"How's the job hunting?" asked Kate. "Any luck?"
Natasha was at the bar again and so were Kate, Taylor, and another girl she hasn't met before, the sisters' cousin from two towns over. The name was Grace.
Burgundy and two other soldiers she did not recognize were hanging at the pool table. Marcus was not there.
"No, not yet."
"I saw an ad at the florist today. They have it on the front door. Maybe you could check there?" Taylor supplied and Natasha smiled.
"I will, thanks."
It would be a good suggestion if she was really looking for a job. The small shop by the main avenue was perfect for hiding in plain sight and she took note of the add the first time she passed it while walking on the street. It closed early, was a small business that required only one person to operate at a time, so the hours would be split between the owner and the single employee. It wasn't the kind of venue with many customers besides regulars, so the risk of bumping into any POIs would be minimal. And no one would question why she only took two shifts a week, because no one would know. It wasn't worth the hassle though.
The pay was probably shit, too. And it's not like she could use the "KGB spy", "freelance assassin", "SHIELD field agent" and "Tony Stark's personal assistant" bullet points to spice up her resume.
"A florist? What are you going to do, flower arrangements? Doesn't that require a fancy school or something?" asked Kate.
Taylor rolled her eyes. "It's not a pharmacy, dumbo. You don't have to go to college for that."
"It doesn't sound that hard," Natasha said with a shrug.
"It sounds boring as hell," Kate decided. "All day surrounded with nothing but dead plants."
"You work at Walmart, Kate," Grace chipped in. It was the first full sentence Natasha heard her say.
"It's anything but boring. I should get a psychology diploma just for the freaks I have to deal with every day. I wouldn't trade it for your bookshop in a million years," Kate said, and Grace scoffed.
"A job is a job," Natasha interjected. "If it earns money, the rest is hardly relevant."
"Cheers to that!" Taylor exclaimed and raised her glass. "I bet it beats working your ass off in a warehouse anyway."
Natasha nodded and drank a sip of her coke. "Is it always so slow here on Sundays?"
"Yeah, most of the time. Keep the lord's day holy and so on."
"Any chance on some… uhm, company from the base?"
"What, thirsty already?" Taylor teased. "I thought you didn't hit it off with Tick."
Natasha shrugged. "Bored, more like. And no, I didn't, but I like to finish what I started."
"I can respect that," Taylor said, and the rest laughed. "Not today though. I don't think I've ever seen any of them here on Sunday."
"Yeah, they rarely do shopping on weekends either," Kate agreed. "Some soldiers do, but never the scientists. Or whoever they are."
Natasha figured that already, the base ran on skeletal crew during the weekends. "How can you tell them apart from regular customers?"
Kate shrugged. "They have this air about them. Like they are more important than everyone else. You sit behind the cash register long enough and you start noticing stuff like that."
"What are they even doing there?" Taylor pondered. "There's so many people and they hardly do anything. I don't think I've ever seen more than a single truck going in or out, so it's not like they are making something, right?"
"They just sit on their assess on a government payroll," Kate sniggered. "And it all comes from our taxes, baby."
"Ha, jokes on them, I don't earn enough to pay any taxes," Taylor said. "And I've heard they are developing some kind of weapon there with the stuff they gathered after New York. Alien tech, space lasers, the like."
"Space lasers my ass," Kate retorted. "How would you even know?"
"I have my sources," Taylor replied with a knowing smirk.
Natasha leaned in closer, rested her chin on her hand and turned to Taylor, radiating the aura of mild interest. "Do tell."
Taylor made an undecided face, like she was really considering not telling them, but it was clear she was too eager to spill the beans for that to happen. "One of the guys told me." She lowered her voice into a theatrical whisper. "They've captured one of the alien bugs alive and they are keeping it there. Experiments and so on. It has psychic mind powers, it turns out."
