“I don’t know,” Shawn murmured as his eyes flickered toward the queue of
people exiting the plane. “I don’t know what we’re doing,” he admitted softly as his startling green eyes turned back to look into Brandt’s.
“And Remy,” Brandt whispered breathlessly, not certain whether it was a
question, an accusation, or simply a statement, and not certain what the point of saying it was.
“I know. I… I just don’t know what…,” Shawn said, his voice lowering with
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every word until he tapered off with a frustrated sigh. Brandt wasn’t sure why, but Shawn’s obvious confusion made him feel better about his own. Brandt couldn’t help himself. He pulled Shawn’s face towards him once more and kissed him passionately, heedless of the few passengers still awaiting their turns to disembark.
“We’ll figure it out together then,” Brandt murmured against Shawn’s lips.
“We’d best go now, though.”
Shawn nodded and they gathered their few belongings and made their way
down the aisle to the exit, their fingers brushing inconspicuously as they moved one after the other.
Brandt was intrigued by Shawn and Remy’s relationship, but he’d never
imagined he would somehow be inserted into it. How was this going to work? Brandt wasn’t a particularly possessive person; he didn’t mind sharing the few things in life that he cared about.
He wondered idly if Remy would share just as easily.
Brandt knew one thing for certain, though; he certainly couldn’t see how he
would manage going back to being solo after this experience.
A soft call from behind them startled Brandt out of his musings, and he
whirled around in alarm. Shawn turned slowly, his face a study of impassivity.
“Trigger!” Brandt exclaimed happily.
Without even thinking, Brandt walked the few steps down the aisle and drew
Carl and Thiago into his arms, actually lifting Thiago off his feet in the process.
Thiago and Carl laughed happily and returned his embrace as best they could in the narrow aisle.
“Lads.”
They all turned, grinning, to look at Shawn, who stood at the entrance
grinning back at them. He nodded his head and they all followed him obediently,
chittering excitedly about their unexpected reunion like school children on an outing.
Brandt hadn’t realized just how much he had missed the other two men, and
he kept an arm around both of them just to make sure they didn’t disappear on him as they walked through the airport terminal. They had roughly twelve hours before they were to rendezvous with the other two, and they all seemed to be in agreement that the best thing to do would be to get a hotel room and some much needed rest.
“I can’t believe we were on the same flight all that time,” Carl said he
inserted his card key into the door of one of the two rooms they had paid for. “Were you the ones making all that racket in the loo?”
“Not us,” Shawn laughed. “Imagine trying to move about with the two of us
in there,” he said, indicating Brandt and himself with a flick of his wrist as he unlocked the other room.
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“True that,” Carl said in amusement. He turned to Brandt with a spark in his
dark hazel eyes and winked. Brandt grinned happily, his previous mental ramblings all but forgotten as he reveled in the company of the only men in the world he really considered his friends.
Yes, life was good.
The next day, they arrived at the airport roughly an hour before they were
supposed to meet the others, and Brandt immediately began scanning the busy
terminal. His height gave him a bit of an advantage in that area, and he listened half-heartedly to the light conversation of the others as he concentrated on trying to spot the two familiar forms. He zeroed back in when Thiago’s voice pinged one of
Brandt's internal alarms.
“Speaking of, what’s the time?” Thiago asked in concern. It was then and
only then that Brandt’s elation over being reunited began to ebb and the prickling of foreboding began to attack the back of his neck.
“They are a bit tardy, aren’t they?” Shawn mumbled as he looked at his
watch. “They have thirty minutes, though. Remy’s nothing if not punctual. He said 1600, he meant 1600.”
As soon as Shawn said it, Brandt caught sight of Nikolaus walking slowly
through the terminal, looking just a bit lost.
“There they are,” Brandt said happily. He strolled through the little pub and
out into the main terminal, the others trailing behind him, and as Nikolaus turned to look at him in surprise he simply picked the smaller man up and squeezed him as hard as he could. “Gizmo!” he beamed in greeting.
As the others came up to join them, they each took their turn in picking up
the unfortunate little German and hugging him. All the while Nikolaus was trying
desperately to speak.
“Where’s Remy?” Shawn asked with a grin once he had set Nikolaus down.
“You didn’t walk past food, did you? That snags him every time. If he catches sight of a Tim Tam he’s done for.”
They laughed happily and waited for Nikolaus’s answer, but as soon as they
actually looked at the younger man, it was obvious that something had gone wrong.
He could barely look Shawn in the eye, and he was looking at the rest of them
pleadingly, as if he wanted them to be able to read his mind and save him from having to say the words.
“Dios mio,” Thiago breathed quietly.
“He’s gone,” Nikolaus told them brokenly. “They got him,” he said after
taking a deep breath.
“Who? What do you mean ‘got him’?” Shawn asked urgently, and Brandt
placed a steadying hand on the older man’s shoulder.
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“It was McTiernan.”
