Friends? For the longest time, Eliot hadn't allowed himself to get close to many people. When you got high enough in the hitter circles, you tended to know most of the other guys who were in the top, and he'd faced several of them, but he wouldn't call any of them friends. They would have been just as happy to see him dead. "Not really." He took his hand and got to his feet. "My friends know better than to fight me."