His blue eyes, glimmering in the fluorescent light of the hallway, searched for her, unblinking.  She was trying to speak, but could barely move her lips.  It happened too fast… he never even considered going after him and leaving Heather behind.  Castor rested his hand on her arm and felt the sudden rush of warmth, sticky and thick on his palm., and at first he couldn’t bring himself to look at her wound.  He hadn’t seen much gore in his life… that was for the other guys.  I just wanted to get on with business… why the **** did he try to shoot me?  But now he was cradling her, taking off his jacket and wrapping it around her arm, pretending not to notice the blood seeping and spreading through the dark violet fabric.      

     “Baby…”, he whispered as he lifted her head off the cold concrete floor, his numb clammy hands clutching her hair reflexively, “I gotcha… I’m here.”.  He could say no more.  He was trying to kill me, clumsy ****er, he realized, biting his lip in anguish and barely hearing the footsteps behind him coming up the stairs, slowly and lightly.

     “Cas?”.

     He turned slowly to see Pollux, standing meekly behind him.  Without another word, they scooped her up and carried her back to the hotel room, then pushed the piano in front of the door in makeshift defense.  After tucking her into bed and hastily wrapping the jacket around her arm with neckties, the younger brother calmly reached into his pocket for his cell while Castor sat by her side, holding her hand and stroking her face.  He was helpless, sick and mortified… it was this last emotion that knocked the wind out of him.  He wasn’t fast enough, he was careless.  If he had been thinking clearly, he would have never let her come this far.  If he hadn’t fallen for her, she would have been just another agent.  And she would’ve been shot anyway… by someone else.  Those last words sat bitterly in the back of his throat, and he swallowed hard to push them away, forcing himself to listen to Pollux’s voice in the next room.  Some of the words… helicopter… escape… penthouse…were elusive in his fevered mind, so he clung to Heather’s hand and kissed it tenderly, stupidly.

In the soft moonlight, her eyes fluttered open for a moment and tried to focus on him, and the sight of her revival stirred his soul.  “Sssshhh… no, don’t say anything.”.  Tenderly, he kissed her lips, but she barely noticed.

     “What happened…?”.

     Castor said nothing, but trailed his lips across her forehead and cheek, silently begging to bring her back to the way she was, before hell broke loose.  “We’re getting out of here … real soon… real soon, baby.”.

     Heather tried to look down at her arm, haphazardly bundled in expensive cloth, but the searing rush of pain held her back.  “It hurts…”.  She pleaded silently with her eyes, not for relief, but for an answer.  It was a plea that Castor understood… it was like her to never complain but always seek to understand… it was the magnet that brought them together.  He softly kissed her parted lips, and she gripped his hand slightly in response, forcing him to shut his eyes and pray his tears went unnoticed.

     By the time Pollux walked back into the bedroom he knew what had to be done.  “Where are they?”, Castor whispered hoarsely.  “Why aren’t they coming up here?”.  The moonlight reflected off his brother’s smudged glasses, and he averted his eyes.  “They think they’re bad asses with their guns… so what, they’re hiding downstairs now?”.

     “They hauled ‘em away, Cas… left the hotel about 10 minutes ago.  Heard it from one of the boys…”.  The last word was pushed from his thin lips with a sneer as he peeked out one of the windows nervously.

     “Bull****.  They know we’re up here.  It’s just a matter of time.”, Castor murmured, mostly to himself.  Heather’s hand, once clutching his tightly, was growing weaker, and in response he moved closer to her, trying to lose himself in her face and the spirited nature that was still there, after all this time.

     “I called the chopper for us… they think they can get just outside the window…”.

     “How the **** are we supposed to get her in a damn helicopter?”, Castor hissed, feeling the sudden rage building inside him as he slowly realized what his brother had in mind.  Pollux knew his brother’s temper all too well.  He swallowed a little and responded, his voice a little softer.

     “We can’t take her.  It just ain’t gonna work… we have to leave her behind.”.  A flurry of shadows swung at him, and he instinctively flinched in the face of his brother’s anger, clutching the cell phone to his chest.

     “Give it to me… they’re landing on the roof instead.”

     “No… no, they can’t do that…”, Pollux whined, his reedy voice wheezing in fear.  “They can’t… there’s no place to land… and even if they could… we just can’t take her, Cas… she would slow us down.  We’d never make it out of here.”.