“Oh, God,” Carl murmured.
“Fuck,” Brandt said simply, watching the pain seep into Shawn’s features
and struggling to keep from shouting out in frustration. They had lost one of their own. Carl looked just as heartbroken as Brandt was suddenly feeling, and Thiago
stood with a stony expression as his jaw clenched repeatedly.
“When?” Shawn asked with difficulty.
“Four days ago. We were in Missouri. It was McTiernan,” Nikolaus repeated
miserably.
“Is he– did you see it?”
“They took him alive,” Nikolaus said as Brandt pulled him close and hugged
him comfortingly. Nikolaus buried his face against Brandt’s chest and Shawn stared at him disbelievingly.
“We have twenty-four minutes,” Carl pointed out hopefully. “He could have
escaped.”
Thiago was nodding in agreement, and Brandt looked to Shawn hopefully.
“We’ll wait ’til four,” Shawn ordered in a hoarse voice. “If he’s not here by
then, he’s not coming.”
They returned to their table, and Brandt kept a comforting hand on Shawn’s
back as they all stared morosely at the tabletop. Nikolaus told them about how
McTiernan chased he and Remy and finally cornered them, and how Remy sacrificed
himself to send Nikolaus on his way.
“Stupid bastard,” Thiago murmured as he rubbed his eyes slowly.
Four o’clock came all too quickly, and with it, Shawn’s broken voice
speaking with an eerie finality.
“He’s not coming.”
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PAR
T THREE: THE CAJUN HOUDINI
I.
REMY came to consciousness slowly, his world spinning in a most sickening manner
as the effects of the tranquillizer wore off. He took in his surroundings with chagrin, not quite believing that he’d managed to get himself captured. Well, he’d been
captured before, actually, but never quite so easily.
He was slipping. He briefly wondered how Nikolaus had fared and shook his
head to clear it. He instantly regretted the action. Pain lanced through his eyes and the back of his head and he immediately went limp, trying to slow the pounding flow of blood through his aching brain.
He cleared his parched throat and fought through the pounding headache to
peer out at the sterile white room around him.
“The headache is the worst part, no?” came the familiar voice from
somewhere behind him. Remy acknowledged Sir John McTiernan’s presence with a
slight cock of his head and a long-suffering sigh. “It feels as if your head is twisting off and trying to float into outer space, does it not?”
“I can’t imagine how you would know,” Remy responded dryly. He cleared
his throat again and squeezed his eyes closed, fighting back the rising nausea.
“Oh, even the best of us get caught here and there,” McTiernan said
cheerfully as the clicks of his shiny black shoes echoed off the plain white walls.
Remy opened his eyes as McTiernan came into his line of vision, and he looked up at him blankly. “The best of us, however, manage to escape once more.”
“I see. Should I be taking notes?” Remy asked innocently. McTiernan smiled
indulgently and shook his head.
“I’ve seen your work, my boy. You should be writing the book, it would
seem.”
“Oh,” Remy responded as his brain finally caught up with his situation. He
knew what he should be doing. He should be milking McTiernan for information even as McTiernan tried to do the same to him. He should stick around until the very last possible moment and gather as much information as he could, and only then should
he be thinking of escape. But Remy was terrified, and all he wanted to do was get the fuck away. He had seen McTiernan’s work, too, and he certainly didn’t want to end up like that.
“You still have a chance to make the right choice, Remy. That’s why you’re
still tied to that chair, you see, instead of hanging from the ceiling,” McTiernan
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informed him as he gestured grandly to the corner of the otherwise bare room, to a complex system of chains and pulleys that made Remy shiver involuntarily.
McTiernan was telling him to choose between the Organization and death, apparently.
Remy’s mind raced trying to consider how to deal with that.
“This is your way of offering an olive branch?” Remy asked acidly as he
shrugged his shoulders to indicate the ropes, opting for a delaying tactic. McTiernan shrugged noncommittally.
“I enjoy tying young things like you up and watching them squirm,” he
drawled. “What can I say?”
Remy looked away, choosing to ignore the comment. If he had to use that as
a last resort then he certainly would, but his options were still rather numerous.
“You were marked as dead,” he accused bitterly,
“Yes, I was,” McTiernan said indulgently as he pulled a metal chair in front
of Remy and sat down. “What do you make of that, by the way?”
Remy was a bit thrown off by the question. What did he make of it?
“Well, I would beg to differ, as it were,” Remy finally responded in an eerily
accurate mimicry of McTiernan. This earned a joyous, resonating laugh from his
interrogator. At least one of them was enjoying the ordeal.
“Yes, yes, it would seem that I’m not quite as dead as all that after all,
wouldn’t it?”
“The Organization marked you to throw us off, didn’t they,” Remy asserted
softly. He was grasping at straws, hoping to throw McTiernan off by either hitting the mark or being so completely off that the man would think he’d finally lost it.
His only reaction was an elegantly arched eyebrow.
