"Let's hurry this up."

Marcus frowned, trying not to breathe on the glass as Robert Parker stalked through the middle of four armed men. At least, he was almost certain they were armed. Before Teddy met Carlos and they were all introduced to the finer nuances of urban warfare, he wouldn't have noticed, but now it was plain that the men's leather jackets didn't quite lay flat.

Ernest was nowhere to be seen, and he found himself hoping that the other man would stay away. The men didn't look like the kind to handle surprises well.

"Hey," one of the men said, an older alpha with a violently red bandana wrapped around his hand. It tickled at something in Marcus's memory, just out of reach. "I just want my money, bitch." The sound was surprisingly clear through the door. The electronic lock was sealed tight, and the hinges protected by a baffle, but the top and bottom of the door had been left with a gap for air flow.

Parker grimaced, his face twisting comically in the distortion of the glass. "And I'll be happy to be rid of it, if you have the passwords."

"We've got the passwords for three of the accounts," the same man said. The rest of the men ignored what was going on, checking their surroundings with paranoid repetition. "You said you could figure out all the accounts if we had at least three of the passwords."

"Our system," Parker said, snapping his fingers until one of the men handed over a crumpled sheet of paper, "keeps our client information completely separate. Even we can't access it without the password. It's a trick that the founder, Gerald Bainbridge, stole from the Swiss." He was typing into a tablet as he spoke, ignoring the way the men shifted impatiently around him. "But the system is well aware of whose money belongs where. When investments dividends are paid out, it distributes the money between a selection of the client's accounts based on the balances."

"So can you give us all the accounts, or what?" the leader asked, his hand scratching idly at his jacket.

Parker ignored him, continuing to type. "With multiple accounts, we can track the transaction codes that appear on more than one account, and find other accounts with the same code..." He hit a button, spinning the tablet around triumphantly. "And voila. Sixteen accounts."

The leader leaned forward, scanning the screen blankly. "And that's all of them?"

"Well," Parker said, glancing to one side. Marcus had to duck out of the way, dragging Gio with him, as his eye passed over the window. "It's all the accounts that received the same payments in the last ten years. Do you know how many we're looking for?"

"He's lying," Marcus whispered. "Why is he lying?"

"Because if he 'misses' an account, he gets to keep the money for himself," Gio said. "Let's go."

"According to the old man's ledgers," the leader's voice carried through the door, "there was over 75 million in the accounts. How much is there?"

Marcus leaned forward to steal another glance, and Gio dragged him back. "Let's go," he hissed. His hand was resting on his stomach, and cold fear prickled across Marcus's skin.

"Go," he whispered, following him down the stairs. "Don't leave the stairwell until you get to your normal floor. I'll meet you in the parking garage."

"No," Gio said, turning around. "Go to your apartment. I'll meet you there." His eyes slid to the side, staring down the endless stairwell as his pulse fluttered against the soft skin of his throat.

A warning bell sounded in Marcus's brain, and his gut clenched. "Okay," he said, glancing back up the stairs. "I'll go down to Accounting and use the elevator there."

He walked down the stairs ahead of Gio, the back of his neck burning the whole way. Behind him, Gio's footsteps got slower and lighter until he could barely hear him. He didn't turn to check, afraid of what he'd see.

"I'm going now," he said when they reached the accounting floor. "My apartment, fifteen minutes."

"Right," Gio said, but his eyes were looking everywhere else. "Just act normal."

Marcus resisted the urge to pull him into a kiss. He didn't need to taste the lie to know it was there. "Fifteen minutes," he repeated, ducking through the door.

He forced a smile on his face as the accountants looked up in surprise. "I heard there was birthday cake," he lied. If there was one thing he'd learned in his time with the company, it was that there was always some kind of snack in the accounting break room.

Today, it was gluten-free, sugar-free, whole grain cupcakes, and he snagged two before heading for the elevators. Taking a deep breath and holding it, he hit the button, his lungs burning as the car shot up toward his office. He had no idea what he was doing, but he knew who would.

Dumping the cupcakes on his desk, he cut across the floor to the opposite stairwell. He took a moment to shift the camera that pointed at the door just a touch to the left. It wasn't much, but it would keep it from getting a good picture of him. With his white shirt and blond hair, he could have been any number of people. With lunchtime approaching, there was no one to see him slip through the door.

Getting into the vault was a whole different issue. He'd have to use his passcard, and he had no way to modify the camera. He was betting that he didn't have to worry though. If Parker was having clandestine meetings, then there had to be something in place to keep the security system from seeing.

As he peered through the door, noting that Parker and the men were no longer in view, he could see that he was right. The camera was dark, no blinking red light to show that it was in operation. That just left the lock, but that was dark as well, and when he pulled the door open, it slid easily on silent hinges.

