“Carl, Nikolaus. Find Thiago,” Shawn ordered as the fire blazed merrily
behind him. They all nodded, and Brandt noticed the despair in Shawn’s eyes as he failed to mention his own mission. It was almost physically painful to see. Brandt actually felt badly for thinking that Shawn was trying to kill him.
He knew the others were panicking, as much as a trained agent could panic
anyway. But Brandt’s mind was working on a slightly different plane as the fire
whipped about in the darkness and the smell of burning wood permeated the air. He led them into it without blinking, his mind almost elsewhere as he kicked the heavy door in and slipped between the flames.
The most likely suspect out of the six of them to have started this particular
little blaze stood in Brandt’s unlaced boots. Brandt knew that. And he knew the others would come to the same conclusion as soon as they calmed and started thinking
rationally again. So as he moved almost mechanically, carrying out the orders Shawn had shouted at him, he tried to work out the problem in order to defend himself when
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the accusations started to fly. And they would. Carl had questioned him and he had been naked in bed with Brandt. To Carl’s credit though, it must have been a little…
disconcerting to be awakened in such a manner. Maybe he hadn’t been thinking
clearly.
Assuming the bomb– and it was definitely a bomb– hadn’t been on a long-
term timer or a remote control, then Brandt could easily narrow the possibilities.
He knew he hadn’t set off the bomb. Even he wasn’t so far gone as to not
remember setting a charge of this magnitude. Check that. Of any magnitude.
He knew Carl hadn’t set off the bomb. Carl had been in bed with him the
whole time, and Brandt was a very light sleeper. If Carl had moved Brandt would
have known.
Those were the only things he could be sure of. Those were the absolute
certainties. Now, the questions. Why had Shawn been standing calmly outside the
cabin, with every one of his bags sitting around his feet and his gun out? And why had Nikolaus been out front? He said he’d been out there the whole time. Why? How?
Brandt almost tripped over a lump on the ground, and when he bent over to
investigate, he immediately recognized Remy’s unmoving body.
“Hey!” he called into the smoky chaos of the outer room. “I found Remy!”
Shawn was by his side in a heartbeat, and Brandt watched him gather the
younger man carefully into his arms in a fireman’s carry, nod in thanks, and disappear into the smoke as he carried Remy outside to safety.
If Shawn had set off the bomb in the assumption that Remy would be out of
harm's way with him when it went off, then now that he was assured of Remy’s
relative safety, he would most certainly be gone by the time Brandt was done
gathering what little equipment he could find.
Brandt knelt on the floor as the fires raged around him, struggling with
indecision. Should he follow Shawn out and lose what little supplies they would be able to salvage, or should he trust the older man to still be there and get on with his job?
Brandt cursed colorfully and lunged to his feet, heading into what was left of
the hallway toward the worst of the flames.
XIX
REMY struggled against the arms that held him. There was something wrong. There
was danger, and he had to get to Shawn. But the arms held him firmly, and though he struggled to the point that his abused lungs sent him into a fit of pitiful coughing, he eventually ran out of the energy to fight them.
“It’s okay, Remy. You’re fine,” the voice belonging to the shockingly strong
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arms told him soothingly.
Were the arms that strong, or was there something wrong with him? Remy
was having difficulty seeing clearly, and his lungs and throat burned as if Brandt had lit a pinecone and stuffed it down his throat.
Out of the corner of his eye, Remy could see Thiago on the ground coughing
and struggling to get up from his hands and knees. Carl knelt with him, patting him on the back and trying to convince him to eat what looked like a handful of snow.
“Shawn,” Remy gasped desperately as his glazed eyes took in the flames and
the destruction of the cabin. Fuck! Explosion! Bedrooms! “Shawn!” he tried again, his voice a mere croak as his fingers dug into the hard muscles of the arm draped across his chest, trying to pry it loose so he could get up.
“He’s in there,” Nikolaus said as he tightened his grip around Remy’s body.
He pointed to the flaming doorway as the sound of a falling ceiling timber echoed throughout the forest. “He went back in to help Brandt gather equipment.”
“No… let me up,” Remy begged, finally managing to sit up slightly before
crying out as pain tore through his body.
“You’re hurt bad, Remy. Stay down. They’ll be okay… know what
they’re… be… Remy? Remy!”
Remy’s world began to fade into black, and though he could hear Nikolaus’s
desperate voice calling to him, he couldn’t return to it no matter how hard he tried.
XX.
THIAGO looked up from his kneeling position and stared at the flames as they flared more and more out of control. Carl held him up and rubbed his back in an automatic gesture as he shivered in the snow. Thiago distantly wondered how you could be so cold and yet so hot at the same time. He looked over just in time to see Remy going limp in Nikolaus’s arms.
“Carajo,” he gasped. Carl turned him loose and they both scrambled through the snow to the other two men.
“He won’t wake up,” Nikolaus said in a surprisingly calm voice as he
cradled Remy’s lolling head in his hands. “He started struggling, calling for Shawn.
