Happy Holidays, calime33!
Title: Palm and Pleasure
Author: The Santa Cows aka elistaire
Written for: calime33
Characters/Pairings: Amanda, Methos, Joe, Duncan, a few OCs; the barest hint of DM/A/M in the future-tense
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,670
Author's Notes: A very big thank you to my beta, who shall be revealed later, but who knows who she is, for excellent service in a most expedited manner. All mistakes remain those of the author.
The title is taken from a quote by Pliny about oysters being "the palm and pleasure of the table".
Summary: After another Amanda idea goes pear-shaped, she and Methos end up taking a very cold swim at the bottom of Seacouver Bay.
Palm and Pleasure
"Yuh?"
"Joe? Is that you?"
Joe instantly came awake. "Amanda?" he asked, switching the phone from one ear to the other. The clock by his bedside told him it was almost two in the morning. The ringing had woken him out of a sound sleep-and one where he'd been just about to go deep sea diving with a very pretty red-haired woman. He'd like to be able to get back and finish that dream.
"Thank goodness," Amanda said, her voice very low and breathy. Unaccountable noises were crowding in around her words and Joe had to strain to hear her. Where the hell was she calling from, the bottom of a well?
"Amanda, it's two o'clock," he said.
"I know that. Adam and I are out by the docks. We need you to come and pick us up."
Joe sat up in bed. "What the hell are you two doing out at the docks at this hour?"
"It's a really long story, and we're going to run out of battery," Amanda whispered. "And I've got to go now."
"Amanda?" Joe asked and then heaved a long sigh. He rubbed at his face. She'd disconnected.
It took Joe a while to get himself out of bed and ready to go. He wasn't the young operative that he used to be. Everything creaked and groaned when he got out of bed these days, and it seemed to take at least ten minutes before his spine stopped complaining.
The air was bitterly cold when Joe started the car and he had to rub his hands together to keep them warm. The steering wheel sapped every bit of warmth he generated. He turned up the heat and kept it up. He had an idea that Amanda and Adam would be glad to get into a toasty-warm car after whatever misadventure had brought them out to the docks.
The streets were mostly empty as Joe drove through the dark night. The area was hardly illuminated at all and Joe pulled up to the chain-link fence and idled the car. What now? It was a capacious place. The freighters and trucks that came and went at the docks, as well as the warehouses, were not small potatoes. Joe could spend the rest of the night driving around and not find Amanda and Methos.
He glanced at his cell phone, but it remained uncommunicative.
Suddenly the door opened and Amanda slid onto the seat. She pulled the door closed and gave Joe the most miserable, chilled, wet look he'd ever seen on her.
"Go for a swim?" he asked.
"Not funny, Joseph," she warned as she rubbed her arms. She was dripping all over his upholstery, but the look on her face stopped him from mentioning it.
"What happened to Adam?" he asked.
"He hasn't revived yet," she said and put her fingers in front of the heating vents. "Is this as high as it goes?"
"You left him while he was dead?" Joe sputtered.
"He swallowed a lot of water," she said. "All that hardware he has hidden weighed him down." She shrugged. "That and they'd tied him up. Hard to swim like that."
Joe grabbed his night vision binoculars and started scanning the area. "Can we get to him?"
"He's a bit much for either of us to drag," Amanda said. She fiddled with the heating controls. "Especially soaking wet."
"Amanda, please."
"Okay, okay." She waved a hand at him, and he noticed that her lips were still blue. She had to be truly cold, probably nearly hypothermic. Most likely she'd have been dead, permanently, if she hadn't been an immortal. Swimming in Seacouver Bay in December wasn't a very good concept of a fun time. "I'll go and get him." She searched the darkness intently. "I think the goons are gone, anyway."
Joe closed his eyes and counted to three. He would have counted to ten, but if there were any goons about, he didn't want his eyes closed that long.
"Don't go anywhere," Amanda said, and slipped out the door and into the darkness.
