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The moving stack sat down and deposited itself on the coffee table, revealing a suspiciously earnest-looking Pep behind it. He stared deeply into Luís’ eyes, then briskly began to sort out the various binders...medical journals...and flashy pop-science relationship guidebooks he’d brought with him. Habit made Luís start scanning their surroundings for a quick exit.

“Now, I just want you to know right off that I’m here for you, for every step in this process,” Pep said soothingly. “I’m not here to accuse or to judge, but just to sup—”

“What process?” Luís said. He felt a little guilty for his curtness upon seeing Pep’s injured expression, but then steeled himself. He put down his morning coffee. “I know I just got back, but...I’m very sorry if I forgot a birthday, or...”

Pep blinked, then smiled encouragingly. “It’s all right. Occasional memory loss is hardly a sign of abnormality, and is nothing to get alarmed about. It’s certainly not a sign that you’re...” he furtively consulted something tucked into his sleeve “...losing your manhood. It’s just part of the whole process and is nothing to get concerned about. Of course, I can understand if you’re worried about it, because we all used to be faster than we are. If you want to talk—”

“Oh, Christ.” Luís stared at him. “Zlatan was joking, Pep. I’m not actually going through a midlife crisis. My God, you’re two years older.”

Silence. Then Pep tucked his chin down, blinked a few times and looked back up. “What does my age have to do with anything?” he asked, more than a little offended. “Luís, there’s no need to lash out at me for your insecurities.”

“I wasn’t,” Luís muttered. Of course that only hardened Pep’s suspicions; Luís cursed himself, Zlatan, and Zlatan’s awful table manners and hastily tried to rearrange his face into something more conciliatory. “Pep, while I’m very…it’s very nice of you to be concerned, but there’s really no need. I think I’m fine.”

Pep pursed his lips. He fiddled with the note in his sleeve, then pulled that out and tossed it onto the table. “Really. And your recent adventures in Italy were just accidental.”

“Well, yes, more or less. I told you, I wasn’t looking to get involved but once I was, I thought I might as well make sure that everything turned out well and there wasn’t any blowback,” Luís said. He probably sounded a little too defensive, but it was hard to keep his composure with pamphlets on—on good God, crisis intervention mediators staring him in the face. He looked at said brochure, picked it up and then put it down. “That’s really not necess—anyway, Pep, I’m fine. I’m well-adjusted, I’m in complete control of myself and completely fine with my—our—current lifestyle, and I really don’t think you need to worry about me for at least a couple more years.”

“As opposed to worrying about myself?” Pep said acidly.

Luís raised his brows in inquiry. “Should I be?”

Not the right thing to say, judging by the way Pep immediately looked away and began to shuffle together his accumulated papers, all stiff elbows and stormy face. “As you say yourself, I am still in good command of faculties, despite my comparatively advanced age.”

“Oh. Oh, for God’s sake, Pep, I didn’t—stop getting offended, all right? I didn’t say that you were going through any problem. I just said that you’re older than me, as a factual statement. Which it is.” Promising himself he was never inviting Zlatan for dinner again, Luís grabbed the nearest of Pep’s elbows and dragged the other man towards him. He intercepted Pep’s other hand when Pep tried to push away from him, then made the man face him. “I think you’re perfectly fine.”

“Thank you for the ringing endorsement,” Pep muttered, angling himself away from Luís. He twisted his head about to frown at the coffee table, as if he had anything desperately important to do with the junk lying on it. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“If you want, but I’d really rather not.” Luís waited for Pep’s weight to shift, then pulled the other man towards him till Pep’s foot skidded off the floor. He stopped pulling, let Pep’s momentum carry the man into him and then slipped his arm around Pep’s waist to lock Pep in place. As annoyed as Pep still looked, his breath caught a little when Luís nuzzled his ear. “Come to think of it, now that you’re asking, I would like you to help me with a problem of mine.”

Pep half-heartedly tried to wiggle off Luís’ knee, only to jump himself back on it with a yelp when Luís slid a hand between his legs. Then he sighed and leaned back against Luís. He wrapped both hands around Luís’ wrists, which kept it from moving further up his thigh but which didn’t exactly push it down. “If it’s the one I think it is, you could always have your trousers retailored.”

Luís laughed. Then he hooked his hand around Pep’s leg, high enough so that the side of his hand pressed into Pep’s groin. He kissed the side of Pep’s neck just as the man gasped. “What happened to being there for me no matter what?”

“That was for your emotional and mental needs, Luís,” Pep said, twisting again. He made a grab for the back of the couch and nearly got it as well. If Luís hadn’t kissed his neck again, a little higher up, Pep probably would have used the leverage to pull himself free instead of what he did do, which was push himself around to put one hand on Luís’ side. “You’re quite competent about seeing to your physical needs yourself.”

“But I’m getting old. I need help,” Luís murmured into Pep’s throat. He nibbled at the side of Pep’s jaw, then lifted his head the centimeter he needed to kiss the man on the mouth. Then he tried to move onto Pep’s temple, but Pep caught his mouth again, making an irritated noise that immediately shifted into a moan.

Thank God they were done with the talking. Luís adjusted his hands on Pep, then shoved the man down on the couch and crawled onto him without breaking their kiss. Or Pep’s fisted hold on his shirt, which might possibly have just made a button pop off, but that was something Luís could check on later.

“You’re too damn flippant for your own good,” Pep half-breathed, half-grumbled, trying to help Luís get his sweater up his belly. “Honestly, I only wanted to—”

“I know, and while I appreciate the concern, I am clearly not that old yet,” Luís said, mouthing up and down Pep’s neck. He finally got his fingers under the bottom of Pep’s sweater and started skinning it off the man.

Pep grabbed Luís’ wrist and pushed himself up on his other arm in an unusually well-coordinated move, considering how his breath was catching. He leveled a still-irritated gaze on Luís. “You know, it has nothing to do with age. It’s more about having difficulty with a sudden change of circumstances.”

“And I don’t have this so-called difficulty, and I’m fine, damn it,” Luís snapped. “And if anyone’s going to worry about that problem, I’d think it’d be you.”

“Why me?” Pep asked sharply. “Just because I’m turning forty—”

“And you didn’t want a party for it, which most people might take as a sign of denial,” Luís said, not thinking.

When he wanted to, Pep had absolutely no problem with getting away from Luís. He shoved Luís off him so hard that Luís had to grab the couch to keep from falling off it, then got up and stalked out of the room. A moment later, the door to his office slammed.

Luís opened his mouth. Then he closed it and put his hand over his face. He rubbed at his right eye, then glanced over himself. He plucked at his rumpled shirt, absently noting that he had lost a button, and then sighed and smoothed it down with his hand. For a few minutes he sat on the couch and looked at the table full of midlife crisis guides before him, wondering if it was too late to lie and say that yes, he was going through it. Since anxiously-helpful Pep was easier to deal with than angry Pep…Luís winced upon hearing another door slam. Then he got up.

Pep already had his coat on and was stiffly jerking his scarf around his neck, rather like how Luís might sling a garrote around someone. Then he looked up and saw Luís. “I’m going to campus,” he said curtly. “There’s a little problem with one of my upcoming exhibits and since I’m so decrepit, I’d better take care of it before it slips my mind.”

“I thought you said it didn’t have anything to do with age,” Luís said.

“Then it’s my inability to deal with new situations such as your sudden need to go off with your old friend to chase illegal arms shipments around Lombardy,” Pep snapped. He yanked up his satchel from the floor and spun on his heel.

When Pep started referencing archaic geographical identifiers, it was time to let him go and work off his temper. Not that doing so was easy, and not just because a selfish part of Luís couldn’t help wondering if there was any chance of resuming their relations on the couch. Luís didn’t like seeing Pep angry—as opposed to merely irked, which made the man adorably amusing—and especially not when he didn’t understand why, and several pointed comments to that effect were leaping to mind. But it’d be better if they didn’t continue this now, so Luís stayed where he was and watched the other man go.

* * *

“Cesc?” Ballack said, sticking his hand out to hold the elevator.

“Oh, so are you why Robin was a no-show to the group meeting?” Cesc hissed, skidding into the elevator. He caught himself on the rail, then bent over and grabbed his knee, trying to catch his breath. Stupid fucking car, it just had to break down during one of the worst winter storms London had had this year, and so he’d had to run for the train and then the bus before they shut those down. And now he was probably stuck sleeping on Robin’s couch for the night while Robin banged his man-mountain professional assassin boyfriend. He really should’ve made Vela go check on the Dutch bastard.

Ballack was staring hard at Cesc when Cesc straightened up. “Robin was what?”

“Late,” Cesc said. Then he shook his head. “Well, actually he didn’t even show up, and it was his week to present, that asshole. We all came out even though the city’s practically snowed in, but no, he skipped out so he could go have more kinky sex with you and your gun collect—”

“I just got here,” Ballack interrupted. “I’ve been out all day.”

Cesc blinked. “Oh. Really? Oh, I wonder why Robin didn’t—oh, my God, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean that being kinky with your guns is a bad thing!”

After another moment’s staring, Ballack shook his head and muttered to himself in German. He took the safety off the gigantic gun he’d just pulled out of his…his…where had he been keeping that thing, anyway? He did have a knee-length overcoat on, but it fit him pretty closely so there should’ve been a bulge or something. And why did he have a gun?

“Stand over there for a second,” Ballack said, pointing to the far corner of the elevator.

Cesc moved over. The elevator came to Robin’s floor and as the doors slowly opened, Ballack dove out through them in true action-movie style. He landed in a crouch, scanned the empty hallway with his gun and then stood up and made a beeline for Robin’s door. At that point Cesc figured it was safe for him, so he came out. He was going to join Ballack when he stepped in a wet spot on the carpet. He looked down and picked up his foot, and the bottom of his sole was red. Not good.

The creaking of a door opening made Cesc look up. He saw Ballack go into Robin’s flat and then he looked back at the floor. After a moment’s debating with himself, Cesc pulled out his phone.

“What are you doing?” Ballack had come back out with an even bigger gun and a piece of paper. “Are you calling the police? That’s not going to help.”

Cesc made a face but kept dialing. “Yeah, yeah, they won’t be able to help Robin but they can make sure Robin’s landlord doesn’t end up thinking he’s some evil maniac and kick him out while he’s gone, and…and I’m freaked out enough, okay? You don’t have to look at me like that.”

“I’m not,” Ballack replied. He stuck his gun under his arm and glanced at the paper, which was printed on one side. “You’re very calm.”

Yeah, and if Cesc stopped to think about it, he’d be really freaked out at himself, even if some fucked-up stuff had happened to him on digs. But he wasn’t freaking out, because he had to call this in and get that off his mind, and then help Robin. “Well, I figured if Robin was dead or something like that, you’d be madder. And me running around screaming my head off’s not going to help either, but I’m gonna do it anyway if you don’t tell me right now you know what happened and what we’re doing to find him.”

“He was kidnapped,” Ballack said, turning the paper back and forth. Then he held it up to his nose and sniffed it. He grimaced and folded it up, then took his gun from under his arm and looked at Cesc. “I need thirty minutes to get some things out of there. Then you can call them over.”

“No, no, wait, I’m not going to do what you tell me to do just because you tell me to do it,” Cesc snapped. He saw the gun move and stiffened, but then lifted up his chin. “What things, and where are you going afterward, and you’d better be going after Robin or else you’re just a—”

Ballack’s eyes began to roll. Then he stopped himself and sighed. He stuck his hand inside his coat and when it came out again, the gun was gone and his coat still wasn’t bulging anywhere. “You are so irritating, I should shoot you.”

“Well, you’re not going to.” Cesc glowered at the speculative glint that came into Ballack’s eyes. “Or else you would’ve already, you trigger-happy asshole. So what are you doing?”

“I am going inside, and am taking out all of my illegal weapons or else they will think Robin is an evil maniac,” Ballack said, sighing. “And then we are going to get on a plane and go to Spain, so I can ask Figo why someone wants me to kidnap him to swap for Robin. All right?”

“No, it’s not all ri—wait. Did you say ‘we’?” Cesc asked, blinking.

Ballack did roll his eyes this time as he turned around and went back into Robin’s flat. “Yes. If you have to come, I want you where I can see you. Now make sure no one comes here or I will shoot them.”

“Okay, okay,” Cesc muttered, going back to his phone. He stared at it for a second, then canceled the call to the police and phoned Theo instead. Somebody would have to let the boss know, but if they were going to Spain, Cesc was going to be too busy packing to call Wenger. And anyway, he’d already had a shitty enough day, so at least that should go to someone else.

* * *

Raúl blinked a few times. Then he pushed away his laptop and got up from the table. He shut the door to the other room, where Fernando and Villa were good-naturedly arguing over the best way to wiretap a train. At any rate, Fernando seemed to be good-natured about it; Villa kept stabbing his screwdriver into the blueprints they had in a way that would’ve made Luís keep his fingers farther away than Fernando currently was.

“I’m sorry,” Raúl said, coming back to the table. “I’m not sure I heard you right. So you had Zlatan over to dinner and he and Pep got into a fight, and when you defended Pep, Zlatan told you that you’re losing it?”

“More or less. I think Zlatan was actually talking about Paolo, but Paolo apparently isn’t talking to him right now and you know Ibra, if he can’t tell the person he wants to tell, he’s still going to tell somebody.” Luís dabbed some membrillo on his next slice of cheese and then folded the cheese around it to form a sort of sandwich. He popped it into his mouth and washed it down with some beer. “I knew I should’ve checked to see if the Italians had kicked him out again before I invited him over.”

After another moment, Raúl sat back down. He pulled his laptop over but didn’t look at the screen. “All right. So is Zlatan still alive?”

“You’re a little old to be a smartass now, aren’t you?” Luís said, snorting.

“If we’re going to make age jokes…” Then the half-smile faded from Raúl’s face, to be replaced by a thoughtful frown. He peered into Luís’ face. “Are you worried about that? Luís, you retired, you’re not supposed to be a top-level mercenary anymore. That’s the whole point of retirement.”

“It doesn’t mean that I’ve suddenly forgotten how that works, or that I’m no longer qualified to tell Zlatan when he’s fucked up,” Luís said irritably. “And yes, he’s still alive. For that matter, it doesn’t mean that I’ve suddenly become so stupid that I’m willing to start a war with Nesta and Maldini over one overgrown Swede. Henrik had him call and apologize anyway.”

Raúl nodded, but not at what Luís was saying. “Luís. With all due respect, Pep might have a point, because you are sensitive about it.”

“About…my age? Thirty-eight is damn near prehistoric in our profession and I’m not only comfortable with admitting it, I’m proud of it.” Luís pushed himself back in his chair and cradled his beer in his lap. Then he sat up and put the beer on the table, and looked hard at Raúl. “You’re not quite the bright-eyed young thing you once were either.”

