FIFTEEN
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Amy scrambled over the fence and landed in a heap in the grass on the other side. She cried out in pain but then just panted in desperate air. She listened, swallowing to try to lubricate a painfully dry throat.
Nothing moved. She counted to sixty.
Listening to her heart, trying to quash the raging fear that someone who very seriously wanted to kill her might have followed her, she squeezed her eyes shut and waited another sixty seconds.
Then she rolled to her side and pulled out her phone. A quick scroll and she was tapping at a name, holding the phone to her ear. "Sean? It's me," she said shakily. "Yeah - did you get the footage?" She paused to listen. "Oh thank god. I think I just had like three heart attacks but if it's all there then it was worth it."
She nodded as Sean on the other end spoke at length. Finally she rolled onto her back, looking up at the night sky.
"Well if you can get a good shot of their faces then I hope it ends up on the front page," she gabbled. "Yeah they were in masks but… there must be something that distinguishes them, right? Well… we can hope." She felt the all-over fear morphing into relief and exhaustion. "Ok. I'm going home. Look after all the footage. Let Mr Axford know the team can edit or play with it - whatever he wants." She nodded to herself. "Will do." She tapped the red button to end the call, then let her phone fall to her chest. "What a night."
Then she got up carefully, looked back over the fence, and skulked across the private lawn, hoping to make it over the next fence without setting off any security lights.
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Kato undid the hidden fasteners on his coat slowly, groaning in a mixture of pain and fatigue as he sagged back into the couch. Safely ensconced in Britt's man-cave of miscellaneous minutiae, he finally let himself relax.
Britt appeared round the corner carrying a red box. "Just keep still a minute," he urged, juggling that and a towel down onto the arm of the sofa furthest from the man in pain. He landed in the seat next to him, taking off Kato's hat and dropping it to his lap.
"I can do it," Kato grumped. He took his gloves off and then put his hand to his mask - and hissed and stopped.
"You ok?" Britt asked.
"It's stuck." He pulled carefully and Britt watched in horror as semi-dried, semi-gooey blood tried very hard not to give up the arm of the mask from his skin.
"That's gross," he winced.
"Worse than a bullet wound?" Kato tutted. He pulled the mask free and let it drop into his hat. "How bad is it?"
"There's blood everywhere," Britt sighed. "I'll try to clean it so I can see what we're dealing with here." He opened up the box but Kato was pulling his coat off, lying it out on his arm of the couch. Britt found a large sterile cloth in a packet and opened it up, popping the lid off a bottle and slapping the cloth over the top to swish it upside down. "So what was your girlfriend doing there?"
"I don't know," Kato said irritably. "She said she did fact-checking for journalists, not actual spying on people."
"Yeah well, she might be lying to pretend she doesn't have a secret life. I don't think you can trust her - I mean who does that?"
Kato turned his head deliberately and stared at him.
"What?" Britt asked in all innocence.
Kato's eyes narrowed as his lips pursed so hard small dimples of anger appeared. He stared.
"Well - I mean - apart from superheroes like us, man," Britt grinned. He swept all of Kato's hair back and pressed the cloth into the top of the dried blood pattern, not stopping when the recipient of his care hissed. It started to melt and come away on the cloth, and he repeated the somewhat rough sponging until it was all gone. "Yeah - that's pretty bad. She got you good, dude."
"She is good at swinging a bowling ball," he muttered rather ruefully.
Britt grinned. "Really? You went bowling? Did you win?"
"No."
"Well she's got an arm on her, I'll give you that," he said, going back to the box and finding small Steri-strips. "Let me stick you back together before you move."
"Do your best."
He grinned and was very, very careful how he used two Steri-strips to grip the skin and keep the not insignificant gash in Kato's temple together.
He picked up a small tube but Kato took it off him. "Not that."
"Dude it's like superglue for skin - it'll seal it," Britt argued, whisking it back off him.
"You put it on before the strips, idiot," Kato tutted. "If you put it on now you will superglue the strips to my head."
Britt suppressed a laugh. "No yeah - sorry. You're right. I am a dumbass."
"Not all the time."
"But hey - we got away. And like, Amy got away too, right?"
