Chapter Eleven

Ever

I move in front of Rafe before he can leave the room, and, realizing I have my hands full, say, “Kiss?”

He smirks and leans down, kissing me in his slow and unhurried way that always makes me want him naked.

“Better?” he asks when he pulls back.

I nod, “Yep. Thank you for making breakfast and cookies and generally just making sure that we are fed. I love you.”

Rafe’s cheeks tint slightly as he leans down and kisses me softly again, “I love you too. Now, stop procrastinating and go watch boring footage.”

I fake gasp, clutching my cookies to my chest, “I would never.”

He rolls his eyes and chuckles, “Sure you wouldn’t.”

I don’t have a retort because, quite frankly, he is right; I am the queen of procrastination, so instead of replying verbally, I simply stick my tongue out at him and spin on my heel, his laughter following me out of the room.

Getting up to my room, I grab my laptop off my desk and take it over to my bed; I want to be comfy while I do this. I also put the TV on quietly in the background. There was no sound on the security cameras when we watched them at Luc’s parents place, and I can never concentrate properly if I am sitting in silence.

Settling on my bed, with my coffee in my hand I open up my emails and press play ready to settle in and hopefully find something useful on the footage.

**********

I stretch the kinks out of my back. I feel like I have been doing this for hours, but when I check the time on the screen, it has only been one. I have found absolutely nothing so far; it’s just an empty house and a curious raccoon, which I have grown strangely fond of. This is one of the more boring parts of working for the organisation, that, and paperwork. But it can’t be all excitement all the time.

I am going to need more snacks to get through the rest of this.

Hopping up, I grab my travel mug; I may as well make a fresh coffee while I’m down there. As I walk through the house it's quiet apart from the odd rumble of one of the guy’s voices and various TVs playing throughout the house. I can also hear snoring coming from somewhere, but I’m going to assume that it is Shadow and not one of the guys.

When I get to the kitchen, I quickly refill my cup before I grab another cookie and then head to our giant walk-in pantry to rummage around and find myself some more snacks. Once I have got everything I could possibly want, my arms filled with snacks and my coffee, my phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s most likely one of the guys, and my arms are so full of stuff that if I try and shift any of it to grab my phone out of my pocket, I’m going to drop everything on the floor.

So instead, I yell, “Who messaged?”

“Me, Princess!” Atlas yells back pretty much immediately, and I hear the guy’s chuckle from various places in the house as I head in his direction.

I'm reasonably confident that he was working in the office slash library that’s in the hallway before the garage. My first stumbling block is the door that leads to the hallway, and I just stand there staring at it for a moment.

“Need a hand?” Riot asks from behind me.

Looking back at him, I can see the amusement sparking in his eyes as his lips twitch with a smile.

Since he looks so amused at the predicament I am in, I briefly consider being stubborn and insisting that I can do it myself but honestly, that is only going to end badly for me.

“Yes, please,” I admit.

Riot grins and opens the door for me, smacking my ass as I walk past him and making me smile.

“I thought you were going to get stubborn with it for a second. I had a vision of you trying to open the door with your toes again.” Riot says as he follows me through the door.

I huff loudly, glad he can’t see the smile on my face, as I reply jokingly, “You don’t know me.”

“Uh huh, sure I don’t, Sunshine.”

I decide to leave that argument where it is, and I add indignantly, “And actually, if you remember correctly, I did manage to open the door using my toes.”

Riot chuckles, “You did, and it was disturbingly impressive.”

I pull a face, “You know what, I’ll take that.”

“Hey, you got us snacks,” Jensen grins.

I pause, look down at all of the food I have managed to carry, admit to myself that I probably can’t eat all of it myself, and then sigh, “Yeah, I suppose I can share.”

There is a beat of silence before everyone bursts out laughing.

“You really weren’t going to share with us?” Atlas chuckles, his eyebrows raised.

I dump all the food on the coffee table so that everyone can help themselves, and then shrug. “Well, I was heading back upstairs with it all. I think I could have probably made a pretty good dent in it.”

Rafe chuckles, “I have no doubt about that. I will make some dinner as soon as Atlas has told us what he has found.” He looks at Atlas, “You have found something, right? Because I have found literally nothing, not even a whiff of a glitch.”

“Me neither,” Jensen chimes in before Atlas can say anything. “And I really did pay attention.”

“Yeah, I have found something,” he explains, although that is all the information he gives us as he simply turns the laptop around, presses play and then waits.