“Thank you for reminding me,” Raúl said, voice rich with dry humor. He finally stopped looking at Luís like that, like he’d just discovered a second head growing out of Luís’ shoulders, and went back to his laptop. “So this dinner came up again and Pep and you had a fight about which one of you was having issues with it. And you said you didn’t have any and Pep did, and now you’re puzzled about why he’s mad at you.”

“I don’t know why I’m talking to you about this,” Luís said after a moment. “Granted, you have twice as much experience as I do with trying to have a stable relationship with an irrational person…”

Like the jaded professional he was, Raúl still didn’t take offense, but he did glance at the door behind him to check that it was fully shut. Then he sighed, shook his head and started typing. “You’re talking to me about it because Zizou’s out of town, and thank God for that, because if you went to see him and then Pep found out about it, things would be even worse.”

“And just how do you come up with that conclusion?” Luís asked, exasperated.

“From the fact that, from what you’ve said, Pep thinks your midlife crisis started with you running off with Zidane to track down that missing shipment of his, and he’s known since our last dinner together that you two used to have a thing,” Raúl said, his eyes intent on the laptop screen. He typed for a few more seconds, then looked up with an expression that quickly went from curious to shocked. “Don’t tell me that you didn’t connect the two.”

Luís didn’t even bother to answer that. He just slouched in his seat and rubbed at his eye; he still was quite sure he wasn’t in the throes of some age-induced panic, but he couldn’t help thinking that two years ago, when he hadn’t known Pep and was still jetting around the world to collect giant paychecks, that his life had been considerably simpler. And that he hadn’t ever felt embarrassed as regularly as he did now.

“Did you…I don’t want to pry, but did you ever talk about Zinedine with him?” Raúl asked carefully.

“Aren’t you prying?” Luís snapped. Then he grimaced and pulled himself up in his chair. “Well, no, since I’ve been talking of my own free will…Raúl? Did I talk about these sorts of things this much before I met Pep?”

Raúl’s brows flew up in surprise. He started to reply, then shut his mouth and tilted his head. He frowned, then looked at Luís as if he’d just realized something deeply important. Sadly, he didn’t have a chance to share it, as just then Villa banged open the door. Villa glanced at it, then swept an irritated gaze around the room.

“Why the hell did you close it?” Villa asked. “I almost ran into it.”

“Well, I suppose we assumed that you’d use your eyes to determine whether it was open or not before you walked into it,” Luís muttered.

A foot kicked him under the table. Then Raúl half-turned and looked pleadingly at Villa, who grudgingly subsided enough to toss Luís a mobile. “It’s for you,” he said.

“Who is it?” Luís asked, not lifting the phone to his ear.

“Somebody named Xavi, says he works with your partner,” Villa said, already turning around. “Tell him not to call the fucking house next time, all right? Doesn’t he have your number?”

“He does and he doesn’t have yours,” Luís muttered, shooting Raúl a look. He stared at the phone, then gingerly put it to his ear as Raúl silently but quickly slid back from the table. “Xavi?”

Villa had turned back, but a sharp gesture from Raúl sent him scrambling from the room. Raúl pulled open a drawer and began to pull out various cables and small black plastic devices.

*Hi, Luís. Sorry to call this number, but I couldn’t get your phone and this was the number I found for where you are,* Xavi said. *Listen, we’ve got a problem.*

“How did you know where I was?” Luís asked. He waved his hand to get Raúl’s attention, then nixed one of the devices Raúl had just picked up. Then he cupped his hand around the phone so that the sounds of Raúl hooking up the other devices to his laptop wouldn’t be audible to Xavi. “Did you track me?”

*Can I just show you later? It’s a…it’s kind of a big problem,* Xavi said. A hint of urgency was starting to come through his normally calm voice. *The thing is, Pep’s missing.*

Luís sighed. “We had an argument earlier and I suppose he doesn’t want to come home yet. Now, about you tracking me. I know you’re concerned but—”

*No, he’s missing,* Xavi repeated more sharply. *He went out to get some coffee and pastries for us and he never came back, and I checked with the shop and he never got there. I’ve checked the whole campus, too.*

“He’s missing,” Luís said after a moment. He looked at Raúl, who signaled that he needed another thirty seconds.

*Also, I got a text from Cesc and he says somebody named Ballack is coming to see you about his friend Robin going missing.* Xavi briefly got off to order someone to keep hacking the security tapes for the parking lot, and to stop worrying about it because he’d get Pep to justify it to Cruyff later. *He wants to know if Ballack’s called you yet.*

Just then, Luís’ phone rang. He got up and took the phone out of his pocket, then bumped Raúl with his elbow. When the other man looked up, Luís nodded to his own phone. Raúl pursed his lips, just to let Luís know he was an indecisive ass, but obligingly began redoing his phone signal analysis.

“Give me a minute and I’ll let you know,” Luís said to Xavi. Then he switched phones. “Ballack?”

*Figo, your stupid nemesis Mourinho took Robin,* Ballack said. He sounded as if he was driving very fast somewhere, with a squawking Spaniard in the background. *He wants me to swap you for Robin. My plane touches down at ten tonight.*

Luís sat back down. Of course this would be the week his arms supplier picked to go home to France—though if Raúl’s theory was right, Zinedine being around to help would only offend Pep even more. Wherever he was, and Luís had long since passed the creeping feeling of dread stage on that. Goddamn it, but why did this always happen when he and Pep were fighting? Mounting private rescue efforts was difficult enough without also having to account for Pep’s peculiar sensibilities. “I take it you’re not coming to kidnap me and swap me for Robin.”

*No, I am getting Robin back before I come see you. And then you will point me in the direction of Mourinho, because you—*

If Luís knew Ballack, the rest would just be a lot of alpha male posturing about who got to kill Mourinho first. He switched back to Xavi. “You’re right about Ballack, and it involves Mourinho so I think at this point we have to assume that Pep’s disappearance is connected. Are there any clues?”

*Puyi just came in with Pep’s scarf,* Xavi promptly said. *He said he found it in the parking lot, but it looks like the cameras were jammed.*

“I don’t suppose you have a GPS chip on Pep,” Luís muttered. He got up again and tapped Raúl on the shoulder. When the other man looked up, Luís gestured for him to stop. “Look, I’m going home to see if there’s been a message sent, and to get my things. Then I’ll meet you at Pep’s office, all right?”

Raúl threw up his hands a little. Then he let out a huffy breath and slapped his laptop shut. He didn’t give Luís a chance to explain either, but went straight into the next room.

*Well, we tried, but Pep kept accidentally disabling them—um, anyway, yeah, that’s fine,* Xavi said.

Luís had been watching Raúl go and it took him a moment to fully take in what Xavi had just admitted. “Wait a moment. When was this? Before or after I moved in with…and have you tried to do it with me—”

*Look, I need to go. Andrés says that the janitor said some weird guy was poking around Pep’s office a couple days ago and I’ll check it out and let you know when you get here.* And then Xavi was off.

*Figo!* said a muffled voice.

After a few seconds’ looking about, Luís remembered Ballack and put the other phone back to his ear. “Ballack, I know you’re working yourself up to a homicidal rage against all things Portuguese, but I have a few bones to pick with Mourinho myself.”

*Ah, so he stopped by your house too,* Ballack said, oddly calm.

“How do you know?” Luís snapped.

* * *

“Because I am standing in their London base and there is a half-burned photo of it stuck in the toilet,” Ballack said, shaking the water from his arm. Then he looked up, frowning. He sighed and handed the phone to Cesc, and then took a towel from the rack over the toilet, wrapping it around his arm and his gun. “Here, talk to him.”

“About what?” Cesc was still staring at the dead bodies in the bedroom, so excuse him if he wasn’t really in a talking mood, and with a guy whom he’d met for all of ten seconds before Figo and Pep had started being all sexually-frustrated with each other in the middle of a bloodthirsty underground burial chamber. God, he really had too many bizarre crime scenes in his relationships. “I don’t know anything! I thought we were going to the airport!”

Ballack was busy pushing up the window that led out onto the fire escape. He hummed, like he was kind of listening, but he totally wasn’t. “Plane doesn’t leave for four hours. This is a better use of our time than sitting in the airport lounge.”

“Oh, now you tell—” the phone in Cesc’s hand made noises and he angrily jerked it up to his head “—and what do you want? It’s bad enough Robin wasn’t skipping out but was really in trouble, and now I’m sorry I was blaming him, but do you know what Ballack drives like?”

*Yes, actually. Cesc—*

“Well, it was probably in some super-cool tropical spy place so you don’t know what it’s like when the roads are icy and any second we could’ve smashed into a snowdrift, and then who’s gonna save Robin—”

*Cesc, Pep’s gone too,* Figo said.

Cesc stuttered a little. Then he shut his mouth and he looked around. When he saw the bathtub, he sat down on the edge and then grimaced because he’d done that a little harder than he’d meant to. He fumbled with the phone, almost dropped it and then put it back to his ear. “Today’s really, really shitty.”

*I know, but if you calm down and do as I say, it’ll get better.* Actually, from the way Figo was growling under his breath, it was just going to involve more dead bodies, but Cesc didn’t feel like interrupting. *Cesc?*

“What?”

*Where’s Ballack?*

That…was a good question, since come to think of it, Ballack wasn’t in the bathroom anymore. Cesc started to look into the bedroom, but remembered the dead bodies. And even if they were bad guys, he still didn’t really want to see it. Especially if they were bad guys, since he didn’t want to feel bad about them when he didn’t even know where Robin was and if he was all right, and Ballack had said he’d take Cesc along but he’d probably crawled out the window and ditched—

Cesc ran to the window. “I think he’s outside on the fire escape,” he said. “Let me—”

*Don’t look,* Figo ordered. A horrible kind of crunching noise came from outside and above. Then Figo sighed, helpfully distracting Cesc from whatever was going on. *Just stick with Ballack, all right? Make sure he comes straight to me after you land in Barcelona, and doesn’t try to go after Mourinho himself.*

“Oh, easy for you to say. I’ll tell him, but I’m a grad student, okay? I study ancient astronomical monuments, not how to make huge angry German guys do what I want,” Cesc snapped. He thought he heard Figo mutter something about Xavi and if he could’ve reached through the phone to hit the man, he would have. “I’m not Xavi, okay? I’m just doing what I can, and I know, I know, I want to get Pep back too, just as much as Robin. But it’s not like I have a sniper rifle in my trunk like Xavi. I mean, I don’t even have a car right now.”

Figo sighed again. *All right, all right. I’ll call somebody over there and have them meet up with you, so all you have to do is make sure Ballack doesn’t kill them when they show up. After that, they can take care of themselves. But under no circumstances can Ballack go after Mourinho before I know where Pep is, do you understand? Robin, fine. But not Mourinho. Because Ballack doesn’t care about Pep.*

“Yeah, I get that,” Cesc said. Then he hissed and jumped back. “Hey! Warn me, all right?”

Ballack stopped halfway through the window and looked quizzically at Cesc. Then he shrugged, pulled his legs over the sill and put his feet on the floor. He had blood on his gloves, which he carefully stripped off via turning them inside-out so he didn’t get blood on his fingers. Then he bagged them, stuffed them into that magically non-bulging coat of his and nodded at the phone. “Still talking? I know where Robin is now.”

“You do?” For a moment Cesc stared in…in…okay, he didn’t exactly want to hug Ballack, even now, but he was definitely feeling more like he wouldn’t mind buying the man a beer, at least. Then he got himself under control, remembering that now Pep was in danger, too, and they didn’t know where he was yet. “Figo says no going after Mourinho till he knows where Pep is, and he’s sending somebody to meet us.”

The beginnings of a sneer started over Ballack’s face. Then he grunted and turned away. He put on a new pair of gloves and shut the window, and then pulled Cesc away from the tub so that he could wipe at it. “Are they going to clean this up for us?”

“Um. I don’t know. I’ll just…” Cesc put the phone to his ear, then cursed as he heard the dial tone. “Shit. He hung up. Um.”

Ballack casually reached out and pulled the phone out of Cesc’s hand. He pocketed it and then went into the bedroom. “Well, then I will leave things alone so they can follow us,” he said. “Come on.”

“But—” But a thousand things, like Cesc didn’t even know who they were going to be, so how was he supposed to know when he needed to keep Ballack from killing them? And how was he supposed to do that anyway?

And obviously Ballack didn’t care, because he kept walking. After a moment, Cesc bit down his curses, covered his nose with his sleeve and hurried after the man while trying not to look around. He wondered if he could call Xavi for some tips, or if Xavi would be too busy trying to find Pep to tell him how to rig a tranq gun. Of all the damn things their grad survival seminars didn’t cover.

* * *

“I need somebody in London,” Luís told Raúl, while trying not to slam his mobile on the table. He started to call Xavi back on the other one, only to have it disappear from his hands. “I need that.”

When he looked up, Raúl had already removed himself to the other side of the table and was back on his laptop. The other man typed a few keys, frowned at the screen and then shrugged. “Use your phone,” Raúl said. “If you want somebody in London, I need mine. What do you want? Wheels man, gearhead…”

Raúl might have a point, but that didn’t mean that Luís was necessarily happy with the way the other man was expressing it. He stared at Raúl’s carefully averted head, then bit back the first reply that came to mind. And the creeping suspicion that Xavi was better at covert surveillance than he was, and just tried to concentrate on what was important: making Mourinho suffer for completely ruining his day and probably losing him the argument with Pep.

Luís stared blankly forward for a moment. He didn’t actually care so much about winning it, compared to having Pep back. It was just that they’d been interrupted in the middle of a fairly serious argument, and one that he’d wanted to work out properly, with all that talking and psychological buzzwords Pep was so fond of, as opposed to what was going to happen now. Which was that he was going to charge in and get Pep instead of calling the police like a normal person, and Pep was going to tell him he had a white knight complex or difficulty in adjusting to a lower risk threshold, or whatever ridiculous head-shrink articles Pep was reading now, and…

“London?” Raúl repeated, voice gusty with resignation.

“Right.” Luís decided it’d be faster to just get to campus and find Xavi, since unlike his mentor, the man tended to not vanish unexpectedly. He put his phone away and started looking for his coat. “I need somebody who’s willing to tackle Ballack if the man gets in my way. I realize that’s a bit of a tall order, and yes, I’m sorry to be imposing on you, so stop looking so long-suffering, Raúl, because I’m not Mori or Villa and I don’t find that attract—”

“You ramble when you’re worried. I never realized,” Raúl observed. When Luís twisted about to look at him, the man had his head bent over the phone and was furiously texting. “All right, I’ll send Silva.”

Villa suddenly appeared in the doorway, eyes narrowed warily. “What about David?”

Raúl looked up. “Luís needs someone to keep tabs on Ballack. He’s near London anyway and he’s bored.”