"I can't believe you left her there."
"Bro, she left me!" Britt protested. "I told her to run and she took off like Usain Bolt. You didn't tell me she was a runner."
"I didn't know," he sighed. "Like I don't know a lot of things about her, it seems."
Britt peered at the cut, found it starting to ooze a slight amount of blood, and went back to the box. He cracked open a sterile packet with a small pad in it and pressed it over the strips. "Hold that there."
Kato held it in place as Britt found some tape, using it to secure the pad to his temple.
He sat back, all done, and then picked everything up and dumped it back in the box, snapping the lid shut.
Kato watched his hands on the box. "Thank you."
"For cleaning you up? Hey - that was easy. I don't do bullet wounds but little cuts like that? No sweat."
"No, I mean… for what you said. To Sapphire."
Britt's face went slack and his eyes went across the room, wandering around blindly. No matter how much he hoped, they did not stumble into anything remotely resembling an idea. "What did I say?"
Kato rolled his eyes. "You said I was not the sidekick, that I was a partner."
"Oh! Yeah - that. Totally, dude," he shrugged. He paused, looking uncomfortable. "You know…"
"What?"
"It's a pain in the ass having to hide things from Amy and lie about where you've been, but…"
"What?" Kato asked quietly, not looking at him.
"But… She seems pretty cool, man. I mean she got you with a rock. And she was like out of her head scared but she still mouthed off at the bad guys, right?" He slapped a hand on Kato's shoulder and then used it to push himself up. "I'm just saying… she's got balls, man. Like solid rock." He picked up the box, turning to go.
"You think so?" Kato asked.
Britt smiled as he turned. "Yeah, man, I do. You got a good one there." He looked at his feet.
Kato sniffed. He felt at the dressing in his head before letting his hand drop. "So… you want to go to the bar now?"
"Seriously?" Britt grinned. "Like now?"
Kato shrugged.
Britt thought for a second. "Uh… I don't think that would be a good idea. …But we got beers here. You want one?"
"I think I do."
"Let me get a load - don't move," he said excitedly, careening off round the door to the room.
Kato smiled to himself, settling back in the couch. He lifted his boot onto the coffee table to stretch out, crossing the ankle with the other one. He hissed and felt down his right side - and when he brought his hand back it was damp. He sighed, shaking his head, as his hand went back down and he pressed at the pad over the stitches in his side.
Britt re-appeared, three bottles of beer in each hand. "Right, first you can tell me all about that time you were a kid and you and some friends stole a car. That sounds dope." He set the bottles down, already twisting off a cap and leaning to hand it to him.
"Ok but… get the box," Kato managed, nodding to the first aid kit.
"What for?" Britt asked. He picked it up anyway, sitting himself down close enough to reach Kato's head again.
Kato lifted his hand from his side, displaying the red smudge on his fingers.
"Whoops," Britt allowed. "Ok - I'll clean, you talk."
"I'll clean."
"Ok but you still talk."
"Fine." Kato paused. "And then we tell Lenore what happened. She will know what to do."
"Yeah. —After you tell me about the car you stole."
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The shout outside Lenore's front door made her smile. "I still can't understand why I get a paper every morning when I actually work for the place and could just read the app." She turned off the gas to the stove, lifting the frying pan and sliding her scrambled eggs onto her toast. Whisking up a knife and fork, she carried the plate to her kitchen table and set it down next to her coffee. Then she went to the front door and opened it up, breathing in the cool yet fresh morning air. She went across the small lawn, enjoying the warm morning sun, and picked up her newspaper delivery, carrying it back inside and letting the good vibes of the morning get her ready for the front page, her breakfast, and maybe a crossword before she had to fire up her work laptop for the day.
She cut up her toast first, the scrambled egg atop just kind of going with it until she speared a piece and had it in her mouth. She smiled in relaxation and enjoyment, sipping at her coffee and picking up the paper. She unfolded it to get a look at the front page.
And nearly choked.
She coughed down the sharp toast and poor misunderstood egg as she stared wide-eyed at the headline.
