A/N Thanks again to Angel, my beta reader. This chapter would be a whole lot sloppier if it weren't for her. A special thanks to Twyst for his input on John McClane's 'hero' status.
Despite Lucy's initial misgivings, purchasing beer using Bethany's sister's ID ended up being completely uneventful. The store's night cashier apparently didn't care if the driver's license he held matched her face. He seemed far more interested in staring at her boobs.
Lucy quickly pushed the grocery cart across the parking lot toward the car her friend Bethany was waiting in. As she reached the rear of the vehicle, she fumbled in her jacket pocket for the car keys. They caught on the ID and it dropped to the ground at her feet. "Shit," she muttered under her breath. Leaving the license for the moment, she unlocked and opened the trunk, then bent down only to discover someone had already beaten her to it.
"You dropped something," a familiar voice said, and Lucy looked up to meet her father's dark green eyes.
"Shit," Lucy cursed again, her gaze involuntarily shifting down to the grocery cart.
"I gotta admit this isn't exactly what I would have expected to find on your grocery list." John reached into the basket and pulled out a bottle of Milwaukee's Best. "The Beast, eh? Didn't your father teach you better than this?"
She tossed her head, not meeting his eyes. "Yeah, well I'm sure he would have if he'd been around a little more."
Before he could speak the passenger side door opened and Bethany stepped out, her expression concerned. She had her hand in her purse where, no doubt, it was clenched around a can of pepper spray. After all, this was New Jersey. "Lucy?" The girl's eyes nervously darted from Lucy to the tall, bald, and completely unfamiliar man standing beside her. "Everything ok?"
He reached into his coat and pulled out his badge, flipping it open briefly to show the other girl as he replied, "I'm Detective John McClane." There was a slight pause and he waited expectantly for Bethany to make the connection between his last name and Lucy's own.
No such reaction was forth-coming. Lucy shut her eyes and sighed, "Shit," while studiously avoiding her father's increasingly irritated gaze.
"No, actually," John finally said in an even tone, "Everything's not ok, unless there happens to be a young lady named Ashley Renee Keyes in the back seat of that car somewhere." He tucked his badge away again, slightly lifting the driver's license to wave at Bethany, who paled and shook her head. "May I see your ID, please?" he politely requested, and in a harsher voice ordered Lucy, "Yours too."
Bethany quickly withdrew her wallet from her purse, showing her license to John.
"Bethany Ann Keyes? Ashley Renee Keyes?" John raised an eyebrow, comparing the two licenses. "Your sister, I take it?" His green eyes skimmed over her face before flicking back down to the pictures on the IDs. "Not much family resemblance between you two, is there?" he inquired and gave Bethany her license back.
Her voice was squeaky with nervousness as Bethany replied, "Yes sir. No sir, not much at all." The girl's hands shook slightly as she put the ID back in her wallet.
Lucy had taken her sweet time in locating her own license, rummaging through her small purse in an attempt to delay the inevitable. Finally, she handed the license over as though she were handing out a written death sentence. Her father glanced down at it and his lips tightened with anger.
John lifted his head, the amiable smile on his face failing to meet his eyes as he spoke, "Miss Keyes, I tell you what, I'm going to hang on to this other license. It's expired, so it's invalid anyway. If I were you, I'd tell your sister that for future reference she should destroy her old driver's license to prevent it from being misused. You understand me?"
"Yes sir," Bethany replied in a tiny voice, her blue eyes darting over to Lucy, who waited in sullen silence.
Nodding his approval, John gestured at the car. "Listen, Miss Keyes, why don't you get back in the car while I have a little chat with your friend, Miss Gennero, ok?" His voice was hard as he said Lucy's last name. After giving Bethany his friendliest smile, even going so far as to courteously open the car door for the girl, John turned back his daughter.
She looked her father squarely in the eyes, holding out her hand for her license. "May I have it back now?" she requested tersely.
John hesitated a moment before pressing it into her palm, and watched as she quickly tucked it back into her purse. Then he quietly asked, "Are you that ashamed of my name?" This time, he was the one to turn his face away, avoiding her eyes as he stared across the parking lot. The dim light made his face seem shadowed and haggard.
Lucy was taken aback by the question. For some reason she had imagined this conversation going an entirely different way. Not trusting herself to respond, she merely shrugged as she shut the trunk. She gave the beer-filled cart a push into her father's hip to shove it and him out of the way, and then turned to walk around to the driver's side door.
Before she took a step, John reached out and grabbed her by the forearm, preventing her from moving away. "Lucy, wait."
"What?" she demanded, lifting her chin defiantly as she shook herself free of his grasp.
John's hand dropped to his side and he sighed, glancing at the interior of the car where Bethany was watching them curiously through the rear view mirror. He lifted his hand in a brief wave at the girl before asking Lucy, "This girl. Bethany. She a good friend of yours?"
The question seemed to come clear out of the blue, and Lucy nodded automatically. "Yes. My best friend in college, in fact. Why?"
He rested his hands on the handles of the grocery cart, staring down at the alcohol. "Whose idea was it to get the beer?"
