Chapter 31

Midnight came, but Sharon was in no danger of falling asleep. She paced her floor impatiently, praying Harrison would find Rogers so that he could find Fury, and listening to the police scanner just in case something else happened. So far she had only heard routine chatter. She glanced at her own hand-held radio, lying silently on her coffee table, and checked it for the umpteenth time to make sure it was still on.

This time, it crackled to life just as she picked it up, and she heard a man's voice say something indistinguishable through the static.

Instantly, she hit the talk button. "Hello?" she said.

There was no reply but heavy breathing.

"Hello?" Sharon said again, heart suddenly racing.

"Tango."

Sharon felt her shoulders sag with relief; it was Fury's voice. Only... he didn't sound quite like himself.

"Foxtrot?" she asked cautiously.

"I'm gonna... order takeout." It was the phrase they had established to verify each other's identities, and quickly Sharon replied: "Nothing for me."

"Location?" Fury asked then.

"At my post," she answered promptly.

"Stay. Watch." Fury panted for breath again. "And put his key... under the door."

Sharon's mind raced with questions, but she knew better than to ask any of them as she hurried to obey. If she needed to know something, Fury would make sure she knew it. Withholding explanations from her might be his way of protecting her from whatever was going on. But his labored breathing weighed heavily on her. It sounded like he was utterly exhausted, maybe even hurt. Put that together with what she'd seen on the news, and Rumlow's aggressive questioning...

It didn't add up to anything good.

Sharon slid Rogers' key under her door. "Done," she said into the radio.

Her only reply was the click of a severed connection. But she didn't have long to wait and wonder what would happen next. In less than a minute she heard heavy footsteps on the landing outside her door, and through the peephole she saw Fury come into view, walking slowly with his left arm held stiffly against his side. He bent down to retrieve the key she'd left, grunting audibly, and when he stood back up Sharon got a good look at his face and gasped: there was a bloody welt under his eye.

Sharon watched anxiously through the peephole as Fury let himself into Rogers' apartment and shut the door tightly behind him.

"Foxtrot," she said into the radio, keeping her voice low. "Did you post Malik Walker in the building to the north?"

Fury's voice was strained as he answered: "Negative."

Sharon grabbed Harrison's binoculars and used them to peer through her kitchen window, and felt her fear spike the moment she located Walker again.

He now had a high-powered rifle mounted on the tripod he'd set up by the window.

Sharon felt her fear spike. "He's taken up a sniper position," she said tersely into the radio. "He's aiming at Rogers' windows."

Fury's voice was terse. "Eliminate him."

Heat bloomed deep inside her chest, but she tamped it down; this was no time for emotion. "Keep away from the windows," she warned him. "I'm on it." Fury's only answer was a low groan.

Moving quickly, Sharon dug her rifle out of its hiding place and attached the silencer, then slid open her kitchen window and knelt down, raising the rifle to her shoulder and peering through the scope until she had Walker in her sights.

Her heart was beating wildly, and she had to wait for what seemed an endless few seconds, breathing deeply and focusing as Uncle Mike had long ago taught her, until her hands gradually stopped shaking. Music suddenly blared from next door, one of Rogers' favorite big-band records; Fury doing what he could to drown out the sound of her impending gunshot.

She carefully aligned the crosshairs in the center of the man's chest, slowly exhaled, and then held her breath there.

She fired.

Walker went down.

Sharon waited for as long as seemed necessary, watching through the scope, but he didn't reappear at the window, so she snatched up the radio again, willing her hands not to resume shaking.

"Foxtrot, target is down," she murmured. "Moving to the stairwell to assess the approach from the east. There may be more." Just then, her eyes fell on her phone where she'd left it lying on the floor. A proximity alert was flashing, showing that Rogers' motorcycle was now parked just outside their apartment building.

Sharon swore under her breath, and instantly she assessed the priorities clashing in her brain. Keeping Fury safe was critical, and keeping Rogers safe was paramount.

Keeping them both alive was ideal.

