In Bits and Pieces by ReeseisLAVAhot, SavhCaro

Chapter 2

John drove through the small narrow streets lined by row after row of connected houses until he reached an exit for an autobahn. He didn’t care where he was going, and just blindly chose a route that took him south and away from the press of humanity that was Frankfurt. He swerved in and out of traffic, pushing the car to its limits. The engine whined as his speed exceeded 180kph. Away from the city center, John knew that the Polizei would not care how fast he was going.

The gunshots and screaming he heard over the radio were repeated over and over again in his head. His hands gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles were white and he yelled out his frustration and anger. A black cloud of despair enveloped him as he realized that he was here, across an ocean, while the only woman he had ever truly loved was dead on some street in Columbia. He pictured in his mind, her sightless eyes looking up at the same stars he could see above him, her blood running off into the street. He had had no idea she was there in Columbia. Why would Peter have taken her to a country so full of corruption and drug trafficking? Once more he regretted his decision to bow out of Jessica’s life. His heart had been practically ripped out of his chest that day at the airport; the day when she had asked him for the last time to be part of her life despite the fact that she was engaged. He had said nothing and watched her walk away from him only whispering those words she had asked of him once she was out of earshot. He had done it all for her own safety, thinking that she would be safer with Peter and look what had happened! He had tried to protect her and failed, failed miserably in fact. He pounded the steering wheel and considered for a brief second swerving into a bridge abutment but then tossed the idea away. His death would not bring Jessica back. BUT, he could have the satisfaction of knowing that the people who were responsible for her death paid and paid dearly. Oh yes, that was one thing he COULD do. But first he needed answers; answers from Stanton and then Snow. He growled thinking about the man who knew Jessica was in danger and did nothing to help her or any of the other people he considered collateral damage. John swung the steering wheel hard to the right and the tires squealed as he exited the autobahn. He quickly turned the car around and headed back to the safe house, determined to get answers and then….the satisfaction of revenge.

The car ate up the miles at a fast clip on the return trip to the safe house. No longer driving erratically, swerving in and out of traffic and running off the side of the road, Reese kept it between the lines. Some semblance of order was coming back to him. Reese shut the incoherent screaming he kept hearing in his head, into its own compartment in the back of his mind. Now was not the time to give into the rage that originally had him fleeing down the autobahn in the other direction. Now was the time to get information: good, solid, cold information about what went down in Columbia. Find out what happened to........her......best not even think her name.......and most important of all, who knew and did nothing AND made sure HE knew nothing about it.

He believed in Stanton. He had to. She was everything to him. She created him. She was his mentor, his confidant, his partner, his friend, if you could ever actually HAVE a friend in The Company. He had to believe she was telling him the truth about not knowing about Jessica's life being in danger. He had to. If the trust he had in her turned up empty then he was truly lost. He reached for his phone to call her but he didn't have it. He had put it on the table while he'd been writing his report. No telling where it was now since he'd up ended the table in his extremis. She had admitted being concerned about Snow's directive sending him away.

As he drove back towards the safe house and the answers he desperately needed, he reminisced about past missions with Stanton. There was the time that he and she had parachuted into Pakistan to hunt for insurgents. They had been holed up in a small village in the hills and it was suspected that one of the heads of Al-Queda was taking refuge with the group. It was their mission to infiltrate the village, take out the insurgents and bring out the “package” alive and able to talk. The mission had started out poorly from the get-go. Stanton had come down on a rock while landing and had twisted her ankle. Reese had to practically carry her to the outskirts of the village, dodging enemy patrols that were NOT supposed to be there. When they got to the village, she had insisted that he not go in alone and had limped in, covering his six. The other problem with the mission was that it was practically impossible to tell the insurgents from the villagers. He didn’t want to kill innocent civilians but once, he passed a house having cleared it of hostiles, when he heard shots behind him.

“NEVER let anyone get behind you!” Stanton had yelled at him after having shot the man who was aiming for him. “It’s you or them! Now pay attention!” After that, he had only left the women and children alive. He knew it would haunt him, these deaths, but he also knew Stanton would help get him through it. She was very good at laying his ghosts to rest. They had finally located the “package” and left the village as quickly as possible for a rendezvous point with the chopper.

