He cursed. “Don’t you have a universal card or something? I don’t want to set off any alarms.”
There was a rustle, like the brother was getting off a sofa. Then, in a softer voice, V said, “What are you up to, cop?”
“It’s not about the war or anything.”
“Okay, hold on.”
Butch exhaled in relief—then jumped back as V materialized right in front of him. The brother was in leathers and shitkickers—great—except without a single weapon on him. Unless you counted his acid tongue, which was only material in an argument.
Then again…
Plus that hand of his. But still.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” Butch snapped into his phone.
“Oh, sure,” V said bitterly into his own, “it’s fine for you to be in danger—”
“Get back home!”
“I thought you needed help, asshole—” V paused. Took his phone from his ear. Ended the call. “So, yeah, we’re face-to-face now. How ’bout we scream and yell at each other in person.”
Butch dropped his phone from his ear as well. “You’re not armed.”
“And your weapons haven’t been checked.”
“Touché. And at least you’re not in Little Mermaid PJs.”
“You’d be surprised at how sexy I look in them.” V assessed the back of the building. “So this is our target, huh.”
“There’s no ‘our’ in this.” When V started striding forward, Butch grabbed the guy’s bare arm. “This is too dangerous out here for you. Remember our little agreement?”
“You’d sense if there were slayers around. Are there?”
“Well, no. But there could be at any—”
“So this is our target.” V went over to one of the loading bays and jumped up onto the concrete lip that was chest high. After he inspected the linked panels, he nodded. “Okay, I think I know what to do.”
“I should never have called you.”
“Are you even serious? This is so much better—”
With that, V dematerialized in mid-sentence.
Standing by his little lonesome, Butch slammed one shitkicker into the pavement like a five-year-old. Then he froze, waiting to hear an alarm. Then he paced when nothing of the ear-plosion variety occurred.
The clunking sound of the bay’s sections going up was loud in the quiet, and V’s leather-clad legs and muscle shirt and bare shoulders were revealed inch by inch.
“—than staying home with that angel,” he finished as he leaned down and offered his palm. “I swear to God, it was going to be me or him.”
Butch grabbed onto the lead-lined glove and was hauled up into a receiving area that was every bit as grimy as the parking area. “I don’t get it. You could have just left the guy and gone back to the Pit.”
“Fritz is cleaning our place tonight.”
As V shuddered and eased the panels back down with a hand crank, Butch whistled under his breath. “Yeah, I’d pick Lassiter over that.”
“I swear, that butler would vacuum my backside if he got the chance.” Securing them inside the receiving area, V clapped his hands together. “So where are we going?”
Butch glared at his roommate. When V just stood there, patiently waiting, Butch resolved to learn breaking and entering skills from Balz.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he bitched.
“Is that a department here?” V drawled. “Or just a certain floor.”
Grinding his molars, Butch glanced around. Thanks to the glowing “EXIT” signs over the various doorways into the building proper, he was able to assess things well enough. Not that he was inspired. Other than rolling bins for FedEx boxes and a long stretch of counter that looked like a processing station for mail, there wasn’t much to go on.
He’d been hoping for a map mounted on the concrete wall or some shit. Hey, the folks who worked here had to know where they were going with the envelopes and the packages, right?
“I need to find the basement,” he muttered as he headed randomly toward one of the doors. Before he went more than two steps, he held out one of his forties. “Take this. I know I’m not going to get far trying to make you leave.”
“It’s like you know me or some shit, true?”
“Shut up, V,” he said as they set off together.
* * *
They had made love the second Syn had come to see her at nightfall.
Is that the right past tense? Jo thought as she hit her direction signal and then put her hand back in Syn’s.
Or was it more like, they’d had sex. They’d fucked. They’d screwed. They’d banged, boinked, bumped uglies…
Whatever the grammar, whatever the vernacular, they most certainly had been together. Pretty much all over her