Chapter 14
Chapter 13
Tony doesn’t flinch when the massive front door is splintered open under the ruthless blow of a ram, the sounds of heavy-booted feet running down the hallway toward them. Doesn’t bat an eye when four heavily armed guards decked out in full tactical gear burst into the kitchen, immediately taking up positions on all four sides of him, their weapons pointed unerringly at his carefully relaxed form. All he does is slowly, surreptitiously shift his feet so they are planted more firmly on the ground, giving him the necessary leverage to stand up quickly. Because Pepper is sitting right there across from him, and if these guys start shooting, he needs to make sure she doesn’t get hurt in the crossfire. And if he has to tackle her stubborn ass to the ground to keep her safe, so be it.
“Tony, Tony, Tony,” a familiar smarmy voice calls out from the doorstep and Justin Hammer waltzes into the kitchen with an exaggeratedly confident swagger of someone sure to have the upper hand. “Did ya miss me?”
Tony watches him prance peacock-like across the kitchen, eyeing the lovingly chaotic clutter of its countertops. Watches him grab an apple from the fruit vase, tossing it up into the air with the insolent nonchalance of one who owns the place, before taking a bite and dropping the apple back into the vase.
“Like hemorrhoids,” he returns, meeting Hammer’s outraged look with a toothy smile. “In fact,” he scrunches up his forehead as if trying to recall something, “I believe the picture my proctologist showed me after my last visit looked exactly like you.”
Hammer’s face sours into a twisted curve of a sneer. He flicks a gaze at something behind and above Tony, gives a barely perceptible nod. And Tony barely has time to brace himself as the butt of a rifle slams into his back in retaliation, shoving him chest first into the edge of the table and jostling his injured shoulder.
He grunts, biting the inside of his cheek against the near-blinding surge of pain. Blinks away the tiny dots of blackness that encroach upon his vision to focus on the amber stain that creeps along the white tablecloth, spreading outwards from where some of the tea that Pepper had set out for him earlier sloshed over the rim of the mug when the table got jolted.
He breathes, in and out. Forces himself up and away from the edge of the table to relax gingerly into the back of the chair. Gives a what he hopes is a reassuring smile to Pepper who’s shooting daggers at the thug behind them, looking ready to strangle the guy with her bare hands. He catches her eye, gives a barely perceptible shake of his head.
Don’t interfere, he pleads silently with her. Don’t call attention to yourself.
“Always the jokester, aren’t you, Tony.”
He turns his head to find Hammer leaning casually against the counter, watching him with a triumphant little smirk. The urge to wipe that smirk off the man’s thin chapsticked lips becomes almost overwhelming.
“Hemorrhoids are no joke, Hammer.” Tony reaches for the mug, a contemptuous sneer hiding a wince of pain at the simple movement. Slowly, he brings it up to his lips, takes a pointedly long sip. “You, on the other hand…”
Hammer straightens out, eyes flashing with fury behind his expensive glasses. Opens his mouth, no doubt to instruct his men to mete out more punishment for Tony’s insolence.
“Senator Hammer!” Pepper’s voice cuts through the building tension, sharp and commanding. She’s sitting ramrod straight, her chin raised as she stares at the weaselly man before her with all the force of her disapproving glare. “As big of an… honor as it is for me to welcome a U.S. Senator in my humble home, I would very much like to know what you are doing here, Sir. Why have your men felt the need to scatter my cattle, break down my door, invade my kitchen, and assault my friend?”
Hammer’s gaze narrows on her, mistrustful and assessing. “Your friend, Miss…”
“Potts.”
“Potts.” He nods his acknowledgment, pursing his lips in thought as if trying to remember if he’s heard the name before, if it raises any flags with him. And Tony releases a small breath of relief when, after a moment of concentration, Hammer shrugs dismissively and continues in what he must think is an intimidating tone of voice, “As I was saying, Miss Potts, your friend here is a very dangerous man and a wanted criminal. In fact…” Hammer slips on a smarmy, conspiratorial smile. “…you should be grateful my men and I came when we did. There’s no telling what Stark could have done to you otherwise.”
“Is that so?” Pepper shoots a lightning quick look Tony’s way, a corner of her lips twitching upwards in subtle mockery. “And what exactly is he wanted for, may I ask?”