“Don’t you have anyone else there?” Luís asked. “No offense, but if I remember correctly, Silva is…well, Ballack is a very, very successful man at what he does. And also probably four times Silva’s weight.”

“So?” Villa snapped at him. Then Villa turned on Raúl, his eyes now jacked open as wide as they could go. “Silva? You’re sending Silva? I thought you wanted to use Ballack for that thing in—you know, there.”

Raúl was starting to show his irritation again. He put down his phone and pulled at his nose while looking down it at Villa. “I thought you didn’t want him.”

“For that thing. There.” Luís shook his head. “I understand not wanting to sound like idiots with silly code words, but you could at least use X and Y. Raúl, what about…I don’t know, Arteta…”

“Ballack would crush him,” Raúl said after a moment. He was still locked in a stare-down with Villa, but once Villa dropped his head, shuffling his feet and muttering about just wanting to make sure their car insurance didn’t kill them, Raúl slowly shifted his gaze to Luís. “Silva will get the job done. Trust me.”

“But good luck finding enough of Ballack to bury,” Villa muttered, stalking back out of the room.

Since that was a problem—if it was even going to be one, and all respect to Raúl’s judgment but Luís had his doubts—Luís could leave till his current one was over, he thanked Raúl for the help, said he’d be in touch, and left for Pep’s house.

* * *

Cesc shoved his phone back into his pocket and slouched in his car seat. Ballack was driving, and violating just as many traffic rules as last time, but funnily enough, Cesc had gotten tired of being in deathly fear for his life after the first ten minutes. They might be traveling at a zillion kilometers per hour and in imminent danger of smashing themselves into goopy paste, but he still had been stupid enough to let his mobile battery run down just before getting stuck with a bloodthirsty professional hitman while they chased other bloodthirsty professional hitmen around town. “So where are we going?”

“After Robin,” Ballack said, in the sort of exaggeratedly patient tone you’d use with very small children.

“Yeah, I know, but where is that? And wouldn’t they have gotten him out of town already?” Cesc asked. “I think the last time anybody would’ve seen him was last night, so they had plenty of time.”

Ballack nearly wrapped their car around a lamppost, then straightened it out after the turn. He checked something on his smartphone, which meant he wasn’t looking where he was going and Cesc briefly was terrified. Then Ballack looked up and the vaguely exasperated expression on his face annoyed Cesc out of it. “I spoke to him at three this morning, so not that much time,” he said.

“That’s still more than twelve hours. It didn’t take you that long to get us out of El Siete’s tower.” Then Cesc frowned at the dashboard. “And why were you calling at three in the morning? Robin’s so not a morning person, he must’ve wanted to kill you. Unless it was phone-sex or something like that.”

If he hadn’t already worn Cesc out with the crazy driving and the unexpected firefights, Ballack’s glower might have made Cesc a little nervous. Maybe. Wenger right before the annual budget review could be pretty damn frightening too. “It was not phone-sex,” Ballack snarled.

Cesc rolled his eyes and mouthed ‘sorry.’ Then he took another look at Ballack, who was clenching his jaw and squeezing the wheel and just generally acting way too pissy for a little comment like that. “Ooooh. You were fighting.”

“I was not,” Ballack started. Then he shut his mouth. He adjusted how he was squeezing the wheel so it looked way more like he was strangling someone. Then he looked over at Cesc, his brows rising a little over an oddly injured expression. “Do you leave things on the floor?”

“What? No, I heard you, I just…ooookay.” Did Cesc really want to start this? On the one hand, Ballack didn’t really seem like the sharing type and he knew how to kill people. On the other hand…Cesc had been dying to find out what the hell Ballack and Robin got up to, ever since Theo had had that nosebleed and Robin’s incredibly detailed explanation about how to get the stains out of wool had led to him ‘fessing up that he’d let Ballack buy him dinner. And bang him, repeatedly, and then sort of move in with him. As much as a globe-trotting assassin could do that.

And anyway, it wasn’t like Ballack was the only thing likely to kill him he’d run into today. Though if Ballack didn’t look back to the road soon, he was definitely shooting to the top of the list.

“Sometimes,” Cesc finally said, when Ballack wouldn’t stop looking at him. “Not on purpose, but you know, you get busy, you forget to clean house…”

“I know,” Ballack snorted. “Robin does the same, so I don’t see why I should take the yelling more. Also it was an accident. I was going to pack it up later.”

“So what was it?” Cesc asked after a moment.

Ballack suddenly slammed on the brakes, sending the car into a tailspin that somehow parked it perfectly at the curb between two huge delivery trucks. He used the momentum of the spin to reach into the backseat and yank out a duffel bag, and then had the door open and one leg out before the car had come to a complete stop. He did pause for a moment right then, staring hard at Cesc.

“A rocket launcher,” Ballack said. “Wait here and keep your head down.”

First Cesc breathed. Then he checked that his head was just spinning because they’d spun around, and not because he’d bloodied it against the window. And then he rolled his eyes, because seriously, how much more macho could Ballack get? “Oh, a rocket launcher. Yeah, obviously you two couldn’t have a fight over something normal, like which way you put on the toilet paper roll, because you’re all Mr. Hitman and all that, and…damn it.”

The driver’s seat was empty, and Ballack had even managed to shut the door without Cesc noticing. Cesc let out a disgusted snort and reached for the door on his side. Then a sudden thought froze him: what if Ballack had just ditched him for real this time?

He grabbed the door handle and jerked it down, and when he felt the latch go he breathed out a huge sigh of relief. At least the jerk hadn’t locked him inside. Then he yanked the handle back up and smushed himself down in his seat as he heard gunshots. On the other hand, Ballack could’ve been serious about the warning, because he really was being all pissy about Robin getting kidnapped and was going to kill everybody in the fucking city to get Robin back. It wasn’t really a big deal when Ballack was doing it at some remote dig that was filled with crazy ancient booby-traps anyway, but Cesc lived in London. He lived in London because it was a nice place and not an action-movie set filled with gunfights and explosions and other things that tended to screw up the infrastructure. “And we don’t even know if he’s still here!”

“Who?” said someone just outside the car.

Cesc screamed and stuffed himself into the footspace under the dashboard, throwing his arms over his head to protect himself from the shattered glass he fully expected to rain down on it. A couple seconds later, when that hadn’t come, he peeked up.

A man was peering down at him. The guy looked vaguely familiar, and while Cesc was trying to place him, he opened the door and slid inside and onto Cesc’s seat before Cesc could get up. He shut the door, muttered an apology when his right foot accidentally bumped Cesc’s shoulder, and then looked around with a critical eye. “Yeah, this so screams ice-cold German,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. “Talk about playing to stereotypes.”

“You’re one of Figo’s friends!” Cesc said, pointing a triumphant finger into the man’s shin.

The man snapped around to look at Cesc. He was definitely smaller than Cesc, but with their respective positions he could totally stomp Cesc unconscious if he wanted. And from the way he was narrowing his eyes, he knew it too.

“Um, comrade? Employee? Independent contractor? Look, I don’t know how you guys structure your employment hierarchy, okay?” Cesc tried to shift back and banged his head into the glove compartment. He hissed and grabbed the back of his head, then sighed and looked up at the man. “Anyway, you were—”

“Yeah, that freaky Indiana Jones dig thing, I was there.” The man glanced up at another round of gunfire, then fumbled around in the pocket of his leather bomber jacket. He dug out a couple gun clips, put them back in and then took out a smartphone. “Did he say how long he was going to be in there?”

“No.” Things were getting cramped down in the footspace, and as short as the man was, his head was above the level of the dash and wasn’t getting shot, so Cesc squirmed and hauled himself out into the driver’s seat. He cursed as the gearshift jabbed him way high in the thigh, then finally yanked his feet free and began to flip himself over so he could see out the front. “He’s just running around doing the vengeance thing. Says he’s going to get Robin back—you remember Robin?”

The man looked up from his phone, expression blank.

“Dutch guy, pretty tall, legs like a flamingo?” Cesc said. “Oh, I’m Cesc.”

“Oh, yeah, I think I saw him for about five seconds before the nutty professor started flipping out about Figo doing a runner on him,” the man said. He went back to his phone. “David Silva. Your friend’s probably still in town because it’d be a pain in the ass if they shipped him out, then had to ship him back once Ballack came through. So Figo did send me, but I’m…I guess you can say I owe somebody who owes Figo.”

Cesc nodded. “Drives you home once when you’re smashed and never lets you forget it, huh?”

Silva suddenly dropped his hands into his lap and put his head up straight, his eyes wide with indignation. “I know! What the fuck, honestly? Okay, so we weren’t out of the zone of operations yet, but Albelda said everybody was dead and with him, you’d think he’d know. And oooooh, my God, Guaje drove me. Big deal. It wasn’t his driving that blew up that—”

“Is that Bejeweled?” Cesc asked, craning his head to look at Silva’s phone.

“No,” Silva said, abruptly clapping his hands over the phone. Then he stuffed it back into his pocket and jerked his chin at something behind Cesc. “He’s back.”

“Who?” Cesc said.

The driver’s side door opened and Ballack stuck his head inside. “What are you doing in my seat?”

“Cesc?” Robin said, peering over Ballack’s shoulder.

“Robin!” Cesc barreled out of the car, pushing Ballack out of the way as he went. And Ballack looked even less happy about that, but Cesc didn’t care. He grabbed Robin and hugged him till Robin’s wheezing started tickling his ear too much. Then he let go of the man just enough to look him over and count all his appendages. “You’re okay! What happened? Ballack said you got kidnapped, and there was blood in the hall in front of your place—”

“Probably that bastard forgetting to clean up again,” Robin muttered.

Cesc looked up to find Robin and Ballack eyeing each other like…well, not like a happily-reunited couple, that was for sure. Ballack had a little grin on his face, kind of like how a wolf pulled back its lips just before it bit into something, and Robin was doing his slit-eyed purse-lipped face, which usually meant he was about to pitch a binder at somebody’s head.

“I am so sorry,” Ballack drawled. “Next time I will get the steam cleaners instead of you. How about that? Better?”

“You know what’d be better?” Robin snorted. “If you took your fucking dick-metaphor guns and—”

Silva poked his head out of the car. He looked between the men, then snapped his fingers loudly. Robin looked down but Ballack just twitched—so Silva, rolling his eyes, swung his foot out and stomped on Ballack’s foot. Then he shoved a gun that was seriously as big as his head in Ballack’s face when Ballack started to reach inside his coat. “Hey, guys, I bet you can have your little marital spat just as well in the backseat. We need to get moving so we can catch the plane.”

Ballack grinned again. Then that smile wiped straight off his face as he noticed something inside the car. He jerked around, then ducked half-into the car while reaching for the wheel. “Excuse me? Do you think you’ll drive? My car?”

“And I thought we had four hours till the—whoa!” Cesc just about dodged the leg Ballack had swung at him, then started to say that he hadn’t done anything. But then he realized that Ballack’s leg had flailed, not kicked, and…and had Silva just sort of smashed Ballack’s head into the driver’s seat?

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Robin snarled. “Get off him, you fucking little shit!”

“I am,” said Silva, opening the back passenger door. He got out, dusted his jacket off and then blinked up at Ballack, who’d finally pulled himself out of the car. “Can we go now?”

Ballack stared down at Silva, a definite car seat seam imprint on his cheek. He made this weird little gesture, moving his hand back and forth over the car door, and then Cesc realized that the man wanted to know how Silva had gotten from front to back so fast. And it was such a weird, weird feeling, sympathizing with Ballack, because Cesc didn’t get it either.

“Look, I really don’t want to be difficult or anything, but we need to be in Spain like, now, and I moved the flight up and even got us all aisle seats. So can we move?” Silva asked.

For a moment Ballack stared at him. Then the muscle in Ballack’s cheek twitched, and Ballack turned back to the driver’s seat. “Get back in.” He reached out without looking and grabbed Robin by the arm, then yanked him towards the back. “You. Get in.”

“Or else what? You’ll fuck off to Germany again?” Robin snapped.

“Um, can we just…” Cesc made an apologetic face for interrupting Robin’s rant “…it’s just Pep’s missing too, and it’s connected, and…”

Robin took a moment to switch from being irritated to shocked. Then he backslid a little, because Ballack just had to grunt just then and couldn’t hold it in for five more seconds, but finally he nodded. He went around and got in the front passenger seat. Normally Cesc would fight tooth and nail to claim that, but under the circumstances, it seemed better to just try the backseat with Silva. Sure, so far he seemed a bit psycho, but psycho, Cesc figured he could see coming. Obscure relationship drama where he didn’t know the backstory, not so much.

“Hey, can you drive a little—” Cesc started.

Ballack spun the car back into the street at top speed, and Cesc decided he didn’t care what it looked like. He just cared about keeping his neck untwisted, and so he was just fine and dandy squeezing down into the footspace again.

* * *

Luís went through the kitchen and across the hall, and slipped out his gun as he stepped into the living room. He casually raised it as he let his shoulder fall against the jamb. “Deco, it’s always a misery to see you.”

The dark shape on the couch jumped up and whirled around—Luís was briefly amused to see that Deco had gotten out his laser sight for this—then sighed, shoulders slumping. Deco lowered his gun and ran his free hand through his hair, looking as if someone had just told him his house had burned down. “Do you have to always throw out a quip?” he said. “What’s wrong with hello?”

“Did you have to break into my house and try to set up an ambush for me?” Luís asked, slouching against the jamb. He glanced down the hall, hearing a scuffle, and then heaved his own sigh. “Mori’s going to let whoever it is go once we’re—”

“You think you’re so damn clever,” Deco snapped.

There was another scuffle, somewhere in the kitchen behind Luís. He pulled out his phone and checked it, then shifted his gun slightly right without looking up. “Don’t move. And if you don’t want Veloso back, I know a man in Italy who wouldn’t mind a new gunrunner.”

“Funny.” Deco’s voice was flatter than a post-nuclear landscape. “Look, I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that you’re missing something important.”

“And I suppose you’re here to tell me about how to get it back,” Luís replied, looking back up. He put his phone away and let his gun drift downward so it was pointing just below Deco’s waist. “You probably don’t remember that I owe you a bullet for the one you put in Pep.”

“Oh, yes, I’m so sorry I shot your soon-to-be partner because you’d decided to go rogue on a valid contract without any provocation from us,” Deco said, rolling his eyes. He jerked his gun around in front of him and Luís came damn near to shooting the whiny little bastard, but Deco didn’t even look up as he started to unscrew the laser sight from his gun. Deco started to shake his head in irritation, yanking and twisting at the sight. “No, I’m not. You want to play hero? Fine, go ahead, shoot me, avenge your goddamn boyfriend. I’m sure he’ll be very happy when José tells him about it, right before José tells him that you couldn’t keep it together long enough to get him back. No wonder you got out of the game, with your head that rattled.”

