The Archer

by Abigail Roux

  judge the ups and downs of the stock exchange, non?” Remy asked sarcastically.

  Carl stared at Remy in shock. Assassinating politicians and CEOs? What the

  hell?

  “That’s what you do for the Organization?” Brandt asked after a short

  stunned silence.

  Remy blinked several times as he belatedly realized that perhaps this was a

  bad thing to have made public.

  “Jesus,” Remy breathed irritably. He unbuckled slowly and placed one hand

  carefully on the handle of the door. The other he rested on the steering wheel, both in plain sight of Carl. “We’ve never been on the same fucking side, have we?” he asked slowly as his body tensed. Carl could only stare at the other man in shock. “You’re the fucking good guys,” Remy whispered in anguish as he stared sadly out the

  window of the Mustang.

  XLVI.

  SHAWN sat in the corner of the lower bunk of one of their three sleeping

  compartments, stuffed behind a ladder he was pretty sure they could have removed if they weren’t so busy fighting. He tried to force his tense muscles to relax. His ears were still ringing and he could barely hear Thiago and Gray speaking, even though Gray sat on the bed with him and Thiago stood just steps away in the tiny

  compartment.

  They were speaking in low tones to avoid being overheard, and their voices

  were simply a murmur of white noise beneath the overwhelming ringing in Shawn’s

  head. Nikolaus was crouched in the corner of the small compartment, his eyes darting back and forth between Thiago and Gray as he followed their heated conversation. He reminded Shawn of a small child watching his parents have it out.

  Considering that Nikolaus had revealed his treachery to them in the car,

  Shawn assumed that at least half of the argument had to do with the German tech.

  Some of it, however, seemed to deal with him as well. Every now and then, Gray

  would gesture toward Shawn emphatically and snarl and Thiago would respond with

  an angry wave of his hands or a shake of his head. Shawn had never felt so lost in his life. He needed to be able to hear.

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  He didn’t know if it was something he did that was causing the heated

  discussion, or if it was the fact that Thiago had maimed him. He doubted that Gray was worried over any harm done to him, though. The man was probably upset that

  Shawn couldn’t now be used for guard duty and they wouldn’t get as much sleep.

  Bastard.

  Shawn watched Thiago, who stood facing him, trying to read his lips as he

  spoke. He could catch pieces of what was said, but it was a skill he’d never tried to improve, and he wasn’t able to follow very well. His hearing seemed to be getting worse rather than better. Maybe Thiago really had busted his eardrum. Bastard.

  As Shawn sat watching, Thiago tensed and turned slightly to look over his

  shoulder at the door. Gray lunged forward quickly to stand with him. It was close quarters, and Gray was forced to stand slightly behind Thiago as they waited for

  whatever they had heard. Shawn saw the man place a hand on the small of Thiago’s

  back, and Thiago visibly relaxed.

  Whatever they shared didn’t matter to Shawn, though. Shawn still didn’t like

  the bastard.

  The door burst open and Shawn sat forward, unable to do more than watch in

  the cramped compartment as Remy barreled into Thiago and Gray, followed by a very pissed off Brandt. Carl stood out in the aisle looking first to his right and then to his left nervously. He actually looked quite distraught.

  Shawn hoped the assassin wasn’t claustrophobic. Thiago caught Remy by

  wrapping his arms around the man, and Shawn immediately tensed once more as he

  saw the look on Remy’s face. He was as close to panicking as Shawn had ever seen

  him.

  Remy’s eyes landed on Shawn, and he immediately began to struggle in

  Thiago’s grasp. Brandt pointed at Remy and then Shawn and started speaking harshly to Thiago. Thiago and Gray tried to get out of Remy’s way as he struggled past them.

  Remy spoke to Shawn in what appeared to be a hurried whisper, but Shawn could

  only frown back at him helplessly.

  He had no idea what was going on, and he couldn’t hear a fucking thing.

