Eve Kelly (fearlessfelix) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-09-06 22:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman, han solo |
Who: Hal and Eve
What: Criminals' collaboration.
When: Set back in time quite a bit
Where: Seattle!
Warnings: None! Not even a foul mouth.
If she'd had a little sense, she'd be regretting taking the job right around now.
Nothing that the client had explained (hedged; he'd looked a little nervous but that was perfectly usual of men shut in a room with Eve at her most restless, when she prowled around their things and poked long fingers into everything) had been exactly as planned - true, yes, but a little more inconvenient than originally laid out. For a start, the painting he was so desperate to acquire (his throat worked as he'd described it, the way another man might describe a woman; Eve had yawned) had far more security detail added to it than was initially outlined. The address was a compound, where someone incredibly wealthy and incredibly powerful spent part of their time and accordingly the gates were high and steel and the guards were sharp-eyed and held guns the way someone might cradle a child -- lovingly and warily and always watching. She'd waited til the directed time -- the shift-change -- but either the client hadn't wanted all the information to reach her, or he'd been misinformed, but the shift-change was far quicker and well-oiled than it was supposed to have been. With the slickness of long practice, one group of dark clad men changed for another, and Eve stole her moment and was half way up the side of the building before they'd finished. Anyone else, without her special skill-set, would have been lost -- but she wasn't anyone else, and busily set about untangling the puzzle pieces of how to extract such a painting with the buzz that came from being presented an actual challenge.
It had taken longer than it should have done, too -- and the client had been quite clear about that; the pick up was timed quite precisely and if she didn't make it, she'd lose her fee. Eve wasn't much concerned about whether the client felt like witholding her fee or not -- she'd take it, if necessary, along with the rest of his precious things and leave him perhaps with just one painting rather than many -- but she did care about moving on and doing other things. By the time she was stood at the appointed place, the painting rolled into a sleeve and tucked under her arm, she was scanning the horizon for both the car and the guards, entirely aware that it could all go wrong. When it all went wrong, it was very exciting but utterly time-consuming -- and Eve had a plan with a bar and a beer and a man in the future and wasn't entirely interested in that plan going utterly awry.
It was a nondescript black sedan that pulled up to the curb inches away from the point of her shoes; the driver didn't appear to be in a hurry, because he wasn't skidding or screeching and the car certainly didn't have the frame of one built to carry criminals or muscle through police barriers. The windows were dark and the car was silent, but it stopped and there was a distinct click of the doors unlocking for her. By his silhouette, the driver was looking out the passenger window at her, and just as clearly expected her to get in the back.
That, she hadn't been told either -- but then this was the latest in a long line of things Eve hadn't been told about this job, but one of the things she had been told was to see the painting handed over safely. Which it hadn't yet been. With little hesitation, black gloved fingers settled on the door-handle, and a moment later, black-clad legs swung themselves over the seat and Eve folded herself into the car with a careless kind of grace and a bright smile beneath the mask for whoever it was behind the wheel.
"Do I get to call you James?" She was light, airy, as if she hadn't spent the last two hours doing everything she knew to pull one small (priceless) painting from its home in a frame on a wall, as if it weren't dangerous to clamber into cars with people from the criminal element she didn't know. "And say 'full speed ahead'?"
The car's seats were new, incongruous to the exterior, and that wasn't the first thing that was odd about the car. Within the dark glass there was no full back seat, just one chair on the side closest to the curb behind the passenger. The man behind the wheel gave her a look all bemusement, and he didn’t match the car, either. He looked like he’d prefer a motorcycle or a muscle car, and he smelled like motor oil and cologne so strong that he overcame the new-car smell the seats gave off. “Honey,” he said, in a voice that was touched with the south so vague that a specific region was hard to discern, “You can call me whatever you want. Put your belt on.” There was something a bit off in that possessive ‘your,’ but there was no time to think about it. The driver was looking in the rearview as two cars driving fast and dark pulled into the roadway beside the building. “You’re gonna need it.” He showed absolutely no curiosity in the thing she was holding, though he seemed to think her mask was funny as he shifted and hit the gas.