Reese slowly drove into the neighborhood where the safe house was, his mind still sifting through different scenarios about what had happened. He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see that over four hours had passed since since he had fled the house. Sitting at a stop sign he paused to collect himself before turning down the road of the safe house. He wondered what she must think after seeing him lose complete control AND having no way to reach him when he fled. Then he remembered that he had hurt her. She had reached out to him and he had hurt her. He remembered her gasp of pain. He remembered seeing her face showing shock that he had hurt her. Oh my God, Stanton! He gunned the engine, leaving tire marks on the pavement as he turned down the road to the safe house.

All of a sudden a familiar sensation came over Reese. It was a feeling he had learn to listen to. Stanton use to call it his 'Spidey sense' that told him something was 'off', not right, unseen and dangerous. His mind clicked into spook mode and he immediately let his foot off the gas pedal but didn't apply the brakes. The car coasted toward the safe house and Reese took stock of the lay of the land. Something was definitely not right. He couldn't see anything amiss but he KNEW something was wrong. He let the car come to a stop about four houses away. He reached for his gun, only to come up empty handed. It was probably on the floor with his phone. He had no weapon.

Just before he opened the car door, he reached up and turned off the dome light. No sense in giving anyone an easy shot if there was something wrong here. He silently opened the car door and ran in between the houses to approach the safe house from the back. As he got closer, he noticed that all the lights in the house were off, even the kitchen light he had always been trained to leave on in case someone was trying to sneak in the back just as he was now. The house was silent, not even a flickering of a TV in any of the windows. The only light that was on was the one above the back door. If he approached the house that way, he would be a perfectly illuminated target. He padded silently around to the front of the house and found the same situation. It appeared his only choice was to break a window and go through that way. Even that was not ideal. He knew it could just as easily be an attempt to funnel him into a trap. He grabbed a rock from nearby and leaned down to break the lock on one of the basement windows, figuring that this would make the least amount of detectable noise inside. He slowly raised the window in case it should creak but thankfully it was quiet. He weighed the options of sliding in slowly and making little noise or jumping in quickly so as to not make as an easy target of himself. He stopped for a second and extended all his senses, trying to decide just what it was that was setting off his alarms. Finally, he decided it was more important that he get in quickly and jumped feet first down into the basement. He landed on the balls of his feet to absorb the shock and noise but there was still a detectable thump. He crouched down and waited for any sign that he had been heard. Nothing.

He slowly made his way to the stairs, thankful that the basement was empty of anything he could have run into in the dark as he knew from his first reconnaissance of the house. As he approached the door, he felt a draft from under the door and used the gap to see if there was anyone waiting for him directly in front of the door. He saw nothing and silently reached up to open the door. He continued to crouch down as the door slowly opened. Unless the person he suspected was in the house was a highly trained assassin, they would shoot above him where his head should be and the resulting flash of the gun would give away their own position. The door finished opening and John waited a good minute before he slid through the opening. He quietly crept to the living room where he had last seen Stanton.

Suddenly, his foot kicked something soft and he had to bite back a curse as he tripped. The sound of his falling echoed in the quiet house and John held his breath, waiting for the shots. Nothing came. John knew he couldn’t continue to stumble around in the dark and crawled over to where he knew a lamp used to be. As he did, he felt something wet on his hands and soaking through his pants. He switched it on and gasped when he saw what the light illuminated.

Blood.......lots of blood........an ungodly amount of blood. It was all over his hands and his knees and pant legs. He raised his eyes, afraid of what he knew he would see. Stanton was crumpled in a heap on the floor. That was what he had stumbled over. Her sightless eyes stared at him with what he felt was reproach. How could he leave and let this happen to her? The blood was hers and it was everywhere. She obviously had been bleeding for quite some time. He dropped back to his knees and sat back on his heels, unwilling to believe what he was seeing. He had seen many dead people in his line of work and he was the reason for many of them. But seeing Stanton shook him profoundly. This was someone he knew, someone he cared for, someone who meant a great deal to him.

He reached down and hugged the body that had been Stanton. The low keening sound echoed in his head and got louder until there was no other sound, no other thought. He buried his face in her long, dark hair. The smell of blood, with its coppery undertones, filled his nostrils adding to the horror he was holding in his arms. A sound, almost inhuman, started in his throat and grew until he could contain it no longer. He threw back his head and howled his pain, his rage, his despair, not caring if anyone heard him. He had failed once again. The two most important people in his life he failed to protect and save, first Jessica and now Stanton.

