A new way to get your revenge by MrsJohnReese

(December 2011)

I woke up to the high pitched ringing of a cell phone on the coffee table in a downtown New York City hotel room; and extricated myself from the sheets to answer it, throwing a hand over my eyes as I flipped on the lamp above the bed and adjusted to the sudden brightness in the room.

“Gerard” I croaked out upon reaching the phone; swallowing to try and rid my voice of its hoarseness as the person on the other line spoke.

“Natalya, this is Joss Carter. Listen, I know where Reese is going to be. He’s headed to a parking garage outside the hospital to finish up a job. You guys can catch him there.”

Upon hearing her words, I found myself fully awake; anxious and excited at the news that we had waited nearly a year for. We had him. After all this time playing cat and mouse, getting just close enough to grab him, only to have him slip through our fingers like smoke; he was finally out in the open again. The elation I felt at this new breakthrough sent waves of excitement rolling off of me; and I found myself itching to get out of the hotel room to fulfill the task that I had been called here to do.

“Hang on a second Carter, I have to tell Mark” I told the detective, while simultaneously climbing back onto the bed to nudge at the agent who had been sleeping beside me.

“You go ahead and do that Agent Gerard; I have to go take care of something else, okay? We’ll talk later.” And with that, she hung up.

I briefly considered how eager she seemed to end the call before returning to my task at hand; nudging Mark again as he slowly stirred to life.

He eyed me blearily, stretching before saying with a smirk

“You ready for more, sunshine?”

I rolled my eyes, blowing off his reference to our, for lack of a better term, “arrangement”. Ever since that night at the gala (when I had admittedly imbibed a bit too much on champagne); we had taken to enjoying each other’s company in a more intimate fashion. Whether we did this because there were some feelings for each other buried somewhere underneath the surface; or merely to relieve the inherent loneliness and lack of physical contact that stemmed from our job, I’ll never know. I really couldn’t even justify why I allowed myself to get in this particular position in the first place; what with all of the moral teachings and military training from my past casting a significant amount of guilt on our trysts. At any rate, I thought to myself, it was what it was; and I supposed that I would answer to God later if there was issue with my conduct.

Mark propped himself up on an elbow and reached out a hand, placing it possessively on my knee and startling me out of my musings as he asked

“What is it?”

“Carter said she found where Reese is. He’s going to a parking structure near the hospital; so we’d better get moving if we want to catch him.” I replied, stifling a yelp of surprise as he threw himself on top of me; grinning from ear to ear and planting a solid kiss on my lips before jumping out of bed to get dressed. I fought back my quick pang of longing as I found myself wishing he would look that genuinely happy about something other than the job; something I knew for a fact would never happen.

Sighing as I watched him get dressed, I repeated my new mantra of the past few months: it wouldn’t do to start getting all emotional now, not when I knew exactly what I had gotten myself into from the very beginning.

Stretching slowly, I got out of bed and began rummaging around for some comfortable clothes for the task at hand. After dressing in some loose black slacks and a blue T-shirt, and strapping my gun to my waist; I paused in front of the mirror to tie my unruly locks into a loose bun before grabbing the keys and following Mark (once again in a suit) out the door.

By the time we reached the car, my melancholy thoughts were a thing of the past; and I found myself once again taut with excitement at what we were about to accomplish.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Soon after leaving the hotel, we stopped by the police station to grab Carter; and then the three of us skidded off on our way to the hospital. Video feed of the parking structure that had been secured by one of Mark’s goons indicated that Reese was still within; and I felt my anxiety edge up with every passing mile that brought us closer to our destination. I could sense Mark’s excitement as well; the eagerness at catching up to our fugitive radiating off him in waves.

Carter was the only one who seemed a little unsure; but I chalked that up to her relatively recent connection with the man. Reese had, for some reason, saved her life a week or so prior; and I had to admit that if I were in her shoes, I would be feeling a certain amount of trepidation as well.

My emotions were not nearly so tied up with our fugitive as the detective’s though; as I had only heard stories of the brutal murders he was capable of since his departure from the CIA. Given my habit of forming attachments to people I really shouldn’t be involved with (hence my current entanglement with Mark); I suppose this was probably a good thing.

By the time we had pulled up to the top level of the structure and sighted Reese walking towards a car on the other side; my nerves were tight as a drum, and it was with extreme effort that I was able to get out of the car slowly, to move around to the front alongside Mark.