Shit. It was impossible, of course. All the Chitauri dropped dead when Stark blew up the mother base and severed the connection and one could hardly call the link the spawns had to their ship a "psychic power". More like a leash that killed them once it was broken. But the word of a gossip gets twisted easily…
"And what, they keep it in one of the sheds?"
"No, you idiot, they keep it underground."
"I call bullshit," Kate decided. "You shouldn't trust every piece of crap that spills from guy's mouth. He was saying shit to appear important to get into your pants."
"He was already in my pants, so…" Taylor said and winked.
"Did he say what they were doing to it?" asked Natasha.
Taylor hummed and shook her head. "Probably cut it alive, like on those old films from Roswell. To see what it has inside."
"IPhones…" Kate murmured and rolled her eyes.
"Don't they have enough of the dead ones already?" said Grace and Natasha had to give her credit for asking the right questions. "And how would a regular soldier know that, you said it yourself, they do nothing but walk around the fence or sit on their asses all day."
"I dunno. But he was drunk. You can't lie if you're drunk. Alcohol blocks that part of your brain."
If that were true, Natasha's whole profession would stop existing overnight. She smiled and nodded. "So I've heard. I mean, who of us didn't let one or two secrets slip, right?"
"I need to wear my tinfoil hat the next time I'm out to town then." Kate said then she turned to Natasha. "Seriously, you believe this shit?"
Natasha shrugged. "I don't know. Weirder things have happened lately. There were space whales flying over my neighborhood just four months ago, so who can tell what's real and what's not anymore?"
"You've… seen it? The attack?" Grace asked, her eyes wide.
Natasha nodded curtly.
"How was it? It looked hella scary on TV."
"I was terrified," Natasha said. The best lie, they say, is the one that carries a sliver of truth. "Phones didn't work and the electricity in my building was out, so we couldn't even get any info from news or radio, so we didn't know what was going on. I learned about what exactly went down a lot later."
"You've seen any of the aliens?"
Well… "Just from a distance."
"And the Avengers?"
"Not during the battle, no. But I've seen Iron Man flying by later."
"Dope!" Taylor exclaimed. "But isn't that like a common thing if you live in the city?"
"Not really. Tourists can spend whole days sitting at the foot of the tower, waiting for him to fly in or out and they often leave disappointed. But I guess you're getting used to the thought that it could happen if you live there and it's not really that exciting anymore."
"You're all right and that's what counts," Grace said, and it earned her a poke in the ribs from Taylor. "What?"
Kate shot her a scornful glare.
"Seriously, what is it?"
Natasha sighed. "My fiancé died in the attack."
The genuine terror in Grace's expression made her regret ever using that part of the story. It worked splendidly for what it was supposed to accomplish, and the old Natasha wouldn't spare it a single thought, but it felt wrong, now. She didn't deserve the compassion. She was the one that got away unscathed.
"I… I'm sorry to hear that. Are you all right?"
"Yeah."
Grace looked at her still with a worry in her gaze, expecting her to say more. Natasha gritted her teeth. There was no way to backtrack now.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I just… There are so many things I wanted to say to him, so many experiences we could've shared and now it's just… all gone. It gets better, but I still find myself picking up the phone or just turning to tell him about something that happened, only to realize that he is not here anymore."
The words tasted like ash in her mouth.
"I'm thinking about getting the job at the florist. Okay, not really, but say what you will, I'd look dashing in an apron," Natasha said and pushed the phone away to get a wider angle, put her hand on her hip and flashed a smile at the camera, then slowly allowed it to die down. "I played many parts in my life. I was a waitress, a veterinary assistant, a nurse, a governess, a preschool teacher, and an escort, too many times to count. Everything that was required of me, I became. It shouldn't be any different, should it?
"I think I'd hate it, actually. It was always the worst part. Getting into the role and then sitting and waiting for things to develop the way you intended, with nothing else to do, with the sense of urgency brewing at the back of your mind. And I know you're out there, alone, while I sit on my ass, doing nothing.
