Amanda Clark sat on the couch, tucked neatly into the fold of Ryan’s arm, her feet folded up underneath her. It had been a perfect evening, Ryan reflected. Amanda had made him dinner, as she’d promised; well, to be more accurate she had tried to make him dinner, which was when Ryan had learned that Amanda Clark was possibly the worst cook in history. After he had stopped laughing, Ryan had shown her his own recipe for spaghetti and meatballs. In the end, dinner had turned out pretty good, even if he said so himself, and for the first time in weeks, Ryan felt normal. Looking down at Amanda, he stroked her hair and laughed quietly.
“What?” she asked.
“You know, I have never seen a person set pasta on fire while boiling it in water,” he laughed. “In fact, before today, I wouldn’t have believed that it was even possible.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” she sulked. “It isn’t easy to…”
“Boil water?” he interrupted with a smirk.
Amanda smacked him lightly on the shoulder,
“Why do you know how to cook so well anyway?” Amanda shifted the focus to him.
“What can I say, the ladies love a man in an apron,” Ryan grinned.
“Oh, they do, do they?”
“Well, you certainly seemed to,” Ryan pulled her in closer.
“It was a pretty sexy apron,” she giggled. “I think the pink ruffles really made the look. How could I resist?”
Ryan cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently. She leaned in, sliding into his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck. Ryan slid his hands under her shirt, caressing her as he did. Then her cell phone rang.
“Who could be calling so late?” she mumbled.
Ryan glanced at his watch, it was after 1 a.m.
“Just ignore it,” he whispered, kissing her neck.
Amanda glanced over at the phone buzzing on the table,
“I can’t,” she murmured. “It’s my brother. If he is calling this late, it might be an emergency.”
Ryan sighed deeply and backed off. Amanda stood and picked up her phone.
“Hello?”
Ryan reached for the newspaper on her coffee table, trying to look like he was interested in the sports section. But in reality, he was listening intently to her conversation; he was curious why Cross was calling his sister so late at night and was a bit concerned that it was about him. Fortunately, Amanda was one of those people who kept the volume of her cell phone turned up quite high; Ryan could clearly hear Cross on the other end of the phone, though his voice was admittedly tinny.
“Amanda, is Stone there with you?” Ethan Cross clearly wasted no time with pleasantries.
Amanda glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, to see if he could hear, but Ryan kept his expression neutral and focused on studying the newspaper, Amanda was apparently satisfied because she looked away and replied quietly,
“Look, I am not talking about this now, Ethan.”
“Amanda, I know he is there, I saw the security footage of you leaving the garage with him.”
“You checked security footage, to spy on me?” Amanda hissed angrily.
“No, it isn’t what it sounds like. Please, you need to listen to me, it’s important,” Cross’s tone was urgent.
“Alright, fine. What is it?” she replied petulantly.
“Amanda, you need to leave your apartment now, make an excuse, any excuse at all, you just need to get away from him, as fast as you can.”
“What? Why?”
“God, I shouldn’t even be telling you this,” he seemed conflicted. “But the word just came down from Director Collins. Ryan Stone is a traitor; he and his partner have been selling the identities of undercover agents to members of organized crime syndicates. There is a team of agents being called in to the office right now to bring him in, dead or alive. They checked the security tapes, and they know he is with you, so you need to get as far away from him as possible before they get there, do you understand?”
Amanda’s face had gone chalk white, her eyes darted over to Ryan again; he was struggling to keep the shock from his face. He couldn’t believe what he had just heard. Biting hard on the inside of his cheek, he managed to keep it from showing.
“I don’t believe it,” she whispered softly.
“Look, Amanda, you don’t even know him! He’s a stranger to you. I’m your brother, you need to trust me. This could get very ugly, very fast and you could get hurt. Please Amanda, I need you to get out of the room and away from him, right now,” Cross pleaded.
Amanda’s lower lip quivered, she glanced over at him again, this time with fear in her eyes. It hurt to know what she must be thinking of him right now.
“Alright, Ethan,” she replied. “I trust you.”
She put on a fake smile and turned back to Ryan,
“I just need to check on something for my brother,” she said nervously. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Ok,” Ryan replied casually, not even looking up from the newspaper. “Hurry back.”
Amanda slipped out into the hallway; Ryan heard the door close.