'GREEN HORNET IN DRUGS CARTEL MEET'
Two full-size pictures underneath made her mouth lose its mooring and simply hang limply. Very sharp but also quite dark, they quite clearly showed a woman and a man in some kind of room, facing the Green Hornet and a masked man. They did not seem to be at war, and yet something about their stances did not seem entirely copacetic. Immediately she lifted the paper closer to her nose, peering intently at the two masked men, turning the paper this way and that to try to glean any clues from the images.
Then she shook her head and instead read the article below. "… Meeting at a secret location… talk of a gang war…" She sat back and swore. At length.
Then she got up and found her phone.
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Doug picked up his coffee mug and then swept up Sean's. "You want one?"
"Why not," Sean muttered, still typing away at something.
Doug walked off, going down the stairs one floor to get to the break room. He walked in and found someone peering intently at the instructions on the coffee machine. He walked over with a grin. "So you can capture the most awesome footage of Sapphire the drugs kingpin and the Green Hornet ever filmed, and yet you can't make a simple coffee?"
Amy jumped in surprise, then turned and looked up at him. "Oh - morning," she said. "No, I still can't figure this thing out. It's like…. I understand all the words it uses, but I don't understand the way they put them together in a sentence."
"Here - let me." He stepped up to the machine and she gave him room, folding her arms and watching as he began to pull on settings and open trays. "How many people have asked for your autograph this morning?" he grinned.
"Me?"
"You've seen the front page, right? And it's all over our app - even some of the video. You prepped it, right?"
"I just got the footage - the media department did all the magic," she said.
"Well it's seriously awesome. This is the big thing that all the other papers are going to wish they had been in on." He set her cup underneath a spout, setting the machine to run.
"I know, right?" she grinned. "Take that, Tribune. I'd like to see that editor's face this morning."
"So what have you got planned for tonight?"
"Tonight?" she asked. "What do you mean?"
"Well is your man taking you out to celebrate or what?" He pulled a few switches and milk started to froth into her cup.
"My man?"
"You know - the EA from the top floor," he winked. She frowned. "Oh come on, Amy - everyone knows. Everyone's talking about you two."
"Well I wish they wouldn't," she said quietly.
He turned, handing her the coffee. "Not like being mean, but… It's like they're all cheering you on, right? Like you're their favourite team - Steve called you 'OTP', whatever that means," he teased. "And look, the dude seems nice. And he's hot. Honestly, if you don't want him, I'll have him."
She blushed, smiling as she smelt the rim of her mug. "Well you can tell everyone I don't like being the topic of everyone's gossip," she said. "But… yes, he is nice."
Doug chuckled, turning back to the machine and resetting it for his own recipe. "So where's he taking you?"
"You're so old-fashioned," she smiled. "Maybe I'm taking him somewhere."
"Well where?"
"I haven't decided yet. But… definitely somewhere calm, where nothing can surprise me or scare me out of my wits again. I nearly died of fright about six times last night getting that footage."
He chuckled again, shaking his head. "Well everyone's very proud. You definitely deserve a good night out."
"Thank you," she said airily, then just giggled and walked to the door. "Thanks for the coffee."
"Oh, my pleasure, believe me," he said with a wave.
She walked out, noticing people stopping to look up at her as she went up the stairs, finding her floor.
She was sat down a whole two minutes before she turned her chair deliberately, eyeing everyone who had stopped to watch her. "What?" she managed quietly.
Someone clapped. And then someone else did. Pretty soon the entire floor was on their feet, giving her a standing ovation.
She went bright red and waved her hands. "Stop! Please!" she called, and the noise died down. "Thank all the editing staff and the video woman - I didn't do any of the post-video work or the uploading or write any articles."
"No but without your footage as evidence there would be no story," said a voice, and she looked round. Mike Axford walked over to her, putting his hand out. "Well done, Amy. Very well done. A shame you didn't get that other thing we were after, but still - excellent work."
She shook it lamely, nodding. "Thanks, Mr Axford."
He let go, patted the side of her shoulder, and walked away.
Amy swallowed and looked around. "Ok - all of you stop staring at me! Do some work!"
People chuckled and turned away, everyone going back to their seats. She felt her face, willing it to cool and turn back to its normal colour. And then she put a hand into her bag, retrieving her phone. She checked the screen but found no messages waiting for her.