Then he just….”
Thiago scooped up a handful of snow and began to gently smear it over
Remy’s forehead and cheeks as Carl put two fingers to the younger man’s neck,
searching for a pulse.
“It’s strong,” Carl murmured.
Thiago seemed to be doing nothing more than mixing the soot and melting
snow over Remy’s smooth forehead. He nodded and wiped his abused eyes as if it
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would clear away his muddled thoughts before looking Remy’s body over for
injuries.
“His leg, Thiago,” Nikolaus said softly, nodding his head at Remy’s bloody
thigh. “It’s the only injury I can see. Are you hurt?”
“No,” Thiago said distractedly as Carl grabbed him and yanked at his belt.
Thiago raised his hands the let Carl yank it out of his belt loops.
“What happened?” Carl asked as he tied the belt tightly around Remy’s thigh
just above the shrapnel wound.
“I was in front of the fireplace,” Thiago explained needlessly to the two men
who had found him. “Remy was standing just in front of the hallway. I thought for sure it had killed him. I was looking right at him and then….”
“When the fires calm I’ll go back in,” Brandt announced breathlessly as he
and Shawn staggered up and dumped several bags of equipment on the ground.
He fell to his knees and huffed, and Thiago was a little shocked at how
normal he appeared, covered in soot and singed around the edges. His bare chest
shone with sweat, and Thiago realized that he was gawking at the impressive sight.
Shawn wasn’t in much better shape, but Brandt carried off
the crispy look much more naturally.
“We’ll try to see where it originated,” Brandt was saying. “From the amount
of damage it looks as if it was one of the back bedrooms… or maybe the washroom.
Won’t be able to tell for sure ’til I can look at it, though.”
“Did you set this fire?” Thiago demanded angrily.
“If I had started this fire, there would just be a crater,” Brandt answered
heatedly, “and none of us would be sitting here breathing in all this lovely smoke because I would have made damn sure to blow us all to Hell!” he shouted. It was the first time Thiago had seen the big man perturbed, and he instantly regretted his hasty accusation. “So no, I didn’t start this fire, but fuck you very much, all the same.”
Shawn put a hand on Brandt’s shoulder and Thiago saw the fingers dig into
the muscle. As if by magic Brandt was once again calm, and Thiago blinked at him
uncertainly.
“I’m sorry,” he offered sincerely. He tried to think of something more to say,
but Brandt apparently didn’t need more because he nodded and looked at Remy in
concern.
“Is he… bad?” Brandt asked hesitantly. Shawn swallowed with difficulty,
and Thiago’s heart went out to him. He himself wanted to kill the person who had
done this. He couldn’t even begin to fathom what sort of murderous rage must have been going through Shawn’s head. He shivered as he thought about the look in
Shawn’s green eyes and shook himself out of the rather frightening images that
graced his imagination.
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“I think he passed out. Shock, maybe,” Nikolaus supplied as Shawn gestured
for him to move. Nikolaus complied and Shawn settled himself beneath Remy’s head
and shoulders and held him close, keeping him warm in the snow.
“Does anyone know what happened?” Shawn asked in a low voice as he
gently ran his hand over Remy's forehead. Thiago didn’t like his tone at all. He’d dealt with some of the most ruthless and dangerous individuals in the world without batting an eye, but Shawn’s tone scared him. Thiago made a mental note never to
cross the man as he shook his head in answer.
“Nikolaus?” Shawn said in the same terrifyingly low voice.
“Hmm?” Nikolaus responded as he tore his gaze away from Remy’s face.
“Why were you out here?”
“What?”
“Why were you out here?” Shawn repeated deliberately as he finally looked
up and pinned Nikolaus with a dangerous glare.
“You were outside?” Thiago asked in surprise. That was news to him. How
had Nikolaus gotten outside?
Nikolaus looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights as he looked from
Shawn to Thiago and back.
“I needed a smoke,” he squeaked.
“How did you get past Thiago?” Brandt asked as he eyed Thiago
suspiciously. Thiago creased his brow and shot a nervous look at Shawn. Nikolaus
had to have slipped out when he and Remy were having their little discussion about trust. How very ironic.
“He…,” Nikolaus started uncertainly. He looked guilty as hell, and Thiago
suddenly realized why. Nikolaus knew he was in serious trouble if he couldn’t get them to believe his story, but he was actually risking his life to cover for Thiago.
Thiago couldn’t have that.
“I was having a discussion with Remy,” Thiago said softly. “We weren’t
paying attention. He could have easily walked by us without us noticing.”
Behind them the last timbers of the cabin began to crackle merrily.
XXI.
“DID he?” Carl demanded.
“Well, I didn’t crawl out a fucking window,” Nikolaus insisted with a scowl.
Carl merely nodded at Nikolaus and looked back down at Remy in concern.
