Panic! At the Razorblade

Hughie almost missed Ashley Barrett emerging from her apartment building on West 89th and getting into a cab. The Ashley he was familiar with was the corporate CEO, with her fashionable business attire and her quiet hair. That wasn't the woman who came out of her apartment building, but Hughie recognized her gait, one of the surest ways of identifying a person. It was a talent he had. The person getting into the cab had a sleek black pageboy bob and wore a short black lace dress under a denim jacket, fishnet stockings, and black leather ankle boots with stiletto heels.

He hadn't ridden a motorcycle in a long time, but it had seemed like the best vehicle for the surveillance job Butcher had assigned him. "Keep an eye on Homelander's redheaded cunt," the older man had told him. "He may be using her as a courier to Victoria Neuman, or using her some other way. We need to know what she's doing."

Yeah, that's the only reason you want me to spend the night following her around. How stupid do you think I am? But he kept his thoughts off his face and presented his usual pleasant expression. "Okay. I'm on the job."

Butcher smiled, his teeth white in his bearded face. "Knew I could count on you, mate."

Although it took quite an effort of will, he smiled back. "I'll let you know what happened tomorrow." Shame you won't do the same.

Brushing off the memories, Hughie peeled out into traffic in pursuit of her taxicab. As much as he'd believed his surveillance assignment was just make-work to keep him away from the base of operations for the night, the fact that Ashley had put on a wig and dressed up in some downtown Goth club kid disguise indicated that there might be something to Butcher's suspicions. He wove the bike in and out of traffic until he saw the taxi stop in front of a blank stretch of brick wall off Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, with stairs leading downward and a blinking purple neon sign reading "Razorblade" inside a double-edged razorblade outline. Ashley slammed the taxi door shut and disappeared down the flight of stairs.

It took Hughie longer than he would have liked to find a parking place for his Kawasaki Vulcan 1500 and follow her down the stairs. After he presented his ID to the bored tattoo encyclopedia at the door and paid the cover charge, his hand was stamped with a purple razorblade showing he was over twenty-one, and he entered the building.

Razorblade was a dive with a tiny stage at one end, on which a band was playing some discordant song he didn't recognize in front of a wall covered with colorful graffiti art. A number of people—this was an actual New York watering hole without a tourist in the bunch—gathered at the bar, cans of beer in hand, a few tables around what seemed to be a postage-stamp-sized dance floor. Ashley had just turned away from the bar with a can of Miller High Life in each hand, and he hurriedly sat down at a table to avoid her seeing him.

It didn't work at all, as even at that distance he saw her eyes widen and she rushed over. "Get up, Hughie, right now!" Out of surprise, he did. "First rule: don't sit at a table. You're halfway to a fight if you do that."

"Th-thanks," he stammered.

She handed him one of her beers. "So what are you doing here? I never pegged you for a fan of punk rock."

Hughie didn't answer her immediately, as he was too busy registering the finer details of her new look. She wore silver earrings that were made to look exactly like wood screws, as if she'd put screws through her earlobes, and her necklace looked like a length of bicycle chain, although he knew it must be some custom-made Tiffany's design that cost more than he'd ever earned in a year. Her eyes were outlined in dark purple, with dark shadow and mascara, and she wore purple lipstick the color of rich crushed amethysts. Her nails were painted with shiny black polish and her skin was pale under the fluorescent lighting. "I—never too late to learn something new."

"If you say so." She lifted her beer can. "Let's drink to new things."

"Sure." He touched her can with his and took a sip. "What are you doing here?"

"Listening to music. Sometimes the place has good bands. This one, not so much." She ran her eyes over him, head to toe and back again. "For someone who isn't interested in the music, you have the look down pat."

He looked down at himself in surprise. He'd worn a blue-and-black plaid long-sleeved shirt over an Iggy Pop T-shirt, skinny jeans, and a pair of low-top Converse sneakers. When he looked up and scanned the crowd, he realized he was dressed like half the men in the bar. He'd thought it was a pretty generic look, definitely not something to wear to a punk dive. "Uh—I didn't plan it that way."

"That's okay. Neither did most of the other guys." The band onstage—he spotted a tiny signboard listing them as the Narcotic Lollipops—started a cover of something he recognized as a Ramones song and it became too loud to talk. Hughie didn't like that; talking to Ashley had kept his mind off what was going on back at base and now he had nothing to do except drink Miller High Life beer, listen to a punk band playing "Blitzkrieg Bop," and think about what he'd seen on the nanny cam he'd planted. He took a long drag on the beer can and put his mouth against her ear. "Want to dance?"

