UPSTATE NEW YORK
The sun trickling in between the curtains and onto her face woke Kat the next morning. It'd been a while since she woke up to the sun rather than the blaring of her alarm. Clint's arm was draped across her stomach and she smiled when she remembered last night. She could get used to sharing a bed with him. She let out a small squeal when his hand squeezed her hip and turned her to face him. His hair was tousled, and his sleepy eyes blinked back at her, half open. She could only imagine what her hair looked like.
'Good morning.' He signed. 'How did you sleep?'
It took her a minute to realize he didn't have his hearing aids in. He must have removed them at some point after she'd conked out.
'Like a rock.' She signed back, her movements hesitant and a little stilted as she tried to remember the signs.
"You can talk. I can read lips," he spoke as he signed. His voice gravelly and low. It was sexy and made her want to pull him into her.
"You wore me out," she said, having no clue how to sign it.
"You're the one who made good on your promise to 'rock my world.'" He gestured as he spoke, ending with the phrase she'd signed to him last night.
"It took me a while to find out how to sign that one." The videos she found mostly covered the basics, and dirty talk wasn't included in them.
"Oh, the signs I could teach you," he said one corner of his lips tilting up in a drowsy half smile.
"We've got endless time. Sign dirty to me," she said, propping her head on her arm. "But, forewarning, I might require a demonstration."
His eyes shone, looking a bit more alert as he started in on their tutoring session. His voice sent shivers down her spine as he translated the signs. Focusing on his hands wasn't helping any. All she could think about was everywhere his hands had been last night. She did her best to focus, repeating the signs he showed her both physically and verbally. When he reached out to still her hands, she thought she'd signed something drastically wrong. Meeting his gaze, she found it heated and she realized she wasn't the only one affected by the lesson.
Releasing her hands in favor of wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her closer, capturing her lips in a kiss and rolling them until she was laying on top of him. The kiss was slow and deep, unhurried because they had no one and nothing to interrupt them. Well, nothing except her full bladder. She reluctantly pulled away, making Clint's eyes drift open.
"As much as I'd love a repeat performance, and believe me I would, I really have to pee."
"Should I wait, or do you want to freshen up?"
"My answer now is wait, but I'm sure once I see a mirror, I'll change my mind." She bit her lip. "You could always join me."
"That would defeat the point of freshening up." He kissed her once more before releasing his hold so she could use the restroom. "For the record, I find your sex hair to be quite enticing."
"That's only because you were the one who tangled it."
"You're right. I'd like it less if someone else had given it to you."
He turned his head to the side as she walked away, appreciating the view until she closed the bathroom door behind her. Running a hand over his face, he forced himself out of bed and got dressed. He headed outside to start his morning PT out of habit and the need to uncoil his tense muscles.
Kat found Clint outside after her shower. Leaning against the deck railing, she watched his muscles flex as he powered through pushups at a pace that had her heart speeding up to match.
"Burning off steam?" she asked.
"I'd gladly have taken another round with you over this, but you had to pee," he said, not breaking stride.
"I should have skipped the shower." She'd be perfectly fine with staying in bed all day.
"I should have joined you in it." Finishing his last push up, he stood. "Let's see if we still have energy after training."
"We?" She didn't have a daily PT requirement, and thanks to their night of hot and heavy, she didn't feel the need to go on a run.
"I'm going to teach you how to shoot."
"I know how to shoot a gun." It was a requirement for going in the field. As was basic self-defense.
"Good, then we can skip the basics." He pulled the gun from his leg holster and handed it to her barrel facing away. "I'll teach you how to shoot better."
Kat never considered shooting a gun a workout, but the techniques Clint had her working through left her sweaty and exhausted. Her arms and abs burned and sweat stung her eyes as she took her last shot at his makeshift targets. The bullet hit at the very edge. Not bad considering she was hanging upside down by her knees from a tree branch.
She clicked the gun's safety into place and reached up with her right hand, trying to right herself, but her hand slipped on the bark and the counterweight of her swinging back had her falling from the tree. Clint darted forward, catching her from the ten-foot drop before the ground could.
"I've got you, KitKat." He set her down gently, releasing her when she got her footing.
"Nice reflexes," she said, wiping the sweat from her face with the back of her hand.
"Nice shooting. You're a fast learner."
"I know." She smiled up at him, straightening her glasses. "How do you think I got two doctorates in four years?"
