Once outside, Buffy regained the use of her legs and tore herself out of Gunn’s grasp. They rounded the corner of the building and came across Forrest, who was guarding the front of the building and clearly hadn’t heard the shots from above. Gunn jumped him from behind, rendering him unconscious before the other man was even aware of what was happening. Fred’s car was gone, she must have just fled the scene. The two leapt into Gunn’s truck and sped away, and as Buffy glanced in the rearview mirror she could see Angel limping out of the building and watching them go with murder in his eyes.
“Holy fuck,” Gunn breathed out, voice shaking, speeding towards the freeway as fast as he could. “That was intense.”
“Give me your phone, we have to call an ambulance!”
“They took mine too, and we can’t, we can’t stop to find a pay phone, we need to go,” he rambled, seemingly trying to convince himself of his words. Buffy stared at him in shock. “Buffy, come on. It’ll be okay.”
“No, it really won’t! Turn around, turn around,” Buffy cried out as he started to get in the lane for the north-bound entrance. “We at least have to go back to the mansion.”
“What the fuck, Buffy?” He yelled. “That’s the first place they’d go. We’re going to find Giles, now.”
“No!” She insisted through her tears. “We have to get the evidence against Angelus, we have to. Spike told me where it is---”
“Don’t be an idiot,” He growled. “We have plenty of evidence as it is.”
“But Spike—“
“You want me to put my life in danger to save your fucking boyfriend’s ass? I don’t think so, he’s probably dead now anyway, wouldn’t matter if he goes to jail.” At the stricken look on Buffy’s face, he tried to rectify his cruel words. “I’m sorry, Buffy, but it’s too dangerous, we can’t—“
“You’re not going to help me?” She interrupted.
He was quiet for a moment. “No.”
“Then I’ll find someone who will.” They had stopped at a red light, and she opened the door of the truck, jumped out, and took off running, ignoring the sounds of Gunn yelling after her.
She ran for five blocks until she found a payphone near a gas station, and she hastily called the police, giving them the address of the warehouse and Spike’s location in the building before hanging up. She glanced around quickly, and made a split second decision. A woman was getting out of her small convertible just about ten feet away, and she left her keys in the ignition when she walked over to the gas pump.
Buffy ran to the car and jumped in, driving away before the woman could even turn around and figure out what happened.
“Sorry, lady,” she muttered as she sped off in the direction of Spike’s house.
The entire way there, she could only repeat one sentence, out loud to herself, over and over and over again.
“He’s not dead. He’s not dead. He’s not dead. He’s not dead.”
She parked two blocks away from the gate to the estate, and sighed in relief when she saw that the security guard was sweet, nerdy Jonathan.
“Hi, Jonathan,” she said as calmly as she could when she walked up. “Open up the gate for me?”
“Sure, Buffy,” he said, looking puzzled. “Didn’t you leave in a car, though?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Got dropped off a bit away, I wanted to take a walk. But I’m kind of in a hurry? You know…girl problems.”
“Okay,” he said readily, keying in the code to open the gates.
“And, Jonathan, can you do me a favor?” She asked sweetly. “If anyone shows up, wanting to be let in, would you press the alert button, but not so they can see? And don’t tell anyone I’m here. It’s…it’s important.”
The small man stared at her for a moment suspiciously, then shrugged and agreed when she twisted her face in a pathetic, pleading mask. “As long as it’s not going to get me into trouble.”
“It won’t! Thank you, so much,” she said, darting through the gates and up the driveway. The door was unlocked as she’d left it, and she entered the house and dashed up the stairs, wanting to get in and out of this situation as fast as possible. Spike’s door was locked as always, and she pulled a bobby pin out of her hair to expertly pick the lock.
She headed towards the bathroom and saw three paintings. The first had nothing on the wall behind it, but the second was hiding a silver safe.
“22-19-7-3-14,” she recited as she spun the numbers, and sighed in relief when the safe opened on her first try.
Sitting inside was the stack of disks she’d worked on just a few nights earlier and a thick file of papers. She grabbed everything out of the safe and clutched it to her chest, then ducked into Spike’s closet and quickly found a backpack to shove everything into.
Just then, a low, persistent, menacing beep began to sound through the house, entering her ears and creating shivers down to her feet. It stopped after just a few seconds, but it was the warning she needed.
