Murphy's Law
~We Have A Problem~
-Clay's POV-
I hear a knock on the top of the casket I lay in and push open the top to see blaring lights up above me. I rub my eyes and then sit up, looking around the barren warehouse I was in. The others were already up and stretching, talking softly amongst each other. I hop out of my casket and stretch, looking over at Aisha, who stood a few feet away and wearing a suit.
"Welcome back to the world of the living." Aisha smiles at us as I pull my shirt out from being tucked in my pants. I look around at the others again. I wanted to make sure they were all alright. Last thing we needed was someone hurt and unable to help in the mission at hand. They all looked alright, yawning and trying to keep themselves awake. I give a small huff of a laugh and shake my head, looking back at Aisha.
"So Clay," Aisha starts, a smirk forming on her face as she pockets the box cutter she had used to unlatch the ties around the coffins, "What do you plan on doing first?"
I laugh at the question and run a hand over my face, scratching the stubble on my chin. There were a lot of things I wanted to do. But in what order? I laugh again and look back at her, letting my hand drop from my face.
"I'm going bird hunting." I reply and shove my hands into my pockets. Aisha nods her head and crosses her arms over her chest, "So how do we get out of here?"
"Well, there's a..." Aisha's voice drones off as I listen to another conversation coming from behind me where the guys were.
"Wait a minute. Coug, where's Rose?" Jensen's soft question pulls me completely away from my conversation with Aisha. I keep my eyes on her, but my ears were listening in to Cougar and Jensen as they continued.
"No se." Cougar replies in a low voice, "There are six coffins though."
I take a quick look behind me at the two and see them both stare at the sixth coffin that was unopened at the back of my their row. I see Cougar and Jensen look back at each other, giving one another the same confused stare. Cougar gives a small shrug to Jensen's unasked question.
I look back at Aisha and nod my head at her, confirming that I had heard everything she had just said. I hear Jensen walk towards the coffin and open it, then go quiet. No laugh, no happy greeting, nothing, just silence.
Slowly I look back at him, the quiet unusual for him. I see the others were talking amongst themselves and look behind them to Jensen, seeing his back turned to me. Something in the coffin had caught his undivided attention. That was a first.
"Jensen, is she still asleep?" I call out to him, giving a small laugh. It wouldn't surprise me if she was. Jensen quickly lifts his head, staring out across the warehouse stiffly. I narrow my eyes at his behavior and turn around fully to face him, "What is it?"
Jensen whips his head around to look at me as he slowly closes the coffin. He turns around and looks from me to the others, who had become interested in the conversation.
"What is it?" I ask again, feeling annoyance beginning. Jensen swallows hard and then gives a small cough, fist in front of his closed lips.
"Uh..." He starts and lets his fist fall, looking down at the ground for a moment. His eyebrows knit together in confusion of how to word his next phrase. He looks back up, same expression on his face, "We have a problem."
"What're you talking about?" Roque asks in bewilderment. Jensen looks over at him a moment, then to me, opening and closing his mouth to speak, but nothing coming out.
"Is Rhos okay?" I asks slowly, getting the feeling that something was seriously wrong.
"Okay, see that's the thing." Jensen starts in a normal voice, acting a little more like himself.
"No." I whisper and jog towards Rhoswen's coffin.
"She's not," Jensen starts, but I push him away and rip open the coffin, my eyes going wide at what I see, "...in there."
In the coffin laid an elderly man with peppered hair, eyes closed, and hands lying neatly on his stomach. This definitely wasn't Rhoswen. I feel my breathing get deeper as the situation slowly set in on me. She wasn't in the coffin. So where was she?
"Where is she?" I snap suddenly, feeling anger building up inside of me. I was mostly angry at myself, but Aisha had been the one who had made the promise. She had been the one I had trusted with, not only my life, but with the lives of my team, with Rhoswen's life. This was a disaster. I turn around from the coffin, the others quickly coming over to look inside of it, and stare at Aisha with heated eyes, "Where the fuck is she!"
I couldn't believe it. How could this have happened? How could I have let this happen? I try and conceal my emotions, staring at Aisha.