“Kidnapping the President of the United States.”
The straight-faced delivery nearly makes Tony choke on his tea. Beside him Pepper scoffs with poorly hidden scorn.
“Stark and the President were seen leaving the Walter Reed together just before all contact with the President was lost,” Hammer insists, looking affronted by the blatant disbelief on Pepper’s face. “My men were able to track them down to a small family diner near Warrenton, but Stark went crazy, started shooting up the place, endangering both the President and the civilians present, and my men were forced to let them go.”
Tony whistles, incredulous. “You and your men have a real future in fictional writing, Justin, anyone tell you that?”
Hammer ignores him, takes a step closer. Places both hands on the table, leaning into Pepper’s space. “My men are here, Miss Potts,” he says, going for ingratiatingly confidential and landing squarely on condescendingly creepy, “to retrieve the President and to protect you from this very, very dangerous man. Believe me, Stark will stop at nothing to get his way – civilians, friends, he would cut through them all. If you’d seen the carnage he left behind in Warrenton, you’d be thanking us now for getting here as quickly as we did.”
Pepper has never tolerated condescension.
“I appreciate your concern, Senator,” she spits out, ice-cold, “but I assure you that I am perfectly safe here without your little goon squad. I know Tony very well and I trust him. He’s been visiting here with me for the past few days, and I have not seen or heard anything about any kidnapping of the United States President. I’m afraid whoever gave you that information was simply mistaken. And since you can see for yourself that the President isn’t here, I would really appreciate it if you would take your men and vacate these premises.”
The smile Hammer gives her in response is painfully wide and plastic. “Very noble of you to defend your friend, Miss Potts,” he says, his voice deceptively honeyed. “Foolish but noble.” He shakes his head, his expression molding into a moue of affected disappointment. “I happen to know, however, that my source is correct and I have good reason to suspect that Stark did not come here alone. My men have orders to search this place inside out until they are satisfied otherwise.” He glances at the men in question, eyes gleaming behind his horn-rimmed glasses. “If you happen to know where the President is…” Lazily, nonchalantly, he returns his gaze back to Pepper. Bares his teeth. “…it would be in your best interest to tell me now before my men start tossing this place up. It would be truly… unfortunate, if you were implicated in treason alongside your friend.”
Pepper’s eyes flash, lips thinning into a single, pale-pink line. “You have no right to threaten me in my own home, Senator,” she seethes. “And until you present me with a warrant or show any other legal grounds for conducting the search, you have no right to do that either. I suggest you leave!” She stands, the chair scraping lightly across the floor. Faces Hammer head-on, paying fuck-all attention to the four armed men in the room, whose weapons instantly swivel toward her.
Tony stands, too, then. Pushes to his feet as fast as he’s able to, letting his chair clatter to the floor, the movement and the noise serving their purpose, bringing the thugs’ attention back toward him. He allows himself the tiniest breath of relief at that. It’s not enough, nowhere near enough, but it’s a start. And he will bring it to the finish.
“I would be very careful if I were you, Hammer,” he warns, one hand braced on the tabletop in a manner he hopes is inconspicuous enough not to let it appear that he’s using the table as a literal crutch. “Bad enough you broke into a private property on what was clearly some pretty shitty intel. But if you and your knuckleheads get caught on tape assaulting a civilian, you’ll be out of your cushy little Washington job faster than I can say ‘I told you so’. Won’t be a case of ‘he said, she said’ like last time.”
“Tape?” The eyes behind the glasses narrow in confusion and worry. “What tape?”
Wordlessly Tony nods toward a large vintage clock hanging on the back wall. It’s a perfectly innocuous, run-of-the-mill kitchen clock – the easily recognizable silhouette of the Eiffel Tower against a grainy sepia background and loosely scrawled words in black washed out cursive proclaiming one’s love for Paris. Tony had bought it for Pepper years ago with a promise to one day take her to the City of Lights for real. The closest he had come since was a farmhouse a couple miles out from Paris, Missouri – a tiny blip of a town in the middle of nowhere. The clock serves as a constant reminder of this, yet another one of his failures.
