Feel That Fire

Three Days Later...

Thursday - January 22nd, 2004

4:22 AM, En Route


Cold again, but only half so much as when they had first arrived. As Lily stood at the curb of the valet, waiting for the rest of them to come out from breakfast, she watched the wind in the darkened trees pick up with the beat of the small buds inside of her ears. It was some new band Shane had insisted on her listening to, an attempt if ever she saw one, to be extradited from the old classics she so loved. Shane, unlike Lily, was fresh on the market of 'what was cool.' The hours spent in the hospital during her night stay on Monday, had given the two women the chance to find each other again, the wild friendship they used to cling to like crazy. And when she had healed enough to be released on Tuesday afternoon, Lily was right there waiting for her. Shane was as much her sister as she was Jeff's, again.

With her hands in her pockets, she tried to focus on the words of the song she was listening to, but found it next to impossible when two warrior boots stomped down on the pavement beside her. Leaving the buds in and the music on high for another moment, she glanced up to see Danny smiling down and sideways at her, his hands in the pockets of his own jacket. He said nothing, only waited beside her, watching the wind, the expensive cars passing. Wondering if there was perhaps a point to his closeness, she tugged the earphones out as the song slowed, and looked back to him with a knowing, anxious sort of smile.

"What's up?" He finally asked, chuckling.

Rubbing her already red nose, she shook her head. "Not the sun yet."

"Soldiers get up before the sun, Hanson."

"Oh so I'm a soldier all of a sudden?"

"Well, I guess that truly remains to be seen." They laughed together quietly, and watched as a few of the valets fought over who would drive a Maserati to the garage. He turned back to her eventually.

"I wanted to tell you Lily, that, I think what you're willing to do for your brother's falling…I think it's pretty cool. You've got guts I didn't imagine."

She smiled in an almost embarrassed fashion and thanked him quietly.

"It'll be fine, I'll train you good."

"You?"

"Yeah, these other pricks with guns are just show offs. I'll help you keep your head in the scheme of things."

Agreeing with a grateful, warm nod and smile, they were both interrupted by the sound of the hotel's automatic side doors whooshing open with the remaining three agents. Andy was ahead of them with two large duffel bags, and Shane lead Jeff, who was also helping her to stand in her weakness.

"I hope you're ready for this Lily." Shane belted.

The single SUV was parked and waiting for them, where Andy threw the stuff in the back. It had been his own idea to stick with one car, for simple safety precautions at this point in the game. Lily yawned with a shake of her head toward the group, climbing into the back seat with Carter to her left, and a moment later, Jeff to her right.

He had hardly spoken to her or any of them in three days. The last thing he had said to her, in any respect of meaningfulness, had been on the phone the previous afternoon. She had called to check up on him, his leg, his head, as any good doctor would do. He had told her simply, "I'm good. Thanks" and then hung up quickly.

The rollercoaster continued still, the up and down, close and far away of their relationship's rekindling. Even with formal training, a doctorate in Psychology from Harvard University, she couldn't understand it.

After a few minutes of argument that she could hardly make out in her extreme tire, the truck pulled away from the curb of the hotel and narrowed its fast pace through the winding highway a second later. By the time they were high above the city on the expressway, she was ready to collapse. The coffee at breakfast had done nothing for her. The cold shower earlier hadn't helped.

4:30 a.m. had never been her friend, especially now in a car full of agents, heading off to be trained to kill. The very thought weakened her, and as she felt Andy tap the gas a little harder, a little smoother, she let go of the weight her head was capable of, and found it sliding against the back of the seat, towards a shoulder. By the time it hit the surface though, she was out, and had no idea whether it had fallen to her left and onto Carter's shoulder, or to the right, and onto the shoulder of the man who had little concern for where her head landed or didn't land.

Sands, half asleep himself, jumped at the immediate fall of her head to his shoulder. He hadn't expected that, or even known her to have been that tired. It never sounded in her voice, or her breathing at breakfast. Shock washed over him; a strange, exotic, beautiful shock at that, something he wanted too badly to admit it and something that shouldn't have confused him or covered him so much. The simple drop of a sleepless head had the capability to undo him at the seams, and he hated to know such a thing in himself. The sex, this had been great. It had always been the best with her. But since the hospital, and since Shane and Lily had decided to exclude his opinion from the commitment to save certain lives and alter others, he hadn't given her a single piece of himself, nothing to attach to.