Her lips touched his ear and it sent an unexpected shiver through him. "Too early in the evening." He felt her watching him for a few minutes as he finished his beer and went over to the bartender to get two more. When he came back and held one out to her, she said into his ear, "I've still got three-quarters of mine. What's going on with you?"

"I…don't know what you're talking about." Ashley snorted and grabbed him by the arm, leading him out of the main room and down the narrow hallway where the toilets were until they reached a fire door marked "Emergency Exit Only-Alarm Will Sound." The sound from the band was lessened, and he grabbed her arm. "The alarm will go off!"

She gave him a look and shoved the door open. No alarm went off. "That's just for the city inspectors," Ashley told him as she found a wooden wedge and used it to block the door open. "We can talk in the alley."

Hughie felt awkward with two beer cans, and the rancid stink from the restaurant dumpster next door didn't help matters. Ashley went on the attack at once. "Don't bother denying something's wrong. You're a pretty bad liar. If you don't want to talk about it, fine, but don't expect me to believe your bullshit when you go full denial."

Setting one of the cans on top of a nearby garbage can, he pulled his iPhone out of the pocket of his jeans. "Did you know I used to work in an electronics store? Before I got mixed up with Butcher and his quest to murder the guy who murdered his wife but turned out just to have gotten her pregnant."

"I seem to remember something like that." Ashley took another sip of her beer and drops glistened on her amethyst lips before she licked them away. He found the sight compelling, but he didn't take time to think about it. "Am I detecting a little disillusion with your Dear Leader?"

A breath that could have been laughter huffed out. "You haven't heard the story yet."

She lifted her beer can to him. "Apologies. Please tell the story your own way."

The phone screen was black, and he didn't try to unlock it yet. "He assigned me to follow you around tonight. He said he thinks you may be Homelander's courier to Victoria Neuman."

"Then he's getting high on his own supply. My boss doesn't trust me that far. I know there's something going on between him and the politician that's not fuck-related, but you have as much of a clue as to what that might be as I do."

"I don't think he does believe that. Following you was just a way of getting me away from our base tonight." His fingers tightened on the iPhone until they went white.

Ashley shrugged. "Okay."

Hughie sighed to himself. If he'd gone this far, he might as well tell her. There was no way he could see that she could use this against him, and some vindictive part of him wanted revenge. He unlocked his cell phone and swiped until he got to the videos. "For the last couple of months or so, there have been several occasions when I'd be looking for Annie and couldn't find her. She wasn't where she said she'd be, she wasn't anywhere in the base where I could find her. Later, when she did turn up and I asked about it, she got angry."

"Defensive," said Ashley. "Didn't think to have an explanation ready to use, just in case."

"She'd start yelling at me about spying on her and accusing me of being paranoid and not trusting her."

"Putting you on the defensive." From the look on her face, she'd already figured out the end of the story.

"I accused her of sneaking around and she called me crazy."

"She's cheating," Ashley told him. "The second they think you're close to figuring it out, they bust out the word crazy and, if they're good enough liars, they can have you apologizing to them for suspecting what they're actually doing."

"Yeah, I figured that out," said Hughie. "I just didn't know who with. So I set up some nanny cams around the base, one in each deserted room where she and her fuckbuddy could tear one off, since they were sneaking around and I didn't think they'd use one of their own rooms."

"How long did it take?"

"Two days. They're still in the fuck-each-other-at-every-opportunity stage of the affair. Want to see?"

She looked shocked. "If you want to show me."

"Not much to see on the first one, just two sets of feet moving across the frame until they get to the wall and Annie dropping her jeans and panties, along with a metric ton of sex noises while the camera shakes from how hard they're banging. I figured they might go back to the same room, so I sneaked in the next day and repositioned the nanny cam. That room had a lot of boxes, so no problem hiding it. And that night I hit paydirt. I also have a live feed to all the nanny cams. Want to see if they're fucking yet?"

"Uh—sure." Ashley looked uncertain, but Hughie didn't give a shit. If Annie was ashamed of what she'd done, she sure didn't feel badly enough about it to stop. So fuck her.