She’d been settling into her surroundings with the ease of someone who jumps into many and stays never long in one, and the click of the seat-belt into the teeth of the socket was more of an answer than the roll of the eyes that accompanied it -- even to someone unaccustomed to cars, the pull and tug of the motor impatiently awaiting release was ticking over underneath the hood and sang almost dangerously. The mask went, as did the hat that contained a lot of dark hair and both disappeared into the pockets of a much beaten up leather jacket that looked as if it had once belonged to a man, not Eve at all.
“This wasn’t in the brief,” she said, all dry amusement and vague interest in adventure -- and she flicked him an assessing look that drank in the use of cologne and the thick tang of motor oil along with everything else that was partially one criminal looking over another, and partly just Eve herself.
The driver was completely undisturbed by the assessment, having seen a lot of it and done a lot of it himself. He didn’t look too hard at who was in his car, his attention on the road and not the woman--after the first long drink, anyway. “I don’t write briefs,” he said, taking the car off the driveway and through a yellow light as smooth as a hot knife through butter. There was an engine in there that wasn’t anything like the dealership offered, that was for damn sure, and the fact they weren’t bouncing around like ping pong balls inside meant that someone had done something to the suspension, too. The two security cars were in pursuit, but the scream of horns meant they weren’t as good at getting through that intersection, and the driver shifted, tapped the brake, and neatly slid the car down an alley that exploded into yet another intersection.
“And your name isn’t James,” she said as though the driving were usual, as if it were normal to cut through traffic and roads the way a scalpel might snick in between flesh -- and if a flash of admiration caught itself on her face for a moment as the car and its occupants were neatly absorbed into the traffic of the next intersection, it was soon lost. “You don’t write briefs, your name isn’t James and you drive like a -” a gesture of the hand as she drew off the black gloves as well, clearly less concerned with leaving fingermarks here. “So what are you?” A smile that was all show and glitter, but the curiosity was genuine.
“Bat outta hell?” he suggested. He wore a dark gray jacket and nondescript black slacks, but the features were wide and warm, not dark and empty at all. Criminal he might be, but he wasn’t in the class that worked as body guards or hired killers. (Or he was, and just very good at pretending.) “I’m the driver,” he said, rather smugly. The car slowed to an innocent rumble and they rattled along at precisely 39 miles an hour in a 40 zone behind a delivery truck. The driver flicked glances in the rearview; the security was professional and he had a hard time believing that he was going to lose them so easy. “Tell me what was in your briefs, hm? Were you late in ‘em or was that just this time?”
She’d leaned forward, presumably to see if the car came with a music system, those long white fingers probing and poking around the way they did in every new situation. The mild criticism found its mark, and the fingers stilled and the smile slid away and Eve looked up and caught his eyes in the mirror with the kind of irritation that roiled up hot and quick and burned off easy.
“I got out, didn’t I?” A little tilt of the chin, all ruffled pride and edges on display, but with a prickle of self-satisfaction - had she been anyone else, she probably wouldn’t have been sat in the passenger seat and Eve knew it. “Pick up a painting, drop it off. Few armed guards, a light show, nothing special.”
When she started to reach for the console and push buttons, he swiped a hand at her, and what would have been a light thwap on the back of her hand hit nothing but air. He was not bothered by the thief’s reflexes, and instead he just said, “No touchin’,” shortly. Definitely southern. “Not that I’m not real impressed by how amazing you are, honey.” Smug smile that said quite the opposite.
She stuck her tongue out; his smugness afforded the most childish of responses, even as sheer self-satisfaction and cocky pleasure shone out of her at even such a very basic win afforded her -- Eve gave all victories great and small the same warmth of mood, brightening to the very edges at her own success. “Going to drive like a bat outta hell,” and she mimicked the accent, her own a little further west than south, but with the kind of delighted amusement difficult to brush aside, “Needs a soundtrack.” Her hand hovered a moment as she contemplated it, sneaking a look across the way a child might judge their luck -- and then her hand dropped back into her lap as she leaned back in her seat, apparently content to enjoy the ride. “And I am amazing.” Under her breath, almost to herself - but audible.