The tall man (also in a suit…is that all these ops knew how to wear?) turned slowly to face our direction; and I was immediately floored by the depth of emotion spanning his face within the millisecond before Mark spoke to him. Surprise at seeing us, anger at Carter, curiosity tinged with a bit of a haunted look at my appearance, and resentment towards Mark all boiled to the surface before his face was, once again, a stoic mask of indifference.
Even his reply to Mark’s hello was calm and collected; with only a hint of the surprise he surely must have felt.

I wondered silently at his ability to remain calm in a situation such as this; but I figured if you were a seasoned killer, then not much out there would faze you. I was all too ready to accept that as the reason for his seeming calm; but something in the tone of Mark’s next statement “glad to see you’re still alive” alerted me to something that I hadn’t picked up on before. There was a bit more than pleasure at finally catching a fugitive in his voice; something that sounded more akin to a primal desire for revenge. I looked over at Mark, trying to gage where his tone may be coming from; and the look I saw in his eyes as he gazed at the ex-op horrified me. It was a look that I could only describe as the look one gets when they are hunting down an animal purely for sport. There was no gratification in his eyes, signifying knowledge of justice served; only a look of pure glee at the other man’s impending misfortune.

To add to my growing discomfort with the current situation; it seemed as though Reese was trying desperately to communicate with either myself or Detective Carter, because he was looking for all the world like a man pleading for a second chance as his gaze swiveled around and locked with mine. As Mark continued to talk to him, and he continued to respond; his eyes never left my face, locking us in a wordless stream of communication that rendered me, for the first time since accepting it, unsure of my task.

I had seen the pleading looks cast my way on the faces of men I had helped track for the military as we closed in on them; but those looks were filled more with desperation and fear at finally being held responsible for their crimes. Reese’s eyes held another story entirely. He wasn’t so much pleading to be spared any punishment; as he was pleading to get a chance to explain himself.

Something in me knew, at that moment, that we did not know his whole story; and that we were about to punish someone a bit more than they deserved as a result. I looked back over at Mark, intending to mention that we should perhaps take the man somewhere more private for questioning so that we could shed more light on what he had really been through. The night was turning colder; and I figured it may help to make Reese more comfortable (if that were even possible given the situation) if we were sitting at a table to talk, rather than ganging up on him in the street like a band of thugs.

As I opened my mouth to speak, however, Mark cut me off; once again addressing Reese as he said:

“It’s time to come home John. The slate’s been wiped clean.”

Reese gave me one last, heart-wrenching look as I was attempting to process the meaning of Mark’s statement before he said

“You know that’ll never happen.”

As if on cue from his defiance; a single shot rang out from somewhere up above and behind me; and I dove back behind the SUV as more gunshots followed. By the time I had recovered from my surprise enough to make it back out in front of the vehicle with my gun at the ready, both headlights had been shot out and Reese was nowhere to be found. Carter had disappeared too, and this did nothing to strengthen my growing doubts about why I was here.

If we had come to take Reese in so that he could serve time for all of the things he was accused of; why on earth had Mark looked so damn predatory? And where in hell had that gunshot come from? I realized, belatedly, that had I been standing one step closer to Reese it would have hit me; and my horror only increased as I heard Mark yelling into his earpiece at the hidden gunman. He had never intended to take Reese in alive; and the fact that he knew I was standing in the line of fire and had done nothing spoke volumes to me in that moment.

I backed away from the SUV slowly, the events of the past few minutes and their implications beginning to sink in. Mark turned, then, to see me moving away; and he strode around the vehicle, reaching a hand out as he continued to walk towards me.

“Come on Natalya, let’s go. We still have a chance to catch him.”

I knew the look on his face was supposed to show empathy; but perhaps it was the knowledge that he would have let me be killed if it meant he got what he wanted that finally snapped my tenuous illusion of him as the knight in shining armor. I continued backing away, gasping for air as I realized I was choking out sobs.

“You stay away from me!” I cried out, instinctively drawing my gun once more and aiming it at his chest as I continued to back away from him. A surge of bravado that I didn’t know I had bubbled up as I kept moving backwards, as I addressed him in a more confident manner.

“Tell me, Mark” I said, forcing as much venom into my words as possible, “how long were you going to wait before you offed me too? Before you decided I needed to have a slate or two of my own cleaned?”

“Listen, Natalya it wasn’t like that with you. You saw John’s file; he’s done some…terrible things” he said, trying to calm me down; the look on his face clearly showing that he was not expecting this sudden turn in my allegiance.

As he continued approaching me, I noticed his hand go reflexively to his gun; and that was all I needed to move me to action. If I had learned nothing else from my time with Snow, it was that with the agency; it was either kill or be killed.

Squeezing my finger over the trigger of my gun; I fired one shot, not bothering to check if I had hit my target or not as I ran off into the night.