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  lamp, Nikolaus could see the dark circles under Remy’s eyes and how drawn he still looked. He was either looking worse than he felt or he had caught wind of how

  worried Shawn was and was putting on a pretty damn good show of being better.

  Remy and Carl shared a look that Nikolaus didn’t even want to try to

  decipher, and then Carl shrugged. Remy raised his eyebrows questioningly, then

  looked around the room at the lot of them.

  “Well, where should we start?” Remy asked Carl as he looked at him once

  more.

  “You think it over while Shawn finishes his story, yeah?” Nikolaus

  suggested as he and Thiago moved closer and sat on the other bed. “’Cause he

  stopped with his gun going off and I, for one, would really like to know how you two went from shooting at one another to being…,” Nikolaus trailed off and gestured

  vaguely at the bed, “… you.”

  Shawn smiled and looked down at his hands almost as if he were

  embarrassed, and Remy allowed himself a private little smirk that told Nikolaus

  they’d never get the full story.

  “He didn’t shoot at me,” Remy announced in a sarcastic voice. “He shot me.

  Shot me! And not only did he shoot me, but he stopped to check the message on his phone before he came over to check on me!”

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  “I was working!” Shawn said in exasperation. “How many times are we

  going to have this discussion? When you get a message from your handler in the

  middle of a fucking mission, you know it’s a life and death situation.”

  “Being shot is sort of a life and death situation, too, Beignet.”

  “Yes, but when it’s my life instead of yours I tend to care more,” Shawn

  responded haughtily.

  “Pfffft.”

  Nikolaus and Thiago both snickered quietly. It seemed that things were

  swiftly returning to normal.

  “Anyway, I had only shot him in the side, just there,” Shawn said as he

  pointed to an old scar on Remy’s ribcage. “It was so nearly a miss that it grazed off his rib and kept on going.”

  “It was close,” Remy said in a voice close to a sulk.

  “What was it you always said? Close only counts in horseshoes and hand

  grenades?” Shawn admonished sarcastically. Nikolaus saw every eye in the room

  flicker to Brandt’s still form and back.

  “Close counts in handguns as well, in my book,” Remy argued.

  “Your book is written in purple crayon. No one cares. Now where was I?”

  “You were reliving the joys of shooting me.”

  “Ah, yes,” Shawn said with mock relish as he tilted his head back and closed

  his eyes in apparent pleasure.

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if that had been the only time,” Remy protested to the

  rest of them. Shawn’s eyes snapped open and his head whipped around to glare at

  Remy.

  “I told you, that were an accident!” he declared in agitation as he pointed his

  finger in Remy’s face and waved it around.

  “You said the first one was an accident, too!” Remy yelled as he pointed his

  finger back at Shawn. “I’ve never had an accident with a gun, couyon! And you’re a better shot than I am! Please tell me how, in twenty plus years of service, have you only had two accidents and I happened to be the target of both of them? Hmm? You

  shot me in the ass!”

  “I wasn’t aiming for your ass,” Shawn argued meekly as the rest of them

  laughed raucously. Remy’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open.

  “You were actually aiming for something?!” he cried.

  “I think you need to rest,” Shawn said hastily as he started to tuck the covers

  in around Remy’s body.

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  “Fuck that, you were aiming? You actually missed something badly enough

  to shoot me in the ass?”

  “Well– ”

  “My ass isn’t that big, Shawn! How could you hit it and not be aiming for

  it?”

  Thiago started to snicker helplessly at Nikolaus’s side. Watching Shawn and

  Remy bicker was like sitting down to a sitcom, and they were all thoroughly enjoying watching the typically imperturbable older man squirm under Remy’s wagging finger.

  “I told you it was an accident!” Shawn finally shouted defensively. “It was

  three years ago, for chrissake! It’s water under the bridge!”

  “Ha! Well it’s blood under my fucking bridge, grand bioque!” Remy harrumphed and crossed his arms. He was definitely feeling better, Nikolaus decided.

  He’d heard several of Remy’s Cajun curses, but he’d understood none of them. He

  knew enough to know that the ‘grand’ in front of one made it bigger, though.

  “What happened after Shawn checked his message?” Thiago asked in a voice

  still shaking with laughter.

  “The message had been that massive all-stop that was sent out, you all

  remember?” Remy inquired, still sulking slightly.

  They all nodded. Nikolaus had been one of the engineers of that message. It

  had been his first month with the Organization, and even then, he’d known that

  sending out a mass message of that sort was a major security risk. It had saved

  countless innocent lives though, and miraculously no real harm had ever come from doing it. Not that anyone had detected, anyway.

  “When I fell after being accidentally shot,” Remy continued testily, “my cell went flying across the gravel of the roof top, as did my gun. When Shawn finally

  came prancing over to check on me–”

  “I resent the implication that I prance anywhere.”

  “You prance in my mind, Mary,” Remy snapped. Shawn snorted irritably,

  and Remy continued. “When he got to me he just stood over me, looking at me like I was some poor creature in a zoo.”

