The guard looked back at Anthony. “Don’t you brief your partners on this sort of thing anymore?”
Anthony’s mind worked fast. Elliot was the last person who would taunt a guard—which meant he must be doing it for a reason. Anthony didn’t know what that reason was, but if it was enough to give Elliot the necessary bravery to taunt a guard with a gun, it had to have been important.
Time, he thought. Elliot needed time. “There wasn’t any time. Besides, he’s not exactly trained for field work. Desk man, you know. Reads and writes reports all day.”
“Not all day!” Elliot sounded peeved.
“He’s only here because my boss insisted,” continued Anthony. “He knows nothing. Extremely unimportant. To me, that is. Not to the organization, I suspect they’d be willing to ransom for him, so you should take very good care of him. Certainly don’t bother killing him.”
“Anthony, what the hell—?”
“Yeah, man,” said the guard, rolling his eyes. “You’ve got it bad, don’t you?”
Anthony frowned. “Got what?”
“It’s obvious you don’t want me to kill him. Have you kissed him yet?”
“What?” shrieked Elliot. “No! That’s—no! I mean—no.”
“He sounds peeved about that,” the guard told Anthony. “You should kiss him.”
Anthony glared at the guard, though whether it was out of annoyance or guilt was anyone’s guess.
“No one’s kissing anybody!” yelped Elliot. “Why are we even talking about kissing? Aren’t you supposed to be arresting us?”
“Yeah, sure,” said the guard with a shrug. “Let’s go.”
Elliot did sound peeved about the lack of kissing, though. He even struggled against the guards as they briskly handcuffed him – thought Anthony was pleased to see they weren’t unduly rough with Elliot, even taking care to make sure the handcuffs weren’t too tight against his wrists.
Maybe I should have kissed him in the closet, mused Anthony. Or at least nuzzled his neck a little bit. I wonder what Elliot smells like?
“You’re just letting them arrest us?” Elliot hissed to Anthony as the guards led them down the hallway. Their hands hadn’t even been blindfolded, which was rather lax for even Cicero’s security.
Of course, there were five guards, all armed to the teeth, and while Anthony could handle that many by himself, doing it while also protecting Elliot from harm was quite another issue.
Then again, if Elliot kept questioning his leadership decisions and interrupting his attempts to memorize their path while contemplating how the supply closet could have gone differently...
“We don’t have a choice,” said Anthony. “They are better armed.” Right turn. Maybe a gentle press of the lips, right behind Elliot’s ear?
“Aren’t you trained in twenty kinds of martial arts?”
“No. Four.” Right turn. No, on his collarbone. Much more seductive.
“You fought off a dozen armed guards last year in Pretoria. Single-handedly.”
“That was one time.”
“You have a laser on your watch.”
“Terrible power drain.”
Left turn—and straight into the main holding cells for the complex. Anthony let the smile briefly pass his lips, thinking about the way Elliot would shudder—and then without any further ado, the guards removed the handcuffs and shoved him into a glass-lined holding cell. No two-bit metal bars for him, thankfully.
“Oh, this is very nice,” he said, glancing around the cell. “Has Cicero finally upgraded? Well done.”
“You don’t get to make wise-cracks!” Elliot yelled at him. “Not when this is your—”
The rest of Elliot’s condemnation was lost when the glass door slammed shut. Anthony turned around, frowning, to watch the guards remove Elliot’s handcuffs before gently pushing him into a glass holding cell directly across from his. Elliot fought back, and much to Anthony’s surprise, it took two guards to successfully close the door and lock him in. One guard sported a torn sleeve; the other had a nasty scratch down his cheek.
Anthony felt a surge of pride.
“Huh,” he said, pleased with both Elliot and the fact that Elliot couldn’t hear him. “Guess you might not end up killed on my watch yet.”
Chapter Ten
I am going to die, thought Elliot from the floor of his holding cell. He stared at the ceiling, because he was too mad to look at Anthony.
The guards had been arguing about a soccer game nonstop since arresting them fifteen minutes before. Elliot knew it was fifteen minutes, because he saw the clock on the wall behind them. Plus, the guards hadn’t bothered to pat either he or Anthony down, and Elliot’s phone was still in his pocket. He had the brief, sunny thought that he could just call Anthony to continue to berate him—except Anthony had never given Elliot his phone number, which made the plan somewhat moot. There wasn’t any cell or Wi-Fi reception anyway—the first sign that maybe Cicero knew what he was doing.
Elliot tilted his head just enough to see Anthony. He hadn’t moved, and remained sitting in the center of his cell, cross-legged, hands on his knees... meditating.
Or sleeping. Elliot wasn’t sure which.
“Idiot,” said Elliot to the ceiling, because calling Anthony an idiot was better than admitting that Elliot was jealous of Anthony’s calm. Elliot wasn’t calm; he was furious.
We should have just gone to the hangar. We could be safely tucked away on the plane right now, sleeping. But no, I had to poke around and look where we ended up. Stuck in a pair of jail cells, waiting for Cicero to execute us. Stuck in a pair of jail cells, waiting for Cicero to execute us in some ridiculously overblown manner.
I can’t even warn anyone else about the potential clone threat. I used to think Cicero’s schemes were ridiculous. Now his ridiculous is trying to kill me!
Where does Cicero come up with these plans?!?!
Elliot sighed again and took another surreptitious look at Anthony. Still there, still calm, still meditating... and his eyes were still closed, which meant Elliot could look as long as he wanted.
Anthony’s lips were parted, his chest rose and fell with every breath. His clothes were just as neat and trim as they’d been the entire journey, without a single spot or crease out of place. His watch was visible below his sleeves, which he undoubtedly would tug down just as soon as he woke.
A lock of Anthony’s hair had come loose and hung over his forehead, threatening to block the vision from one eye. Elliot wanted to tuck it back up again, run his hand through the rest of the thick locks, curl around the back of Anthony’s neck, and steal the kiss Anthony hadn’t given him in the supply closet.
(Anthony always kissed his field partners when discovery was near. He hadn’t kissed Elliot. It was annoying.)
Elliot wanted to tug on Anthony’s sleeves, run his hands over the lapels on his coat to make sure everything was in its proper alignment.
(Why was it so annoying? Okay, fine, maybe Elliot wasn’t up to snuff as a field partner, maybe he was more of a bother than a help on this mission, but he’d been holding his own! He wasn’t dead yet!)