorothy's eyebrows.
Chapter 12: Plan B
There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING that improves one's general outlook on life like a night of hot, sweaty sex with a drop-dead gorgeous man. Believe me. I know. There is also nothing as exhausting as a night of hot, sweaty sex, so, the morning after, I was in no mood to do much of anything, not even roll out of the new Hilde-shaped crater in my mattress. All I wanted to do was lay there and bask in the afterglow and occasionally look over at the man sleeping next to me to make sure he was really there and not a figment of my imagination. I was checking to confirm his reality a fifth time and contemplating different ways to wake him up when someone started pounding on my front door. Dammit. Nothing good ever happens when someone starts pounding on my front door.
Duo dragged open one sleepy amethyst eye and frowned at me. "Don't you have a doorbell?" he asked grumpily.
I sighed, sat up and began fishing around for some clothes. "Yeah, but no one ever seems to use it."
He rolled onto his back and ran his hands over his face, the movement slipping the bed sheet down and giving me a nice view of his well-defined chest. I don't know how long I ogled him before he cocked an eyebrow in annoyance and gestured towards the door. "I'm flattered you want to molest me some more, Hilde-babe, but whoever is at your front door is starting to get angry." Indeed, the pounding was getting louder and I could hear someone cursing.
"Dammit." Giving him one long last look, I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed, grabbed a discarded shirt that turned out to be his and made myself somewhat presentable before marching to the front door, hollering at the top of my lungs that I could hear them knocking just fine.
I wrenched the door open, fully prepared to give whoever was disturbing me an earful, but stopped in my tracks when I saw Heero, Quatre and about four or five uniformed officers standing on my doorstep, looking grim. "We weren't that loud last night, were we? Did old Mrs. Ledbetter call in a noise complaint?" I asked cheekily, hoping to make one of them crack a smile. If one of them smiled, things weren't as dire as they appeared.
No one smiled. Shit.
"Hilde, is Duo here?" Quatre asked gently before Heero could open his mouth and say something offensive.
"Why?" I asked uncomfortably.
"Yes, why? I'm curious." Duo appeared at my side, wearing only his jeans since I was wearing his shirt, a small silver cross swinging on his neck.
Before Quatre could formulate an answer, Heero flipped what looked like a photograph at Duo, who caught it easily. The man in the photograph was unrecognizable to me, mostly because what was left of his face had been reduced to what looked like raw hamburger. I felt my stomach turn over at the grotesque sight.
Even though I didn't recognize the body, Duo clearly did because he let forth with a long stream of curse words, some of them new to me.
"We have a witness who says he saw you leave this building last night." Quatre said, almost apologetically.
"But he was here last night…" I began and then remembered the meeting he had left for soon after dropping me off.
"But not all night, Hilde. We know that." Quatre murmured.
I looked at Duo's dark face, fear making my nausea worse. "Duo?"
"He was alive when I left, babe." Duo said evenly as he handed Heero the photo. "But I assume that makes no difference, right?"
"I'm sorry, Duo, but given the events of the past couple of weeks, the captain wants us to bring you in." Quatre gestured to the uniformed officers standing behind him. "We really don't have a choice."
"I bet Zechs is just about beside himself with glee." Duo muttered.
For once, Heero cracked a smile, a grim one, but a smile nonetheless. "He's doing cartwheels."
Under normal circumstances, I might have laughed, or at least been shocked at Heero making a joke, but I wasn't exactly thinking clearly.
Duo sighed and ran a hand through his messy hair. "All right. Let me get dressed and I'll go with you." He glanced over at me and a small smile graced his severe expression. "I'll need my shirt back, babe."
I turned bright red and started to stutter something, but Heero interrupted me.
"Don't do anything stupid, Maxwell. We have people watching the building." He said darkly, all humor gone.
"Don't worry, Yuy. I'm a little too old to be jumping out of windows."
