The shot went down his throat like liquid fire. Fine stuff, this. He gasped for breath and slapped the glass on the bar.
"Oi, mate, you're not out yet, are you?" a voice to his right said. Rather slurred, he thought; amateur. "Neh, just warmin' up." Rather slurred, he thought; then, oh, bugger, that's me. He giggled. The voice to his right laughed as well. "What's yer name again, mate?"
Good question. It took him a moment to get the right answer. "Bryce."
"One more for my man Bryce!" A hand clapped Bryce on his shoulder. He turned to look at the owner of the voice and the hand. Not bad, not at all. "I'm Nate," said the owner, picking up his shot and downing it in one gulp.
"Nate, me mate!" Bryce said, downing his shot and laughing.
It was a few shots later when Nate suggested a breath of fresh air. The air in the back alley behind the pub was scarcely more tolerable than the air inside, but with the ponderous cunning of the highly intoxicated, Bryce guessed that the air business might be a pretext. He was delighted to be proven right when he was pushed against the stone wall, and Nate tilted his head for a snog. Attractive enough bloke, Bryce decided, and opened his mouth to help the process along. He grabbed a handful of hair, more for balance than affection.
After a few minutes of this, Nate pulled back. "Whew, mate, you're sexshy." He fumbled with his pants. "Howsh about a little suck, boy?"
Bryce is a petulant drunk, and a blow in a dirty alley was not on his agenda. "Go bugger yerself," he snapped, pushing at Nate's chest.
The other man swayed back briefly, taken by surprise, but leaned forward with narrowed eyes and grabbed Bryce's arm. "Fuckin' cocktease, eh, man?" He bent the arm that he was holding, intending to bring Bryce to his knees. Bryce turned his wrist in, wrenching it out of Nate's grasp. He spun around, intending to hare it, but Nate grabbed his other arm and swung him back against the stone wall, hard. He lifted a fist and popped Bryce in the nose. Bryce saw stars. His vision cleared after a half second, just time enough to see the fist raised for another blow.
Bryce cringed. But the blow did not land; another hand covered the fist and pulled back. Nate spun about, and the figure now visible behind him stabbed fingers towards his throat. Nate went down gagging, and the figure knocked the wind out of him with a well-placed kick.
Bryce wiped blood from his nose and tried to make sense of the situation. Someone had removed Croft Manor from around Hillary, and the alley just did not look right sitting around the impeccably dressed butler in its place. Especially the gold watch-chain. The alley simply did not belong with that gold watch-chain.
He was still pondering this issue when Hillary grabbed his wrist and, none too gently, hauled him to his feet and down the alley.
"Wait," said Bryce, and, more loudly, "Wait!" when Hillary ignored him. Bryce twisted his wrist at the same time that he wrenched at the fingers around his wrist. Hillary let go, grabbed his other wrist, and continued down the alley. "I am not going back!" said Bryce, desperately. Hillary said nothing, and Bryce remembered that he was the type of bugger who wouldn't argue with a drunk man. Bryce briefly debated pretending to abruptly sober up, but found himself stuffed into the passenger seat of a Mini before he had made up his mind on that one. He fumbled for the door latch, but Hillary had already hopped into the driver's seat, and rapped him smartly on his left hand before fastening his seatbelt. "Oy, man," Bryce complained softly, cradling the injured wrist and his injured pride. Hillary said nothing, and the tightness around his mouth was lost on Bryce as the smaller man leaned out of the open window in a dark funk. They sped down the road.
That Jeep, he decided, was definitely heading towards them too quickly.
Then the world turned upside-down.
xxxxxx
Lara stepped out of the Aston-Martin and walked towards the tight knot of emergency vehicles, their blue strobes lending the scene a surreal quality. She had expected trouble when Hillary left to go find Bryce after his unexplained two-day absence, but she had expected it to be of a more personal nature. A handsome, square-jawed bobby detached himself from the cluster of whut's-all-this-ers around the scene and walked towards Lara.
"Lady Croft?"
"Sergeant," she replied with a nod. "Thank you for the call."
The bobby nodded towards the heap of blue metal that had been a Mini. "Pulled your name from the registration. Hit and then run off, looks like. The passenger was unconscious, but the docs on the scene say he's fine, just a little knocked about."
Lara thanked the sergeant, then walked to the former Mini. A solid hit on the left side, she decided, at a good rate of speed. She reached into the remains of the back seat - and frowned. She pulled out the bag that Hillary had taken with him, with his hunting knife and phone in it. Strange as it would be to run off after an accident, leaving Bryce behind, it would be even stranger for him to leave this behind, as well.
