May Day - Part Eleven

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Doyle looked after him, temper rising, as Bodie strode back to the car, slammed the door, and started the engine. Fine. If he was going to act like some love-sick teenager then Bodie'd better be prepared to be treated like one. He'd tried to apologise once, and…

Bodie revved the engine hard, and despite the fact that he really didn't want to get back in the car with the sulky bastard, Doyle wanted to leave him alone to his own devices even less.

"The pictures are the least of our worries if Cowley knows, you know," he said as he got in, slamming his own door as viciously as he could. "You don't think he's got enough on his plate without worrying about the newspapers finding out about us?"

Bodie was silent, eyes focussed coldly and single-mindedly on the road ahead. He drove quickly, dodging other vehicles with skill and precision, but a muscle twitched by his mouth as Doyle spoke, and Doyle pressed the attack.

"Be great that would, wouldn't it? Front page news – " he traced a headline in the air with both hands, "CI5 agents caught in tawdry sex scandal – Geraldine Mather: 'I knew the day would come'!"

"Oh, what's it got to do with her?"

Well, at least he was talking again. "She'd love it, you know she would! All her dreams come true… And we'd both be for the chop – she'd have her pound of flesh in the end!"

"Oh, come on Doyle," Bodie took his eyes from the road to shoot him a look of pure disdain, "I'm no Russian agent, Cowley's not exactly in the Cabinet – and you're no leggy beauty."

"I don't suppose I am!" he shot back, though it had been well-aimed, that one. He'd thought Bodie at least… "But it's not what really happened they'll care about, is it? It's how much dirt they can fling in the first place!"

"Cowley deserves to know!"

"Why?" he demanded automatically, even as he dreaded the answer. He knew Bodie's loyalty was as strong as his own – but if it came to a choice between Doyle and their boss? For a moment, just a moment, when Bodie gave him those keys, he'd been more sure of Bodie's answer than anything else in the world, but now…

"Because he's a good man, you've said so yourself!"

"Yeah but…"

"We're here."

Fifteen minutes they'd made that in, not bad for a Friday afternoon – and there was Martell, suave as ever, sitting over by the roses.

"Given up the river business?" he asked nastily as they approached the man. He never had liked him – made his skin crawl. And he never had found out how he and Bodie knew each other in the first place. But they needed another shooter, something smaller than Bodie's collection of rifles had provided, and Martell was the quickest route they had.

"Certain aspects of it," Martell said calmly, with a small smile. "Not," he ran his eyes up and down Doyle's body, as he did every time they met, and Doyle wanted to hit him, "Everything."