“This ride I need my concentration, not whatever cat’s wailin’ you think is music.” He gave her a little unimpressed smirk when he heard her comment, though it was almost drowned entirely as the engine caught again. “Hm,” he said, looking into the rearview. The security detail was back. “They made us, I see.” He said it very slowly, observant. “Lots of friends you make when you’re being amazing.” He lifted the driver’s side hand, opposite of her, up to his ear and scratched.
Eve turned in her seat, craned round to look with her whole body moving, caught by the anchor of the seat-belt. Hearing it, in that quiet, factual way was quite something different from seeing the cars, snub-nosed like sharks, lined up and trained on them and this one, like guns. She couldn’t quite see through the glass beyond silhouettes, no faces to remember, and when she settled back in her seat, there was a tightness to how she sat, like coiled springs under velvet and the desire for music was quite forgotten.
“I’m not really all that sociable when working, pumpkin,” she said it flippantly, but with the surety underneath that made it quite clearly true; Eve knew when she’d been seen on a job, when she made the slip and this one had been true despite the difficulties. “Seem to be more your type, than mine.”
“Flattering,” he said, of her observation. He went with the flow of traffic for a second longer, and then he said something sharp that sounded like ah lay to whoever was in the earpiece. The sedate-looking sedan took a leap out of the intersection line, jumped the curve, skidded around a mailbox. Tired of the camouflage route, apparently.
“Who’s in the ear?” she asked, a minute later, when her hands had unfurled from the sides of the seat and her breath had uncaught itself from the back of her throat. He drove the way she ran rooftops, with the glory of a roller-coaster gone off the rails. Eve didn’t have much use for cars, but this one seemed almost as good as outrunning people on foot -- and it came with company.
He was not heading for the freeway, it was the fastest way to get on the news with half the Seattle PD on your ass. The buildings got closer together, and closed storefronts whipped past. Without warning and without brake lights, the driver made every light in the sedan go dark, including the dashboard, and whipped the car into a ninety degree skid that shot it down a perpendicular path seconds later. “It’s not important.”
Dark was fine for Eve, a friend, and when it stole away all the lights inside the car, she could see more clearly -- if she were looking, rather than leaning back tight against her seat, spine arched for impact. It was like being lassoed to a comet, carried along in its wake and instead of watching the road she began watching him, because not watching the careering path they were taking was the easiest way to slow the kick of adrenaline at running without running.
“Never said it was, honey,” she was playing with the edge of the painting sleeve, running her fingertips up like playing the piano, “You planning on telling me where we’re headed, or am I just along for the damn ride?” Hand over the painting, it had been there clear as black and white, in the handful of papers she’d tossed down careless in her apartment. It didn’t say who to, it didn’t say a car with a good-looking madman, who drove as if the car were a loved woman and he knew every curve, who smelled more strongly than her senses really wished anything smelled, whilst being pursued.
A new car skidded out behind them, lights flaring out through Eve’s window without warning as they shot past a garage opening. The car was a black sedan too, same model, same make, but its lights were on and it was braking to show its lights to the pursuing vehicles. In their car, the driver’s jaw firmed, he shifted gears, and the car accelerated another twenty miles an hour, moving like a bullet from a gun and putting distance between them and the new car that now divided them from their pursuers. A second later he swerved across a roundabout, took them literally over a grassy ditch, and into a shopping mall parking lot that was quiet and dead. He braked slow, without sound, and with one switch on the wheel, brought all the lights up again. He ignored her questions and put an elbow over the seat, looking through the back window with a kind of intensity, waiting, waiting, scanning for pursuit.
In the silence, a very tinny sound came from the earpiece, but it was a short message, maybe two words, and he did not respond to it. He watched.