Joe spent the better part of fifteen minutes blinking at the darkness through his binoculars and finding nothing. On the good side, there were no heavies to deal with. On the bad, Amanda and Methos were nowhere to be seen.
When she returned she had a barely conscious Methos propped against her. Considering how slight she was, she was amazingly strong to be able to support his weight. He looked like he was made of pallid candle wax, and his dark, sopping wet coat seemed to drag him down and swallow him up. Joe reached and opened the back door, and Amanda nearly toppled Methos into the backseat. He managed to crawl the rest of the way in. He gave Joe the barest of nods.
Amanda came around and got into the passenger seat. "Drive, please," she said. "I think we'd both like a hot shower."
Joe put the car in drive. "Where to?"
"Your place, if you don't mind."
A little over an hour later, sometime between 3 am and 4, Joe poured each of his impromptu houseguests a strong cup of black coffee, and then leaned back against his kitchen counter to hear the strange tale. "Was it another immortal?" he asked.
Methos snorted. "We could have only hoped it would have been a challenge."
"Oh, Joe," Amanda said, "you have your mind on too many Watcher worries."
"If one of you doesn't tell me what happened, I'll withhold the wool blankets," Joe warned, only partially kidding. He could see that the two of them were still occasionally shivering. Hot showers only went so far to warm a person once they'd gone polar-bear dipping.
Amanda and Methos exchanged a look. "Okay," Amanda said slowly. "Seeing as you rescued us...."
"I'll tell it," Methos said, and Joe would have bet money it was so he could edit the story in the telling.
"We'll tell it together," Amanda said sweetly.
*****
12 hours earlier, MacLeod's Loft
"So what did you get Duncan for his birthday tomorrow?" Amanda asked.
"Get?" Methos asked blankly.
"You know. A gift."
"I know what a gift is. I don't know why I'd have gotten MacLeod anything."
Amanda made a face. "Because giving him a gift usually involves getting something in return."
Methos stopped lounging and leaned forward, interested. "What are you suggesting?"
"Oh, I don't know." Amanda ran her fingers over the table edge. "Once I gave him a silk bathrobe, with a lovely silk sash. Another time, a bottle of chocolate body paint. Wine, of course. What else is there?"
Methos smirked. "What else indeed. Those are appropriate gifts from you, Amanda."
"And you think they wouldn't be appreciated from you?" she countered.
There was a long silent pause.
Methos narrowed his eyes.
Amanda tilted her head and tapped one finger against her lips. "You know, years ago, eons really, we had the most marvelous evening eating oysters." She looked sideways at Methos. "On the half shell, of course."
"Of course."
"Duncan really appreciates...an oyster."
"What are you saying, Amanda?"
She flopped down into the chair across from Methos and leaned forward excitedly. "I know a guy who knows a guy, down at the docks. I heard they had some oysters just come in. Kumamotos, of course. Coromandels. A few others from here and there. European Flats to die for."
"Actual Belons?" Methos asked.
"That's what I was told."
Methos considered. "Okay, I'll drive."
Amanda smiled brightly. "Lovely."
They drove down to the dock area and parked. Amanda squinted into the dying afternoon sunlight at the different control shacks.
"I'm not exactly sure which one," she said, "I'll know him when I see him."
They wandered around until Amanda spotted him, and she waved. The sun had already dipped below the horizon and the sky was growing dim.
"Patsy," Amanda said, "I'm glad I caught up with you. You said you might know about some oysters."
Patsy was a roughened man with eyes that crinkled. He obviously spent a lot of time in the open air. He gave Methos a once over. "Maybe."
"He's with me." Amanda waved a hand at Methos. "Now, about those oysters."
"Patsy! Hey Patsy!" Another man hurried over. His accent was pure Southie, Boston. He looked like he'd been built out of cement and steel, and forged in the land of graffiti.
"Yeah, Beansy?"
"The boss wanted me to tell you to double the order for next week." He gave Amanda a look-over, with an extra-long pause at certain points of her anatomy. "Do I know you, lady?"
