“What do you mean, ‘They know we’re here’?” Danny gasped.

“Don and his men, they know we’re looking for Paul and Gina,” Greg sighed. “I told you not to take a car from those psychos, man, fuck.”

“This is serious,” Danny said, sitting up and watching the last of the flames die down as they ran out of fuel, leaving a charred mess. “We’re in some deep shit. They’re trying to kill us, aren’t they?”

“It’s what they’re good at,” Greg shrugged, dusting himself off a bit. “Guess we head back to the city and find a car that isn’t rigged by heavies to explode.”

“No, fuck that, I’m going home, I don’t wanna die, I’m too young,” Danny babbled, “there’s places I haven’t been, things I haven’t done, women I haven’t—”

“Look,” Greg began firmly. “If we’re being tracked, that means Paul and Gina must be in really serious trouble. We’re not gonna abandon them, we’re their only hope, right?”

“Fen and Brad?”

“Oh yeah, they’re real competent. And besides, by now they’re probably only halfway to London, so get a grip and let’s catch a ride back to Amsterdam so we can get a car and get back to that airstrip.”

“What, to be shot, right?” he gasped. His terrified eyes reflected the glowing embers of what used to be their car, and Greg was sure the poor man was going to hyperventilate. Obviously Greg’s previous explanations hadn’t hit home the way the incineration of a vehicle could.

“Danny,” Greg growled, then took a deep breath. “If we don’t try to find Gina and Paul, they could die. I won’t lie to you, it’s a very distinct possibility. Do you want that on your head for the rest of your life, that you could have stopped your friends from being murdered in cold-blooded revenge?”

Danny paused and frowned at the dirt beneath him for a moment before shaking his head carefully.

“Right. They haven’t managed to kill any of us yet, so the odds are sort of in our favor anyway. Now get up, we’ve got to get back to town.” Danny and Greg both scrambled to their feet and shuffled back the way they’d come, away from the wreck. “Besides, the adrenaline rush when you’re fighting evil can be better than any drug I’ve ever had,” Greg smiled, eliciting a small whimper from Danny.

Fenny splashed some water on her face, hoping to quell the flushed appearance that would promptly announce to anyone who bothered to look what she and her husband had been doing together in the impossibly small bathroom. When she looked up into the mirror she saw Brad crammed in the corner by the toilet, pants half done and gazing at her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, turning to face him.

“I’m just amazed at how you can make a disgusting airplane bathroom erotic,” he mumbled, pulling her into a soft kiss.

“I think it has to do with the fact that I’m in my underwear,” she pointed out as she pulled away, “and we probably just added to the disgusting factor. Hand me my shirt?”

“It wasn’t disgusting,” he protested as he fished her shirt from a corner.

“You tell that to the fourteen-year-old boy who’s probably outside waiting for us to finish,” Fenny smiled, pulling on her jeans.

“Think he heard us?” Brad giggled.

“Oh, probably,” he smiled. “Do we go back out together or separately?”

“Well if they heard us we might as well go out together so they don’t think we were both flying solo, as it were.”

She regarded him carefully. “It worries me that you think like that,” she sighed, reaching up to fix his hair a bit before carefully opening the door and peering out. The coast was clear, so she dragged Brad by the hand out to the small corridor to head back to their seats. A middle-aged woman opened the door to the toilet next to them, and Fenny dropped her eyes with a polite smile.

“It wasn’t disgusting,” Brad declared proudly. Fenny hit him in the stomach and pulled him back to where Ritza was waiting for them, him giggling all the way.

“Have fun?” Ritza asked.

“Yes,” Brad nodded, and Fenny rolled her eyes as she collapsed back into her seat, Brad following her lead.

“You missed a button, Fenny,” Ritza pointed out, “or was Brad a bit anxious to get to your unmentionables?”

Fenny looked down and discovered that one of her more important buttons had indeed popped off. She blushed, thankful for the t-shirt she wore underneath, otherwise the entire cabin would have had a perfect view of said unmentionables. Brad giggled at her, tried to pull together the shirt as it gaped at her chest, and kissed her on the cheek. “Sorry,” he whispered in her ear.