He took a deep breath and tried to focus on the radio, the sound of the wind against the car windows, the shallow tone of Shane's snickering from the seat in front of him. It was all too much to bear in his position. He had only come along on the training excursion to tell the four of them that 'he told them so', when Lily shot herself in the foot. He wanted to hear it, the sound of a bullet through a toe, or a finger, or even just through her favorite jacket. Sands needed her to understand that she wasn't ready to be a CIA agent and that a day of training wasn't going to do anything but worry her more. He wanted them to realize that in the end, he would have to be the one to kill Tuzla anyway. And yet, as badly as he had cherished the late night idea of defying her on this day, his head was spinning with the soft scent of early lilac in her hair, on her skin, all around him.

Killing him silently.

You can do so much better than this…he told her in telepathic stride, begging her to wake up and realize her position, and that it was hardly any good for her own health anymore. I'm just a fucking prick. I was before…I am now…Jesus, I don't need this kind of guilt. Kill yourself if you want…but don't make me fall for you on the way there…

Another twenty minutes passed before the truck was slowing into place, with three other bodies scrambling, and one, tired, weak face digging into his shoulder as Lily stirred awake with pause in movement. Her hand had fallen to his thigh as she woke up against him, half smiling, half regretting it. Jeff said nothing back to her as she apologized and slid across to the opposite door to follow Carter out. He sat there, listening to the door open and close, the bags of weaponry in a half dozen hands. And he found himself concentrating on one simple detail through all of it, the faintest trace of lilac left sitting on the sleeve of his jacket.

I could taste that scent…that god awful, perfect smell.

From outside, in the hazy morning sky of grays and purples, Lily could see a few blinking plane lights, but still no sun. Andy had parked the truck in the middle of a narrow, ancient by-street of some kind, where the pavement was horribly cracked with desertion and grass grew out from the splinters of cement between. There was a dusty field lined with old railroad tracks straight ahead, a derelict brick factory building of some sort, and in the long distance of the turf, was early morning Tampa Bay, lit fashionably against the charcoal clouds. Had she not been so tired, this area would have fascinated her, the darkness of it, the neglect of fifty or more years, the silence of only wispy palm trees, high grasses, and the truck's still running engine behind her.

She glanced back and saw Shane and the other guys working with a few different guns on the hood of the car, shadows between its glowing headlights, and Jeff inside, unmoving. Part of her could have gone back at that point, pulled him out, talked to him, and said anything necessary about the continuing awkwardness. But Carter's smile with a firm hand on a large automatic weapon and vest, kept her from making up her mind.

"Let's get you suited up, Lil."

She grinned back and followed him across the short street to the open field, noting that with each step, it grew just a little bit lighter outside. Carter took to getting her into the vest with a few leg pads, all of which were heavy for their necessity. She didn't complain though, and had to admit that for a moment or two, Danny's touch, the gentle caress of his hand on her thigh or arm, was peaceful, warm, welcomed in her absence of such feelings from another.

"I know you're gonna kick ass at this shit, Doc. You're a Hanson; it's in your blood. Should have never doubted it before."

"I'm glad your confidence runs so deep, Danny. I'm going to need the reassurance when I shoot someone on accident."

Without warning, and perhaps without need for one, came to stand just behind her, his arms around her waist as he finished fastening the vest straps from front to back tightly. In her ear, his warm breath flew through her hair with the cool wind.

"I would gladly take a bullet from you."

"Oh, good." She replied trying to catch her bearings before her head spun out of control too far. "Then why don't you go stand out there by the tracks and I'll give you your wish ahead of schedule."

One more laugh, another fasten of a strap, and he patted her gently on the butt of her jeans before smirking and walking back towards the truck for something.

"Don't kill anyone without me."

"Don't hold your breath."

With the gun slung in her arm to the side, as far away as she could keep it from herself, Lily watched carefully as Shane hobbled far out into the field with Andy, their shadows dancing in the still moonlit grasses, setting up some sort of targets. She looked back in hopes of seeing Danny with another bag of guns, or a smile, or anything but what she did catch walking towards her.