"I wish I picked some of your skills in the patience area. I'm trying to be; I see how badly things could've turned out the last time I acted without thinking and that I have just this one shot at doing it right this time around, but it's still hard. It feels like I've given up…
"I'm trying to work on the thing in the meantime. You were right, the more I do, the more everything feels … I don't know how to call it. Fresh, new and exciting, yet familiar on some level, too. Like I see and feel things I could always sense, but never registered consciously?
"I tried to expand on the dream-walking a bit. I found a quiet spot by the fountain in the main square, sat there and watched the people pass by on the street. It feels overwhelming, trying to reach out with all those people around, but I try to get used to that feeling, direct it better, be more precise. It's harder to figure out what to do on my own, without you guiding me, there are so many things I would like to ask you, but for now I'm just experimenting, feeling my way around blindly.
"I heeded your warnings for once and didn't try establishing any lasting connections, I just… brushed the minds, as they passed. I can't sense much, but I think I'm able to feel… something. Whispers, emotions, pieces of half-formulated thoughts, feelings. It feels completely different to what we've been doing on the glacier, I don't know if it's because of how brief the connections are or that people over here are just… constructed in a different way?
"I'm not digging in deeper, because I remember what you told me and I know I'm not ready, but maybe I'm getting there? Maybe, by the time we meet again, I'll be able to surprise you with my awesome new skills?
"Who am I kidding? I might have gotten the best teacher in the world, but there's still so much I need to figure out first and there's only so much I can do on my own. Too bad, I could've used some more advanced moves right about now.
"Anyway… If all goes smoothly, I should be able to move on to the next phase by the end of the week. If all goes smoothly, the next time I talk to you will be in person."
It didn't go smoothly.
Marcus didn't set his foot outside the base for the most of next week and Natasha started to doubt her choice of a target. By Thursday the anxiety won, and she spent the afternoon at the observation post, trying for an alternative. By now she knew the agency men rarely left the base and if they did, they did so in groups that were harder to approach. Regular soldiers ventured out on their own more often, but they didn't have the credentials she needed. That left the civilian personnel, and it posed its own set of problems.
On the surface it seemed easy. Pick someone, follow them home. Go in, ask questions, get out. But she had no inside knowledge or any other intel on employees, so she had no way to tell who had high enough level of clearance and who didn't. It meant shooting blindly and hoping for the best. And she only had a couple of bullets available, because people do talk and being approached by a young woman one didn't know under some flippant pretext or another creates a pattern that someone's ought to catch up to, sooner or later. The last thing she needed now was the base being put on high alert. And that was the optimistic scenario, if someone recognized her… Given where – and with whom – she spent the last months, it wouldn't take a lot of investigation to figure out what she was after. In that case, even if she managed to slip away without getting caught, it would make finding and getting Loki out more complicated than it already was. And it has proven pretty damn complicated so far.
No, she needed to keep it covert. No one can know.
Even eliminating the target didn't ensure the secrecy to be upheld, it would buy her a day or two before the absence was noticed and the alarm was set off. Not to mention that – no matter what the actual purpose of the base was – most of the men there were just following orders. It wasn't her right to call who deserved to live and who deserved to die. Not anymore.
She wasn't foolish enough to say for sure there would be no killing. Such promises were prone to being broken the moment shit went down. But there would be no killing if she could avoid it.
A car approached the western gate, followed by two more. It was almost six and the night shift was arriving.
She pulled up the binoculars, set them to the maximum magnification and aimed her scrutiny at the main entrance.
There was a certain set of characteristics she was looking for. It was by no means a guarantee of success, but it was nonetheless a way to thin out the herd somewhat. Her eyes slipped over the people leaving the building, until she found what she was looking for.
The man was one of the last leaving the facility and was older than most of his colleagues, wore a well-fitting jacked, expensive shoes and a wristwatch that gleamed in the sunlight. He aimed his stride at the back of the parking lot and entered a sky-blue, mid-range Audi of a relatively modern make.
Natasha picked up her equipment and headed for the car.