     The flood of emotions came to the surface as he realized his brother was right… if he tried to carry her, she might be injured further.  He looked down at her, and realized for the first time that her true strength was in her spirit, not her body.  Giving her up was not an option for him.  He wasn’t going to let them have her back… they hurt her… it was their fault, not his.  He wanted to protect her, to make things right again, and they weren’t going to hold him at bay.

     “Give me the phone.  Give me the ****ing phone!!  We are not leaving her behind… we’re coming up with another plan… now!”.  Grabbing Pollux in a headlock and snatching the phone from his fingers, he started to dial, his fingers trembling with feverish denial.  As he raised the phone to his ear, a muffled smashing sound – wood splintering and cracking under the force of human strength, he realized – came from the main room.  The younger brother peeked through the doorway.

     “****… they’re breaking in!  They’re breaking in!!”.

Pulling a pistol from his back holster and handing it to his brother, Castor stood at the other side of the doorway.  From their vantage point, they couldn’t see – or be seen – but they could hear the piano being smashed, blow by blow, as pieces of the door were ripped apart and pushed aside.  The light streaming outside was suddenly eclipsed by a single bright beam, and the whole suite was engulfed by the sound of a copter’s blades churning… it was hovering several feet from the main window.  Separated by nothing but a pane of glass, Castor and Pollux peered at it with sickening acknowledgement.

     “We’re gonna have to ****ing jump for the ladder!  It can’t get close enough!”, Castor screamed above the noise.  Pollux simply nodded his head, his attention focused on the main room and the pieces of light that broke in from the hallway outside… they were tearing the door down, and were very close to getting inside.  Without warning, he skittered into the main room, shooting at the main window frantically.  A few cracks appeared in the thick glass, and Castor realized what had to be done if they wanted to escape.  Glancing back at Heather, angst and guilt swelling in his throat, he followed his brother just as he was grabbing the coffee table and hurling it at the fractured pane.  Now he could see the agents on the other side of the door – two of them, with a small pick axe – and leveled his gun at their heads.  They quickly ducked as he fired at them, and he only got a couple of shots in before he heard the glass disintegrate behind him. 

     Now the helicopter, the sound of whirring blades ringing in his ears in unbridled urgency, muffled his thoughts and fears.  He turned to see Pollux climbing onto the small brick ledge and leaping for the ladder – he made it, miraculously, and as he followed his lead he thought he felt wisps of hot wind brush past his face.  Bullet holes were appearing everywhere – on the walls, on the window frame.  The primal need for survival springing into his limbs pushed him to climb onto the ledge… the copter didn’t look like it was that far away.  Without thinking, he holstered his gun and jumped for it, desperately grabbing on… and as he was climbing upwards he glanced over his shoulder.  He could see through the bedroom window… she was still there, her eyes closed, her body still.

     “Cas!  C’mon!  We have to go… “, his brother’s voice cried from above, distant and hollow.

     He closed his eyes and continued to climb, and he felt his sweaty hands touch the cold steel frame of the helicopter as it glided upwards.  His muscles, rubbery and weak from the aftermath of adrenaline rush, somehow managed to pull him inside, and the door slammed behind him.  For what seemed like hours, he laid on the floor, the side of his face pressed on it.  He didn’t want to sit down, and he sure as hell didn’t want to look outside.  Somehow he found his voice, and he spoke up tentatively.

     “Bro…”

     Pollux said nothing, but bent down and pulled him into his seat.

     “Bro…”, he said again, with growing strength, “I owe you one.  Damn.  You saved me back there.”

     The younger brother smiled sheepishly.  “We gotta stick together.  You’ve had my back more than once.”.  His voice, thick with creepy reflection, grew silent for a moment, then piped up again.  “I think I’ve got an idea, if you want to hear it.  Do you really want your sweet Sinclaire back, Cas?”.

     He said nothing, but looked out the window onto the deep, purple-black night sky.

     “Yes.  But I want that ****er to die too… the one that shot her.  I want his head on a ****ing platter.  Whatever you have in mind, I’m down with it.”.  His hands were slowly growing cold and numb, and he twitched them reflexively.  He was ready to do anything to get her back.