In the darkness of the trees and flickering streetlamp, his glasses gave him an even more sinister appearance, one of a criminal, a vixen. She did not grin, or think, or practice a speech of any kind, she only kept her eyes trained on his cat-like sense of direction and step through the littered grass, drawn into his every slight movement of form. Time doubled, sped up, and a second later, she could smell his cologne in the frozen air, and hear his breathing throughout her head. He said nothing at first, apparently not needing to, and instead stood listening to his surroundings, getting a sense of her hesitant demeanor. Her breathing pattern alone, gave him the justification for speaking he needed.

"How's the vest?" He asked solemnly.

"Fine."

"You sure about that? Doesn't really sound fine."

Shaking her head in his direction, she moved her hand down to the straps, the rigidity of her chest bound inside, her lagging breath only now recognized as something other than nervousness around him.

"It's just a little tight, that's all."

"May I?" He offered, holding out a hand toward her as she stepped closer.

She examined the way his fingers ran along the front of the vest, ripping back the ties and straps one by one. Each one he loosened brought her body closer to his, the scent of him harsh, the warmth of his arms in and around her waist and back too perfect for words even. It was the opposite of Danny, because with Jeff, it was indescribable.

Literally.

As quickly as he had started, the vest and padding had been loosened for added breathing room, and she was relived in ways she had not known she needed before his arrival. When he stepped back to catch his balance again, she looked at his face, seeing only a pale satisfaction under the silence.

"You sure you don't want to help me out with this stuff? I'll bet you're still ten times better than anyone."

He stood quietly in front of her as he reached into the back pocket of his jeans, retrieving a ragged old baseball cap, one she knew the very scent of and every stitch between. His boots kicked through the grass as he walked off to her side, and out of surprise, he tugged the hat down onto her head, again, for the second time this trip. It smelled the same, dirty, old, the way she liked it. It covered her eyesight for a minute and by the time she had gotten it on well enough to see him, he was a good five feet beyond her, walking off slowly into the dark field, toward the brick building. Something told her it would be the last time she saw him for the day, and this was not so far off the mark.

When Carter came back to her to begin the first round of firing, she tugged the cap back down to cover her eyes a way, and recognized in the scent of his hair through the weaving of its Boston age, that the hat was his help for her. It was his luck, all that he had ever known, given to her.

Knowing this, with a smile, she used its power to every advantage throughout the day. Shane and Andy stood off clear from the marks, watching, betting, cheering her on as she slammed target after target, destroying them far worse than any of them had pictured, cutting through cardboard and bottles alike. The rifle, perched on her arm, was triggered by her own finger, controlled by her head, her sense of self awareness in the matter, by her own need to finish off everything she had fought for too long, the pain, the loneliness, the desire for revenge. Every bullet, every hit, every mark thrown to the ground with a growl of cheering, with Danny's enthusiasm and rippling laughter, was one step closer to getting the one man she needed, the target she wished to stand before.

"I told you she would kill with the 9 millimeter, man!" Danny shouted over to where the other two were sitting on the hood of the truck, slamming back more beer for targets. "You owe me fifty bucks rookie!"

"Yeah, yeah. Bottles don't move. Drug lords do!"

Immediately drawn away from the last fire of the gun at Andy's words, Lily's head flipped back with a smile of conviction in what she was doing, and Carter patted her back with another round for her to fire off.

"God…this is what control feels like!?" She screamed at the top of her lungs, watching the bullets strike each individual bottle lined up twenty feet away, the gun trembling with excitement in her hands, pressed to her cheek.

"No wonder my brother wanted to do this!"

Shane howled in response, watching her perfection in aim, in stability of the gun's hold, in her every movement. She was, no doubt, her father's child, and Tommy's little protégé. A maniac at firing guns, her lunacy hidden behind a medical dictionary and prescription pad. There was a freedom surrounding Lily's form out in the distance as she watched on, a rebellion long since tied up, and only now brought out again by the same person who brought it out before. Shane wasn't as oblivious as her brother and Lily would have probably liked her to be, and because of this, she saw a depth to the tough reunion that they simply did not. This depth, this further meaning, was detailed by the obvious hope of longevity despite all of their temporary bouts of hatred for each other.

"She got the travel mug, babe." Andy whispered beside her on the hood, his arm fashioned warmly around her tiny waist, and his lips at her ear. "You owe me ten bucks."

Laughing, she pushed him away with a sinister glare, "Or I could just tell Jeff what you've been up to with his little sister."

"I think I'd rather be one of Lily's targets."