It also serves as an added layer of security for the farm, because Tony is a paranoid bastard. And the small round dot of a camera about an inch below the clock hand nut is easy enough to see when one knows where to look. Of course, that’s the camera that feeds into the panic room where Rhodes is hiding at this very moment with the rest of the Foundation residents, but Hammer really really doesn’t need to know that. All he needs to know is that right now, this very moment he’s being recorded in all of his weasely glory.
“Smile!”
There’s a moment of tense silence as Hammer considers the new information, his squirrely little eyes darting back and forth from the hidden camera to Tony’s face, sharp, calculating.
“What do you propose?” Hammer asks finally, and that right there is the opening Tony’s been waiting for.
“We leave,” he states calmly, forcing himself not to look Pepper’s way, praying she won’t do anything stupid like try and stop him. “You and I and your four little toy soldiers will take this little party back to that bird of yours and fly out of here. And when we’re far enough away, I’ll tell you where the President is. You get what you came here for and you keep your worthless reputation intact.” He winks, clicking his tongue. “Win-win.”
“And the tape?”
Tony shrugs, a careful lift of his good shoulder. “The tape’s insurance, Senator,” he replies, unflappable. “You’ve spent enough time in Washington by now to know how that works.”
For a long moment Hammer just watches him, his thin lips caught in a twist of venomed anger. And Tony waits, breath bated, meeting his intense scrutiny with a poker face of nonchalance.
Hammer cheek twitches, something dark and predatory flickering in his expression. And, oh, Tony doesn’t like this look at all. “You know,” he drawls out finally, lips pulling into a smile that sets Tony’s teeth on edge, “the team that caught up to you in Waterton, one of the men there swears he managed to clip you before you got away.” He raises an expectant eyebrow at the man behind Tony, who moves closer at the unvoiced order. “Left shoulder I believe it was?”
Tony twists, tries to. Tries to turn his body to let his good shoulder take on the brunt of the attack he knows is coming.
He isn’t fast enough, his body still too sluggish, too slow to respond to his mind’s commands.
The hit lands, fast, brutal, and Tony finds himself on his knees with his forehead pressed against the floor, gasping for air into the light-gray tiles that flicker in and out of his strangely wavering vision. A gloved hand grips his good shoulder, another lands on the back of his head, fingers curling in his hair then tightening and pulling, yanking him back up.
Hammer’s face swims into view, black-dotted and fuzzy around the edges. His lips are moving, that smarmy smile back in place, but Tony can’t hear a thing past a dull roar in his ears.
He bites down on his lip, forcing himself to focus, forcing his body to listen, forcing the pain down, down, down, out of the way.
“…renegotiate, huh, Stark? How about you tell me now where the President is and we all wait here, while I have my men verify your information, and in the meantime your pretty friend here destroys the tape and gets to live?”
His breathing hitches at the mention of Pepper, the sudden realization that he can’t hear her, hasn’t heard a word or a shout from her, driving a spike of fear through his heart. It’s enough to clear the last of the pain-wrought haze from his mind.
He twists as much as he can in the ruthless grip, turning his head to where he’s last seen his friend, and feels his stomach drop at the sight of Pepper writhing helplessly against another one of Hammer’s men, a gloved hand over her mouth, a uniformed arm locked around her neck. There’s a telltale redness spreading across the delicate bone of her left cheek – the beginning mark of a bruise. It makes Tony’s vision go red for a completely different reason.
“Let her go, Justin,” he grits out, voice strained with barely contained fury. “Let her go now.”
Hammer scoffs, confident in his advantage. “Or what?”
Tony looks up, right into the mocking, grinning face above him. “Or I will ram your nose straight into that useless pea brain of yours,” he promises, dangerously, deadly calm.
“You don’t seriously believe you’re in any position to make threats, do you,” he huffs, incredulous.
Tony bares his teeth at him, tilts his head toward the uniformed arm gripping his shoulder. “You don’t seriously believe your little lapdog here can hold me back, do you,” he returns, unruffled.
Hammer’s smile strains a bit, his bravado slipping. “You’re bluffing,” he insists, though the conviction behind the words is flagging. “You won’t even get off the floor before my men swiss-cheese you.”
“You’re willing to bet your life on that?” Tony counters, pointedly ignoring the muffled protests coming from Pepper’s direction.
And barely bites back a growl of frustration as a new voice, calm and commanding, breaks in on the deadly tension.
“I rather think you should let them both go now, Senator.”