Well, now what? He was in.

He listened carefully, his heart pounding in his throat, but the floor was still and dead as a tomb. Squeezing through the barely cracked door, he ducked into the recess of the nearest door. Still nothing. He wanted to believe that Parker and the men had left, but there was a solid weight in his gut that told him not to let his guard down.

Most employees believed that the Vault took up the whole floor, but he remembered his hiring tour. The high tech server room was pressed up against the back of the elevator shaft, the most structurally stable part of the building. This floor was also laid out differently than any other floor, the hallways purposely designed as a labyrinth.

The other thing he remembered from the tour was the backup room. It was one of their recent, multi-million dollar upgrades, part of a push to court younger, more tech savvy investors. It wasn't up and running yet, but he'd been a part of the email chain that had talked about getting it connected into the main system.

Somewhere else on the floor, someone laughed, and Marcus froze, his knees turning to jelly. They were still here somewhere.

Not even daring to breathe, he shuffled silently across the floor. He probably looked like an idiot, ducking behind every potted plant and bit of door frame. His ears were ringing with every tiny noise, paranoia creeping over him until he was positive that the sound of his own racing heart was the footsteps of an approaching army.

The backup room was dark, but the door opened easily. Maybe Ernest wasn't so useless if the door locks were so ridiculously easy to get around.

The servers were cold and dark except for a single laptop resting haphazardly on top of an end cabinet. There was a printer there, too, pages of network information crumpled and scattered on the floor. There had been some kind of issue with the firewall that had taken the IT team a week of head scratching to get around, and it showed.

Marcus pulled the laptop open, careful to turn the glow so that it couldn't be seen from the door. The system popped up almost instantly, not even requiring a login. Typing quickly, he dug through layer after layer of access logs, trying to find what Parker had done.

"Put your hands up." The cold voice was accompanied by the sharp click of a safety being disengaged.

"It's me," Marcus said, ignoring the way shock turned his sweat soaked shirt to ice.

"Get your hands off the keyboard," Gio said, pressing the warm barrel of a gun against his temple.

"I can't do that." Finally stripping away the last layer, Marcus quickly highlighted the information he needed and sent the report to the printer.

"Don't make me shoot you." It sounded like Gio, but the man looking back at him was a total stranger, cold and hard.

Marcus smiled at him, not breaking eye contact as the printer hummed to life, quiet enough to avoid attracting attention. "I'd rather you didn't, but I'd also rather that you didn't spend the rest of your life in prison."

That seemed to confuse Gio, his eyebrow raising. "What?" The first page slid into the printer tray, and he glanced away, a single millisecond of distraction.

Grabbing the gun, Marcus twisted the way Cody had taught him. Gio wasn't where he should have been though, a hard arm snaking around Marcus’ neck and crushing his throat until he slid to his knees.

"I'm a federal agent," Gio hissed in his ear. "Stop fighting me."

He went limp, sliding to the floor and gasping for breath as Gio moved out of reach. "You're..."

"FBI," Gio said, pressing up against the door to look down the hallway. "What did you just do?"

As much as he wanted to continue the conversation, Marcus was aware that there were other priorities involved. "I printed the information that Parker accessed. I was going to send it to the... Well, to you, I guess."

"Can you email it?" Gio didn't look at him as he spoke, his gun still firmly pointed at Marcus's face.

"Not from here. They call this the Vault for a reason." He winced.. Even if he was starting to hate the way this new person looked wearing Gio's skin, it wasn't a good reason to run his mouth. "Sorry. What now?"

"Now, I get this information to my contact, and you get as far away from here as possible." Grabbing the printouts, Gio stuffed them into the oversized pockets of his baggy jeans.

"What about you?" Marcus asked, risking a bullet to the face as he got off the floor. Gio didn't answer, but the gun followed his every movement. "Gio... Whatever your name is..." Bitterness coated his voice, and he cleared his throat before continuing, "Those guys looked dangerous."

Gio snorted, the familiar sound music to Marcus's ears. "Shut the fuck up so I can listen."

Marcus snapped his mouth closed so fast that he bit his tongue.

"Okay, let's go." Motioning with the gun, Gio eased out into the hallway.

Marcus followed, adrenaline spiking again as he heard voices raised somewhere else on the floor. His head pounded. "They're coming," he hissed.

"Shut up," Gio snapped. Glaring at him in the tense space between heartbeats, Gio growled and dropped to his knees, shoving the gun into an ankle holster. "Go!"

They stumbled silently into the stairwell, not bothering to hang around and see how close they'd been to being caught. They rushed down the stairs, tripping over their own feet. Gio kept a close eye on him, his eyes hard and dead.