They turned back with laughter to the final round of her shots, both knowing as well as Danny out in the field with her, that she was more than ready for whatever they needed from her. Lillian Hanson, M.D, was as prepared to be a tag along for the CIA as anyone before her. Tuzla would no doubt meet his match, if not by their own hands, at least by her steadied one.

It was another two hours or so before they had completed their training for the day, which continued to include working on her already perfect aim, as well as practicing footwork in the event of any sort of showdown between her and the aforementioned wanted men. Danny taught her how to break free from a strong hold, Shane drilled her on high speed chases as they weaved in and out of the empty lot and subsequent streets, and Andy even helped her understand the nature of Tuzla a little bit better with his array of collected information.

Lily felt as if she had known the insides of the case as long as they, and even more so, felt confident she could help them the way she had so wished from the beginning. When Shane began to get restless for food, they decided to start packing up for the day, promising that they would give her another full seminar of the same sort tomorrow.

While the guys loaded the trunk with all of the equipment, Shane took to ordering Chinese pick-up and sent Lily off to go finds Sands. In the events of the day, the focus, the drive she had gained, her thoughts about him had all but diminished and it had never occurred to her that he hadn't come strolling back from the building at all.

After changing out of her jeans and into and into a warm weather approved sundress, which was confidently matched with her black biker, warrior boots, she walked slowly off into the field's distance. The high grass brushed against her legs where she lifted the skirt of her dress, her skin sensitive to the lowering sun, and her eyes fixed on the corner of the falling brick walls as she walked in and around its path. Stopping to glance up into one of the leveled windows of the third floor, she covered her eyes from the glowing brightness, and tried to determine whether he was inside or out, watching her or not. She stepped around a few large chunks of brick, stones, more grass and piles of metal, until she came about the shadowed corner of the backside to the building.

He wasn't there.

Running her hand through her hair and placing Jeff's hat back on, she searched off where she could see Shane and the guys still packing up the truck, with no sign of him there either. She began to move again, stepping carefully through fallen wood, shattered glass, and remnants of life, on a hunt for someone she knew probably didn't want to see her anyway. The sun was shining brighter around the corner, and it was as she stepped over a large, useless old tire, that she saw smoke cascading in the warm wind. Her head flipped around the curve of the building and she found the source, who strangely, had found her first.

"I had a feeling they'd send you sooner or later."

He spoke deeply, with one last drag of his smoke. Lily watched without saying anything, instead too focused on the way his boot crushed the ashy butt into the dirt and his silhouette curved into the orange light of the Florida sunset. It was a much different brightness than she was used to seeing him in, a southern glow, his Ray Ban shades both blocking and redirecting the luminosity, as he stood leaning against the brick, hands in the pockets of his worn jeans, a blank expression on his face as she walked toward him slowly.

"We're heading back to the hotel now."

He remained still as she inched closer.

"The guys are packing up," she tried again with a clear cut statement, receiving no response and pausing only feet away with the sun to her bare back and dress circling around her legs with the grass. "And Shane's ordering food."

When he didn't respond to any of it, she turned away to leave him, too tired to bother with his attitude. And to this, he finally spoke again.

"What, no offer of help for the blind guy?"

"I thought you said you didn't need my help."

"I don't." He answered quickly, forcing her to spin back and continue to move away. "But…" he stopped her again. "…I'm surprised you didn't at least try."

"I'm done trying." She whispered back in angered peace. "I've resolved to let you just be. It's what you seem to want, your independence. I can respect that."

Again, she was shocking him in ways he hadn't anticipated at all. Her determination to give him the bane of his desires, his independence, his self esteem to follow through without assistance, he was impressed by her in this matter all of a sudden. Lily had understood him somehow, to cave in and grant him the space he had asked for, and yet little did she realize that his earlier demand, had cached itself into something new, something more trusting than before.

His vulnerability had gotten the better of him in the heat of the afternoon sun, lonely and thinking for hours, listening to the sound of bullets being fired into glass, knowing that the cheers were for her all along and that she was ready to fight the way she claimed. The same way she refused to give up on Tommy's memory and the death of a guilty man, who had ruined a corner of her life, she also refused to give up on him, whether he realized it soon enough or not. And standing against the heat of the falling daylight, listening to the sound of her breathing, the glass cracking under her shoes, the overgrown weeds blowing against her body the way he could imagine, Sands knew also that it broke him in a million different places to hear her admit to stepping down and away from him. To hear her say she was surrendering from her attempts to help him, to save him from himself.

