Finders, Keepers

Chapter One

Foreplay

When a bullet hummed right past her cheek, almost grazing it, Claire knew that donating all—most—of her good shoes to Goodwill had not been a waste. Breathing heavily, she bent downwards in mid-run to take off her heels, extra tall and strappy just the way she liked them. She often wondered why she ever bothered wearing heels to work, since it wasn’t exactly helpful to wear them while running for your life. However, when she unclipped a miniature revolver from underneath one of them, Claire’s love for her painful, but deliciously cute Jimmy Choos was sweetly justified. Spying a good sized dividing wall just up ahead, she reloaded her mini revolver and nearly dove behind her temporary shield. Two things registered in her frenetic brain: one, she nearly missed getting blown to bits by a shotgun and two, she had never killed anyone in her life.

Certainly, Betty the goldfish did not count.

Finding her metaphorical balls, Claire emerged from hiding behind the wall, then fired a couple of shots. A shiver ripped through her spine when she heard several men groan. She didn’t know what bothered her more… Not knowing if she had managed to hit them or that it bothered her that she had shot them. She had always been quick and ruthless with her brain, which usually traveled via mouth, not hands. Claire had to admit it; she was a very big chicken. The rapid sounds of gunshots made her feel claustrophobic and scared.

Claire counted to three in her head. Breathe, reload, and avoid bullets, got it. Adrenaline coursed through her, and with a sharp intake of air, she managed to steady her hands and re-emerge from the wall once more.

After a couple more shots, Claire was already out of bullets for the revolver. She fought down a surge of desperation, but it remained lodged in her throat. Still, there must be something. She had no idea how her team was doing, and if they were doing as well as she was, then they were all doomed. Hastily reaching inside of her coat pocket for a cell-phone, Claire was relieved to find that there was reception. First, she needed back up. Garnet Co. was the leading chemical company in the world, and they had all the wealth in the world to hire whomever they wanted. Her team was dealing with people who were well trained as former SWAT members or something probably equally dangerous. They also had special weapons that only the government or the very wealthy could have access to. And upon entering the building and realizing that everything was a set up, Claire knew that she and her team were at a clear disadvantage. The building was theirs—their turf. It wouldn’t be long before she and her team were overpowered. Her hands trembled as the number rang.

Once. Twice. Come on, come on.

“Hang up,” a cold voice ordered.

Clare felt something hard shove against the back of her head. Her hand trembled and she felt the phone slip from her fingers, coming to a clumsy clatter on the ground. Now, a million things ran through her head, and Claire feebly identified it as hysteria. She was crazy when she took up this job; not only was she not cut out for it, she certainly wasn’t ready to die for it.

“Turn around.” The man ordered.

She was surprised at the voice that came out. Was it hers? She couldn’t be sure. “Just get it over with and shoot me now.”

What? No, don’t shoot me now. Or at all! What the hell am I saying?

He chuckled, low and devoid of any amusement. “It’s not fun with no one watching. I want you to watch me.”

If she had a concealed weapon on her, Claire would have stood half a chance, but they had already made sure to strip her of everything threatening on her body. She was glad they hadn’t bothered to check underneath her shoe, but it wasn’t like the mini revolver did her any good. So, with nothing on hand, Claire would have given anything just to slice out his tongue and then shove it down his throat. She had worked so hard to bring him down, following him from Texas then to California, and finally when everything was going to pay off, he was going to kill her. Claire took in one deep breath and closed her eyes, but did not move.

“I. Said. Turn. Around.” He seethed. The clicking sound of his gun was like thunder to her, jolted her. The surrounding gun shots paled in comparison.

“Turn around!” He barked. She jumped.

Then finally, it happened. The explosion. Claire felt her body slump to the floor as a gasp escaped from her lips. The same old question repeated itself in her head: why had she taken the job in the first place? Claire belonged in a lab, researching, analyzing samples, and generally being safe. She hadn’t meant to become so involved. Then again, she never meant to be so involved with her previous cases, either. How could she have known that one of her own was working for them? She couldn’t have possibly known that her cover had been blown merely days after she had started on the case, and that today had been a carefully planned ambush all along. Claire couldn’t have possibly known that she was going to die.

Wait a minute.

Was dying supposed to feel so painless? Nice. She never did have a high threshold for pain. Claire felt her chest rise and fall tiredly. She wanted to lie down, to shut her eyes from everything and just rest. She didn’t even get to say goodbye to anyone! Not to mention making love to a hot millionaire named Mr. Darcy. Life was seriously unfair sometimes. Hey, at least it didn’t hurt. What did hurt was being roughly grabbed by the arm, pulled to her feet, and being smashed into a warm, solid chest.

She smelled him first before anything else. A hint of fresh soap and subtly scented aftershave. Oh my god. Claire stomped on a foot, not caring that her victim was wearing tough leather boots.

“Are you crazy?” A voice snapped at her. It was an all too familiar voice. Claire panicked, tried to break free from the strong grip. “You have to get out of here. Fast.”