"All right, Lara?" Bryce's voice came from behind her.
"No, Bryce," she sighed. "Things are very much not all right."
xxxxxx
Closed eyelids were no match for the fury of the sun. It stabbed right through, penetrating to his brain in a double needle of pain. He groaned, softly. This was the mother of all hangovers.
He did a quick personal inventory, and decided he could not blame it all on the tequila. He had cuts and bruises on his upper body, and his nose was particularly tender. He relaxed and closed his eyes, waiting for the memories of the night before to return in an abrupt and humiliating fashion. They obliged, exceeding his expectations, and he groaned in earnest.
Excessively loud footsteps came towards him. He dared cracking his eyes open, and saw Lara in front of him, her face a stormcloud. She handed him two tablets and a glass of water. "Quickly. I need your brain working again."
Bryce swallowed the ibuprofen gratefully. He looked around, noting that he was on a couch in the living room. "What happened?"
"You need to tell me that." Her voice would make a glacier shiver.
"Lara, I told you when I came that I couldn't stay. It's not me nature. I'm too independent to be tied down."
"Fine. So you were out demonstrating your independence by getting blind drunk. What next?"
Only blind drunk? Hillary didn't tell her about... ? He looked around. "Oy, where's Hillary?"
"That's what I was hoping you would tell me."
Bryce closed his eyes and willed his memory to clear. "He picked me up and dumped me in the Mini. We were takin' a straight shot back, near as I can tell. Then that Jeep rammed us, and I passed out."
"What can you remember about the Jeep?"
Bryce shrugged. "Darkish color."
"Bloody great help you are," she snapped. She turned on her heel and stalked towards the door.
Bryce glowered, stood, and shoved his hands in his pockets. He froze. "Lara."
She turned to watch as he pulled a folded piece of heavy parchment out of his right-hand trouser pocket. "This ain't mine."
"Read it."
He unfolded it and read the terse message aloud.
You stole Ivan's sword. I lost a man. Do you have to lose one before I get it back?
Lara had unsheathed a knife from her hip while he read this, and was idly tapping it against her bottom teeth. "Bastard. Ivan the Terrible's sword is mine, fair and square."
"That whoppin' great scimitar you came back with last summer? You said it was a smooth job."
"It was. This bloke... Blond chap? A little fat... He was incompetent. He got to the site first by pure luck, but he dithered around while I went around a side way and took the sword. His toady pulled a gun on me. I sliced him - I didn't think I hurt him that badly. But regardless." She pointed the knife at Bryce. "That was business. This is personal."
"R... ight," said Bryce, swallowing. "What are we going to do?"
"You are going to help me identify this bastard. Then we are going to find him, and I am going to explain the rules to him." She muttered names as they walked to Bryce's study. "Toby? Tony? His last name sounded like..."
xxxxxx
Hillary took stock before opening his eyes. He was no longer moving; he was sitting on a chair in a room that was quiet and still. His hands were cuffed behind his back, arms turned around the back slats to keep them attached to the chair. They were fastened correctly, almost to the point of cutting off circulation; the typical amateur mistake was to fasten them too loosely. His feet were bare. His head was sore from when he had been pistol-whipped, but he felt otherwise unharmed.
He opened his eyes. He was in a dim, small, windowless room, one that looked hastily converted to its current function as prison. It was painted in a soothing dark red stippled over a slightly lighter red, and had the air of a guest bedroom for the least popular guest. He had been stripped to his undershirt and trousers. The only other furniture in the room was a dark brown wooden chair, seemingly the partner of the one he occupied. A man of middling years sat in it, smoking a cigarette with a nervous air. He was slightly overweight, with a florid face and thinning fair hair. He appeared to have been waiting for Hillary to wake up.
"You work for Croft?" His voice was upper-class in accent, but undistinguished otherwise. Hillary said nothing. "So-called Lady Croft stole something of mine and killed one of my men. Not exactly cricket, what?"
He stood and walked over to Hillary. "I just want my sword back. Nobody else needs to get hurt if you help me negotiate with her."
Hillary kept his silence. He had made a living of trusting Lara, and was not about to stop now.
"I don't need you to help," the man said. "It would merely make this easier. For both of us." He slowly and deliberately stubbed his cigarette out on Hillary's chest, then left the room. The lock clicked behind him.
Hillaty expelled his breath in a hiss that turned into a rude word. That had hurt. He started to explore any possibilities his unbound feet offered.
xxxxxx
An afternoon of Lara racking her brains and Bryce hacking into a number of public and private databases had finally given them a name and an address. Lara looked at the florid face on Bryce's LCD. "Toby Timmons. I might be a bastard, too, if I had a name like that."
