The old Nissan he found parked under a tree wasn't even locked, and succumbed to Michael's fumbling hotwiring efforts without too much resistance. Its upholstery was old and worn enough, he didn't feel an ounce of guilt about bleeding all over the seat. His luck held when he noticed the car still had half a tank when the engine coughed to life.
Michael held the wheel with his right while his bloodied left hand took forever to punch the number on the Nokia he had pickpocketed on his slow hobble to steal his ride.
"Hello?" Sam said after the second ring.
"Sam."
"Jesus Christ!"
Michael smiled. "No. It's Michael."
"Jesus, Mike, you–"
"Listen, Sam," Michael cut him off before he could dissolve into more cursing. "I don't have much time to explain, but I'm on my way to the warehouse where Gamble is keeping Fi. I need you, Jesse, and, uh, the new guy to show up with the big guns. I have a plan."
Sam didn't speak for a full twenty seconds. Michael figured he needed a moment to deal with the highly unexpected shock to the system.
Then he found his voice. It wobbled a little. "Mike, first of all, I'm so freaking glad you're alive and somehow miraculously here when we need you the most. And, second of all, brother, we're going to have a good, long talk after this shit is over. You mark my words."
Michael let his smile widen. It felt really good to hear Sam's voice after all those months. Underneath the shock and incredulity, the relief he heard in his best friend's voice was like a balm to his fractured soul.
"Can't wait," he said gruffly, not wanting to let the sudden burst of emotions leak through the call to Sam. Maybe it was just the flaring agony of the fresh road rash that had him feeling off-kilter. Either way, it was not the time to falter. "I'll see y'all in a bit."
The Warehouse
Westside Miami
15:53 Hours
Sam's Cadillac pulled in behind the building where Michael had parked the Nissan only fifteen minutes later. Michael had already done a cursory search of the empty building by then and had an idea of how to approach Gamble when he called.
He was leaning against the door frame of the building's rear exit with his left arm cradled in his right when Sam turned to park his car next to Michael's stolen one.
Carlos jumped out of the Cadillac while it was still rolling to a stop and came charging at Michael with a furious roar.
"You fucking bastard!"
Michael saw the fist swinging in his direction a fraction before his instincts took over. He ducked under the punch and turned his body, with his legs extended. Carlos' momentum worked against him and he tripped over Michael's foot. Michael swung with his right, and connected solidly with the man's throat, sending him to the ground in a heap on his back. Michael didn't stop there. The survival instincts honed to a cutting edge during the harrowing fourteen months spent in the prison wouldn't let him. He followed up the attack by going down with Carlos, landing on top of him with his knee pinning the man to the ground. His right hand wrapped around Carlos' throat, thumb and forefinger applying pressure on the pulsing veins, and started to squeeze while the man bucked under him like an animal. Carlos struggled and clawed at his arm to gain purchase and push him off, to no avail.
Sam's oddly fluctuating voice reached him through the narrowed tunnel in his mind after an unknown amount of time.
"...Mike, Mikey, It's alright, he's not a threat," his friend was saying over and over again from behind him. "Let him go, Mike, let him go."
It took time for him to parse the meaning of Sam's worried words. It took even longer to pry open the fingers that had locked around the man's neck. When he finally did release Carlos from his grip, Sam pulled him to his feet by his right shoulder and tightened his hold when he stumbled.
"Michael," Sam used his full name in a low voice that had Michael snapping back to reality instantly. When he blinked, he saw a pair of brown eyes staring back at him with concern. "Are you with us, buddy?"
There was no accusation or blame in his intent gaze, and that helped Michael find his focus. Then he saw Jesse pulling a wheezing Carlos off the ground and grimaced, feeling suddenly very tired, and guilty.
"Mike?" Sam called softly.
"Yeah," he mumbled, pressing the heel of his palm against the bridge of his nose, and squeezing his eyes shut, "Uh, sorry." Although he wasn't looking at either of them, he was directing the apology to both Sam and Carlos.