Thinking rapidly, Sharon dashed into her bedroom, grabbed a laundry basket and dashed back to the kitchen. Frantically she unscrewed the barrel of the rifle again and shoved the pieces to the bottom of the laundry basket under a pile of scrubs, along with her hand gun, and tucked the radio out of sight in her shirt pocket. She could hear footsteps coming up the stairs outside her door. Sick with fear, she balanced the laundry basket on one hip, jammed the phone between her ear and her shoulder, and came out onto the landing — forcing herself to move at a leisurely pace although she could feel the sweat pouring down the back of her neck — just as Rogers came jogging up the last few steps.

"That's so sweet! That's so nice!" she said casually as if talking into the phone, trying not to cringe at how unconvincing she sounded to her own ears. "Hey," she said softly to Rogers as he made eye contact with her and gave a little wave, and then she continued speaking into her phone: "I gotta go, though. Okay, bye."

Rogers had paused on the landing and was looking at her expectantly. By now Sharon had nailed down her cover so well that she no longer had to plot out conversations with Rogers before they took place, allowing them to unfold naturally, but with everything that had just happened, her mind suddenly blanked out — who was she pretending to talk to on the phone? Her mother, her father, her brother? But for some reason a different face flashed into her brain, the face of the person she most often associated with Rogers.

"My aunt," Sharon said to Rogers by way of explanation as she dropped the phone on top of her scrubs. "She's kind of an insomniac."

She forced herself to speak lightly, as if she were still Kate the nurse and not the woman who had just shot a man in cold blood for him. She knew she should preserve her cover if she could, but the most important thing right now was to not let Rogers walk into his apartment unaware that something was seriously amiss.

"Yeah..." she said, her voice trailing off uncertainly as she tried to figure out exactly how to accomplish that.

"Hey, if you want," Rogers said, his words coming out with a forced casualness. "If you want..." Despite her distraction she instantly took note: the only time she ever heard him repeat himself like that was when he got nervous around women.

"-you're welcome to use my machine," he went on. "Might be cheaper than the one in the basement."

"Oh yeah? What's it cost?" she asked lightly, just to stall for more time. She was strongly tempted to accept his offer. If she could go in with him, she'd be in a position to keep him away from the windows somehow until she could evaluate whether there was a threat from the east. She wasted a precious moment cursing the fact that he lived in the corner apartment. Too many windows. Why didn't he think of that when he moved in? Did he think he was only in danger when he was on missions?

Of course he thought that. Why would he think himself in danger here, in his own home? Sharon herself didn't even know the nature of the threat she'd been assigned to watch for. Had Rumlow posted that sniper there for Fury? Or Rogers? Or both? And why? It was all above her pay grade.

But she couldn't go in the apartment with him, she knew. A sniper would be just as likely to hit her as either Fury or Rogers, and then she'd be no good to either one of them. What she really needed to do was go to the next landing down, look through a window a sniper wouldn't be watching, and clear the obstruction if she could.

"Cup of coffee?" Rogers said. He met her eyes again, looking hopeful.

It took Sharon a moment to remember what he was talking about, and when she did, she didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. He was asking her out? Now? With Fury bleeding in his apartment and a sniper dead across the street and maybe another still alive somewhere close, with two guns weighing down her laundry basket and a radio in her pocket that could crackle to life at any moment with Agent Goodman's voice...

She took a breath. "Thank you," she said slowly, "but, um-" The moment she said "but," his face fell, and the guilt stabbed her like a knife. She'd tried so hard not to be too flirty with him; she knew that getting close to him was the one thing that couldn't happen under any circumstances, but despite her best efforts she had apparently been sending signals to him anyway. Suddenly she hated herself. So much for a convincing cover. So much for professionalism. He'd seen right through her.

"I already have a load in downstairs," she explained to Rogers, trying to soften the blow as much as she could, "-and, uh, you really don't want my scrubs in your machine. I just finished a rotation in the infectious disease ward, so-"

"Ah, well," he said, doing a credible job of playing it cool as he held up his hands as if to fend her off. "I'll keep my distance."

"Hopefully not too far," she said before she could stop herself.

"Oh, and I think you left your stereo on," she added quickly as he turned to unlock his door.

"Oh, right. Thank you."

Even as she turned to go down the stairs, Sharon caught a glimpse of Rogers' expression growing suddenly wary as he leaned toward his door to listen through it. She knew perfectly well that he didn't own a stereo, only a record player... and those didn't keep playing music on repeat. He'd been gone for hours, and if he'd left a record on, it would only be playing static by now. The only explanation was that someone was in his apartment, and now he knew it.

