by Abigail Roux
Remy smiled at him briefly and scooted over to the wall. It was a thin bunk,
regardless of how much he scooted over, and Shawn slid in behind him and held onto him tightly to keep himself from falling over the edge.
“Want to make a pallet on the floor?” Remy asked in a muffled voice even as
he sank into Shawn’s familiar embrace. The exhaustion was overwhelming. He just
wanted to be held for the rest if his days and die happy.
“If I were planning on shagging you, I would,” Shawn said with a little
laugh. “But this suits my purposes just fine for now,” he added as he buried his nose in Remy’s short hair. “Reminds me a bit of Toronto,” he said softly after several long minutes of silence.
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“Yeah,” Remy agreed as his chest tightened painfully.
“Remy–”
“Shawn, don’t. Even if you have finally driven me crazy, I can only be
broken so many times,” Remy said softly. “Doesn’t matter if you love me or not. All that matters is that I can’t imagine life without you, and I won’t let you go back to them.”
“Let me say this before you go all Babbling Cajun on me,” Shawn said
sternly, his breath gusting against the back of Remy’s neck.
Something in his voice made Remy’s breath catch in his throat, and he was
aware of every involuntary twitch of his own body as he rested tensely in Shawn’s arms and waited for him to continue. Shawn held him close and seemed to be
gathering his thoughts, but finally Remy’s patience wore out and he snuggled closer to the other man.
“Just get some rest, non?” he said quietly.
“Fuck it,” Shawn growled in disgust. Remy tried to turn to face him but
Shawn held him tight. “I love you, Remy,” Shawn admitted softly. “I should have told you a long while ago, and meant it. I’m a complete shit for not doing it before this, but I will make it up to you.”
“Shawn–”
“You can’t go back in.”
“But–”
“I’ll do anything, including resorting to dirty tricks, to make sure you stay
with me.”
“Pulling out the dirty tricks threat, huh?” Remy said thoughtfully as a smile
spread over his lips.
“You’ve seen what I can do,” Shawn said with a grin apparent in his voice as
he hugged Remy closer.
Remy nodded, but his smile faded as he thought about what Shawn had just
told him. The more he thought about it, the more disturbed he became. Finally, he squirmed and rolled until he was lying on his sore arm and facing Shawn.
Shawn watched him worriedly, looking self-conscious for perhaps the first
time in Remy’s knowledge.
Remy leaned forward and kissed him chastely. “I love you, Shawn. I do. But
it’s too late for us,” Remy said sadly. “You know I have to do this.
LXII.
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THIAGO waited until Brandt’s easy, steady breathing indicated that the bigger man was asleep, and he moved silently to the door of the sleeping compartment. He’d
expected to have to wait quite a long time, but Brandt’s head hit the pillow and he had been out in minutes.
He hesitated at the door and took several deep breaths to calm himself.
He’d done his best to break away, but the pressure had obviously gotten to
him. He’d hurt Gray. That wasn’t what he was supposed to be. That wasn’t who he
was. He had to go to him and apologize, even if words couldn’t make it right.
He would never be able to make that right.
First, though, he had to take care of this.
He opened the door slowly and listened for footfalls for several long
moments. Hearing nothing over the roar of the train, he stepped out quickly and slid the door closed with a muffled thump.
He had to find a phone. A landline, preferably, but a cell phone would do.
Thiago knew that they had no hope of escaping the Organization, especially now that both sides were after them. It was time to pick the lesser of two evils and beg for mercy. He had to call Thierry St. John and give himself up. Or give himself back, at any rate.
As Thiago prowled through the cars of the train in search of a phone, he
thought back on how this entire fucking mess started. It seemed surreal, even to a man who led the life Thiago led.
The Organization was headed by what was affectionately called the
Committee. Up until about five years ago, Thiago had been blissfully unaware of the Organization’s dual personalities, but now he knew the Committee was split right
down the middle.
Thierry St. John and Sir John McTiernan, who had both proven themselves
to be devious, lying bastards, were the Underground’s representatives on the
Committee. They roped Thiago into this by methods that Thiago still couldn’t quite straighten out, and they kept him in it with threats, promises, and just outright bribery.
Hugh Wallace and Claude Bryce-Johnson represented what Thiago had
come to think of as the clean side of the Organization. The good side. The side he’d signed up to serve when he had been young and idealistic. They were both good men.
Intelligent men. And unfortunately, they were also clueless men, at least as far as the actions of their dark counterparts were concerned.
Eduard Rollins was one mean, scary, war-hardened son of a bitch, and he
oversaw the entire thing. Thiago had wondered at times if Rollins was aware of
Thierry’s machinations, but he’d always been too much of a coward to inquire into it.
It wasn’t exactly like Thiago had access to Rollins, anyway. He couldn’t just stroll into the man’s office and start pointing fingers at his underlings. And besides, if Rollins were aware of it all, then it was probably he who instigated the whole thing in
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the first place, and then Thiago would really be in the shit.