The moment she was out of sight, Ryan jumped to his feet. He was absolutely staggered. Selling the identity of undercover agents? That was one of the worst crimes an agent could commit. People who did that were both traitors and murderers, the worst kind of scum. And Cross had said ‘his partner’, which meant Hawkins was being accused as well. He didn’t know what was going on, but one thing he knew was that he needed to get out of here, fast. Under normal circumstances, he would have never considered running from the law, he knew that running just made you look more guilty. But the words ‘dead or alive’ had a very ominous ring to them and the crimes that they were accusing him of were the type that encouraged agents to err in favour of ‘dead’. So, Ryan decided that he couldn’t be here when those agents arrived. Listening for Amanda, he could hear that she was still talking to Ethan, but he could no longer tell what they were saying. So, while he had an opening, he quickly made a choice. As quietly as possible, Ryan opened the back window and slipped out onto the fire escape. He climbed down the 5 stories to the ground and sprinted for his car. Pulling out of the lot, he got onto the highway and just drove. He wasn’t sure where to go, so he just picked a direction and went. All he knew was that he couldn’t go home, and he couldn’t stay where he was. He had to go somewhere that they wouldn’t be looking for him. Suddenly, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. At first, he thought it must be the agency trying to locate him, but glancing down at the caller ID, he saw that it was Hawkins. Hawkins! He had almost forgotten, he had to tell her what was happening before they got to her, too. He answered the phone quickly.
“Hawkins?”
“Hey, Stone, I’ve got news,” Hawkins’s voice hummed with suppressed excitement.
“Yeah, well so do I,” Ryan interrupted. His news was urgent. “We are screwed, Hawkins, completely screwed.”
“Why, what’s happened?”
“The agency thinks we’ve been selling the names of undercover operatives for profit. They are saying that we are traitors. There are orders to bring us both in, dead or alive.”
“Shit!” Hawkins hissed. “Wait, how do you know this?”
“I was with Amanda…”
“Are you kidding me?” she interjected angrily.
“Look, you can berate me later, alright? The point is, Ethan called to warn her that I was about to be gunned down in a fucking hail of bullets; I overheard their conversation. He said we were both on the hit list.”
“Damn it! He must know,” she hissed.
“What do you mean? Who knows?”
“Well, are you selling agents?” she asked facetiously.
“Of course not,” he snapped back.
“Neither am I! If they have any evidence at all, which I assume that they do, then it means that we are being set up, and there is only one reason for that,” she waited patiently for him to connect the dots.
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“Parabellum!”
“Exactly. He must have found out we’re investigating, and that we’re getting close. This is the perfect solution for him, it completely discredits both of us. It ensures that we can’t go to the agency with anything we have, and it likely gets us both killed to boot. Ties up all of the loose ends nicely for him.”
“So, that’s it then,” Ryan felt the panic rising in his throat. “We’re dead.”
“Maybe not,” Hawkins replied.
“Oh, really? If you have some sort of brilliant plan, I would love to hear it!” he shouted, panic overwhelming him. “We can’t go back to the agency now, and even if we can get away from them, Parabellum certainly won’t let us live, not if he thinks we know something,” Ryan chuckled bitterly. “Which is ironic, considering we don’t actually know fuck all. We don’t know what he’s planning, who he’s working with, hell, we don’t even have a clue who ‘he’ is!!”
“Well, you don’t,” Hawkins replied calmly. “But that’s just because you won’t let me get a word in edgewise.”
“Excuse me for being a bit freaked out about…” Ryan stopped abruptly as he realized the full implications of what Hawkins had just said. “Wait, do you mean…?”
“Yup,” Ryan could hear the triumph in her voice. “That was why I was calling. I told you I’d call if I got anything.”
“How?” he asked, still stunned by the revelation.
“It was in the victim’s phone records. 3 different agents, working in 3 different sectors of the NIA, separated by decades and they all had one person, and one person alone, in common. The same person called each of them dozens of times during their respective Parabellum incidents. Even more importantly, this person was also the last one to call each victim the day that they were murdered. Likely to set up their final meeting.”
“Who was it?” Ryan could hardly stand the build-up.
“It took me awhile to piece it together because the number was different in every case, I guess he changed it over the years, trying to be cautious, but there is no mistaking it now. Each of our new victims were calling and being called by a number that was, at some point, linked to James Darien, the head of NIA security.”