"You only have two?"
"I'd have three, but I decided to become field eligible instead."
"Can't say I'm mad about that." Her field training had them finally meeting face to face.
"It was one of my better ideas." She handed him the gun. "Now what?"
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Slater waited an hour before his buyer showed up. Opening the door, he slipped into the seat across from Slater in the back of the black sedan.
"You're late," Slater said. "I have half a mind to deduct the time from your refund."
"I don't want a refund. I want what I paid for," the buyer said, calmly wiping his monocle on his shirt before slipping it back on.
"It no longer exists," Slater said. "And unless you have the person who created it, the prototype is useless."
"He's dead." SHIELD spies got to Dr. Nyman before he could. There would be no reprogramming the scientist's device in this century…unless. "What about the one who technologically decimated the device?"
"She's as good as dead." As soon as he found her. She'd disappeared with Barton shortly after his first attempt. He'd miscalculated her resourcefulness. Together, Barton and Lee were a dangerous pairing. He wouldn't underestimate them again. "SHIELD can't protect her forever."
"She's a SHIELD agent?" His eyebrows rose, his interest piqued.
"Yes. She could be doing so much more if she wasn't. Another talent wasted by loyalty to the agency."
"Loyalties can be shifted," the man murmured to himself. And if not, there were other ways to force cooperation. "What's her name?"
"Katherine Lee. But I've got her covered, you don't need to worry about her."
"Keep your refund, and don't touch the woman." He ordered, opening the door of the car and stepping out. Apparently, their meeting was over.
Who did he think he was, ordering him around? Slater didn't work for anyone but himself anymore. Pulling his phone from his jacket pocket, he dialed the last number to call him.
"What have you found out?" he asked at the click of his call being answered.
"Someone at SHIELD cast a net, but it wasn't Lee. Any technological traces of them went cold. All signs point to them going off-grid."
They'd be harder to find off-grid. But once found, they'd be isolated from SHIELD and its resources.
"What's our next step?" The question buzzed in his ear from his phone.
"You're going to flush them out."
UPSTATE NEW YORK
"As much as I love the view," Kat said, her gaze dropping to Clint's butt as she followed him down another fork in the trail. Though, she used trail in the loosest sense of the word. "This isn't what I meant when I said I didn't mind you wearing me out."
Her body protested the slight upward angle the trail took. After training with Clint yesterday, and a repeat performance of their first night, she was feeling every muscle in her body.
"You don't like hiking?" he asked, glancing back at her and extending a hand to help her over a boulder in their path.
"I'd like it better if I wasn't already sore from our other activities." Sex with Clint was amazing but physically taxing; using muscles she hadn't even thought about in too long of a time. On top of their weapons training, her body wasn't used to the overexertion. "Remember, I sit at a desk most hours of the day."
Of course, Clint was in peak physical condition, so it made sense his body wasn't feeling the extent of her soreness from their overactive sex drive even with his daily PT and training her. Between their day and night activities she went from working out several days a week to most of the day, every day.
"It's not much further. Scouts honor." He winked at her, entwining their hands together and slowing his pace to walk beside her. This hike wasn't meant to be another workout. He'd packed a lunch in his bag along with a blanket. SHIELD had crashed his date plans and he wanted to make up for it.
Turning left off the trail, they walked a quarter of a mile more before breaking through the trees to a small clearing with a breathtaking view of the forest beneath them. The sun was red in the sky, slowly descending closer to the tree line and bathing the forest in a warm glow.
"A picnic?" Kat asked, turning to find Clint had spread out one of the blankets from the cabin over the ground.
"I've heard it's romantic," he said, pulling out the apple slices and the sandwiches he'd prepared. "It's not what I had planned when you came to New York, but it's all I could do with what we had."
"We're stuck hiding in the middle of Upstate New York, and you're taking me on a date?"
"Too cheesy?"
"A bit," she said, taking a seat beside him on the blanket and accepting the bottle of water he offered her. "But I like it."
They sat close together, their shoulders and thighs touching, and watched the sunset while they ate. As soon as the sun disappeared, Clint pulled out a battery-operated lantern that pushed back the shadows of the early evening.
"Always prepared," she noted with a smile.
"The scouts honor wasn't a joke. I was a boy scout. Plus, I'm an agent of SHIELD, it's kind of my job." That and resourcefulness. Both came in handy when you didn't want to die.