She glanced back when she reached the foot of the stairs just in time to see Rogers slide open the window in the hallway and climb out nimbly. She knew in an instant that he would be able to cling to the ledge and climb back into one of the windows of his apartment along the north face of the building, and she felt a surge of gratitude toward her cousin. If it weren't for Harrison, she may not have thought to look for snipers, and then Rogers would be clinging to a ledge while in the sights of Walker's rifle scope. That could have ended really badly.

Sharon shook her head slightly. There was no time to waste on what-ifs. She had to make sure the east windows were clear before Rogers got inside.

She set down the laundry basket on the landing and quickly reassembled the rifle, glancing around to make sure she was alone, praying no one on this floor decided to leave their apartment for a midnight stroll. She eased open the window on the landing, pointed her rifle out of it and peered through the scope, carefully scanning each window of the office building to the east. The windows were all darkened this time of night, and they were totally opaque, reflecting the lights of the city instead. Sharon's heart fell; if there was a sniper inside, she'd never be able to see him. So she switched tactics and started scanning the roofline instead. If she were a sniper, that's where she would be; an office building like that was likely to have night guards, and the rooftop would permit a more open escape route once the deed was done.

There was a man standing on the roof.

Sharon's heart nearly stopped, and she gripped the rifle tightly, peering through the scope at him. He was wearing all black, but a flash of light reflected off one of his arms, which looked strangely metallic. Was he wearing some type of armor? It was the only reason she had spotted him at all; he appeared to be masked, too. And yet he wasn't lying on the roof to avoid detection, he was standing there at the edge straight and tall, his dark profile just visible against the ambient light of the city.

It bespoke a reckless disregard for his own safety. Or maybe an unusually high level of confidence in his own abilities. Sharon lowered her rifle slightly, and saw that he was carrying a rifle of his own. A surge of something swept through her — not fear, there was no time to feel fear — but half a heartbeat before he lifted the rifle to his shoulder, she knew with a certainty beyond reason that she must stop this man, and now.

Without hesitation she aimed for center mass, and fired.

Through the scope there was a sudden motion, a flash of light reflecting off that armored arm, and for one wild, hopeful moment Sharon thought she had hit him, that he was falling over the edge of the roof.

He didn't fall. He just dashed forward, disappearing from her scope, and Sharon lost precious seconds trying to get him back into her sights. Her mouth was open in disbelief. Her aim had been perfect. She was sure of that. But she hadn't hit him. That flash of light she had seen... it was more like a spray of sparks. Like he had moved his armored arm just in time for her bullet to hit that instead of his chest. But no one could block bullets. No one had eyesight or hearing that acute. No one had reflexes that fast.

No one, of course, except Steve Rogers.

She found him in her sights again. He had his rifle raised to his shoulder again. But it wasn't pointed at her. It was pointed at Rogers' apartment.

In desperation, she squeezed the trigger once more. But she didn't have the time to aim as carefully as she needed to for a shot this long, and she missed him. In almost the same instant she fired, she heard a deafening bang, and a man upstairs shouted out in pain.

Heart pounding, Sharon dropped the rifle and pulled her handgun out of the basket of scrubs, dashing breathlessly up the stairs to Rogers' apartment. The door was locked and Fury still had her key, but it didn't matter; she kicked the door open in three tries and burst through, quickly scanning the living room: empty, but the air was thick with plaster dust, and there were bullet holes in the walls. Bizarrely, a big band song was still playing on the record player. Some part of her brain registered the completely irrelevant fact that it was one of Aunt Peggy's favorite songs, something her cousin Sammy played on the piano and sang to her all the time.

A blood smear on the floor led toward the kitchen. Sharon moved smoothly forward. "Captain Rogers?" she called out, anxious that he not mistake her for the gunman and attack before she could explain. Unless he was the one who was down. She hoped not. She desperately, dearly hoped not.

A face cautiously peered around the corner at her. It was Rogers.

"Captain," she said levelly, careful to keep the gun pointed away from him. "I'm Agent 13, S.H.I.E.L.D. Special Service."

