Evenfall (67 page)

It was made even worse by remembering the danger he had put Sin in on the mission. He could have been killed trying to save Boyd. And he got injured. Boyd had seen the blood on Sin in the car afterward. What would he have done if he had gotten Sin killed? How could he have lived with himself? And how much more did Sin hate him now?

After Alexis, there was even less hope than there had been before that he could pull out of this. He'd sabotaged everything and he'd taken innocent lives in the process. The idea of Alexis having a family left behind, or a Boyd to her Lou running around, made him feel even more sick.

He spent the night in a state of wretched misery, wondering more and more why it was he'd lived past Lou's death.
Depression was a black cloud of acrid smoke that made it hard for him to breathe properly. He stayed in his house, eyes squeezed shut against tears he tried desperately to repress, and he wished he knew a way to fix it all so none of this had ever happened in the first place.

When the debriefing came around the next morning, Boyd thought about not going. But the part of him that, despite everything, wanted to do the right thing wouldn't let him stay home. He had fucked up and he deserved anything he got. Alexis' spirit deserved revenge.

He washed himself up just enough to be presentable, but his eyes were dark and bloodshot from lack of sleep and his resolve felt shaky. He was afraid to see Sin. Afraid to see the cold, disgusted expression of his partner and have it all underlined to him that Sin had completely given up on him. That his latest actions, whether born of pain, panic, or fear, were all too damning for whatever relationship they had to be able to recover.

The drive to the Agency felt like he was heading to his own execution. Despite that, knowing how the people who hated him were likely to latch onto any insecurity he showed, he kept his expression closed off and head held high as he walked through the courtyard. It felt like longer than a few days had passed since the start of his breaking point had been reached thanks to Moua, and he kept his gaze straight ahead.

When he walked into the conference room, despite being on time, he saw that everyone was already there. He felt like their gazes were all accusatory when they turned on him, even though he knew logically that they were not. The sins of the mission felt like they would be easily readable; like the metaphorical blood that stained his hands would be seen by Carhart's keen eye. Boyd took his seat, the sound of the chair moving feeling as though it was too loud and echoing in the tense silence of the room.

Carhart sat at the head of the table, his hands folded in front of him as he stared at Boyd and Sin with a cold, angry expression on his normally pleasant face. His mouth was pressed into a hard line and he didn't say anything for a long moment. The others at the table were equally silent; Owen seemed more alert than usual and Jeffrey was giving Boyd strange, sidelong glances as Ryan's wide, alarmed eyes went from Sin to Boyd.

"You--" Carhart focused on Sin, voice quiet despite the obvious undertone of anger. He paused, closed his mouth and began again. "What did you do?"

Sin stared at him with a bland expression on his face and seemed in no hurry to defend himself.

Carhart slammed a fist into the table and leaned forward. "What the fuck happened? No report was filed and I want details, right now."

"It was my fault," Boyd said quietly from the side.

Everyone's eyes turned to Boyd collectively. Ryan seemed to be in a state of shock; he was one of the few people who knew Boyd well enough to realize something was very wrong with his behavior.

Carhart's anger seemed to dwindle a bit and he looked over at Boyd with an expression that was mostly confusion and surprise. "Was negotiation out of the question?"

Boyd didn't know what to say to that. He stared at Carhart, unable to lie; unable to tell him that negotiation wasn't possible, but equally unable to say he didn't even try.

In the end, he remained silent.

"This mission was extremely important," Carhart said, voice growing hot again. "Death was to be the absolute, last resort in this case. This woman could have provided valuable information to us about Janus, information about its leader and the core members. So this time you're going to give me more than some bullshit, half-assed answer. I want details, I want to know exactly went down and why. I have to answer to Connors after this. You aren't just working for me." Carhart's eyes flicked over to Sin and they narrowed, as though somehow he couldn't completely believe that none of it was his fault.

"We were completely surrounded," Sin said derisively. "Did you people really think they were going to let us carry the woman out without a fight?"
Boyd's eyes shot over to Sin. He was surprised to hear Sin covering for him but kept his expression blank so Sin wouldn't get in trouble by being found out.

"I'm not really surprised," Ryan spoke up suddenly, dragging his eyes away from Boyd. "They chose Alexis to represent their group in Canada because she was tough and because they trusted her to do anything necessary to ensure their success. It was very doubtful that she would have agreed and honestly, the compound was large and teeming with soldiers that came from the OR with her and new ones that she'd recruited."

Carhart absorbed the comments but continued to stare at Boyd, waiting for him to speak, to say that this was the case.