Luís pressed his lips tightly together. Then he stepped away from the doorway, lowering his gun as he went. He went up to Deco and grabbed the sight just as Deco’s head began to rise. He held onto it for a moment, then jerked it loose and pressed it into Deco’s palm. “Where and what?”

“There’s this artifact,” Deco said. He pulled a small case out of his pocket, opened it, and put the sight inside as if it was a fine jewel. Then he took his time about holstering his gun under his shoulder.

“And?” Luís prompted.

Deco glanced up. “You need to get it.”

Luís nodded. Then he wrapped his free hand around Deco’s throat and used it to shove the man back against the couch. One of Deco’s hands clawed at his face, but he ignored that and bent Deco backwards over the couch arm. Then he shoved his gun up between Deco’s legs, which immediately stopped the clawing. “Listen, you smug piece of shit, I’m not getting anything. What I’m going to do is stuff you in a little box and if you’re lucky, and Mourinho’s in a good mood this week, he’s going to bring Pep back to me before the air in that box runs out.”

“You can’t—” Deco wheezed, both hands clutching at Luís’ wrist “—if I don’t call in—going to kill him—”

“No, he won’t. That only works on somebody who doesn’t realize that the moment Pep’s dead, I have absolutely no motivation not to blow you all up. And I do believe José does the thinking, of the pair of you,” Luís snarled. He tightened his grip on Deco’s throat, then corkscrewed his gun hand so that the syringe strapped to his wrist pushed out his sleeve and into Deco’s thigh. Then he held Deco down while the sedative took effect.

Deco was still twitching feebly when Luís heard a cough at the doorway. “Sorry, I know you said to just take them out back—” Fernando started.

Luís batted aside Deco’s last weak flail, then looked over his shoulder. “Well, haven’t you?”

“I’m going to in a second, all right?” Fernando said, tone more than a little annoyed. “Look, I know you’re upset, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten how to do my job, Luís. Mind having some faith?”

“And I’m not saying that you have. I’m just saying that I told you not to come in here, as I assumed you’d be busy making sure that Deco’s back-up was completely, unquestionably disabled.” A glance told Luís that Deco was fully out, but he flicked up an eyelid to make sure. Then he let go of the man, but had to grab him again as Deco slid off the couch arm and forward to bang his lolling head into Luís’ side. Even unconscious, the little shit was difficult. “That way, none of us have to worry about the implausible yet utterly predictable last-minute revival and—”

“Goddamn it, I hog-tied them both, and after dosing them up with enough to put down Albelda. They’re not going to come back here and shoot us, okay? And if they do, then fine, I’ll die first just so you’ll have time to be happy you were right,” Fernando snapped. He whipped about and took a step away, then turned angrily back. “It’s just I thought you might want to know, Pep called on the kitchen phone while you were busy chatting with Deco. I told him to hold and I’d get you, but that was a good two minutes ago.”

After a moment, Luís grabbed Deco under the arms and heaved the man onto the couch. Then he stalked past Fernando into the kitchen. “Mori, I like you, but the only reason I’m not shooting you right now is because I just had the carpet redone. So do me a favor and keep Deco from drooling on it.”

The kitchen phone was still lying on the counter where Fernando had left it. The damn thing knocked away from Luís’ first snatch at it and went spinning over the edge of the counter; Luís barely caught it before it hit the floor. Then he hissed as the hard plastic slapped against his ear. “Pep?”

*…wait, did someone say something?* Only one man had that particular mix of shock and exasperation. *Luís! Luís, did Mori get you? He said you were just in the next room, but it’s been so long I was about to hang up—*

“I’m going to kill Mourinho,” Luís said. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

Long pause. Then Pep slowly cleared his throat, the way he did whenever he was trying to resist the urge to be sarcastic. He usually failed miserably, and this was no exception. If his voice could have been distilled into liquid form, it could’ve dissolved steel. *Oh, I wasn’t worrying about José at all. I’m fine, by the way. It was a little bizarre to be dragged into a van and have a hood tossed over my head, since while I’m used to being kidnapped from the university parking lot, that’s generally in the springtime when the weather means the roads are good enough for quick getaways…*

“I meant that I’m going to kill Mourinho because I’m going to be there anyway getting you back,” Luís said in carefully modulated tones. He took a breath and was surprised by how deep it was. Surprised and annoyed, and looking into the other room to see Fernando still fiddling around with Deco didn’t help; it didn’t take rocket science to secure an unconscious man and take him out to the van, so what the hell was Fernando doing? Comparing guns? “Also, I am completely taking seriously what he did to you, and am extremely happy to hear that you’re all right. And hope to keep you that way.”

*Ah, yes, you sound thrilled. Absolutely thrilled to have a chance to jump into action again and play with your old friends,* Pep said. He was flat-out upset now, and not even trying to hide it.

Luís opened his mouth, then shut it. He rubbed at his temple. “Pep? Do you want me to not come get you?”

*All I’m saying is that I did very well without your egotistical need to play the macho hero for forty years—*

“Thirty-eight,” Luís corrected.

*Thirty-eight and a half,* Pep snapped. *You know, I thought we were really moving towards mutual respect, but I see now that you’re still stuck in your mentality that I’m always the helpless damsel and you’re the flawless—*

“Oh, God, this again,” Luís muttered.

Too loudly. Pep sucked in a breath. Then he banged something wooden, his voice rising like a kettle whistling steam. *I might not like being forty but at least I acknowledge that I’m an adult! You’re still attached to your goddamn adolescent fantasies of no-strings attached action, whether that’s physical or sexual or, or, or whatever else you do when you take off the way you do!*

“And how is that?” Luís asked. Then he whipped around, gun out, as someone tapped the counter. “As in, when I tell you several weeks in advance that I’ve been alerted to a possible leftover from my professional career and I need to take care of it so you can go on living in your ivory tower? When I post my goddamn flight schedule on the fridge and put it in your computer and phone and Xavi alerts? Do you know when was the last time I regularly told someone where I was going? And wasn’t lying?”

It was Fernando again, looking much less sorry for the interruption and much more curious about the argument than he had any right to be. What Raúl saw in him and his perpetually inconvenient timing, Luís just didn’t understand. “I loaded everything up and I’m ready to go, but did you want me to wait so you can finish…whatever this is?”

*I’m sure Zidane always knew where you were,* Pep said snidely.

“Because that’s his job, Pep!” Luís slumped against the counter, shaking his head. Then he glimpsed something move at the edge of his vision, looked up and remembered Fernando. He gestured for the man to go away, then grimaced and waved for Fernando to come back. Then he tried to think about how to signal for Fernando to just go sit in the goddamn car and not eavesdrop with that gleeful glint in his eyes. “I never had to tell him, and anyway I fucked him twice, years ago, and now we’re just goddamn friends and I’m not going to his excruciating holiday parties, am I?”

*Where you introduced yourself as my risk management consultant. Again. If it wasn’t a good joke the first time, Luís, repetition won’t improve it.* Pep let his words chill the air for a moment. Then he sighed so loudly that the phone crackled. *You know, I don’t know why I even called. José and I thought it’d clear the air, but obviously you’re not even ready for that yet…*

Fernando was still standing there, avidly listening. Luís glowered at him, then frowned and backtracked the conversation in his head. “Excuse me? You’re discussing us with Mourinho?”

*I know, I know, he’s evil, but let me say, Luís, he listens far better than you ever have. And he has no reason to do so, you know.*

“Of course he does! He’s an evil, manipulative, scheming bastard! Look, I’m coming for you right now,” Luís said, incredulous and disgusted and furious. “And I’ll tell you about Zinedine, all right? I’ll tell you anything you want. Will that make you happy?”

Pep hissed under his breath. *Of course you would think that. Obviously for you it always comes down to your goddamn sexual needs.*

And then he hung up. For a moment Luís stood there like an idiot, listening to the dial tone. Then he lowered the phone and stared at it. Then he looked up at Fernando, who raised inquiring brows.

“That son of a bitch Mourinho is trying to brainwash Pep into hating me,” Luís said.

Fernando whistled lowly. “That’s pretty damn brilliant.”

Luís looked at him. Then at the phone. Then back at Fernando, who’d pulled his shoulders back into a defensive posture. Then he slammed the phone back into its cradle, cutting off Fernando’s comment, and stormed out of the kitchen.

“I’m just saying!” Fernando called after him.

If the idiot wanted to stand there and trade quips, he could do that as much as he liked. Luís, on the other hand, had an infuriating Catalan professor to get back and straighten out as to certain former relationships of his and as to their current relationship. And if Pep didn’t like it…well, Luís was having a hard time caring about that at this point.

* * *

The plane was a private charter jet that would’ve been awesome if Cesc had had the time to appreciate it, and not been busy trying to tune out Robin and Ballack’s bickering while worrying about Pep while staring at the various guns Silva kept pulling out, taking apart, cleaning and snapping back together the way other people played Solitaire on their phones. As it was, the only feature Cesc really noticed was the phone in the back, which had a touch-screen menu that offered six different levels of encryption. Cesc poked ‘automatic setting’ and then called Xavi.

*Hello?*

“Xavi! Pep’s gone? What happened?” Cesc hissed, ducking as far down as he could. He crammed himself behind a cabinet. “Is it Mourinho?”

*Cesc? How do you kn—I mean, yeah, Pep’s gone, they grabbed him from the parking lot again and he lost his scarf so we don’t even have a tracker on him. Hang on a second.* Xavi told somebody that yes, they had to reschedule the goddamn grant proposal meeting and no, within the last five minutes wasn’t an acceptable margin of error for Figo’s location. *But how did you know? Did Figo call you?*

In the front of the plane, somebody smashed glass. “No!” Robin snapped. “Look, you fucking asshole, all I’m asking is for a little courtesy and to leave the fucking work at work. I don’t pay my son of a bitch landlord as much as I do just to clean up after you.”

“So why don’t you let me pay for a cleaning service?” Ballack asked, sounding put-upon. Like, he was practically whining.

For a second Cesc had an image of Ballack in a maid’s uniform. It was weird, and…Cesc scrunched his eyes shut, hoping that somehow doing that would squeeze those images out of his head. “Um, what? Oh, yeah. I mean, no, Figo called after Robin got kidnapped by Mourinho too and Ballack got him back and um, we also picked up this guy named David Silva who’s—”

“Way too awesome to sit out there listening to their bickering,” Silva said, stepping through the doorway. He raised his brows at Cesc’s dirty look, then glanced around till he found a pull-down seat, which he promptly pulled down and sat on. “Are they always like this?”

“I don’t know, it’s the first time I’ve seen them be all couple-y. Well, unless you want to count that freaky flirting they were doing right after we escaped El Siete’s tower.” Then Cesc stared at Silva, trying to remember what was wrong about this picture. Oh. “Hey, private conversation here.”

*Is that the Silva guy?* Xavi asked.

Up front, Robin let out a sort of strangled scream. “I’m a grad student! I’m not a criminal! I don’t want bank records linking me to some weird Swiss bank account, I don’t want my student loans screwed up, I don’t want some fucking dossier on me up with national security! How hard is that to understand?”

“Private, sure. I promise I won’t tell anybody,” Silva said, looking at Cesc with wide, earnest eyes. He held that expression for a creepily long twenty or so seconds before he blinked. “Not really like I have to, when you’re flying on a plane Ballack’s got bugged up to its ass.”

“So I’m coming over and I really want to talk to you when I get there, and really hope you find Pep soon,” Cesc said. Then he hung up, hard. Immediately after he remembered he wasn’t mad at Xavi, who had just gotten an earful and oops. And goddamn it. He kicked the floor, then slouched against the wall and glowered at Silva. Professional assassin or whatever, the guy was still being a jerk. “Are you trying to prove to me that all people like you and Ballack are assholes? Because you can consider that done and done. And that was totally Bejeweled.”

Silva had been taking out his phone, but he stopped with it halfway out of his pocket to turn an offended face on Cesc. “Hey, first of all, don’t lump Ballack in with me. He’s a merc. I’m a consultant. And second, don’t knock Bejeweled till you get stuck in some mountain hellhole for ten days because your idiot client didn’t realize that building a supervillain hideout in that kind of place makes it fucking hard to get in and out when it’s snowing.”

“Hey, sorry, didn’t mean any offense,” Cesc muttered. “I just figured you’d, I don’t know, play something with shooting involved.”

“You mean, same as what I do for work? How’s that relaxing?” Silva asked, settling in with his phone. He furrowed his brow, looking intently at the screen. Then he jumped as something snapped out in the main cabin. He quickly checked his phone, then sighed irritably. “At least you calmed down.” He looked up. “Or not. Chill, okay? If Ballack was going to kill you, he would’ve done it already. Man hates having to waste money dragging around somebody he’s got to bury anyway. Actually, I’m surprised he sprung for a charter. Your friend must be fucking amazing in bed.”

Cesc…didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered, or if he could even react to a comment on Robin’s behalf, so he went with plain confused. “Robin’s…um…look, it’s not like I haven’t run into this kind of thing before. Okay, not so much the German mercenary going all vengeance Viking part, but the bit about random supervillains ruining your day, yeah. It’s just they usually save it for when I’m out at a dig. When I’m at university, it’s always boring.”

“I don’t fucking ask you to come to my seminar presentations, do I?” Robin screeched. When his voice started hitting those notes, Cesc usually volunteered to help out catalog artifacts in the back archives and let Wenger take care of things. “You know why? Because you’re a goddamn hitman and nobody expects hitmen to go to a fucking grad student’s grant proposal meetings!”

“If you asked, I would go,” Ballack snarled back. “I would be happy to. I told you, I want to—”

“That doesn’t fucking mean I’d be happy to go to your fucking illegal weapons trade conventions in Siberia!” Robin’s voice was like fingernails on glass.

His right eye scrunched shut and his fingers in his right ear, Silva peered into the main cabin again. Then he flicked a dubious look at Cesc. “Does university include that?”

“Honestly? I just found out they were dating last month,” Cesc said. “Haven’t really had the time to, y’know, figure out what it’s like.”

“I think I figured them out in the first five minutes seeing them together,” Silva muttered. He glanced at his phone, then grimaced again as Ballack cut loose with a stream of furious German. Then he shook his head, put his phone away and took out a really boxy-looking gun. “Listen, are you gonna be really offended if I just put them out for the rest of the flight?”

Cesc started to yelp, then inhaled in the middle of that as he realized what Silva really meant. And then he had to hack through his embarrassing hiccup. He pushed his hand over his mouth, then into his hair when he got that no amount of muffling was going to keep Silva from staring at him. Okay, humiliating himself a lot today, but it was for a good cause, he reminded himself. “Tranq them? Both of them?”