"It's okay," Sam said, displaying a surprising amount of understanding. "You saw a fist and reacted. It happens." Then he made a hissing sound, causing Michael to open his eyes again in confusion.
"What the hell happened to your arm?" His voice went up a few decibels when he saw all the blood and grime on Michael's left side. "And the hip, and the back?"
In the periphery, he saw Jesse giving Carlos a once over. "Man, were you trying to get yourself killed?" he scolded.
"Fiona is a fucking hostage of a madman because of that man." Carlos spit out. Michael winced.
"It wasn't his fault," Jesse snapped. "And you were trying to slug the only man who can get her out. Now take a deep breath and pull yourself together. Fiona needs you at one hundred percent."
"Michael, hey–" Sam shook him a little to get his attention.
"I fell off a van, Sam." Michael murmured.
Sam's eyebrows climbed to his hairline. "Fell off?! How fast was it going?"
"Forty, fifty miles per hour? I'm not sure."
"Jesus."
Jesse walked over to them with a grin, leaving Carlos leaning against the Cadillac to catch his breath. "Michael, man, I'd say good to see you, but you look like hell. you alright?"
"I'm fine," Michael said, extricating himself from Sam's hold slowly. "I can still walk, talk and think. The rest we'll deal with later. How long do we have?"
"Twelve minutes, if Gamble is punctual," Sam said, taking his phone out of his pocket.
"Did you bring the guns?"
Jesse walked over to the Cadillac and opened the back door and the trunk. Michael was treated to the sight of two M249 machine guns and a few .50 calibre rifles packed neatly into all the space the car had to offer.
"Will that do?" Sam asked.
"That's more than enough," Michael said, turning towards the building. "Bring them and let's go inside. I'll fill you in on what we're going to do."
Dexter Gamble turned out to be the punctual sort. The phone rang exactly an hour after his first call.
"Mr. Axe," Gamble said when Michael pressed the call button.
"Guess again, Gamble," Michael said, "You've been a busy man. Looking for me all over Miami, I hear."
There was a sudden, surprised intake of breath on the other side. "Michael Westen. You're here. Your friend's been lying."
"Oh, he had no idea where I was," Michael said easily.
"Come on out, Westen," Gamble ordered. "I need to see the man of the hour."
Michael looked up. Sam, Jesse and Carlos were set up on the next floor, with clear sightlines to the building where Gamble was hiding. Jesse and Carlos had the belt-fed machine guns, and Sam was armed with the semi-automatic rifle that could switch from single burst to full auto depending on the situation. Thin planks nailed against the broken, dust-covered windows covered their perches, so that Gamble wouldn't see the barrels of the guns peeking through the openings.
Sam gave a thumbs up, signalling that they were ready. Michael had a bluetooth earpiece in his left ear, through which he was connected to a call with Sam's other phone.
"Alright. I'm coming out."
Michael walked out of the building with his hands up, phone held between the thumb and the forefinger in his right hand for Gamble to see that he was unarmed. The glare from the sun brightened the ripples of the surrounding river to such a painful level, he immediately wished he had stolen a pair of sunglasses along with the car and the phone.
The warehouse that stood before him had its door closed. There were two windows on either side of the door, and he figured Sam, Jesse and Carlos had all three covered.
"You are Michael Westen," Gamble's voice said on the phone. Michael took it as a sign to slowly put his left hand down and hold the phone to his right ear. "A bit worse for wear, but you're him, alright."
"Thanks," Michael grinned at the general direction of the door which was located about three hundred yards from where he was. Gamble was probably using binoculars, and Michael needed to keep his attention on him. "I just had a bit of trouble getting here. Why don't you come out and introduce yourself?"
Gamble laughed. "Nice try, Westen. That's not how this works."
"Oh, please, then, by all means, tell me."
"Start walking towards the building. I'll open it when you are here. When I have you with me, I'll even let you untie and release your girlfriend yourself."
He heard Sam's quiet voice in his ear. "Mike, don't."