Ryan had to pull his car over to the side of the road. He sat there, his emergency flashers blinking, trying to regain his bearings. As much as he had been prepared for the serial killer Parabellum to be an NIA agent, he had not been prepared for it to be someone like James Darien. He had expected someone inconsequential. James Darien was a highly regarded division head. But it actually made some sort of horrifying sense, now that he thought about it. Darien was in the perfect position to prey on NIA agents, not only was he one of their own, and thus beyond suspicion, but he also had the entire headquarters at his disposal. As head of security, he had access to everyone, and he was pretty much expected to spy on everything that happened there. The advanced security system allowed him to hear every conversation, see every piece of evidence and keep track of all of the computer activity of every person in the building. He would also have access to every personnel file and the psych evals of every agent. It was in the ideal position for a predator with control issues. A paradise.
“Darien must have figured that no one would ever link those 3, apparently unrelated agents together, let alone link them to Parabellum, so he didn’t worry about the phone calls much,” Hawkins continued, after giving him a moment to digest her initial revelation. “And he was right; I doubt anyone even looked at the phone records in the first place. Those murders were written off as muggings right away and the investigations went nowhere. No one suspected that they were involved with Parabellum and without that link, there was no reason to connect their deaths or to compare the cases. Darien made sure that any evidence that could have linked him or any of his partners to Parabellum went conveniently missing, so how would anyone ever figure it out?”
“If it hadn’t been for that one misfiled envelope, it’s possible no one ever would have,” Ryan marvelled.
“Exactly. Not to mention he could easily explain away calls to a colleague. Oh, and there’s more,” Hawkins’s continued excitedly. “Guess who went with the team assigned to inspect Grayson Pauling’s security system, and conveniently left his name off of the official record?”
“Darien?! How did you find out?”
“I called our friend Frank the security guard. He remembered the day that they inspected the system. He specifically remembered talking to Darien, and he remembers Darien checking the access codes and camera angles. He was all over the house and property. He would have been able to get all of the information he needed for the kidnapping, easy.”
“Incredible.”
“But that’s not all,” Hawkins rushed on. “The agent I came out here to talk to? The one that worked the Ferrier case? He remembers Darien too. He remembers him coming around on a fairly regular basis to see if he was making any progress.”
“Insinuating himself into the investigation. Classic. So, all we need is a sample of his DNA to link him definitively to the Ferrier murder.”
“Well, yes. That was my plan about 15 minutes ago. I was also planning on getting Darien’s phone records to identify his current partner,” Hawkins sighed heavily. “But your news puts something of a kink in those plans. For one thing, he is obviously on to us, so it will be almost impossible to get a sample from him, surreptitiously. And we certainly can’t go back to the agency to get any more evidence. There is also the little matter of everyone thinking we’re traitors and probably trying to kill us. Whatever evidence we bring them, no one will listen to us now, and that’s if they leave us alive long enough to say anything at all. He has effectively inoculated the agency against any accusations we might bring against him.”
“Yeah, that is a bit of a problem, isn’t it?”
“Just a bit.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“I don’t know, I need some time to think,” she paused. “The first thing we need to do is regroup and find someplace safe for the night. I am already on my way back to my apartment; there are some things that I need to get. Can you meet me there?”
“Agents might already be crawling all over that place,” Ryan warned. “They hadn’t sent out the teams when Cross called, but that was almost 25 minutes ago. It could be too late by now.”
“Well, I know a back way in. Hopefully if they are there, they will be lying in wait out front for me to return.”
“It’s a big risk.”
“I know, but I can’t just leave everything out for them to find. For him to find. Not right now. Will you help me?”
“Of course, but let’s hurry. Maybe they aren’t there yet.”
“Ok, I can be there in ten, you?”
“About the same, see you there.”
“Meet me out back.”
Ryan hung up the phone, pulled a U-turn and headed for Hawkins’s apartment.
Pulling her car into the parking lot of the sub shop next door, Hawkins hopped the low fence and walked up to her building. As she waited by the dumpsters for Stone, she looked around for any sign that the agency had people sitting on her place. There was no one around back, so she moved towards the corner of the building. However, her view was blocked by a large white cube van, parked close to the wall on the east side of the building. She was about to try and get a look around it when she saw Stone coming towards the building from the other side. Hawkins jogged over to meet him.
