Disclaimer: I do not own Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol or any of the affiliated characters


Chapter 11: Moments of Truth

"We could have gone back to the house, you know." He sat in the recliner without the footrest up, and I had moved the wooden desk chair to sit and handle the blood flow, which was almost staunched. With one hand I kept gauze against the gash, and I used the other to wipe the blood that stretched to his elbow. I continued my work, but looked up at him, my eyes involuntarily hesitating for barely half a second on his lips before reaching his eyes. "What?" he asked.

I returned my attention to his arm. "It's a thirty minute drive."

"So?"

"Really, Will?" I asked, more amused that irritated with my patient's good humor. "All we had was a motorbike, and as soon as your adrenaline wore off and you passed out, we would have a problem. Or rather, I would have a problem."

He gestured to himself with his left arm. "I'm okay."

"Sitting down, maybe," I replied as I grabbed another piece of gauze from the first aide kit. "Going seventy down the highway on a motorbike, not so much. I think you've had enough fun for one day." He held up his left hand, accepting defeat. "Besides," I added, getting to my feet and stretching my tank top in front of me for him to see. "You bled all over me, and I have a spare change of clothes here. I'll be back in a minute."

"Can I do anything?" he asked, looking around the apartment.

I took a few more pieces of gauze and put them in his left hand. "Apply steady pressure and don't move." He looked at me, eyebrows low, face unamused, obviously displeased by his newest task. I smiled at his expression.

"I was hoping for something like looking for bugs around the room," he said, raising his voice to reach me through the closed door of my room as I stripped my stained tank top and pulled on a clean one from my duffle bag.

"Reynolds and Baker know me," I called. "My cardinal rule is that once a safe house is unsafe, you don't go back to it." I opened the door and returned to the room, taking the gauze away from Will and holding it against his wound myself. "They wouldn't expect me to come back."

He blinked at me a few times. "That's your cardinal rule?"

"Well, that, and don't drink the water, but I thought this one fit the situation better," I replied, keeping my face straight. "Why? What's yours?"

"Well, I've always had this thing about staying away from bullets." He grinned to let me know it was a joke, but I felt a twinge of guilt.

"You said this was from the parking garage?" I asked.

He nodded. "That's when I felt the sting."

"After you pulled me behind the upright?"

Again, he nodded, and looked at me apologetically. "Sorry about that. It was more of a yank. Is your arm okay?"

"Is my arm okay?" I repeated. "Will, if you hadn't pulled me out of the way, I'd probably be dead right now." He didn't say anything, just searched my face, his blue eyes soft but intensely holding my gaze. I made a conscious effort not to glance at his lips. The next time I spoke, my voice was a lot softer than I thought it would be. "Thank you for saving my life."

I tore my eyes away from his and stared at his wound as intently as if I were trying to heal it with my mind. "Sorry you got hit," I added, seeing the blood flow had finally stopped. I threw the gauze into the nearby garbage and pulled out an alcohol pad. Will hissed quietly as I dabbed the gash. "Sorry about that too," I mumbled, beginning to wrap the bandage around his bicep.

"Been worse before," he said. "Having the actual bullet in hurts more."

"You've been shot before?"

"Only once," he defended himself.

I knew I'd been right. "I thought you were just an analyst." I chanced a glance up at his face. He looked surprised by my comment, but then recovered with a half-grin that was a little rueful, but mostly attractive and intriguing.

"You caught me," he said. "I was a field agent before I was an analyst." I looked at him expectantly, and he laughed; he knew he couldn't just leave it there. "I was in charge of a protection detail in Croatia, shadowing a married couple the agency thought were valuable assets. About a week in, we got word that a Serbian hit squad was targeting them. I wanted to warn them somehow, but..." He trailed off.

"Orders," I said quietly.

He nodded. "So I didn't. A few days later, the husband went out for a run. I tailed him and left a couple of men behind for the wife. When I got back, my men were out cold and the wife was gone."

I leaned in, listening to his words but noticing how his eyes took on a glazed, haunted look as he stared in front of him. "They found her remains two days later."

"I'm so sorry," I mumbled, feeling guilty that I'd asked about it.

"I was too," he said. "And I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't fail like that again. So I switched."

I wanted to ask about the husband, but I kept my mouth closed. He must have seen the look on my face when he looked at me, though. "I lived with that guilt for years, until I found the husband a couple months ago."