"We should go all the way to the bottom," Marcus said as they passed Accounting. Through the window in the door, he could see row upon row of empty desks. Glancing at his watch, he noted with some surprise that it was already well into the lunch hour. "That's the easiest way for Parker to sneak someone in, so the security system will probably be down there, too."

"Maintenance," Gio muttered. "There was an email about a system update. We were supposed to keep an eye on our valuables." He slammed his hand into the concrete of the stairwell. "Fuck. It was right in front of my face the whole damned time."

Marcus kept his mouth shut and walked. The lower they got in the building, the more his muscles creaked with the fear that they'd meet someone else on their way. Intellectually, he knew that it wouldn't be one of the gun-toting henchmen from the Vault, but his gut was roiling with panic.

They hit the first garage level, and Gio peered through the door, opening it just enough to check if anyone was out there. When he moved to step out, Marcus grabbed him by the arm.

"Wait." In a move that he'd once spent an entire semester perfecting, he slid the printouts out of Gio's pocket and tucked them up his suit jacket sleeve. They were bulkier than the coins and cards he'd practiced on, but the principle was as simple as a talent show magic trick. "Be careful," he said.

Gio pulled away from him, a tiny flash of something warm and regretful passing through those hazel eyes before it was gone. "Remember, get as far from here as you can."

"I know." Marcus let him go, hurrying down the stairs. It wasn't that he didn't believe Gio, he did. It was the answer to a question about why such a smart, talented man was in such dire straits that he hadn't even realized he'd been asking. Then again, he didn't even know the man's name.

Emerging onto the sidewalk, he breathed a sigh of relief. At least no one was going to shoot him with this many witnesses. He made it all the way to the corner, about twice as far as he expected, before a furious omega dragged him around.

"You son of a bitch," Gio growled, his phone clutched in one hand. "Give it back before I place you under arrest." His cheeks were flushed pink, and his eyes were anything but dead, promising a long, fiery death to anyone who stood in his way.

"Tell you what, you can make a copy of them at my apartment, and we'll each send them in to our guy at the FBI." Marcus raised an eyebrow.

"Or I could arrest you for obstruction, attacking a federal agent, and... and... jaywalking!" Gio's hand clenched around the phone until his knuckles were white, but he was chewing on his lip with those adorable gapped teeth.

Dragging his mind away from how much he wanted to kiss the other man, Marcus shrugged. "Go ahead," he said. "How do I know you're even a real FBI agent?"

Gio gaped at him, his ears turning red and his chest heaving. "I will shoot you," he snapped.

"Do you have ID?" Marcus asked. The crosswalk turned, and he started across the road, Gio stomping along behind him silently. "You don't, do you?"

"I'm under-fucking-cover. Of course I don't have my badge with me. That's textbook 'How to Get Yourself Killed 101.'" He seemed to remember his phone was in his hand, flipping it open and stabbing at the keys. "Pick up. Pick up. Yes!"

Marcus stumbled as Gio dragged him into the shadow cove created by an empty storefront. People milled by a few feet away, but they might as well have been in another world.

"Curtis, where the fuck have you been?" Gio snapped into his phone. Whatever he heard made him pale, and he pulled the phone away from his ear.

Leaning in, Marcus expected him to pull away, but he just hit the speaker button.

"... pity that Agent Curtis is currently recovering from an accident on the range. You'll just have to make your report to me, Mr. Romero." The voice was smooth and charming, like poisoned chocolate. Just looking at Gio's face, Marcus hated the man on the other end.

"I've been trying to make my regular check in for a week now, Agent Michaels," Gio said, his voice changing into something so bland and neutral that it sucked the color out of the world around them. "I have three weeks left in this nightmare, and not a moment more, so Curtis's injury had better not interfere with me getting out of here."

Marcus shifted, running his hand over the papers in his sleeve. Without raising his eyes from the phone, Gio shook his head.

"I'll be sure the director knows how keen you are to get back," the other man, Michaels, said. "Anything to report?"

"Just that my goddamned rent is late, and I've been eating ramen for the last month." Gio shifted away from the phone to swallow hard, his throat bobbing as he pressed a hand against his stomach. "Hasn't Data Analysis found anything yet? I'm ready for a hot shower and some vacation time."

"Nothing so far, sorry." Even over the tinny connection, Michaels couldn't have sounded less sincere if he'd tried. "How's it going with that exec you're sleeping with? Have you gotten an in with him yet?"

Marcus jolted, his back bumping the papered over windows of the building. He'd been part of Gio's job?

Hazel eyes caught his, but they were a stranger's eyes, and he couldn't read the emotion in them. "No. He was a dead end. Last I heard, he was making his way through the entire department."