He looked at her and her gun in complete confusion. "Kate?"

She peered around the corner, ensuring in a glance that they were alone. "I've been assigned to protect you," she explained.

"On whose order?" he demanded, and there was an undeniable flash of anger in his voice. She knew there would be. That didn't make it any easier to hear. But there was no time to think about that now. Sharon took a few more steps into the room, and saw Fury lying crumpled on the floor.

"His," she said.

She knelt on the floor, laying down her gun so she could check Fury's vitals. There was blood soaking through the front of his shirt, and it was immediately obvious that he was in a bad way. Quickly she yanked the radio out of her pocket.

"Foxtrot is down, he's unresponsive," she said into it as Rogers hovered nearby with his shield on his arm, making no move to stop her. "I need EMTs."

"Do we have a 20 on the shooter?" Agent Goodman's voice asked.

As one, she and Rogers looked out the east window. Through the blinds they could see a metallic flash up on the roof of the office building, and immediately Rogers gripped his shield a little tighter, his jaw clenching in determination.

"Tell 'em I'm in pursuit," he said briefly, and without hesitation he took off running, smashing through his own window at full speed.

Sharon scrambled back to her feet and looked out the window, eyes wide. A couple of passers-by on the street were looking up in alarm, standing near a swath of shattered glass on the street. A window across the way and one floor down was smashed, too, and Rogers was already out of sight.

She lifted the radio up to her lips once more. "Captain Rogers is in pursuit," she said coolly.

And then she went back over to Fury and began to administer aid.

Agent Hill arrived moments after the paramedics did. Whatever deep shadow conditions she had been in, an attack on Fury was apparently enough to pull her out of it. It wasn't hard to catch the real distress in Hill's eyes when she first came through the door and saw the state Fury was in, but within seconds Hill had lifted her chin and gotten to work.

As the paramedics worked to stabilize Fury and transfer him to a stretcher, Hill pulled Sharon aside and listened to her whispered report, delivered as succinctly as possible. They were almost finished when there was a loud thump and a crunch of glass around the corner, and they both turned to see Captain Rogers climbing back through the window.

"Did you get him?" Hill asked hopefully.

Rogers shook his head, looking defeated. "He disappeared. He was... different. I think he was enhanced."

So the man really had dodged her bullet. Sharon thought she should be comforted by that fact — how could she be expected to defeat an enhanced combatant singlehandedly, when even Rogers had not been able to catch up to him? — but the thick cloud of guilt enveloping her didn't dissipate in the slightest. She'd been tasked with protecting Rogers. With supporting Fury. And she'd failed. There was no getting around that fact.

"Why was Fury in your apartment?" Hill asked Rogers.

Rogers glanced at Sharon, expression inscrutable, and said nothing.

"Report," Hill said, her tone urgent.

"When she leaves," Rogers said, still looking at Sharon.

Hill gave him a look that was half pity, half impatience. "Rogers, she was here by my order," she said crisply. "Fury and I put her here to protect you."

"Go," Rogers said to Sharon. His shoulders were squared up perfectly. He was in Captain America mode. The man who was just plain old Steve Rogers, the one who liked to be teased about what his job was, the one who got nervous offering her a cup of coffee, was nowhere to be seen. She'd run him off. Driven him away. Maybe for good.

"Excuse me, Captain, you don't get to give orders to my agents," Hill said, suddenly stern. But Sharon had already turned to go, and she didn't stop until she was out in the hallway, where a couple more paramedics were working to prop open the elevator doors for the approaching stretcher.

She closed her eyes for a moment, willing her hammering heart to slow down. He hated her. She'd lied to Captain America, and now he hated her.

But that was okay. She could live with that. He was still alive, and that was what was most important.

That was what Aunt Peggy had asked her to do.

Eight hours later, Sharon sat motionless at her desk in the Triskelion, both hands pressed palm down against the smooth surface, eyes unseeing despite being fixed on her computer monitor. Her mind was racing... and her heart was racing to match.

All around her, her co-workers were gathered into tight knots, ignoring their work and talking over Director Fury's death in hushed tones. No one really knew much more than what had been officially announced this morning, but that didn't stop them from speculating anyway.