The original plan was simple, but it had taken Thiago a while to finally
figure it all out.
Thierry was planning a coup. He’d been planning it all along, and Thiago
had simply been his pawn all this time. Thiago knew this. It wasn’t a surprise; he’d known it from the beginning. But it still irked him.
His initial instructions were to do just what Thiago was thought to have been
doing all along; round up agents and turn them or kill them. It was very simple, and Thiago had at first taken them to be traitors, hence the need to off them. Thierry gave him a specific list of agents to take out, but Thiago later discovered they were all clean agents.
That had started his inquiries. He found out about the Underground and the
Black Agents. He found out about the Hunters, and in so doing had begun to wonder what he was doing if the Hunters were charged with the job of taking out traitors and moles.
Then it hit him. Thierry was trying to turn the entire Organization. He was
trying to take control of what was likely the most powerful security agency on earth.
He was instigating an Organizational Civil War, and he was weakening the other side agent by agent in preparation. Not only that, but he was using Thiago and his recruits to do it.
To subvert Thierry’s plan, Thiago ordered his men to simply fake the deaths
of the agents they marked. He was no cold-blooded killer, and these were his
brothers-in-arms, most of them not even lead agents, but simply technical support.
Thierry knew who the real strength behind the Organization was, and he’d
aimed for the jugular. But Thiago threw quite the wrench in Thierry’s plans, and
>
when Thiago was ordered to join this crew in order to stop his own detection, only to have the cabin blown up by an unknown who, at the time, he’d been sure was one of his own men, Thiago knew he’d had enough.
He stopped communicating with the Archer ranks. He stopped reporting in to
Thierry. He simply existed as one of the Six, and until the secrets were spilled, he was content for the first time in half a decade. Now, though, he had no choice but to go crawling back. It was the only way to save all their lives.
Thiago clenched his fists in anger and frustration as he finally spotted a
courtesy phone in the now empty lounge car. It was mid-afternoon, and apparently it was a downtime for the food service people. The server washing down seats paid him no mind, and so he stepped up to the phone and dialed the number from memory.
Thierry answered on the first ring, but Thiago had to attempt speech three
times before he was able to speak.
“St. John,” he said in a hoarse, angry voice.
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“Archer? Bloody hell!” Several obscenities and a flurry of shouted
instructions to someone in the background followed, and Thierry’s voice came back on the line in an excited rush of words. “Location and status!” he demanded. “Oh, fuck that shit! Where the fuck are–”
“Thierry, shut up and listen,” Thiago said through gritted teeth. “There are
seven primaries. Location is in transit, heading toward D.C. from New Orleans via train. We have Hunters on our tail, Thierry, you have to call them off.”
“General opinion around here is that you’ve all turned on us, Thiago,”
Thierry said in a hushed, agitated voice as papers shuffled and what sounded like a cup full of pens scattered across a hard surface.
“I haven’t,” Thiago answered testily, lying through his teeth and clenching
his fist in anger once more. “Things got a bit tight around here, I had to go under.”
“That last message you left us indicated that you had indeed turned,” Thierry
argued in a calmer voice. “Though it was a bit out of character. Care to translate it?”
“I didn’t send that message, Thierry,” Thiago said worriedly. Quite frankly
he’d forgotten about the damn thing. “Someone in the ranks has found us both out. I think it could possibly be Fletcher Barclay.”
“Why do you say that?” Thierry asked with interest as something clicked and
whirred in the background.
“Because he knew I was one of the Six,” Thiago said with a frustrated sigh.
“How in the hell–”
“I told him as a backup,” Thiago growled. “In case something happened to
me, he was to take the lead. He must have figured it was an opportunity for career advancement and tried to take me out,” Thiago reasoned, knowing damn well it
wasn’t the truth. Fletcher was certainly after him, but it wasn’t for career
advancement. Fletcher had figured Thierry out, too, and in all likelihood he thought Thiago was in on it. It tore Thiago apart to be the adversary of the good guy.
“Someone took a shot at us in Sydney and missed,” Thiago continued resignedly.
“Remy and Nikolaus tried to find him in Scotland with no luck, and by all other
accounts, he’s completely off the reservation. It has to be him.”
“He’s not next in line, though, why didn’t you tell Kincaid?”
“Te voy a romper el orto, Thierry, I’m a little short on time here!” Thiago hissed as he looked around warily in search of Carl or Gray doing their rounds. “Gray wants no part of heading this shit up. Just find Barclay. Call off the Hunters. Have a whole shitload of agents waiting in D.C. with orders not to fucking kill us, and end this goddamned clusterfuck of a mission before anyone else dies!”
“Will do,” Thierry said with urgency, and Thiago could tell that the man was
giving orders even as he slammed the phone down angrily. Thierry was an evil
bastard, but at least he was efficient. And he took care of his men.