She grinned and tapped out a message, pressing Send. She barely had time to put it down before a reply came back. She opened it up.
'I saw your work on the front page this morning. Awesome work, sis'
She put the phone down and went back to her large files of names, addresses, histories and careers that needed fact-checking.
With a smile on her face.
.
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The phone rang. And rang. And rang.
Britt blindly put his hand out and made a grab for it. His fingers collided with the corner and sent it spinning across some surface to stop just out of reach. "What the…" He opened bleary eyes, trying to work out where he was and why.
He realised he was lying on his back, one foot up on the couch next to him, the other flat out on the carpet. He appeared to have a tie knotted round his forehead and his left hand round an empty glass. A cushion was lying on his chest; shoving this to one side he managed to find the shrill noisemaker just beyond his right hand. He grunted and strained then made a desperate lunge for it. He snatched it up and jabbed at the screen, panicking he would miss the call.
"Hellooo?" he called at the bottom of the smartphone.
"Britt? Have you seen the news?"
"Lenore? Is that you? Morning, sunshine," he beamed, relaxing into the carpet on his back. "What's shakin', dude?"
"Are you drunk?" she demanded.
"Uh… not entirely," he said, but he did sound somewhat unsure. "You woke me up is all. What is it?"
"The news," she snapped. "Turn it on. Right now."
"Ok - gimme like…" He turned and crawled across the carpet as if his legs no longer worked. He made it to the coffee table in the middle of the room, grabbing up the remote and pointing it lamely at the television.
It blinked into life and he changed the channel a few times until he saw a news logo in the corner.
"Ok, I got it," he said. "Now what?"
"Keep watching. Recognise anyone?"
He frowned, trying to keep the screen in focus when it was so high up. An anchorman was talking about something, a ticker-tape of up-to-the-minute breaking news going across the bottom of the screen. Suddenly the man stopped talking and a full-screen image of something terribly familiar was plastered wide.
"Holy shit," he whispered. "That's me! Look at that - that's me! And I'm moving! Dude!"
"Yeah - the entire west coast can see you," she snapped. "You're lucky no-one's been able to ID you from that."
"And there's Kato - look! Whoa - is that when the ceiling came down and—. Oh shit - look at that!" he grinned, pushing himself up to sit properly. "That's when the guys went for us - holy—. Look at Kato go! He's just like windmilling those dudes—"
"Yeah, I saw - about seven times this morning. This is Sentinel footage, Britt. How did they get this?"
"Oh you won't believe this," he gushed. "So we get to the meet, right? We're all ready to take 'em down or get them arrested, ok? And then Sapphire says—." He paused. "Didn't we email you this last night?"
"I have one email from you, at roughly three-thirty a.m.," she said archly. "It just says 'epic night. We were the shit, lots to tell you in the morning'." She huffed. "Start talking."
"Oh… well… yeah, so Sapphire says she has an in on the police department, and when the cops were tipped off her guy on the inside changed the destination. They were never coming to our meeting." He shook his head. "Then things went bad. You know Amy, Kato's girlfriend? She just like fell out of the ceiling and told everyone she'd been videoing the whole damn thing."
"What?"
"I know, right? I mean we thought she was a fact-checker for journos, not some kind of war correspondent with fearsome wifi skills!"
Lenore sighed, long and hard, down the phone. "Ok. Let me… Ok." She paused. "Have you seen Kato?"
"Uh… we had a few drinks last night, and you woke me up, so…" He squinted around the room. "Man I hope he didn't try to ride his bike back."
"Find him, Britt. Make sure he's ok. He's still got stitches."
"Oh that's the best bit - we tried to rescue Amy last night and she full-on swung for him - with a lump of rock! She got him right in the head - poor dude couldn't walk straight till we got back to the car!"
"Britt?" she asked calmly.
"Yeah?"
"Find him!"
The line cut abruptly.
Britt blinked at it. Then he tossed it to the couch. He levered himself up to his hands and knees with an Herculean effort, before climbing onto the sofa and sagging into it. He looked around carefully, looking for any sign of his partner. Other than a discarded coat, hat and gloves, there was nothing.
