BOND

20.

And the calluses on your fingers

I admired them from a distance

Now they're on my cheek

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.

Elena leaned back as much as she could to catch a glance at Joey's face, but the tree obstructed her full movement. After a strange click sound he'd suddenly turned totally rigid. With no more space left behind her head she settled for the next best thing, pushing Joey away. Which surprisingly, he helped in, giving her enough space so she could make out his expression.

When she turned her head to look around at the warehouse it collided with his arm which he'd moved at eye level to her. Huffing up at him, she pulled it down and he relaxed it down to next to her throat and that too with much reluctance. Realizing that this was the best she could hope for, she carefully peered at the back door.

All the lights in the building had been switched on so it was a startling change from the darkness surrounding them and her eyes took a couple of seconds to adjust. When she did see what had turned Joey even sourer than he already was she gasped and if it wasn't for his quick response she would've given away their position.

Joey observed the guard for a few seconds and only after he was convinced that he, the guard, hadn't heard Elena, he relaxed his hand from her mouth. The second he did she whispered sharply, "That's a gun!"

Joey closed his eyes to catch a second worth of break and nodded. She had a problem with this part and he knew for a fact that things were about to get a whole lot worse. He leaned ahead and said into her ear, "Stay here, I'm coming back."

She almost started to protest and tell him to stay right where he was, but he'd already started moving backwards. Again she could only stare in disbelief as he moved so silently like he did this kind of thing every day. She stayed, pressed up against the tree as he stepped around carefully, only moving when the wind rustled and the leaves crushing below his feet couldn't be heard.

Joey backed away till he could see the corner of the street, all the while making sure that Elena wasn't beyond his line of sight, and just like he'd suspected there was a car parked there with the headlights on so the driver could see any movement down the road. Going out that way was ruled out and the other way wasn't an option he would consider even as a last resort. The guard might not have heard him prancing around but there was no way he was going to miss a motorcycle going through the dark.

Gingerly, he made his way back to Elena and cursed at himself for not having gotten her out of there sooner. There wasn't anything he could do about it now and they were going to be there for at least another fifteen minutes so his main concern at the moment was making sure that they didn't get caught until then.

Even with how wired he was, stepping back into their little bubble left him a little flustered as she grabbed onto his shoulder.

Suddenly twigs cracked to their left and both their heads snapped to the direction of the noise.

Elena saw the man first and she clutched Joey's shirt at the sight of the gun he held poised in his hand. The man glanced over to where Joey had been just a moment earlier, and seeing nothing there he moved ahead. After a split second, leaves crunched just in front of the tree they were against and Elena flinched at the sound of footsteps so close to them.

The man moved straight ahead, looking back at the woods, until he was just in front of the back door.

Joey tilted his head enough so he could just barely make out the two figures, talking in normal tones because after all they'd searched, and nobody was around.