Sunderance-Chapter 19:The Devil of Devon -Complete

    He was pretty sure she had been made to write her name down at least six times.

    “All right, Miss Hopps, it looks like everything is in order,” the boar who maintained the impound lot grunted after he examined the pages carefully, twice. “The car is in lot 112 currently. Keys are here.”

    “Thank you, officer,” she said, keeping her tone and her expression neutral.

    Nick thought she was trying to keep it professional because he could see her tail twitching and her ears tremble when she reached up to take the key from the large mammal. She was excited and had been since waking that morning. Energetic and ready to get moving before the sun finished its rise over the city skyline. Having to fill out a barrel of forms had not changed that much and he was pretty sure she would have run through the lot like a kit at an amusement park if she hadn’t been on the clock.

    “Ninety-nine, one hundred,” she counted aloud, causing him to grin as she started to speed up, forcing him to reach out to place a restraining paw on her shoulder.

    “We’ll get there, Carrots,” he murmured, shrugging at the annoyed expression when she turned lavender eyes to him. “As much as they want you to believe otherwise, just because we’re on government property doesn’t mean we’re safe. The prison was proof enough of that.”

    A small sigh was her only reply, though she did slow her pace as the counted down the last dozen lots before reaching the now very familiar chocolate brown car. At this point, he couldn’t have held her back if he’d wanted to. She bolted away from him and towards the car with surprising speed, instantly had the key in the lock, and was yanking the door open before he’d even had a chance to make sure there were no surprises hidden within. Slightly thankful when none arrived, he simply sighed and rubbed the bridge of his muzzle under his sunglasses for a moment before he walked over to lean against the hood while she had a look through the car.

    “How many places can a receipt hide?” she muttered to herself, drawing his gaze. She had taken off her jacket and was currently crawling around on her hands and knees in the back seat. While the view was appreciated, he could hear the annoyance in her voice when she continued. “If someone removed the receipt and didn’t submit it as evidence for the trial, that will make this a lot harder. Nick, let me borrow your stick.”

    That last part had him blinking slightly, one brow quirking high enough to be seen over the frame of his sunglasses as she sat on her knees in the back seat. “My stick?”

    “Your baton, then.” She grumbled in annoyance and stuck her paw towards the door expectantly. A few minutes of searching and the paw that she held out towards him was already dirty. “I can’t reach between the seats here.”

    “Look, cottontail, you can’t just take my baton and jam it between the seats like some… Stick,” he said as an uncommon indignation rise at the very idea of the weapon being used as a hunting tool in some otter’s car. He was about to continue when the cell phone in her coat pocket started to ring. Thankful for the distraction, he frowned to himself and holding the top of the door with one paw leaned forward as she dug out her phone.

    “This is Hopps,” she said, her tone somewhere between friendly and professional. His eyes instantly narrowed, and he leaned closer when she cast a startled look in his direction, her nose twitching twice as her brow creased and she sat up straighter. “What do you mean you have it? Who is this?”

    He didn’t bother to ask who is was. Her sudden confused tension has the fur on the back of his neck standing on end as she held his eyes, her expression shifting between confused to annoyed as she opened her mouth to speak again. When she stopped and closed it, he frowned when she held the phone in his direction.

    “She wants to talk to ‘the mystery fox.’ She says she has the receipt.”

    His frown flatted to a cool expression as he took the phone from her and stood upright as he placed it to his ear. “Speak carefully,” he warned in a low, emotionless tone.

    “And the first words directed at me are so forceful,” the feminine voice on the other end of the call said, causing him to twitch slightly when what he could have easily called a pleased sigh escaped the speaker. “Alright, Hero. I have what you need, and I have what the bunny wants. If you want what I have, you’re going to meet me for a little chat. Just the two of us, sans bunny.”

    “Not going to happen.”

    “Well, that’s not very nice. I just want to have a talk, get to know the fox behind the bunny,” the voice continued, a familiar one that tickled at the back of his mind until it dawned on him who he was talking to. “It’s such a small price to pay for such an important item.”

    “We do need it,” he admitted, though the tone of his voice didn’t change as he spoke, watched Judy as she stepped out of the car and stood facing him with a worriedly curious expression, “but meeting me alone is out of the question.”

    “Look, I’m not trying to trick you or anything,” came the voice, though Nick was only half listening now as Judy waved both arms until he tapped the screen to mute the phone.

    “Who is she? Does she have it? If she wants to meet, then meet her!”

    “It’s a reporter. She wants to meet me alone,” he said dryly as the voice of said reporter droned in his ear. “Which isn’t going to happen because you go where I go, remember?”