"I don't think so. I don't know you." Amanda turned away from him and looked back at Patsy. "Oysters?" she asked.
"Yeah, I think maybe I do know you," Beansy cut back in.
"Well, good for you," Amanda said icily. "I still don't know you."
"You're that dame the Boss has been looking for."
"No, I'm not. Really, now." Amanda frowned at him.
"Yeah, you're that dame. The one that the Boss hired to break into the vault, and you took off with the jewels."
"You're confused," Amanda said.
"We'll let the boss sort it out." Beansy moved to take hold of Amanda by the wrists, and she rolled away. "Get her!" the man ordered.
The next moment was chaos. Amada ducked and ran. Methos ducked and ran, but with his gun in his hand. The two men pursued with their guns out and waving around while they yelled for assistance from their numerous compatriots scattered all over the dock area. Methos was summarily bashed on the head by a sneakily hidden adversary in a shadowy crevice between the stacked containers, and he went down. Amanda was cornered by a phalanx of workers and grabbed.
"You wanted these guys?" asked the head guy. "You got 'em." He turned over Amanda and the unconscious Methos to Patsy and Beansy.
"Thanks, boys," Beansy said. "Now, lady. You hold tight and we'll see who knows who." He pulled a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket and snapped one ring on Amanda's wrist and the other to a hasp on the wall. With Patsy's help, he located some rope and he tied Methos' hands and then dropped him into a corner where he went down with a thud.
"Honestly," Amanda said, projecting wide-eyed innocence. "It's all a mistake. I don't know anything about a boss, and nothing about a vault." Her bottom lip quivered, and she blinked back frightened tears.
"Yeah, sure." Beansy pulled his cell phone out and punched some keys. "Direct to voicemail," he told Patsy. "Sometimes the boss turns the phone off if he's in the movie theater."
"You better text him," Patsy advised.
"Good idea." Beansy went to work trying to punch the tiny little buttons with his mutton-fist hands. "Okay, sent. He'll call soon as he sees it." He turned his glare on Amanda. "Till then, we'll just wait."
Amanda dropped the useless frightened girl act and put a sunny smile on her face. "And then we'll just get this all sorted out."
Twenty minutes later Amanda noticed that Methos was awake. He kept his head drooped to look like he was still unconscious, but they made eye contact. She gave him a signal.
Two minutes later, and Beansy's cell phone rang.
Methos rolled toward his feet, clipped Beansy in the back of the legs, and Beansy went down with a thud. Amanda, who had sprung the lock on her handcuff about five minutes after it had been snapped on, kicked Patsy in a tender area. She helped Methos to his feet, and they dashed for the door, shouts ringing behind them.
"The water," Methos said, and they headed for the Bay.
Amanda could see that he was right. The other ways out of the dock area were too open, and still too populated by the occasional worker-bee. She heard a gun go off behind, far too close for comfort, and felt Methos sag. "Come on," she urged, and pulled at Methos' arm. The water was ten feet away. Another gun shot went off, and she could have sworn she felt it zip through the ends of her hair. She yanked harder on Methos' arm, he wasn't quite running full speed anymore, and they both tumbled into the sordid, squalid water.
Amanda gasped, nearly losing her breath, as she plunged into the freezing water. She still had one hand around Methos' arm, and he wasn't moving. At least he wouldn't be cold, she thought, as she let his weight pull them both down. He wouldn't revive until she pulled him out, though, which meant she was on her own until then, and responsible for both of them.
She couldn't be sure, but she thought Patsy and Beansy were shooting into the water from above her. The darkness of the water obscured her from seeing anything, and the sounds reaching her ears were too muffled to tell her much.
Amanda let them reach the bottom, where she swam at her own pace, not using up her air, until she was positive they were far enough away to not be noticed. It was difficult to drag Methos back to the surface, but she didn't want to risk letting him go for fear she'd never locate him again, and when she finally broke the surface, her lungs were burning in agony.
