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24

Puke And Rally

G ravel snapped under the tire as the motorcycle pulled into the driveway of the estate.

Tobias said, “Pictures don’t do this place justice.” Marisol gazed back at him. He stared, mouth agape.

“Yeah. Empty, dusty, and full of old crap. Media never seems to report that.” She got off the motorcycle and approached the garage door.

She stifled a yawn. Her body demanded rest down to its bones, but her heart answered her exhaustion with a resounding, hell no!

She flipped up a keypad. Like the handlebars had earlier, the pad lit white-hot under her fingers, and the doors roared open. The motorcycle carrying Tobias followed her inside like a beckoned dog.

The garage door sealed behind them. “What do you think?” Marisol asked .

Tobias’s mouth and eyebrows returned to normal. He stood and looked around, hands on his hips. “A billionaire couldn’t afford a bigger garage?”

The ramp opened on cue. Marisol nodded for him to follow her into the black depths. As soon as they reached the end of the ramp, the lights flickered on, one after the other. “Big enough for you now?”

Tobias spun around in both directions. “What is all this?”

“Storage. I say we load up what we need in his SUV.” She nodded toward the massive black, matte-chrome vehicle parked in the basement. With the plan in place, she rushed to the metal wall cut into grids. As she touched it, a box lit white under her hand and the compartment opened. “Heat vision goggles.” She tossed a pair to Tobias. He juggled to catch them.

Marisol opened another drawer. “His suits.” In a row, she saw how Vincent adapted, from navy wool coats and gray tights to midnight blue rubber and charcoal armored neoprene.

After a sweep of his gaze, Tobias’s face pinched with confusion. “I thought they were black.”

“Night isn’t pitch black, you know,” she said flatly.

Tobias looped the goggles over his upper arm and leaned against the compartment. “I didn’t say it was. I just realized the stories about him, they’re not accurate. ”

“You’d prefer people tell stories about men in blue who fight crime?” Marisol flashed a blink-and-miss-it grin.

“You’re funny.” But all he did was turn a corner of his mouth and puff a single laugh, as if it hurt to be happy. He squinted and rubbed his chin. Something caught his attention—the glowing blue window of the vault door. “What’s in there?”

“500-year-old conquista-cicles,” Marisol said as she moved from drawer to drawer, opening them with her touch. Never stopping, ever moving, she fought the creeping need to sleep. She found gas masks, concussion grenades, flash bombs, and tear gas canisters. She gathered them and threw them in the back of Vincent’s SUV.

Tobias wiped the window, and the glass squeaked under his hand. Peering through it, he shuddered. “Looks like frozen beef jerky.”

“What else do we need?” She emptied an entire compartment’s contents into the SUV.

“Bulletproof vests? Holy water?” Tobias paced slowly around the open compartments.

Marisol opened more—one refrigerated compartment containing vials drew her attention with the cool vapor emerging from it. “I may need to do a little digging for specific requests.”

Tobias moved to a compartment of weaponry and picked out a black metal stick. “A cattle prod.” He smoothed his hand over its length before he swung it in the air. He lunged, stabbing an invisible assailant. “Zzzz,” he sounded through closed teeth .

Marisol shook her head. “Men and their toys.” She studied the vials—Vincent’s regenerative serum, anesthetic, antibiotics, and voila! tranquilizer. Guess they didn’t need Izzy as much as he needed them.

While she read the labels, her eyes drifted shut and knees buckled underneath her. She steadied herself against the open compartment. Damn. She had paused long enough to surrender to exhaustion. In a moment, she’d walk her drowsiness off like a kick to the shin.

“Whoa, kid.” Tobias dropped the cattle prod and rushed to her side. “You’re no good like this.”

She slapped her cheek. “It’ll pass. How do you think I handle rotating shifts?”

“We’re not talking about going through a shift on autopilot.”

She picked up a vial of regenerative serum. It was the good stuff that healed her broken leg and churned her insides until she barfed her guts out. Sure, it had unseemly effects, but the resulting adrenaline and endorphins could be the boost they needed. “My leg was broken.”

He snorted. “No shit. I used my tie as a tourniquet.”

”But he healed it, injecting me with this.” She held up the vial. “It initiated cellular regeneration at a rapid speed and pumped me with enough adrenaline, I could leap over buildings. This could be a good night’s rest in a bottle. ”

Tobias licked a corner of his mouth as he held the vial between his thumb and forefinger. “Is it safe?”

“Safe enough,” she said, leaving out the shattering pain and vomiting part.

He set the vial back into the compartment. “I don’t know. The thought of injecting myself with something gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

Marisol nodded. When Tobias looked away, she pocketed a vial and syringe. Taking it later might give her the edge she needed.