The nanny cam had a panoramic view of what looked like a storeroom, with lots of cardboard boxes. Nothing moved in the shot for twenty minutes, during which time Hughie and Ashley drank beer silently in the alley. He'd started to feel nervous and was waiting for her to try to convince him nothing was going on with his girlfriend when the storeroom door opened.

Annie came in, holding Butcher's hand. The moment the door closed behind them, she pulled her I Hate Supes shirt off over her head, revealing her perfect bare breasts and their hard pink nipples, and pressed her body into the older man's. He gave her a grin and then they were kissing wildly, flashes of tongue clearly visible, and Butcher began pulling off his Hawaiian shirt.

"You don't believe in sparing yourself, do you, Hughie?" asked Ashley. "We don't have to watch the rest of this. Anybody can clearly see—"

Then Annie spoke up. "You're sure Hughie won't come back here tonight?"

"Dead sure, love. I put him to following the redheaded cunt. I've been watching her for the last two weeks and she never does anything but come home from work and stay there. Boring as fuck, that bird."

"Shows what you know, asshole," Ashley told the screen. "He's missed me leaving at least half a dozen times. You saw through the disguise, Hughie, so you ran surveillance better than he did."

"He must have been looking for Ashley Barrett CEO instead of Ashley Barrett Punk Princess. Can I ask why you wore that wig?"

But Annie spoke again. "She is a cunt. She always acted like she was the boss of me, like she was my fucking mother."

"I was the boss of you, bitch. Until you got me fired," Ashley told the screen. "And I'm not fucking around on my boyfriend, so who's the real cunt here? And what's with the stupid T-shirt? Do you not understand you're a supe? It might as well say I Hate Myself."

"And you promise he won't come back until morning? I get so tired of fighting with him and trying to convince him he's imagining things."

"Does he still believe you?" Butcher unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, leaving her naked except for white cotton bikini panties.

"Vom," said Ashley. "Mr. Butcher has a pubescent girl fetish. Or a virgin fetish."

Annie answered, "Yes. No reason for him not to. He thinks I still love him."

That statement hit Hughie like a sledgehammer. He'd known she was cheating, but he'd thought it was just a passing thing, an infatuation. He could have forgiven her a crush, even one that involved sex. How could he have suspected that she didn't love him anymore? When had that happened? His knuckles went white again as he clutched the sides of the iPhone, trying to ride out the wave of mingled grief and anger.

"So you don't need to worry that pretty blonde head. He'll stay put on West 89th for the rest of the night, and if he does come back the tracker I planted on him will give us plenty of warning, so we can get into position and pretend we haven't been—"

"Haven't been fucking like rabbits? Haven't been coming our brains out all night?" Her voice was teasing, and Butcher smiled at her before slipping his hand down the front of her childish panties and causing her to writhe and let out a long "Oooooohh" at his manipulation of her clit.

"Turn it off, Hughie," said Ashley. "We don't need to watch them fuck."

"I already watched last night's recording anyway." But he left it running long enough for Butcher to slide the panties down Annie's legs and fall to his knees, spreading her thighs and burying his face in her.

Ashley swallowed. "Guess she is a natural blonde. His head kind of blocks the view."

He ignored her words. "Why would she do this? Why would she do this to me?"

"Daddy issues," she replied. "Starlight has major daddy issues. Her father took off when she was young and she feels that paternal love was denied her and the only way she can get it now is sexually. Since Butcher's the leader of your little gang, he's the authority figure. He's Daddy. And he's, what, twenty years older than she is? He's made to order for her every need."

"How do you know that?"

"Vought has exhaustive psychological profiles done for every supe who's under serious consideration for inclusion in the Seven. Since I was Starlight's handler, I was given access to her profile. Madelyn thought she'd do better with a man as her handler, and she was right, but we didn't have anybody free when she came in. That whole #homelight thing? All Homelander would have needed to do to turn that into a real affair would have been put her over his knee for a good sound paddling, then force her to call him Daddy a few times. He's quite a bit older than she is, too, so she'd have been begging for his dick in ten seconds."

"And what about Butcher? How could he betray me like that?"

"Even easier. She's a young hot beautiful blonde. Evolution and a stiff dick took the wheel."

"You make it sound so—"

"Sordid? That's what it is. This guy isn't your friend, Hughie. He's snaked your girlfriend, he's a user, and he's a piece of shit. I don't care what he may have done for you in the past."

