“That’s why we were asked so many questions when we were debriefed.”
“And that first week?” Remy asked tentatively.
“I didn’t know what they had planned,” Shawn said urgently. He needed
Remy to know that. That first week they had spent together, fighting their way back home, had been the spark that started their relationship. It hadn’t been a lie. Shawn desperately needed Remy to believe that.
Remy stared at him for several long seconds and then nodded. “When did…
do you… fuck,” Remy muttered as he shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck in frustration.
Shawn frowned and waited, unsure of what Remy was trying to ask.
Remy shook his head again and seemed to mentally switch gears. “What was
your objective, exactly?”
“The powers that be suspected a coup,” Shawn started with difficulty.
“Stemming from the raid that I’ve never heard of before today?”
“Yes. I don’t know a lot about it. There were twelve agents involved. Eight
were killed in the Purge. I don’t know what they found or why it caused such a fuss.
But something in your files flagged you as a danger. They put me on you so that
when– if you turned….”
“I would trust you enough to take you with me,” Remy finished as he looked
away and sighed heavily.
“After four years of vouching for you, I… that’s why I was so fucking angry
when I found you’d actually done it, Remy,” Shawn said with difficulty as he leaned forward and took Remy’s face in his hands.
“I’m sorry I let you down, Shawn,” Remy said flatly. His eyes were black
and emotionless and Shawn could almost feel the other man’s spirit simply seeping away. “I’m sorry I turned like I did.”
“You didn’t let anyone down,” Shawn said sternly. He pulled on Remy
slightly and Remy crawled forward obediently and allowed Shawn to guide him until he was straddling Shawn’s hips. “I never needed to… I always wanted you,” he said softly as Remy looked at him blankly. “I….”
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“Okay. No more apologies, non?” Remy said as he braced himself with his
hands on Shawn’s shoulders. “I’m tired of saying I’m sorry. And I’m tired of hearing it, too. We both fucked up beyond belief, and we both blew our tops with our
reactions. I just need… I need to know one thing, okay?”
“What’s that?” Shawn whispered as he looked up into Remy’s eyes and a
little seed of dread formed in the pit of his stomach.
“Did you ever mean it?” Remy asked after a long silence. “Any of it? Did
you ever mean any of the things you said?”
“I meant some of them,” Shawn said hoarsely as guilt forced his entire body
to flush. He could remember the only time he’d told the other man he loved him. He hadn’t meant it then, not completely.
“When you told me you loved me?” Remy asked as he sat back and looked
at Shawn patiently, seemingly able to read his mind.
Shawn opened his mouth to lie. He would lie and tell Remy that he had
meant it then, because even though he hadn’t meant it then, he knew that he meant it now. What difference did a couple of years and a belated realization make?
Remy saw the look in his eyes, though, and he nodded tightly and clenched
his jaw as he looked down at Shawn’s chest.
“That’s okay,” he said quietly.
Shawn’s words caught in his throat, and he tried desperately to say
something, anything to take that look off Remy’s face. That hard, vacant mask he
pulled on when he didn’t want to feel. Shawn had seen it so many times before, just before a kill.
“Are you still in love with Brandt?” Remy asked in a casual voice as he slid
off Shawn’s body and sprawled back onto the lower half of the bed.
Shawn grabbed for him and missed. “No,” he croaked as he leaned forward
to take hold of the other man once more. Remy batted his hands away and waited for an answer. “I never was. I was wrong. We were wrong,” Shawn added, wondering if he should tell Remy about the various talks he and Brandt had gone through while
Brandt had tried to convince him not to kill himself. “Remy, please–”
“I don’t mind that you lied, Shawn,” Remy said in an even voice. “I know
you care about me, that’s enough for me.”
“But–”
Remy sat up quickly and looked at Shawn with a gleam in his eye that
Shawn had rarely seen aimed at him. “Can I trust you?” the man asked breathlessly.
“Yes,” Shawn breathed immediately.
“You’re no longer a Hunter? You’re no longer an O.R.G. agent?”
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“No,” Shawn answered urgently as he shook his head.
“You’re one of us?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s all I need to know,” Remy said flippantly. He sounded casual,
but there was a hard glint in his eye that made Shawn shiver.
“What… what happened to you, Dixie?” Shawn asked in something close to
dread. It was the same man he’d known sitting before him, but he was somehow
different. Harder. Definitely more unstable.
Remy blinked several times and then nodded. “I think I blew a fuse. I
think… I think you finally drove me crazy.”
“Insane people don’t think they’re insane,” Shawn said before completely
thinking through the wisdom of saying the words.
“That’s not true. Brandt’s crazy as hell and he knows it. I think… I think I
may be, too,” Remy said with a tinge of desperation.
“Why?” Shawn asked in fascination.
