“Is that what you and your boys found out on that raid, Thiago?” Nikolaus
asked curiously after several more moments of silent contemplation over Remy’s
words.
“Not exactly,” Thiago said hesitantly. He looked at Gray and then at Brandt,
then sighed heavily. “Gray and Brandt were there as well. There were twelve of us.
As we’ve recently discovered, eight were killed in the purges.”
“That didn’t strike you as, I don’t know, alarming?” Remy asked
sarcastically.
“I didn’t know they were all the same men,” Thiago said defensively. “I
didn’t keep track of them, not then.”
“You’re not exactly aces at keeping track of us now,” Brandt mumbled.
“We’ve had some difficulties,” Thiago spat angrily.
“Uh huh. Go on,” Remy prodded as he reclined and patted Shawn on the
back to let him know they were done with using him as a table. Shawn sat up and
turned to look at Remy, his face flushed from being upside down for so long.
“Whoa, head rush,” he murmured as he reached out to steady himself on the
wooden ladder. The others snickered and he looked up at them quickly. “Hey! I can hear!” he said happily, his face lighting up like Carl hadn’t seen it do since before the cabin blew up.
Remy grinned and patted Shawn on the shoulder. “Good then, just in time to
hear Thi spill it.”
“Hmm… I can kind of hear, anyway,” Shawn said as he rubbed his ear
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gingerly and turned his head from side to side. “Better than nothing, though,” he said as he turned to look at Remy happily.
Remy smiled at him and nodded, then turned and frowned and asked, “So
who was the twelfth man?”
“We don’t know,” Thiago admitted with a shrug. “He was our outrider.”
“Outrider?” Remy repeated in confusion. “Why would you need someone on
surveillance outside? Wasn’t this your basic, straightforward raid?”
“Not at first. It was a bait and tackle. What it turned into was a fuck up. We
were given bad intel, whether on purpose or not, I don’t know. What we thought was a drug runner’s outpost turned out to be one of the Organization’s backup document storage buildings. We were never supposed to go inside. We were never even
supposed to know it was there.”
“So let me get this straight,” Shawn said, holding out his hand and closing
his eyes. “Eleven of you accidentally raided what was, essentially, an Organization satellite storage, found backups of compromising documents– that eventually got
most of you killed– and this twelfth man heard every word of it, but never surfaced after it was all over?”
Thiago pursed his lips and nodded. “Basically,” he said tightly.
“And then when they tried to off him for what he knew, he turned around
and killed his own marker and faded away, yet again?” Shawn clarified.
“Apparently,” Thiago said uncomfortably.
“Wow. Smart son of a bitch, yeah?” Shawn claimed in a soft voice.
“Yeah,” Thiago said uncomfortably.
“Too bad he’s not on our side,” Shawn huffed.
Thiago rolled his eyes and sighed.
“So what did you find?” Nikolaus asked hesitantly. “I mean, what made you
turn and start… what exactly do you do, anyway?”
“We found documents that detailed the extermination of agents,” Thiago
answered in a slow, tired voice. By now this wasn’t so much of a shock to anyone, and so Thiago continued without much fanfare. “In a nutshell, they don’t let you
retire, chicos. Too much of a liability to have us running around in society.”
“What, so they do it to protect themselves? Or to protect society?” Remy
asked in a strange voice. “They think we’ll all go psycho one day and start randomly killing innocent people for the fun of it?”
Thiago bit his lip and tried not to look Remy in the eye, and Carl saw Shawn
turn his head to look at Brandt, who sat glowering at them all in the corner of the bunk. Carl couldn’t help but smile at the other man. Brandt and Remy were the most
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likely candidates to go crazy one day and start randomly killing people. That’s why Carl loved them so much.
“So that’s it?” Nikolaus asked incredulously. “All you were doing was
pretending to kill off agents in order to save them?”
“Yes,” Thiago said with another shrug as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“My guess is the Organization thought we were amassing some kind of army out of
the agents we set loose. But most of them just went to ground. Went home.
Disappeared. I don’t know. We just wanted out,” Thiago said in a soft, sad voice.
“None of this is adding up,” Shawn said in a gruff voice that indicated that
he probably still couldn’t hear much. “We’re missing something.”
“Yes, Beignet, let’s make a chart, shall we?” Remy said in a fake, posh
British accent that sounded disturbingly like Sherlock Holmes. “Off with your shirt then,” he said as he popped the cap off his pen and leered at Shawn.
Shawn glared back at him. “I was drunk,” he growled.
“Which made it all the funnier,” Remy said with a raised eyebrow.
“What the fuck are you two on about?” Carl asked as they glared at one
another.
“Last time Shawn got confused about a mission, he made a chart of it to help
him keep track of our information. Of course, we were in a foxhole, so all he had was me to write on. I say it’s payback time.”
“Give me that,” Shawn growled as he snatched the pen away from the
younger man and tossed it at Gray.