"What next, Lara?"
"Have some dinner and put your chauffeur hat on. We're paying him a visit."
Lara had Bryce pull into a space a block away from the target. Lara checked the quiet street, then slipped out of the nondescript grey VW Golf - her Stealthmobile. Timmons lived in a moderately affluent part of London; the houses were sizeable, though not mansions, and the grounds were well-tended, if small.
Lara slipped over the stone wall of the closest house and sat in the shadows. All was quiet. She was dressed in a black catsuit, with black boots and gloves; with her black hair and olive skin, she would be all but invisible in the shadows. She trotted across the grounds, keeping low, and hopped the fence into the next yard. She waited to make sure all was quiet again, and then crossed to the next yard.
She made her quiet way to Timmons's house in this manner, and sat in his small, neat yard, considering. The bedrooms would likely be on the second floor, but the house was built in a style of architecture that felt wide lintels were beautiful. Lara shimmied silently up a drainpipe, and began to work her way down the windows. The third set of windows revealed an occupied double-bed. Lara drew a knife from her leg sheath, and made quick and quiet work of the window latch. She held her breath as she opened it, but it slid open smoothly and without a creak. She slipped over to the bed. A woman of middle years, dumpy, hair in curlers, slept alone in the bed.
Bugger.
Lara put her knife to the woman's throat, then clamped her hand firmly over the woman's mouth. The woman woke at this and screamed, but the sound did not make it past Lara's hand.
"I want Toby. Your husband?" The woman nodded, eyes the size of skeet. "I am going to take my hand off of your mouth, you are going to tell me where your husband is. Then I will leave. If you scream, I will cut your throat. Clear?" The woman nodded.
Lara removed her hand. The woman said, in an unexpectedly sweet and melodic voice, "On holiday. In France, with his business partners. I don't know where."
Lara nodded and slipped back out the window. She climbed the fence and ran back to the car along the street. "Drive," she ordered. Bryce drove.
xxxxxx
"So, yer goin' to France?" Bryce asked.
Lara was standing at his shoulder in his study, sharpening her knife on a whetstone. "No. He lied to his wife. He's nearby - and, I'm guessing, at a friend's place. See what you can dig up in terms of friends and associates."
"Blimey, Lara," Bryce sighed, "this'll take a while."
"You'd better hope he's antisocial. I get the feeling that we don't have much time."
xxxxxx
Having his feet free gave Hillary some measure of mobility, but it was of little use. He could hear nothing when he pressed his ear to the door. The chair was good solid wood, and although the joins of slats to base were not as solid and could likely be dislodged with a few solid whacks against the wall, the noise would undoubtedly be noticed. His kidnappers were not professionals, but they had studied enough to avoid many common amateur mistakes. Hillary sat back down and set himself to trying to ease the posts out more quietly.
xxxxxx
Bryce was once again chauffeur; Lara sat in the passenger's seat with a wad of addresses, making notes as she passed each one. She immediately discounted the ones that had children in the yard; it's all but impossible to keep an uninvited guest secret in a house with children. She made further judgments based on size, rooms with windows, and flats. By the time Bryce had driven her back to the manor, she had narrowed the suspects down to three.
"You're goin' to pay them a visit tonight, Lara?"
She sat back in the passenger's seat and considered that. "No. I think they're going to send me an ultimatum tonight. There's no time." She came to a decision. "Stay here. Call me when Toby the twat makes contact. I'm going hunting." She took the driver's seat, and Bryce walked back to the manor.
xxxxxx
The door opened while Hillary was still working at the chair. The florid man walked in. He had a strange, oddly familiar smell clinging to him. "Time for a change of venue," he said, walking behind Hillary. And Hillary suddenly recognized that smell, as a chloroformed cloth was held to his face.
xxxxxx
From her perch in a tree two houses down, Lara watched as two men carried a large, cloth-covered bundle to an unmarked grey van that was waiting in the driveway. She would bet both of her semiautomatics that this was the place. She slipped out of the tree and into the car, driving around the block slowly to keep the van just barely in sight.
Her phone buzzed, and she answered, still tailing the van through moderate Sunday evening traffic.
"Lara," Bryce's nervous voice said, "I have him on the other line. Swap sword for Hillary, no cops or MI-6 or they'll kill him, all that rubbish. Behind Fenchurch station at 8pm."
"Tell him I'm in the bath, and I'll be there."
"Will you?"
"No, you will." She hung up.
They were not heading directly to the rendezvous point. Lara was briefly confused - and then had to smile as they turned into a car park next to a convenience store. Beer run. This was as good a time as any.