Michael moved the phone away from him for a moment so that Gamble couldn't hear him talking to Sam. "I'm not planning to, Sam," he murmured, thinking rapidly.
It would have been much easier if he could lure Gamble out, so Sam could take the shot. But, Gamble wasn't about to do that. Michael had a feeling the moment he handed himself in, Gamble would take him out through a back door, possibly into the river on a boat from the pier at the back. But there was no guarantee he would let Fiona go if he did that. Besides, Michael was angry, and he had no intention of sparing Gamble's life. Strong would have needed him alive to interrogate him about Burke, but Michael had no such compunctions.
Since the man wasn't playing ball, he had to find a way to warn Fiona that they were about to spray the entire warehouse with heavy fire.
"She's not really my girlfriend," he said quietly.
His mind took a stroll back to the time when he first met Fiona in Ireland all those years ago, drowning him in the tangle of emotions the memories brought along with them. It had been one of the most dangerous periods in his life, but it was also tinged with bright, vivid memories of Fiona, wrapped up with layers of the rush, excitement and thrill that always came along from being around her.
Michael had been there to do a job, and people had been hunting him all around the city while he had run along with Fiona, shooting back and blowing things up in their wake. He had come close to dying more times than he could remember, and he hadn't even stopped to think or give a damn even for a second. Because for the first time in his volatile life, Michael had met his match, the woman whose jagged edges had fit perfectly into the spaces left behind by the damage of his own, and he had been in love.
He took a deep dive into the beautiful, precious and painful memories, sorting through them until he found the one he needed. Even more than a decade old, the images that sprang into the forefront of his mind were bright and clear, as if it had only happened yesterday:
It was Dublin, 2001. They were in a rented apartment above a small restaurant, overlooking a bank which was their next target. Fiona leaned next to the window frame, watching the rain. The yellow glow from the streetlamps below made the skin on her bare shoulders shine an enticing shade of gold.
"I saw my dad get beaten up and shot at…" she said out of nowhere. Michael was sitting on the bed, cleaning his gun. But something in her quiet tone made him stop what he was doing and focus on her. He couldn't see her face because of the way she had her hair down, which was thick black then. But even the drooping rivulets of water against the window couldn't distort her reflection enough to blur the melancholy in her gaze.
"What happened?"
"Not sure, exactly, but he said he was protecting his family, his beliefs and what he stood for. I never saw him afraid of any of it, you know, if he was, he never showed it. You know what he said when I asked him if it was worth it?"
"What?"
"That there was a difference between livin' and livin' free," Fiona murmured, smiling a little at the memory. "He was full of those…little life lessons."
Gamble's impatient words came through the line, reminding Micheal of the dire situation outside, "You can sort it out when you're here."
It did nothing to wrench Micheal out of the curious moment in time he found himself stuck in, however. The reality and the memory from back in time laid over each other as they played out in real-time while he existed in both, caught in between.
"Now walk."
"Okay," Michael said, knowing that he was still staring at a warehouse but only seeing the empty, rapidly flooding street down below, back in Ireland. "But first, I need to talk to her. There's no point in me handing myself over if she's already dead now, is there?"
Gamble's voice reached him through the sound of the pitter-patter of the rain against the window. "She's fine and she's right here, sitting on the chair next to me like a good little girl."
"That's nice," Michael said, breathing deeply to revel in the memory of her scent – something floral and cordite mixed with the rain-tinged petrichor. "However, I don't trust you, Gamble, so put her on the phone."
He left the bed to go stand behind her, resting his chin on top of her head and smiled to himself when she leaned back against his chest, welcoming his presence.
"What else did he say?"
"Michael?" She sounded tired, angry and shocked, but not hurt. Michael breathed out in relief.
"Fi, are you alright?"
"Still here."
"When he knew trouble was coming, he'd say, 'Fiona, time to be brave, little angel.'" She said, "What it really meant was, 'Get down on the floor, close your eyes, and start praying till it's over…'"
Michael opened his eyes he hadn't realised he had closed as the memory of him kissing her faded back to the deepest recesses of his mind.