"You said we would all get here; together. So where is she, Aisha?" I ask again, my temper rising. Aisha's expression turns spiteful, angry about what I was insinuating.
"You actually believe I would purposely loose her? Or have her shipped somewhere else?" Aisha snaps and takes to shaking her head for lack of anything better to do.
"I don't know because I don't know you!" I yell roughly. I was loosing control of myself. This was the worst thing that could have happened. Rhos had said she didn't want to get into a coffin and now she might not get out.
"Clay, I don't know where she is. I gave specific orders for you all to be brought to the U.S. Customs: Shipping and Receiving. All of you; together. That's the arrangement I made. If she's not here, then I don't know where the hell she is."
I stare at her a moment longer and then look down at the ground, hands on my hips. I try to think of how this could have possibly happen and where she could possibly be. The most logical answer was that she was in some other warehouse on the site. That didn't mean that she was though. I kick the stand the coffin behind me was on and curse, unsure of what to do.
"What're we gonna do Colonel?" Roque asks, drawing my attention to him. I stare at him a moment, taking notice to the look of annoyance in his expression. I knew he didn't care about Rhoswen very much and I wasn't exactly sure why, but right now that didn't matter. What mattered was that Rhoswen was missing and was in a coffin that was probably still locked and tied shut.
"We find her." Jensen's voice breaks me from my thoughts and forces me to look around at the group. All eyes were on him, including my own. I watch him carefully with a steady eye. I knew he, Cougar, and Rhoswen had grown close the last couple of weeks. They were inseparable. I also knew that his answer was the one I should have been telling them, "We have to find her."
"And how do you suppose we do that, Jensen?" Roque asks sneeringly, turning to look at Jensen. Jensen gives a shrug and then shakes his head, unable to think of an answer.
"We split up and look." He replies after another moment.
"Split up and look." Roque repeats Jensen's answer and nods his head, "And if she's not here? Are we gonna go and look somewhere else?"
"Yes!"
I stop paying attention to the others. All I could think about at the moment was how Rhoswen must be feeling; frightened, panicked, forgotten...All the same feelings as the last time something similar had happened. I knew that where ever she was, the memory was now fresh in her mind and making things worse. This was the second time she had been put into a coffin because of Max.
"We can't do that." Aisha speaks up, pulling everyone's eyes to her. I look over at her, wondering what I had missed of the conversation. Aisha shakes her head and looks at each of us, "We can't."
"Why not?" Jensen retorts curtly.
"It'll take too long to search every square inch here and by then Max will be out of Miami." Aisha stares at Jensen and crosses her arms over her chest again.
"Oh right, Max. Yeah that makes it perfectly alright then to leave her behind IN A COFFIN!" Jensen raises his voice at the end to make a point to her and everyone else in the warehouse.
"I'm sorry. I really am, but right now you have your side of the deal to keep." Aisha snaps, her lips pulled tight against her teeth.
"You didn't keep up your end. Why should we?" Pooch asks, breaking into the argument. Jensen's eyebrows raise as he nods his head, obviously unable to have anything else to say and also in agreement with Pooch.
"Look, there's a car waiting outside for us that will take us to Miami where Max will be. I will call in a search party to look for her and when they find her they'll send her straight to us. I promise." Aisha argues back, trying to win them over. I shake my head at her attempt and at the situation. I turn away from her and look back at the elderly man in the coffin Rhos was supposed to be in.
"How can we trust you? You already lost her once." Cougar counters in a low voice, staring Aisha down with his dark eyes that were shaded by the brim of his hat. It was easy to tell he was upset despite his being so calm.
"I promised to get you back into the States and I did." She retorts, her face going sour.
"Yeah, you promised all of us would get here and as far as we know she's back in Bolivia still." Pooch responds before anyone else.
"For all you know she left without you all and is on her way to Miami right now to kill Max." Aisha snaps back, staring at Pooch for a long moment. The others watch the two face off in some kind of silent battle, no one knowing what to say.
"What if she is here somewhere?" Jensen breaks their battle, drawing their eyes to him, "She could be here in one of the other warehouses. We can't just leave without her."