"Why did you join SHIELD?" she asked, taking a sip of her water.
"I was a kid who didn't like the idea of higher education and I had a knack for marksmanship. I needed a job, and I didn't like the idea of joining the Army. The circus career didn't pan out as expected, so when I was approached by Fury, I didn't really think twice about it."
"Fury recruited you?" Her eyebrows rose.
"He wasn't the Director yet, so it's not quite as impressive as it sounds." Clint shrugged. Fury had been a field agent at the time, a high ranking one, but still just a field agent. "What about you? Who recruited you?"
"Agent Agatha Clarke. She used to run the SHIELD Communications academy. I'd just finished my first PhD in computer science at MIT. I had a butload of loans to repay, and there was this secret underground competition with a cash prize for breaking through this insanely coded file on the dark web. It was a closed competition, invite only, and I didn't have any connections, so I decided I'd hack into it. If I was the first through, I figured they had to pay me. Turns out it was some sort of entry exam for the Communications academy. When I won, instead of cash, I got an invite to the academy. I only signed on when they agreed to help pay off the loans."
Clint chuckled, his shoulder shaking against hers.
"You hacked your way into SHEILD." It fit so well with everything he knew about her.
"I suppose I was lucky they didn't arrest me." It was a real concern of hers when Agent Clarke pulled up on campus in a black suit and sunglasses.
Staring up at the sky, a million stars blinked back at her and she amended her initial skepticism of picnics being romantic.
"This is nice. It feels like we're the only people around for miles." It was kind of relaxing, being utterly alone, no way for anyone, including SHIELD, to interrupt them. Maybe going off-grid wasn't as bad as she initially thought.
"We probably are." He leaned back on his forearms.
"I'm really glad you're here with me," she said, keeping her eyes on the stars. "That I don't have to do this alone."
"I've been off-grid alone. So deep undercover not even Nat could know where I was," he said, glancing at her. "It's a thousand times better with you."
"What's the longest you've gone off-grid for?"
"I think about four or five months."
"Months?" She couldn't imagine going months. Could it take that long for SHIELD to track down Slater?
"It wasn't exactly like this. I wasn't isolated from other people the whole time, nor was I in hiding, I just kept off everyone's radar."
As though that was an easy thing to do.
"Did this deep undercover mission involve a romantic misdirect?" She turned to face Clint, leaning on her right elbow.
In her earlier years she'd been assigned to digital clean-up after field operatives' missions. It was a lot of tedious work deleting any digital record of the agent's cover. There were times where, rather than destroy evidence, she had to plant it. Some missions required finding an in, and sometimes that meant getting close with someone on the fringes. She'd seen the aftermath of it when she created narratives of believable death stories and documents so the innocents the operatives had to get close to during their mission would believe they had died. She'd never considered the impact those missions might have on agent's personal lives.
Was that something she'd have to deal with? If she started something serious with Clint, would she have to do so knowing there were times on missions where he'd have to get physically close to someone else to keep his cover or get intel? Could she accept that? His blue gaze met hers and she decided, yes. She could. If it meant he'd stay safe.
"No," he answered simply. "Coulson only made that mistake once."
"Why, what happened?"
"I blew my cover within two minutes. Turns out, I suck at flirting unless I actually like the person I'm flirting with."
He winked at her, making her smile wide enough it crinkled her nose. He loved when he could make her smile like that.
SHIELD HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK CITY
Coulson's plan wasn't working. Natasha wasn't able to pass herself off as Kat to the hacker, and neither the hacker nor Slater were taking the bait. The agents carrying Kat's phone and Clint's hearing aids hadn't been targeted in the least. She wanted to send out the call to bring them back in, but Coulson still believed they could get it under control. At least he'd approved her overtime. She'd been coming in early and staying late ever since Clint and Kat went off-grid.
The clock in the lobby above the exit read 21:15. Emptying her pockets into the bin to go through security, Natasha's phone rang when she walked through the body scanner. As soon as the screen lit up green the security officer on duty waved her through and handed her the phone.
"Romanoff," Natasha answered.
"We need you on the top floor. Now," Coulson said. He hung up before she could ask any questions.
Turning on her heel, she walked back in through the exit. She ignored the red flashing light resisting her entering the wrong way. The elevator dinged open on the top floor to a flurry of activity from the analysts still working this late. There were lines of code scanning across the wall of screens on the north wall and a timer in the top right corner. It counted down the seconds from fifteen hours.