“I’ve extended the one and only offer the Organization is willing to give
you,” McTiernan told him with a smile. “Go back, make amends for the error of your ways, and continue to help find the Archer.”
“Or?”
“Or die. Quickly, of course. No torture involved. A nice, honorable warrior’s
death,” McTiernan answered dramatically, a trace of irony lingering in his last words.
“Screw that,” Remy murmured, earning another laugh. “You said this was
the Organization’s last offer. Who else are you speaking for, John?”
“No wonder Shawn enjoyed your presence so,” McTiernan said with a fond
smile. “You were always so blunt. Pardon me a moment, won’t you?”
With that, McTiernan rose and went to the door, pressing a button on what
appeared to be an intercom. Remy tensed as the two rent-a-goons from the airport
came through the door and glared at him, waiting for McTiernan to give them orders.
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“These are my associates,” McTiernan said as he walked up to stand in front
of Remy. “No need to know their names. You remember them from Atlanta, I should
think?” He paused to give Remy a chance to answer, but Remy merely stared at him
and so he went on. “They are fresh from the recruiting ranks of the Organization and are so very eager to please.”
Remy watched McTiernan with a slight scowl. He wasn’t sure what the older
man was getting at, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be fun.
“They have been chasing you and your young friend over half of the
continent for me,” McTiernan continued. With that, McTiernan pulled a silenced gun from beneath his ever-present gray coat and aimed it at Remy. Remy looked down the barrel, knowing that these were his last moments and struggling to go out with some form of dignity. In one swift movement, McTiernan turned and put a bullet into the forehead of each of the other two men.
Remy gaped at him.
“How’s that, dear boy? Better?” McTiernan queried in a friendly manner.
Remy continued to gape. “Before you ask; no, I’m not the Archer,” McTiernan
continued with a swipe of his hand as he sat once more. He sat with his legs crossed like a gentleman, the gun sitting atop his knee as he rested his other elbow on the back of the chair. Remy blinked at him. “And no, I don’t know who the Archer is. I’ve
never met him and so I assume, since I am essentially his right hand, that he is
someone I know,” John asserted with a narrowed gaze at Remy.
It took several seconds for Remy’s mind to catch up to the logic, but when it
did, the alarms began to clang around in his head and his eyes widened theatrically.
“You think I’m the Archer?” he asked, his voice a bit higher than he would have liked it to be.
“Possibly,” McTiernan answered enigmatically, his voice the epitome of
nonchalance. “That’s the only reason I can see for him to keep his identity from me, you see. If I know him. And there aren’t many agents whom I have contact with these days.”
“You can’t believe– Shawn is no traitor!” Remy shouted heatedly.
“Ah. He may not be, but you wouldn’t defend a dead man so passionately,
now would you?”
Fuck.
Remy snapped his mouth closed and clenched his jaw in agitation.
McTiernan smiled contente
dly.
“That’s a relief, at least. I can’t tell you how saddened I was when you told
me he had been killed.”
Remy couldn’t be certain, but he was pretty sure McTiernan was being
sincere, at least in this respect.
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“So you’re working for the Archer then,” Remy murmured as he tried to
think his way out of this mess. Being nabbed by the Organization was one thing; you could plead your case and probably be forgiven and reinstated. But being taken by the Archer’s man? By Sir John McTiernan, no less! This was beyond bad.
McTiernan stared back at him, apparently content to let Remy formulate in
peace. Remy worked at the bonds on his wrists discreetly, careful not to let his
muscles tense and give him away.
“I don’t believe Shawn is the Archer,” McTiernan offered finally, almost as
if he were speaking to himself. “He’s much too loyal. Sometimes to the wrong
people, yes?” McTiernan added with a pointed stare at Remy. Remy ceased his
motions and glared back at him. His heart jumped into his throat, and his stomach roiled uncomfortably. He tried to tell himself that it was just the after-effects of the drugs, but he knew what it was. It was guilt.
“I couldn’t possibly know what you mean,” Remy croaked finally.
“Don’t you?” McTiernan asked in amusement. “The two of you were fairly
exclusive, were you not? It doesn’t do to hold to secrets, my boy.”
“What are you now, an expert on trust?” Remy snapped. “Fucking spook,”
he muttered in annoyance. “Secrets are our lives, John! You know that!”
“Ah, but do you?”
“What the fuck?” Remy sighed, finally admitting that he couldn’t keep up
with McTiernan’s mind to save his life, which was probably exactly what was
required to manage that particular feat.
“Don’t lose hope,” John encouraged in amusement. “We were doing so well!
Don’t think I don’t know what you and your friend have been up to.” Remy stared at John impassively, praying he wouldn’t show any signs of the surprise he felt. There were so many things McTiernan could be referring to now. “That’s right. It doesn’t take a fool to know that you’ve been less than loyal of late,” McTiernan said with a sparkle in his clear blue eyes.