  “I was actually marveling over how young he looked,” Shawn informed

  them defensively.

  “Whatever, couyon. I know you were perving on me,” Remy declared

  haughtily.

  “You were bleeding quite profusely,” Shawn pointed out.

  “And you like that, don’t you,” Remy purred as he let his head rest on

  Shawn’s shoulder contentedly. “Turns him on,” Remy said to them in a conspiratorial stage whisper.

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  Their relationship was unlike any Nikolaus had ever witnessed. One minute

  they were bickering like an old married couple and the next they were flirting and seemingly on the verge of screwing in front of everyone. Nikolaus inhaled deeply as he thought about them, smelling the scent of Thiago’s cigars.

  “You’re fucking mad,” Shawn mumbled contentedly as he petted Remy’s

  cheek with the hand Remy wasn’t leaning on. “I was trying to decide what to do with him.”

  “Took you forfuckingever.”

  “It wasn’t really that long.”

  “It’s a long time when you’re lying there bleeding all over yourself,

  wondering if this bioque is going to blow your balls off any second.”

  “True,” Shawn conceded carelessly. “Anyway, I finally decided that we had

  to be on the same side, so I took his hand in mine and introduced myself.”

  “As I lay there bleeding and in pain,” Remy supplied.

  “But how did you end up being…” Carl motioned randomly with his hands

  much like Nikolaus had done, and finally he let them fall to his lap. “You,” he

  finishe
d.

  “Shawn brought me in,” Remy answered. “The order had been for every

  agent to cease and desist all activity; leave your shit where it is and come home,” he explained needlessly.

  They’d all lived through it. It was the only time in the history of the

  Organization that every agent had been called home at the same time. Agents were

  rarely recalled to the main Facility located in a very remote locale in the wilds of New Zealand, and when they were, you could bet it was serious. All of them at once? That was catastrophic.

  “But instead of dropping all his shit and going immediately,” Remy

  continued, “Shawn helped me.”

  “I couldn’t in good conscience leave him to fend for himself when we didn’t

  know what the threat was, now could I?” Shawn argued as if any of them thought he had done the wrong thing. “Especially after shooting him like I had,” he muttered.

  “It took us a full week to get in. What a fucking disaster that was. We were

  the last agents in and we had actually been written off as killed in action. By that time, we had had plenty of time to… bond, I suppose. It’s a cliché, but it was like we had known each other all our lives."

  “This ‘bonding’ was of course after he quit bitching about being shot.”

  “Va-t'à la merde,” Remy muttered. “When we were debriefed,” he

  continued, “they took an interest in how we had worked together. That’s when they asked about the possibility of partnering us.”

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  “That’s it?” Nikolaus asked after a thoughtful silence.

  “Well, we could go into every detail, but there is no point, non?” Remy said, and though it was said in the friendliest of tones, Nikolaus could tell that it was more of an order than a suggestion. Story time was over.

  V.

  BRANDT nudged Carl with his elbow to get his attention.

  “What were you two talking about?” he asked curiously when it became

  apparent Remy and Shawn were done sharing. He thought he had a pretty good idea,

  but he was going to play dumb just now.

  “Oh. Well,” Carl looked back at Remy and shrugged. “We were sort of

  having a conspiracy theory chat.”

  “What sort of theory?” Thiago asked from where he and Nikolaus sat on the

  other bed.

  “We were talking about the explosion,” Remy said quietly. His voice seemed

  to have gotten weaker, and if Brandt had suspected he was putting on a show for

  Shawn’s benefit before, then he was sure of it now. Brandt could tell he was hurt, tired, and still painfully weak. Oh, he was probably healthy enough by a normal

  person’s standards, with the possible exception of that hole in his thigh, but to keep up with five well-trained agents he would have to be a lot better, and soon.

  “What about the explosion?” Shawn asked in the same quiet voice, and

  Brandt got the sudden impression that Shawn was angry. They’d been joking just

  seconds ago, but now Shawn’s entire presence changed. Why would he be angry?

  “Remy and I don’t think the Archer was responsible,” Carl announced, and

  though Brandt wasn’t truly surprised, hearing the words out loud was a bit of a shock.

  The other three were obviously surprised though, and Brandt slipped his arm around Carl’s waist protectively as Shawn stared at him blankly.

  “You don’t?” Nikolaus asked innocently. “Who do you think did it then?”

  Remy licked his lips nervously and looked at Carl. Brandt’s grip tightened

  around Carl’s waist reassuringly and he nuzzled the back of the other man’s neck.

  “Here’s our thinking,” Carl said as Brandt inhaled his clean scent deeply.

  “The first thing we did in order to find the Archer was look at his message.”

  “Which we’ve been working on, by the way,” Remy interjected.

  “Yeah. Let them see it, Dixie,” Carl suggested. Brandt raised an eyebrow at

  the nickname, and he saw Shawn do the same thing. Was it possible Shawn was the

  jealous type? Brandt could just smell trouble coming from those two.