They loaded the back of the SUV until it ran out of space. Tobias held on to the cattle prod as if he had yanked it from a stone.

“Now that we have weapons, we need to become walking fortresses.” Marisol held up a pair of Kevlar pants in front of Tobias. “These could work.” She grabbed the tights and held them over her legs. They needed a little adjusting. “Staci! Do you have any scissors?”

A drawer popped open. Marisol and Tobias cannibalized Vincent’s suits, cutting and pulling pieces that fit them.

Marisol stripped down to her sports bra and underwear, using the SUV’s windows to study her reflection. In the same reflection, she noticed Tobias’s clenched jaw and darkened eyes. After what they had been through, it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d want to maintain the barrier of modesty between them. But he looked at her just as he had back at The Pink Curtain. The look said despite his assertions otherwise, this friendship would not be enough for him. Damn.

Tobias broke their trance with a blink and shook his head, chuckling. He gathered his supplies and ducked into the nearest room with a door, the sauna.

Marisol pulled on navy spandex tights and a shirt. Next, she put on a pair of armored neoprene shorts she fashioned out of one of Vincent’s suits and secured it around her waist with a utility belt. She wiggled into a bulletproof vest and topped it off with a heather gray hoodie. Suited up, Marisol had easily added fifty pounds to her appearance, resembling a welterweight warming up before a fight. The finishing touches, her domino mask and fingerless boxing gloves, she shoved into the pocket of the hoodie.

Though her knuckles longed to break some goons’ bones, she’d wrap them in gauze closer to game time. As she loaded her utility belt with smoke bombs and tranquilizers, she heard Tobias in the sauna room squeezing into his layers. He let out a long sigh. A head taller and equally thicker, he must’ve struggled to get into anything made for Vincent. Then he retched and spit, his hangover clearly catching up with him. Surprising that he hadn’t rallied by now.

Falling asleep on her feet and her burly companion throwing up his lunch? They were the rescue mission no one would ask for .

Marisol drew the vial and syringe out from her damp jeans crumpled on the floor. She needed to take the serum. After loading the syringe, she pulled down her shorts and tights to expose her hip and jammed the needle into her side. She reeled back against the door of the SUV.

Pain stabbed into one side of her stomach as if her insides were on the verge of rupturing. Her agony was unsatisfied until she sank to the ground. Whoosh! The pain left as soon as it arrived, but it did not fool her this time. It was the eye of the storm before the next hit.

Her cheeks flushed. She took in a deep breath, preparing for the heave of the empty contents of her stomach. But—what the hell?—she licked her lips and rubbed her thighs together. Her lower abdomen muscles tightened. No pain. Just the opposite.

Her head lolled back, and she moaned. An orgasm? Without a broken leg to heal, did her body react differently to the stuff? Unseemly side effects, indeed, Vincent. As the synthetic pleasure faded, she laughed, touching the light sheen of sweat on her face with the back of her hand.

Tobias’s heavy footsteps approached. Marisol jumped up from the floor and threw the used vial and syringe in an empty compartment, closing it. She adjusted her shorts back and turned around.

Tobias strutted in. The thump of his steel-toed boots added more heft to his walk. The too-small Kevlar pants he borrowed were tight around his muscular thighs. Creases pointed like arrows at his crotch. Dear God, she needed to look up. He had cut a T-shirt out of Vincent’s suits, his biceps too large for the sleeves. His shoulders and chest were even more massive under a bulletproof vest. His arm muscles glistened like some god touched the earth to bless its warrior. Since when did homicide detectives spend hours in the gym?

She searched his face—did a god come down and touch you?—but a knit ski mask disguised him.

Tobias pulled his ski mask up. “What?”

It wasn’t a “mask thing.” She dealt with enough masked patients at the hospital to know that was far from true. So, what was it? His stubble shone with auburn flecks, no longer a grizzled gray. How? The retching, the glistening muscles. She grabbed his injured hand and unwrapped it. Her bite had disappeared. She ran her thumb over the smooth skin. “No more teeth marks.” She looked at him and narrowed her eyes. Her observation sounded more like a reproach. That’s not how she meant it, was it?

His lips parted as he took in a breath. “No,” he mouthed.

“You took the serum,” she scolded.

Busted. He shrugged. Whatever, they had to save Vincent. She bolted to the driver’s door of the SUV.

“No!” Tobias slammed his hand against the door. Marisol shivered, unsure of the side effects he was experiencing. She turned to him, holding her breath .

He smiled, baring incisors of a wild carnivore. “I’m sober. I may never drive something so nice ever again. You’re riding shotgun.”

Marisol let go of her breath and chuckled. She’d gladly ride as his passenger.