It wasn’t the type of chase-and-run she was used to; where you listened for footfalls and soft breaths, where light was a cigarette’s glow or a street-lamp’s flare and if you could run faster, longer, harder, you were safe. Eve was always faster and always safe but this wasn’t running through alleys but in cars and that was different and something that left her unsure but with the roiling urge to be in motion. Instead she curled up tightly on the passenger seat, feet tucked under her thighs and watched too, but with the hesitation of being out of place and knowingly forgotten. She moved sharply at the sound, however small that broke the silence, but stilled -- waiting, whilst he watched.
There was no clock in the dash and no telling exactly how long it had been, but finally he relaxed in the seat. “We good.” The engine was idling without protest, humming to itself while it waited for him to make up his mind where to go, and he looked at her to assess her state. “You okay?” He took his arm off the seat and straightened.
When his body unfurled, telegraphed the release of tension, hers did too and Eve stretched as though she’d been sleeping, with studied carelessness and an easy smile to answer his concern with apparent relaxation. “Never better, sweetcheeks. Who could resist a little high speed car chase?” She seemed to resettle herself by moving a lot in a very little space, touching things as though steadying herself and then finally, properly relaxed and still. “Although I think I’m charging double for this.” The bar and the man and the drinking was still on -- but she was going to make that beer a scotch instead. “And you? All in your line of work, pumpkin?”
“That’s why I’m hired, honey.” But a smile touched his lips at the annoying appellation, since it made him envision actual pumpkins, and like most men the driver had a fondness for pumpkin pie and pumpkin seeds and (secretly) pumpkin lattes. “You’ll be interested to know that my orders are to drive you around until we get a call to come in at some undisclosed location.” He slid her a sideways look to see if she’d known that was coming, because that was the part of the deal that he had charged the most for in this little shindig, and he didn’t like it one bit.
Her displeasure was quick and easily seen; it welled up hotly and Eve’s mouth quirked into something that was sharper than a smile, and she muttered something about just one painting and nothing else, before settling back in her seat and propping her feet on the dashboard, in thin, crepe-soled shoes. “Nothing personal, sugar,” she said, with the slow, measured way of putting aside one thing for another (but she had almost heard the splash of liquid in the glass) “But that wasn’t really in my evening plans. Or you, come to that.” She looked back, and it wasn’t surreptitious at all but bold and strong and a little bit wicked. “I had my fun all lined up.”
The driver shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t like it either,” he said, enunciating again as they pulled out of the drive safely and he checked traffic as they merged smoothly into it, sedate once more. “Seems like a dangerous way to do business, especially your business.” It was clear that he was taking turns at random, not choosing a route through any sane means and taking them down busy thoroughfares and quiet residential streets without preference for either.
She lifted her body into something like a shrug, drummed her fingers against the window’s ledge and watched the roads pass beside them, shift away from the areas she knew on the ground into ones she didn’t, and back again until it ran together in confusion -- which seemed to be the point. “It’s a job, doll. Worried about me?” That wicked little smile curved itself into her mouth again, a look sent his way that was all bored flirtatiousness. “Why, we only just met.” Danger came with the work she’d chosen, but so did the thrill; the sweeping heat of an adrenaline kick that didn’t come with anything legal.
He shook his head and frowned at the dark road ahead. “Your job, not mine.” On his, he had a back up, plans, several weapons of various nature, and no life insurance. He wasn’t sure what she had, but he was guessing that all it added up to was guts and skill, and that wasn’t going to help her if he was supposed to drop her off in some dark alley while they both got shot at. He braked as his cellphone rang and guided the car off the free way as he lifted it to answer. “Hello.” It was even a friendly greeting, and it was more west and north than south. He glanced at her as the voice on the other end replied with the location instead of the greeting.
She was rifling through the glove-compartment at a moment’s distraction, with the idle interest of a thief never entirely satisfied with a nightly haul. The contents spilled out across her lap, stuffed in haphazardly; Eve took inventory before putting them back -- all of it, although examining the cigarette brand and the choice of cologne and looking at him first, tucking the maps in, a handful of places to go in her fingers that she showed no interest in -- and the gun last, feeling the weight of it first. Eve didn’t much go in for guns; they bit hard in a way glass and stone and metal didn’t, permanently. You couldn’t outrun a gun, but you could duck and you could dodge and you could jump -- and Eve trusted more in those skills than she did in her ability to want to hit someone with a bullet, which was the point.