“Because I don’t want to run. Thiago will have us run, but I want to fight
them, Shawn,” he hissed, his eyes flashing and his accent thick and rich. “I want to take them on and take them down,” Remy growled as his eyes unfocused and he
clenched his fist in the bedcovers.
Shawn’s heart fluttered slightly and he sucked in a breath of air. Take on the
Organization? Just the seven of them, and whoever else Thiago had up his sleeve? It was suicidal. It couldn’t be done.
“You’re right,” he breathed as he leaned unconsciously away from the
younger man and propped against the headboard once more. “I think you’ve fucking
cracked.”
XLI.
NIKOLAUS was more nervous now than he ever had been before. If Remy had
discovered he’d been the one to create the Purge virus just by process of elimination, what else did Remy know? Did he know what Nikolaus had been doing this whole
time? Surely not. Surely, he would have called Nikolaus out the moment he found
out.
Nikolaus took care of what Thiago sent him out to do as quickly as possible;
buying the basic travel supplies they’d need for what was essentially a six-day train ride. After taking care of that with his usual efficiency, he practically ran to the Café du Monde to give him enough time to fill his contact from the BND in on what was
happening.
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There were advantages to being seen as the weak link in a crew. You weren’t
subject to the normal suspicions, and you were given leeway where others weren’t.
Nikolaus had used this to his full advantage so far. He felt certain that Thiago would not have let any of the others do this on their own, no matter how much he trusted them. Nikolaus skidded to a halt in front of Jackson Square and shook his head
sadly.
He stared across the street into the outdoor eating area of the café until he caught sight of the man he was looking for.
The BND, or Bundesnachrichtendienst, was a German foreign intelligence
agency. Much like the CIA or MI6, its job was to protect German interests from
threats overseas. Before Nikolaus had been recruited by the Organization, he’d
worked in the Technische Unterstützung, the technical support section of the BND.
He still did.
Nikolaus stood and watched the other man from the cover of the crowded
pavement. He spotted four others in and around the café, and he smiled ruefully to himself. Yes, he was a computer nerd. Yes, he was smaller in stature than the others.
But that was the essence of his cover; seemingly weak and unsuspecting,
inexperienced and naïve. That was how he appeared. Highly trained and with a
specific mission from the BND; that was what he was. He knew that Gray suspected
him, but the others had never done. Now, even if they believed what Gray had to say, it was too late for them to counter his actions. Wasn’t it?
Nikolaus sighed heavily. He hadn’t expected to grow so fond of his
companions. He didn’t want them to be hurt. Was there another way around this? His contact wasn’t an O.R.G. man, and therefore Nikolaus had a little leeway. He shifted uneasily and took a deep breath to steady himself.
The Organization wasn’t helmed by idiots, and they were well aware of far
more than even Nikolaus knew. Sometimes, Nikolaus wondered if they had known all
along that Thiago was the Archer. If they had known, then they were playing a stupid, dangerous game. Thiago struck Nikolaus as being slightly flustered right now, and maybe even a little lacking in organizational skills, but he was a dangerous man, nonetheless. Regardless of whether or not they knew Thiago’s specific identity, the Organization certainly knew there was a threat, and they knew this group of six– or seven– posed the greatest threat of them all.
They knew because they’d engineered it that way.
From what Nikolaus had been told before the start of the mission, Thiago
and Brandt were both known to have turned, and though there had never been enough evidence gathered to say for certain, Remy was suspected as well. Shawn was under suspicion simply because of his relationship with Remy and his constant insistence that Remy was clean, though it was now clear to Nikolaus that Shawn should never
have been here. The man was loyal, and Nikolaus thought that if they got into trouble, Shawn’s loyalty would sway back to the Organization.
Love versus twenty years of service was a tough call, but Shawn liked order.
Loving Remy was anything but ordered.
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Nikolaus had been placed with the group by a joint O.R.G./MI6/BND
decision, and his sole purpose was to observe the others and report back. His reports would be the deciding factor on when punishments started raining down. So far, he’d been able to report that the Six were simply attempting to figure out who or what was trying to kill them, and they’d been left to their own devices. What he was hearing now was rebellion and subversion and taking down the Organization. That couldn’t
happen, and though Nikolaus was painfully aware of the hopelessness of their
situation, he couldn’t allow six desperate men to destroy the entire Organization.
It never crossed Nikolaus’s mind that they couldn’t do it.
Nikolaus frowned as he realized that his thoughts were rambling, and he
crossed the street with a heavy heart. This was it. This was when he gave himself over to the agents from MI6 and allowed them to take the other six down. This was when his mission ended.
He walked up to the contact and looked down at the man disdainfully as the
agent jumped and sputtered coffee in response to Nikolaus’s sudden appearance.