He wasn’t really concerned with Nikolaus. He didn’t like the little German for this
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mess. And Remy was a bigger worry at the moment. If he had been standing in front of the hallway when the explosion happened, then he had probably taken the brunt of the force directly. The thick log walls of the bedrooms had protected the rest of them, and Thiago’s sheer distance had kept him safe, but if Remy had been in the open….
“We should check him for internal injuries,” Brandt said softly, as if he had
been reading Carl’s mind and thinking along the same lines.
Shawn gently placed Remy’s head in the snow as they laid him flat, and
Thiago began to probe gently at his torso.
“How did you get out so quickly, Shawn?” Carl asked regretfully. It almost
caused him physical pain to question the man. Shawn looked up at him in surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“Brandt and I moved pretty fast, but you were out with all your gear and
just… standing there like it was a walk through the park. With your weapon out, no less. Who were you planning to shoot, Shawn? You weren’t expecting the blast, were you?” he asked doubtfully. He hated to play the interrogator at this point, but he had a feeling that he was the only one who would.
Shawn stood and faced Carl, his face calm once more. “I got out quickly
because I’m very fucking good at what I do. Just like the rest of you,” he growled dangerously. “I had all the gear out because I happened to have been in Remy’s room at the time, and not only is he the most organized person I know, but he also
procrastinates, so his bags were all sitting under the window, still packed. I got your shit out, too, by the way. You’re fucking welcome. I had me gun out because
someone had just tried to blow us up!” he shouted, finally losing his temper. “And I don’t take kindly to people who try to blow me up!”
Carl put up his hands in a placating gesture. Shawn’s explanations were
entirely plausible, and besides, Carl found that he trusted Shawn implicitly. He was the last person Carl would suspect of being out to hurt any of them.
“I had to ask, Shawn,” he murmured apologetically.
Shawn seemed to tense slightly, but then he deflated visibly and nodded.
“You’re right,” he said calmly. “You’re right,” he repeated softly, turning back to place a hand on Nikolaus’s shoulder as if he had just realized he had insulted the younger man in the same way Carl had done him.
Nikolaus nodded in acknowledgement of the silent apology, and the three of
them stood and watched Thiago and Brandt’s hands move gently over Remy’s body
as the cabin behind them smoldered in the freshly falling snow.
XXII.
SHAWN was the closest to a full-fledged breakdown as he had ever been, which was
to say, he was a little nervous. In the five years Shawn had known him, Remy had
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been shot, stabbed, hit by a particularly lovely blue Jaguar, dragged behind a
motorbike, thrown off a roof, and attacked by a nasty turkeyduck thing that had ended up being supper that night. Among other things. Shawn had rarely been so worried
about him as he was now.
Shawn thought perhaps it wasn’t so much the possibility that Remy could
have internal injuries and that he was bleeding pretty profusely and that there wasn’t a doctor for miles, but that Shawn felt guilty. Guilty as fuck, actually. If he hadn’t tried to hide anything from Remy in the first place, Remy would never have felt the need to seek Thiago out and lecture him on trust. He would have been happy to stay in that tiny single bed, curled up with Shawn, and he would have been safe there. He would have been able to calmly roll out of bed
, gather his things, stroll out into the forest, and remain just as unscathed as Shawn.
It didn’t occur to Shawn that Remy might have had other reasons to be out of
bed.
“There’s really no way to tell,” Thiago said as he looked up at them finally.
“I don’t feel any broken ribs, which is good, I suppose. But I’m no doctor. We won’t be able to tell if there’s bleeding anywhere until it’s too late. Unless he wakes up soon to tell us where he hurts, we’ll have to get him to a hospital.”
Brandt stood and dusted the snow off his knees, but he said nothing as he
looked down at Remy thoughtfully. Shawn avoided eye contact with the others,
knowing that his guilt was written clearly on his face. He sat down, weaving his arms under and around Remy and pulling him close once more to keep him warm. Brandt
and Carl exchanged a look that Shawn was too tired to try to decipher, and Nikolaus and Thiago scooted closer and began fussing over the man like mother hens.
“Should we move him if he could be bleeding?” Carl asked in concern.
“If we don’t move him out of the snow he’ll die anyway,” Thiago responded
grimly.
“If he’s bleeding internally,” Shawn said softly, “he’s already dead.”
Shawn rocked slowly back and forth as he held Remy to him– a habit that he
had picked up from Remy in their early days of working together– and tried to wrap his mind around what had just happened.
XXIII.
NIKOLAUS couldn’t begin to describe how relieved he was at seeing all five men out of the cabin and relatively safe.
The blast had shaken him, but he kept trying to force down the grin that
wanted to appear every time he heard his mother’s voice in his head telling him that cigarettes would kill him one day.
It certainly hadn’t been today.
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“Does anyone have any information we can go on from here,” Carl asked
after they had moved Remy to Shawn’s Land Rover. He seemed to sense that Shawn
would be useless until Remy awoke, so Carl momentarily took charge. “Anything at