by Selma Wolfe
“You shouldn’t have opened the door,” she said sternly. “Have I taught you nothing?”
“Um,” Rick said. He glanced over his shoulder.
“I mean,” Hope moved forward to cross over the threshold into the other room, relief and something warmer loosening her tongue, “this isn’t mad science, you know? I told you not to talk to anyone or trust anyone. Good Lord, Stone, you’d think you could handle that.” She smiled at Rick to soften the words. He smiled back, looking unaccountably… wary? Hope was confused. She would admit to being scary at times, but surely not that scary?
“Then I really don’t think you’re about to enjoy this,” Rick muttered, and stepped away from the door.
Hope walked into the other room and shut the door carefully behind her and… yeah. She really, really wasn’t.
The only motion that gave away her tension was a convulsive jerk of her neck muscles.
“You’re right,” Hope said. “I’m really not enjoying this.”
Rick gave her a rueful smile and shrugged; beyond the movement of his shoulder, three men looked at her in a varying array of stoicism, nerves, and outright fear.
The nerves belonged to Javier, who was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet and kept opening his mouth and closing it again. Boran was as stoic as Hope herself, of course, and his client looked like he would have started screaming at them all to get a move on if he wasn’t too frightened to speak at all.
“I’m sorry,” Rick said, but when she glanced at his face he didn’t look sorry at all. He looked fearless; his expression as steady as her hands wrapped around her gun. “But I found them outside, and I knew you’d want - I couldn’t just leave them.”
You could have, Hope thought despairingly.
But even though she knew that Boran was a more than capable bodyguard, and that Javier really could take care of himself, she couldn’t find it in herself to be really angry at Rick. He was standing there in front of his three stragglers, his posture defiant. And he’d saved them for her, because he thought she would be upset if anything happened to them - and more than that, just because that was the sort of man Rick was.
She blew out a sigh and let the anger slide away. They didn’t have time for it anyway.
“Come on, if we’re going to hide, we should get down there now.” Rick’s face brightened. He flashed her a brilliant smile before he turned away and pulled the trapdoor open.
“Wow, that’s awesome!” Javier’s customary enthusiasm had returned, and far too loudly. Hope hushed him and grabbed the back of his collar to point Rick down the ladder first. She grabbed Boran’s client with the other hand and let him go second; as she corralled the men she noticed Boran standing there staring with an odd expression on his face.
“Everything alright?” she asked when Javier’s spiky hair had vanished down the ladder and it was just the two of them left.
Boran’s eyes darted to her face. He looked big and out of place in the bedroom where Hope was used to seeing only Rick. Used to - God, it was still weird to feel at home. She’d gone years at a stretch without ever feeling at home before, and yet in this place she felt like she belonged after only a handful of weeks.
“Yes, of course.” Boran smiled, but it looked forced. “Just surprised. And…” He started to move to the ladder and swung his foot down onto the first rung. “I thought you were going to cut off the attachment? He doesn’t seem aware.”
Hope raised her eyebrows and fixed him with a level stare. She appreciated advice. She didn’t appreciate orders.
“My business,” she said shortly and made a gesture. “Down, quick, I need to come too.”
Boran’s head jerked back like she’d slapped him; his eyes gave away nothing, but Hope was surprised by his reaction nonetheless. Had it been this way in Africa?
When she wracked her brains for an answer, her memories were a dusty blur of rough shouts and sharp hand signals. There was no time for anything so subtle as intentions in Hope’s memory. Or maybe they’d been there and she’d only missed it. Rick wouldn’t have missed it, she thought, feeling an absurd yearning in her memories for a man who had never actually been there.
The top of Boran’s head disappeared into the tunnel. Hope jumped down in one go, letting the impact of the fall shudder up her legs and distract her as she pulled the trapdoor carefully down over them.
She hurried down the tunnel to meet the three men standing in the back room behind the glass lab, though Rick had one foot on either side of the doorway and was casting anxious eyes around his laboratory like he wanted to start fiddling with his equipment but knew Hope would bodily harm him if he tried (he was right).