She looked up at her savior and wished right then and there that she had been killed.

“Michael.” She breathed his name.

He smiled down at her. Claire hated how familiar that sloppy grin was to her even after all these years. Bastard. He always knew how to make an entrance, and he probably loved seeing the shock in her green eyes.

“Found ya,” he said smugly.

“How?” She asked, but before he had the chance to answer (if he was going to answer at all) he had practically thrown her behind him. Covering her, Michael edged her away from the wall and towards the exit, firing bullets with precision and focus. Claire saw one of the snipers from one corner of the vaulted ceiling keel over. She saw his shoulders tense up, the muscles underneath tightening under the strain. She glanced over at the body, the man that had tried to kill her, lying on the ground and shuddered. He was still alive. Whether she liked it or not, Michael had saved her.

“I’ve brought my group with me,” he informed her, “they’re handling things right now. Everybody on your team is fine, so all we need to do now is get you out of here.”

Indignation surged through her. “I don’t need your help or your back up!”

He threw her a “are you fucking with me” glance and nearly flattened her against the wall with his back, which Claire decided was highly unnecessary and annoying and not at all sexy, even though he actually had a pretty nice back. All muscular and sweaty and pretty…

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought I just saved your fine ass back there?” He motioned for her to keep moving. And the perverted smirk on his face showed that he had not missed her staring like a starved woman at his back.

She flushed, embarrassed and furious. “Well, thank you for saving me, if that’s what you wanted to hear—“

“It was,” he muttered, then with one fluid motion he pushed her out into the stifling LA heat.

Under the naked, blazing sun she noticed that several police cars were lined up. She also noticed that nearly all the officers were aiming their guns directly at her, or rather, at the building behind her. She hadn’t needed to call for back up after all.

“You guys alright?” Came a voice blaring a la speaker.

Claire brought a hand to her eyes, trying to shield her eyes from the blinding sunlight, and maybe hide her embarrassment as well. “Yeah, we’re okay!”

Turning to Michael, she hissed, “I can’t believe you would embarrass me like this--I had this.” Well, she didn't, but she'd rather go to hell first before she admitted it.

He rubbed a hand across his face, then motioned towards the police cars as if dismissing a little child. “Claire. Please just go. The FBI is going to take care of this, okay? We’ve already--”

“You’ve already what? Taken care of things for me? Do you know how long I’ve worked on this case?” She bit on the inside of her cheek hard, ready to give him the biggest fight of his life when she suddenly noticed a man practically stalking behind Michael with a pistol in his hand.

“Michael, behind you.” She whispered.

With a speed that made her dizzy, he whirled around with his weapon ready in hand. Then, just as quickly as he had gotten ready to shoot somebody’s brains out, Michael relaxed.

“Fuck, it’s just you.” Michael breathed a sigh of relief. “Todd, don’t ever creep up on me like that again, I can’t always guarantee I won’t shoot you.”

Claire blanched. No, no. What are you doing, her mind shouted. Todd. That was the traitor. All the times when he had come to her for help, pretending to be the ambitious new guy, and buying her lunch… He had been gathering information, slowly feeding it to the other side. How could she have been so stupid? It was suspicious that he had been assigned on the case so suddenly, but the head of the Forensics department had said that he was adamant to be doing some fieldwork. They said he showed promise.

It was impressive how he had managed to fool them all. Truth was, he had been hired by the Garnet company to keep up with the Forensic side of things. Claire was sure that they had hired ears and eyes for every single department. She was sure that it was Todd who helped them set up today’s quick turn of events, and it was unfortunate that she had only realized that when he had let them take her away with a nothing but a smile.

“Michael, shoot him!” She bit out. “He’s working for them.”

He turned around slowly to face her, then that amused grin swept across his face again. The realization hit her too late. When she heard the metallic clink of the handcuffs, Claire couldn’t do anything but be horrified.

“You did what?” Claire practically snarled.

Todd held up both hands to shield himself, even though Claire was still clearly handcuffed.

“Claire, babe, you know it’s not personal. I had my duty. When I heard that you were going undercover, I didn’t have any other choice!” To his credit, he actually looked sincerely apologetic.

Claire made an angry, incoherent noise at the back of her throat. “How could you? I trusted you. I can’t believe Michael was in on this too.”

“You know he only did this because he wanted to find you,” Todd flinched at the icy glare she tossed at him. “He went to great lengths to be assigned this case just to get close to you.”

“Tell him his stalker tendencies are very romantic,” Claire said dryly. “And how long have you known him, anyway? You already know his sob stories?”

Todd murmured, “well, I did tell him he was wasting his time…”

“So when he heard that you were going to use my going undercover as bait—that’s all he could think about?” Claire scoffed. “Oh, of course. When has he ever thought about me?”

Todd sighed as he played with the cuff of his sleeves. “Michael and I really never meant to humiliate you.”

Claire rolled her eyes, even though damn it, she knew that Todd really didn’t mean to hurt her, either. She just wasn’t sure about Michael. To be honest, she should have expected it. When the police chief approved of her going undercover just a bit too enthusiastically, she should have smelled a rat. When the head of her department practically shoved Todd into having some fieldwork “experience,” alarm bells should have knocked upside her head.