"I really have tried everything, Jeff. Earlier this week, before Shane got hurt, I truly thought I'd made a breakthrough with you. That night I thought I had helped you to at least see some light in your situation. But you're right back to where you were when you first stepped in my office. This dark, twisted place you go all the time. And I think that I'm only making it worse for you, in fact…I know I am. And I'm sorry for that."

She watched him shake his head and move away from the building, his boots digging into the dirt the same as his hands in his pockets. The weakness in her knees was formulated by the rise and fall of his chest against the form fitting white t-shirt he wore, the way his hair sat at the nape of his neck in a tie, and the way he bit his lip in thought and then turned to face her. Lily tried so desperately at times like these to imagine him without the glasses, to remember his eyes just once, how perfectly they shone in the afternoon, how they would tell her everything she ever needed to know without a sound or stutter.

"I thought of telling Jack that I couldn't help you, I thought about explaining all of this to him. But because I tend to follow the righteous path, and because I've taken to masochism so well in the last few years, I told myself I could handle it and help you. I've wanted to help you, selfishly, against your will."

"Stubborn by birth." He replied quietly.

She laughed, looking to him with water filling the corners of her eyes. "Yeah." She returned, "I tried to tell myself that too. But stupid me, the challenge was too good to pass up."

"I'm a good challenge?"

Wiping the hair from her face and taking off his old cap, she walked towards him closer, whispering. "The best I've had in a long time."

He chuckled and counted her steps, feeling her hand around his wrist a moment later, pulling his hand from his jeans. It was softer than even the days, the weeks, the years before, the softest her hand had ever been, assuredly. He felt her shove something into his palm, the spooned bill of his old hat, and roll his fingers over it in a clamped position.

"I'm just returning your luck to you, safely." A smooth sigh left her lips as she moved her hand away again. "You're going to need it to get back to the truck."

And a second later, he recognized the sound of her boot heels spinning into the graveled dirt, against the grass, in a fashion of exit from their conversation, from the building's opposing privacy. His mind clicked instantly, and with his freed hand, he reached out to snap her small wrist between his fingers, pulling her back to him.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Her eyes shone with curiosity as she looked at his smiling face, the brightness in his cheeks catching her almost off guard. She heard Shane's voice from a distance, calling around the other side of the building and down the street from the car, "Let's go Lily! Jeff!"

Trying to pay it no mind, she glanced down to see his fingers growing softer around her wrist, twisting along until they met with her own, coiled for the insurance of the moment. There were more calls, the sound of the wind picking up around their heads, an engine starting through the brick hideaway and broken windows. And somehow, none of it quit the patience of his smile, the longing of his hand in hers.

"What would you like me to do then?" She asked sarcastically.

Tugging her hand in a separate direction, his other arm coming around to hold her waist tight against his hips, Sands easily lifted her body and barreled in a return to the wall he studied the distance of, pressing into her timid chest, her burning neck.

"You could start with holding back on the screaming…" He whispered at her ear, the curls from her lilac scent covering his nose and face. "…Unless you want an audience for this."

While one arm remained in a hold of her body, his other left her hand to move to the unfastening of his jeans. Lily could faintly hear and feel the movement between her thighs as he finished with the button and zipper of his own barricade. And then his creeping, delicate fingers traced up and along her tender skin, searching out the waistband of her panties, and pulling them down and off in a quick, nearly unnoticeable flash.

Set along the tight denim, she felt the hardened throb of his cock as it swiped against her center and inner thighs with every grind he made. She moaned out at the sensation as his hand travelled up her arm to reach for the thin straps of her dress, pulling them down as well to reveal her breasts in the sun. With his glasses falling off of his battle wounded eye sockets, she reached up to push them back on for him, as he slid his own fingers into his mouth with a wicked grin, and returned their wet tips to the firm peak her nipple had formed, caressing roughly for a moment and then softer, habitually.

Her legs hugged his waist harder, clenching around him as her bare back arched against the scaling brick. A louder, still sound proof moan escaped her lips as she watched his mouth move down to her breast, his tongue flicking harshly against the agitated peak.

"Jeff…" she sighed above his head, her arms gripping tight to the back of his neck, pulling him as close to her as she could.

He laughed as he left her chest to cover her widened, begging mouth. "Did you say something?"