“Yeah. I know the one’s your friend and everything, but—”

“No, go ahead,” Cesc said. He rolled his eyes at the arched brow he got from Silva. “Robin’s my friend, but friends means that I know when he’s about to lose his shit and that’s like, now. And as long as you don’t make him hit his head, it’s probably better than the closet we usually lock him in.”

Silva blinked a few times. Then he shrugged and pulled out a small plastic case. He flipped it open to reveal a set of darts with colored bands around the middle, glanced at Cesc again, and then selected the blue and the red darts. Once he’d snapped them into the gun, he got up and went forward into the main cabin.

Cesc watched for long enough to see that Silva’s attention really was on the fighting pair, and then he grabbed the phone off the hook and dialed Xavi again. “Xavi! Listen, sorry about just now, but—”

*Xavi just left,* Victor said. *Cesc? Is that you? He said you’re coming over today. Really? Because of course we’ll be happy to see you again, but we’re all a little busy trying to find Pep, so I don’t know how much we can—*

Oh, for God’s sake. All right, now Cesc was mad at Xavi. Yeah, the man had to deal with Pep vanishing but he should’ve had that scheduled into his calendar by now, and he could at least pay a little attention to the fact that Cesc was stuck with a couple assassins and an angry Robin. If everybody was going to keep running off on their own thing and leaving Cesc behind, then he was just going to stop trying to catch up with them. “Yeah, I am, and I’m bringing Robin and a nasty German hitman and this kooky little Spanish one who beat the German one up, and somebody had better remember to pick us up at the airport this time.”

*Sorry, look, that wasn’t Xavi or my fault, that was—*

“Whatever, just don’t do it again. Now how come Pep’s gone?” Cesc said. “Is it another relic that’s going to destroy the world? I thought those only came up during finals.”

“Yeah, if I’m gonna end up in another History Channel special, I want some notice this time so I can make sure I get a cut of the royalties,” Silva said. He plopped back down in his seat and grinned at Cesc. “Tell him the kooky one says hi.”

Cesc looked at him. Then Cesc hung up and looked at Silva some more.

“Your friend’s head is intact, by the way. I even got him a pillow.” After another moment, Silva rolled his eyes up and pretended like he was praying. Then he looked back at Cesc, like he had any right to be exasperated. “Look, you want me to be honest, I don’t really want to be here either. I could’ve had a nice paying job in Manchester, but noooo, I’m doing a freebie in Spain. So I’d really like to just do this and—”

“You’re gonna take Manchester over Spain?” Cesc blurted out.

Silva moved his shoulders back and forth and kind of avoided Cesc’s eyes for a couple seconds. “Emphasis on paying, okay? You don’t get too far in the world being a snob about jobs.”

“Yeah, but…I’ve been to Manchester,” Cesc said.

“And you live in London, not Barcelona,” Silva shot back.

“It’s for school, and London’s not as bad, we at least get a warm breeze once in a while, and…okay, okay.” Cesc threw up his hands, then leaned back against the wall. “So you drugged Ballack and Robin. We’re going to Spain. Pep’s missing, his boyfriend’s mad, Mourinho is being all evil, and I have no idea what the hell the plan is supposed to be because you won’t leave me alone long enough to call people about it. Or they just go off without telling me, because whooo, I live in London, like they never invented phones or email. So now what?”

Something tapped Cesc on the knee. When he looked down, Silva grabbed that knee and used it for support as he looked Cesc in the eye. “So now we do what they should be doing, and find out what Mourinho really wants.”

* * *

Xavi met Luís in front of Pep’s office. “I had a call from Cesc,” he started. “He said that Ballack, Robin and he are coming here and there’s somebody named Silva—”

“Silva’s mine. He’s there to make sure that Ballack doesn’t go rogue again,” Luís said, striding into Pep’s office. He noted the maps scattered over the desk and the wide-eyed grad student frozen over the computer, then turned around. “Any luck finding him?”

“Well, we’ve narrowed it down to three possible locations, but that’s extrapolating from some really, really rough estimates of the manpower, electrical supply and…” Xavi cocked his head. Then he tucked the clipboard from which he’d been reading under his arm and took a step forward. His arm went out, then back down as he saw what Luís was looking at. “Right. So that’s…”

The scarf Pep had been wearing earlier. For some reason Luís picked it up and began to coil it around his wrist. “Rough estimates?”

“Um, well, based on prior experiences. But if you’d like to look over them, I’d really appreciate it since every evil guy seems to have different ideas about how to do his lair and all that,” Xavi said. He took the clipboard back out from under his arm and showed Luís. “You know, the funny thing is that we haven’t had any demands yet. Or anyway, they haven’t called over here.” He cocked his head again. “Have they tried to contact you?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Luís reached for the clipboard, but his arm was unexpectedly pulled up short. He looked down and saw it was the scarf, and shoved that off his wrist. He stuffed it into his coat pocket with one hand while getting the clipboard with the other. “Supposedly it’s about some artifact I need to turn over—”

“Okay, then let’s look at the catalogs and get started on a fake,” Xavi said, gesturing to the student at the computer. “It’s not going to be real good with the short timeline, but it should get you a couple minutes.”

For a good ten seconds Luís stared at Xavi, while the other student scurried out the door. Then he shook his head. “No, nix the catalogs. I took a couple hostages so Mourinho should be coming to us.”

Xavi closed his mouth and slowly straightened up. He looked at Luís, then at the computer. Then he looked at Luís again. His expression never changed from politely considerate, but somehow Luís had the strong impression that he’d…well, failed to make much of one on the man.

“Okay,” Xavi finally said. “So you don’t know which artifact he wants.”

“No, because it’s not even about the damn artifact, it’s about a personal grudge and the artifact’s just a reason to get me on his home ground,” Luís snapped. As bad a day as he was already having, he was not about to be condescended to by a graduate student about how to take down an evil mastermind. “This turns the tables on him. So what I need is—”

“Look, you definitely know him better than I do, but if this is a personal thing with him and you, then why didn’t he just try to kill you?” Then Xavi hunched his shoulders and shuffled his feet and did everything he could to look harmless except for dropping his eyes, which more or less gave away his act. “Wouldn’t that be faster?”

Luís opened his mouth, then shut it and told himself he was not about to snap off the head of Pep’s favorite student. And it was a fair question, for someone who didn’t know how his and Mourinho’s world worked, and he should just answer it and move on. And hopefully Xavi wouldn’t ask any more questions afterward, and would just…do whatever he did to find people. Since that would be far, far more helpful than trying to act like he was outthinking Luís. “Because Mourinho doesn’t want it to go fast. I didn’t just break a contract with him to help out Pep and his friends. I did that, took away that silly El Siete trophy from him, and lived long enough to brag about it. That’s going to irk him a little more than just wanting me dead.”

“So if he’s mad enough to want tit-for-tat and to not just get you out of the way, then doesn’t that mean that he’d want to ruin your professional rep, take Pep and then get you killed?” Xavi asked.

“Exactly,” Luís said, sighing. Maybe the kid got it.

“But then where’s the professional rep part?” Xavi rubbed his hand over his temple, then dropped it back to grab at the nape of his neck. “I mean, I know that he went after Cesc’s friend too, but I thought that was because he was dating that other guy who turned against Mourinho with the El Siete deal. Unless you’re doing something together, and Mourinho wants to ruin the deal and make you look bad?”

Luís started to say no, then stopped. He stared at Xavi, who just assumed an air of patient expectancy. Then he put his hand over his face, digging his fingers into either side of his nose. “No,” he finally said. “No, Ballack and I are not doing deals together. Listen, there’s a man out in the lobby. Tall, dark, answers to Mori. He’s my friend and he’s helping me out with the hostages. Go…talk to him about letting Mourinho know we have them, and when you get in touch with Mourinho, pretend I’ve got the…whatever it is he wants. Sound like you’re setting up an exchange, but just string that out as long as you can, till I get back. All right?”

A flicker of what might’ve been displeasure went over Xavi’s face, but he was at least sensible enough to see that he couldn’t argue with Luís on this. He nodded. “Okay, but where are you going? How are we going to contact you if we really need you?”

“Mori can get me if he needs me,” Luís said curtly, turning around. “As for where I’m going…I need to see a man about a hawk.”

Xavi brightened. “A hawk? So you do know what artifact it is? Is it from Malta—”

“I’ll be right back.” Luís pushed the clipboard at Xavi, then went out the door while Xavi was fumbling with it.

* * *

Cesc stared at Silva. Then he turned around and stared at the bed on the other side of the room, and then turned back to stare at Silva some more.

“Relax,” Silva said, fiddling with his laptop. “They’re not going to wake up.”

“Then why is Ballack looking at me?” Cesc hissed. “He is! He’s pretending not to but I can see his eyes under his—”

“He’s not. It’s a trained reflex and his eyelids don’t close all the way down when he’s out, so he just looks creepy, okay? Ignore it.” Silva tapped a few more keys. “Honestly, you said you were a grad student. I thought you guys did that sort of thing in lecture all the time.”

Cesc opened his mouth. Then he shut it. Okay, he had seen that before, and once in a while, when he’d really been spending too much time in the back stacks, had managed it himself according to Robin. But it was one thing to see some kid propping his eyelids up over a textbook and another thing to be looking at a dead-eyed professional killer draped over the bed like any minute now he was going to get up and smear them like peanut butter over the wall.

“It’d help if you didn’t look at it so much, you know,” Silva said. “He’s fucking out. I dosed him up with enough to stop Albelda in full-on fight-sex mode.”

“I don’t know who Albelda is,” Cesc pointed out.

Silva looked up from his laptop and stared straight ahead for a moment. Then he shook his head, grimacing. He pressed his hand against his temple. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget not everybody’s in the network. Anyway, trust me, Ballack’s down for another good two hours. And if he does wake up again, I’ll dose him before he even breathes on you, okay?”

“But I don’t really know who the hell you are either.” Cesc fidgeted on the couch next to Silva and tried to find something else besides creepy Ballack to look at. It was too bad they couldn’t open the curtains so he could look outside, since the hotel room was pretty damn small, but Silva had insisted on keeping them closed just in case somebody was spying on them. Given all of the gadgets Cesc had seen so far, he wasn’t really sure how curtains were going to be that effective, but hey, he wasn’t the black-ops guy here.

“I’m David Silva, and I work as a freelance security consultant, and I’m addicted to Bejeweled but that doesn’t mean I can’t kick your ass,” Silva sighed. He rubbed at his temple again while squinting with one eye at Cesc. Then he impatiently shoved his bangs out of his eye. “What else do you want to know?”

“Uh, I don’t know, what the hell the plan is? And why you’re going along with it when you’re not getting paid and don’t care about us?” Cesc said. Then he made a face himself. He put both hands over his face, rubbed them in place and then swept them back over the top of his head. “That came out sort of harsh. Look, I’m sure you’re a nice person, but I’m just kind of…huh. I don’t know what to call it. You know, when you’re way past being freaked out, but you’re not exactly in shock yet, and everything just feels really, really blurry?”

Silva actually looked a bit sympathetic. He frowned, one hand still fiddling up in his hair, and seemed to be trying to think about what to call it. And then he suddenly shrugged, dropped his hand and leaned over to plant his lips firmly on Cesc’s mouth. It was warm, sort of chocolaty and gone as fast as it’d come.

“You in shock now?” Silva asked, his face still hovering in front’s Cesc’s. He peered deeply into Cesc’s eyes, then nodded in satisfaction and went back to his computer. “Great. Another ten seconds, you should be over that, and then you can go back to acting normal.”

Cesc opened his mouth. He shut it. Then he flopped backwards against the couch and let himself sag down till his knees were bumping into the coffee table before them. “Just what the hell is it with you people and hitting on archaeology people? At this rate, the next dig we go on, we might as well call Lara Croft to just do it for us.”

“I like Tomb Raider. The game, I mean. Movie’s all right, but it’s more fun when you can control the play,” Silva muttered, typing away. “So here’s the plan—I’ve just done some checking about what research Mourinho’s been having his people do lately and I think he’s after the Halcón de Oro.”

“On the other hand, if we had people who knew how to sneak into places, we wouldn’t have to waste so much time on paperwork,” Cesc mused. “Robin’s never had a problem getting things on interlibrary loan since he started dating Ballack.”

Something kicked him in the shin. He yelped and grabbed up his leg, then glowered at a half-exasperated, half-amused Silva. “Hey, do you care at all that your friend’s still in trouble, or are you just going to sit there and moan about how weird this is?” Silva asked. “Anyway, how is this any weirder than what you do for your studies? I looked you up and basically you root around in ancient trash heaps.”

“I do not! I mean, yeah, we do that but…it’s more complicated than that. It’s not about what we analyze, it’s about what those things tell us about the way people used to live. And that helps you understand better why people live the way they do now.” Then Cesc caught Silva eyeing his other leg and pulled that away. But that left him twisting his head one way and his whole body the other, and so he just gave up and straightened himself out before he could screw his head right off his own neck. “And it was one stupid coprolite paper, because I had a diversity credit requirement, okay?”

“You studied fossilized shit,” Silva said, grinning.

Cesc rolled his eyes. “You play girly video games.”

The grin wiped right off Silva’s face, which suddenly went flat and hard. “I have a gun and you don’t.”

And the back of Cesc’s neck was tingling, because when Silva meant business he looked like somebody who could take care of it. Not in a big macho way, but in a much scarier, quiet but absolute confidence in himself way. But that kiss really had gotten Cesc over the hump, because while he was looking at Silva and knowing that he was stepping on really thin ice, he just couldn’t help himself. He was so over being frazzled and being criticized for it, as if it was a totally abnormal reaction to have to being dragged everywhere by people constantly threatening his life for no good reason. “Yeah, shoot me. That’s totally going to prove that you’re strong enough to take a little teasing.”

Silva gazed coolly at Cesc for a few more seconds, just long enough for Cesc to wonder if he should try ducking. Then he laughed. He shook his head and then twisted his laptop around to show Cesc the screen. “Awesome. You’re quicker than a lot of people I meet. Okay, so here’s the thing.”

“Thanks. I think.” Cesc glanced at the screen, mostly because Silva was making a big deal out of it. Then he frowned and looked again. “Oh, that? What does Mourinho want with that? It doesn’t really look like an artifact…it looks like an award.”

“That’s because it is an award.” For the first time since they’d met, Silva looked faintly uncomfortable. He ducked his head and scrubbed one hand through his hair—he really had a hell of a lot up there, to the point that the shag didn’t even bulge as his fingers disappeared into it. “Um, it’s kind of like the Oscars for risk management consultants.”

It took a few seconds. Cesc had to wrap his head around the idea of hitmen politely applauding each other’s soppy speeches in some stuffy ballroom. “You guys have an award? And what, Mourinho wants to win it? What does this have to do with archaeology?”

