Explosive Misconceptions


Finding a place to park, the two agents took a few moments to observe the building they were supposed to be investigating.

"It seems like any other warehouse to me. There isn't any suspicious guards hanging about, no extremely rundown buildings around it, and nothing to make it stand out as anything special."

"I don't like it either." said his fellow agent.

Taking every available precaution, they exited their vehicle and meandered their way towards the building. As they walked along the street, both men continued to evaluate their surroundings and observe the building they were targeting. With nothing more than their instincts to make them feel threatened, they proceeded right up to the door. The smaller man pulled out some tools for a quick job of picking the lock before he stepped back and let his partner lead the way while he followed up in the rear to provide back up.

Inside, the warehouse was the usual collection of goods and dust in a large arrangement according to the owner's wishes. It didn't make sense to the investigating agents, but their job wasn't managing his company, rather they were to find their evidence somewhere in the mess.

Walking around, the two divided up the work by height. The little one was more acrobatic leaving him the high work, while the bigger man got the ground boxes and guarding their backs. After a few moments, they both stopped in their tracks.

"Do you feel that?" Their instincts were screaming at them by this point. Scrambling for the exit, they took off as quickly as possible.


Picking up the pieces of rubble, the investigators hoped no one had been inside the warehouse when it blew. The debris was spread all over the place, and the building was barely standing, which meant it would be a while before they could ascertain whether the building had been empty, or not.

"Check security cameras from the surrounding warehouses. Maybe they picked up on anyone entering the building, and if we're lucky, we might even be able to spot the perpetrator." The lead investigator shouted out his orders.

Following orders, one of the subordinates hurried off to gather the videos from the area.

Once the videos were collected, a team of unfortunate officers were delegated the task of watching the feeds.

After an hour of boredom, one officer was rewarded with seeing someone, rather two, entering the building. Fast forwarding through, he was unable to see a point where the people left the building before it exploded. Taking the information to his fellow officers, he hoped that someone else's angle would show them leaving by another exit. When no one was able to find the feed revealing them leaving, he had to assume that they might not be in the land of the living anymore.

Taking the discovery to his boss, he made his report based on what they had proven. It was assumed that the two people were innocent victims, but then again, why were they walking into a warehouse just before it blew up?

Sending the still frames over for identification, the officers continued to investigate the feeds and rubble while they waited for more information to surface.

Eventually the pictures came back with names. Placing the calls, the lead officer called the wife of the larger man, while he had a subordinate call the landlady of the smaller.

"I am sorry to have to inform you, but we believe we have bad news to deliver…" They didn't guarantee the death of their loved ones, as they didn't have any bodies, but they did give them likely information as everything said they were probably dead.

Each man ended their call with pacifying words in a desire to calm the distraught women on the other end of the line. With no means of giving them the reassurance they wanted, they could only end the call with general condolences of kindness.

With the hardest part done, the boss moved on to calling the men's boss. He would need to know the information to take care of the internal aspects of their team.

"Agent Hughes? This is Chief Hays down at the precinct. We have video confirmation that two of your guys entered a warehouse this morning before it blew up. Although we don't have any bodies, we also don't show them coming back out." This conversation was longer and went through more specific details of the investigation and the locations of the person's in question.

Since their assigned locations matched the general vicinity of the explosion, it was assumed that something caused them to act. The biggest puzzle about the situation was that neither of the men had called in for backup. Still, even though the situation didn't exactly add up, they did have visual confirmation of the people entering the warehouse and neither of them was answering their phones.

Hanging his head, Hughes had the next difficult task of informing the team.

Standing up on the landing he called the office together. "Gather round people. I have some bad news to share."

With heavy hearts, the team gathered around and stood together to hear what the boss had to say.

"Peter and Neal… there is video confirmation that they entered a warehouse while on duty at the stakeout. It, it blew up without any evidence that they exited the building in time. A full scale search has been done, but their car was found empty, they aren't answering their phones, and no bodies have been recovered due to the insecurity of the building. Elizabeth and June have received the calls."

Gasps filled the room and several people had tears running down their faces. Peter and Neal were loved members of the team. Why were they killed?

After the team had a few minutes to absorb the information, Hughes gave more orders for them on how to proceed. For the rest of the day, they were to focus on trying to discover who had taken out there teammates while only continuing to work on the more important current cases.

Dispersing to the work, the team tried to keep their tears at bay and channeled their anger into finding the person/person's responsible.


When the day was drawing to a close, Elizabeth and June were in the office to get some answers as there still wasn't any progress towards discovering what had happened to Peter and Neal. While the group tried to keep themselves together, Elizabeth and June hung out in the conference room with the door open to the main room. They were all about to reach the point where they were going to call it a day when the elevator dinged.

Turning towards the door, everyone watched in shock as two men stood in front of the clear glass covered in dirt.