His joke was hardly welcomed in her weakness, but before she had a chance to express her agitation, his tongue had forced its way between her sweetened lips, drilling along the insides of her mouth with haste. And in this also, while her ability to speak or think was otherwise occupied, he let one hand return to his own pleading length, and stroked hard at the tip, bringing it closer to where he felt himself slide against her drenched, heated opening. Groaning to meet her own desperate pleas at his mouth, he felt no reason to hold back any further, and made fast headway through her soaked folds, thrusting into her trembling, warm body in a quick jolt. Her head immediately heaved backwards, only to be quickly and telepathically caught in his palm, missing the rough brick.

With one subjective breath, he found himself chuckling over nothing but his own confidence in the matter, and a clear second later, felt her body clench around his stiff organ as he melted into her with another agonizing groan.

"Go ahead…" he teased sharply as he felt himself drawing back out of her. His brow tightened in an honest desperation to see her face, to know what her eyes were thinking. And then, unable to confine his thoughts to just his own mind any longer, he leaned down into her neck and found himself biting against her heated skin, "…scream it."

In the middle of comprehending his words, Lily sensed her body rattling with pain and pleasure all at once as he thrust deeper back within her, shoving her entire body, wrapped inside of his, into the building's outer wall. Her nails dug into the thin cotton of his dampened shirt, pressing at his shoulder blades, causing his hips to arch into her at a different, more longing angle, and graze against the one spot she knew he could always find.

"Jeff!"

She shouted it with another woven thrust, and when his hand moved down to manipulate the situation of her pulsing clit, probing it, stroking it at the same momentum and rhythm of his length inside of her, she screamed out again. She accepted her own death in that moment, the death of the most utterly disgusting and altogether perfect pleasure any one person had ever known.

"Again…" He begged with haggard breathing into her ear. "…louder."

"Ah, J…Jeff yes!"

The smile was plastered on and around his entire face as he kept the speed at an ideal rate, one he had remembered being only half as good at eight years before. Their display was one that could have surely sent a person into shock upon seeing it, in the plain sight of late afternoon. But here, secluded with the abandonment of high grasses and a broken factory, it was the best he believed he had yet known. And that was truly saying a lot. He pressed inside of her again, taking with him the predisposing heat and suction of her pinnacle necessity, and gripping her hips tighter against his own; he continued to demand of her until the end.

"Now, let go…come."

For whatever reason in this world or the next, that did it for her. With his hands anxiously holding her to him, his shaking, still rock solid form inside of her, she released the chasm of everything she knew, screaming his name, his praises in the process. The shuddering blow of her body synced around him made Sands tremble into the spiral of his own surrender, squeezing the aching flesh of her thighs for support and letting everything he had flow deep and warm inside of her.

"Lily…"

He retracted in honest complacency into the softness of her clammy breasts, his forehead rolling on her skin as his chest rose and fell with hers. She held him there, gladly, her fingers spun through the web of his blackened hair. Soon enough, she felt him slide out from within her, but remain in place, holding her to him, to the wall, to the blockade of his will to admit what he was feeling.

"Lily!"

"Jeff!"

It was no longer their own pleads for one another, but the annoyed tone of those waiting on them in the distance, calling in through windows and doors, around corners, and across the open field that separated them from the car. Again, they ignored it as Sands lifted his head from her chest, tucked himself into his jeans and held her waist calmly, helping her back down to her feet. In doing this though, Lily found trouble in simply standing, as her knees and feet gave out in a heady loss of blood, and in an instant saw herself falling towards the ground. She missed it by only a few inches when Jeff sensed the trouble and reached down to grab her waist again, helping her to stand and catch her balance again.

"Cliché'." She stated simply as she clung to his strong arms. "You make me weak in the knees."

He chuckled and held her to him even harder, kissing the top of her head where he felt it settled under his chin. "Too weak to continue this back at the hotel?"

"Never that weak."

He felt her arms leave his as she bent to pick up what he'd thrown from her ankles to the dirt, and while waiting to know that she had them back on safely, he felt her hand tuck into the back pocket of his jeans, shoving the garment inside.

"For me?" He laughed, knowing the condition they were in and trying to picture the color.

"My best pair."

Lily grabbed his hand and pulled him away from their place and back around the side of the building from where she had come, through the open field of tires and grass, and in a saunter to the truck, where three angry, hungry agents stood waiting.

Three agents who never seemed to hear a thing at all.