He scowled across at her as he listened, and when he agreed with the client on the phone and hung up, he shot her another hard look. “Damn sneak-thieves get your sticky fingers all over everything.” He resented the greed imposition on his privacy, what he saw as a violation of a sacred space, and he wanted her to know it. Without pause he continued, “He wants me to take you out to Discovery Park.” He was shifting and turning, getting back on the freeway the opposite direction.
She shut the glove compartment with a quiet click, without a measure of being sorry at all, and gave him the same bright, unapologetic smile of being caught -- and lifted her hands away, high and clear of anything touchable and wiggled her fingers. “Habit,” she said, and when he spoke -- and drove at the same time, it wasn’t a question, wasn’t anything at all but an information delivery. She would be delivered, the same way she’d expected the painting to go. For a moment, Eve questioned it, the safety of it. Stealing from a client who’d cheated her was one thing, climbing into buildings with shadows at her back and the thrill of it making it easy and glorious -- but it was another to be in a bare, open space with no cover at all and nowhere to jump, and she settled back in her seat looking thoughtful, which wasn’t a look Eve’s face wore often.
He fell silent as he drove. Whoever was in his earpiece heard the direction and he didn’t need to repeat it, and the expression on her face was closed enough in the sliding light of streetlamps that he didn’t feel he had anything significant to interrupt. Finally, as they dropped off the freeway and turned toward the coast, he said, “You work for this fellow before?” He enunciated the word ‘fellow’ a bit too much, and he disliked the taste of it in his mouth.
She was leaned right up close against the window, curled there as though she could slip through and out, watching things flicker into nothing between the bright flashes of light that cut across them like blinds. “No,” she said, after a while, and it sounded like he knew something more than she -- Eve looked up, and focused on his face as he watched the road ahead. “It was a job. With a paycheck that didn’t need fencing first,” she said honestly. And those paychecks were needed, for rent and bills and all the detritus of living, when occasionally precious things couldn’t be sold quickly enough.
“Eve,” she said, after a moment or two. Stuck in a car for a little while longer, might as well make nice.
“Hal,” he said, with surprising readiness for someone driving a new acquaintance to their potential doom. “I’m thinking that maybe you should do a little more research on who’s hirin’ you, honey. Just saying.” They swerved and bumped down the road that followed the coast toward the park, and if anything it only got darker as the light pollution drifted behind instead of ahead. Hal shifted tensely in his seat and leaned a little into the wheel.
“They hired you too,” she said, as the light crept away and the driver -- Hal, shifted in his seat as though uncomfortable with the way it was supposed to work. “You do much in the way of research? I go with ‘roll with the punches’.” That guess he’d made, about her lack of back-up, about running on bravado and barefaced cheek, found true. Eve shuffled herself around, restless again -- peering through the windows as though trying to establish some familiarity with the territory before even there.
Hal didn’t do much in the way of research, it was true, but Charlie did. Hal decided not to mention this, just like he decided not to mention that he would probably run around exactly like she was without him. “I get that,” he commiserated, watching the treeline unfold before them. The cigarette and cologne sedan cruised to a stop at the corner and he looked at her and her painting.
“You get paid on delivery?” There were different ways of working out payment, from the cold and calculated to those who didn’t talk money until it actually had to be spoken about and even then it was embarrassed shuffles and coughs. Eve was bold about it, the way she was about everything and she looked across at him with the concern of a co-worker, vague sympathy. “If all this goes to hell, I can always sell it.” She held the painting in one hand, tossed it to the other -- nonchalant about playing catch with something so many years old. She preferred jewelry anyway.
“Half on delivery for this job,” he said gruffly. The brown eyes were distinct in the shadows, and he watched the park. It was not a good look for either of them. “Tell you what,” he said, suddenly. “I’ve got another out on the south side of the park. This goes sideways, you meet me there and I’ll give you a discounted getaway rate.” He showed his teeth in a rogue’s grin, but he was dead serious.