She took a moment to orient herself. There must have been a bit of a current as they were now quite far down along the dock area. She could faintly hear, and not quite see, the commotion that she had left behind. She hoped Beansy got the Riot Act from his boss.
Her fingers were going numb and she was starting to shiver as she considered her options, especially now that the first adrenaline rush was wearing off. It would be too dangerous to climb up onto land yet. They'd be searching the entire dock area, and probably most or all of it was under video surveillance. She could continue to swim down the shoreline, but discarded the idea. She didn't want to be hunted and lost. At least here she had her bearings. The car would be a lost cause; they'd be watching and waiting to see if either of them showed up to claim it.
No, the best place to be was waiting quietly in the water. At least for now.
*****
"And that's when I called you," Amanda explained. "I waited hours, and found Methos' cell phone--"
"It's waterproof," Methos added.
"-and pulled him out, and untied him, and you came and got us. I thought those two goons would never go home."
"That's quite a story," Joe said. He wasn't that shocked. These sorts of things always seemed to happen where Amanda was concerned.
"Isn't it?" Amanda said.
"And we never did get the oysters," Methos added wearily.
Joe thought that over. "I've got some connections in the restaurant business. I can't promise anything fancy, but I think I could get you some oysters."
"That's nice," Amanda said, but she was mostly-asleep on one end of Joe's couch, and Methos was completely asleep on the other.
Joe covered them each with a blanket, and turned out the light.
****
Duncan opened the door to find Joe on his doorstep with a burlap bag. "Hi, Joe. To what do I owe this honor?"
"You know darn well. Happy Birthday." Joe thrust out the sack. "Here, take it."
Duncan took the sack. It was heavy, and he pulled the top open to look inside. "Oysters?" he asked, surprised. "Joe--"
"They're from Amanda and Methos," Joe said. "They'll call you later." Joe turned to go, and called out over his shoulder. "And don't go getting any funny ideas about me just because I delivered them."
Duncan couldn't think of a thing to say.
*the end*
Author: The Santa Cows aka elistaire
Written for: calime33
Characters/Pairings: Amanda, Methos, Joe, Duncan, a few OCs; the barest hint of DM/A/M in the future-tense
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,670
Author's Notes: A very big thank you to my beta, who shall be revealed later, but who knows who she is, for excellent service in a most expedited manner. All mistakes remain those of the author.
The title is taken from a quote by Pliny about oysters being "the palm and pleasure of the table".
Summary: After another Amanda idea goes pear-shaped, she and Methos end up taking a very cold swim at the bottom of Seacouver Bay.
Palm and Pleasure
"Yuh?"
"Joe? Is that you?"
Joe instantly came awake. "Amanda?" he asked, switching the phone from one ear to the other. The clock by his bedside told him it was almost two in the morning. The ringing had woken him out of a sound sleep-and one where he'd been just about to go deep sea diving with a very pretty red-haired woman. He'd like to be able to get back and finish that dream.
"Thank goodness," Amanda said, her voice very low and breathy. Unaccountable noises were crowding in around her words and Joe had to strain to hear her. Where the hell was she calling from, the bottom of a well?
"Amanda, it's two o'clock," he said.
"I know that. Adam and I are out by the docks. We need you to come and pick us up."
Joe sat up in bed. "What the hell are you two doing out at the docks at this hour?"
"It's a really long story, and we're going to run out of battery," Amanda whispered. "And I've got to go now."
"Amanda?" Joe asked and then heaved a long sigh. He rubbed at his face. She'd disconnected.
It took Joe a while to get himself out of bed and ready to go. He wasn't the young operative that he used to be. Everything creaked and groaned when he got out of bed these days, and it seemed to take at least ten minutes before his spine stopped complaining.
The air was bitterly cold when Joe started the car and he had to rub his hands together to keep them warm. The steering wheel sapped every bit of warmth he generated. He turned up the heat and kept it up. He had an idea that Amanda and Adam would be glad to get into a toasty-warm car after whatever misadventure had brought them out to the docks.