Duo grabbed my hand and dragged me back into my bedroom, leaving the door open a few inches so as not to alarm the police. "Treize is getting desperate, Hilde." He muttered as I shrugged out of his shirt and handed it to him. "And the more desperate he gets, the sloppier he'll be. They'll get him if he's careless enough."
I located a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt and slipped them on quickly. "And what if they don't?" I asked, a quiver of fear running through my words.
Duo looked grim as he buttoned up his shirt. "I don't have a Plan B." He admitted. "Usually I do, but Trieze caught me off guard." He sat on the bed and fished around until he found his socks and boots. I watched him as he pulled them on, wringing my hands because that was all I could do at the moment. He laced up his boots and sat for a long moment, his mind clearly percolating.
Finally, he stood up and looked at me, his severe expression softening somewhat. "Don't worry too much, babe, you'll get wrinkles."
I smacked him, but it was half-hearted. He caught my hand and used it to pull me into him. "I think you'll have to be my Plan B, Hilde. I don't want to put you in danger, but with Trieze out there, you are anyway." He kissed me then but pulled away before we got too carried away. "I'll call some people and have them get into contact with you." He smoothed my hair and smiled down at me. "You might just get me out of this."
I wondered if I should be offended or not, but before I could accuse him of being a jerk, he reached around the back of his neck and unclasped his silver chain. "Keep this for me, will you, babe?" He fastened the cross around my neck, his hands dropping to toy with the small charm.
"We don't have all day, Maxwell." Heero called from the living room.
"I'm coming." Duo called back, making a face in Heero's general direction. He gave me another kiss. "Keep safe. I'm counting on you." He said softly, and then he was gone.
It just figures that the moment I would find a perfect man, he'd get framed for murder and arrested. Dammit.
Given the way my day had begun, I wasn't expecting it to get any better, and I was right.
Duo had said he would get into contact with some people, so I figured I should wait at home for them to find me. I was beginning to go out of my mind around hour five when someone rang my doorbell. That was a change. Usually people just ignored the doorbell and went straight to pounding on my damn door.
I had my gun handy when I opened the door, the brass safety chain rattling a little.
"Hilde, right?" A woman asked. I was looking straight up at the strangest pair of eyebrows I had ever seen outside Trieze Khushrenanda. Beneath them, a pair of dark blue eyes studied me. "Duo called me and told me to come find you."
Other than her eyebrows, the woman looked harmless enough. I nodded and shut the door so I could undo the chain and let her in.
I opened the door for her and she waltzed into my apartment, leaving a trail of Chanel No. 5 perfume in her wake. I had to take a few seconds to get my voice back after I got a good look at her. She was tall, mostly thanks to the thigh-high pair of black vinyl platform boots she was wearing, which matched her barely there shiny black skirt. She wore a red and black lace bustier, had dragon-lady talon-like red nails and long blonde hair that went down past her waist. What the hell? Duo had sent me a stripper.
She smiled at me, her lips as red as her nails. "My name is Dorothy Catalonia." She offered a hand and I took it, still unable to form words.
Finally, I managed to croak out, "Aren't you a dominatrix?" Visions of her whipping the living daylights out of Wufei went dancing across my mind and I shuddered.
Her lethal smile broadened. "One of the best. But I help Duo out from time to time, sort of a hobby." She waved a long-clawed hand around in the air.
Okay, so Duo had sent me a stripper/dominatrix/amateur bounty hunter. "Where do you keep your gun?" I squeaked.
"You don't want to know." A gruff voice chuckled from the still-open doorway.
I turned around and was face to face with what looked like a grizzled, bearded homeless man in a Hawaiian shirt. The man pushed up his sunglasses and grinned at me. "You must be Hilde. I'm Howard."
Because of my completely lost and bewildered expression, Homeless Man Howard hastened to explain further. "I've been told you need some help."
In order to catch a ruthless master criminal and save him from a lifetime in prison, Duo had sent me a crack team consisting of a dominatrix and a homeless man. Looks like Plan B was doomed and it hadn't even gotten off the ground.