"What's the countdown for?" She asked. None of the analysts looked up from their stations where they typed furiously, but Coulson abandoned his post standing in front of the wall of screens.
"That's how much time we have before some terrorist hacker gets past China's government cyber security and firewalls and gains access to nuclear codes to start an all out nuclear war," he said, pulling out the chair from one of the empty stations. "The CIA's diverted to us. I need you on point for this."
"You mean the glory hounds passed up an opportunity to add another medal to their chests?" she asked, scooting closer to the computer station.
"It seems their best and brightest tried for five hours with no luck. After wasting time, they've grudgingly acknowledged we might have a better shot at it."
"Did you get the call from your contact over there?" she asked, pulling up several blank screens.
"Jack? No. He's still bitter we recruited rather than arrested you. His resentment solidifies every time we snatch up recruits before him." He'd had his eyes on Lee during her MIT days and still wasn't over how she fell right into SHEILD's lap before he could approach her. "I got the call from higher up."
"Then let's save the day so you can rub it in Jack's face."
Breaking through the code the hackers set up was like picking at a tangled ball of string. No matter what angle Natasha attacked it, it only seemed to tighten the ball. It was frustrating, and she'd like to blame her failure on her lack of sleep, but she had a feeling even fully rested her attacks wouldn't work. It was as though the code was built with a specific key in mind. One that her hacking style didn't fit. Banging her hand against the enter key had another string of code popping up, but that time, Natasha started seeing a pattern. Scrolling up through the previous lines of code, her eyes drawn to the repeated pattern, she entered the numbers the code fed her. When she hit the enter button that time, a message flashed in place of code.
Kat's Cradle. Will the Kitty Kat come out to play?
"Coulson," she called out, her gaze never leaving the screen.
UPSTATE NEW YORK
The small wood stove glowed orange in the cabin, chasing away the night chill. Kat and Clint sat, curled up together on the couch, each with a book from the shelves behind them. His arm draped around her shoulders and his hand traced lazy circles on her upper arm.
"Okay, I've read the same sentence ten times," Kat said, letting the book fall to her lap. Clint's touch was too distracting.
"I've been staring blankly at the same page since we sat down," he admitted.
"Want to make out like rowdy teenagers?" she suggested.
He didn't answer verbally. Instead, he let the book he wasn't reading thud to the floor and gently tilted Kat's face towards his. Brushing her lips with his thumb, he leaned in to kiss her. It wasn't long before the kisses deepened, and Kat ended up straddling him, both their hands roaming over any part of the other they could find.
They pulled apart when the radio on the shelf, which had emitted nothing but soft static the last few days, broadcasted a single phrase repeated twice: hot iced tea.
They looked at the radio in unison before their gazes met again.
"Is that the code word?" she asked, shifting off him and rising from the couch.
"No," Clint said. "It's a code Nat and I created."
"What does it mean?"
"I need to call her. ASAP." It must be serious. She hadn't used the code word designated to mean they were safe to come out of hiding. Which meant Slater was still out there.
"I'll grab the bags." She darted to the bedroom while Clint put out the fire and grabbed their weapons. They didn't have any way to contact Natasha at the cabin. They were going to have to leave their safe haven.
Four miles down the highway there was a gas station with a working payphone, a rarity these days. Kat drove, getting them there in half the time. She waited with the car running as Clint called SHIELD. They didn't have any change, so SHIELD was going to have to accept the charges of a collect call.
"What time does the eagle fly?" Natasha asked after accepting the charges. They'd had to resort to collect calls during previous off-grid assignments.
"Four-fifths after seven oh four," he said, reciting the call back for her check-in. "You okay?"
"For now. We've got a nuclear situation on our hands and a hacker who wants to play a game with Kat."
Clint glanced back at the idling car, but Kat's attention was on their surroundings, watching their six. Rightly so. As soon as he made the call, he knew Slater would have someone triangulating where it was coming from.
"You can't crack it?" he asked, already knowing the answer. If she could, she wouldn't have made the radio call.
"I've tried, but it's designed for her: her style and the way she attacks code. We need her."
"How long does she have?" He'd already started the mental calculations to determine how long it would take them to get back.
"The clocks at twelve hours and counting."