“You’ll be punished when I get you alone,” she murmured back.

“For Christ’s sake,” Ritza grumbled.

“Excuse me,” a new voice perked, and Fenny and Brad quickly glanced up to see a steward smiling down at them. “These are for you,” he said, and handed them each a small plastic object. “Congratulations on joining the club. And if I find your missing button in the bathroom, I’ll let you know.” He winked at them as they looked at the small set of wings they’d been given, complete with sticky tack on the back to attach them to their shirts as any eager six-year-old, for whom such trinkets were usually reserved, would.

“Look around for my sense of pride while you’re at it, would you?” Fenny grumbled, a hint of a smile playing on her face.

“Thanks again,” Greg perked as he and Danny both slid out of the car. “You’re a literal life saver, may your preferred manner of deity bless you with fantastic karma, have a fantastic life, I love you.”

The woman who’d picked them up giggled at Greg and with a final wave she pulled away from the hotel. A homely American tourist, she was the third car that had stopped for them and the only one that either had trusted enough to go with, as she was neither a) Dutch, English or French, b) devious looking or c) the least bit frightening. And she had delivered them outside a small yet generally pleasant hotel without much discussion between any of them, which had left Danny a bit confused. “What now, then?”

“We check in, clean ourselves up, and go get a car to get back to that airstrip, see what we can find,” Greg declared, marching into the hotel. Danny followed closely behind, clutching his Lonely Planet book and trying to offer Greg useful phrases as he tried to communicate with the receptionist whose mastery of English was tragic at best. After a long, infuriating debate about rooms, credit cards, Euros, and, for reasons no one was sure of, gophers, Greg and Danny were each handed a key and they scurried up to their rooms.

Paul headed down the street at a brisk pace, overwhelmed by adrenaline and worry, and he could feel himself rapidly nearing a panic. How the hell was he supposed to be able to find Gina without so much as a hint at where she’d been taken? The last time he’d hunted down Don, at least they had a driver’s license to go by. And the time after that, he’d been the one needing to be tracked down.

God, he wished he had been sober when the others had explained how they’d found him and Fenny, but that had been their customary “we survived and pissed off the bad guys” party, and besides, Greg was drunk and Brad was entirely too preoccupied with the condition of Fenny’s molars, so there was no telling how accurate their tale had actually been. Still, he wracked his brain for anything that might have managed to sink in.

As he wandered the streets hoping for maybe a taxi — regardless of the fact if he found one he wouldn’t know where to send it, even if he did know the language — a flapping of fabric in the dim light from the scattered streetlights and moon caught his attention. “Someone’s forgotten to take in the wash,” Paul murmured to himself, peering at the darkened house. “How foolish, someone could come along and just snatch something.”

Stealthily he made his way to the back of the home where a line was set up, and, conveniently enough, a row of shirts had been left to dry. Glancing down at his own dirty and bloodied shirt, he decided that “borrowing” a shirt would certainly help him rescue Gina enough to justify the criminal intent. He perused the shirts, looking for something appropriate.

“Creme Tangerine?” Paul muttered upon seeing the phrase embroidered on a woman’s t-shirt. “What is this, some sort of demented Beatle freak?” He spotted a simple green sweater that was probably a size or two too big, but it would have to do. He pulled it on over his own damaged t-shirt more for warmth than style, and scurried away, humming to himself. “Of all the times to have a song stuck in your head,” he groused. “But you’ll have to have them all pulled out, after the savoy truffle.”

Paul paused halfway across the street. “Savoy? Didn’t someone say something about¶mdash;is there even a Savoy Hotel in Amsterdam?” It was really the only lead he had so far, maybe the gods were finally smiling on him after all. A car came whizzing around the corner, and with a squeal of brakes and blinding headlights, it swerved and barely missed Paul, who was still standing in the center of the street, pondering his options. “For god’s sake, man, what’s the speed limit around here, are you fucking insane, you’ll kill people driving around like—”

A man stepped out of the taxi yelling at Paul just as fiercely, only it sounded like a duck choking on a kangaroo rat.