Coming so quickly on the heels of losing Jessica, his loss of Stanton knew no bounds. He felt incapable of reining in the creature he was becoming. In truth, he didn't want to rein it in. He wanted the release that carnage would provide. The urge to pound, beat, tear, rip, destroy and KILL was strong in him. It was as if the trappings of civilization had been stripped from him and nothing was left except raw emotion with no filter, no control.....just the desire to hurt, to cause mayhem.

He was almost panting with unreleased emotions when a thin thread of sanity caught him. Who did this to Stanton? He relaxed his hold on her and looked at her face or rather what was left of her face. She was......had been, such a beautiful woman. That was her greatest talent. Her beauty hid the cold, calculating killing machine she was. She disarmed potential marks with her smile and made them want to get closer and bask in her warmth only to meet the cold steel muzzle of her gun at unexpected moments.

But all that was gone now. She had been beaten. Beaten savagely, hit over and over and over with fists. That kind of damage was personal. It had to be someone who knew her. He thought he knew who had done this but wasn't completely sure. His eyes searched the room, taking in every piece of furniture, bric-a-brac, looking for a clue. He was looking for Stanton's 'sign'. From the first day she had begun to train him she had taught him about leaving 'signs' for each other; signs that were meant to provide information or warnings that only the two of them would see and understand. It was difficult, with the chaos in the room. There had been quite a fight here after he had fled the house. He remembered up ending the table and throwing the chair through the window. But much more had happened since then. Then he saw it, her sign. It screamed DANGER almost as if he could hear her. Then he knew what to look for and found the other sign he was looking for quickly and the name it proclaimed became a death sentence...SNOW. Somehow Snow had found out that he knew about Jessica. But did Stanton call him out on it? It would be her way; she was fearless. Or had Snow done his usual and kept his own eyes on him and Stanton? Reese knew Snow didn't like to actually get his hands dirty and he felt that what had transpired here was something Snow would not want anybody to know about. One agent killing another agent; that was something that even The Company frowned on.

He gently laid Stanton back down on the floor and removed his bloodied coat and covered her face. That was when he realized she'd been shot.....in the throat.....at close range. He stood up and surveyed the room once more but with a different purpose. He needed to locate his phone and his gun. He found the gun near Stanton's body. He sniffed it and cursed. The gun had been fired recently and he knew what the target had been. Stanton had been killed with HIS gun. It was then that he knew pure black, raging hatred and it now had a target. Snow. He was being set up by Snow for killing Stanton. He knew he had to get out of there. He knew he could not take his phone because they could trace him with it but he would take his gun. He needed a weapon and it would delay them in identifying his gun as the murder weapon if they didn't actually HAVE the gun. But the ballistics of his gun were on file at Langley so they would find out sooner or later. As he scoped out the room once more, he could actually see Mark's handiwork, setting up the crime scene, pointing at one and only one suspect...him. There was no way to he could stop that train now. He had nothing left. Jessica was gone from his world and now Stanton. He no longer had any family or any friends only himself, or what was left of him. He looked down at himself. He was covered in Stanton's blood, he was holding a murder weapon in his hand and it was his and he was standing in the middle of a crime scene.
This day had seen three people die. Jessica, Stanton and himself. He was dead inside, literally a hollow shell that walked and talked but had no core. He knew he had to get out of Frankfurt, out of The Company. His mind had begun to click with the precision of a machine, marking off what he needed to do, how he needed to do it and the fastest way to do it. His training took over so that his mind could hide from reality for the moment. He walked into the bedroom he used while he was working from the safe house and stripped. He had to get Stanton's blood off of him before he was seen. He jumped into a cold shower. There was no time to let it get hot. The freezing cold water worked well with the coldness he felt inside anyway.

He watched the blood run off of his body and down the drain. It felt like that part of his life was gone for good. He quickly dried off and dressed in the casual clothes he kept for down time between missions. He was amazed no one had shown up at the house yet to “find” Stanton. He assumed Snow would be watching the house and would alert the authorities once he was in the house. Not wanting to push his luck any further, he grabbed a few more clothes and shoved them in a bag. He also put his bloody clothes in another bag to get rid of them and walked back to the ransacked living room. Seeing Stanton on the floor covered by his bloody jacket shook him one last time. He mentally slammed the door on that part of his life and prepared to walked out of the room for the last time. He stopped for a moment, staring at the door, refusing to look back and silently promised Stanton that Snow would pay.....pay dearly......and pay slowly.... for what he had done this day. He opened the door and walked out, leaving his humanity behind.