Dancing with Embers - Book Two (Winter Soldier)

Prolouge

"God....what the hell....Tony?"

There was no reply to my sleepy, confused question that was mumbled into the darkness of my room. I squinted in irritation at what must have been my dream that had woken me. I flopped back onto my bed and closed my eyes again.

I was currently in Stark Tower, in downtown New York. It had been a while since the attack on the city sent by Loki, and Tony had asked me to stay with him for at least a few days. A 'few days' had turned into a week, then a month, and by now I had practically moved in with him. Tony suffered from severe PTSD from Loki's attack, much like what I experienced every once in a while thanks to my run-in with Hydra a few years ago.

The noise that originally awoke me sounded again out in the hall, making me open my eyes without a word or a single other movement. It sounded like someone was out in the hall, someone that wasn't Tony. He normally spent entire days in his lab without sleeping or eating, and it wasn't uncommon for me to hear him working in the middle of the night. But I had memorized his footsteps, how much weight he put on the floor and steps, and even his breathing patterns so I could tell if it was him outside the door, or someone I needed to cock my gun for.

The person outside the door definitely was not Tony.
Their footsteps were too heavy, their breathing too loud, too staggered.

I silently rolled out of bed and slid my loaded .45 caliber out from under my pillow as I went. I clicked the safety off, but waited to cock it. I made my way over to the closed door in a crouch, holding my handgun at the ready almost instinctively.
Questions started to whirl around in my mind.
'What if it was Hydra, what if they had somehow found me again?'
Then, 'Don't be ridiculous, Kindle, they couldn't have found you.'
My heart was beating and the adrenaline was already working its way through my veins.

The footsteps outside the door stopped suddenly and all I could hear was the ragged breathing patterns that were so unfamiliar. There was only a single person outside, which calmed my suspicious on Hydra quite a bit. They wouldn't be so stupid as to only send one man to kidnap me.
In a whirl of sudden decision, I stood up from my crouch and kicked the door of my bedroom open. It flew back and hit the wall behind it with a loud bang. Nobody was in the hallway.
In half a second I was out of my room and whirling out into the hallway, spinning clockwise to scan the dark corners.

I let out a stifled shriek as I saw the culprit of my attack.
It was one of Tony's empty suits, standing next to my door with its head tilted at me as if to say 'what was that for?'

I looked at the gold and red suit with a tinge of disgust before sighing loudly and pinching the bridge of my nose. My gun dropped to the floor as my arm fell to my side.
I ran a hand through my hair as I turned from the suit and started down the stairs leading down to the fifth floor of Tony's tower.
I found the genius in the kitchen, looking sleep deprived as usual, and holding a screwdriver in his mouth. He was leaning over something on the counter, it couldn't make out what it was through my sleep-fogged eyes and my adrenaline level that was still making my hands shaky.

Tony looked up as I padded into the kitchen. He looked surprised to see me up at...a look at the clock told me it was 2:34 am. Great.

"Kindle? Are you okay, why are you awake?"

His voice was quiet and rough in the darkness, proof that he hadn't spoken in quite a while. I sighed and walked towards him, my arms folded across my chest partly because I was upset and partly because I was chilly.

"One of your Marks made its way upstairs." I told him, my voice just as thick as his had been. He blinked and I saw his eyes dart towards the staircase.