Adrenaline

Toretto nearly panted as he pulled into Blair’s garage behind the redhead in her stolen vehicle. She had given him a run for his money, to be certain - the muscle man felt there had to be an explanation for her two-minute lead other than sheer talent and honed skills. Never before had he been beaten in a race by a woman. Twice! Letty had come close on more than one occasion, but Dominic always managed to keep an ace in the hole in order to get the upper hand at the last second. Apparently, Blair was capable of hiding more aces in her sleeveless shirts than he was. Slightly bitter, the bald man emerged from the car to punch the button on the lift - felt it slowly clatter down the elevator shaft a minute or so behind hers as he came to terms with his defeat.

He even had the better fucking car.

How had she done it? He thought he had her in the race back from Tver, when she had been cut off by an angry semi-truck driver - which left Toretto with a straight shot until the curve of the road which would bring them off the autobahn and into rural Tver. Somehow, in that situation, Blair had shot up past the trucker on the narrow shoulder of the highway in the frighteningly wide Jaguar and took him on the inside lip of that corner, and then had sped down the winding road, taking each divergence from the main roads like a fucking NASCAR driver. It had been all he could do to keep up.

What was her fucking secret?!

Dominic shook himself out of his revelries as the lift clattered to a halt - he lowered himself back into the low-profile M7 and drove it to its customary spot near the room which he now knew housed Blair’s technological Mecca before he proceeded to the Jag. Blair had parked it and disappeared apparently, Toretto thought as he dragged two of the four perfectly door-shaped sheets of two-inch steel toward the work bench beside the car. Each of the door pieces weighted two hundred pounds, or so he guessed, as he slid them across the concrete on a piece of oil-stained towel. Once the four pieces of specially-shaped XJ door bulletproofing was placed conveniently, the burly man began to remove each of the car’s black doors and then disassembled them swiftly.

The click of heels - a telltale sign of Blair’s approach - brought Toretto out of his loss-induced fury of work; she sipped a bottle of Perrier nonchalantly as she clacked her way to Toretto’s side. She set a bottle of normal, non-“sparkling” water next to the door he worked on and smiled brightly.

“You gave me a hell of a run there, Toretto.” His eyes narrowed - even the bandanna couldn’t keep the sweat out of his eyes as he connected the first door (front driver’s door) with its steel plate of a mate. Toretto’s calloused hands guided the two pieces together, and he fastened them to one another with surprising adeptness for one who had only assembled one armored door before in his life. Blair complimented him on this as well, and began to work with a screw driver on the front passenger’s side door.

She found herself unceremoniously shoved out of the way as Toretto furiously unscrewed the paneling, and separated it from the door.

“So you’re angry at me?” She asked, and retrieved another screwdriver to work on the rear driver’s side door. He couldn’t shove her away from that particular workstation - if he seemed too angry it would make her angry, and an angry Blair was not fun to deal with, he had learned.

“Not at you.”

“At yourself for loosing?” Blair gently lifted the “guts” of the Jaguar XJ’s rear driver-side door; she placed them on the diamond-plate workbench beside the door itself. She didn’t ever smoke when she worked on the cars in her garage - especially not while she worked on the ones which were to be sold to the Mafia. She didn’t consider these cars hers, Toretto had noticed - they were just “moving on through.” Blair crawled underneath the worktable with the interior parts of the door Toretto had already finished and began to work on it - parts of the bulletproofing had to be sanded down by delicate hands before the interior and exterior could meet again. She attacked the steel with the hefty belt sander which had been left beneath the table for that specific purpose - when she finally shut the sander off, she realized that the sound of music - Avenged Sevenfold - filled the garage. Kolya and Mikhail were back with their prizes.

The pair had gone off separately - they took a bus to St. Petersburg and stole two separate cars while there. They still had a third to get - Blair and Toretto had been the first successful team of the day - but the group at the garage could only work so fast on what was already there. Kolya had parked the Rolls-Royce he had retrieved on a lift in the corner and worked on removing the wheels.