“Oh hey,” Paul perked, “you’re a cab driver! Can you take me to the Savoy? Savoy Hotel?”

The driver, noting he now had a client instead of a near fatal collision, slipped back into the car, and once Paul was secured in the rear, they headed back into the city.

Greg’s hands shook as he buttoned up his clean shirt. He cursed himself for letting himself get worried. He fancied himself a full scale action hero by this time, he should have guessed that they’d been expected to show up, and what was one more car explosion, he’d seen enough of those to consider them commonplace. But the honest truth was he was petrified, scared absolutely shitless. Gina and Paul, who had the most talent at saving other people, were now held captive themselves, he was stuck trying to save them with a relative stranger who’d worked with Gina and slept with Fenny and who was rapidly nearing a nervous breakdown, and Fenny and Brad were coming over with a woman who had tried to kill them on several occasions who was now supposedly fighting for the side of good, and the bad guys could quite possibly be following him. He couldn’t think of a worse situation that didn’t involve rednecks, orangutans or Winona Ryder hopped up on Oxycodin. And he was going back into it, voluntarily.

As he was questioning his own sanity, there was a knock at the door. “Who is it?” he called, not in the mood to deal with maids.

“Greg? It’s me, Amy. You left your wallet in my car, I thought you might want it back.”

He cast an accusatory glance at his slacks that he’d tossed in the corner of the room, wondering how his wallet had managed to work its way out of his pocket, and wandered to the door. “Thanks again, Amy, don’t know what we’d have done if it wasn’t for you.”

“No problem,” she perked as she handed him his wallet. “Go ahead and check, everything’s still there.”

“No, I trust you,” he smiled, slipping the wallet into the back pocket of his jeans.

“Thanks,” she grinned. “Can I ask you a favor?”

“Sure, anything, I owe you big time.”

“Can I have like a glass of water or something, it’s just I’ve got this headache and I picked up some pills in the gift shop downstairs…”

“Sure, um, I think there’s some sodas and stuff in the fridge, lemme look.”

“Yeah, a Coke would be great, thanks.”

Greg wandered to the mini fridge and shuffled around a moment as Amy wandered in and sat on his bed, watching. “A Coke for the lady and a beer for myself…gotta settle the old nerves,” Greg smiled, popping open his beer as Amy ripped open the packet of pills she pulled from her purse.

A knock sounded at the door, and Greg put his drink on the night stand and went to answer. It was someone speaking in Dutch, asking for someone or something, he wasn’t sure. It took Greg a few minutes to convince the stranger that he couldn’t help, and he wandered off down the hall in a huff.

“Some people, huh?” Amy smiled.

“Yeah, really,” Greg nodded, picking up his beer again.

“Well, I should be going, it sounded like you had big plans for the night, so thanks for the drink,” she said, holding up her can. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” Greg smiled, and they both downed the rest of their drinks.

“Good luck with whatever it is you’re doing, and maybe I’ll see you around. It’s nice seeing someone else who doesn’t understand these weird Netherlandish creeps.”

“You have no idea,” Greg grimaced. The room made an unexpected spin and dove sickeningly around him. “Whoa. Never known just one beer to do that to me,” he giggled.

“Something wrong?” Amy asked as Greg’s eyes glazed over.

The world went black and white and Greg was certain his head was going to explode as he closed his eyes against the pain, which seemed to radiate from the back of his head to the pit of his stomach. “Yeah, I think…” His eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed in a heap on the floor, his beer can rolling towards the door.

“Guys, get in here,” Amy commanded, and two men bustled into the room, including the one Greg had argued with at the door. They hoisted Greg off the floor and dragged him out of the room, Amy following carefully. Just as she was about to close the door and leave, she stepped back inside to retrieve the beer can. “Can’t forget you,” she smirked. “It’s not my style to leave trace evidence of drugs at the so called ‘scene of the crime’.” With a self-satisfied grin, she flipped off the light and slipped into the hall.

