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all?”
“I managed to grab Remy’s paper,” Thiago said as he patted down his
pockets.
“Paper?” Carl repeated questioningly.
“Yeah, he… he wrote the Archer’s transmission down,” Thiago mumbled as
he pulled the sheet of paper out of his back pocket. Nikolaus looked at it curiously.
The pad was gone, as if Thiago had ripped it away in his haste to leave the burning structure, and it was just a single charred sheet now. But it was certainly still legible.
“It’ll do,” Nikolaus murmured as he watched Thiago fold it carefully and
place it in the front pocket of Remy’s flannel shirt. “Not like the computers were giving us much anyway.”
“What else? With the fire? No one heard anything? Saw anything? Thiago?
You were on watch.”
“To be honest with you, I wasn’t all that alert,” Thiago said to Carl,
somewhat testily. “Between the God-awful sounds you two were making and talking
with Remy…,” he shook his head and rubbed his hand over his eyes irritably.
“Besides, Nikolaus was with me most of the time. We didn’t hear anything.”
Brandt turned to look at Nikolaus, and he tried desperately not to back away
from him in alarm.
“What about you, Gizmo?” Brandt asked in a reasonably normal voice.
“What’s ‘for the most part’ mean?”
“I, uh… well… I tried to get some sleep after… after, uh….”
“He was gone for roughly thirty minutes after Remy called out,” Thiago
supplied, being careful not to meet Shawn’s eyes. “I assume you both heard it?”
Brandt and Carl both nodded, and Nikolaus was relieved to be out of the
rather dangerous spotlight once more.
“About that,” Carl said as he looked down at Shawn. Nikolaus saw the same
look cross the assassin’s face as he had seen before, one of pity and regret. Nikolaus could tell that Carl didn’t want to ask Shawn what he was about to ask. He didn’t want to cause Shawn any pain as Remy lay unconscious in his arms, and Nikolaus
liked the man all the more for it.
“I would never hurt him,” Shawn mumbled as he continued to rock back and
forth slightly and began to speak softly into Remy’s ear. The rocking was almost
imperceptible, it was so slight, but it worried Nikolaus all the same. Was it just a nervous habit or was it a nervous breakdown?
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They all stared at Shawn for what seemed like forever, each of them
undoubtedly wondering about his sanity. They had all they could handle with Brandt being half off his rocker, if they lost Remy and Shawn went mad because of it, they were as good as dead.
The Organization did not tolerate failure in any form, and Nikolaus thought
of the repercussions for a setback such as their safe house being compromised less than a week into the mission. He looked up and into Thiago’s intense gaze, and he knew that the older man was thinking the same thing from the look in his odd blue eyes. Just the thought of what would be done to them if they failed so miserably made Nikolaus’s blood run cold.
XXIV.
BRANDT catalogued what he’d learned during the night as he picked through the
charred remains of the cabin in the early morning light. The fire had burned fast and hard, just like Brandt liked it, and he’d thoroughly enjoyed watching it burn down to nothing as the sun rose over the tree tops.
He kicked aside the burnt corpse of a door and bent over to examine the
ashes beneath it. He’d not yet found the device that was responsible, but he hadn’t expected to just yet. He was still in the outer room, after all. The door appeared to be the washroom door. It was thicker than the others, and Brandt thought that its being at the end of the hall, at least a full ten meters away from its original location, was even more evidence that the bomb had been behind the toilet.
He continued slowly picking his way through, and finally he found what he
was after. To the untrained eye, it would probably have looked like any other debris after such an explosion, but to Brandt it looked like pay dirt.
“Clever bastard,” he murmured as he knelt to pick up what remained of the
corrugated steel pipe. It was the thinnest pipe you could get, and therefore gave off the biggest blast. It had been placed amongst the plumbing as far as Brandt could tell, and it would have passed unnoticed in a brief inspection of the room. Attached to it were the shattered remains of an old-fashioned pocket watch.
He cradled his find in his arms and picked his way back out to the vehicles
where the others milled about, waiting for him. They’d transferred Remy to the back of one of the Land Rovers, and now Shawn sat in the storage compartment with the
younger man’s head in his lap. The others paced back and forth in front of the tailgate like uneasy guard dogs. The whole scene struck Brandt as wildly funny.
“I’ve found the timing device,” he announced as he walked up to them. They
all turned to look at him expectantly. “Old time pocket watch. No remote on it from what I can see. The way the timer works,” he told them as he held up the remains of the pocket watch, “you attach one wire to the hour hand, another wire to the minute hand, and boom when they connect. It can’t be set for more than twelve hours,” he explained. “Want my Big Bang Theory? Whoever blew this bastard was here with
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us,” he concluded grimly, not wanting to admit that one of them could have done it.
Probably had done it.
He hated harboring the suspicions he had voiced to Carl, but they were there
all the same. Now, though… Remy wouldn’t have set this bomb and then knowingly
stood in its path like he had. Would he? Brandt could think of three plausible
explanations.