It wasn't a lot of time. It would take them six hours just to get back to the city. He didn't know how long it would take Kat to actually beat the hacker's game.
"We'll be in touch." Hanging up, he scanned the area as he made his way back to the car. Before he even shut the door, he told Kat to drive. He didn't want to be anywhere near the gas station. He could explain while they headed south.
"We don't have time to drive back to headquarters, even if I speed and we don't get pulled over by cops." She'd want more time working away at the hacker's defenses if nuclear war was on the line. "How well do you know this area?"
"I can become familiar with it." He pulled the map out from the visor and flattened it across his lap.
"Can you direct me to the nearest 24-hour store that sells computers?"
He picked out their place on the map and traced their path, looking for something that met her criteria.
"Take the next exit and keep right."
She followed his directions, pushing the speed limit as much as she dared. Though there was no one else on the road at that time of night, she knew small town cops loved their speed traps. Her eyes kept flashing from the street in front of them, to the stretch behind them via the rear and side mirrors. When she saw the bright blue sign with the yellow sunburst, she shot Clint a look.
"It wasn't like we had a lot of options. The nearest Apple store is miles away and isn't 24-hour," he said.
"At least they sell Nighthawk and Mifi," she said as she pulled into the lot. She'd been running through options in her head if she had to try and work with the very slow free wi-fi around here.
There were only a few cars in the lot at that time of night, most likely those of the employees. Clint holstered his gun at his ankle, under his jeans. He didn't like the idea of being unarmed and the gun and his knife were the only weapons he could carry without being obvious. He doubted the greeter would let him in with his recurve bow.
Grabbing a cart, Kat headed straight back to the electronics section. They kept their heads down, grabbing ball caps on the way in an effort to stay off the surveillance cameras.
"How much cash do you have?" she asked. Reaching in his pocket he handed her a wad of bills.
"That enough?"
"It'll have to be." Rounding the aisles, Kat tossed a wireless mouse, two pay-as-you-go phones and corresponding minute cards.
She had to wait for one of the employees to unlock the cabinet for the Nighthawk modem and her chosen laptop. It was a cheaper model than she'd normally go for, the cheapest they had actually, but she'd worked with worse. Hunkering down in a booth at the McDonald's in the front of the store with a large Coke, she hesitated before turning on the Nighthawk.
"As soon as I turn this on and start poking around SHIELD, Slater will be able to pinpoint our exact location. I can put up some firewalls to slow his techie down, but it won't stop them."
"You worry about stopping a nuclear war. I've got whatever Slater sends our way covered."
Turning on the Nighthawk, she built a firewall, making it as structurally sound as she could. When she was satisfied, she pulled up several internet browsers and got to work connecting with the New York headquarters so she could see what they were dealing with. Grabbing one of the phones, she called Nat on the number Clint gave her.
"I've got some shopping of my own to do," he said, grabbing the other phone. "Patch me into the call. I won't be long, but I'd feel better if I could hear that you're okay."
"But we don't have any money left," she said, but he was already working his way past the registers.
Her focus swiveled to her computer when she connected with SHIELD's system and got a glimpse of what they were dealing with.
"I'm here to offer support," Natasha said, her voice a little tinny through the cheap phone's speakers. "Even if you just need someone to bounce ideas off of."
"I'll definitely be taking you up on that," she said, typing an entry line of code as an experiment.
Hello, Kat. I hope you don't disappoint
The message flashed across the screen. The fact that one line of her code had him identifying her was creepy.
Clearing the screen from the previous attacks Natasha and the other agents tried so they wouldn't distract her or affect her methods, Kat flexed her fingers. If she could cut off the hacker's connection to the foreign server and set up a tech blockade, she could douse the fuse before it reached the ammo. But first she needed to find a way through the firewall the hacker created.
Clint made a pit stop in the stationary aisle, grabbing a package of pens, post-its, and paper clips. He opened the paper clips on his way to the sports and outdoors section. Setting the phone on one of the shelves, Nat and Kat's voices sporadically discussing computer stuff dealing with the hack, he bent the paper clips into shape. He glanced up and down the aisle, making sure he was alone, before kneeling in front of one of the glass display cases.