"He saved my life once. And I murdered someone because of him. Because of his revenge quest. Don't ask me who, but I never would have murdered anyone, not even A-Train, if I hadn't met Billy Butcher." His heart was a lump of ice. What had he done to his own life? When had it stopped being about Robin and started being a day player in Butcher's vengeance on Homelander?

"Yes, revenge for the sainted Becca Butcher. What a laugh. If he knew what she'd done with Homelander, he would have killed her himself."

"What do you mean?"

Ashley looked at him with sad eyes. "Don't ask me that, Hughie. You'd be too likely to throw it at him during a confrontation and he'd kill you. Not because you're weak, but because he's a trained killer. The only reason I said anything at all is because I have project files and DVDs of dear sweet Becca and I know the truth. Her selfishness caused so much needless death."

He felt an urge to question her further about this but let it go. Fuck Butcher and fuck Annie, the two people who'd betrayed him most. His best friend and his love. Without noticing, he'd finished his beer and she put the one he'd set on the garbage can in his hands. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. Do you remember he said he'd put a tracker on you?" Hughie stared at her in shock. All he'd focused on was Butcher's hands all over Annie, his head between her legs, and her obvious enjoyment of everything he was doing. Ashley shook her head. "I'll check your pockets." There was nothing in the pocket of his shirt, and then she slid her hand into one of the side pockets of his jeans. Her fingers brushed his cock and his body had an instant positive response.

"I—I can check my own pockets. But thanks, Ashley."

Her eyes sparkled with humor as she withdrew her hand. "Think nothing of it."

After a brief search he found an Apple AirTag in the back pocket of his jeans and held it up to show her. "Here it is." He lifted the lid of the garbage can and tossed it in.

"Wait a minute. Do you want him to know that you're onto them? That'll force a confrontation and everything will come out."

"Fuck him. I don't give a shit." He threw his beer can at the brick wall of the alley and it bounced off and spun crazily, beer spewing everywhere.

"Is this going to hurt them in any way, or is it just going to give them the ability to go about their fucking with everyone knowing, to stop hiding? Isn't this what Starlight wants?"

Hughie stared at Ashley. "It could be. What do you propose instead?"

"Keep the AirTag on you. If he feels the need to check your location once he pulls his dick out of her pussy, he'll see you're in Greenwich Village. When he asks why, after you get back to your base, you can just tell him I went to a bar, met up with some guy, went in the bathroom and presumably fucked him—you've seen me fuck a guy in a bathroom before—and let him know you think this guy may be a liaison between Victoria Neuman and me, an extra level of separation. Use his own story against him."

He nodded slowly. "He can't very well tell me that you aren't a liaison between Homelander and Victoria after that's the excuse he used to get rid of me."

"Right. And he might even think you're actually onto something." She pulled the AirTag out of the garbage can and tucked it away in his back pocket, with a little pat on his ass.

He liked that. "What happens afterward?"

"You get even with Starlight, of course. Mr. Butcher, now, getting even with him's a little harder to do, so you just concentrate on your cheating girlfriend."

"And how do I get even with her?"

Ashley moved toward him until they were almost touching. "Well, if it were me and somebody fucked around on me, I'd fuck around on them right back. Once for every time I knew they'd fucked somebody else. Why should they be the only ones getting a damned good fucking?"

Hughie slipped his fingers under the bicycle chain necklace, enjoying the warmth of her skin. "And who would I give a damned good fucking to?"

"Well, that's up to you." She gave him a sultry smile and he moved his fingers upward to brush her cheek, where the black pageboy touched her skin.

"You never told me why you wore this wig."

She sighed. "I've pulled most of my hair out because of my fucking job. The one good thing about it is that nobody knows unless I tell them—except for fucking Homelander, that is—so I can go incognito just by wearing a different wig. It helps me get away from the Vought mindset for a while."

That wasn't what he'd expected. "I'm sorry about that."

Ashley leaned her cheek into his hand. "Not your fault, but I appreciate it. Made any decisions about that damned good fucking?"

Hughie didn't answer her with words but slipped his hand to the back of her neck and pulled her in for a kiss. Her mouth opened quickly and their tongues caressed as his arm went around her waist to pull her closer. When he broke the kiss, he asked, "Why do I feel like you're the only person in the world I can talk to?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I am. You want to get that fucking on that road?"

He grinned. "You read my mind. Do you want to go back to your place, get a hotel room?"