She followed the blue Audi until it pulled over onto a driveway leading to a two-story colonial style house in Monroeville. She stopped on the opposite side of the road, behind a semi parked two houses away and watched as the man left the car and headed inside, closing the side entrance door behind himself.
Then she waited.
The darkness has fallen, and she made her move. It was still early, and the lights were on in what she assumed was the living area – two big windows and French door leading to the patio in the front of the house – but that only meant she would be that harder to spot while she peeked inside.
She changed into long, dark pants and threw on a hoodie, then pulled the hood up.
The lamp above the side door was off, but it looked like it could be motion activated, so she circled around the area to avoid it. She stepped onto first of the wooden stairs leading up to the porch and the boards creaked under her weight.
A loud barking came from inside of the house and the curtains moved. She dropped into a low crouch and dove into the bushes on the other side of the banister.
The door opened and a small, furry dog leapt out, one of those tiny, loud lap-warming breeds people considered fancy. It ran onto the porch, down the stairs and right into the brushes Natasha was using as a hiding spot. It barked again and nudged her leg with its nose. Natasha cautiously patted it on its head. "Go away," she mouthed. The dog barked again. She scratched it behind its ear. "I don't even like dogs." She was always a cat person. Cats were nature's best spies. Dogs were incessant noise machines.
"Toto!" a female voice yelled from the door. "Come here!"
"Go to your mistress, you noisy, annoying creature," Natasha whispered, and Toto wagged its tail and licked her hand.
"Toto!"
The dog finally reacted, gave her fingers the last parting lick and ran back to the house. The door closed and the rectangle of light on the pathway disappeared.
Natasha sighted then closed her eyes and reached for her core. She should've done it earlier, she realized; she wouldn't get surprised like that if she did, but using magic was still not a part of her instincts. Not only because it was mostly useless so far, but also because it was fucking magic and, no matter how she twisted and turned the fact that she could do that now in her head, it still felt weird. Good, but weird.
She started with charting the area around herself then directed her attention further and further into the house, ignoring the power buzzing in the walls, the vibrations in the air from the sound blazing from the tv set and the small fuzzy ball of life energy by the door, which couldn't be anything else but Toto. There were two signatures in the living room and two further in the back, a bit less pronounced. Or perhaps just smaller? Kids maybe?
She reached further and higher but could sense no one on the upper floor. So, four people and a dog. Should be doable.
She circled the house, keeping close to the walls. There were a few potential routes of entry. The front door was too exposed, she would be too easy to spot there in the faint light that reached the porch from the streetlamps, but there were others. The side entrance was an obvious one, but the motion sensor was an issue. Luckily, she soon found a different way in – a small basement window, cracked open, perhaps for ventilation. She pulled out her phone and shone a light inside. There was some open space to land on, so she'd be able to get in without making too much noise.
It would be almost too easy if not for the goddamned dog. It didn't seem aggressive, but who can tell how it would react once she got inside the house? Too bad she didn't bring tranquillizing darts, there were a couple of those in the equipment she took from New York, but she left most of it back at her place, it was safer to store there than in the trunk of the car since the lock on it didn't even work anymore and one solid kick was enough to open it.
Well, she could always wring its neck, if it became an issue. I wasn't anything she didn't do before, was it?
It was well past eleven when the lights in the upstairs bedroom finally went off. She waited another fifteen minutes, then pulled the hood back up and – after a momentary consideration – grabbed a black scarf from the glove box and wrapped it around her lower face. She didn't see any cameras on the outside, but it was a middle-class house, and it was more and more common for those to have some sort of surveillance. The equipment got more inconspicuous and easily available in the last couple of years. Covering her face would at least make her a lot harder to recognize if she got caught on camera without noticing.
Yeah, there were sides of progress she didn't really like.
The basement window was still open, just like she expected it would. She wiggled her hand inside and felt for the latch, then pushed it open and slid inside.