It took a minute, but he managed to open the case. He grabbed a couple dozen arrows then slid the glass door closed again. He scribbled a hasty 'IOU' on one of the post-its he'd taken and stuck it on the glass before moving to the next aisle over. Sliding the arrows into one of the cheap quivers, he slipped it on and moved to grab the best bow on the aisle. None of them came close to the recurve bow he had in the car, but he'd have to make do. Pulling his knife from his left ankle holster, he cut through the packaging.
"He's changing the rules as we play." Kat's voice held a hint of frustration when it came through the phone.
"What do you mean?" Clint asked as he adjusted the draw length and weight to fit his needs.
"I've found his pattern, but when I start to write the counter code, the hacker adds to it, or changes it." She hadn't expected it to be easy, but she also hadn't expected the hacker to be able to devote so much effort to both hacking the nuclear codes and keeping her out.
"The hacker's focus is on Kat, not getting the nuclear codes. The countdown clock has slowed significantly," Natasha added.
"So, there is no threat of nuclear war?" That was a good thing. Right?
"No, there is. I think he's got bots working on them," Natasha said.
"What does that mean in plain old English?" Clint didn't speak tech.
"It means Slater's hacker and the hacker trying to get the nuclear codes are most likely one in the same. He's stalling her."
There were only so many reasons the hacker would want to keep her focused on the code, working from one location, and the most obvious was he wanted to keep them nice and stationary for whatever assassination attempt Slater had up his sleeve.
"Clint, you need to evacuate every civilian from this store. Now," Kat said. She didn't want any of them under whatever fire was headed their way.
"I'm on it."
Racing towards the empty checkout in the sporting section, he hopped the counter and pressed the intercom button on the phone.
"Attention all shoppers and employees, a gas leak has been detected. I need all of you to evacuate the store. We will reopen as soon as the problem is resolved."
Kat edged further into the booth after Clint's announcement to prevent any of the employees from kicking her out as well. It was unnecessary. No one paid her any attention.
"Kat, you got enough battery to last if I cut the power?" He'd prefer to have the extra cover, but he didn't want to compromise her work.
"I can make do. If I run out of juice I'll talk Nat through my coding." It'd take longer to explain her attacks verbally, but they'd still be able to keep the hacker busy. "How long do you think we have till Slater shows up?"
Clint made a pit stop towards the back of the store. He didn't bother with picking the lock, instead he shattered the glass and reached in for the box containing the night vision goggles. He had to pick up batteries as well. That time he didn't leave any more IOU notes. He didn't have time and SHIELD would take care of all the damages after this standoff.
"Depends. Going off-grid limited our transportation options, so he most likely set up a probable grid of how far we could have gotten and would already be waiting somewhere within that grid. It's what I would have done." Maneuvering through the back warehouse, Clint located the circuit breaker. With a few switches, the store was bathed in darkness. He slipped on the goggles. "We could have anywhere from fifteen minutes to a few hours."
"Coulson's already organizing back-up. They'll be there within the hour," Nat said. She hoped that was enough time.
Clint slid the phone into the pocket of his borrowed quiver when he climbed his way up to the store's rafters. He'd need a good vantage point.
Kat's fingers danced over her keyboard, the light from the screen casting her face in a blue-white glow. She tried to calm her nerves, but the dark abandoned store was eerie enough let alone the fact that assassins could show up at any minute. The anticipation made it ten times worse.
Clint straightened from his perch in the rafters when the automatic doors squeaked as they were forced open.
"We've got company KitKat," he whispered into the phone before hanging up. He didn't need it giving away his position.
Pulling an arrow from the quiver, he drew his bow and waited, watching through the sight. A dozen men dressed all in black and armed with semi-automatics entered through the doors. A bit over the top, but he supposed Slater wasn't taking any chances after the airport fiasco. Clint's fingers itched to release the string, but he waited. He had no plans of giving away his position until one of them made a move in Kat's direction. The man in the front directed the others with hand signals Clint recognized from the tact team. They were splitting up. Good, it'd be easier to pick them off that way.
Kat took the phone off speaker, cradling it against her shoulder as soon as Clint warned they were no longer alone. Her fingers fumbled over the keys, making her type the wrong letters. Back tracking, she started over.
"How far out is backup?" Kat asked, keeping her voice barely over a whisper.
"Let's not focus on that right now," she said. That wasn't promising.