“What do we do now?” Boran’s charge practically snarled at her. The man hunched his shoulders and turned a napkin he’d forgotten to let go of over and over in his hands.
Hope bit back a growl of her own and swept her eyes over the scene in front of her, a perfect representation of all the ways her life had changed since she’d gotten back to the States. The past had found her through Boran, but then Javier was there by nothing but grace of her stumbling across Steve Winters.
And there was Rick, always Rick, closer and more welcome than anyone else, not afraid to be near enough that she could mark the pulse thudding hard in his throat, not worried what she’d make of it.
“Half the city police were at the party tonight, and I put a call in to the other half. And the state police. And the highway patrol,” Hope said. The eyes of Boran’s client lit up. Javier looked thoughtful. Boran just nodded appreciatively, his gaze trained on her. Oddly, she found that she couldn’t look at Rick.
When Rick said, “Brilliant,” in a fond voice and reached out, Hope shied away without turning to him. She gritted her teeth. She hated the fact that Boran’s warnings had any real influence over her, especially when she was going to quit and make it all a moot point anyway. But all of her training and background was screaming out that she was doing the wrong thing; that she was violating every rule in the book. If Boran hadn’t been echoing the worries in her own head, it wouldn’t have been so hard.
Rick looked confused and - damn - hurt, but before Hope had a chance to decide what to do about anything, his expression shifted into concern. On other people, concern usually looked soft. Rick expressed concern with a tight jaw and steely gaze. You knew that he wasn’t going to let you get a step further without fixing whatever he deemed needed fixed.
It was hugely annoying but also weirdly endearing.
“Your arm,” Rick said. He stepped up to Hope and ignored it when she tried to pull away, just caught at her elbow and held up her bicep in evidence.
“What? Oh.” There was a long jagged line of blood slipping down her upper arm. It looked painful, but it didn’t feel like much. Either the advantage of adrenaline, or it looked worse than it was. Probably both. “Must have got it while I was running. Didn’t even notice.”
Rick tutted and moved closer, not seeming to notice he was curving his shoulders around like he wanted to shield Hope. Or maybe he was just pretending not to notice - he was some kind of genius, after all.
“Come on,” Rick said, and tugged her through the doorway into the glass lab. Hope was trying to run down a list of things in her mind as she watched him mess with bits of glassware on the counter. Was there anything else she needed to do? Any chance of the bad guys finding them down here? Could she trust that nobody else would mention this lab once they were out? Would the police be able to catch…
Her thoughts cut off abruptly when Rick walked over to her with a glass eyedropper half full of clear liquid.
“Is that - ” Hope began, eyeing it sidelong but not moving away. Rick gave her a pleading glance.
“You got hurt because of me, just let me fix it, okay?” He sounded more injured than she felt. Hope thought that she should tell him no, but she couldn’t actually think of a good reason why, and honestly, she just kind of wanted to see Rick smile again. So she nodded and offer
ed up her arm.
She was immediately rewarded with a brilliant, grateful smile from Rick. He drew up the vial quickly, like he was afraid she’d change her mind, and dribbled a few spare drops of the liquid down her arm. Hope knew what to expect from the last time. She watched with detached interest as her skin knitted together neatly, leaving nothing behind but the smears of blood trailing down her arm.
For a moment she forgot that anyone else was there. She was too preoccupied with Rick’s smile, curving deep and satisfied. She watched his hand as he brought it up to rub a thumb down her newly healed arm.
“That can’t be sanitary,” she muttered. Rick just chuckled and wiped his hand off on his God-knew-how-expensive suit.
A gasp from the other room snapped Hope’s head up and her attention back to the other men. They were all crowded in the doorway staring, looking variations of disbelieving and stunned.