She paused a fraction of a second before shrugging evasively, though her eyes flickered in Bethany's direction.
Unsurprised by her response, John dipped his head in acknowledgement, then turned to push the cart back toward the grocery store. As his shoulder brushed by Lucy, he stopped, leaned over, and spoke quietly. "Your best friend just used you to do something illegal. It's small, stupid, it's just beer, but it's still illegal, and you let her do it, let her use you. Don't let yourself be used. Not by anyone but especially not by your best friend." He straightened and walked off, the wheels of the grocery cart rattling on the pavement.
Lucy watched him push the cart into the grocery store, heaving a sigh that blew her bangs upward. He was right, dammit, she admitted to herself with growing anger. Why did he always have to be right when it came to stuff like this? "Shit," she swore out loud. It was the word of the night. Then she threw open the car door and climbed in behind the wheel.
Nervously biting at one of her fingernails, Bethany hurriedly asked, "Are you ok? Did you get a ticket or something?"
A sharp laugh escaped Lucy. "No. No, he didn't give me a ticket." The laughter trailed off and she turned to regard Bethany with grim resolve. "Don't ever ask me to do anything like this again. Ever. Got it?"
Her friend nodded furious agreement, wide-eyed. "I won't."
Not even two months passed before Lucy found herself in serious danger of being used again. This time, however, it wasn't by her best friend but by a complete stranger.
Thomas Gabriel was tall and handsome, with sandy brown hair and a frighteningly manic gleam in his blue eyes. He was the one ultimately responsible for the meltdown of the United States that day, from the transportation disaster to the stock market crash all the way to the nationwide power outages. And he'd kidnapped her in an attempt to control John McClane. That was working about as well as could be expected, which was not at all.
The last time Lucy had seen her father, she had been so mad that she'd told herself she never wanted to speak to him or see him again. But when she heard his voice over the walkie-talkie talking to Gabriel, she immediately realized there was nothing she wanted more than to see her dad again. He'd sounded so confident, so normal, like this sort of thing happened to him every day.
Then again, to hear her mother talk, maybe it did. Terrorists had blown up buildings, airplanes, and robbed the Federal Depository of New York blind. Who was it that the 'good guys' were lucky enough to have around when all hell broke loose? Not the police, the FBI, or Homeland Security. No, instead they got John McClane.
Even though Lucy had grown up hearing the word 'hero' attached to her father's name on numerous occasions, it had never quite set in with her, the sheer magnitude of things he'd done and how many people he'd saved. And despite the numerous magazine and newspaper covers John's face had graced, he'd never once bragged about his actions. If anything, he spoke with regret and humility. "If I'd done things differently, maybe I could have helped save more people," she'd heard him say so many times. That, and, "Anyone else would have done the same thing, in my position." Like hell they would have.
He had struggled to keep his family life separate from the uncertainties and dangers of his normal job and the 'hero' title he'd been given. Lucy knew the hero status had not been the reason he and his wife had divorced, but it certainly hadn't helped. Police officers had a nationwide divorce rate that was as high as 75 percent. John McClane had been able to beat almost impossible odds against the terrorists he'd faced, but his luck had run out when it came to staying married and having a normal life.
As fate would have it, now there were more terrorists, and this group had quite successfully managed to break down the entire US infrastructure in a matter of hours. And once again, somehow, her father was right in the thick of things.
Not only was John involved, he just happened to be in this particular building on the third floor, en route to rescue her and absolutely willing to kill anyone that got in his way. If that wasn't good luck, she didn't know what was.
Lucy listened intently as Thomas Gabriel talked to John over the handset. It seemed bizarre, but her father's voice was calm and utterly confident in spite of all that had happened. Even when Gabriel stared her in the eye and asked John, "What makes you think I won't put a bullet in your daughter's head right now?" her father's tone never changed.
"'Cause you're scared of me."
Gabriel laughed it off, but Lucy saw the barest hint of fear in his eyes and knew her dad was right. Thomas Gabriel, terrorist, was afraid of John McClane.
Threatening McClane didn't work, so the blue-eyed man tried to reason, explaining his cause and how his actions that day had been well-deserved given his treatment at the hands of the US government. That resulted in a similar amount of success.
Finally, Gabriel exhaled with frustration, admitting, "I can't talk to this guy." He thrust the walkie-talkie at Lucy's face and grimly ordered, "You talk to him, see if you can get him to focus."
Lucy leaned forward slightly and, though she tried to keep her voice calm, she couldn't stop the slight quaver that came through as she spoke. "Dad."
There was a long pause. For a panicked moment, Lucy wondered if her dad was even going to respond. Finally, he answered, "Hi, baby," his voice warm, deep, and reassuring. Wordlessly telling her that everything was going to be alright.
There were many things Lucy knew she could say to her father. Things like, "I'm sorry I called you an asshole yesterday," or "I love you," or even, "I don't want to die."
But Lucy looked into bright and expectant blue eyes, knowing those were all things that Thomas Gabriel wanted her to say. In fact, they were all the things that he needed her to say, so that he could use her to keep John under control.
So she said the only thing she could say. "Now there are only five of them."