"Will," I said, gently putting my hand on his forearm. "You don't have to tell me."

"It's okay, really," he said, and continued, "I actually didn't find him. The secretary introduced me to him: Ethan Hunt."

I felt every possible confused emotion just then, and words came tumbling out of my mouth, words I needed him to know. "Oh, no, Will -"

He interrupted me. "I know, how did I possibly wind up back in the field, and on Ethan's team? I really didn't have much of a choice after the IMF was disavowed, and after he told me something that made me stay."

I picked up from where he'd cut me off: "She's alive."

His mouth parted and his eyebrows knit together, crinkling his forehead. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

"I know Ethan," I said. "There were stories about her leaving him, which would never happen. I confronted him, but he dodged my questions, and the next thing I knew, there were a lot of dead Serbians. I pieced it together and concluded that she was dead. That was the same day I saw her in Seattle."

He paused. "Was that what you were going to say?"

"Before you interrupted me just now?" I asked. He nodded. "Of course. I wasn't going to let you live with that another second."

He smiled, warm and sincere. "Thank you."

I pretended to check his gash, which was fine. "I'm glad you're not an analyst anymore. It's helpful, but I think you're more suited to be in the field."

"Me too." His voice sounded unusually close.

I leaned as far back in my chair as I could, feeling suffocated suddenly. "And that's why you're here now, handling this situation," I said lightly.

"Yeah," he replied, awkwardly scratching behind his ear. "There's actually a funny story to that, and it may have gotten overlooked, what with everything going on."

I risked looking up at him. "What does that mean?"

"Well, you see..." He wasn't flustered, but appeared to be looking for the right words. Finally he said bluntly, "We're technically not supposed to be here."

"I thought you said Brassel showed you that file."

"He did," Will nodded. "But he also told us that the president didn't clear the mission. He was still deciding. We haven't needed to, but if we did, we wouldn't be able to call for back up."

"They hadn't decided on whether or not to come get me out?" Will nodded. I folded my arms, insulted. "I'd be dead by now."

"And that's why we're here," Will said. "The mission was you. And to take down the seller, but mostly you." He cleared his throat suddenly and continued, "They just didn't know how to go about it. For something like this, they'd need the best. But the best is Ethan, and given his track record with the Serbians..."

"And his relationship to me," I said resentfully. "And the last time one of his proteges was taken." My mind drifted to Lindsey, whom I had only met once before her death.

"Exactly." Will leaned back in the recliner. "But, who's to say Ethan wouldn't have gone rogue anyway? He'd gladly sit in a cell if it meant taking down the guys that killed you." There was a moment of silence before he added, "We all would."

'We all' included him. "But you wouldn't have even known me," I reminded him.

He opened his mouth just as my phone rang, but I managed to read his lips: "My loss."

"Yeah?" I answered the phone, looking at Will, who was looking down.

"How's Brandt?" Ethan asked.

Will may have heard his name over the phone, or sensed my stare, because he looked up. "He's okay," I replied.

"Can he move yet?"

I wasn't sure about that; all the color had returned to his face, but that didn't mean he would be okay when he stood up. "Why?"

"Cibulka called me again. Remember I told you he wanted to go faster because of our ambush?"

"Yeah?"

"He's moved it to this evening, on one of his oil tankers at Ras Tanura."

I checked my watch; it was just past noon. "Ethan, that's almost a five hour drive!" Will, sensing my tension, rose from the recliner. I practically hurdled my chair to be at his side, but he stood steadily, his color remaining.

"I know," Ethan said. "But we have everything set up, and we're heading to you guys. We'll be there in twenty minutes."

I hung up and started moving around the apartment, opening the desk drawers until I found my spare gun. "They'll be here in twenty minutes," I recounted to Will.

"Yeah, I heard everything," he said, watching as I ran around the apartment, pulling my weapons from their hiding places. I looked up and tossed him a gun, which he caught with his left hand. "Ambidextrous?" I asked.

He gently rolled his injured right arm, then tucked the weapon in his waistband. "Natural lefty."

I pulled out a knife from beneath the carpet and tucked it into my boot. "That's helpful."

"You have a lot of weapons," he noted objectively.

"A whole lot of good they did for me when I got taken," I said ruefully.

"I'm guessing Baker and Reynolds didn't know they were...everywhere."

Now, I grinned. "Nope."


Ras Tanura is a real place, on the east coast of Saudi Arabia. You can google it if you want a geographic idea.