All of the cars were to meet certain specifications - standards that Blair claimed allowed her to be the top “dealer” of armored cars in Russia, if not all of Europe. The hood and trunk of the cars were to re-enforced with the same steel plates that Toretto connected to the doors, the roof was torn out and re-lined with a sort of Kevlar-like material before the original material was replaced (with a little extra padding in case of impact). A siren control and a PA system were installed into the glove compartment for communication outside of the car, special strobe lights were attached to the front grille and the back bumper of each vehicle, and bright high-beams were added to the headlamps and taillights. Extra padding was added around each window to avoid head injury to the “dignitary” who would ride there, the windows and windshield were replaced with thick, special bullet-proof glass (and if so desired, they were made to move - a hell of a lot of extra work, Toretto decided). Each tire was equipped with run-flat capabilities, and Blair saw to it that each rim was upgraded as standard part of her package. The windows and windshield were all tinted the blackest black, just like each of her personal cars. To order from Blair Hundley was to order the best.

It took three days of work around the clock for the order to be finished; just in time to take a shower and prepare for the delivery, Blair had said. She hadn’t ever stopped for a break herself - the occasional cigarette, bottle of water and trip to the bathroom aside, the redhead hadn’t left the garage in three days.

Freshly showered, she met Toretto in the hallway, dressed in her usual while he was dressed in the suit she had provided him.

“I feel like James fucking Bond.” Toretto grumbled, as Blair fussed over his collar, she straightened it before she fastened the small white buttons at its corners. Very detail oriented.

“You better not act like him, I’m running a business here, not living a movie.” Blair tugged on the hem of her high-waisted skirt, watched as the pleats fell straight and continued down the hallway. “Now, you’re here as my personal bodyguard. You do not speak to the bosses, you simply accompany me. Stay on my right flank.” From the pocket of her sleek black trench coat, Blair pulled an equally as sleek Glock, .45 caliber with a loaded clip and proffered the weapon to Toretto as if she had a distaste for the thing. “I trust you know how to use this, right?”

The burly man quickly slid the gun into his lapel pocket, surprised at how well it fit there; she must have had the pocket specially sized for it. Only she would have thought of such a thing, Toretto thought as he adjusted the jacket across his broad shoulders.

“Come now, cheer up. You’re driving for me.” Blair allowed her hand to skitter across those shoulders after she dropped the keys into his chest pocket. Toretto suppressed a shiver at her touch.

“Why would that be any fun at all,” He murmured as she crawled into the passenger seat of the dark Range Rover and began to tap the coordinates of the meeting point into the GPS tacked to its windshield.

“Let’s go.”

Five hours later the convoy (Blair and Toretto in one SUV, Kolya in another, Mikhail drove the semi-truck filled with heavily armored sedans) was on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine. Neutral territory, Blair had said, neither party was as well known in the Ukraine as they were in Russia; which said something about the mob bosses - The Compound wasn’t known anywhere at all.

“Or perhaps it say something about us,” Blair murmured as she pushed the long red silk back from her eyes. “Keep your eyes open, they should be here already.” No sooner had she spoken than a black Mercedes GL550 pulled alongside the Range Rover and slowly began to guide it to an unknown parking lot. Blair seemed to have no qualms with such a sketchy situation - out of the corner of his eye, Toretto thought he saw her shift a lump between her legs, strange as he didn’t remember that she was in possession of a penis.

“Are you packing?” The question was a strangled cry, as if he hadn’t expected it.

“Are you an idiot?” Blair shot back as she sifted again, this time to slide her signature black heels on her feet. “Just remember to hold your tongue. These guys are rough.” Toretto opened his mouth, as if to say that he knew his way around people like this, but her scathing look silenced him once more. “Very good. Remember, just hover and look tough.”

“James fucking Bond,” Toretto growled again, as he followed Blair over the cobblestones of the parking lot. Her tiny strut was dwarfed by Toretto, Mikhail and Kolya, but made no less potent by their size; the woman stood at 5’8” in those intimidating heels, and she knew how to use every inch of her height.