She pulled out a small flashlight, the same exact make and model she had with her on the island. It was a standard issue, so it's not like she had many to choose from. Holding it in her hand still reminded her of the time she used it previously. It was not a pleasant memory.
She shook her head and surveyed her surroundings. The cellar was small, and the beams hung so low she would have to bow her head if she were even an inch taller. Stacks of boxes lined one wall, while a discarded pile of used building materials took rest of the space: buckets of half-dried paint, opened rolls of wallpaper, a metal ladder with one step missing. Whoever lived here was not a fan of throwing stuff away.
There was only one door on the other side of the room. She stopped with her hand on the handle and closed her eyes, scouting ahead.
The inhabitants were all upstairs – two adults in one corner, the kids in their bedrooms on the other side of the house. Fortunately, the dog's signature sat lodged between the two adults upstairs. She would have the full reign of the lower level as long as she was careful.
There were stairs on the other side of the door. She aimed the beam at the floor and climbed, staying close to one side. The wooden frame whined and buckled under her weight slightly. There was another door at the end and, again, she stopped and sensed her surroundings, then, after determining the situation hasn't deteriorated, she pushed it open.
The door led to a wide hallway, with two archways leading to the kitchen on one side and the living room on the other and stairs going to the upper floor ahead.
She headed for the mudroom first, checking the pocket of the jacket the man was wearing, but found only car keys and some crumpled papers there. She studied the contents, but it was just a list of groceries and cinema tickets from a week ago. Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3, really?
She went through the house meticulously, checking every obvious place people usually left the items they used every day. The side table in the hallway, the kitchen and bathroom counters, the living room coffee table.
The double door in the living room led to the study. She swept the light beam over the rows of books on the shelves. Most of the titles pertained to branches of physics, with lots of "particle" and "energy" subjects, some more fancy words too. A personal library like that was a good place if someone wanted to hide documents or photos, but nothing seemed evidently out of place, the thin layer of dust was even and undisturbed and she didn't have an entire night to go on a – most likely fruitless – search, so she just turned around and turned her scrutiny to the desk.
The top drawer was locked but it was so easy to open it was almost insulting. There was a gun there, on top of a pile of papers. At least the man of the house didn't sleep with it under his pillow, that was a good sign.
She put it aside and went through the papers. Mortgage documents for John and Susan DeWitt, car insurance, last year tax form with a six figure on it, a hospital bill for an ulcer removal. At the bottom of the pile there was a planner and she skimmed it. There wasn't much in it, some dates were completely empty, some had a single note with an hour and an email address or a phone number – perhaps planned calls and meetings, but without any names. She skipped to the end of August and went through the days Loki was kept in the facility. Nothing stood out of the ordinary to her, until she got to the sixth of September.
There was a single phrase there. "Second attempt", written with capital letters with a red pen, then underlined a couple of times.
Second attempt at what? What were they doing?
She skipped a few days, and surely, there was another entry, on the fourteenth. "Third attempt," it read, but that one was struck out.
She stared at the page.
It might be a coincidence, but it matched the rough timeline Fury provided too well to disregard. That would mean that Mr. John DeWitt was, in fact, taking part in torturing Loki in the name of science.
She gritted her teeth, closed the planner, and replaced it in the drawer, along with the rest of its contents.
There was a laptop in front of her and she opened it up. It was protected with a password, but it was just an operating system setting and running it in safe mode solved the issue. She went through emails, but there was no work email set up, just a private one and a quick peek at the gallery and internet history revealed it was mostly used by the wife and kids. So, either John had a second computer somewhere or wasn't bringing his work home.
She sighted and went upstairs.
There was nothing in the bathroom, nor on the table in the hallway. The door to the main bedroom was closed with the inhabitants still soundly asleep behind. She turned the handle and pushed it forth, then stopped, listening.
There was a whine and then patter of small feet on the floor. She took a step back into the hallway.
Fucking dogs.
Toto trudged up to the door and stopped. The fur on its back bristled and it bared its teeth in a growl.