  Remy picked the charred little piece of paper up and put a blue Bic pen into

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  his mouth as he handed the message over to Shawn. He explained the marks they’d

  made as the paper was passed around carefully.

  “Niko said the key changes with every transmission. So, we figure the key

  has to be in the message itself. I wrote that down when I thought of it in case…

  anything happened to me,” he said, trailing off in a low voice and giving Shawn a sideways glance before continuing. Thiago handed Brandt the paper and he looked it over as Remy spoke.

  “I have a tendency to scribble,” he muttered apologetically as Brandt

  examined the flurry of doodles covering the singed piece of paper.

  “Still,” Shawn sighed as he shook his head and examined the dark ceiling,

  “that gets us nowhere.”

  Remy lowered his head, looking fairly crestfallen at Shawn’s lack of

  response. Brandt felt badly for him. It was a pretty nice observation on his part, if it was true, but Shawn hadn’t really acknowledged it.

  “Well, that’s about where we got to when we were interrupted by the clown

  parade,” Carl muttered. Brandt thought maybe Carl was getting a little annoyed with Shawn, too. He had spent all week mooning over the kid and now he couldn’t even

  give him a pat on the head for a job well done? What the hell? “After hitting a dead end with that, we went to the list of agents who had turned, and then the agents who had worked with all of them.”

  “We know this, mate. We were all there, remember?” Shawn said testily.

  “Bear with me,” Carl said a soothing voice. “Now, if that list of names was

  our top suspect list, then who’s to say that it wasn’t theirs as well.”

  “‘Theirs?’” Thiago repeated questioningly.

  “The Organization’s,” Carl offered with a nod. “What if they took that list,

  saw our six names at the top of it, and said that we were expendable if it would rid them of the Archer? What if– ”

  “What if we were set up,” Remy supplied hollowly.

  “You think they got us together in one place to make us easier to kill?”

  Brandt asked, unable to keep the shock out of his voice. He hadn’t gone this far with his theories, but he had to admit that it made sense.

  Remy was nodding, and Carl turned his head to the side to glance at Brandt.

  “It makes a hell of a lot of sense,” Brandt agreed quietly.

  “But how would they have tracked us?” Thiago asked skeptically. Shawn

  was scowling heavily, and Remy was shooting him worried glances.

  “Niko, is it possible that your equipment could have been traced?” Remy

  asked despite his concerned looks at Shawn.

  “Very,” Nikolaus said with a nod. “By the Organization? Most certainly. The

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  equipment I used was theirs, not my own. I didn’t even check it for bugs or tracers because it came directly from a secure area.”

  “Did they give you a choice of which equipment you could use?” Thiago

  asked with a frown, “or did they issue it to you?”

  “They issued it, come to think of it,” Nikolaus answered in a troubled voice.

  “They could have had tracking implants– sort of a…‘if you steal me you’re

  screwed’ kind of thing– already in them,” Thiago suggested.

  Shawn’s scowl deepened and he looked at Remy, but he said nothing. Brandt


  watched them curiously, wondering what was going on between them that had Shawn

  so tense. As he pondered, he leaned forward and let his arm tighten around Carl’s waist. Carl shivered in his arms, and Brandt kissed the back of his neck impulsively before standing up abruptly and shuffling over to the other bed in the room.

  “It’s late,” he pronounced as he shooed Nikolaus and Thiago away and threw

  back the covers on the bed. He turned to face them all. “I’ve been up all night

  irritating Gizmo and I’m tired. Trigger, come keep me warm. Dixie looks like hell.

  Mary, you should sleep there tonight in case he needs you,” he declared.

  “Did you just call me Mary?” Shawn asked incredulously.

  Brandt looked at Thiago and winked. “You two go do something

  interesting,” he said to Thiago and Nikolaus dismissively.

  At first, it seemed that they would all simply stare at him. But then Carl

  smiled slowly and got up, gave Remy’s head an affectionate rub, and walked over to crawl into the bed beside Brandt.

  Remy grinned and winked at Brandt, though he still looked pale and drawn.

  Brandt worried about him regardless of the brave front he was putting up.

  Shawn stared expressionlessly at him. If Brandt could ever get Shawn to

  show any sort of bewilderment, then he would consider his life complete.

  “Fine then,” Thiago huffed, feigning annoyance as he nodded at the door.

  Nikolaus gave a little sniff and turned to go, flipping Brandt the bird as they

  disappeared through the door.

  “Well,” Brandt said uncertainly, at a loss for words now that his orders had

  actually been followed. His orders were never followed.

  “Well,” Remy repeated in a tired but amused voice. “Maybe Thiago will be a

  little less cranky if he gets laid, hmm?”

  “Hell, Mary over there is the cranky one,” Carl offered as he snuggled into

  the cold sheets and pulled Brandt into bed by the waistband of his sweatpants.

  “Grumpy, too.”

  “Is he grumpy or is he cranky? Make up your mind,” Brandt demanded as he

  allowed Carl to manhandle him and pull him beneath the covers.

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