The other agents had tried to get something out of her when she'd come back from her interview first thing this morning with Undersecretary Alexander Pierce, but she had merely buttoned her lip and said nothing at all, and soon enough her supervisor Agent Li had gotten the hint that she was not free to speak, and directed the others to leave her alone. And so she had sat down at her desk alone and remained silent.

Silence had been a part of Sharon's life since the day she had joined S.H.I.E.L.D. And right now, she was sick to the teeth with it.

Alexander Pierce had looked deceptively relaxed throughout the interview, sipping from his coffee cup as he listened to her speak. And yet his voice had been hard and his questioning over Fury's death relentless, if delivered in a perfectly even tone. Sharon could only imagine what it had cost the undersecretary to keep emotional control, considering how long he and Fury had been friends. She'd done her best to give him a clear picture of what had happened, keeping her own tone professional and matter-of-fact, but underneath was a tremulous fear she could only pray was not apparent to him.

Less than an hour after Fury's death, a grim-faced Agent Hill had called her in — not to mourn the man they had both looked up to their whole careers, but to prepare "Agent 13's" official report on the events of the night.

In the end, it hadn't exactly been complete. There had been so much Sharon couldn't tell Pierce. About Fury's orders to continue surveilling Rogers, unbeknownst to anyone else at S.H.I.E.L.D. That she'd knowingly lied to Rumlow about where Rogers was last night. And certainly nothing about Peggy Carter's grandson's contact with her... which she couldn't even mention to Hill. And then she'd repeated the whole well-rehearsed story to Pierce first thing in the morning, careful to let some of her real grief over Fury show to give space for any discrepancies in her story to be chalked up to her distress.

And she'd failed.

The first thing Pierce had asked her was why there were bugs in Rogers' apartment transmitting to a receiver in her apartment across the hall.

Sharon's heart had dropped to her toes. The agents assigned to investigate Fury's assassination must have found the bugs when they searched Rogers' apartment after the shooting. Her mind raced for an easy out, but there was no point in pleading ignorance. She could tell by Pierce's face that he was in no mood for games, and so she had answered briefly that it was Fury's orders.

"We're talking about Captain America," Pierce said evenly, but his blue eyes were locked on hers. "The man who defeated Hydra. The man who saved my grandfather's life in World War II. The man who saved us all from Loki's attack in New York City. Why would Fury distrust him?"

"I don't know," Sharon admitted.

"You must have had a guess."

Sharon had forced herself not to shrug. "Maybe it was about protection. Not distrust."

Pierce's eyebrow went up a centimeter. "Does Captain America need your protection, Agent 13?" His tone was neutral, but it wasn't hard to see the absurdity inherent to the question.

"His apartment was attacked last night," Sharon pointed out.

"But Nick Fury was the target. Not Captain Rogers."

"We don't know who the target was. Maybe Fury took a bullet for him. Sir, isn't the more important question the identity of the assassin?" Sharon asked.

"We're working on that," Pierce said. He met her eyes over his coffee cup. "How much did you see? Did you get a glimpse of his face?"

Sharon had shaken her head, relieved she could tell the truth about that much, at least. "I wish I had, sir. All I saw was a silhouette at the distance. I can't even tell you height or race." Technically she didn't even know he was a him, although his stride had looked masculine.

Pierce nodded, his lips pulling down slightly as he set down his cup. "All right. Well, don't worry, Agent 13. We'll find him. One way or another."

She'd passed Captain Rogers in the hallway, coming out of Pierce's office. For one wild moment Sharon had permitted herself to hope that his fury against her had cooled, after having hours to consider the reasons behind her duplicity and the fact that she had run straight to his aid the moment gunshots rang out.

"Captain Rogers," she said politely as they passed.

"Neighbor," he had ground out without even making eye contact with her, and there was a world of anger poured into that single word.

Nope. Still running hot.

She hoped he managed to keep his cool during his own questioning. Angering Pierce when the undersecretary was already smarting over Fury's death was the worst thing Rogers could do to his career right now. She glanced at the clock on her computer. Thirty minutes; maybe Rogers was done talking to Pierce by now. Maybe she should find a way to try talking to Captain Rogers alone. To offer her condolences over Fury, or explain, or apologize... she wasn't sure which.

