Clint sat cross legged on the shack floor with a roll of gauze half wrapped around his arm. Bloody cotton balls were spread out around him. A package of alcohol swabs sat open by his feet, two of the foil packages torn open. He tied the end of the gauze using the help of his teeth and scooped the trash into a resealable bag.
With everything cleaned up, he settled against the wall and pulled a bulky tablet from the back pocket of his bag. It was a beast of a thing that had survived plunging into an icy river, falling out of a helicarrier, and being frisbeed at more than one target's head. His last one made the ultimate sacrifice when a bullet meant for him went through the screen only to be stopped by the Kevlar casing. The one before that may have had an accident involving coffee and an exploding arrow. Allegedly.
Okay, so maybe the tech guys weren't too fond of him.
He pressed his thumb over the power button and a line of green light scanned behind his fingerprint. There was a little pulse with the words, 'Login Accepted' and the screen unlocked.
With a quick glance out the door, he tapped open the database and typed in,
R-A-I-N-E-R.
23 Results Found.
He sifted through each one. There was a banker who could make fireworks come out of his hands, a low level goon who really needed a dentist, and a teacher in Upstate New York. But none of the entries were worthy of the reaction he'd seen this morning. 'Reiner' and 'Reigner' had similar results. The weirdest file, by far, belonged to a clown with so many piercings his face looked like a festive pin cushion.
Which was nightmare fuel in itself, but not what Clint was looking for.
"Who are you hiding from?" he muttered.
He took another look out the door and frowned. There had to be something, right? S.H.I.E.L.D. had information on everyone on the planet. The file had to be there.
He swiped the last search clean and tried one more time.
R-A-Y-N-E-R.
There were about as many files as the other searches, but it was the tenth one in that caught his attention.
David Hogan Rayner smiled from the screen with a smug expression that made Clint's insides roil. On the surface, the guy's record was squeaky clean. No doubt more than one good lawyer had made it that way, but they couldn't scrub everything.
He'd been arrested for assault twice. Once in 2016 and again three years later. Got off both times for whatever reason counsel had pulled out of their asses at the time. According to sealed records, he was a suspect in several other investigations. That included a string of unsolved murders in Oregon and Nevada. The victims were from different towns, races, and sexes, but each one had been mauled by a large dog. The lucky ones were shot. In fact, that was the only thing that indicated murder at all. Most of them had just been torn apart.
The cops were calling the killer, 'The Werewolf.' How… colorful.
They couldn't pin anything on him, but Mr. Squeaky Clean happened to be the founder and CEO of Safeguard Security. AKA, a company that trained personal protection dogs for the wealthy. It was mostly German Shepherds and Czechoslovakian Wolfdogs. Which was a weird flex for someone accused of murder by dog, but okay.
There was a picture of the guy at the bottom of the file, half crouched over a mottled black and tan German Shepherd. The dog lunged to the end of its leash, jaws snapping at a second guy in a padded suit. Rayner was grinning ear to ear with some stupidly expensive looking sunglasses perched perfectly on his sharp nose.
Clint squinted.
Well hello. What's this?
Underneath the thick leather collar on the dog's neck was a blurry flash of silver. A thin metal band.
"Gotcha," he said with a lift of his eyebrows.
Alright, so he had his bad guy. What was the connection? Was she a victim on the run? Maybe a trainer who'd figured out what those precious pooches were really being used for? That didn't explain what she was doing in Borneo, but it did mean that she was in trouble. Guys like Rayner weren't used to losing.
He stuffed the tablet back into his bag and rocked onto his feet. The way she was running, there'd be an easy trail to follow. Not that he expected her to be happy to see him. She wasn't an ex CIA operative in red spandex, but she did need his help. Somehow, he was going to have to convince her that he actually didn't work for Rayner. Preferably without getting shot by his own gun.
With the pack tucked next to the front door where it was harder to spot from the outside, he buckled on his quiver and slung his bow over his head.