“Well, this one trophy is like hundreds of years old, so I guess that’s how it’s an artifact, and you get to keep it till you die,” Silva said. “Which kinda means the next winner has to kill you for it.”

After a long moment, Cesc let out a disgusted breath and waved for Silva to go on. Smug shit was positively enjoying making Cesc squirm. “So who’s got it now?”

* * *

Zinedine went streaky, with dark blue and black lines cutting him into horizontal slices of pale, flinty features. He cursed under his breath and fiddled with the camera, and the picture on Luís’ screen steadied. *Sorry,* he said. *I was at a testing ground and one explosion knocked my laptop off the table. I think it jiggled a few things loose.*

“I can hear you fine and that’s what matters. So have you checked your cabinet lately?” Luís said. Then he frowned and glanced over his shoulder. He’d heard some sort of banging noise plus a muffled howl, but a second later Raúl popped in the doorway and made an all-clear gesture. ‘Villa dropped his end,’ he mouthed, and Luís sighed and nodded. Then Luís turned back to Zinedine. “I think Mourinho’s coming after both of us.”

It wasn’t the camera that made Zinedine’s face suddenly lengthen, but the heights to which his brows scaled his forehead. *What makes you say that?*

“Well, he took Pep and then got Pep to call me and argue with me, and—”

*Oh, is Pep upset about us?* Zinedine said, with an admirably genuine lack of guile. When Luís didn’t immediately reply, Zinedine twitched his shoulders the way he did whenever he was feeling particularly embarrassed. *Raúl called earlier. He said it came up.*

Luís pursed his lips. Then he looked over his shoulder, but of course Raúl had long since left, and if Luís got up to look for the man, he undoubtedly would find that Raúl had managed to get himself out of the house on some errand, like looking into that kitty litter Veloso wouldn’t stop babbling about. Raúl had an uncanny sense for when he could slip out of the argument, which made him a brilliant colleague but an irritating friend at times. “It did. But it’s not the problem.”

*So Pep is all right about it? Because I don’t want to come between you. It’s old business and I’d be happy to explain that to him.* Of course, most of Luís’ friends had similar downsides. Such as Zinedine’s current example of how having laser focus once locked onto a subject could result in severe social discomfort. *He did seem suspicious the last time he was over.*

“That’s because I had just kidnapped him, killed Sneijder in front of him and then dragged him to your place in handcuffs. He didn’t even know we’d ever had something going at that point,” Luís finally said. He gave Zinedine a few seconds, and when the man just gazed inquiringly at him, took a deep breath and raised his hand. “So about the Halcón. I think—”

*If you want me to call him, I’d be happy to,* Zinedine said.

Luís paused. He reminded himself that he had an agenda, a short timeframe and a lack of information he desperately needed Zinedine to correct. And he didn’t need yet another person angry with him, even though he honestly still couldn’t see how the hell anything he’d done today merited that. “I don’t think that that would help, but thanks.”

*So you’re going to talk to him yourself?*

“I already talked to him and it didn’t go well, and anyway I have to have him in order to talk to him. So first I’m going to work on getting him back.” Another pause for breath and temper control. “And then I’m going to talk to him.”

Zinedine nodded thoughtfully. *But if it didn’t go well the first time, how can you be sure that it will the second?*

“Can I just get Pep back first?” Luís snapped. “What’s the point of thinking about what I’ll say to him till then?”

*Well, the point would be that then you could be happy to see him because you know what you’ll do that happens. Instead of being upset at him while you’re upset about what happened to him. Because I know you and you’re not very good at planning when you don’t know how it’s going to end,* Zinedine replied in the calm, mellifluous tones of a saint who never had to deal with strangely sensitive Catalan professors. He leaned forward in his chair in an attempt to peer into Luís’ soul over the Internet connection. *Why would he be upset about us, anyway? I’m sure he’s had his own past relationships.*

Luís breathed in and out a few times. He muttered that he needed to check on something, got up and walked over to the doorway to look into the next room, where Villa was filling up a syringe from a small glass vial. Then he came back to the laptop and sat down. “Zinedine? Just for my peace of mind, because I can only be worried about so many things at once, can you first tell me if you’ve got the Halcón with you?”

*Yes,* Zinedine said after a moment. His brow furrowed. *Luís, it might be public knowledge that you’re the winner but you do know that I can’t hand it over to you yet.*

“Well, I think that the point is that I’m not supposed to ever get it. Mourinho’s still sore about the El Siete incident, so he wants to hijack the award and see to it that I’m professionally and personally disgraced,” Luís said. “Anyway, watch out for it, and also please be careful when you have your rendezvous later. I can’t be positive that he won’t also try to sabotage your current job, since I was helping to arrange that.”

Zinedine appeared to be finally listening to Luís. But then he lifted his hand for Luís’ attention. *Was that what Pep’s mad about? I thought you said you told him you were helping me in Turin.*

“I did! I even left him exact times for when I was going and coming—not places, so don’t worry, you weren’t compromised—but I told him and he seemed fine with it then. I don’t know why he’s upset about it now.” Then Luís put his hands to either side of his head and pressed in with them while he bent his head over the keyboard. “I moved in with him. I come back to him. What else does he want?”

*Did you tell him you didn’t actually want to go?* Zinedine asked. *Because now that I think about it, I was wondering why you even agreed. I was glad for the help but you didn’t have to come all the way to Turin to do that. I think I told you.*

After a moment, Luís reluctantly nodded. “Yes, you did. But it just made more sense to come. I could make sure that everything was properly…look, there’s nothing wrong on my side. I’m happy with Pep, and with retiring, and none of this has anything to do with—”

*Though helping me out did make sure that you won the Halcón,* Zinedine went on, talking over Luís in a musing voice. *Impressive considering you were out of the game for over a year. You know, people are actually asking whether you might be coming back now, because of that.*

“I’m not,” Luís said after a long moment. “I’m not coming back, and all the idiot awards in the world aren’t going to change my mind. Actually, for all I care, Mourinho can have the damn Halcón. It’s just a trophy, and for something I don’t have the appetite for anymore.”

Zinedine blinked hard. He pursed his lips and started to reply, then abruptly tucked his chin down towards his chest. He rubbed a finger slowly over his mouth, then looked back up at Luís. *So why would Pep even think you do?*

Luís threw up his hands. His arm caught the edge of the table, rattling the laptop, and he could see Zinedine grimacing on the screen, but for once he couldn’t work up much sympathy. The man had seen worse and lived through the motion sickness; he could stand a few seconds of Luís finally losing his temper. “I don’t know! Look, I’m ready to move on to something new—him—but I just don’t see why that means that I have to turn my back on everything that came before. I’m not ashamed of it and it helped make me what I am, which is apparently something he likes so I don’t see why he’s got a problem with it. If he can keep flying out to check out booby-trapped digs and rampaging museum monsters at the drop of a hat, I think I should be able to visit my old friends once in a while.”

*You’ve got a problem with his work?* Zinedine asked. *I thought you found it interesting.*

“I do. I find it very interesting. Right up till I get that damn call from Xavi in the middle of the night letting me know that once again Pep’s gotten himself into a jam and I have to go dust off my guns,” Luís snorted. “You know, he never complains about my background when I’m killing monsters for him.”

Zinedine was nodding attentively enough, but Luís could see the man’s eyes wandering off to the side. A faint beeping in the background started up. Then Zinedine grabbed up something small and black and plastic, muttering to himself. *I’m sorry, Luís, but I need to go. I’ll keep an eye out for Mourinho. And I hope you and Pep straighten things out. You’re much happier when you’re not fighting with him.*

“Thank—wait. What do you mean, when I’m not fighting with him? I’m almost never fighting with him. It’s only every so often when he suddenly starts…goodbye, Zinedine.” Luís watched the blank screen for a few more seconds, then pushed his face into his right hand and rubbed his fingers over his eye. And that was why he rarely ever had these sorts of conversations: if someone was close enough for him to even feel comfortable talking about such things, then they probably knew him well enough to know when to hang up.

Except for Pep, who never hung up. Till today, and if Luís was honest with himself, that one detail was bothering him almost more than the fact that Mourinho still had Pep stashed away somewhere and was subjecting him to God knew what sort of misery. Pep never gave up on trying to pry information out of Luís, no matter what evasive tactics Luís took. It was one of his best features, and one of the main reasons why Luís actually believed that they could work through all the ridiculous obstacles both of their lives kept throwing at them.

But he’d hung up this time.

“Luís?” Raúl looked into the room. “Are you done talking to Zizou? Because there’s something you should—”

“Am I difficult to talk to?” Luís asked.

After a moment, Raúl coughed under his breath. “I’ll come back in a minute.”

“No. Don’t move.” Luís slewed around in his chair and pinned Raúl with his eyes. “Answer the question. Am I?”

“Well…” Raúl visibly considered whether to duck, then sighed and shrugged “…I can’t say, because you usually don’t give people a chance to talk to you. You talk to them and that’s it. Is this about Pep?”

“You know, today I think I’ve talked more about him than I have in months,” Luís said after a long pause.

Raúl pulled at his nose, his feet shuffling uneasily on the tile. “But you haven’t talked to him since this morning, right? Oh, there was that phone call too—sorry, Mori was angry and I had to ask why…”

“Whatever it is, just take care of it,” Luís said, getting up. He shut the laptop and shoved it aside, then got his coat off the back of the chair and put it on. “Set up a meeting with Mourinho and make sure he brings Pep, all right? I’m going out for about an hour.”

“But—”

Whatever else there was, it couldn’t be that serious. If it had been, Raúl would’ve knocked Luís out and dragged him back. So Luís made a mental note to swing Zinedine’s next job Raúl’s way as an apology and kept walking. If he plotted everything out correctly, he’d just have enough time before Raúl finished arranging the meeting.

* * *

Cesc stuck the end of the pen in his mouth again, then cursed as Silva yanked it out of his hand. He grabbed at his mouth, then pressed his thumb against his clipped lip. “Ow!”

“Don’t chew on other people’s pens,” Silva said, pulling up to the curb. “It’s gross and I need that one back.”

It looked like an ordinary ball-point pen to Cesc. Cheap black plastic case, already scratched in a couple places. “I’ve got one from the plane you can have instead.”

“No, I want that one. It’s poisoned.” Silva parked the stretch SUV they were in, then kicked back in his seat and rotated his shoulders a few times. He looked in the back, grimaced and then glanced at Cesc. “Well, only if you bite off the end. Which is why—”

“Here,” Cesc muttered, shoving it back at Silva. He ignored the man’s amused grin and looked around, scrubbing at his mouth. Then he checked the piece of hotel stationery he was clutching. “Okay. So this award thingy’s what Mourinho wants, but we’re not going after it.”

“Because as far as I can tell, Zidane still has it and I’m pretty sure that he’s not going to give it to Mourinho. Zidane is like…the wind.” And then Silva made weird waving motions with his hands. If he didn’t look so serious about it, Cesc would have called him on being a total spacehead. “In that you shoot at him and it usually comes back to hit you instead. So instead we’re gonna see the people who decide who gets the Halcón.”

Cesc slouched in his seat and propped his arm up on the window so he could rub at his forehead. He admittedly hadn’t been thinking his best today, but even he could see a couple problems here. “Okay, I’m sorry I’m so slow, but I still have a hard time believing that you guys have like, this huge secret organization that’s designed to rate each other and hand out funky awards that people will actually kill each other over.”

“What’s hard to get?” Silva asked, raising his voice over a thumping noise. “The secret organization part?”

“No, the part where you don’t all just call it a bunch of bullshit because seriously, you do all this illegal stuff that people can’t know about or else you’d get into trouble for it, and then you tell each other about it? For some stupid dust-catcher on your mantelpiece? I bet you all don’t even have mantelpieces,” Cesc said. That thumping was still going, so he reached back over his shoulder and banged on the glass separating the front from the passenger compartment. Then he hissed and jerked himself around. “Shit. Robin? Robin? Did you wake u—gah!”

It wasn’t Robin’s bleary, red-veined eyes that suddenly bulged against the glass, which Silva had sworn was shatterproof but which was definitely creaking loudly just from Ballack’s breathing. Ballack glowered at Cesc, then shifted his eyes sideways. When they locked on Silva, they narrowed.

Silva didn’t even look back. He just unhooked the receiver from the dash, clicked the button on the side and coughed into it. “Can you hear—” he grimaced at the angry snarl from the back “—great, you can. Listen, we’re in Barcelona now and yeah, yeah, you’ll still have your chance to yell at Figo. But first I figured that we’d take care of Mourinho. That way, you don’t have to worry about him showing up while you’re having your—”

“Cesc!” came Robin’s muffled but distinctly angry voice. “Cesc! Are you up there? Did you let that midget drug me?”

“Okay, that’s really uncalled-for,” Silva said in a mild tone. He handed the receiver to Cesc and reached into his pocket for something.

“Hey, wait, don’t—look, he’s sorry, he’s just pissed off and give me a second before you shoot him up again, please?” Cesc tried to peer past Ballack to see where Robin was, but…Ballack was nasty to look at when he was mad. So Cesc just twisted around and slouched down till he couldn’t feel Ballack’s glower on the top of his head anymore. “Robin? Hi, yeah, I’m here. I’m really sorry but, um, we were afraid that you two were going to hurt each other.”

Silva had that dart gun of his out again and was checking the action on some lever on it. Then he cocked his head as some grinding noises started up. “Ballack’s trying to pry off the glass.”

“What? Oh, my God, don’t just sit there! Shoot him!” Cesc yelped.

“Cesc!” Robin shrieked. “You little shit! Don’t even think about it! You shoot either of us up again and I’ll break your neck!”

“Sorry! I meant—oh, fuck it.” Cesc turned the receiver off and rubbed at his forehead. He looked out the window at the nice, perfectly ordinary house before which they were parked, and then back at the growling German guy trying to bash in the shatterproof glass. Then he turned the receiver back on. “Robin? Look, I’m trying to rescue Pep here, so can you just calm down for a second? Or at least go fight somewhere else? I know you’re mad at Ballack and you’re kinda mad at me, even though it’s not as bad as swiping my milk for—anyway, the point is that we all know you’re okay. And we don’t know that Pep’s okay. So he’s kind of more important than whatever you’re fighting over right now.”

Ballack stopped banging at the glass and chuckled, kind of like he was staring at Cesc’s head again and really enjoying the idea of smashing it. “Of course. So I need to—”

“You don’t need to see Figo except to bitch at him and you can do that after we stop Mourinho and get this professor Guardiola back and whatever,” Silva said, rolling his eyes. “This whole thing about seeing Figo is just about being all pissy and macho and showing him who’s boss. Which is stupid, because he is.”

“Like you always are,” Robin snapped.

It was quiet for a moment. Then there was a loud snap as Ballack let go of the glass and twisted around. “I am…what?”