Toby and a slender red-headed man exited the van and walked to the store, leaving only the driver up front. Lara dug around in the car and located the broad-brimmed, floppy hat she kept in the car for sunny days. She put it on and walked to the van. The driver might not know her, but the floppy brim shadowed her face. "Excuse me, sir..." she asked in a meek voice.
The driver stuck his head out of the window. "Whut?"
She smashed his face with the butt of her gun, and he fell back into the van without a sound. Lara looked around, but no passersby had seemed to notice anything amiss. She pulled the keys from the ignition and walked to the back of the van. She opened the doors and hopped in. The man sitting in the back looked bored, and went for the gun on his hip far too slowly. Lara felled him with a swift kick to the solar plexus, followed by an uppercut.
The interior of the van was dark and cluttered, but Lara had little trouble finding the cloth-wrapped bundle she had seen them carry in. She pulled back a corner of the cloth and saw that it was indeed Hillary, bleary and smelling of chloroform.
"Just lie still another minute," she said quietly. She covered him back up, hopped out, closing the doors behind her, and slipped underneath the van.
Two pairs of feet came up to the van only a few minutes later. They walked to the passenger's side door, and Lara heard a startled profanity. A bag of bottles was dropped on the ground, and all four feet trotted to the back of the van and hopped in. Lara sniffed. Amateurs.
She slid forward, twisted, grabbed the bumper, and pulled herself lightly into the van's interior, pulling the door closed with one hand and drawing her gun with the other. The red-headed man had his back to her, and she hit him hard on the back of the neck with her gun's butt. Toby was on his way to his feet, and she stepped forward and pressed the gun to his forehead. He froze.
"There are rules to this business. You would do well to learn them. First. Finders, keepers. Second. Anything goes on the raid, but once back home," she leaned in closer, "be civilized." She stepped back. "The sword is mine. Piss off." She kicked him as hard as she could in the groin - which is quite hard - and he folded with a pained wheeze. She pulled the cloth off of Hillary. "Come on. Time to go."
He was still very woozy, and she had to pull his arm over her shoulder and help him to the car. She ran back to the van, grabbed the beer, and tossed it in the back seat. "Back home," she said with a smile.
xxxxxx
Hillary was fairly conscious again when they arrived back at the manor. He assured Lara that he was fine, in need of just a hot bath and some rest. This lead to a fairly predictable altercation in the bathroom as Lara attempted to get his clothes off and see for herself - only partly out of concern, and mostly to irritate the prudish butler. He finally managed to fend her off. He drew a steaming hot bath, tossed off his filthy clothes, and settled in with a sigh.
Lara sat on a couch in the living room with a book and one of the swiped beers. She put her feet up, and was two chapters in before her phone buzzed.
"Lara?" asked Bryce. "I've been here an hour, and they haven't shown up."
"Oh, I'm sorry, Bryce," she replied, voice dripping with saccharine sincerity. "I forgot to tell you - I took care of it. Come back."
Bryce muttered a few bad words and hung up.
Bryce walked into the living room. Lara looked up from her book, jerked her head towards the staircase, and said, "Bath." She turned back to her book. Bryce mounted the staircase with a heavy tread.
xxxxxx
Hillary called "Come in," to the knock at the door, expecting Lara. Instead, Bryce's sharp-edged face came around the edge of the door, followed by his lean body. Hillary looked away.
"All right, man?" asked Bryce.
"Not bad."
Bryce sat next to the bath. "I'm sorry."
"For running off like that?" Hillary scrubbed fiercely at his chest. "Why did you do it?"
"I needed out, mate. I needed a break."
"That wasn't a break; that was a bender."
Bryce sighed and rested his head against the smooth porcelain. "I was talking to Lara last week. She asked me if I loved you."
An uncomfortable silence settled over them. Hillary finally broke it. "And you couldn't decide."
"This ain't the way I work. I don't think I've loved anyone in me life." He stared fiercely at his shoes. "I'm not used to this."
Hillary turned the soap in his hands. "If I have to share you, I can't let myself love you. That's not how I work."
Bryce looked up. "I'm not askin' you to do that. I'm askin' you to..." he frowned, pondering.
"To what?" Hillary asked, testily.
"To forgive me. I'm tryin', I am."
Hillary put wet fingers tentatively on Bryce's head, and started to run them through Bryce's hair. "Try harder."
Bryce smiled and put his hand on Hillary's cheek, pulling his head down. They sat cheek to cheek for a moment, and then Bruce turned and kissed Hillary on the lips. "I will."