"Fi, It's going to be okay," he said, before letting himself effortlessly slide back to the man he had been when he met the only woman he had ever loved. "It's time to be brave, little angel."
He let his knees fold and hit the ground hard, and went flat against the heated asphalt for the second time of the day. Sam, Jesse and Carlos opened up with everything they had at the signal, obliterating the warehouse that stood before them.
Fiona stared at Gamble as he paced back and forth, talking on the phone with a man who claimed to be Michael. He seemed sure enough that it was Michael. But Fiona had her doubts. Instead of dwelling on it, she continued to memorise every wrinkle and contour on Gamble's face, imagining the satisfaction she would take in carving it all into ribbons when she was finally free of the restraints.
"Here, it's Westen," Gamble stuck the phone in her face with a snarl. "Say Hi."
"Michael?" She said dutifully, letting whatever game Sam and the others had cooked up play itself out.
"Fi," said the man on the phone, delivering a massive shock to her system because he was, in fact, the real deal. She would never not be able to recognize that drawl, tried her best to cover her reaction to hearing that voice after more than a year, but she knew Gamble saw it in the way her eyes widened, nevertheless. "Are you alright?"
She had to swallow hard before she could find her voice. "Still here."
"Fi, It's going to be okay–" Michael said before Gamble could wrench the phone back. Then, he did the strangest thing, and changed his voice into the thick Irish accent she had begun to yearn all those years ago when she had fallen for the spy.
"It's time to be brave, little angel."
Those precise words were intrinsically woven into a set of reflexes and instincts that had been instilled in her since childhood. Before her mind could even comprehend what was happening, the rest of her body wrenched itself sideways, along with the chair she was tied to, and she fell to the ground hard on her side.
Sha hadn't prayed in a long time, so she didn't really call upon a higher power to make sense of what was about to happen. But she had all the faith in the world in her friends, and had trusted the voice she heard on the phone before she had even known the real name of its owner.
That was more than enough for her to stay as close to the ground and curl around herself as much as the slack from her bindings allowed.
Gamble did the one thing he really shouldn't have done in his situation. He turned around to her and froze, unable for a split second to understand what was happening.
That split second was all that was needed to turn the tables.
Fiona smiled ferally at Gamble from the floor and mouthed the word she'd wanted to say since he had slapped a cloth full of chloroform in her face: "Die."
It was as if it was her command that had summoned the barrage. The entire wooden wall and the barred windows behind him were obliterated into a million shards and splinters as machine guns and assault rifles opened up on full auto, raining down hundreds and thousands of bullets inside the warehouse.
Gamble, a mere man-made only of flesh and bones, stood no chance as some of those bullets carved paths through him to continue their journeys. His body danced a macabre dance in the thunderous rain of death for a few seconds before a bloody corpse full of holes fell on the floor next to Fiona, its eyes open in shock and its mouth wide open in a scream forever silenced.
There were wood splinters and glass shards in her hair, clothes and on her skin. There were also scrapes and cuts on her exposed arms, neck and forehead. But Fiona hardly felt any of that as she laughed mockingly at the dead body before her, feeling alive and invigorated and free for the first time after a long, damn time.
Michael stayed where he was even after the ear-splitting sounds of the gunfire faded. The ground was starting to feel cold for some reason, or maybe it was his body, he wasn't sure. The smell of gunpowder was thick in the air all around him, and it burned his nose and throat when he breathed. His hearing had acquired a weird buzzing, possibly due to the proximity of the thousands of bullets that had flown past him, or something else. His vision also had a blurry quality to it no amount of tired blinking could fix.
Intellectually, he knew that he was finally starting to crash from the adrenaline rush he had been riding since jumping off the CIA surveillance van. The rest of him, however, was convinced that he had caught the worst flu the Sunshine State had to offer, and the only way to get rid of the fire engulfing his entire left side was to stay where he was and take a long nap.