“Nikolai Baronova, how are you, you dirty bastard?” Her alto accent rung across the courtyard - Toretto gave a start, had she just sworn at the hulking giant of a man who sauntered toward them? The girl had a death wish!

“Blair Hundley, you little bitch! Where are my cars?” The man’s voice was slimy, too high of a pitch to be natural or even accepted.

“Where is my money?”

“Ah, Blair, you really think I’ll give you the money first this time?”

“It was worth a try,” The little Brit smiled wryly, and turned to Kolya and Mikhail to order them about with harsh Russian. Toretto gathered that she had asked the cars be taken out of the truck, but remained at Blair’s right just as she had told him, his arms clasped in front of his body like a bouncer.

As Blair motioned to Kolya and Mikhail, signaling them to begin unloading the armored cars from the heavily-weighted truck, one of Nicolai’s men - bodyguards, Toretto had figured - reached into his breast pocket for a cigarette, and then into his lapel pocket for what Dominic had believed to be a lighter.

Too late, Toretto realized it wasn’t.

However, Blair didn’t seem phased by the presence of the gun, the only notice she seemed to take of the black metal was the raising of one eyebrow. Upon a closer inspection, though, Toretto noticed the tips of the thumb and forefinger of her right hand were pressed tightly together, her nail nearly cutting the skin of her finger. It was all he could do to resist reaching for his own piece when faced with a man with a gun in his face - Toretto didn’t take kindly to getting shot any more than the next guy, he would rather have been the one holding the gun if anyone was.

“What’s the meaning of this, Baronova?” Her voice was cold, and punctuated by silence and the sound of heavy tires crushing the feeble paving stones of the parking lot. Mikhail and Kolya were smart enough to notice the gun and Blair’s stiffened stance and would stop unloading the cars, Toretto hoped for their sake they were. What had Blair been thinking, bringing four into a group of at least five? Did she really think that they weren’t going to bring enough drivers for the cars she had brought plus a few extra for security?

Her face a mask, Blair pondered how long it would take her to reach up her skirt and pull out her piece if Toretto didn’t thaw out and draw his own weapon. The Russians weren’t that stupid, the would definitely notice she wasn’t trying to invite them to her bedroom when she began sticking her hands between her legs, so she would have to persevere.

“We don’t have any money these days, dear Miss Hundley. The market for us here has all but gone south.”

“The market for what, Nikolai? What exactly is the market of the mafia?” She crossed her arms under her breasts as Kolya and Mikhail returned to join Toretto in hovering just behind her short frame, her face hard. Silently, Blair thanked God she had taught the pair so well - they had only gotten one car off the trailer when the gun was pulled and secured the truck once more before they joined her. The four of them could easily get all of her assets out of this damned parking lot if the need be. That was, if none of the four of them were wounded. “I don’t work for free. Did you expect me to?”

Toretto’s brows knit together at the big man’s silence, and slowly - taking his cue from Kolya - reached into the lapel pocket of the suit, his hands gripping the rough handle of the gun as he slowly pulled it from the back material, clasping it in two hands. Kolya and Mikhail were both fixed on the Nikolai character, and accordingly, Toretto focused his sights on the only man with a gun.

“I need the cars, Blair.”

“I need the money, Baronova.”

The man with the gun managed two shots - one which found center mass and one which went wide - before Toretto hit him between the eyes. Coldly, he moved in front of Blair as she crumpled to the ground and managed to get three more shots off, all of which found some sort of limb and two of which were mortal before Nikolai hit the ground, riddled with Kolya’s bullets. Apparently, Mikhail had taken the same route as Toretto, buying the burly American time to scoop up Blair’s frail form.

As Mikhail changed clips to cover the escape, Toretto managed a shout of direction.

“Leave the Jag, take the truck and the SUV, let’s move!”

He unceremoniously threw Blair in the backseat of the Range Rover - the burly man knew she was still breathing, but not much else about her condition - and held the pedal to the floor until they were on the border of the Ukraine and Russia.