One; his suspicion that Remy was working for the Archer had been wrong.
God, how he hoped he’d been wrong.
Two; Remy had mistimed the device. The fact that his bedroom, where
Shawn had just happened to be when the bomb went off, was even now relatively
unscathed despite the fact that the roof had burned away, was very suspicious. Brandt could conceive of Remy luring Shawn to his room in order to keep him safe, going
out to do whatever he’d been doing to Thiago to deflect suspicion, but then getting caught in the blast because he’d made a mistake. He’d been up, and even Thiago had admitted that Remy had surprised him and Nikolaus. There was no telling how long
he’d been up and moving about before he made his presence known.
Or three; Remy hadn’t made a mistake. This was the most frightening
scenario of all, and if Brandt was right then it meant Remy was even more unbalanced than he was, if that were possible. If Remy had set that bomb and then stood in its path with a bull’s eye painted on his fucking ass, trusting in the fates that he wouldn’t be killed just to deflect suspicion from himself, then he was crazy as hell. And smart.
And dangerous. And downright fucking scary.
A bomb with a broken timer. Though Brandt respected the thinking behind it, and admired the balls required for it, he didn’t like it.
Brandt had never been scared of an opponent before, and he didn’t like the
feeling. He looked at Remy closely, as if he could see into the other man’s soul. But no miraculous insights came. He shook his head and moved away from his suspicions for a moment, trying to get a better angle.
He tried to think of times during the past twelve hours in which any of them
had been alone. But because the bomb had been in the fucking toilet, it made them all suspects merely by location and opportunity.
Unless, o
f course, the bomb had been set by an outsider, which was quite
frankly hard to fathom. No one knew they were here. And anyone who could get past six trained agents and sneak into the bathroom, of all places was… well, nonexistent, really.
Brandt realized he was drifting once more, and he looked down at the
remains of the bomb in his hand. So out of his five suspects, because he knew that he himself hadn’t done it, Brandt had two real suspects. Carl was the only one with
express knowledge of making explosive devices aside from himself, but he was out of the question. Brandt trusted him implicitly, and his reaction to being awakened by the explosion had been genuine. Nikolaus had managed to quietly slip out of the cabin
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only moments before the blast under the guise of having a smoke, miraculously saved from any danger. And then there was Remy.
Brandt sighed. And then, of course, there was the possibility that Shawn had
gotten up as soon as Remy had left him, and that would also explain why the room
which he’d occupied had been spared, as well as why the fuck he’d been standing in the woods with a gun in his hand. Of course, if he’d been trying to kill them all, he’d have taken the gun and shot them as they came around the corner. They never would have known what hit them.
Brandt shivered and shook his head. No. He trusted Shawn. He trusted him
with the same certainty that he now trusted Carl. They were both out of the question.
Thiago had the same opportunity as the rest of them and, as a Class One
agent, possessed the knowledge to make a pipe bomb, but for some reason Brandt
believed him when he said he’d done nothing all night but walk the perimeter. In
fact….
“Thiago, is it possible that someone could have entered the cabin when you
were on rounds?”
Thiago blinked at him. “I saw no signs. But yes. Like I said, I thought we
were safe. I was going through the motions, really, and I can’t be everywhere at once, now can I?”
“Well, fuck,” Brandt whispered. All that rational thinking had to be thrown
out the window. This was why he liked irrational thinking so much better. It took less effort and the conclusions you came to were harder to refute.
XXV.
REMY was struggling with consciousness. He didn’t want to be conscious. He didn’t want to be cold and in pain. He quite liked the comfort of the dark and he would have preferred to stay unconscious, thank you very much.
But it was not to be. His face was wet and very cold, and there was a steady,
pleasant rumbling in his ear that slowly brought him back to the land of the waking.
There was also a fiery pain in his thigh, and it was this pain that finally brought him around.
“I think he’s coming to,” Remy heard a voice say.
“This looks bad, Shawn. We have to–”
“He’s seen worse,” Shawn’s wonderfully familiar voice rumbled into his ear.
Remy opened his eyes with difficulty and looked up to see all five of his
companions staring down at him. It would have been comical if he hadn’t hurt so
badly.
“Cold,” he managed to croak. Shawn pulled him closer, and Remy realized
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that Shawn was holding his head and shoulders in his lap like you would someone
who you thought was about to die. Well, fuck that. Remy started to struggle to
remove himself from Shawn’s grip, but Shawn held him firmly around his chest and
whispered soothing words into his ear.
“It’s all right, lad. You’re just fine,” he said, seeming to sense why Remy
was panicking. “I’m just trying to keep you warm, lad. Stop struggling.”
Remy did as he was ordered.
Thiago sat with difficulty in the cramped space beside him and Carl knelt at
his knee. He untied a leather belt from around Remy’s thigh and checked the wound.