Sounds of footsteps running past him made him blink open his eyes again. Jesse and Carlos both ran past him towards the warehouse they had shot to hell and back. A small part inside his mind screamed at him to get up and run with them, to find out if Fiona had gotten the message as he hoped she had. But his body refused to obey any commands that needed more strength than shaky breathing.
"Mike, hey," it was Sam again, his hand closing around Michael's shoulder gently. "Buddy, it's over."
He couldn't form a coherent reply than a grunt. Tightening his hold on Michael's shoulder, Sam pulled him to his feet and kept him standing more or less straight when he started listing to the side.
"You okay?"
It felt like it was the only question Sam had been asking him since they had made contact.
"I'm fine," he grunted again, and looked up just in time to see Carlos bringing Fiona out through the door that really wasn't a door anymore. He blinked rapidly to clear the fuzziness in his vision.
"Looks like she got your message in time."
Michael let his gaze take her in as they both walked towards them slowly. Her hair was loose and a mess, and her clothes were dirty and torn in places. There were a few bleeding cuts, mostly on her forearm and one on her forehead. Apart from that, she was fine, alive and in one piece.
The relief at seeing her hit him like a freight train, sapping him of the scant strength he had left to hold himself up. He would have fallen to the ground again if it hadn't been for Sam who was letting him lean against him and taking most of his weight without any complaint.
"Yeah," he murmured, unable to look away from the way she had her entire attention focused on him. "She did."
Fiona desperately took her fill with her eyes as Carlos took most of her weight and slowly guided her out of the ruined warehouse. A part of her was convinced she had just hallucinated the whole thing, that Michael couldn't have been the one she had heard on the phone.
The man in the black t-shirt, jeans and military boots leaning against Sam looked taller, thinner, and hungrier, somehow. Then there was the full beard that covered most of his face, something she had never seen on him before and couldn't quite decide whether she liked it on him or not.
What convinced her that she wasn't seeing some sort of an apparition her shaken mind had conjured was the look in those blue-green eyes. That was a gaze that would never belong to anyone else other than Michael Westen…the calm, serene gaze that deceptively hid the wild, unrestrained destruction it promised and delivered without holding anything back. A look that had never failed to drive Fiona a little insane whenever she had caught a rare glimpse of it.
"You remembered…" the words slipped out before she could sensor herself when they came to a stop a few feet before him.
Michael flashed a tired, half-smile, focusing on her in a way that made her feel like she was the only living being standing on Earth. "I'll never forget, Fi."
Carlos pressed closer and held her arm up, breaking her out of the spell Micahel had once again effortlessly snared her in. "Fi, we need to get these cleaned."
"I know," she snapped, wrenching her arm back. "Stop poking at it."
Jesse came jogging out to join them then as well. "Dexter Gamble is very very dead." he said, "We gotta scram before the cops of the entire damn state descend here. I'm pretty sure they heard the shooting at the precinct."
To punctuate his prophetic words, they heard the wailing of the sirens in the distance.
Fiona turned back to Michael, and was confused to see that he looked a little out of it, his head hanging down and looking for all the world like he wanted to fall asleep then and there tucked against Sam. Before she could say anything, Sam threw a key at her.
"That's the key to the Cadillac," he said when she caught it, mostly in reflex. "I'll drive Mike's borrowed car. Jesse, you're with us. We'll meet at the safehouse by the South Beach."
Without waiting for any of them to say anything else, he manoeuvred a silent, checked out Michael back inside the building they had used as their perch for shooting. Jesse joined them without further urging, and followed along.
"Shall we, Fi?" Carlos's quiet words brought Fiona back from her thoughts
"Yeah," she said, and narrowed her eyes when Carlos didn't move. "What?"
"I can drive if you want?" he asked, gesturing at the key in her hand.
"Try it and I'll break your hand." She threatened with a sweet smile before striding towards the door that was left open. She figured she could use a little adrenaline dump after the past few hours she had been forced to endure.