Ritza, Brad, and Fenny were grateful to be getting off the plane, even if it was only to get on another one in a few minutes for the significantly shorter trip from London to Amsterdam. “Hope your flight home is as fun as your flight here,” the same cheeky steward chimed as Brad and Fenny passed. Ritza and Brad snickered as Fenny blushed.

“Aw, come on Fen, don’t be embarrassed,” Brad cooed as they made their way to the terminal. “Not like we’ll see him or anyone else he and Ritz may have told ever again.”

“You make a valid point,” Fenny smiled. “It was worth it anyway, apart from the stench and the bruise from the faucet.”

“Sorry,” Brad breathed, leaning in for a short kiss.

Ritza cleared her throat subtly. “Shouldn’t we be heading for our next flight? It’ll be boarding any minute.”

“I told Greg I’d call,” Fenny declared, pulling away from Brad to dig her phone out of her purse. “We have to find out where to meet him, see if he’s found out anything yet.”

“Yeah, right, go ahead,” Brad grinned as the three of them sat in the nearest seats.

Fenny leaned back and went through her phone book until “Proops cell” came up, and she hit the call button. It rang four, five, six times, and Brad and Ritza both peered at her expectantly. She shrugged, figuring he was probably rifling through his bag trying to find the phone or something. It clicked on and she smiled. “Hey Greg, any luck yet?”

“Guess again, Fenny.”

The cold, crisp voice nearly made her drop the phone, and she felt all of the blood rush from her face into her heart, which pounded like mad.

“Where’s Greg,” she demanded, amazed at the conviction her voice held.

“He’s…occupied,” Don declared. “You didn’t think we knew that you would be just dying to try to save your little friends?”

Fenny tried desperately to think of something clever to say, something that would convey her hatred for him. Instead, she looked helplessly at Brad, who was obviously beginning to get worried.

“You and I have unfinished business to attend to,” Don hissed gleefully into the phone and it clicked off.

Fenny slowly lowered her own phone to her lap, not bothering to turn it off. “What’s wrong?” Brad asked, fearing the worst.

“Don’s got Greg,” she said softly. “And he knows we’re here too. He doesn’t sound pleased.”

“Shit,” Brad grumbled.

“Any bright ideas yet?” Fenny asked, looking at Ritza but suddenly too drained and frightened to make any side comment.

“We get to Amsterdam,” Ritza nodded, picking up her bag and heading for the terminal where they would catch their next flight.

Gina flipped through the channels offered by the television; Dutch news and a couple American sitcoms. Her left arm still throbbed from Don’s manhandling as he had tossed her into the room and locked her in; he’d been gone for well over an hour and she could only hope that he’d gone to bed for the night or found something else to do with his time other than pester her.

She was wrong. The door flew open and Don sauntered in looking disconcertingly pleased with himself. “You’re looking rather smug,” Gina noted, “finally learned to tie your shoes or something?”

“Let’s just say three down, two to go,” Don jeered.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gina asked.

“This mean anything to you?” He held up a cell phone that she didn’t immediately recognize, and scrolled through the phone book it contained. Gina’s eyes bulged a bit as she watched the list: Fen cell, Gina cell, Home, Jen cell. It was Greg’s phone.

“Where did you get it?” she asked as casually as she could.

“Took it from him when we drugged him,” Don shrugged.

Gina dropped her eyes to the bedspread beneath her. Things were not looking good. What had he done to Greg? Would he be alright? What had Don meant by “two to go”? He wouldn’t go all the way to the States to find Brad and Fen, would he? Or had they found out about her and Paul and headed to find them? “Fuck,” Gina hissed as she looked up at Don again. “Look, what do you want from us? If it’s the money you’re upset about, I’m sure between us we could get you the cash. What good is putting us up in hotels and knocking us out?”

Don’s smug smile dropped and he marched over to her, knocking her back onto the bed. “You don’t understand. You took from us the money, merchandise, and time. This is about payback, darling. Not to mention the emotional strain.”