What caught Hope’s attention was Boran, though she couldn’t have said exactly why. He just looked so intent, his eyes wide and his body leaned forward like he might spring into action any second. It made her uncomfortable, though maybe it shouldn’t have: after all, Rick was the one with the alchemy. It probably made sense for mere mortals to be uncomfortable with it. Hell, Hope wasn’t entirely comfortable with it herself. She rolled her shoulder a couple times, waiting for some kind of tingling or other indicator of doom to start settling in.
Rick looked at her reproachfully and stepped back to put the vial away. “It’s perfectly safe, you know.”
“What was that?” Javier demanded. It should have been annoying and intrusive, but in a way his honest curiosity was easier to handle than Boran’s unnerving gaze and his client’s obvious distrust.
“It’s nothing,” Hope said, at the same time Rick said, “It’s a formula that seals flesh wounds. It’s a secret.”
Hope swung around and stared at Rick. “Do you ever have a thought and not say it out loud? I mean, it’s either that or you just aren’t entirely clear on the definition of the word secret.”
Rick smiled sheepishly and she gave him a stony look. She wasn’t having this. She was not. This was ridiculous.
“Awesome!” Javier said. The kid darted forward, staring eagerly and utterly without comprehension at the menagerie of glassware in front of him. “You did this yourself? That is so cool, man!”
Hope pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. Rick looked extremely pleased. Off to the side Boran’s client scowled fiercely and muttered, “I know that I help to fund these little ventures, Stone, but is now really the time to be showing off?!”
She stared over at the two younger men, dark heads bowed together as Rick’s words tripped over themselves in his hurry to explain his brilliant invention to an interested party. Javier clearly didn’t understand a word, but he looked suitably impressed and nodded and exclaimed at what seemed to be the right points.
A hand closed around Hope’s bicep. She’d been paying such close attention to Rick’s delighted smile and the way his hand flung out in sweeping gestures of explanation that she wasn’t paying enough attention to the two men behind her. Instead of tensing up or jerking away, Hope went very still and purposefully relaxed, the result of years of experience.
She looked up and around at Boran. Cocked her head in a question. Forced her heart rate to calm down. “Something you need?” Hope asked, her voice deliberately cheerful. A warning sign to anyone who’d worked with her as long as Boran had. Her default was neutral, not cheery.
Boran’s forehead creased and his big eyebrows drew together. He frowned at her. Then, suddenly, the lines on his face smoothed out and he attempted something very like a smile.
“It is just… I just wanted to tell you that, er, I apologize. For attempting to interfere.” Boran released her arm and moved past her to hover over Javier’s shoulder, clearly feeling that Rick himself wouldn’t take it all that well. As it was Rick paused his speech for a moment before seeming to mentally shrug and move on, too enthusiastic at having an audience to stop for long.
Hope blinked at them slowly. What the hell…? Boran wasn’t a bad guy, but that was all relative. Her profession was made up of a bunch of hardened experts who rarely bothered in niceties like apologies for anything less than outright attempted murder. Apologizing for a minor rudeness was… to say it was out of character was understating it in the same way as saying some people got wet on the Titanic.
At least she wasn’t expected to respond, she supposed.
Boran appeared even more interested in Rick’s passionate speech than Javier. She had to work not to feel charmed by the site of the two men listening raptly to her - well. To her employer. To her future ex-employer. To her something.
This time when a hand landed on her arm, Hope was more than aware and turned neatly ahead of time to avoid any actual contact.
“Yes, sir?” she said politely. Boran’s client snarled in a way that might have looked impressive on someone whose shoulders weren’t so hunched as to make him appear concave.
“When are we getting out of this freak death lab? What the hell went on upstairs? You’re going to be hearing about my lawyers for this, let me tell you. The security here isn’t worth…”
“We can’t actually do anything about people breaking in and attacking us,” Hope said, wondering who “we” was supposed to refer to exactly. Her? Boran? God? This angry man in an exquisite suit seemed like the sort of person who might start an argument with the universe at large.