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Thiago was practically shaking with frustration. The seven of them wouldn’t
escape the clutches of the Organization this time. They would be lucky to escape with their lives.
He closed his eyes and shook his head sadly, and as he opened them to turn
and go find Gray to beg for forgiveness, the only things he saw were the courtesy phonebook being swung toward his head, and the angry snarl on the face of the man wielding it.
LXIII.
CARL swung through the first blow and winced at the heavy thwack of the
phonebook hitting the side of Thiago’s face, but he used the momentum of the first blow to swing the thing again in a backhanded uppercut phonebook smackdown, and
he caught Thiago under the chin with the second blow. The man went down like a
load of bricks, and Carl briefly mused that he would have to patent that move. Death by phonebook.
He immediately dropped the phonebook to land with a heavy thud beside
Thiago’s unmoving body, and he crossed the dining car with the frightening swiftness and agility of a large cat to grab the server before she could even turn to run. He wrapped one arm around her torso, trapping her arms against her as he picked her up off the ground, and he covered her mouth with his other hand as he held her tight against his own body.
“Quit struggling, dear, I don’t want to have to hurt you,” he whispered
threateningly into her ear.
She continued to utter muffled cries for help and kick her legs uselessly, and
Carl used his middle finger to dig into her cheek, right at the tender joint of her jaw, in order to let her know that he was serious. She let loose a muffled cry of pain and went limp obediently.
“There’s a good girl,” Carl whispered soothingly, hoping to hush the girl
without getting any more trouble from her. He had no intention of hurting her, but if she was going to give them away, he’d kill her without a second thought.
Even with the girl motionless and quiet in his arms, Carl still had a problem.
He couldn’t exactly drag Thiago or the girl through the train to their sleeping
compartments, much less both of them. He couldn’t let the girl go now, not by any stretch of the imagination, and he couldn’t simply leave her and Thiago tied up there in the middle of the dining car while he went to the others to tell them about what he had just overheard.
That didn’t include the problem of Thiago himself. He’d betrayed them. Lied
to them. Turned them in and forfeited all of their lives for his own safety.
Fucking bastard.
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“Listen, darling, and listen carefully,” Carl said quietly into the girl’s ear.
She shivered and trembled, but nodded her obedience enthusiastically, even though she must have been extremely frightened. Carl was impressed. “We’re going to walk calmly through this train, together, all the way to my room, and you’re going to be very quiet while we do it, understand?” She nodded again. “One misstep and I’ll snap your neck,” he assured her in a growl.
She nodded vigorously once more, and Carl lowered her carefully until her
feet were touching the ground. As soon as her feet had gained purchase, she stomped on the instep of Carl’s right foot with a muffled shout and jabbed back at his torso with her elbow. He released her instinctively and doubled over as the wind was
temporarily knocked from his lungs, and she ran for the door of the dining car.
It opened as she reached it and she flew into the arms of the man entering,
wrapping her arms around his neck in relief and babbling about Carl’s attack on the
; ‘poor guy on the phone’ and his subsequent attempt to ‘kidnap and rape her.’ She
finished by begging the man to ‘kick the shit out of him, please.’
Gray held the girl in his arms comfortingly and looked down at Carl with a
confused frown. Carl shook his head and straightened back up, rubbing his stomach gingerly. He quite liked this girl; she had spirit, if not really horrible luck.
“Poor girl,” he said to Gray sympathetically. “Shit for luck, really, to run into you as she’s trying to get away from me.”
Gray nodded absently and held the girl tight as her eyes widened in horror
and she tried to wrench away.
“Who have you killed, now?” Gray asked flatly. “Stop struggling, woman,
we won’t hurt you unless you ask for it,” he said testily as he covered her mouth in expectation of a scream.
Carl nodded toward Thiago, who was unmoving on the ground and bleeding
from his mouth where his teeth had probably cut into his tongue.
“I caught him on the phone,” Carl explained as Gray looked at his boss and
lover impassively. “He was speaking to St. John,” Carl muttered as he walked over to the other two and looked down at the girl with a frown. “We had a deal, love,” he growled at her.
“Don’t scare her,” Gray scolded as he held her tightly to him, whether to
comfort or restrain her, Carl didn’t know. “Jesus, you’re as bad as Brandt
sometimes,” he chastised. “Thierry, huh? Then those fucking rumors were true,” Gray muttered as if he was talking to himself. “Goddamn you, Thiago,” he hissed bitterly.
Carl frowned at him and waited for further explanation, but none came. The
girl was beginning to tremble and whimper against Gray’s hand. Carl chewed on the inside of his cheek thoughtfully.
“Let’s take them both with us, then, get them the fuck out of the open,” Carl
said after a few moments of pondering their situation. “You can explain what the fuck
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you’re on about to all of us at the same time.”
“Yeah, everyone will certainly need to know now,” Gray agreed absently.