They used to talk of ‘honor amongst thieves’ -- as if it existed, as if strangers who betrayed other strangers felt some kind of connection and bond with others who did exactly that. Eve didn’t have much of the way in honor, but she looked at him and his grin that was something true, and she tipped her head in acknowledgment.
“Only because you’re pretty,” she told him, and patted his cheek before unlocking the belt, and sliding out of the car and into the dark with a smooth, soft lope of a run that sent her into the long shadows of the trees. She didn’t look concerned, didn’t look back to where the car sat with its engine purring safely. But she didn’t slick sideways and run away either.
He did his job, and Charlie was doing the meet for the cash, so it meant he wasn’t able to give him an earful just then about picking up a job immediately and in such a dangerous situation. Instead the grinding of teeth was extremely distinct in his left ear. Hal shifted into reverse and parked the car across the street from the park in the agreed upon spot, taking the gun, loading it from the ammunition that was in a hidden compartment under the driver’s side floor mat, and tucking it into his jacket. He devoutly hoped he wasn’t going to have to shoot anyone, because he’d dislike that quite a lot.
Putting his hands in his pockets, he strolled around the edge of the park, listening to the trees in the dark and approaching where his backup vehicle was waiting for him--the one Charlie had brought when he heard where the drop-off point was.
It took a while, presumably some negotiation going on in that copse of trees that was halfway in to the depths of the park -- and then there was the bark of gunfire, almost at the same time as the streaking figure of black that was running far, far faster than ought to be right -- the gunmen appeared at the very edge of where what little light there was, fell -- a couple more rapports but it was half hearted, a warning, before they massed forward - but Eve ran as if she was being chased, without looking back, without stopping until her hand was flat against the side of the vehicle, the one she recognized -- empty. Her head came up, eyes wide behind that bit of a mask -- and searched the horizon, wild and quick. Without back up, when there was nothing to hide up or in, it was easy to be picked off.
“Hey, whatever the rate is, I’m paying, can we haul ass here?” Her demand was sharp and short and clear in the air, but when she saw him, a little bit of the wildness fled, leaving only tension. Not exactly how the evening had been planned.
“Long time no see, honey.” The car, a green Chevy Nova that was a lot dirtier and a lot more him than the black sedan, was already idling and he thrust it keenly in reverse as figures materialized out of the horizon from which she had come. “Charge is five hundred for de trip.” He shifted again, let the tires burn as they skipped sideways on the turn, and pressed the pedal down with firm command.
She would’ve argued -- opened her mouth to do so, in fact -- but a glance behind established that she wasn’t running out of here in time for a shower and a drink at a bar where no one’s face needed to be remembered. “Now who’s the thief?” She slung herself into the car with the carelessness of wanting to be gone already and dug the required fare for an unorthodox cab driver out of a pocket somewhere in tight black pants, handed it over. “Anywhere nice and safe.”
He shrugged, grinning. “Standard fare fo’ this ride, actually.” He was getting deeper south, or perhaps hiding it less, as susceptible to the adrenaline as the next man. “Never charge less.” He lifted his hips with his foot still on the accelerator, and the car didn’t so much as rev from a change in pressure as he stuffed the cash away into his pants pocket. It was a move born of practice. “You pick a spot. They don’t got anyone ready to pursue, not from that park. They figure you without backup.” He gave her a derisive look.
Danger wasn’t bearing down on her as it had a moment or two ago -- she could afford less sharp reaction and his relaxed ease and bearing was infectious. She lifted her head back from the window, gave him the sweeping sort of look that took in everything, from the different car to the lazy sound of the South that slowed his voice to molasses and sugar, and grinned.
“They figure me without you, then,” she said, and named a bar close enough to the general buzz of late night Seattle that she could lose herself inside and shake any possible danger in a room full of people who all dressed in tight clothes and wanted to lose themselves for other reasons. Not a job she’d be repeating -- the money had been a lot at once, several nights’ worth but harder won, and she patted the pocket where it lay, absently. Money enough for rent and a drink, even without the fare to safety.