The streets were mostly empty as Joe drove through the dark night. The area was hardly illuminated at all and Joe pulled up to the chain-link fence and idled the car. What now? It was a capacious place. The freighters and trucks that came and went at the docks, as well as the warehouses, were not small potatoes. Joe could spend the rest of the night driving around and not find Amanda and Methos.
He glanced at his cell phone, but it remained uncommunicative.
Suddenly the door opened and Amanda slid onto the seat. She pulled the door closed and gave Joe the most miserable, chilled, wet look he'd ever seen on her.
"Go for a swim?" he asked.
"Not funny, Joseph," she warned as she rubbed her arms. She was dripping all over his upholstery, but the look on her face stopped him from mentioning it.
"What happened to Adam?" he asked.
"He hasn't revived yet," she said and put her fingers in front of the heating vents. "Is this as high as it goes?"
"You left him while he was dead?" Joe sputtered.
"He swallowed a lot of water," she said. "All that hardware he has hidden weighed him down." She shrugged. "That and they'd tied him up. Hard to swim like that."
Joe grabbed his night vision binoculars and started scanning the area. "Can we get to him?"
"He's a bit much for either of us to drag," Amanda said. She fiddled with the heating controls. "Especially soaking wet."
"Amanda, please."
"Okay, okay." She waved a hand at him, and he noticed that her lips were still blue. She had to be truly cold, probably nearly hypothermic. Most likely she'd have been dead, permanently, if she hadn't been an immortal. Swimming in Seacouver Bay in December wasn't a very good concept of a fun time. "I'll go and get him." She searched the darkness intently. "I think the goons are gone, anyway."
Joe closed his eyes and counted to three. He would have counted to ten, but if there were any goons about, he didn't want his eyes closed that long.
"Don't go anywhere," Amanda said, and slipped out the door and into the darkness.
Joe spent the better part of fifteen minutes blinking at the darkness through his binoculars and finding nothing. On the good side, there were no heavies to deal with. On the bad, Amanda and Methos were nowhere to be seen.
When she returned she had a barely conscious Methos propped against her. Considering how slight she was, she was amazingly strong to be able to support his weight. He looked like he was made of pallid candle wax, and his dark, sopping wet coat seemed to drag him down and swallow him up. Joe reached and opened the back door, and Amanda nearly toppled Methos into the backseat. He managed to crawl the rest of the way in. He gave Joe the barest of nods.
Amanda came around and got into the passenger seat. "Drive, please," she said. "I think we'd both like a hot shower."
Joe put the car in drive. "Where to?"
"Your place, if you don't mind."
A little over an hour later, sometime between 3 am and 4, Joe poured each of his impromptu houseguests a strong cup of black coffee, and then leaned back against his kitchen counter to hear the strange tale. "Was it another immortal?" he asked.
Methos snorted. "We could have only hoped it would have been a challenge."
"Oh, Joe," Amanda said, "you have your mind on too many Watcher worries."
"If one of you doesn't tell me what happened, I'll withhold the wool blankets," Joe warned, only partially kidding. He could see that the two of them were still occasionally shivering. Hot showers only went so far to warm a person once they'd gone polar-bear dipping.
Amanda and Methos exchanged a look. "Okay," Amanda said slowly. "Seeing as you rescued us...."
"I'll tell it," Methos said, and Joe would have bet money it was so he could edit the story in the telling.
"We'll tell it together," Amanda said sweetly.
*****
12 hours earlier, MacLeod's Loft
"So what did you get Duncan for his birthday tomorrow?" Amanda asked.
"Get?" Methos asked blankly.
"You know. A gift."
"I know what a gift is. I don't know why I'd have gotten MacLeod anything."
Amanda made a face. "Because giving him a gift usually involves getting something in return."
Methos stopped lounging and leaned forward, interested. "What are you suggesting?"
