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I sprung from my hiding place and grabbed him by the neck with my arm. I brought my hip into his body and tossed him to the ground. I placed a hand against his face and smashed the back of his head into the floor to keep him quiet. I snapped my head around to see Helena grab the feet of the second man before he could reach the bottom of the stairs. He tripped and fell, knocking his head into the wall as he went. He crashed onto the floor and Helena was on top of him in an instant. She rested her knife against his neck, and I was just about to order her to cut his throat, just to scare my guy a little, when he cut me off with the use of my name.

“Hunter! Wait!”

I looked down at the man I had subdued and wondered who the hell he could be. I reached down to pull his mask off to reveal a very familiar face.

“Gaius!” I practically screamed, looking down at one of my closest Roman friends. I looked over and saw Helena pull off her own victim’s mask to reveal my other friend, Marcus.

I was stupefied. What the hell were they doing here?

I turned back to Gaius. “What in the name of almighty Jove are you doing here?!”

Gaius looked scared shitless as he coughed in pain. “That, my old friend, is a very long and interesting story.”

Relative to the rest of the day, our trip back to our apartment had been rather dull.

Once our initial confusion had worn off, Gaius and Marcus had been quick to assure us that they were not our enemies. According to them, they hadn’t had any idea they were chasing Helena and me until I pulled my gun on them. They hadn’t been much more forthcoming than that so far, indicating they needed the relative safety of our apartment before they could explain themselves.

I agreed, and the four of us had made our way back to Santino and the safe house. Before we left, Helena spent a few minutes rummaging through the lady of the house’s collection of clothing. She hadn’t found much, but she’d managed to pilfer a black robe for herself. The last thing we needed was her walking down the streets in her underwear. That would draw far too much attention.

After donning her new outfit, I helped her limp along to the house. I bandaged her feet with the limited medical supplies I had in my bag, but each step had to be like stepping on glass for her. We also had to take a moment to wrap Marcus’ sprained ankle, a result of his tumble down the stairs. Finally, even though I needed it for my own head, I offered Gaius the disposable cold pack from my med-kit. The only thing we couldn’t fix was my cracked rib. It would have to wait, even though every breath I took felt like someone was sticking a knife into my lungs, and every step hurt more than the last. After the time it took us to find our way home, it wouldn’t have surprised me to discover that my lungs had been shredded to pieces, but a lack of blood in my mouth quelled those fears.

What I couldn’t divine, however, was if any of Gaius and Marcus’ comrades were following us. The two Romans claimed to be on our side, and I really wanted to believe them, but it was hard to trust anyone these days. If only we had Santino’s UAV to provide rear reconnaissance, but I had to settle for surreptitious glances over my shoulder as we rounded corners and pushed our way through people. I hadn’t noticed a tail so far, but that didn’t guarantee our trip wasn’t being watched.

Twenty minutes later, our apartment was within sight. We passed by the waiting wenches hanging around outside and in the hallways and stairwells, each giving Helena an annoyed glance as we passed by. These particular whores would have rated very low on any man’s scale, and they knew if Helena tried to bust in on their action, they’d be put out of business quickly.

At the end of a long hallway on the third floor of the building, we found our door, opened it, and went inside to find Santino leaning back in a wooden chair, his bare feet on the table, apparently spending his time counting something on the ceiling. He turned his head to see what the commotion was, but because Helena and I weren’t the first ones in, he flew into action when he didn’t immediately identify Gaius or Marcus.

In one swift move, he fell off his chair, and rolled under the table, flipping it on its side to rest it in front of him. The next thing I saw was his HK416 pointed in our direction, which he kept duct taped to the bottom of the table for this very reason. Helena had her P90 hidden under Santino’s bed, and I kept Penelope over the door inside the apartment’s sole bedroom.

“Get down,” Santino yelled from his defensible position.

“Stand down,” I ordered, but all the same, stepped out of his line of fire. “It’s Gaius and Marcus.”

“Gaius and Marcus?” He asked no one in particular. The two men entered the room, shutting the door behind them in silence.

Our apartment was small and rectangular. The wooden table sat just across the small open space from the door, with a fair sized bed to the right of the entrance. The only other furniture in the room was a single wardrobe between the bed and the door. To the left of the entrance was a small room with another bed.

I hauled Helena over to Santino’s bed, sat her down and began the process of removing her blood soaked bandages.

“I recall telling you a long time ago that you weren’t allowed to get hurt anymore,” I told her, pulling out an iodine pad to clean her wounds.

“Right,” she answered. “You said only you were allowed to get hurt.”

“You’re breaking the rules,” I quipped, holding her foot still as she winced at the cold sting. “Again.”

“Jacob, if I only let you get hurt, you’d be dead a thousand times over by now. Probably from your own damn clumsiness.”

“Good point,” I conceded, spraying some antiseptic on her wounds and wrapping a gauze bandage around it. I finished her left foot first before starting work on her right. Meanwhile, Gaius helped Santino turn the heavy wooden table back on its legs. Santino gave him a proper handshake, grasping his forearms just below the elbow, while giving Marcus a friendly bear hug, lifting the smaller Roman off his feet. Marcus had saved Santino’s life the day Caligula had been poisoned, and they’d bonded immediately.

I finished with Helena’s second foot as Santino poured steaming cups of tea for each of us.

“I’d stay off your feet for at least a day,” I recommended to Helena, giving them one last look over.

“A whole day?” She asked, feigning disappointment. “What ever will I do for a whole day with nothing to do? In bed?”

“Don’t get any ideas,” I joked with a sly smile, before turning to Santino. “Hey, Santino, toss me Wang’s medical kit.”

He nodded and went to retrieve the enormous bag Wang had put together years ago. We had more medical supplies than we knew what to do with, but those were stored away. Wang’s bag, however, had everything we could ever need at moment’s notice, and everything was organized so that I could find whatever was needed by touch alone.

I pulled out two giant rolls of gauze, dropped the bag to the floor and handed them to Helena. I took my shirt off and noticed a large bruise starting to swell exactly where my breathing hurt.

“I think I cracked a rib,” I told her. “Wrap me up good and tight.”

She gave me a very annoyed look. I hadn’t mentioned my injury earlier and she must have been getting very tired of patching me up these days. She reluctantly rested the end of the gauze against my chest and started to wrap.

“Next time you want to talk about me getting injured, you’d better think again,” she said matter of factly.