“Near ‘nough.” He knew the bar, liked it well, and nodded as firm as any cabbie who knew the area. As usual when not in a chase, he slowed to the speed limit and obeyed traffic laws, though the doctored Nova rumbled like a tiger on a leash. He took a cigarette from the armrest between them and rolled a window down to light it, the flare illuminating the bemused brown eyes to better favor than their last ride. “So what happen’ on the job, hm?”
She produced her own packet; much crumpled for having been concealed in odd places, but they were a little-chosen brand and even crushed, were still usable. Eve mimicked his actions, leaned an arm against the edge of the window, the cigarette trailing smoke out the door.
“They didn’t want to pay the full amount,” she said shortly, quiet. People didn’t often argue prices, not when it was a take-it-or-leave-it, and she could saunter on out, priceless artifact swinging in hand, as if it were take-home lunch bag brought in for a trade. There might be no honor amongst thieves, but there was Eve’s judgment and usually (usually) it was sound and held true long enough to get the money and be far away. “No harm, no foul, I got out with my hide intact, didn’t I, pumpkin?” She was back to breezy now, feet propped back up against the dashboard, leaning back in her seat and looked back at him for the merest hint of I-told-you-sos.
Oh, there were plenty of those, but he was blowing them out the window with a stream of smoke and didn’t offer any more of them than he already had. “Dat happens.” He seemed to be relaxing further around this thief, his own arrogance matching and even eclipsing hers to the point that he could think of no particular reason to cling to the safety of anonymity. Charlie was cursing in Cajun in his ear. It made Hal smile.
She wasn’t much one for partnerships; preferring her own company, her own ways of doing things when she didn’t have to spare a backward glance for someone else’s tag-along footsteps. When you could run, leap, jump faster than most, going at a normal pace wasn’t exciting at all and the thrill was all of it -- that and the weight of something shiny in her pocket, after all. Working relationships were short and brief, a momentary necessity of a particular job and generally bargained when she was in too deep to wiggle back out without losing something. There had been worse than this man who smelled too strong, but smiled with his mouth and his eyes both and who drove the way she ran, as if it were natural.
“Not to me.” She was bold and she was cocky but it wasn’t a lie, just an overblown truth -- people didn’t much try to change the terms with Eve. They didn’t get what they wanted, when they tried. She’d have learned the pacing of their rooms, where the windows sat against the walls, which place their eyes darted toward inadvertently when they knew there was a thief inside their space. “Guess you’re not amazing enough then,” she added smugly, folding her arm behind her head, sneaking a look across, a smile.
“Plenty amazin’,” he said, unabashed. “You just don’ know me that well.” He brought her to the club she asked for by a different route, and in the end he backed into an alleyway with the nose out and just enough room for the passenger door to open several inches. It was an effortless, clean parking job, like he knew the dimensions of the car better than he knew the back of his hand. He tapped ash out the window and gave her a sideways look. “Better luck on de job next time,” he told her. He took a small business card from the armrest and handed it to her. It just has a number on it, no logo, no name. “You t’ink you gonna screw up that bad again, you call me to get you out.” Honey smile.
That sweetness cut itself with a comment about her skill, and Eve’s look was annoyance but easily swept aside in appreciation of the offer and the man behind it -- she flipped the card between her fingers, a magician with a magic trick and it disappeared somewhere in the proximity of a pants-pocket. “Don’t think I’ll be playing with others again,” she said, rueful. Company was nice enough but the way she played was ruthless, not the kind that softened toward other people in the game. With a grin, she leaned over, bumped lips against the slope of his jaw and took in a breath of cologne in doing so.
“Thanks for the overpriced cab trip, doll -- and really, go easy on that cologne,” was her parting, the door clicked gently shut behind her and she wove into the people quickly, lost in the light that issued from it, and the hubbub surrounding it. Working with people occasionally had its upsides.