  Remy clambered onto the bed and knelt right in front of him, pawing at him

  as if he hadn’t expected him to be there. He caught Shawn’s face in his hands and looked Shawn in the eye. His mouth was moving, but no sound was reaching Shawn’s

  ears. Shawn could read his lips, though.

  “Are you okay?” he was asking.

  “I’m fine,” Shawn answered in a harsh whisper as he jerked his head away.

  Remy’s hand on his ear was a bit more painful than Shawn would have expected.

  Remy pulled away from him as if he’d been struck, and Shawn supposed that

  his tone of voice had sounded rather severe. He knew it was basic instinct to speak loudly when one couldn’t hear in an effort to hear your own words, so he’d been

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  keeping his voice low and flat intentionally. But to Remy, who had apparently rushed in to find him, worried over his well-being for some reason, the tone had probably sounded harsh and reprimanding.

  Shawn berated himself mentally as Remy shrank back into the other corner

  of the bunk. Could he not do a damn thing right anymore? Remy nodded sedately in

  response and looked back at Brandt, who glared at them both. Shawn blinked back at him, wondering what happened to get the normally calm pyromaniac so riled up.

  Brandt turned slightly and threw his hands up in exasperation as he looked at

  Carl. He reached out and grabbed the man by his shirtfront and dragged him inside, sliding the door shut violently as he pushed at Thiago and Gray to back them up and make more room.

  Gray lost his balance and Shawn instinctively reached out to grab him before

  he fell and cracked his head open on the ladder, or some other equally desirable fate.

  He pulled him toward him and Gray fell onto the bottom bunk to sprawl on top of

  Remy and Shawn. The three of them remained there, barely breathing and hoping to

  remain inconspicuous as Brandt got in Carl’s face and snarled, then turned on Thiago and started motioning angrily toward them once more.

  Remy was struggling with Gray and looking slightly dejected as he helped

  the man out of Shawn’s lap. Nikolaus was edging further and further into the corner and looking at Shawn and Remy with a look of ever-increasing horror, and Thiago

  and Brandt were bristling as they argued. Carl simply looked trapped in the corner beside the closed door, and Gray was now smacking Remy upside the head and

  yelling at him.

  All this Shawn was observing with a sinking feeling, but the only thing he

  could completely focus on was the ringing in his ears.

  XLVII.

  REMY and Shawn were killers? Well sure, they all were. Killers for hire? On the

  wrong side? Bad guys, essentially? Not possible. The Organization didn’t do that sort of thing.

  Did they?

  Nikolaus couldn’t quite understand what Brandt was ranting about, though

  he was shamefully glad that it was taking the focus off him, for the moment.

  “I’m telling you, mate, I don’t like being in the dark,” Brandt growled as he

  took a threatening step toward Thiago.

  The compartment was tiny, and Nikolaus scrambled out of Thiago’s way as

  the man stumbled backwards. Nikolaus climbed the ladder to the top bunk and

  watched the scene unfold below him. Brandt grabbed Thia
go to keep him from falling and pulled him close.

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  “If you don’t spill every goddamn thing you know, and I mean right fucking

  now, I will kill you. Slowly.”

  To the surprise of everyone in the small space, Carl stepped forward,

  grabbed Brandt around the neck, and pulled on him, throwing him up against the side of the wall and pinning him there. Thiago fell back against the window as he was let loose and stared at the two men in confusion, and Nikolaus saw Gray and Remy shift uneasily below him. Shawn watched the drama unfold warily, but it was pretty

  obvious that the man wasn’t following it.

  “Calm the fuck down,” Carl growled in a low, even voice.

  Brandt blinked at him with wide brown eyes, and Nikolaus wondered if the

  big man was having flashbacks to his near-death experience in Remy’s kitchen.

  Nikolaus certainly was.

  “What the hell is going on?” Thiago asked in frustration as he pushed away

  from the window and turned around to close the curtain.