She shook her head. "Both of those would take too long. And I think you need a little more punk in your life. Come on." Ashley pulled him back through the door into the narrow hallway, kicked the wooden wedge along the cracked linoleum, and pushed open the ladies' room door.

"Ashley!" Hughie was shocked to his bones and tried to pull back, but she didn't let him.

"The women's john is cleaner than the men's." He didn't ask her how she knew that. It didn't look much like it, the walls covered with graffiti in the same colorful style as the wall behind the stage, so he didn't know if this was a deliberate design choice or just a lucky accident. The floor was stained concrete with a drain in the middle, and three stalls sat on the far side of the room.

One of them was unoccupied, and Ashley had to drive her elbow into the door before it opened. "This one sticks," she told him before pulling him inside, putting all her weight on the stall door to close it, and sliding the lock home. His hands slid over her back to cup her ass as she pressed herself against him and kissed him, hard and demanding. Everything in him fired at the contact and he lifted her until her legs wrapped around his waist. She pushed up the Iggy Pop T-shirt and rubbed her hands over his chest, savoring his skin, the hard male nipples under her palms as he used his grip on her ass to rub her firmly against his engorged cock. She broke their kiss long enough to gasp, "Damn, Hughie, I think you've got this bar bathroom fucking down pat."

"So you like it." He heard the satisfaction in his own voice as she returned the favor by grabbing his ass and rubbing herself harder against him. A moan of enjoyment escaped him and he managed to get his eyes open enough to see her grin at him.

"I love it, Hughie."

"More than Adam Bourke?" He had no idea where that question had come from. When he'd seen her come out of the bathroom stall at the Dawn of the Seven premiere, he'd thought he'd only been amused by the incident, but had he actually been annoyed? He remembered the surge of unreasoning dislike for Bourke he'd felt, under his pleasant expression. Hell, had he been jealous of the director, even back then when things were good, before Annie got the hots for Butcher?

Ashley seemed surprised by that. "That was nothing. A stress-reliever. He and I were just friends with benefits. He was the only person I'd met at Vought for years that had any interests in common with me." She wriggled around and he didn't realize what she was doing until she held her hand up. A black lace thong dangled from it, and she slid the lingerie into the side pocket of Hughie's jeans. "Adam didn't get a souvenir like that," she whispered in his ear before she shoved down the low-cut neckline of her dress and bared her breasts. He lifted her higher and fastened his mouth around one of her nipples as she grabbed the top of the bathroom door for leverage and leaned forward as she kept rubbing herself against his swollen cock. She let her head fall back and moaned as he switched his mouth to her other breast.

They continued to tease each other for long minutes, the door to the ladies' room opening and closing several times. Hughie thought there were three people in the stall next to them who were snorting coke, but he forgot about that when Ashley unzipped his jeans. "Wallet, wallet," he protested before he managed to fish it out of his back pocket and get out the emergency condom he carried.

Her eyes lit up. "Give me that." Puzzled, he did, watching her tear the packet open and remove the condom. With a wink, she put the condom in her mouth, went to her knees, and unrolled it onto his cock using her mouth and tongue. His eyes rolled back in his head and he couldn't hold back a groan. "Like that, Hughie?"

He didn't bother answering her, just wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her up again until the tip of his cock nudged at her between her legs, and she gave a happy little moan and shifted until he sank deep inside her. Her mouth opened in an O of pleasure as his hips began pumping into her. Ashley squirmed around until she was able to grab the top of the stall door for leverage and begin thrusting right back at him. "Good. Oh fuck, it's good," he moaned.

"Yes. Yes. Oh! Fuck me, Hughie! Fuck me!"

Somebody started pounding on the stall door. "Get your ass out of there, Ash!"

"Fuck you, Lynn!" she yelled back. "Do your goddamn blow off the fucking sink like everybody else!"

The pounding on the door redoubled. Hughie grabbed Ashley's hips and thrust into her, hard, over and over, until she gave a wail of pure pleasure. "This is the only stall where the door actually locks!" shouted the woman outside the stall.

"What a coincidence!" she yelled back before capturing Hughie's mouth again and exploring it with her tongue.

"I'm going to get the manager!" Lynn yelled back.

Ashley let go of his mouth long enough to shriek, "You do that and I'll beat you so hard your syphilitic whore parents won't be able to recognize you in the ER!" Hughie reached between them and rubbed her clit as he kept thrusting. "That's so fucking good, keep going, keep going!"