Nikolaus knew this Fotze. The man was a complete and utter bastard, and just sitting across from him at the small table made Nikolaus want to shower. Nikolaus hadn’t
questioned his own loyalties up until this point, but as the British agent droned on and on about duty to Queen and country– disregarding the fact that Nikolaus didn’t give a damn about Great Britain– and how his companions would be put away until they
were old and gray or killed as an example to future traitors, Nikolaus questioned his decisions.
If this Wichser was one of the good guys, then Nikolaus wasn’t sure he
wanted to be one.
“Traitors, the lot of them,” the man sniffed quietly as he sipped at his coffee.
Nikolaus bristled slightly, but held his tongue. The man wasn’t even trying
to keep his voice down, and Nikolaus looked around warily. No one was paying them any attention, but that didn’t mean that no one was listening. Nikolaus sniffed
scornfully and shifted. Even he could see that this man wasn’t a field agent. Why would they send a paper-pusher to do this job?
“O.R.G. has done too much good for the world in the past five decades to be
brought down by this group of rabble. They cannot simply be let off with a slap on the wrist. I personally can’t wait to see them all hang.”
“Hang?” Nikolaus repeated in a quiet, calm voice.
“Figuratively speaking, of course. This has been the most serious internal
threat since the Third Reich; they’ll be made examples of, the lot of them. Ugh, this sludge cannot be called suitable for human consumption. Don’t these blasted Yanks believe in tea?”
Nikolaus bit his tongue and tried to shrink into the metal chair as several
patrons turned to look at his vocal companion.
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“So, where shall I have the men set up, hmm? Where are your lot going?”
Nikolaus stared at the greasy man with a new hatred and made a decision
that would probably end up costing him his life. He didn’t care. Loyalty deserved loyalty, after all. It was the least he owed the others, and it was never too late to make amends for all the damage he had probably done. Good guys be damned, he would
hang with the rest of them.
“We’re leaving in five hours, heading for the port,” he said calmly, surprised
at how easily the lying came to him. “I suggest you have your men set up there as soon as possible.”
“Five hours? Why not just tell us where they are now and have us go in,
guns blazing?” the man asked with relish.
“Because if you attack them on their turf, you’ll all die,” Nikolaus said with
certainty. “Taking them at the port will take them unawares. Believe me, you want them unawares.”
“Wonderful,” the man said happily, no trace of suspicion evident. Nikolaus
stood and nodded to him. “And where are you going?” the man asked officiously.
“If I don’t go back to them, they’ll suspect something and simply disappear,”
Nikolaus sighed, rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses. This man was beyond dense.
At least they had made it easy for Nikolaus to finally turn.
“Ah. Yes, of course,” the man said as he stood and stuck out his hand.
“Good luck to you.”
Nikolaus stared at the man’s hand for several seconds, then let his eyes travel
up the man’s pale, chubby body to land on his greasy face. He looked at him from
over the top of his sunglasses with barely concealed contempt.
“No, mate. Good luck to you,” he said with a little smirk. “You’re going to need it.”
XLII.
BRANDT was practically vibrating with anger.
They were all gathered in the kitchen, their bags stacked by the door,
listening to Gray??
?s theory about Nikolaus.
Remy and Thiago were both frowning slightly as Gray spoke, and Shawn
looked ready to throttle Gray just for breathing his air. Gray kept throwing the man wary glances and edging further away, but he was edging closer and closer to Brandt, and Brandt was just waiting to grab him and choke the life out of him. Carl was
looking particularly blank, as though he either had previous knowledge of Nikolaus’s activities or he simply didn’t give a flying fuck.
Well, Brandt gave a fuck. He was pissed off beyond belief, whether at Gray
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for making the accusation or at Nikolaus if it was true, he didn’t care. He needed to kill something. Nikolaus wasn’t here. Gray was.
“Gizmo wouldn’t do that,” he growled, pushing away from the counter
finally and taking a threatening step toward Gray.
Gray straightened slightly and looked at Thiago and Remy briefly as if for
permission to get into a fight. Brandt growled and took another step, but Carl’s hand wrapped around his bicep and pulled him back before he could do any damage.
Brandt turned to look at the man in shock.
“Someone’s running,” Carl announced in a flat voice.
They all looked at him as if he had lost his mind, but he simply stared back
at Brandt with an inexplicably sad expression. Brandt frowned and looked at him
questioningly, but got no response. Remy cocked his head and took a couple of silent steps toward the door to the courtyard, and finally Brandt heard the hurried footfalls on the pavement outside.
Brandt turned again just in time to see Nikolaus skid through the door and
barrel into Remy, taking them both to the ground in a flurry of curses and grunts and flailing limbs.
“We have to move,” Nikolaus huffed. He struggled to his knees and looked
down at Remy as the other man lay spread-eagled below him and blinking up at him
in shock. “We have to go now,” he said urgently as he looked up at the others.
No one asked questions as their training kicked in, and in less than two
minutes the house was deserted and the seven men were in the garage area loading up.