“Hey,” she kept her voice low. “Where’d you park?”
“Variety store down the block.”
“Good. Alright, let’s go in. We’ll pack everything up quickly and move it to my car, then we’ll get the hell out of here.”
“And go where?”
“Haven’t decided yet, probably a hotel. Any recommendations?”
“Is that some sort of crack?” he bristled.
“Never mind,” she chuckled.
“How do we get in?” Stone asked.
“There’s a service entrance back here. It can get us to the maintenance elevator. There’s a vacant apartment on the 6th floor that we can use to get onto the fire escape and then we can climb down to my apartment.”
“Won’t that be locked?”
“I have a key,” Hawkins grinned.
“Of course you do,” Stone rolled his eyes. “How do you know all of this anyway?”
“Hey, I never move into a building until I study the blueprints, and maybe bribe a superintendent or two. You always need to have an alternate escape route.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re paranoid?” Stone remarked.
“A few people, but then again, someone really is out to get me, aren’t they?” Hawkins raised an eyebrow.
“Point taken,” Ryan conceded.
“Let’s get this over with quickly, alright?”
With that, Hawkins strode over behind one of the dumpsters and extracted a key from her pocket. Opening the door into the corridor, they hurried down the hall and entered the maintenance lift. From the 6th floor, they climbed the fire escape down to her living room window. Hawkins pulled a window-punch from her pocket. The pane of glass shattered, and Hawkins kicked out the jagged pieces from around the corners and stepped through into her apartment. She sighed,
“This is totally coming out of my security deposit,” she whispered. “Ok Stone, you wait here I’ll pack up what’s relevant and pass it out to you. Take it back to the vacant apartment and then come back for more. I want to get out of this place as fast as we can, and spend as little time on the fire escape as possible. Once everything is out of this apartment and in the other one, we are much safer.”
“Let’s not waste time then.”
They worked fast. Hawkins managed to pack everything she thought they needed into a couple of backpacks and 4 large boxes, so everything was out of the apartment in no time. Fortunately, there was still no sign of the cavalry. Then she drew the blinds to cover the broken window and retreated back to the 6th floor. She looked at the pile of files.
“Well, it looks like we can get most of it out in one trip. Those 2 boxes there,” she kicked one with her foot, “we’ll have to come back for.”
“I could probably handle two of these boxes,” Stone replied, putting on one of the backpacks.
“Yeah, but you won’t be able to see over them, Stone. Just tuck those two into that closet over there and if we can’t come back for them, we’ll just leave them here and hope nobody looks.”
Stone nodded and followed her back outside. They locked the two boxes and Stone’s bag into the trunk, but Hawkins opted to keep her own bag on, in case she wanted to add anything last minute. That done, Hawkins turned and looked back at the parking lot, everything still looked quiet, unchanged, so she decided to risk going back in. She didn’t even need to say anything to Stone, he took her cue and followed her back over the fence. But, as they approached the building for the second time, their luck did not hold. Without warning, an unmarked agency car screeched around the west corner of the building, painting them in the headlights.
“Fuck!” Hawkins grabbed Ryan’s wrist and darted for the opposite side of the building.
The car screeched to a halt and two agents leapt out, levelling their guns,
“Freeze!” they shouted
But she was close enough to the corner that Hawkins didn’t even think about stopping, she lunged around the east side of the building, with Stone followed right behind her. Motioning for him to get between the wall and that white van, the only cover in the area, she followed after him. Crouching next to front of the van, she had Stone cover the back, Hawkins looked back along the building, she knew that those agents would be clearing the corner any moment, though they would likely move carefully, to avoid running into the line of fire. The van would offer them some cover, but what she really needed was a way to get out of here unnoticed. The building was probably surrounded by now, so their best way out was through these two agents. Trying to think of a way to get past them without having to kill them, her train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a sharp yelp of pain. Spinning to face Stone, Hawkins saw him slump to the ground by the back corner of the van,
“Stone!” she whispered urgently, inching closer to him.
It distracted her for just an instant, but an instant was long enough. As she knelt over her fallen partner, someone grabbed her hair violently from behind and Hawkins felt the sharp stab of a needle pierce the side of her neck. Her body went limp and she collapsed into the arms of her assailant. The man dropped her unceremoniously to the ground and the last thing she remembered was a familiar face smiling derisively down at her. Then everything went dark.