He groaned and pushed himself to his feet. Rubbing a head that was starting to throb, he put a hand to the back of the couch to help him navigate it, stumbling back and around the room.
"Dude!" he called, as loud as his aching head would allow. "You here or what? Gimme a sign you're not dead!"
"停止喊叫," came a grumble from somewhere behind him.
He turned and plodded toward the other side of the room as if wading against a strong current. "In English, bro!"
"Stop shouting," was the reply.
Britt turned and stumbled back, realising the foosball table wasn't actually a foosball table. He pointed and laughed.
Kato was flat on his back, looking like he'd fallen from a great height. The backs of his knees were draped over the bottom two corners of the table, his arms flopped either side of the top ones, his head propped on the edge by the goal area. If the table had collapsed at one end he would have been sat in a wheelbarrow of knobbly players.
"Dude that has to be the most uncomfortable place in like the world!" Britt laughed.
"It hurts," Kato chuckled, his eyes trying to open. "But it will hurt more to move."
"Come on - I'll help you," he said, putting his hand to his shoulder.
He pulled his arm free. "No - I can do it."
Britt stood back, his palms up in surrender. "If you say so, dude." He watched as Kato unwedged himself from the many poles and players under his back and beyond, gripping the edges of the table to slide himself over the side. "I still say you could use the help," Britt added as he took another step back.
Kato sniffed and straightened up, lifting his chin to tilt it at Britt haughtily. "I don't need help."
Then he belched, grinned with achievement, and slipped sideways toward the floor.
Britt reached out and grabbed his arm. "Sure you don't, buddy. Come on, over here where it's soft. I had no idea you can't take your drink."
"Me?" he scoffed with a smile. "You were 'no more vodka on top of beer' and I said you were a lightweight so you added more to mine - I drink more than you!" Kato grinned, pushing him clear and aiming for the couch. He fell into it.
"Yeah you know what, I think you did," Britt allowed with a smile. "And hey, I have an unfair alcohol-to-weight ratio, so…"
"Why you wake me up?" Kato groaned, rubbing his hands in his eyes.
"Lenore called - we're on the news," he grinned. "Look!"
Kato parted his hands and peered at the TV. "That's us? That's us!" he gasped.
"Yeah man - and here's the best bit - look! It's you! Going all Donnie Yen on that guy behind you! Man that is so cool!" he gushed.
Kato watched, his eyes narrowed. Then he turned his head and looked at him. "Wait… everyone can see this?"
"Everyone. Your girlfriend must have given it to Mike at the paper. Lenore says it's all over every channel. We're the biggest thing on the west coast!"
He nodded, thinking hard, it seemed. "So… everyone has this video now? It's on all the channels?"
"If it isn't now it will be in like a few hours," Britt shrugged. He came over to the couch and bounced down into the opposite end. "I got to check on the DA. And then I'm going to bed."
"I will drive home."
"You sure?"
"I'm ok."
"Are you sure you're ok to drive?" he asked critically. "I mean the last thing we need is some cop to pull you over for drink driving and you going through the police record database with fingerprints. What if they manage to lift something from a scene somewhere and match it to you?"
"See these?" Kato asked innocently, lifting his right hand and splaying his fingers.
"Yeah…?"
"And see these?" he asked, reaching out for the gloves in the hat on the table, flapping one in Britt's face. "How will they get fingerprints from a crime scene when I wear these?"
"Yeah but…" He shrugged. "I just think you're still too drunk to drive."
He thought for a moment. "You may be right."
"I know I'm right," Britt said. "This is the most I've seen you happy in like… ever."
Kato sat back, shaking his head. "I find that spare room I had last time - sleep in there."
"It's still there, any time you want it." He got up. "I'll tell Mike we're working on something so we won't be in. I don't think he'll even notice, not with them riding high with all that footage, but hey. Gotta have a cover story." He patted his shoulder, then walked off.
He was almost out of the room before Kato turned his head. "Britt?"
"Yep?" He turned to look back at him.
"Last night was fun."
"Yes it was," he grinned. Then he twirled around and disappeared.
Kato got up, switched off the TV, and then went deeper into the house, looking for the spare room.