We watch, and for a moment, I think that he’s uploaded the wrong piece of video for us to watch; it’s just a view of one of the many hallways in Luc’s parent's house, but then I see it in the bottom corner of the screen, not glitch but a dark figure.

“When was this?” Cash asks.

“When the cameras went down the first time.” Atlas replies, and then adds for clarification, “When HQ noticed that they were off and assumed it was us.”

“You can’t see much,” Cash says as he leans closer and squints at the screen, “but that is definitely a person.”

“One second,” Peter says as he pulls the laptop over to himself and starts tapping away.

“Is there any way we’ll be able to tell whether that’s the guy we took in?” I ask.

“They were dressed pretty much exactly the same. I don’t remember anything distinguishing about the guy that we took in,,” Riot says with a frown.

“No, it was pretty much just black,” I reply.

“Here,” Peter says, interrupting our musings, “I’ve lightened it as much as I can.” He turns the screen so that we can see and then continues, “There is definitely a person there. But if you look right here,” he points to the very edge of the screen, “I think I can see the edge of someone else’s hand, but I’m not one hundred percent sure.”

We all move closer, and he is right, there is definitely a person standing there, but I am too far away from the screen to be able to give a good opinion on whether there is a hand at the edge of the screen. I can say that the guy that I can definitely see has two hands so if Peter is right and it is a hand then that means that they came together.

“It looks like a hand to me,” Atlas says as he squints at the screen.

Everyone takes it in turns to look at the screen more closely and give their opinion on what they think it is. By the time that everyone has had a look the general consensus is that it is a hand.

“Okay, so we agree that’s a hand,” Trick checks and everyone nods, “so that means that he came in with the guy that we took in. that gives us a starting point for the questions when we can finally get in to see him.”

“Yeah, it does.” Cash agrees.

“Please tell me that means that we can stop looking at the footage,” I say hopefully.

Trick gives me a sympathetic smile, “Sorry Sweetheart, we’ve got to see if there’s anything else important on the footage.”

I sigh, “I knew you were going to say that.”

“Ah, man,” Jensen groans, “I’m taking more cookies; I’m going to need them if I have any hope of getting through this torture.”

“Torture? Seriously, don’t you think that is a little dramatic?” Rage questions.

“Especially since you have been through actual torture,” Luc adds.

Jensen thinks about it for a second and then shakes his head, “Nope, this is worse.”

I'm still smiling when I get up to my room with what is left of my snacks and settle back into watching the rest of the footage.

A couple of hours later and my eyes are dry and sore from staring intently at the screen, and I have got a kink in my neck. I am finished though and I didn’t see any glitches or anything else suspicious. I do kind of want to go back and get my new raccoon friend, but that would be ridiculous, he is a wild animal, and not my friend, despite what my brain is trying to tell me.

“Dinners ready!” Rafe yells up the stairs.

There is a thundering of footsteps and I see multiple guys rush past my door, and I giggle, they are obviously starving, or at least think they are. Honestly, I never see them move as fast unless there’s food or danger involved and even then, it is a toss-up whether they move quickly when danger is involved.

I grab all of the trash I have accumulated with my snacking and my travel mug because if I don’t take it down now, I won’t take it down, and I will gradually accumulate more and more cups on my bedside table. I know myself well enough that I now try to avoid this at all costs.

As I move down the stairs, the smells from the kitchen drift up and, as always, make my stomach growl with hunger.

“Something smells amazing,” I compliment as I walk into the kitchen, putting the trash in the bin and my travel mug in the dishwasher.

“Thanks,” Rafe smiles and then nods in Luc’s direction, “I can’t actually take the credit for this one, it was Luc’s idea.”

Luc rolls his eyes as he grabs a dish and takes it out to the table, “Yeah, my idea, but he executed it; I wouldn’t have even known where to start.”

Rafe just shrugs as he follows us out with the last of the food and places it on the table. Dinner is delicious, and I am very glad that Luc had the idea, and that Rafe was able to make it happen. It takes some serious talent in the kitchen to be able to create something from a vague idea that someone else has given them. As always, I’m impressed.

Trick’s phone suddenly starts ringing, and he pulls it out of his pocket. He smiles when he looks at the screen.

“It’s Mr R, hopefully, he’s calling to let us know that everything has been cleared and we can go and question the guy that we caught in Luc’s old house.” Trick tells us as he gets up and walks out of the room.

The conversation starts back up while he is gone, and I turn to Pete, “Do you want to watch a movie or something later?”

