He approached quickly, and I saw him grip the bat with both hands and raise it above his head. I lifted my arms to protect my head, but the blow never came. Peeking out, I was met with the sight of a broad back in a black suit. The baseball bat the man had been wielding was on the floor, and Mace had one of the man's arms locked behind his back. He slammed the masked man face down onto the bar before he wrenched his other arm back and pulled a set of zip-tie cuffs out of his back pocket. He secured them quickly and then put the man face down on the floor.
"Don't move," Mace barked at the man, then lifted his wrist to his mouth to use the communicator there. "Report."
I don't know what was said back to him through his earpiece, but I could see that people were running to the exit. The cage was empty, but it didn't seem like the intruders were causing any more havoc. As a matter of fact, I couldn't see them at all, and I wondered if the other Heretics had subdued them much the same way Mace had done this one.
He stood abruptly and turned to me, green eyes sweeping over my face and down my body.
"I'm okay," I heard myself say, even though I didn't feel like my mouth was connected to my body. Mace's hands landed on either side of my face, and he tilted my chin up, searching my eyes.
He nodded and lifted his wrist back to his mouth. “Prospect! I need you at the bar on the left.” He looked back down at me. “I want you to get behind the bar and stay there while I make sure they're all captured, okay?"
I nodded quickly, not wanting to keep him from his job, but also not wanting him to leave. I pressed my hand to one of his against my face, and much like I'd done that night on the roof, popped up on my toes and pressed my lips quickly to his. He kissed me back, hard, for just a moment and then he let go, stepping back and nodding toward the bar.
The Prospect ran over, one of the ball bats in his hands, and nodded at Mace.
“Watch him,” Mace said, motioning to the man on the floor. He looked over at me with a wink before turning and rushing off to get the situation under control.
With my adrenaline crash, I fell asleep as soon as Mace closed the door to his truck. When I woke up, the truck was stopped in a dark parking lot. There was a large building sitting in front of us, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw the fence spanning the perimeter around the building and the parking lot. We were at the Heretics’ clubhouse.
I swiveled my head toward the driver seat. Mace was there looking back at me. He’d taken off his suit jacket and tie, leaving the top button of his dress shirt open. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and the dark leather of his shoulder holster stood out in stark contrast to his white dress shirt.
The only sound as we sat watching each other was the ticking of the cooling engine.
"I thought maybe you could stay here with me tonight," Mace said quietly. He reached across the console and brushed one finger across the back of my hand. The gentle touch was like a spark, igniting a fire in me.
"But if not, no worries. I'll take you home."
"I think…" I licked my lips and tried to shake the last remnants of fog from my brain. "I think I'd like to stay." I turned my hand over and his fingers brushed across my palm, sending a pleasant tingle through my body before he threaded them between my own.
"Good," Mace said, voice sounding rough. He slid his hand out of mine and opened the truck door. I squinted my eyes against the dome light until darkness fell again when his door closed. Before I'd even reached for my handle, Mace had already made it around the truck and was opening my door. I took his offered hand and climbed down, wobbling a little when my feet hit the pavement, my legs like jelly.
"Easy," he said, wrapping a studying arm around me. "You crashed hard."
Shame burned my cheeks and hollowed out my stomach. I suddenly wanted to pull away from him, and find somewhere to hide. I hated feeling like this, feeling weak, feeling like I needed someone to take care of me. I hadn't needed anyone in my life. From my time in the system, to the time I ran away, squatting in abandoned houses and buildings, but I’d always taken care of myself. And I'd been in more situations like what happened tonight than I’d like to recall, but ever since that bastard Vector had tied me down and beaten me, had made me give him information betraying my best friend, nothing had quite been the same.
I don't know how Mace knew, if I'd tensed up or if he could just read me better than anyone ever, but the arm he had around me tightened.
"I'm feeling the effects pretty heavily myself," he said. "Like I could lay down and sleep for a week."
"Was everyone okay?" After he told me to hide behind the bar, things got a little fuzzy. I knew that the Heretics had handled the situation quickly and efficiently, but I also knew that a lot of the guests had fled the scene, and that a couple of the masked men had gotten away—running as soon as they’d realized it wasn't such an easy target. At least, that's what I thought. I wasn't sure what they'd been after in the first place. Perhaps the money? The purse for the winner of an event like that was probably worth the effort to a thief, not to mention the potential money and jewelry they could've lifted from the crowd if the Heretics weren't so good at their jobs.
"A few bumps and bruises, but nothing major." Mace's voice was tight like he was measuring his words. Measuring what to tell me which made me wonder if the attack had been less random and more club oriented than I thought. When we reached the door of the clubhouse, Mace produced a set of keys and let us inside. It was well after midnight, but there were lights on in several rooms that we passed in the main hallway and hushed voices filtered through at least one of the doors.
"Am I keeping you from work?" I asked as he led me to a set of stairs.
"Nothing that can't be handled in the morning."
That should have been a satisfying answer, but I found myself wanting to press. What was the work I was keeping him from? Who had those men really been? I wondered if he and I were in a real relationship, if those were things that he would tell me or would this be the norm?
I tried to let it go, because we weren't in a relationship and it wasn't my business to ask. We were friends, and while we may have been moving in that direction, we weren't there yet.
Mace led me up the stairs and we took a left at the top. There were four doors in this hallway. He went to the last on the right and opened it with a key.
"It's not the Ritz," Mace said as he pushed open the door and flicked on the lights. "But it's home."
The room was spacious with light gray walls, dark hardwood flooring, and two big windows—one on each of the outside walls making up the corner of the building. There was a kitchenette just inside the door to the left, and a large flatscreen TV in the corner between the windows with a loveseat angled in front of it. His bed was to the right and two doors were on the wall beside it.
Mace closed and locked the door behind me, then slipped off his shoes and picked them up, putting them in a shoe rack to the right of the door, so I did the same.
"The bathroom is over there." Mace pointed at one of the doors. "Are you hungry? Or want something to drink?"
I pulled my eyes away from taking in all the little details of his room, including a set of shelves beside the bed that were filled with books and knickknacks. "I'll take a beer if you have one," I said, giving into my curiosity and walking toward the shelves. What I thought had been knickknacks were actually little wooden figurines. Mostly animals. They were all intricately detailed. One, a little dog which looked so much like Pip that I had to pick it up and have a closer look.