Sure enough, he growled and brought a big finger up in front of her face. “Don’t sass me, missy, I am not in the mood. Somebody is responsible for this disaster. I do not appreciate being exposed to actual gunfire. Do you have any idea - this isn’t the sort of thing I should ever be exposed to!”
Hope wondered who this rich man thought should be exposed to gunfire.
She opened her mouth without any clear idea of what to say when a warm presence appeared at her side. She glanced over to see Rick smile that disarming, slightly self-deprecating smile and extend an arm in an all-encompassing gesture.
“Very sorry about that, old man. What can I say, sometimes these things get out of hand, I guess. No idea what all that’s about. Still, seems like everyone’s alright, and that’s the important thing.” A warm hand pressed flat against the small of her back and then Rick moved forward to clap the disgruntled man on the shoulder and talk to him in familiar tones. She watched the snarl slowly fade into a sort of reluctant goodwill, and could only shake her head.
Hope looked over her shoulder at Javier and Boran. Javier was watching Boran. Boran was…
“Don’t touch anything,” she said sharply, knowing without question that Rick would not want any civilian fingers on his science.
The big man pulled back and looked at her. Hope had never seen guilt on his face before, but she thought maybe there was something close to it in his expression.
“Of course, I’m sorry,” he said, an old accent coming out thicker in his voice, “I meant nothing by it. Just curious.”
“Right,” Hope said. She gave him a long look. Behind her, she heard Rick’s words slow down and felt his attention catch on the exchange.
Before anyone could say anything else, noise pulsed through the floor above as the police bellowed on their loudspeakers, “Please come out calmly and with your hands above your heads.”
After that, things faded into the blurry, slightly resigned haze of justice. The five of them waited a reasonable amount of time to make sure the baddies were actually caught before both Boran and Hope received phone calls with irritated cops on the other end. They all trooped upstairs to surrender themselves into the arms of the law, which welcomed them with copious amounts of waiting around and paperwork.
It was astonishing how boring the aftermath of almost getting shot (or kidnapped, in Rick’s case) was. She’d gone through it more times than she could count by now, and yet Hope never failed to be amazed by the sheer tedium of procedure. When y
ou worked in executive protection you spent your life on edge, toeing a line between confident preparedness and wild paranoia. So when something actually happened, it might be a disaster, but in a way it was almost a relief. The human mind liked to think of things as closed circles. You signed up, waited around to get shot at, and then someone shot at you. End of story, until you started it up again.
Maybe other people just dealt with the teeth-grating dullness of procedure better than she did. Javier was ludicrously interested in everything, Rick smiled and joked the way he always did, and Boran’s client threatened everybody within earshot in a relieved kind of way. Boran himself was as blank-faced as she was; like Hope, he kept any thoughts to himself.
“These late nights are getting to be a thing for us,” Hope remarked later, as she walked down the long hallway with Rick. Everyone had finally, finally gone home, even the cops. Her muddled last impressions were of Iseul finding them to grasp both Rick and her hands and exclaim how glad she was that they were okay, of finding Trinity standing around still holding a big serving knife she’d grabbed, and of Boran’s sharp gaze as he nodded over his client’s head on their way out the door.
Now, the hallways were pre-dawn quiet, and Hope was overly aware of her own weariness. The sound of their footsteps was loud in her ears and she kept swinging her head from side to side to check that nothing was out of place.
“Hey.” Hope was tired enough to drop to her knees, but not so tired that Rick’s fingertips tracing down her arm didn’t trail a little fire in their wake. Without waiting or asking for permission he tangled his fingers with hers. She stared at their hands - chemical burns and old scars - for a moment and slowly tightened her grip. He smiled, shaded by concern as visible as shadows on his face. “You doing okay in there? I told you, I can never tell what you’re thinking.”
Hope’s fingers twitched reflexively. She knew this part. But she was too tired to avoid it; too old to want to put it off. A small sigh blew out between her parted lips and she glanced over at Rick’s honest concern.