Walking into the office, Peter and Neal turned around with surprised looks on their faces.

"What…?" Neal questioned as he looked around the room at the teary agents.

"Oh…" Peter said with understanding. Turning to Neal he answered his question. "They think it was us and that we didn't make it out of the warehouse."

As understanding dawned, Neal wasn't able to say much more because Elizabeth and June descended on them.

Wrapping Peter up into a hug, Elizabeth kissed him and cried on his shoulder. "Don't ever scare me like that again!"

Neal was likewise ensconced in June's arms as she also cried all over him. "You gave me such a fright, Neal! I don't know how you pulled this off but I am glad to see that you're alright."

For several minutes the agents moved closer and gathered around again as they waited for the explanation. When Hughes stepped out onto the landing again, Peter and Neal started to calm the women down in order to get the situation settled in the office.

"How… I've seen the recording. How did you two get through that?" Hughes questioned as he walked down.

Smiling at each other, Peter and Neal decided on how to answer simultaneously. "That wasn't us."

That got the full attention of everybody.

"If it wasn't you, then who was it?" Hughes questioned.

It was odd how the two were suddenly so in sync. "Our twin brothers."

Jaws dropped around the room. Twins?

Taking the lead, Peter updated them first. "My brother works for another agency and was supposedly dead before today."

Picking up the next part, Neal kept the answers alternating. "Same here. Who would have thought that the two would have become partnered too?"

Nodding in agreement, Peter took the next part. "Anyway, they were given an assignment to investigate that warehouse when it blew up."

With a shiver, Neal continued. "We were nearby when we heard the blast and saw the smoke, so we went to check it out. Arriving on the scene we found our brothers unconscious in the rubble."

He was too lost in the memories of seeing his little brother covered in dirt with blood on his temple to continue so Peter took the next part. "We dug them out and have spent the day at the hospital trying to keep them behaving themselves."

Laughing, Neal added a comment. "If you think we are a handful… we are the tame ones!"

No one in the room could quite believe that. It wasn't possible for someone to be a bigger handful that Neal and Peter combined, wasn't it?

Shrugging, the two people decided that the reason it was true would have to be their secret.

"Do you have any pictures of these brothers of yours?" There were a lot of people curious to see such a sight.

"Uh, no. We thought they were dead before today." Neal gave several of them a look.

"Okay, where are they then, we want to see these twins of yours?" The team continued to push.

"Well…" Neal looked to Peter for help.

"They left to go back to their work." At the disbelieving looks around the room he continued. "Someone nearly blew them up this morning, they aren't going to sit around and let them get away with that."

Facing the determined team and a curious wife, Peter turned to Neal for help this time.

Shrugging, Neal didn't know what to do either.

Fortunately, they were both saved by the bell so to speak as the elevator dinged again. Turning in surprise, the two men looked at each other before turning towards the elevator.

Walking out of the car, the two men turned both directions before they walked into the office behind their brothers.

Seeing two of each man standing side by side, the room erupted into gasps of surprise again. There really were two of them!

"Peter."

"Paul."

"Bryce."

"Neal."

They greeted each other.

"Paul?" Bryce turned to Kieran.

Glaring, Kieran growled. "It's my real name. Do you care to share your real name?"

"Nope, can't." Bryce shrugged.

"Why not?" Peter and Kieran both turned to the other twins.

"The FBI, CIA, and the NSA aren't the only agencies manipulating our lives." Neal shrugged as the older brother.

Taking note of that for future questioning, Peter and Kieran both let the topic go for the moment.

"So, we have double the trouble and multiple agencies to deal with." Hughes sighed even though he was relieved to see his team safe. "Let's go to my office so we can get this settled." He led the four men up to his office.

Peter gave his wife another kiss before heading up to the office after his brother.

Neal patted June's hand and promised explanations later before he too walked up.


Eventually the men left Hughes office and walked back down the stairs. The team insisted on them posing for a joint picture with all four of them together with Kieran at the top, Peter next, followed by Neal, and Bryce last lined up down the stairs in age order. With the admonishment that the picture wasn't to be made public for their protection, the brothers allowed their friends to take a picture. Walking down the stairs the rest of the way, Neal pulled Diana aside to inform her that he wanted a copy too while Peter nodded his desire for a picture as well.

With a smile, Diana also gave Elizabeth and June looks that said they would be given copies as well.

As the office cleared out for the evening, the four twins went over to the Burkes for dinner as they had a lot of things to discuss while Elizabeth had her newly discovered brother in law to get to know.

The adventure was unexpected, but it brought the group closer with the promise of more encounters to come.


Thanks everyone for reading, reviewing, leaving kudos, following, and choosing to favorite my stories and I :D

There are more ideas for this collection, but at present it's all I have written. Per reader request, "He Didn't Have to Be" will be starting next week :D