"Shh, you liked me well enough before, you dumb creature," she hissed and reached to pat its head. The dog growled again. "I don't want to kill you."
This is ridiculous.
Another growl sounded, growing in intensity, threating to turn into a bark. She lunged and grabbed the dog by the nape of its neck, narrowly avoiding the teeth snapping at her hand.
She held the animal down as it squirmed to get away, its frail, fluffy throat under her fingertips thrumming with muffled whines. Her fingers closed around the tiny windpipe, ready to crush it, waiting for a command to follow the call for blood singing in her veins.
She hesitated. The warm body under her hands was brimming with fuzzy energy, the small spark of awareness inside its head reeling in confusion, terrified and hurt. It shone like a miniature star, just within her grasp.
She reached for it. It didn't fight her.
The world folded away around her.
Pain. Stop. Hurt.
Pain.
Enemy.
Run.
Must protect.
Fight.
Pain.
She stumbled and the dog wriggled its way from her grasp. The connection severed and Toto ran away and down the hallway, whimpering.
She scuttled away until the wall behind stopped her, then she collapsed and curled into a fetal position. Her limbs were shaking, and her heart fluttered wildly in her chest.
The echoes of Pain and Stop and Enemy rattled in her brain, pushing her own thoughts away, robbing the world of a couple dimensions until only the barest of concepts remained. It was easy to drown in that, forgot herself.
It took all her will to make herself breathe again. She slowly unfurled her limbs and opened her eyes.
The light was on.
She looked up.
There was a girl standing above her. She was wearing a pink sleeping gown and couldn't be older than six or seven.
"Who are you?" the girl asked and crooked her head.
Natasha cursed. Then she ran.
The voice of the girl calling for her parents and then the sound of footsteps chased her. The front door was locked, and she fumbled with the latch as the steps pattered away down the stairs. She burst out to the street, stumbled down the patio stairs and ran across the lawn.
She almost reached the pavement when a warning shot was fired, and someone shouted.
John wasted no time on retrieving the gun. She should've taken the clip out, she thought belatedly.
She ran.
Another shot. It hit the asphalt a few yards ahead and to her left.
Another one. She swerved to her right to avoid it.
A piercing pain exploded in her calf, staggering her. She fell to her knees.
"Put your hands above your head and stay where you are!"
She bit her lip and got up.
"Stay down!"
She ran.
Another shot. The porch light in the house across the street came on.
She crossed the road and got to the car, then yanked at the driver's door handle. It jammed, like it always did. A bullet hit the window and it cracked in a spider's web pattern. She punched it all the way in, pulled on the handle inside and opened the door. There was a metallic clank as another bullet hit the hood of the car.
The keys were still in the ignition, where she left them. The engine coughed once, twice, thrice, then burred to life. She stepped on the gas. Her injured leg was uncooperative and heavy. Wheels spun in place and the stench of burned rubber joined the tang of gunpowder.
There was another shot, louder this time, and the windshield shattered. Higher caliber, that one.
She lifted her foot of the pedal a bit and the car moved. Side mirror scratched the parked semi as she veered around it, then broke off. She cursed. She should've parked in reverse.
A man with a hunting riffle was standing in the middle of the street, blocking her route. She bent forward and floored the accelerator. Another bullet flew above her head.
There was no impact and – when she looked in the rear mirror – she saw the riffle guy getting up from the sidewalk, where he must have thrown himself to avoid getting rammed. John DeWitt was still on his lawn, still aiming his gun at her, but – if her calculations were right – he should be out already.
There was a flash and a bullet hit the rear light.
Well, now he was out.
She reached an intersection and turned right, then left on the next one. There were sirens coming from the South, so she headed North.
She stopped a couple miles outside of town in a patch of woods, just past a bridge crossing a narrow, lazy river. She pulled onto the side of the road, turned the engine down and slumped, resting her forehead against the steering wheel.
Blood was running down her leg and there was enough of it to slush around in her boot when she wiggled her toes. She was starting to feel a little lightheaded too. She should do something about it.