Remy uttered a pitiful cry of pain as the blood rushed back to the wound. The belt was hastily tied tightly around his leg once more, and Carl looked at him
apologetically. Remy tried to smile at him, but he thought that it possibly came out as more of a grimace.
“What happened?” he asked in a horribly hoarse voice.
“Big bang,” Brandt answered as he paced restlessly back and forth, in and
out of Remy’s limited vision.
“Is everyone okay?” Remy asked, not thinking that it was a fairly stupid
question as all five of them stared at him.
“Only casualties were the electronics and most of our clothes,” Nikolaus said
mournfully as he settled in beside Thiago. How many grown men could you fit in the back of a Land Rover? Remy didn’t really care. “Brandt and Shawn managed to
rescue most of it.”
“Shawn,” Remy groaned, remembering the blinding fear he’d felt when he’d
thought Shawn was in danger.
“I’m here, lad.”
“Bastard.”
“I know, lad,” Shawn said with a laugh that sounded oddly like a sob. “I
know.”
“Well… what now?” Nikolaus asked after several minutes of silence.
“We have to get him some sort of medical attention,” Thiago said. “This
bleeding has to be stopped. And disinfected. We can’t go to a hospital. Maybe a vet or….”
Remy snorted despite the pain he was in. “A vet… where’s my sheep
blanket?” he slurred with an amused look at Carl and Brandt. He saw them both smile affectionately, and Shawn’s arms tightened around him once more.
“You’ll have to get well soon then, if you plan on romping around in that
blanket,” Carl said softly as Brandt walked around to the driver’s side of the Rover and got in.
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“What do we do with the other vehicles?”
Remy opened his eyes again and looked at Nikolaus. “We should separate,”
he said in a hoarse voice. He cleared his throat, trying to recover his voice, but when he continued to speak it was no better. “Can you ride my bike?”
“Ja.”
“Keys are in the bag. Be careful with her,” Remy murmured as Nikolaus
squeezed his foot and then slid out of the back of the Rover. Remy looked up at
Thiago, who was hovering over him, and then at Shawn, who was holding him so
tightly that Remy almost couldn’t breathe.
“Carl, you and Thiago take the truck. We may end up needing it,” Shawn
ordered in a soft voice. “We’re going for speed, not stealth, so don’t worry about being seen.”
They both nodded, and Thiago let his fingers brush Remy’s as he slid out.
“You all right back there?” Brandt asked as he turned around to peer over the
seats. Carl closed the back door and Shawn answered affirmatively as he ran his hand over Remy’s forehead and threaded his fingers through his hair.
“Thought I’d lost you,” he said softly as Brandt cranked the Rover up.
“Same here, Beignet,” Remy muttered as the fingers in his hair threatened to
put him back to sleep.
“Where to, Beignet?” Brandt asked with a little smirk.
Shawn gave him instructions to find the nearest no-tell motel he could as he
rocked Remy slowly back and forth, and Remy couldn’t have really cared what they
did next, so long as Shawn never let go of him.
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PART TWO: THREE ROADS
I.
THIAGO sat by Remy’s bed and stared blankly at the cheap bur
gundy comforter as
he thought over their situation. It had been roughly two weeks since their safe house was compromised, and they’d traveled what Thiago estimated to be about 700 miles
since that morning. They’d finally gone to ground in the city of Sioux Falls, roughly fifty miles from their original rendezvous point.
They weren’t certain who was after them or how they had been tracked in
the first place, but after the shock of the fire had worn off, they’d realized that they needed to move, often and fast.
It had been difficult, but they’d managed to get Remy to a backwoods
veterinarian, who’d looked him over and pronounced that he would ‘probably live.’
He’d patched him up, given them illegal painkillers and antibiotics for the fever that was even now tearing through the young man’s body, and taken their money with a
promise to keep the incident to himself. It had taken everything in Thiago and Carl’s considerable combined power to convince Brandt that they didn’t need to kill the
man.
Then they’d continued on, bouncing from one little town to another, trying to
lose themselves in a city of fairly decent size. Six men of their sort traveling together didn’t really blend in well, and they’d been forced to continue moving even though they risked Remy’s health and life by doing so.
Now they were holed up in their fifth motel of the week, and Thiago was on
deathwatch. He hated to think of the duty of sitting up with Remy as deathwatch, but that was what it was, regardless of how well Remy was doing now. The watch wasn’t necessarily to sit up with Remy in case he died or anything, but to sit up with him and smother him if he started making too much noise. His body was battling back to
health at a remarkable speed, but the fever was what worried Thiago. It made Remy a little on the delirious side, and the last thing they needed was to have him call out in the middle of the night and compromise their position. Again.
But tonight it looked like the fever was breaking. Remy had been restless
and sweating and just downright pitiful for the first hour or so of Thiago’s watch, but now he was calm and quiet, and Thiago absently stroked his hand in what he hoped