But no.

Claire had been too caught up in catching the bad guy—saving the day, proving to God knows who that she could actually solve a case for once. Without the help of Michael. She wasn’t sure what she was more disappointed in—the fact that everyone was using her or the fact that Michael had helped her yet once again even though she had been running away from him for five years. Obviously quite unsuccessfully.

“At least I was going undercover as a man who was going undercover,” Todd paused and a crease wrinkled his forehead, “if that made sense. Well, anyway, what I meant was—at least I’m not actually the bad guy.”

Claire sighed, then nodded resignedly. “I guess you’re right, and we did manage to arrest Worthington.”

Todd shook his head.

“What?” Claire’s face fell. One look at his disappointed brown eyes and she knew.

He ran a slender hand through his slicked back, black hair. “We thought we investigated everything thoroughly, but apparently we didn’t.”

“What you mean is—we didn’t really arrest Edward Worthington, did we?” Claire asked.

“Technically, we did.” Todd began to pace back and forth. “The man we arrested was named Edward Worthington, but he wasn’t the one we wanted to arrest. It appears that Edward had a man posing as him, probably to hide his own identity. What’s even better news is that nobody really knows who the owner of Garnet really is.”

Claire groaned. What a nightmare. All of her hard work had been for nothing, definitely. Even if she had managed to make the arrest all on her own without Michael, she wouldn’t have even arrested the right man. Something heavy and cold settled onto her shoulders, traveled painfully up her neck and to her throbbing head. What a disappointment, she thought to herself.

“When I was going with you to make the arrest,” Todd continued, “Michael must have picked up this information, and that’s when he knew you would be in danger. He knew that they would surprise us when we made the arrest, and that I would either let my cover be blown, or let them take you as bait and pretend as if I was a part of the plan all along.”

“Thanks, Todd.” Claire muttered wryly.

“Hey, I would have saved you!” He feigned a look of innocence. “I would not have left you for dead and then had your uber sexy boyfriend all to myself….”

Claire shot him a dirty look. “He is not my boyfriend.”

“Not after I’m done with him!” Todd hummed.

Despite being furious with him, Claire smiled. “So, what’s up with the handcuffs? Why is it that nobody cares that I’m in handcuffs?”

Todd laced his hands behind his head. “Don’t know. I guess everyone here is used to that kind of thing with you, huh? Michael’s gonna be debriefing you, my little amazon scientist cop.”

“What?” Claire practically shrieked.

Michael? Debriefing her? While they were alone in a room? Together? Claire’s heart took a dive and sank to the bottom of her stomach. Nothing good ever came out of being alone together in a room with Michael Slayne. A blush crept onto her cheeks. Yeah, uh-huh, nothing good at all.

She plastered a smile on her face. “Todd. Buddy. Bestest FBI agent ever—“

“I am nothing but loyal to my prince,” he intercepted.

“Whore!” Claire hissed.

“I know.” Todd grinned, turning towards the door.

“You’re not really going to leave me like this, are you?” Claire asked, struggling a bit against the chair she was handcuffed to. “I mean, the room is locked. And my hands hurt. There is an itch on my left boob that I seriously need to—“

“Save it, sister. Michael said you were an escape artist.” Todd opened the door to leave, then paused to look back at her. “Well… Just think of it as kinky foreplay.”

And then the door slammed shut.

“Go die.” Claire cursed him.

Claire decided that it was time for a weather change. Even during the night the air still smelled like sweat and sunscreen, and she had to pop a few top buttons from her cotton blouse for some relief from the heat. A smile played at the corner of her lips; still, LA droned with life, intoxicating and alluring with its fun and lazy atmosphere. A soft, generic tune rang in the air, and she reached into her purse for her cell-phone.

Claire frowned, not recognizing the number. Curious, she picked up.

“I had forgotten how good you were with handcuffs,” a man’s voice drawled from the other line.

Despite the stagnant heat, Claire felt herself grow even hotter. “Tell me why I shouldn’t hang up on you right this instant. I can’t believe you used me like that.”

“It wasn’t exactly my master evil plan,” he said lightly. “Besides, I wouldn’t have let you in any real danger.”

Claire gripped her cell-phone a little tighter. A button beeped to complain that she was choking it. "I was almost killed!”

“But you weren’t,” he pointed out. “I would never let that happen.”

“We didn’t even make the right arrest! Why didn’t you just approach me earlier? Why didn’t you tell me the plan?” She heard her voice getting higher as she fought to stay cool and in control. “Why do you always do this to me?”

Her heart constricted when he gave no answer.

“Good-bye, Michael.”

“Claire, wait—“

Claire hung up and threw her cell-phone into the nearest trashcan, ignoring its calls for her as she walked away.

Yes, it was indeed time for a weather change.

Author’s Note: if it sounds confusing, don’t worry—Claire feels the same. Hope you enjoyed the first chapter!