“Hey!” Gray cried as the pen bounced off his chest and hit the ground. “If
you’re going to throw pointy objects, at least do it with feeling. Use that big mother of a knife Remy carries,” Gray said as he bent to pick up the pen and stick it behind his ear.
“Don’t tempt me,” Shawn growled.
Carl perked up at this, and he leaned over and looked at Remy. “I meant to
ask you about that thing,” he said as he remembered the odd catch on the handle of Remy’s knife that he’d played with earlier.
“Uh huh,” Remy said flatly. “I’ll give you the damn thing if you tell us all
what you know.”
Carl glared at him, but stood back up and looked at everyone briefly before
sighing and scratching his head resignedly.
“All right. I knew about the raid and the executions. I knew about the
Underground and its job within the Organization, though I wasn’t a part of it. By the way, Gizmo, the Underground makes a public to do of hanging their rogues to instill loyalty. Your contact from MI6 was probably an Organization man and let it slip.”
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“What?” Nikolaus cried in disbelief.
“Yeah,” Carl said regretfully. “I doubt the Organization would allow MI6 or
the BND to stick its nose into an internal cleanup like this. You were the reason we were almost killed so many times, even if it wasn’t intentional.”
“Internal cleanup?” Thiago asked as Nikolaus paled visibly. “What the hell
are you talking about? And how did you know about the raid? And how did–”
“Okay, listen. I’m going to go over this, and I’m going to do it slowly so
everyone will follow. When you have an outrider on a multi-asset assignment, what Class do they usually ass
ign there?” Carl asked, hoping to have them all clue into it themselves.
“A Four,” Thiago whispered as realization dawned.
“You were our twelfth man?” Gray asked in disbelief. The others weren’t
quite as quick on the mark, but Carl didn’t care. He nodded and Gray gritted his teeth.
“Then why didn’t you join us? You had to have heard–”
“Quite honestly, I didn’t care,” Carl said quietly. “The work was all I had,
and as far as I was concerned, when I got too old or too slow to do it, they could kill me off if they wanted to.”
“Jesus,” Nikolaus breathed.
Carl looked up at him, then at the others. It was slightly alarming to see
Remy looking back at him with a sympathetic little frown, and Carl instantly knew that Remy was familiar with that feeling. His eyes went to Brandt, who sat smiling sadly at him, and he smiled back at the other man. No words needed to be exchanged at this point.
“So how did you know all this, is the question,” Remy said finally.
“We all know Thierry St. John, right?” Carl asked as he flushed a little under
their combined gaze.
“Yeah, he’s the one who placed me,” Remy said suspiciously.
“Me too,” Shawn said quietly.
“But wait, do you mean St. John’s a Hunter, too?” Remy asked in horror.
“Yep,” was all Shawn said in response.
“That son of a bitch,” Remy growled.
“Carl,” Thiago said sternly in order to silence the two men. “What about
Thierry? How did you get all this information from him?”
“I was fucking him, and he likes to talk,” Carl said simply as he put his
hands behind his back and waited for the onslaught of questions.
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LII.
THE compartment fell into a stunned silence after Carl’s admission. Shawn sat
wedged in between Remy and Brandt, barely breathing as he looked up at Carl in
shock.
“Thierry told you all this?” Shawn finally asked in a hoarse voice. “He’s
been leaking information? For how long? When did it start? Why did–”
Remy squeezed Shawn’s shoulder and hissed slightly, and Shawn fell silent.
Carl looked back at him blankly and then looked at the others questioningly.
“Any other questions before I start? No? Okay then,” he said in a pleasant
voice as he crossed his arms over his chest. “First of all, no, I wasn’t fucking him to get information. I didn’t give a flying pigmy fuck about information then, and I still don’t.”
“Then why… never mind,” Brandt said softly as he looked away from Carl
and watched intently as he flipped his lighter over and over in his hands.
Shawn absently reached out and let his hand rest on the bigger man’s thigh
in a comforting gesture.
Carl’s calm façade faltered briefly as he looked at Brandt, but he took a deep
breath and continued. “It started about seven years ago, I guess. Don’t ask me how because, quite frankly, I don’t remember. It just sort of happened. It went on for a couple years, no big love affair or anything, just fucking whenever we saw one
another.”
“Years?” Brandt asked in a hard voice.
“It’s over now,” Carl said almost instantly. “Has been for a while. It ended
just after the raid.”
Shawn examined Brandt closely, noting the flash in Brandt’s brown eyes and
his rigid posture as he glared at Carl. He understood that all of this was difficult for Brandt to hear. Hell, Shawn hated the thought that Brandt was involved with anyone else, and he instantly hated himself for the pang of jealousy he experienced. Remy’s hand on his shoulder made his throat tighten painfully and he bit back a curse. He was such a bastard. Maybe he should have Remy shoot him again, just for good measure.