She hit the steering wheel in frustration.
Why was it all so hard? Why can't something go according to plan?
She acted rashly again, didn't she? She promised herself to be patient, to do it right, then fucked it all up again on the first occasion she got, and in such an idiotic way, too. Loki has warned her, explicitly, against the very exact thing she just did.
There was no backup this time, no handy unit standing at the ready to pull her out of trouble. No air support, no inside intel, no satellite surveillance, no state-of-the-art gear, no droves of genius analysts working behind the scenes. Not even Clint to have her back when everything else fails. She was alone in this. Just her against the colossus of SHIELD and Council forces, with Loki's freedom on the line.
She took a couple of deep breaths and inspected the wound. It looked better than it felt, at least what she could see under the faint luminescence of the dome light. The bullet went through the flesh of her calf all the way. It bled and hurt like a bitch, but at least it missed the bone. The Glock John DeWitt was using didn't have enough chamber pressure for the projectile to shatter the bone and still come out cleanly on the other side at that distance.
She had no first-aid kit on her (seriously, what was she thinking, going in unprepared as she was?), but miraculously, the car came equipped with a travel emergency bag. She fished a packet of gauze and a piece of bandage out of it. The half-used bottle of hydrogen peroxide had an expiration date of over a decade prior, so she tossed it away, then proceeded to wrap the wound.
The thought to try healing it with magic did cross her head, but she discarded it quickly. She couldn't be sure how much energy it would require and falling into a coma on the side of the road in a car that was just seen on a crime scene, while cops – and who knows who else at this point – was on her tail was not the best course of action. Besides, she had enough magical fuckups for the day.
The car rolled down the bank and slowly sunk to the bottom of the creek. The river wasn't very deep, but the water was murky and looked high enough to cover the roof, and she drove far enough from the main road for it not to get spotted immediately. She was reluctant to do it, but there was no other way. Even if none of the witnesses took a note of the license plates (why didn't she just steal some beforehand?), the bullet holes alone were enough of a tell.
She sighted, pulled the hood back up, slung her bag over her shoulder and headed back to town. It was going to be a long hike.
When the alarm sounded at six, it cost her a lot to not throw the phone at the wall. What should be an hour-long walk, took twice that. Not only her leg hurt like hell, but she also had to keep clear off the road each time a car passed her on. As much as she would wish to hitch her ride back, she couldn't afford someone remembering her. It was a small community, the news carried quickly and the chance someone would put two to two was too high to ignore. So, she walked, and every step reminded her of her own stupidity. It was a wee hour of the morning when she collapsed into a restless sleep.
She should've waited. She could've tapped the landline, set up a camera, came back with some useful equipment. A gun, too. But no, what did she do instead? She went in without having an actual mean of dealing with what she might encounter, without knowing what she was looking for, without a plan of escape. It was a miracle she was even alive, if the guy was trying to kill her and not just stop her, she might just as well be dead right now. Running from bullets in a straight line, too?
Her misstep meant the time for waiting was over. It was almost certain the car would be identified, even if none of the witnesses remembered the plates it was obvious they were local. The side mirror left on the scene would make pinpointing the make and year of the car inevitable and it will lead the police to the previous owner, sooner or later. She signed the sales deal with a fake name and of course never registered it, but the woman would remember her enough to provide a description.
And, even if that didn't put them on her scent, there was her blood on the scene. The analysis will take a couple of days and the query will bounce off the SHIELD's database, as all the biodata of agents was classified, but it will set a red flag, placing her at the scene and it wasn't something she would be able to squirm away from scot-free. She was on a sick leave, there's no excuse for her to pop up where she did, and the place was still close enough to Norwalk for Fury to make the connection the moment the report reaches his desk. Depending on how fast the local police worked, it gave her a fortnight before she needed to disappear and the bridge connecting her to SHIELD was burned. At best.
Fuck.
And, if that wasn't enough to effectively ruin her mood, she now had to find another car.