Three months later
The unpaved market road was dusty, and Stacy was ready to go home. Nearly four months, and two different countries, later, and she hadn't even gotten a kill out of it. Yes, she'd been prepared for that, but the fact was a buzzkill, regardless. She was so frustrated that she couldn't even come up with an identity that would be content with it. She had so many fictional people living in her head, and by this point, they all wanted to kill someone.
Stacy tossed her head to the side and looked at her husband as he maneuvered them through the bazaar. They had both been so many different people over the years. Their real names, the names on their original birth certificates, were so far back in the past that sometimes, Stacy didn't even remember the person she had been born. She had spent the most important years of her life as Stacy Keibler, and that had become the true identity.
Her husband, though—She knew there were parts of his old military life that he'd never let go, like the last name as the only name. When he introduced himself to her, he had put out a hand for a strong shake and introduced himself as Mizanin. Almost everyone called him that. Over time, he'd grown comfortable enough, civilian enough, that it could be shortened to Miz. That was his concession to civilian comfort, and as time passed, it became an identity of its own. Miz was cocky and smooth, and he had an infectious laugh. She loved Miz.
But, sometimes, she called him by his first name, and that was okay with him, because those times were such influential moments in their lives together. She told Mike that she would marry him. She said I do to Mike at the altar. And when he was shot—She had screamed his name at the top of her lungs before emptying her clip into the shooter. So many bullets had gone into Mike that she'd felt the need to grind her stiletto heel into the guy's eye, just to make sure that if the bullets hadn't done him in, he had one last bit of pain. And it was Mike that she had knelt beside, Mike's whose hand she had held when she thought he was going to die.
Mike was there when Randy went missing, too. He was the strong hand at her back that kept her upright. He was the guy that had understood that one of her best friends was gone, probably dead, but she couldn't cry just yet, because her other best friend needed her to be strong. Mike held her when they were alone, though, and she alternated between crying and cursing. Mike held her up at the funeral.
Stacy sighed and rolled her head to look out the passenger side mirror. There was no use in thinking about Randy. It only served to make her angry. Shield was their job. Paul was their boss. But, he had done his best to make it feel more like a family. Yes, they were a family of psychopaths and criminals, but they were still a family. That someone would turn their back on their family the way Barrett had- It was unbelievable, and it was sickening, and thinking of Randy, especially when she hadn't gotten a kill out of this latest assignment, only served to make her want to hurt someone.
Stacy watched the people moving around the bazaar. When she was in remote locations, she always found herself searching, just in case. Yes, they had found blood. There had been no trace of Randy in years. But, that didn't mean that he wasn't still out there. The chance for escape was always there. She imagined that if she did find him, he would have some kind of amnesia as his excuse for staying away. And if he didn't, she would hug him so hard before she punched him right in his nose.
She knew it was a pipe dream, the last little bits of the hopeful girl she had been in the past, clinging to the chance that the world wasn't just death and destruction, that there was life out there, but it didn't stop her from looking. Even though she knew that the chances of spotting Randy were—
Stacy's thoughts stopped as she caught a flash of a man walking out from between two tents. It was only a glimpse, but her mind was trained to pick out details. His head was shaved, and his clothes were loose, nice, but a less tailored fit than Randy used to wear, but still—The curve of his jaw, the shape of his nose, and most importantly, the walk as the man slid his hand into his pants and moved away from the tented area—
"Stop the car." Stacy tossed off her seatbelt and turned around in her seat until she was kneeling. She could still see his profile. He was turning into a blur as Miz kept driving.
"What?"
"Stop the car," Stacy repeated. She watched the man turn, begin walking in her direction. "Mike, stop the car, now!"
He slammed on the breaks and Stacy was out of the door even as the tires screeched and dust blew up. The dust burned Stacy's eyes, but she ignored it. She ran through the cloud of dust and through the growing crowd of people who seemed to swarm in front of her. She thought for a moment that she was seeing things, that she would reach this person and it would be a stranger. But, she called out his name, and son of a bitch, his head popped up.
Stacy looked over her shoulder. "It's him, Mike! It's him!" Her husband was following her, his white linen pants and shirt dirtied by the dust cloud that he ran through, but he stayed with her.
She turned around and focused on Randy. He was there, standing in a dispersing crowd of bazaar shoppers and he was just staring at her. He was rescued! Totally by chance, but still, he was rescued, and he'd been rescued by his friends. Why wasn't he running toward her? Why was he making her work so hard for it?
Stacy skidded to a stop in front of him, just a few feet away. He looked good, too good for someone that had been on the run for three years. He had more tattoos peeking out of his rolled up sleeves and the open neck of his shirt than Stacy remembered. Again, she noticed that all of his hair was gone. His eyes looked tired, but as he looked at her, a fury grew in them.
"Randy…" Stacy took in a deep breath. Her chest heaved, her lungs burned. She could run so much faster and harder than that, but that was when she was prepared for the run, when she was able to really get her mind and body into it, instead of just taking off without a thought of how far she was going to have to go, what the heat was like, where she was going.
Randy's eyes moved side to side, looking for an escape. Fear welled up in her, an angry fear that they were all wrong. She and Trish swore that Randy would never turn traitor, but instead of embracing her, he was looking for a way to get out. But, no, she knew Randy. Trish knew Randy, and he wasn't the type. He wouldn't run out on them like that, he wouldn't turn. He'd kill them all and just walk away before he turned traitor.