“What emotion, you heartless bastard,” Gina spat as she struggled to an upright position. Don was quick and leapt up on the bed to straddle her around the waist, grabbing her hands as she tried to punch him. She struggled beneath him, but was unable to kick or hit.

“You and your little American friend, both suck prick teases,” he cooed, leaning his face down to hers.

“Get off me, you dickhead,” Gina screamed and wrenched violently to the side, nearly throwing Don off the bed. He slapped her across the face and leaned a hand on her throat.

“You don’t seem to understand,” he growled. “I’ve got your husband and your friend, and I could send the word to have them both killed if you don’t cooperate with me. And once your other little friends get to town, I can finish them off myself. Then you’d have no one to rescue you, and you’d be mine anyway. So really, it’s in everyone’s best interest if you just relaxed and went with it. We’ve been watching you, I know that you and your husband haven’t been getting along, staying in separate hotels. I’m sure you could use a man’s touch. Admit it, go on. You want it, don’t you.”

“Show me a real man and I’ll consider it,” Gina managed through her crushed windpipe.

Don leapt up off the bed and Gina went into a hacking cough. He went to the door and called for his men. Two burly heavies appeared instantaneously. “Be ready at my command to call Claudia, have her kill the man. And you, at my word, finish off the other one. How are we doing tracking the others?”

“Working on it, sir.”

“Good. Go, and wait for me.”

Gina froze on the bed. He meant what he was saying, he could have the people she loved killed if she didn’t give in to his stomach churning demands. “Fuck,” she murmured to herself again, trying not to show the panic that was quickly gripping her.

Paul slipped out of the restroom in the hotel bar looking as tidy as he could get, although the soap had made the wound in his head sting enough to make his eyes water. He sauntered up to the front desk, trying hard not to limp. The cab ride of about half an hour had allowed the adrenaline to leave his system, letting the bruises and what he was certain must have been a couple cracked ribs and a ruptured spleen catch up with him, and he now had a steady, warm ache through his whole body to keep him occupied.

“Ja?” the young man at the front desk chirped as Paul leaned an elbow on it.

“I’m wondering if you’ve got a Donald…Donald, um…McIver maybe, booked in a room here?”

Luckily the man seemed to understand English well enough and clicked away on his computer. “Yes sir, room 412. Shall I ring the room for you?”

“Huh? Oh, no, no they don’t know I’m here, it’s something of a surprise. 412, right? Fourth floor?”

“Ja,” the receptionist nodded.

“Yeah, thanks,” Paul grumbled, heading for the elevator. The big question now was, how to get into room 412 without getting killed. He mentally skimmed through all of the spy movies he’d seen, and all of them involved surreal gizmos that would allow one to pick a lock, crawl through ventilation ducts or scale exterior walls with ease. Without such gadgets, Paul’s only option, really, was a bit of balcony climbing. His body picked up on the idea and immediately protested.

Ignoring his aches, he stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor, as the fourth would leave him open to being noticed by guarding heavies.

The doors opened with a cheerful ding and Paul slipped out and began carefully checking even-numbered doors to find one that was unlocked. After a few unsuccessful attempts, Paul was beginning to lose hope, until a door opened a few doors down and a maid slipped out. As much as he tended to be annoyed by maids, it seemed their intrusions were always coming in handy. He leapt to the room and held the door open for the maid and her cart. She muttered a few incomprehensible words and Paul nodded to her. “Thanks for cleaning my room,” he perked.

“Oh, ja, your room, ja, welcome,” she nodded in broken English before heading for the room across the hall.

Paul looked up to see it was room 318. Up one floor and over three would put him on Gina’s balcony. Assuming he didn’t die in the process. Locking the door behind him, he headed straight for the balcony, leaned back on the railing and looked up. He only had a thin strip of metal to stand on and an array of metal bars to grab hold of above, but it looked like it could be done. With a glance to the side he saw that each balcony was less than a meter from the next. Easier than he’d hoped. He secured the gun in the back of his pants and wiped his nervously sweating hands on his thighs.