  “Seems we’ve had a little miscommunication,” Carl answered calmly

  without taking his eyes off Brandt.

  “Ha!” Remy cried from beneath Nikolaus’s bunk. “Yeah, apparently not all

  the guns for hire got the fucking memo this time around!” he spat disgustedly.

  “Fucking misunderstanding,” he grumbled. “You’re a fucking master of the obvious, you know that, Trigger?”

  Nikolaus leaned over the bunk to look at the three men beneath him. Shawn

  and Gray were looking at Remy warily, and Remy sat in the far corner with his arms crossed over his chest, looking very much like a scolded child. Shawn leaned forward and tugged on Gray’s shirtsleeve, and Gray leaned toward him.

  “What’s going on?” Shawn asked in a low voice.

  Gray did a double take and then tilted his head up to glare at Thiago

  pointedly. “See?” he said angrily as he jabbed his finger at Shawn. “He can’t hear a fucking thing!”

  “What do you mean, he can’t hear?” Remy asked concernedly, and Carl and

  Brandt stopped glaring at one another long enough to look at Gray in alarm. “And

  who shot at you on the way here? Were you followed?”

  “No one shot at us,” Gray spat. “Thiago fired his gun through the freaking

  windshield, right by Shawn’s ear.”

  “Why?” Remy asked curiously, his concern ebbing. Nikolaus wondered how

  Remy knew a gun had been fired, and it suddenly struck him that the three men must have seen the bullet hole in the front of the 4Runner as they came in. No wonder

  Remy had been panicked when he found Shawn with blood running down the side of

  his face.

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Thiago said with an angry glare at

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  Gray. “Certainly made me feel better.”

  “Move, Boss,” Remy ordered as he crawled behind Gray and they struggled

  around one another until Remy was sitting next to Shawn and examining the side of his face. He put his mouth right next to Shawn’s ear, his lips moving almost

  imperceptibly as he spoke. Shawn nodded slowly in response and shivered slightly.

  “You’ll be okay then,” Remy said reassuringly as he patted Shawn’s head and ran his hand through Shawn’s hair.

  “Someone explain before I lose my mind,” Thiago said, his eyes still

  absently on Remy and Shawn.

  “It would seem that someone in the upper echelons of the Organization has

  been having a good laugh with us,” Carl said calmly.

  “What?” Gray asked in a frustrated voice.

  “They’re fucking villains, is what!” Brandt shouted as he pointed his finger

  at Shawn and Remy.

  Nikolaus cringed, expecting an outburst of protest from the two men, but

  Shawn simply looked at Brandt with a confused frown and Remy wrapped an arm

  protectively around Shawn and stared back at Brandt defiantly.

  “Yes, we’ve established that, Wally,” Carl said sharply. “Sit down.”

  To Nikolaus’s utter astonishment Brandt obeyed with very little fuss and

  actually sat down on the lower bunk beside Gray. Nikolaus was rather glad for his bird’s eye advantage just then. They looked crowded down there.

  “What do you know?” Thiago asked Carl shrewdly as Carl leaned against the

  wall and smiled.

  “Probably more than you do,” Carl responded assuredly. “First things first,

  though, yeah?” Carl said as he pushed away from the wall and removed his gun from his shoulder holster. He checked the number of rounds idly and looked up at Brandt and gave the man a small smile as he replaced the gun. “We should secure the train before it leaves. It’ll give us some peace of mind on the way to D.C., at least.”

  “Right,” Gray said a brief silence. “Pairs?”

  “I don’t think we have the time for pairs,” Thiago said quietly. “Especially

  since there’ll just be three of us working the entire thing.”

  “Why three?” Nikolaus asked with a sort of dread, speaking for the first time

  since they had boarded the train.

  Thiago looked up at Nikolaus briefly and then moved his eyes down to stare

  at Remy and Shawn sadly for several seconds. “Because someone will have to make

  sure you three don’t get loose. Brandt, Gray… tie them up.”