She really wished she had headphones she could slip on to block out the absolute silence around her. Silence helped most people focus, but it was entirely too distracting to her. What she would give for a com to connect her with Clint. Her fingers paused on the keyboard when she heard footsteps approaching the entrance to the eatery. They were trying to be quiet, but most shoes on linoleum made some noise. A muffled thwack and a strangled groan preceded a solid thud and the footsteps stopped. Clint must have found a bow.
Reloading his bow after taking his first shot, Clint waited as another man approached the fallen, waiting until he stopped 30 feet away before loosing the second arrow. The arrow hit the guy in the side of the neck, and he fell on top of the other man, making a softer thud than before. He was perfectly happy staying in his nest and picking them off one by one, but another man down and they started wising up. It wasn't hard to piece together his location as well as Kat's from the position of the bodies. They shot at him, forcing him to retreat from his vantage point. Jumping to the next rafter over, he dismounted, timing it so he landed on one of the men to soften the blow. Pulling his knife out, he made quick work of the man.
Dodging bullets in closer quarters than he liked had him really missing his recurve bow. He couldn't use the compound bow as a close quarters weapon quite as efficiently as he could his regular bow. Chucking the bow as hard as he could at one of the men, he reached down and grabbed one of the dead guys guns. He tucked and rolled behind one of the checkout counters, popping out from his cover to rain bullets on those who shot at him. He hissed when one of their shots grazed his forearm. Damn it stung.
The sound of fighting drew closer, but Kat didn't change her tactic until the guns started going off. Acutely aware of her time frame for succeeding dwindling, she switched the script. Instead of creating her own code, she piggybacked off one of the hacker's lines, altering it slightly and using it as a delivery mechanism, not unlike a real virus in the human system.
The sound of a shoe on the sticky floor, like Velcro ripping apart, was the only warning she got. Slipping underneath the table she beat the bullets by seconds. They tore through her laptop and settled in the hard plastic of the booth's bench.
"Kat?" Natasha's voice called faintly from the phone she'd dropped on the bench.
Heart thudding, she glanced across the open floor to the employee entrance to the serving counters. She knew she couldn't stay where she was. Plastic wouldn't stop the bullets, only slow them. She needed better cover. But damn, she wished she didn't have to race bullets. Taking a steadying breath, she rolled into a runner's lunge, wishing she'd stuck with track and field in high school. At the next shot she sprinted across the floor, somehow fast enough when she collapsed behind the counter. Frantically, she scanned the area for something, anything, she could use as a weapon. Her gaze landed on the fryer. Though the power had been off, there was still a chance the oil inside was still hot, if not the scalding temperature the fryer normally kept it at.
Staying low to the ground, she made her way further into the kitchen. Half hidden behind the side of the fryer, careful not to touch the metal sides, she pulled a pan from the grill, dipping it in the fryer and waiting for the shooter to follow. He had no reason not to. Obviously, she wasn't armed.
She didn't have to wait long before the man eased his way around the corner, inching back into the pitch black of the kitchen with his gun at the ready. Gripping the pan tighter to keep her hands from shaking, she waited as long as she dared, letting the man get closer. Before he noticed her in the shadows, she launched forward, flinging the hot oil in the pan at him. Some of it splashed on her skin, painfully hot. She continued forward with her momentum, using the pan to knock the gun from the man's hand. Even with hot oil on his face, he was able to block her attacks, twisting her wrist until the pan clanged to the floor. Raising her knee up it connected with his groin a second after he fired a shot from a handgun he'd pulled from out of seemingly nowhere. The bullet hit her side, the pain making her curse. Losing her footing, she fell on her back.
Clint's stomach clenched when he counted off the number of men firing at him, adding it to the few he'd taken down, and came up one short. Spotting his targets in the reflection of the plastic Pepsi fridge door, distorted as they were, he flung himself back over the counter, firing off three shots before hitting the floor between the two check outs. He'd taken out three of the five men. The last two were to his left. They fired back immediately, bullets flying over the counter, but he was already sliding out into the aisle, shooting twice and putting a bullet through both their heads.
Before his momentum slowed, he rose from his knees and sprinted towards Kat. Her laptop had two bullet holes through the screen, but she wasn't in the booth. His goggles caught movement in the dark recesses of the kitchen. Jumping the counter, he waited until he got close enough to verify the figure as a target. He didn't want to shoot Kat by mistake. Unfortunately, that meant he nixed the element of surprise.