"Why not?" Roque asks suddenly with a nonchalant tone as he plays with the point of a knife he held. He scraps a thumb over it to see if it were sharp and then looks to Jensen, "Knowing Rhoswen, where ever she may have been, is probably on her way to Max right now. If she is somewhere here though don't you think she'd want us to go and kill the son of a bitch instead of missing our chance and letting him go?"
The warehouse falls silent again as everyone looks around at each other. Roque had a good point. Rhoswen could be on her way to Miami to get Max and if she wasn't she probably would want us to go get him. She wouldn't want to miss the only chance of bringing him down. She wants him dead more then any of us.
"How would you know what she'd want?" Jensen asks bothered by Roque assuming, "You don't know her. You don't know the first thing about her."
"I don't know her?" Roque asks rhetorically as his eyes narrow, "Do you? I mean do you really know her, Jensen?"
"More then you do!"
"What's to know? She's a killer like the rest of us!" Roque yells, anger evident on his face.
"She saves people!" Jensen argues back. Roque takes a small step towards Jensen while waving his knife in Jensen's direction.
"You and your little high school crush on her is really starting to get on my nerves." Roque stops two feet before Jensen and stares down at him. Roque's lips form a thin line as he raises the knife up to Jensen's cheek, grazing the blade against his skin, "Why don't you just be a good boy and shut up before I make you."
"Roque. Man leave him alone." Pooch speaks up. Roque lowers the knife from Jensen and points it back at Pooch, his eyes never leaving Jensen.
"You shut up too, Pooch." He snarls and then takes a step back from Jensen.
"Man, he's right. We can't just leave her here." Pooch buts in, narrowing his eyes at Roque.
"Why? We don't owe her anything!" Roque snaps back at him, but I stop listening. I had really stopped listening a while ago, but could hear ever bit of the conversation. I was too lost in my thoughts about Rhoswen, about the last time, to even care about what my team was doing.
"Clay...Clay...!" I snap out of my trance and look over at Aisha, who had called to me. She was pointing at something behind me, "Are you going to stop them? Because I think someone's going to get killed if you don't."
I look in the direction she was pointing and see Roque and Cougar now sizing each other up. They were standing before each other, staring at each other with hard and narrowed eyes, both having a look to kill.
"Come on. Try something. Try." Roque snarls and gives Cougar a small shove, knife still in his hand. Pooch and Jensen both yell something out at the two while Cougar retorts to Roque's taunting in Spanish, everyone's words becoming muddled together.
"Knock it off!" I call out to them suddenly and run a hand over my mouth in exasperation and irritation. The others seem to either not hear me or ignore me and continue to argue amongst themselves, "Hey! I said knock it off!"
The others stop and look over at me. They were all tired and now angry too. We couldn't work this way. We'd get ourselves killed or just kill each other.
"Good. Now that I have your attention. I don't care what any of you think about the situation." I snap, looking from one to another. I really had no idea what I was going to say. I had no idea what to do. Do we go after Max and leave her to where ever she was? Or stay, try and find her, and miss Max? I didn't know which was the worst of the two evils.
"Ow!" Jensen suddenly yells and cups a hand over his right ear. Something clear drops from his ear and dangles from his hip. He quickly picks it back up and places it in his ear, "Rose? Rose is that you? Can you hear me?"
We all watch Jensen as he holds the ear piece in his ear. He looks over at me and keeps quiet, listening.
"Where are you? Are you alright?" Jensen stops again, "Rose I'm with the others. You got brought somewhere else. Do you know where?"
Suddenly his hand is back on his ear again, his expression showing his pain.
"What is she saying?" I ask and move closer.
"She says she's still in the coffin." Jensen replies and then goes quiet, listening, "It sounds like she's banging on it. Hard too. It must still be locked and tied."
"Oxígeno!" Cougar's voice causes everyone to look at him. He looks around at us and then places a hand on his neck. "Oxígeno!"
I realize what he means about the oxygen and suddenly run passed them all to the warehouse doors, getting ready to open them.
"Clay!" Aisha calls out to me, "We don't have time!"
"Rhoswen doesn't have time! Her oxygen is running out!" I yell back and look at her a moment then at the others, "Spread out and find her!"
I open the warehouse doors and run out and into the warehouse next door.