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  XLVIII.

  BRANDT tried to avoid looking Shawn in the eye as he tied a twisted sheet around

  the man’s hands and feet, but he failed and nearly froze in place when he met the cold green eyes.

  Shawn had fought them at first, but Remy had whispered in his ear for a

  good minute, probably explaining to him that they’d been found out for the killers they were and that they were not, in fact, all on the same side, if Brandt had to guess.

  After that, Shawn and Remy both remained alarmingly sedate as they

  allowed themselves to be tied up. Brandt and Gray went easy on them, since they

  were both not only injured, but also friends. Brandt didn’t want to think of either of them as the enemy. It broke his heart.

  Brandt didn’t understand why Nikolaus needed to be tied up, but the smaller

  man had simply held out his hands and nodded, and Gray wrapped him up with a little bit more enjoyment than Brandt supposed was necessary.

  “Why is he being restrained? What has he done?” Remy asked as his eyes

  followed Gray’s hands.

  “He’s been informing on us. We’ll tell you all about it when we get back,”

  Thiago said in a hard, flat voice.

  Brandt sat counting the seconds that Carl, Thiago, and Gray were gone,

  casting guilty glances at Shawn as he sat next to the prostrate man on the lower bunk.

  Remy and Nikolaus above them were unusually quiet, and Shawn simply laid there,

  staring at Brandt balefully like some affronted, green-eyed cow. Or a sheep, maybe.

  Could you insult a sheep? Or a cow, for that matter?

  Brandt shook his head and sat forward. He couldn’t take it any longer. It had

  been twenty minutes. They should have been back by now.

  “Hey, Wally?” Remy ventured softly just as Brandt was about to jump up

  and begin to pace.

  “Hmm?”

  “Can Beignet hear me?”

  Brandt glanced over at Shawn to try and discern whether the man had

  recovered any of his ability to hear, but it didn’t appear that he had. “I don’t think so,”

  he responded doubtfully.

/>   “We’re not bad people,” Remy asserted in the same soft, sad voice.

  “You kill innocent people for money,” Brandt spat in disgust. “What do you

  consider yourself, if not bad?”

  Remy was silent for some time, and Brandt clenched his jaw angrily.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Remy finally said softly. “Doesn’t change who we

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  both are, though. You love him; I can see it in the way you look at him.”

  “Maybe so. He’s still a killer.”

  “As are we all,” Remy said in a tone that signified the end of the short

  conversation.

  Brandt flopped back against the wall and looked at Shawn sideways, wanting

  to vent his anger but knowing the older man didn’t deserve to be the target. Especially when he wasn't even really aware of what was going on.

  “What’d he say?” Shawn asked softly.

  Brandt supposed he spoke in such a low tone to avoid yelling. Brandt had

  seen it plenty of times after an explosion; people couldn’t hear themselves when they spoke, and so they yelled, thinking that others couldn’t hear them either. At least Shawn had realized that was not the case and kept his voice down.

  Brandt felt a pang of pity for the man, thinking he must be reeling from

  losing one of the senses he depended on most. But then, he remembered what Shawn

  was and he tried his best to harden himself against the myriad of sympathetic feelings running through him.

  “Tell him something, Wally,” Remy said softly as the bunk above Brandt’s

  head creaked and rustled with one or both of the shifting bodies of the two men

  above.

  “He was trying to get me to untie him,” Brandt answered finally, lying

  through his teeth and wondering why, even now, he was protecting Remy from

  Shawn’s judgment. Remy obviously hadn’t wanted Shawn to hear his words.

  “Liar,” Shawn said simply as he lowered his head back onto his pillow.

  Brandt blinked and sighed heavily. He ran his hand through his hair and

  looked around the room for something to hold his attention.

  “Should we go look for them?” Remy asked quietly after several more