“I still don’t understand how you go from a nice casual fuck to leaking
special compartmentalized information,” Remy muttered in a lost voice. “Especially not… this particular… I mean… he compromised the entire fucking Underground!
He just… told you? Just like that? Were you fucking him at the time? ’Cause, I
mean… I would have told you anything you asked me in that bathtub that one time.”
Carl snorted and tried not to smile, and Thiago rolled his eyes and rubbed at
his temples like an overworked nanny.
“It wouldn’t be the first time Thierry used his position for some kind of
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gain,” Shawn murmured. “He told you about my taking the retirement deal,
remember?” he asked Remy. “He obviously wanted you on this mission badly enough
to do it. The question is, what did he want Carl to do for him?”
“He wasn’t leaking anything he didn’t mean to,” Carl said with certainty.
“He was very subtle about what he told me, and no, it wasn’t when we were fucking. I think he was recruiting me. Trying to, anyway. When I finally just told him I wasn’t interested in playing the games a double-switch would entail, that I was just there to do my job, that was the last we saw of each other.”
“He was trying to pull you over?” Thiago asked curiously.
“And then he just dropped you?” Gray asked as he peeked at Carl from
behind Thiago.
“Yeah,” Carl answered simply as a frown graced his handsome features.
“Why? Did he have a specific purpose for you?” Thiago asked as he turned
and glared at Gray pointedly.
“I don’t know,” Carl answered with a shrug.
“Fair enough. Most of the time Thierry doesn’t even know what he’s up to,”
Remy grumbled. “All right then, new question. Did Thierry put you on this team?
Directly or indirectly, was he responsible for your presence here?”
Carl was silent for several long moments, and then he nodded almost
imperceptibly and licked his lips nervously. “He contacted me and said he needed a favor; someone who would be able to clean up a mess if the shit hit the fan and then keep quiet about it. ‘Disappear’ was the word he used.”
“You were his insurance, then,” Remy muttered.
Shawn turned even more to glare at the younger man, who was smiling
grimly and beginning to chuckle.
“Stop giggling like a halfwit,” Shawn growled. “What have your last two
brain cells stumbled over now?”
“Thierry heads up the Underground, but is also a major player on the
legitimate side of the Organization. He’s got to be the one behind all of this,” Remy said, his voice still breaking with laughter.
Shawn narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Thierry was a straight player, if not a
little… okay yeah, he was an underhanded bastard, but he wasn’t this unorganized.
“Just because he’s in the position to do so, doesn’t mean he did,” Shawn said
dubiously.
Remy rolled his eyes and pointed at Thiago. “We have not one, not two, but
all four of the remaining members of the raid that, by all accounts, started the whole thing rolling,” the Cajun said, pointing at each of them in turn as he spoke. “We have the tech who created the Purge virus that would cause a shitload of problems if word
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ever got out, and who also happens to remember the data he put into said virus. And we have Carl, who was perhaps the only clean agent who knew about the black ops
side of the Organization and wasn’t personally or professionally invested in keeping it a secret.”
Shawn frowned and nodded, and the ot
hers looked at one another grimly.
“All right, so what about us?” Shawn said slowly.
“Well, they already suspected me, right? I say you were under suspicion too,
no matter how undeserved the sentiment. They put all their rats in a trap, Shawn,”
Remy said with an expressive gesture of his hands that betrayed his frustration. “With the exception of Gray, they had every agent they knew to be a threat in one unit, with you thinking that you were placed to take care of them. This had nothing to do with hunting down the Archer.”
“Are you trying to tell me that Thierry put me here to die?” Carl demanded
in a low, dangerous voice.
“I think he put us all here to die,” Remy said sadly.
“I think you’re wrong,” Shawn said with a stubborn shake of his head.
“What makes you say that?” Thiago asked curiously.
“That just doesn’t feel like Thierry to me. And I gather Carl disagrees, as
well,” Shawn said with a wave of his hand toward Carl. “I was told that I was put here to eliminate the rest of you, but then Thierry went to what can be considered
extraordinary lengths to make certain that Remy was placed here, too. Consider this; the higher-ups knew there was a mole. They knew Gray was snooping around with
someone in the know, but they just didn’t know who it was. Or so they said, anyway.”
“How do you know that?” Gray demanded.
“Because I was the one tracking the mole,” Shawn admitted candidly.
Remy’s body stiffened next to him.
“Ha! I told you we were being tracked!” Gray yelled angrily as he pointed
his finger at Remy triumphantly.
“Tracked and captured are two entirely different things,” Remy pointed out
flatly.
“What if they already knew it was you two and simply hoped I wouldn’t be
able to find you?” Shawn suggested, trying to ignore the looks Gray and Remy shot one another. The pang of jealousy hit him again and he closed his eyes as he
continued to speak. “And I couldn’t find you. God help me, I tried, but you two were good. I should have known Remy was behind most of those covers,” Shawn said
almost to himself.
“Shawn,” Remy whispered as he placed his hand tentatively on Shawn’s