He felt his climax building and kept applying himself to her clit, circling and rubbing and massaging, until a steady stream of cries escaped her and her muscles tightened around him and she screamed with the orgasm, and this was the best fucking sex he'd ever had and he couldn't hold back anymore and added his own howl to hers as he came.

She was gasping and laughing at the same time as he lowered her to the floor, careful to keep hold of her as she staggered a little when her feet touched the concrete. "You are wonderful, Hughie. Starlight is a fucking fool to throw you away for a man who'll kill her because she's a supe."

Hughie opened his mouth to protest, but she put her fingers over his lips. "All that's for later. Right now I guess we should just vacate the stall."

"About fucking time!" said Lynn.

"Yeah, hold your horses," said Ashley. He peeled off the condom and tossed it into the toilet bowl before flushing. She pulled his Iggy Pop T-shirt back down and zipped and straightened the front of his jeans, while he pulled her dress back down and fixed the neckline. "I had no idea you were going to be this much fun," she whispered in his ear before sliding the lock back and applying her elbow to open the door.

Lynn punched Ashley in the face as soon as she stepped out of the stall. Hughie saw bright red blood from her nose and her eyes lit up with fury. Ashley shot a foot out and took Lynn's legs out from under her, then ripped off her necklace and started thrashing the other woman with it. Hey, that was an actual length of bicycle chain, he thought. Another woman and a man—friends of Lynn, he assumed—moved toward Ashley, but he blocked them and applied a right hook to the man. The woman screamed with anger and sank her teeth into Hughie's arm. He didn't want to hit a woman but didn't have to because Ashley was there in an instant and cracked her in the face with the chain. The doors of the other two stalls came open and she grabbed his arm. "Time to go, Hughie," she told him as she dragged him out of the ladies' room, into the hallway, and out the emergency door into the alley. "Got a car?"

"Motorcycle," he said.

"Where are you parked?"

He took a second to get his bearings, then it was his turn to grab her and pull her along as they raced down the alley toward the street. It took him a few moments to realize that he was laughing and so was she. What had Butcher said, "Boring as fuck, that bird?" Shows what you know, asshole.

"Having fun?" she yelled at him.

"Hell yes!" The shock and pain of Annie and Butcher's betrayal had receded into the distance, and for a few minutes he could forget about everything but himself and Ashley, fleeing a punk bar after fucking in a toilet stall and getting into a fight in the ladies' room. He knew the grief and anger would return, but for now it didn't matter.

When they got to his Kawasaki he gave her his helmet, which she looked at for a second before putting it on, and they pulled out into the street. The bathroom brawl hadn't escaped the confines of the bar, so he felt safe in keeping below the speed limit on the way back to her building. Her arms around his waist made him feel warm in a way that he hadn't realized he missed.

Hughie's cell phone rang as they arrived back at her building. "What's going on, mate?" asked Butcher. "Anything happening with the redheaded cunt?"

Ashley tapped the AirTag in his back pocket. "Well, I followed her to this hole-in-the-wall bar in Greenwich Village and she met up with some guy."

Butcher's voice sharpened with interest. "Who was he?"

"Don't know, but he wasn't dressed like the rest of the people in the place. He looked like a tourist. They went into the ladies' room and then there was some kind of fight around there and I decided to take off so she wouldn't see me when she came out. Maybe this guy was a liaison between her and Victoria Neuman? She might think an extra layer of separation would keep her safer."

"Right, right." The older man fell silent. "I think you may be onto something there."

"It might be a good idea to keep me on her for the foreseeable future." Hughie winked at her. "If Homelander and Victoria Neuman have some plan in the works, we need to know about it." Ashley grinned and applauded him silently.

"We do at that. Good thinking, mate. So you lost her in the fight?"

"Yeah. I came back to her building. Should I wait until she gets here?"

"No, I think we've gotten all we can out of the surveillance for tonight. Head back to base and you can get some food and rest."

"Okay, thanks." Once he'd disconnected, he grinned at Ashley. "Looks like I'm going to be on you for the foreseeable future."

"Be still my heart." She handed the helmet back to him and locked her mouth over his in a sizzling kiss. "I hope that Starlight and Butcher keep fucking each other for a long, long, long time."

"And I'll keep track of every time," he promised her.