I know he is missing Elijah a lot, and I want to make him miss him just a little less for a moment. I messaged Jynx and Lyric last night; Jynx said she may have a situation, and she would get back to me. I asked if she needed backup, and she said it was okay for now, but she would let me know, which is the usual response she gives me. I think if she actually accepted my help on one of these things, I would be more surprised. Lyric replied that she would love to do something later in the week, but she is struggling with tiredness at the moment, so it probably wouldn’t be any fun. I just told her that I didn’t care; she could come and just nap the whole time.

In the end, I didn’t manage to book a movie night for all of us, but I'm hoping to get one in before Jynx has to head back. Of course, knowing our lives and how quickly everything goes tits up at the moment, I'm probably not going to get the chance; one or all of us will be busy; I think we are pretty fucking lucky that we managed to get everyone together for Christmas, well almost everyone.

Hence, the reason why I am trying to get the movie night in now, at least Peter and I can have one.

“Yeah, that sounds good. I will come and find you after I have hopefully had a phone call with Eli,” he replies with a grin.

“Oh yeah, I forgot Trick said it would be safe so long as he managed to check in and confirmed that it was,” I reply.

Peter nods, “Yeah, I'm hoping he will be able to give me a rough time scale of how much longer he thinks he will be away for. It wouldn’t be so bad if I knew exactly when he was going to be back, like a date to look forward to, the open-ended nature of the cases makes it seem like it lasts a lot longer than it usually does. I never know if he is going to be gone for a few days or months."

I frown, “Yeah. I can see that actually.” Pausing, I add, “You know the option is always there for you to go and work with his team.”

Peter smirks, “Trying to get rid of me?”

I chuckle, “Never.”

“Better not be,” he replies and then adds seriously, “I’m not going to lie, I have thought about it, but I love working with you and the guys, and I'm happy here. Not only that, I don’t know if you have noticed but Eli is a little bit protective over me, he wouldn’t try to stop me from going on the cases and not just being tech support, but it would cause him so much stress. He worries.”

I smirk, “Oh yeah, I think we all know how worried he gets about you. You know, I think it might actually be a good thing for him to see you in action. He knows how good you are and that you easily hold your own alongside us, but hearing someone say it and actually witnessing it are two very different things.”

Peter considers my words for a moment, “Yeah, I suppose he’s not really seen me in action for a while, not since we last did a case together, and that was years ago; maybe he needs a little reminder.”

“Exactly. Although, my guys still worry about me, and I have tortured and killed people since I was a teenager, so you know,” I shrug, “it’s probably just something that we have to get used to.”

Peter grins, “Yeah, you might actually be on something there.” He side-eyes me, “Admit it,you worry about them just as much as they worry about us, I know I do. So, maybe it’s just one of those things, the difference being your men have gotten used to watching you throw yourself in the way of danger, and my man hasn’t seen it enough to get used to it.”

“A very valid point,” I frown, “I feel like we may have somehow talked ourselves round in a slightly wonky circle.”

Peter frowns, “I’m not even entirely sure of the original point either of us was trying to make.”

Neither of us have to try and figure it out, our brains are clearly fried from all the footage that we have had to watch today, because Trick comes back into the room with a frown on his face.

“What’s up?” Cash asks immediately, gaining everyone’s attention as all of the conversations stop.

“Well, it’s not the news that we were hoping for.” He replies.

Riot raises his eyebrow, “Oh, what happened?”

“He’s dead,” Trick replies.

“What? How?” Atlas asks, “Surely, they checked him for one of the chips? That has become standard protocol now; everyone has to be checked, and even those we know for certain don’t have anything to do with Hunt.”

“That’s exactly what I said,” Trick replies, “he apparently came back clear with no signs of a chip when he was scanned.”

“How did he die, then?” Rage asks, looking as confused as we all feel. “One of ours didn’t get a bit heavy-handed, did they?”

Trick shakes his head, “No. He broke his tooth and poisoned himself.”

“He had one of those capsules implanted?” I ask.

He nods his head, “Yeah. He died pretty quickly, and there was nothing that the agents could have done.”

The looks on everyone’s faces are a mixture of somber and confused.

“Why did he wait so long?” I ask, “He could’ve ended it at any point, but he waited for a really long time before he did.”

“Maybe he was hoping that we’d let him go?” Luc suggests.

Rafe shrugs, “That’s a good point there’s a big difference between saying that you’ll end it if you get questioned or find yourself in the enemies’ hands and actually being able to do it.”

“That’s true,” I reply. I don’t like that he chose to do that. He most likely wasn’t going to be set free, but unless we found something worse in his background, he wouldn’t have gone away for that long.