Boyd could not look away from Carhart, and something in him quelled at the idea of lying.

But if he didn't lie, then Ryan and Sin would be implicated too. He didn't know if he cared what happened to him anymore but neither of them deserved to get in trouble for trying to cover for his idiocy. He was thankful that he had so many years of practice to keep his expression and gaze deadpan despite what was happening in his mind.

"It was a difficult mission. We were surrounded. Amidst the chaos, the danger to our lives, and the fact that the plan fell completely through, I made a decision based on the circumstances and shot her," he said tonelessly.

Carhart was never a difficult man to please, probably because he constantly tried to see the best in people. He rubbed his forehead and seemed to deflate somewhat. He still seemed irritated, something in him not quite seeming to believe what he was hearing but for some reason, he didn't press the topic. The edge didn't leave his tone though.

"What will become of the base in Canada? Will they send another representative?"

Ryan glanced at his laptop and chewed on his lower lip, a nervous habit, as his eyes flicked over the information on the screen. "Honestly all is quiet on this end," he said apologetically. "My contact in the OR has been distant of late and frankly, I'm not sure how long I'll be able to get information out of them. However, there's been a lot of scrambling and contact between Toronto and different countries in OR over night. But until I hear back from my guys, I don't really know what's up. I have ears in Toronto as well, but they don't seem to know much more than what was reported on the news. I still can't really get over the fact that one of her rookies called the local cops in..."

Boyd didn't realize they'd called in the cops and he found himself going over every bit of the mission to make sure he had left no details that could link Americans to it. He would definitely be in a lot more trouble if any connection appeared.

Owen scratched his head and leaned against the table, more alert than usual. "I doubt anything'll come from that, though. I had some Canadian cop-guy friends," he looked a little confused by his own wording but continued, "and it's not like they suck or anything but when it's shit like that, they usually don't find anything. There's enough controversy with the rebels in the first place that even if they investigate, they have to be all political and shit about what they say."

"Beyond that," Jeffrey spoke for the first time, flipping through screens on his panel, "the accounts the rebels gave were scattered and incoherent. It sounds as though they were all so startled by the events that they did not properly see anything. There are about," he counted silently, "five conflicting stories. They can't even seem to agree on whether a bomb exploded or an earthquake hit, though the earthquake theory is pretty stupid given that it's Toronto."

He looked straight at Boyd with an expression that for once had nothing but professionalism in it. "Maybe they were just confused. Did they seem that way to you, Boyd?"

Boyd stared at him, and felt even worse knowing that it seemed everyone was covering for him. Why were they doing this? Why did they even care, especially Jeffrey? Why weren't they letting him take the fall he fully deserved?

"Many of them did seem like new recruits," Boyd offered after a moment.
Jeffrey nodded to himself and flipped to a blank screen, looking over at Carhart. "Honestly, they're probably too scared to do much other than figure out if they want to regroup right now."

Sin remained silent and Carhart crossed his arms over his jacket, dark eyebrows pushing together in annoyance.

"Well Connors will be pissed," Carhart said flatly. "If this explanation doesn't fly with him, expect some kind of repercussions." He looked at Sin for a long moment and then at Boyd. "If this goes wrong it will not only be bad because of the loss of
Intel
, but it will be a PR problem as well. Discretion should have been key."

He shook his head, annoyance obvious in his expression. "Is there anything else on the table?"

Boyd knew the moment PR was mentioned that he would be hearing from his mother sometime soon. The prospect was not pleasing. He dropped his gaze to the table but said nothing.

"Yes," Jeffrey said, sitting up straight. "I have decrypted a little more of the flash drive. However," and he held up a hand as if to forestall any early signs of celebration, "it's not connected enough yet. So far I have a lot of information that isn't complete. Monterrey seems to be a large theme, and there appear to be details regarding security that needs to be created for some type of event. There's also a list of sectors and rebel groups from across the world, but none of it is completed enough to know what it's for. It doesn't have any addresses or names so it can't be a contact list."
He paused. "Everything else is too incoherent at the moment to report yet. I'm still not positive it's all legit, but it seems more likely that it is. I won't be able to confirm this until I've had a chance to tackle the second file."

The tension in Carhart's shoulders seemed to visibly release and some of the frown lines on his forehead disappeared. The importance of the information seemed to completely overshadow the disastrous mission. Carhart looked almost relieved that he'd have good news for the Marshal. He glanced at Boyd again, his expression less severe and nodded. "Excellent. Perhaps my ass won't be completely handed to me after all."

The General stood up and uncrossed his arms from his chest. "But don't think this is over just yet. I'll be in touch. Dismissed."