"Oh, I don't know." Amanda ran her fingers over the table edge. "Once I gave him a silk bathrobe, with a lovely silk sash. Another time, a bottle of chocolate body paint. Wine, of course. What else is there?"
Methos smirked. "What else indeed. Those are appropriate gifts from you, Amanda."
"And you think they wouldn't be appreciated from you?" she countered.
There was a long silent pause.
Methos narrowed his eyes.
Amanda tilted her head and tapped one finger against her lips. "You know, years ago, eons really, we had the most marvelous evening eating oysters." She looked sideways at Methos. "On the half shell, of course."
"Of course."
"Duncan really appreciates...an oyster."
"What are you saying, Amanda?"
She flopped down into the chair across from Methos and leaned forward excitedly. "I know a guy who knows a guy, down at the docks. I heard they had some oysters just come in. Kumamotos, of course. Coromandels. A few others from here and there. European Flats to die for."
"Actual Belons?" Methos asked.
"That's what I was told."
Methos considered. "Okay, I'll drive."
Amanda smiled brightly. "Lovely."
They drove down to the dock area and parked. Amanda squinted into the dying afternoon sunlight at the different control shacks.
"I'm not exactly sure which one," she said, "I'll know him when I see him."
They wandered around until Amanda spotted him, and she waved. The sun had already dipped below the horizon and the sky was growing dim.
"Patsy," Amanda said, "I'm glad I caught up with you. You said you might know about some oysters."
Patsy was a roughened man with eyes that crinkled. He obviously spent a lot of time in the open air. He gave Methos a once over. "Maybe."
"He's with me." Amanda waved a hand at Methos. "Now, about those oysters."
"Patsy! Hey Patsy!" Another man hurried over. His accent was pure Southie, Boston. He looked like he'd been built out of cement and steel, and forged in the land of graffiti.
"Yeah, Beansy?"
"The boss wanted me to tell you to double the order for next week." He gave Amanda a look-over, with an extra-long pause at certain points of her anatomy. "Do I know you, lady?"
"I don't think so. I don't know you." Amanda turned away from him and looked back at Patsy. "Oysters?" she asked.
"Yeah, I think maybe I do know you," Beansy cut back in.
"Well, good for you," Amanda said icily. "I still don't know you."
"You're that dame the Boss has been looking for."
"No, I'm not. Really, now." Amanda frowned at him.
"Yeah, you're that dame. The one that the Boss hired to break into the vault, and you took off with the jewels."
"You're confused," Amanda said.
"We'll let the boss sort it out." Beansy moved to take hold of Amanda by the wrists, and she rolled away. "Get her!" the man ordered.
The next moment was chaos. Amada ducked and ran. Methos ducked and ran, but with his gun in his hand. The two men pursued with their guns out and waving around while they yelled for assistance from their numerous compatriots scattered all over the dock area. Methos was summarily bashed on the head by a sneakily hidden adversary in a shadowy crevice between the stacked containers, and he went down. Amanda was cornered by a phalanx of workers and grabbed.
"You wanted these guys?" asked the head guy. "You got 'em." He turned over Amanda and the unconscious Methos to Patsy and Beansy.
"Thanks, boys," Beansy said. "Now, lady. You hold tight and we'll see who knows who." He pulled a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket and snapped one ring on Amanda's wrist and the other to a hasp on the wall. With Patsy's help, he located some rope and he tied Methos' hands and then dropped him into a corner where he went down with a thud.
"Honestly," Amanda said, projecting wide-eyed innocence. "It's all a mistake. I don't know anything about a boss, and nothing about a vault." Her bottom lip quivered, and she blinked back frightened tears.
"Yeah, sure." Beansy pulled his cell phone out and punched some keys. "Direct to voicemail," he told Patsy. "Sometimes the boss turns the phone off if he's in the movie theater."
"You better text him," Patsy advised.
"Good idea." Beansy went to work trying to punch the tiny little buttons with his mutton-fist hands. "Okay, sent. He'll call soon as he sees it." He turned his glare on Amanda. "Till then, we'll just wait."