Maybe the amnesia idea was true. Maybe he didn't know her. But, he knew his own name. It didn't make sense.
Stacy took a step forward. "Randy, it's me," she said. "It's Stacy."
She reached out to him and, apparently, that was the wrong thing to do. Randy's fist came flying, and it was so unexpected that Stacy couldn't dodge it. She was able to move back enough that she didn't get the full force of the blow, but it still spun her to the side and knocked her to the ground. Then she felt Miz flying over her, and heard both men grunt as he tacked Randy to the ground.
Stacy pushed herself to her fight and spun around. For the first time in years, she didn't know what to do. Randy and Mike fought each other, their fists pummeling one another. People were shouting and running around them. If something didn't give soon, police were going to come, and she didn't know if their identities would hold up to as much scrutiny as this would bring.
The men separated. Blood ran down Randy's face from a cut above his eye. Mike's lip was bloody. They rushed each other again, and once more, the fists and feet flew as they fought. They had trained together, worked together. Even after all of these years, they knew each other's moves and how to counter them. And they both knew that fighting was going to get them nowhere at the same time.
They each took three steps back and whipped their hands behind their backs. They came back holding guns, pointed at one another. Someone in the crowd screamed, but Stacy didn't look to see who. She kept her eyes on the men as they faced off. Stacy walked up to her husband and put a hand on his back. "Mike, back down."
"Fuck that."
"Mike, it's Randy."
"It's a traitor, that's what it is." His arm didn't waver, and neither did his voice. The only thing that showed his anger was his face, the narrowing of his eyes and the way his lips pressed tightly together.
"Bullshit!" Randy spat out at him. "You come to kill me and you call me a traitor? Fuck you!"
"Three years, you asshole," Mike yelled at him. "Three years. Do you know what we've been through?"
"What you've been through? Ha!" Randy took a step forward. "I called, you son of a bitch! I called in for a rescue, and you know what I got? Somebody's worst coming in to take me out. So, fuck you, Miz, and fuck her, too. Fuck all of you!"
Stacy saw his arm tightening and knew that Randy was about to fire. Her mind tried to quickly process everything that had been said. He had called. Whoever took him- He must have gotten away and he put a call in, and instead of rescue, he got a hit squad.
Stacy risked a glance toward Mike and knew that he was figuring it out, too. Barrett wasn't the only traitor inside of Shield. Something was very wrong, very fucked up, and the realization was making him waver. A moment ago, she expected them both to shoot each other at the same time. Now, with Mike thinking about the implications of what Randy said, with Randy not giving a damn what they were saying, she knew that she was about to watch her husband get shot again.
A twitch in his eye told her when Randy was about to fire and it was enough of a tell for her to shove Mike out of the way. Stacy felt the heat of the bullet as it passed her cheek, felt the burn as the side of the bullet graze her and split open her skin. She and Mike hit the ground and her head whipped around to see Randy turning to run. Three years ago, he would have put a bullet in both of their heads. He wouldn't have stopped to talk, and he damn sure wouldn't have left them laying alive on the ground.
Stacy reached down to the sheath on her thigh and pulled out a long, thin knife. She whispered, "Sorry, Randy," then tossed it. She didn't aim for a kill shot, just to get him down. The knife hit him just above the knee and he stumbled. He tried to push forward, but the pressure of the knife brought him down again. She rolled off of Mike and took off at a run, and again, she felt her husband at her back, chasing her.
Mike overtook her, stretching his strides out further than hers. Randy was getting back up and he tackled him from behind. They rolled on the ground, until Mike was on top. Stacy reached them in time to see that Randy was face up. She also made it in time to see Mike's fist come down on his face. It dazed Randy enough that, for a moment, he was still, and that was all Stacy needed.
Stacy dropped down beside him, reaching under her dress as she did, pulling a syringe from its own hiding place. She bit the cap off with her teeth and drove the needle into the large vein in the side of his neck. Randy's eyes opened wide, and she saw something she'd never seen in his eyes before. She saw fear. He had managed to survive for three years, and now he was going to die, and it scared him.
The drug was fast-acting, and his eyes were already starting to close. While he could still see her, Stacy grabbed his face with both hands and told him, "We didn't betray you, Randy. None of us betrayed you, especially Trish. We're taking you home."
His eyes closed before he could answer and Stacy looked up at Mike. His breaths came in hard gasps, his shoulders hunching with each one. "We gotta go," he said, pushing himself to his feet. Mike reached down and struggled to lift Randy's dead weight, but he did manage to get him to his feet. Stacy pushed at Randy's back as a steadying force, as a balance. Mike grabbed him around the waist and hoisted him over his shoulder.
They ran back to the car as quickly as they could go, which was a lot slower than they both would have liked. Mike dropped Randy into the backseat, then dropped into the driver's seat. He picked up a satellite phone from the floor and tossed it to Stacy. "Call Kaitlyn," he said. "Get us an emergency evac. Tell her nobody knows about this but Paul until we get back."
"Mike?" She looked at him, confused. "But, Trish…"
"We'll tell her ourselves. For now, just Paul and Kaitlyn." He shifted the car into gear and sped off down the street. "For now," he said, "just get us a ride home. Get us the hell out of here."