"Tough luck. Well, if you have nothing to report, I'll let you get back to work. How about we face-to-face tomorrow? My flight gets in around noon, so we can meet for dinner. I'll even bring you some extra petty cash, get you some groceries," Michaels cajoled.

Gio grimaced, taking a deep breath. "Sounds good. I was trying to get Curtis in for a meeting after that exec dumped me, but I figured why bother? There's nothing here, so fuck it."

Michaels laughed. "You're a trip, Rizzi. See you tomorrow."

"Right," Gio said, cutting the call. " Fuck, fuck, fuck. This is a problem."

"I don't even know that guy, and I hate him," Marcus said, pulling the pages out of his sleeve. "Your name is Rizzi?" he asked, smoothing the wrinkles out before handing them over.

"Giovanni Rizzi." He stumbled over the words like he wasn't used to saying them. His hand was still resting on his stomach, his thumb twitching back and forth spasmodically.

Marcus stuck his hand out. "Nice to meet you, Giovanni."

Gio gasped, his pupils blowing wide as he stared up at Marcus. "Don't. Until this is over, I'm Giorgio Romano." He dropped his eyes to the papers, folding them carefully. "Here. You keep a hold of these."

Raising one eyebrow in surprise, Marcus slid them in his pocket. "Why?"

"If anything goes wrong, they'll be looking for me. You'll have a better chance of getting them to your contact." Shaking his head, Gio glanced at the passing crowd. "Do you have a scanner at your apartment?"

"Yes." Marcus dug his phone out of his pocket, his thumb sliding over the screen where Gio couldn't see him.

"Let's go." Gio dove into the flow of traffic.

Marcus followed more sedately, sneaking glances at his phone whenever Gio wasn't looking. The text he managed to get sent wasn't Shakespeare, but it covered the basics.

"SOS. Don't call. — Marcus"

Turning off the sound, he stuck his phone back in his pocket and hurried to catch up. His legs burned with waning adrenaline, and the sensation of eyes on his skin made his hair stand on end. It was just paranoia, but every car on the street made him want to dive for cover.

The lobby of his building was deserted, and it sent alarm bells ringing in his head. So strong was the sense of danger that he grabbed Gio before he could get more than two steps in. "Don't take the elevator," he said quietly.

"Great," Gio snapped, his eyes already scanning the empty concierge stand, "more stairs."

"It's good for you," Marcus said, his voice running on autopilot as he keyed them into the sunny front stairwell. The big windows concentrated the heat of the day until Marcus had to pull off his sweat-soaked suit jacket.

Gio didn't stop watching the city outside as they walked, his fingers twitching. "I feel like a target," he said, his eyes flicking to Marcus's.

"It's bulletproof glass," he said, knocking against the two-inch thick plastic with a dull thunk. "They list it as a selling point on the brochures."

"Won't stop an armor piercing round," Gio muttered, but his shoulders relaxed minutely.

The second sign that something was wrong was the glitter of glass shards in the hallway in front of the elevator.

Marcus peered over Gio's head through the barely open door and cursed. He recognized that particular shade of orange. "That's the Venetian glass vase, the one inside the front door."

"Son of a bitch," Gio said, leaning back against the wall. "Okay, let me go first." He crouched down to pull the gun back out of its holster. "If you hear shots, you get out of here and head for the airport."

"Of course," Marcus said, not for one second regretting the lie. He curled his hand around Gio's elbow. "Be careful."

"Shut up," Gio grumbled, shaking him off. He hesitated a moment on the landing, his eyes meeting Marcus's for just a moment. "Don't do anything stupid."

"Never."

The next two minutes were the longest of his life, joining a rapidly growing list that consisted mostly of all the other minutes in that day. Finally, he couldn't stand to wait any longer. There hadn't been any noises, much less gunshots, so he slid down the hall, keeping his back to the wall.

His door was cracked in half. Through the gap, he could see fragments of furniture and scraps of shredded cloth. That was one of the drawers out of his desk, the joints split. And there was one of his dress shirts, a slash down the back cutting it almost in half. Even the slice of the couch that he could see was hemorrhaging stuffing through vicious stab wounds. It was a testament to the solid construction that the furniture was as whole as it was.

Through the gap, the barrel of a gun came into view.

"Still just me," he said, his voice breaking.

"Goddammit," Gio growled, dropping the nose of the gun. "There's no one here, but they took a baseball bat to your computer and fax machine."

"How did they know?" he asked.

Gio glanced at the mess. "This took time. Someone must have seen you go into the stairwell."

Racking his brain, Marcus couldn't think of anyone, but it wasn't so important. "Now what?"