“You’re always going off and saying we’re going to do that and this, like the king of all you survey,” Robin said, his voice rising a little. “‘I’m going to your conference.’ ‘You will get a package from me tomorrow that you cannot drop on the floor.’ Well, I’m not your fucking little soldier, thank you. I have a life and it’s not built around yours—”

“When did I say it was?” Ballack asked. He sounded genuinely confused, and when Cesc risked a peek up, the man was rumpling his hair in obvious discomfort. “I don’t order you to do things. But I have to tell you what is going on, so you have no surprises because you said you don’t like surprises.”

A stifled snicker from Silva’s direction made Cesc hiss under his breath. Then he leaned over and poked the man hard in the side. “Don’t distract them, damn it. Maybe they’ll actually work it all out of their system this time.”

“If you say so,” Silva muttered, still looking amused. “Doesn’t seem that likely to me.”

“Well, are we actually in a hurry?” Cesc asked. “Do we have an appointment or something?”

“No, but we’re sitting out front and eventually I think somebody’s going to wonder why there’s a stretch SUV here.” Silva did holster the dart gun, but only so he could take out his phone and…not play Bejeweled. The screen had some sort of green grid on it with little moving dots that Silva tapped on to show data. “Let’s see…maybe another couple minutes, and then I’m tranqing them.”

Banging noises from the back. “Because it is ordering! It’s ordering when you don’t ask me what I think first—”

“Because you tell me before I ask! I don’t think I have to ask!”

“You still have to ask, you fucking psychopath! It’s showing some fucking consideration—‘oh, Robin, do you mind if I act like we’re fucking married already?’”

“Well, do you?”

Dead silence. Silva looked up from his phone, blinking. Then he grabbed Cesc by the arm and leaned over to whisper in Cesc’s ear. “Are they going to have the whole commitment talk? Because I only brought one dart gun and obviously I’d shoot Ballack first, so you’re gonna have to distract your friend till I can get around to tranqing him too.”

“What is it with you and tranqing people?” Cesc whispered back. “Okay, yeah, I can see where it’d be helpful, but sometimes you should just let people talk it out.”

“Like when they’re a German merc with a hidden homemaking side that’s just been revealed to the whole world?” Silva shot back.

Cesc looked around the car. It could be bugged, he guessed, but he would’ve figured that Silva would know about it and could deal with that.

“As in, just because I’m helping now doesn’t mean I’m going to not complain about this to everybody I know later,” Silva clarified. He shrugged. “Hey, I’m not getting paid for this, so I’ve got to get my kicks somewhere. Don’t tell me you won’t be doing the same with your friends.”

“Well, I might cut out the bit where I said okay to Robin getting drugged a lot,” Cesc muttered. “I’m pretty sure that that’s not good for you.”

“As long as Ballack’s not slipping him mickeys every week, he’ll be fine.” Then Silva cocked his head. “Or is he?”

Thankfully, Cesc didn’t have to answer that because a deep, long sigh came over the receiver. “Are you tired of this?” Ballack asked, his voice surprisingly mournful.

“I’m just—I’m stressed, all right? I have my dissertation dates coming up and that’s a lot on my mind and I don’t really want to have to deal with anything else yet. No, okay, I want you to stay. Don’t go off and slaughter some goddamn army again,” Robin said after a long moment. He sighed himself, then let out a low groan. “See, there’s things like that. I just…I just want to get my defense done and then go home and sack out. I don’t want to have to think about rotating your arsenal or coming up with excuses for the dry-cleaner. And it’s not that I don’t respect your job, all right? I just—I’m sorry, I can’t deal with it right now.”

“If you don’t want to hear about it, you don’t have to. You just have to say,” Ballack said.

Robin made a noise that was half-snort, half-gasp. “What, really? I don’t want to know anything except when you’ll be in for dinner till the end of next month?”

“Yes.” And that came out so low and rough that Cesc…

…screamed when Ballack banged the glass again. Ballack laughed at him, then looked at Silva. “We’re not fighting. Now let me out before I decide to burn down your hometown.”

“Whatever, like they wouldn’t see you coming,” Silva muttered, reaching for some buttons on the dash. He looked a bit disappointed himself that they weren’t at least going to get some make-up smooching, but it was probably just as well. They still had a lot to do.

Like come up with something to tell the man standing on the curb and politely tapping on Cesc’s window, who had a really, really big rifle. And a wooden duck, which was what he was using to tap the glass. Cesc’s life had officially jumped the shark.

“Hi,” said the man. “I’m Roberto Baggio and I would like to know what you’re doing in front of my house.”

* * *

When Luís returned to Pep’s campus office, he found it filled with people he didn’t recognize. He slowed down so he stayed slightly out of sight of it, then was looking around for Xavi when Raúl’s head emerged from the crowd. Raúl had clearly seen him and wanted his attention, so Luís slipped into a nearby empty office and waited for the man.

“I was about to send David out after you,” Raúl said, tone distinctly huffy. His hair was a little mussed and he had ink smudges on his fingers. He pulled out a folded piece of paper and shoved it into Luís’ hand, then pulled around the headset he was wearing and muttered into the mouthpiece that the eagle had landed. “You’ve got half an hour to get into place.”

“Eagle? I’m flattered, but…eagle? Have you been talking to Rui again about codewords?” Luís asked. He unfolded the paper, memorized the layout scribbled on it and then dropped it into the wastebasket. Seconds later a thin curl of smoke came up from the basket as the paper self-destructed. “I know I’ve got a very nice profile but frankly, I think that’s exaggerating the nose a little too much.”

Raúl opened his mouth, then shut it and glowered at Luís. Then he pulled at his nose while checking his phone. “You’re in a much better mood. You fixed things?”

“More or less.” Luís moved the package under his arm because the corner was digging into his ribs, and because Raúl might as well stop pretending he wasn’t terribly curious about it if he was going to be sarcastic anyway. “So who’s staking it out?”

After a long moment, Raúl threw up his hands and turned around. He started to walk out the door. “I hope Guardiola is very happy with all the trouble you’re going through on his behalf. We’ve all been very concerned about it.”

“Raúl,” Luís said, blinking. Then he lunged forward and caught the other man by the arm. “Raúl. Look, I know I’ve asked a lot of you and your friends today, but—”

“But if you would just answer your damn partner’s questions, none of this would have happened,” Raúl snapped. He half-heartedly tried to jerk his arm free, then closed his eyes and rubbed at them. “Luís, we want you to be happy and of course we’re going to help you. But you know, dragging everybody into it every time you have a little disagreement really isn’t a solid basis for a relationship. Also, it costs a lot of money. I’m supposed to be circumventing security in Germany right now.”

“I know. And I’m sorry.” Luís paused, then laughed at the expression on Raúl’s face. And at himself, to be honest. “I know I’ve apologized to you before.”

Raúl kept up the glower for another moment, but his shoulders were already relaxing. He snorted, then shrugged and finally smiled as Luís clapped him on the arm. “You had a gun to your head.”

“Ah, yes, the last time that Mori lost his temper around me,” Luís said, grinning. He still had his hand on Raúl’s arm and he used it to pull the other man towards him, then rumpled Raúl’s hair with his free hand. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to do that. You’re my friend. I’ll always help you.” Raúl paused and listened to something coming over his headset. He frowned, pulled his nose and then muttered to go with the back-up gas. Then he inhaled deeply and looked back up at Luís. “Just make up with the man and get him home and stop bothering me.”

Luís slung his arm around Raúl’s shoulder, slotting himself against the headset side of the man so he could hear the messages as well, and began to steer them out the door. “Oh, I plan to. And speaking of, what is the plan?”

* * *

The warehouse was vast and empty, a concrete desert whose open space was menacing rather than comforting. All the uninterrupted lines of sight would make any sensible professional’s nerves jangle; Mourinho was far from a stupid man and he’d chosen the meeting place, so there was no way that he would make setting up a trap that easy. Of course they hadn’t assumed that he would and Raúl had people stationed in every niche that they could find, and surveillance equipment where they couldn’t put people. He would do his damnedest to cover Luís’ back even when he was angry with Luís, and so Luís fully believed that, standing in the middle of the warehouse, he was as safe as possible. But nevertheless the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up.

*Convoy approaching,* hissed his earpiece. Luís tightened his coat around himself and looked slowly around the warehouse. *East doors.*

By the time he turned to face that direction, he could hear the rising grumble of the car engines. The noise died a little, then spiked as the doors opened and a line of black, elegantly retro cars entered the warehouse. There were three of them, identical, and once they were all inside, they shifted from one after the other to form a side-by-side line. The cars slowed to nearly a stop, then smoothly accelerated while swinging wide. And then they performed a dizzying series of interchanges and switches, drawing beautiful kaleidoscope patterns across the floor.

Luís didn’t even bother to try and track which car was which. He checked his watch, then studied the ceiling. Then he checked his watch again. He sighed and glanced into the bag sitting on the ground beside him. The cars kept spinning. He rolled his eyes.

Finally the cars rolled to a stop, again in a side-by-side line, mere meters from him. He looked up, rolled his left shoulder and then watched his reflection in the shiny, opaque-tinted windshields. Time stretched on.

After another minute, Luís cleared his throat. The sound echoed through the warehouse almost as loudly as the revving of the engines had. “If you’re motion-sick, it helps to stand up and put your head between your legs,” he said.

The back passenger door of the car on his left abruptly opened. Then the corresponding door on the car on the right opened, and then the driver’s door of the center car. Cristiano Ronaldo got out of the center car, lips pressed into a thin, determined line. He looked stable, but the other two men who got out were distinctly wobbly. The one on the left shook his head, blinked, and then reached back into his car to drag out a very shaky-looking but otherwise healthy Pep. Something in Luís unclenched.

Pep straightened up, looked blearily around and then stiffened as he saw Luís, all the dizziness immediately vanishing from his face. His eyes widened. Then he flung out his arms and lunged forward; his guard grabbed his arm and held him in place, but Pep hardly noticed. “You! Oh, of course, this is the perfect moment for you to play out your fantasies about—”

Luís showed his empty palms to the guards, then reached for the bag at his feet with exaggerated care. As Pep went on ranting, jerking at his guard and making the man rattle like a rag doll, Luís slowly tipped the bag so that its contents slid out into his hand. Then he held it up. “Pep?”

“—shows an utter lack of mature…er…” Pep blinked hard. “Wait. Is that—”

“A first edition of Tirant Io Blanch,” Luís said. He lowered the book back into the bag, which he then slung over his shoulder, suppressing a grunt; medieval book-binders seemed to think that their tomes had to be as weighty as the themes they expressed. “Also, I have tickets to the Coldplay concert next week, and I made a reservation for dinner before it at your favorite restaurant. Private room.”

For a few moments, Pep stared at him, open-mouthed. And so did the guards except for Cristiano, who expressed his complete confusion by putting his hands on his hips and glowering at Luís like it was Luís’ fault the man didn’t recognize an apology when he saw one. Then Pep scrunched up his eyes and shook his head. He put his free hand to his temple and started to rub the top of his head. “No. No, no, no, you can’t bribe your way out of this. That’s just reinforcing your adolescent behav—”

“It’s not a bribe. It’s a thank-you.” Luís paused and breathed in slowly. He was rather too aware of all of the high-tech equipment enabling a ridiculous number of people to watch this in excruciating detail. And commentate on it—that muttering in his ear wasn’t his professional instincts calling him an idiot, but Villa asking Raúl what the hell was going on and if they needed to go to plan C. Which meant Luís needed to hurry up because damn it, he was committed at this point and he had certainly faced worse dangers. He was doing this. “For…for putting up with my…problems with settling into a new lifestyle. I do appreciate how patient you’ve been, and how much I’ve been taking that for granted. I’m sorry.”

Cristiano suddenly turned his head, as if he didn’t quite get the concept of electronic communication letting him speak to others without them being next to him, and started to mutter about Luís stalling. Pep started to let his jaw drop again. Then he yanked it shut with a click and just stared at Luís.

“It’s not easy for me, but I could have tried harder and I haven’t been. But I do want this to work, Pep,” Luís went on. “I’m serious about it. I don’t have any plans to go back to my old career—I just don’t want to cut all my old ties. I have a good number that I still value and that I think are worth keeping, but as part of my new life. It absolutely doesn’t mean that I regret leaving or that I’m keeping any doors open or anything like that. That door’s shut. And if it really, honestly makes you uncomfortable…if you think keeping in touch with my old friends is that dangerous, I’m willing to discuss—”

“I never said that,” Pep blurted out. He blinked a few times, still smoothing his hand over his head. Then he coughed and moved his shoulders, and just generally looked guilty. “I would never force you to completely cut yourself off. I know how important—well, I don’t really know, but I can tell when something means something to you. I think. It’s just…”

“You don’t know for certain. Because I don’t talk to you. I know, and I’m sorry that it’s taken so much for me to see that. But I do recognize that I have a problem there and I’m willing to work on it, if you’re willing to still be patient.” Luís offered the man a rueful smile. “I think I’d understand if you weren’t, but—”

Pep jerked up his head, then shook it violently. “Oh, no. I am absolutely not giving up—I know I’ve said some harsh things, harsher than I really meant…because you can be so damn frustrating…but I am not letting you go that easily. I said I was here for you, Luís, and I am. And that includes fighting till you understand. I’m not leaving.”

“So you didn’t bring it?” Cristiano abruptly said.

Even the other guards looked at him as if they had no idea what he was talking about. Cristiano visibly wanted to throw a temper tantrum, but at the last moment he controlled himself and merely stuck out his lower lip as he pointed his gun at Luís. He kept his eyes locked on Luís as he waved his hand at Pep’s guard.

“All right, then we’re going. Take the professor back—”

“But he’s finally talking to me!” Pep protested. “We can’t go now! This is a major break-through and I need to pursue it!”

Blank stare, and then Cristiano rolled his eyes and turned away, starting to duck back into his car. “Get him back in the car,” Cristiano ordered.

Luís heard Raúl’s hiss in his ear and tensed up, ready to dive when the signal came. Then he hissed himself, jerking his hand down so that his gun could slide into it. He’d seen something flash over by Pep.

It was a gun, which was flying through the air away from the guard Pep had just viciously elbowed in the head. Pep’s irritated eyes met Luís’ for a split second. Then Pep finished his turn, whipping his coat off in the process, and flung his coat over the car and directly onto Cristiano as Cristiano was spinning towards him with gun out. Cristiano threw up his arms, but couldn’t keep the coat from completely enveloping him. Meanwhile Pep had dodged around the car door and come straight at Luís, who instinctively spread his arms.