With the help of a chair, he balanced himself on the railing and grabbed for the balcony above. A quick swing of his leg and he wedged his foot between two bars, and he lay across the edge of the balcony, left leg dangling in the air, as he investigated the activities of the seemingly empty room and tried to forget he was four stories high. Pulling himself up with the help from the bars, he was soon upright and managed to crawl over the rail onto the balcony, once more secure. Hard part over.

The light was on in the next room, so he moved carefully, climbing back out on the ledge, straddling the two balconies for a moment and then climbing into the next. Peering into the room he saw two children enthralled in a television program involving puppets of some sort, and figured it was safe to continue, darting to the other side of the balcony unnoticed. Another empty room, another balcony safely traversed, and Paul was on the ledge outside Don’s room. Bracing himself for the worst, Paul peered into the room through the almost-closed curtains.

Gina had her hands bound together and tied to the bed, red-faced from arguing, no doubt, clad in only her underwear, eyes closed and face terrified as Don perched on her thighs, pulling off his own shirt.

“See, I’ll prove it, there’s nothing out here,” a voice said firmly, and Paul jumped. “Just some guy out on his own balcony enjoying the air.”

“Nice night,” Paul, making a valiant attempt to be inconspicuous, nodded to the father and young girl on the balcony he’d left a few moments earlier.

“It was probably just a bird or something, you’ve watched too much television,” the father continued as they went back into their room.

“Shit,” Paul hissed, reaching for his gun and turning back to the window. Don was on top of her, trying to kiss her as Gina struggled under him. Before he could even think, Paul wrenched open the balcony door and pointed the gun at him. “Get the fuck off her you impotent bastard,” he screeched.

Don jumped up and reached for something.

“Paul!” Gina yelped.

Fearing the worst and consumed by rage, Paul pulled the trigger. The blast startled Paul, sending him backwards a few steps, and Don fell to the floor, clutching what seemed to be his groin.

“You say one word and I’ll blow your fucking head off,” Paul growled as he stood over Don, who was writhing in pain. He pulled back his hands, covered in blood, and both he and Paul could see the wound on the upper part of his inner thigh. “Damn, just a couple inches off, sights must be wrong,” Paul hissed. “I won’t miss next time.”

Don whimpered incoherent threats and insults as Paul quickly untied Gina, who scampered to retrieve her clothes. “God, thank you Paul, I don’t know what could have happened, he said he’d have you killed if I didn’t, I’m sorry—”

“Are you alright, did the shithead do anything to you?” Paul demanded, needing to be assured.

“Few bruises,” she murmured as she pulled on her pants, “mental images that’ll stick with me forever and the need for intense psychotherapy, but no, nothing happened.”

“You can put your shoes on in the elevator down, help me tie him up so we can get the fuck outta here.” Gina nodded and pulled the rope from the headboard and they worked in silence hogtying Don, who was obviously struggling for consciousness.

“Don’t you even think it’s over yet…won’t give up so…fuck you.” With that, Don passed out in a puddle of blood.

“Let’s go, before one of his fuckwit heavies gets lonely,” Paul hissed, dragging Gina to her feet and quietly down the hall to the elevator.

“How’d you get away? Where’d the gun come from? Are you okay?” Gina got one boot on and the elevator doors opened. “What do we do now?”

“It’s Claudia’s gun, I dropped her lighter when she gave me a cigarette and pulled it out of her bag and put it in my sock when I was supposed to be searching for the lighter. Then she decided she wanted to get naked and I pulled it on her and escaped.”

Gina gaped at him as she finished with her other boot. “Have I told you what a genius you are?”

“No, actually you haven’t, but you have told me what an idiot I am quite frequently.”

“Can we just get out of here, please?” she pleaded as the door opened and she stormed, visibly shaken and trembling, into the lobby. “They’ve got Greg, and Fen and Brad are on their way.”

“Fuck,” Paul snapped. He’d hoped their ordeal had been over, but by the looks of things, it was just beginning.