    “I need that receipt, Nick,” she said, obviously trying to keep her tone from showing the annoyance in her eyes. It was the same annoyance he had seen when he had refused to let her close the bathroom door her first day in the city. “There has to be somewhere safe you can leave me. With Flash, maybe. He has a bunker, after all.”

    “Flash is an information broker, not a bunny sitter,” he muttered, holding up his paw when she narrowed her eyes at him. “You know what I mean. Plus, a squad of hit-mammals was already sent after you there. It may be under surveillance.”

    “Well, there has to be somewhere you can leave me where you know I’ll be safe. You didn’t become ‘the mystery fox’ without hideouts,” she said, placing her paws on her hips as she stood facing him with a no-bullshit expression on her face. He was pretty sure this was because his reluctantly annoyed expression told her that he knew exactly the place. “Nick, I need that receipt.”

    “I know…” He hesitated and frowned at the phone before he unmuted the line when the female on the other end asked if he was still there. He unmuted it for a moment to say, “Hold on.

    “I know someone. But it’s not somewhere I think you would want to visit,” he explained, dropping the phone to his side. “For any reason.”

    “As long as it keeps me safe while you go get the receipt, I don’t care if it’s in the sewers. You do still work for me, right?” she added, making him roll his eyes skyward. Determined bunny. And a snarky one he found when he lowered his shaded eyes to her again and saw her smug expression. Clearly, she knew she had won already. “So, do you know a place or not?”

    “Yes,” he ground out before he raised the phone to his ear and released a slow sigh. “You have a deal. You name the place, as long as the time is tonight.”

    He had never seen such a satisfied expression on the face of the bunny as the one she gave then, along with a whispered little “Yes,” when she slammed the door of the car closed.

    Nick was wondering how long that expression would linger when she realized where exactly he was going to leave her.

______________________

    The vixen held the cell phone in her snowy white paw for a moment, gently squeezing and relaxing her fingers as she stared at the screen in a mild state of shock. He had agreed to meet her. A time and place had been set, and she was going to meet him that very night. That mysterious, strong, handsome figure that she had been trying to get even a whiff of information on for a week without success was going to be standing in front of her. Where she could question him, try to get a read on him, decide if he was the hero she had portrayed him as in her article.

    Not that it really mattered, she decided as she finally placed the phone on her desk again and rocked back in her deep leather office chair. She would portray him as a hero because it would sell. Her most recent article had sold more hard copies of the newspaper than anyone had seen in years, not to mention the insane number of online views. Everyone wanted to know about the fox and the bunny he followed; a fox and bunny both who were not following the present archetypes for their species in any way. They both made for a good story, considering that Hopps was the only one of her kind in the city. But she had her own reasons for wanting to know more about the Todd, not all of them purely professional. Not all of them pure in the slightest, as a matter of fact.

    “You should be careful,” came a voice, one that didn’t surprise her out of her thoughts just as they had started to turn lustful. It simply made her focus on the similarly white-furred male who stood at her office door, one of his paws resting on her door frame. The powder blue suit and dark tie that he always wore in the office was lacking the jacket at the moment, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. Sharp eyes over a dark nose and untrimmed whiskers made him a pleasant enough specimen to look at, though she considered herself too far out of his league to do more than look. The expression on his pleasant face was one of calm concern. “You don’t know anything about him.”

    “You shouldn’t eavesdrop, boss,” she muttered, sniffing slightly as she plucked her phone from her desk again and grabbed her purse. She would need to change clothes. Something more appealing to a spectacular male, rather than the typical day clothes she wore to titillate her sources. “It’s not polite.”

    “Yeah, well your name might be on this particular door, but my name is on the building,” he said, turning to allow her to pass when she slipped through the door. He was a news mammal, after all. He wasn’t in the habit of standing in the way of a story. “Just be careful. We already know he’s killed at least one mammal and there are some people you don’t want to hold out on. You can call him a hero on paper, but don’t expect to be treated like a damsel when you have what he needs and refuse to give it. And I’m not talking about…”

    “Yes, Andy,” she said, rolling her eye skyward for a moment as she paused and turned to face him. “I just want a look at him. I’m not going to push him any further than he’s willing to go. He’ll get what he wants tonight.”

    He looked less than convinced. Maybe because she hadn’t been able to keep the sultry little grin from spreading over her muzzle, though he replied with a nod before she turned and made her way to the elevator.

    “Watch your tail,” she heard him say as she pushed the button to take her down, turning as the doors started to close, “but get me a story.”

    Her sultry smile turned more than a little predatory when the doors closed between them.