She had almost made up her mind to do it when a klaxon went off, startling Sharon out of her thoughts. Her co-workers abruptly broke off their discussion, looking around in puzzlement at the red lights that were flashing from the ceiling. A moment later, an announcement sounded.

"All agents are ordered to shelter in place due to a security concern in the north tower. Repeat, all agents are ordered to shelter in place immediately. This is not a drill."

Sharon stood up abruptly, sending her office chair skidding behind her. Agent Li immediately took charge, hustling everyone toward the meeting room — a more enclosed space, with only one window — as the announcement played again. Sharon could not help but reassure herself with a pat on her handgun strapped to her thigh as she and the other agents filed in and Li locked the door securely behind them.

"Down on the floor and against the wall, everyone," Li ordered as he switched off the lights. "Keep away from the window."

They complied, although Sharon heard someone mutter as they got into place: "Think someone went postal?"

"Belay that," Li said sternly. "We're not going to speculate, people. Just sit tight and wait for instructions."

They immediately fell silent, and for several minutes there was no sound but the alarm and the announcement replaying over the intercom. Sharon could feel sweat dampening the back of her neck as she crouched on the floor with her hand on her weapon. Was it a shooting carried out by one of their own agents? Or was it related to Fury's assassination? Had the strange masked man who had killed Fury come back for more?

And then the machine gun fire started in the distance.

Everyone in the meeting room froze, their eyes darting from face to face, trying to find reassurance from each other, all of them thinking the same thing: is this it? Is this how it ends? It took Sharon endless heartbeats to realize that the gunfire was not coming from the hallway; it was coming from outside the window. The blast was loud and sustained; more like aircraft weaponry than a hand weapon.

It was like a rubber band snapping in her mind; suddenly, Sharon knew this was no lone gunman carrying out a crazed office massacre. It was a military operation. Which meant that there was a target, and clearly the people in this room weren't it.

Eyes narrowing, she abruptly threw herself down on her belly and army-crawled toward the window.

"Agent 13!" Li snapped. "Get away from the window! Agent 13!"

She ignored him as she finally got there and raised her head up just enough to see out.

There was a Quinjet hovering over the north bridge that spanned the Potomac, blasting its machine gun at a motorcycle that was heading toward it full-speed. Whoever was driving the motorcycle was totally undeterred, weaving skillfully back and forth across the road, avoiding the line of fire.

Sharon had hardly had time to register the red and blue shield strapped to the rider's back before he reached back and slung it at the jet. Suddenly the hovering jet's right wing dipped dangerously low to the ground, black smoke pouring from one of its engines. Only a second later, the man leaped from the motorcycle seat and sailed up in a controlled arc that landed him on top of the jet, where he somersaulted forward, plucked the shield from where it was lodged in the machinery... and then nearly fell off as the jet abruptly tilted the other direction.

Sharon caught her breath, but he managed to jam the shield's edge into the jet's wing just in time, bobbling only momentarily before swinging himself up and over, landing cat-footed on the jet once more and giving the shield another powerful heave. It bounced off both tail fins and went flying up in the air, but already he had dived after it. He caught it neatly in mid-air, somersaulted and landed neatly on his feet.

The Quinjet spun wildly in the air, spewing smoke, until it came to a graceless belly flop on the bridge, only just avoiding sliding off into the water.

Captain Rogers barely even glanced at his handiwork before returning his shield to his back and taking a smooth running dive off the bridge. Seconds later, he had disappeared under the surface of the water.

Sharon dropped back down below the window, her heart in her throat. What had she just seen? Had that really just happened? Her mind went flying in a dozen different directions. What possible reason could S.H.I.E.L.D. have had to do that? To him?

Why?

"What is it?" Agent Li asked her intently. The other agents were staring at her, looking just as eager to hear the answer as her supervisor was. "What's going on out there?"

"It was Captain Rogers," Sharon whispered, stunned by what she'd just seen. "We were shooting at him."

"What?"

Sharon felt such a surge of rage that it left her hands numb, and she had to repeat herself through clenched teeth.

"I said, we were shooting at Captain Rogers!"

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's note: What did you think? Feel free to leave a review: good, bad or ugly!