“Shit,” she breathed out, rushing to the small window over the bathtub and peering out. Angel’s black car was speeding up the driveway.
Buffy didn’t waste another moment, running back to Spike’s room and snatching a lap top off the desk there, shoving it into her bag and zipping it up. She went out to Spike’s balcony and ran down to the main patio. A quick glance through a window to check for signs of life and she dashed across and hid at the top of the stairs down to the yard, peering around the corner and seeing Angel, Forrest and Parker entering the living room. Her heart began to pound so loud she was sure they could hear it.
She quietly crept down the rest of the stairs and around the side of the house, praying to a God she wasn’t even sure she believed in that she’d make it out without being seen. She climbed up the stone wall to the small parking lot there, and held her breath as she searched for anyone or anything blocking her way to freedom.
She saw nothing, and just ran, counting on adrenaline to get her to the safety of the front entrance before anyone saw her. Just as Buffy had almost reached her goal, two shots rang out and hit the metal gate in front of her, just a little too far to her left to be a danger. A last burst of energy carried her around the corner, and she ignored Jonathan’s yelled questions as she made her way to her stolen car.
Buffy tossed the backpack and its precious contents onto the passenger seat and took off at fifty miles per hour, breathing heavily, and beginning to sob.
She needed a plan. A good plan. And she had never been very good at the planning.
Without a phone, she couldn’t call Giles, but she knew what hotel he’d been staying at, and she could only hope that he’d be there.
It only took fifteen minutes to reach the hotel, which was a miracle considering LA’s usual traffic. But any hopeful feelings Buffy had dissipated when she pulled up and saw the unmistakable flashing of red and blue police lights.
“Oh my God,” she said, the worst possible scenario popping into her head.
And when she saw Gunn, walking with a stretcher out of the main hotel entrance, a stretcher with a black body bag on it, she felt her heart stop.
It couldn’t be.
She grabbed her bag and jumped from the car, running towards Gunn, hoping against all odds that it wasn’t true.
But from the distraught look on Gunn’s face, she knew it was.
“What…what happened?” She whispered when Gunn caught sight of her and walked over.
“Giles was killed.”
“Oh God, no,” she shuddered.
They didn’t speak for a moment, the sounds of police sirens and radios swirling around them.
“Was it you?” He asked quietly.
She blinked once, then shook her head a bit, as if to clear her hearing. “What?”
“Was. It. You?” Gunn repeated slowly, his tone brittle, his eyes cold.
“How can you even ask me that,” She choked on her words, backing up slowly. “Why the hell would I do that?”
“Last call on his phone was from you---”
“I never called him!”
“---and there was no sign of forced entry, so he must have known whoever killed him—“
“You really think I would do this? Why?”
“—and this was found under the body.” From his pocket he pulled something out, and dangled it in front of her face. Her crystal necklace.
She reached up and touched her naked throat. “I…I didn’t, Gunn, I swear—“
“I don’t know what to think, Buffy. If you switched sides with Spike, or hell, with Angelus. Was that whole thing today a show? Were you playing me?”
“Please, no—“
“Buffy, just come with me,” Gunn snapped. He started to reach for her, but panic set in and she spun around and ran, not even thinking about the consequences of that impulsive decision, just thinking that she had to get away. He yelled after her, asking her to stop, yelled for backup to help him, but Buffy made her way back to her car and drove away before anyone could catch her.
“This is not happening,” she screamed out loud once she’d put a decent amount of distance between herself and that most recent nightmare. She couldn’t take this. It was all too much and her mind was filled with too many worries and fears and she could hardly breath and didn’t think she had any more tears in her body but all she wanted to do was cry, and she couldn’t stand feeling like this.
An idea began to tickle insistently at the edges of her panic, and she quickly veered right onto the freeway, cutting off a huge SUV and hardly even noticing the honking.
She knew where she could go.
[Reviews - 468]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | 
Chapter or Story
Has been viewed 4183 times
- Text Size +
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | Chapter or Story - Text Size +
Author's Chapter Notes:
Loved loved loved the huge response to yesterday's chapter! I figured that would spark some very intense emotions. I won't tell you how Spike is, but really: this is definitely a Spuffy story. What fun would it be if Spike was dead? Oh, huh. Wait....hehe. Joke. Anyway, thanks so much for reading, and I'd love to keep hearing what you think! Oh, and I got bored, made a picture. Standard disclaimer as always.