Blocking the man's right hand with his left so he couldn't shoot also prevented Clint from firing his own gun. Instead, he used his right hand to punch the man in the solar plexus several times in rapid succession before the man managed to sock him in the jaw with a solid punch. Shaking off the hit, he caught the man's next punch, twisting his wrist and using leverage to flip him. The man landed with a solid thud. Before he could raise his gun, Clint stepped on his arm until a bone cracked. The man released his hold on his gun with a cry of pain.
"Kat, you alright?" he called out.
"I. Think. So." She called back, her breaths shallow as though she was in pain. He stepped down harder on the man's broken arm. The man grunted.
"You won't have to worry about her for long," the man said. "I got in a good shot to her side. Should be bleeding out as we speak."
Clint knew he needed to leave at least one of the men alive for questioning, and this man was the last man standing, but damnit he wanted to shoot him point blank in the face. Instead, he pulled three arrows from his quiver, jamming two of them through the palm of the man's hands and one into his calf before grabbing his gun from the floor.
"Stay put," Clint ordered, like the man had any choice, before he rushed further back into the kitchen.
Kat was sprawled precariously on the floor, gripping her left side. The sight had his heart hammering against his chest. Falling to his knees he crawled the rest of the way towards her, yanking the quiver from his back and pulling his shirt off to use it to stop the bleeding. Only, she wasn't bleeding.
"They don't tell you it stings like a motherfucker," she said, letting Clint ease her hands from her side. He tugged at her tee, lifting it to reveal one of SHIELD's bullet proof tank tops. He laughed in relief when he realized she was fine.
"You didn't think to share?" He asked, tugging on the tank top.
"They hardly would have fit you, wouldn't even cover your broad chest, and besides, it seems you prefer to go shirtless," she smiled, nodding towards his bare chest. "Not that I'm complaining."
"I was going to save you from bleeding out." He shook his head, tossing his shirt at her. "I take it by the lack of mushroom clouds you succeeded in stopping the hacker from using the nuclear launch codes."
"He gave up on that pretense not long after our stronghold was hit. Nat was able to defeat the bots he had gunning for the codes and distract him."
"Distract him from what?"
"My counter-attack."
Shattering glass drew both their attention. Rising to his feet, Clint took aim. Someone turned the lights back on, making him yank the goggles off so he wouldn't lose sight of his targets. He relaxed his stance when his eyes refocused.
"Back-up's here," he said, reaching down to help Kat up. She winced, holding her side once she was standing.
"You're a little late," he called out as SHIELD agents approached the kitchen, two of them stopping to wrangle the one man he'd left alive.
"Where's your shirt, Barton?" A familiar disapproving voice called out.
"I took it off for Kat's benefit," he said. May stood with her hands by her side, one of her many trademark steely eyed, no-nonsense glares in place.
"He thought I was shot," Kat clarified.
"You were shot," he corrected.
"But I'm not bleeding."
"Put your shirt back on, Barton," May interrupted their babble. "And work on getting your version of tonight's events down to necessary details only. Coulson's waiting at headquarters for a debriefing and he has the paperwork for the incident report ready for you for the damages you caused."
"To be fair, it was their fault," Kat said, pointing at the man who shot her as SHIELD agents restrained him and took him away.
"SHIELD still has to pay for it. Now get on the jet so the medics can clear you. You could be bleeding internally."
"I knew you cared under that hard-ass exterior, May," Clint said, shrugging his shirt back on then looping his arm around Kat's waist and helping her towards the plane.
The medic was waiting for them, standing out in his clinical white coat and scrubs.
"Shirts off," the medic instructed, motioning for them to sit on the exam tables.
"You all should really figure out what you want. You're sending mixed signals," Clint said stoically, causing Kat to laugh, then groan as laughing hurt her left side. When the medic's gaze fell on his bleeding arm, Clint quickly corrected him. "No, I'm fine. Ladies first. Please."
A/N: It took me a while to figure out the direction of this chapter, but once I did it went a lot longer than I intended. I hope you enjoyed it!
Onto Guest review responses
JR: haha I loved the all caps and your excitement that Clint and Kat finally got together. Hope you enjoyed this chapter too.
To the guest who absolutely adores this story: Yes, Clint and Kat got to explore their relationship without anyone interfering, finally. It only took an ex-SHIELD agent gunning for them and forcing them off grid so no one can contact them lol.
Rach
xoxo