Amanda dropped the useless frightened girl act and put a sunny smile on her face. "And then we'll just get this all sorted out."
Twenty minutes later Amanda noticed that Methos was awake. He kept his head drooped to look like he was still unconscious, but they made eye contact. She gave him a signal.
Two minutes later, and Beansy's cell phone rang.
Methos rolled toward his feet, clipped Beansy in the back of the legs, and Beansy went down with a thud. Amanda, who had sprung the lock on her handcuff about five minutes after it had been snapped on, kicked Patsy in a tender area. She helped Methos to his feet, and they dashed for the door, shouts ringing behind them.
"The water," Methos said, and they headed for the Bay.
Amanda could see that he was right. The other ways out of the dock area were too open, and still too populated by the occasional worker-bee. She heard a gun go off behind, far too close for comfort, and felt Methos sag. "Come on," she urged, and pulled at Methos' arm. The water was ten feet away. Another gun shot went off, and she could have sworn she felt it zip through the ends of her hair. She yanked harder on Methos' arm, he wasn't quite running full speed anymore, and they both tumbled into the sordid, squalid water.
Amanda gasped, nearly losing her breath, as she plunged into the freezing water. She still had one hand around Methos' arm, and he wasn't moving. At least he wouldn't be cold, she thought, as she let his weight pull them both down. He wouldn't revive until she pulled him out, though, which meant she was on her own until then, and responsible for both of them.
She couldn't be sure, but she thought Patsy and Beansy were shooting into the water from above her. The darkness of the water obscured her from seeing anything, and the sounds reaching her ears were too muffled to tell her much.
Amanda let them reach the bottom, where she swam at her own pace, not using up her air, until she was positive they were far enough away to not be noticed. It was difficult to drag Methos back to the surface, but she didn't want to risk letting him go for fear she'd never locate him again, and when she finally broke the surface, her lungs were burning in agony.
She took a moment to orient herself. There must have been a bit of a current as they were now quite far down along the dock area. She could faintly hear, and not quite see, the commotion that she had left behind. She hoped Beansy got the Riot Act from his boss.
Her fingers were going numb and she was starting to shiver as she considered her options, especially now that the first adrenaline rush was wearing off. It would be too dangerous to climb up onto land yet. They'd be searching the entire dock area, and probably most or all of it was under video surveillance. She could continue to swim down the shoreline, but discarded the idea. She didn't want to be hunted and lost. At least here she had her bearings. The car would be a lost cause; they'd be watching and waiting to see if either of them showed up to claim it.
No, the best place to be was waiting quietly in the water. At least for now.
*****
"And that's when I called you," Amanda explained. "I waited hours, and found Methos' cell phone--"
"It's waterproof," Methos added.
"-and pulled him out, and untied him, and you came and got us. I thought those two goons would never go home."
"That's quite a story," Joe said. He wasn't that shocked. These sorts of things always seemed to happen where Amanda was concerned.
"Isn't it?" Amanda said.
"And we never did get the oysters," Methos added wearily.
Joe thought that over. "I've got some connections in the restaurant business. I can't promise anything fancy, but I think I could get you some oysters."
"That's nice," Amanda said, but she was mostly-asleep on one end of Joe's couch, and Methos was completely asleep on the other.
Joe covered them each with a blanket, and turned out the light.
****
Duncan opened the door to find Joe on his doorstep with a burlap bag. "Hi, Joe. To what do I owe this honor?"
"You know darn well. Happy Birthday." Joe thrust out the sack. "Here, take it."
Duncan took the sack. It was heavy, and he pulled the top open to look inside. "Oysters?" he asked, surprised. "Joe--"
"They're from Amanda and Methos," Joe said. "They'll call you later." Joe turned to go, and called out over his shoulder. "And don't go getting any funny ideas about me just because I delivered them."
Duncan couldn't think of a thing to say.
*the end*