As Pep’s legs clamped around his waist, Luís locked one arm around the other man and did his damnedest not to stagger against Pep’s weight. He yanked his head to one side, spotted the other guard and shot him. More shots cracked overhead as the snipers did their best to pin down the rest of the guards who were trying to roll out of the cars. Luís got off one more shot, then gave up on trying to keep his gun-arm straight and Pep from sliding off. He dropped his gun, grabbed Pep with both hands and backed up as quickly as he could.

“Luís, I love you,” Pep said firmly, hands tightly fisted in Luís’ hair. Then he bent down and gave Luís the sort of kiss that would have instantly led to shredding clothing.

Well, any other time. Pep pulled his head back and gave Luís a puzzled look, and Luís had to admit he was slightly more embarrassed about this than about laying his soul bare before all of his old colleagues and his…well, his nemesis. “Pep, it’s not you. It’s just that we’re in the middle of a firefight, and while I’m truly not trying to evade you again, I really do think that we should drop this for now and take it up later. I swear that I’ll listen. And talk. But after I’m sure that we’re not going to die. Now, I need to put you down, and we need to run. All right?”

“Oh! Oh, God, of course.” Pep scrambled down Luís, which to be honest was worse for Luís’ concentration than the kiss, and then grabbed Luís’ arm as they sprinted for the SUV speeding into the warehouse. “It’s just I thought positive reinforcement!”

“What?” Luís shouted back. He took a quick peek over his shoulder and was relieved to see that Raúl seemed to have Mourinho’s men pinned down by their cars. But then a stray bullet chipped the floor barely a meter from Pep and Luís yanked Pep towards him so hard that Pep went off his feet.

The SUV wasn’t that far at that point, so Luís grabbed Pep’s waist again and half-carried the man the rest of the way. Fernando flung open the back door and then launched himself out with a submachine gun, spraying bullets while Luís and Pep scrambled into the backseat. Somehow Pep’s hand ended up halfway down Luís’ trousers, and then Pep’s other hand took a death grip on Luís’ knee.

“Positive reinforcement,” Pep gasped, cheeks flushed, eyes brilliant. The car bounced him into Luís’ lap and he made no effort to get off. “Because I’m not heartless, I know it’s hard and I want you to see that working through it anyway is a good thing. And because damn it, I am much better for you than that damn Zidane, even if he doesn’t get kidnapped all the time and knows where you are without you telling him, and—”

“Pep, for the last time, I don’t think about him that way. I love y—” And then Luís was shoved onto his back by a very enthusiastic Catalan archaeologist who was apparently hell-bent on excavating the nether regions of his mouth. And groin.

Something bumped Luís’ side. He jerked his arm, felt a constriction and twisted hard, and belatedly remembered the book as the bag strap slipped off his arm. Pep stopped ripping at Luís’ shirt long enough to look over at it. He blinked, blushed and looked with melting eyes at Luís. “I knew that bastard Mourinho was wrong. You do know me.”

“So you actually talked about us to him?” Luís said.

Pep stopped looking adoring and started looking adorably chagrined. “I’m sorry. I know it was inappropriate of me, but he—he started saying things about you, which were all wrong, and I was trying to defend you and somehow I just…talked. And he tried to convince me that you were awful, and I can’t say that I wasn’t…tempted to believe him, but I trust you. But I really am sorry about breaching your confid—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, he’s evil and you were his hostage and under a lot of stress. It’s fine, Pep.” Luís managed to lever himself up on one arm. He glanced out the window and was vaguely surprised to discover that they were out of the warehouse. “It just means that he’s going to send me a lot of annoying messages later, but I can live with that so long as you’re all right. And you are, aren’t you? He didn’t hurt you?”

“Listen, if you wait five fucking minutes, I’ll pull into a garage and you can check body parts then, okay?” Villa said from the driver’s seat. “I just cleaned the car so don’t mess it up. Don’t—hey! Are you listening?”

No, Pep wasn’t. He was busy proving to Luís how all right he was, and as far as Luís was concerned, Villa could just put up with it. Certain things were more important than footing the dry-cleaning bill.

Although Luís did have time for one more coherent thought before Pep’s hands got under his shirt: where on earth was Mourinho? It wasn’t like him to let things get so badly under control.

* * *

“Well, that was easier than I thought,” Cesc said, peering through his binoculars. “For an evil villain, this Mourinho guy is really into negotiations.”

Somewhere behind him, Robin stopped pretending he and Ballack weren’t playing make-up gropy-gropy to harrumph. “Have you forgotten that the son of a bitch sent a whole private army just to take over our dig?”

“No, of course not. I’m just saying, the man goes through all that trouble to kidnap Pep and you, and tick off all these people, and then one guy rings his doorbell and now they’re chatting on his doorstep.” Cesc clicked to a higher magnification and focused on the glasses in the men’s hands. He raised his eyebrows. “Drinking sparkling water with lemon.”

“It’s not just a guy, it’s Roberto Baggio,” Silva said. He was supposed to be covering the street, but when Cesc looked over, Silva didn’t even have his binoculars up. Instead the man had his phone out and was holding it like…like he was playing Bejeweled. Judging by the color of the little reflected dots on his shiny sunglasses, he totally was. “He’s so awesome that even Mourinho has to negotiate.”

“He’s got a wooden duck. All I’m saying,” Cesc muttered.

Ballack managed to adjust his sniper rifle without taking his left hand off Robin’s ass. He squinted through the sight. “It’s for hunting. It’s a decoy. It distracts you while he kills you.”

After a moment, Cesc edged closer to Silva. It was a small balcony and Ballack had long ape arms and a couple centimeters probably wasn’t going to make a difference, but it still made Cesc feel better. “So when does Baggio get around to killing Mourinho so we can all go home?”

“Dunno, whenever he feels like it.” Silva eliminated half of his jewels with a well-placed ruby, then looked up to check on the proceedings below. Then he pulled off his shades and looked at Cesc, not even embarrassed about the Bejeweled. “You’re all bloodthirsty all of a sudden. What happened to freaking out?”

“It got boring, and it wasn’t helping,” Cesc muttered, putting his chin down on his folded arms. He stayed that way for a couple seconds, then gave up and pulled out his own phone, only to see that he’d missed a couple texts. One of them looked like it was from Xavi. He frowned and scrolled down to it.

“So…is this just a temporary thing, or are you pretty much over the whole world of assassins deal?” Silva asked.

Cesc blinked hard at his phone. Then, barely remembering that they were supposed to be all sneaky and covert-ops, he did a quiet double fist-pump of victory. “Robin! Robin! Stop messing around, they got Pep back!”

Robin jerked his head out of Ballack’s neck, his face awkwardly seguing from irritated to pleased. “Really? He’s all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s…he’s gone home early with Figo, says Xavi,” Cesc said. Then he winced and looked hard at Ballack. “Are you still gonna go after Figo? Because Xavi doesn’t think it’d be a good idea to disturb them right now.”

“I’m—” Ballack’s voice hitched funny, about as close as he probably would come to stuttering. He twisted around and arched his eyebrows at Robin, who looked back with big, slightly irritated eyes. “Yes?”

“I want to go home,” Robin said. “I have to make up my presentation, and you haven’t been home in a week. Next week I’m going to be too busy, so can’t you put off whatever the fuck testosterone-fueled posturing you have to do till then?”

For a good long moment Ballack actually looked a bit frustrated. Then he sighed. He reached out and moved his rifle so it was no longer pointing at the porch below, and then ran his hand back through his hair with a resigned expression on his face. “Is that what you really want?”

“Yes,” Robin answered sharply. While sliding right up into Ballack’s side, and Cesc didn’t even need to see where Robin’s hands went to get what was going on.

Ballack’s brows jumped again. Then he shrugged and glanced down between them. “I can reschedule.”

“Great,” Robin said, grinning. He started to get up off his knees, then paused to glower at Cesc. “And if you make one crack about this anywhere, at any time, I’m going to let him shoot you.”

“Robin!” Cesc hissed. Where the hell had that come from? Weren’t they friends?

“I’m still pissed off about you letting your mini hitman drug me up,” Robin explained in a biting tone. He smacked the dust off his ass, which Ballack obviously appreciated, and then stalked back into the room.

Ballack followed at a leisurely pace, dividing his attention between disassembling his rifle and Robin’s ass. He was even humming to himself by the time he disappeared through the door. Smug asshole.

“Height discriminator,” Silva sniffed. “If that’s what he’s like all the time, I say that next time you let Ballack fuck him up. Anyway, so do you wanna grab a beer and some tapas after this? You’re cute, and you’re kind of fun after you stop freaking out, and I’ve got some time before I have to fly back to Manchester.”

“What?” Cesc shook his head. He glanced at the porch, absently noted that Mourinho was gone, and then shook his head again. Then he nearly gave himself whiplash trying to figure out whether he was going to bug-eye at Silva or at Baggio sipping his water with lemon all alone. He pointed at the porch, pointed at a blinking Silva and then threw up his hands in disgust. “Oh, my God. Okay. Look, is Mourinho going to interrupt again? Because I’m tired of freaking out but I’m also so not a fan of having to rearrange my life around some weirdo psychopath. And also, I’m with Robin on not wanting to turn into a hitman. I like being a student.”

“Who said you had to turn into a hitman? If I wanted to date somebody exactly like me, I…wouldn’t ask you out,” Silva said, in the sort of exaggeratedly slow tone one would use with an excited idiot. “Work’s work, and you’re not a job, and I like keeping those things separate. Which includes not getting dragged into Mourinho’s weird vendettas with Figo when I’m on break. That answer your question?”

It did. And it kind of didn’t, in that Silva was still a contract killer asking Cesc out on a date when Cesc had just spent nearly two days finding out how crappy a relationship with that type of person could be.

On the other hand, that crappiness didn’t seem to have much to do with the other person being a hitman so much as scheduling and miscommunication issues. Which kinda came up no matter what job you had, and anyway, at this point Cesc couldn’t really say he was totally innocent. Even if all the drugging had been for a good cause: Robin never would’ve made up with Ballack if he hadn’t taken a couple breaks from being mad and had time to think. Probably. Not that Cesc really knew if Robin had been thinking much when he’d been unconscious.

“If you don’t want to, no big deal,” Silva added after a moment. “I’m not going to kill you just for turning me down.”

“Yeah, well, Robin might be mad at me now, but he’s not going to let you get me first. And you haven’t even met Xavi, which reminds me.” Cesc quickly texted Xavi back that he and Robin were okay, and that yeah, they could get dinner and talk about why Cesc was kinda irritated with his Barcelona friends. Then he put his phone away. “So you’re sure Mourinho’s not going to just pop up out of nowhere again?”

“Well, he’s not going to do it around me or around Figo. Baggio would’ve made sure of that,” Silva said. He cocked his head. “Is that a yes?”

“Just as long as you take me somewhere decent,” Cesc said. “I’m picky about my tapas.”

Silva started to grin again. “Hey, after all the shit we’ve been through, I’m not about to skimp on dinner. Give me a sec to break this down—” he nodded at his rifle “—and then we can go.”

“You want me to do your game for you while you’re doing that?” Cesc asked. When Silva looked blank, Cesc pointed at the man’s phone.

After a moment, Silva laughed and handed over the phone. Then he started to unscrew the sight from his rifle. “I knew you were a fan. You were way too snippy about it to not be in denial.”

“I’m not a fan. I’m…recovering. Well, I was.” Cesc immediately set off a cascade that cleared out three rows. He nodded to himself; it didn’t matter how long it’d been, the old skills always came back. “But fuck it, if Pep can get rescued every other week by Figo and Robin can keep a German merc’s arsenal in his closet, I can totally play Bejeweled during seminar. It’s not like it’s been any good this month anyway.”

“Whatever you say,” Silva snorted. He shut his rifle case, slung the strap over his shoulder and then stood up to stick his tongue in Cesc’s mouth.

A moment later he backed off to the background accompaniment of electronic chiming. Silva beamed sunnily, jerked his chin down at the scarily high points score showing on his phone, and then pushed them through the doorway.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Well…yeah, Cesc wasn’t going to argue with that. He saved the current game and caught up with Silva just in time to shove the man’s phone into his back jeans pocket. And maybe cop a feel—hey, he was only human. And things were definitely looking up.

* * *

“Because it’s humiliating!” Deco protested. He slouched in his chair and moodily sucked at the cocktail of restoratives the doctor had handed to him. “Not only did he get that damn professor back and keep the goddamn Halcón, but he even had the fucking balls to send us back ‘as a professional courtesy.’ Courtesy my—”

“Be happy, Deco,” Mourinho said sternly. Then he stood and looked out through the glass doors behind Deco. He smiled without softening his face. “Look at that. How could you not be happy at such a joyous reunion?”

Deco didn’t bother looking. The high-pitched yips and meows had been torturing his eardrums for nearly five minutes now. “If they don’t get over Veloso being back, I’m going out there and shooting him. And then those damn furballs will see how happy they are to have him back.”

Mourinho clucked at him, but didn’t make any move to prevent Deco from going out there. The man was putting an awful lot of trust into Deco’s ability to sacrifice his wants and needs for the team, and when Deco had just spent two days taking the brunt of the collapse of Mourinho’s plan. Come to think of it, Deco had to wonder why he didn’t shoot Mourinho. It wasn’t as if there’d be any negative repercussions: they were short of people thanks to Figo and of the ones they still had, Veloso was buried under small furry animals, Marcelo was out on a supply run and Cristiano was still traumatized over the damage his hair had taken in the firefight.

“Because you’re smart enough to realize that such faulty planning would never have come from me,” Mourinho said, pulling out his phone.

Deco snorted. “So what, I just imagined the last two days?”

“No, of course not. And you served a valuable purpose in ensuring that Figo would have no interest in interfering with our true plans, though I know that it was difficult for you.” That sympathetic look Mourinho gave Deco over the phone, all deep and pensive, briefly twinged at Deco. Then Mourinho looked back down at his phone, pursing his lips. “But now that Figo is well and truly out of the picture, we can proceed…to ensuring that I am elected head of the rating association. He can keep his Halcón—it won’t matter when I create a new award with new criteria that he’ll never be able to meet. And so, from now on, everything will be in our control.”

For a moment Deco stared at him. Mourinho hadn’t been boasting, or even paying much attention to Deco as he’d spoken. Which made it extremely likely that he actually meant what he had just said. “I’m retiring,” Deco said.

“I know.” Mourinho was still checking his texts. He started to turn around and walk out of the room. “I’ll see you next week when you decide to come back.”

“I’m not going to!” Deco snapped at the man’s back. “I’m out! I’m not doing this, I’m not giving up my life for your stupid schemes! I’m going to retire just like Figo!”

“And remember to bring your glasses,” Mourinho called back. “You look more trustworthy with them, and we’ll need that when we start polling for votes.”

Deco gestured rudely at the son of a bitch’s back. Then he sighed and flopped back in his chair. He closed his eyes and rubbed his hand over them, then put his head back against the chair and groaned. It just never ended.