Boyd relaxed slightly when Carhart left the room then pushed himself up immediately. He didn't meet anyone's eyes as he left.

Chapter 21

Sin left the conference room soon after Boyd, walking quickly towards his apartment with a strong desire to get far away from everyone else. The entire mission had been an utter disaster and now, one or both of them would possibly be sent up to the Fourth or terminated as a result. His one hope was that Vivienne would intervene and Carhart would spin things the right way. Connors would never let them get away clean unless someone covered their asses.

Growling in frustration, Sin ran a hand through his hair and stopped pacing. He replayed the entire mission in his mind and didn't come up with any different of a scenario than he had the night before. He couldn't handle it when Boyd reacted negatively to him, and Boyd obviously couldn't handle the backlash. There was no doubt that their argument had been the cause of his little freak show, and that was something that Sin couldn't deny.

It would have been nice to claim no responsibility and wash his hands of Boyd altogether. It would have been nice to be able to dismiss Boyd completely like he had his previous dumb ass partners. But the catalyst of the previous night had been their rapidly deteriorating interaction. It seemed like no matter what happened, things just kept spiraling down further to make every situation worse. And he had no idea what to do about this situation. He turned the thing over in his mind again and again, but no matter what-- he came up empty. It was something that was beyond his grasp to understand.

Sin was still struggling with it when there was a quiet tapping on his door. Half hopeful but also half disturbed that it may be Boyd, Sin looked through the peep hole and saw that it was Ryan. Having no idea what the hell this could be about, Sin swung the door open.

"What?"

Ryan opened his mouth, looked at the guards that stood at each side of the door, and then gave Sin a hopeful look.

"Can we talk? It's about, ah... a mutual friend. Y'know."

Sin glared at him for a moment before stepping to the side, allowing the R&D agent access. He slammed the door shut almost immediately after and moved further into the apartment.

"To what do I owe this pleasure, Freedman?"

Ryan shrugged, taking off his gloves and rubbing his hands together anxiously. He was visibly nervous and his large indigo eyes flit around the apartment slightly, as if he couldn't or didn't want to look closely at Sin. For a long time it seemed that he wouldn't even spit out what he'd come to say but then he sighed, and looked at the senior agent fully.

"I'm worried about Boyd. I wanted to know what really happened on that mission."

"Why? So you can go write out a full report?" Sin asked caustically, crossing his arms over his chest. "I don't think so."

A flash of annoyance colored Ryan's expression and he frowned. "You know, I'm Boyd's friend. I actually care about him, and worry about him, and want him to be okay. I'm not going to go running to report back to anyone, for your damn information."

This caused Sin's dark eyebrows to raise and he gave the younger man an assessing look. He seemed steadfast and genuinely angry about the implication. Ryan was so easy to read that it seemed impossible that he'd be capable of any kind of subterfuge anyway.

"What does this information mean to you?"

"I told you. I'm worried about him! He's had a really bad few weeks, especially the other day, and now he blew a mission this bad? I feel like--" Ryan faltered and looked away, twining his hands together as his lips turned down. "I just get the feeling... maybe he messed up on purpose. It's not like him."

Sin held up his hand to prevent Ryan from talking anymore. His green eyes had narrowed and he walked closer, only stopping when he was inches away from Ryan. "Bad few weeks how? He didn't even have any missions while I was gone as far as I know."

"He didn't," Ryan admitted a little reluctantly. He sighed and shifted from foot to foot, discomfort clear in his body language. "But like, whenever he did come to the compound for whatever reason... I dunno. People have been hard on him."

"People are always hard on him," Sin said flatly, not seeing where this was going.

"Yeah but it's worse now. Somehow the thing about him being a valentine got out. I have no idea how, and it pisses me off so much that maybe Jeff or Owen said something. I mean it's also possible that like... I dunno, maybe an admin somewhere saw paperwork or put in his status and changed it and word got spread that way but either way, people know. And the people who didn't like him before have been harping on it big time, man."

Ryan gave Sin an imploring look and shook his head of curls and cowlicks back and forth. "You know how most of these fieldies are! You know better than anyone! So many of them have that super testosterone homophobic attitude... and he's an easy target already. Last week-- last week was really bad. They made a spectacle of him in the courtyard right in front of everyone, I heard. Showing how he couldn't even take them all and he's supposed to be rank 9. They even spit on him when he was down. And like-- even the person who told me, didn't even step in to help. It was just like, they left him there on the ground with a mouthful of blood and no one even thought to help him up. And that is fucking harsh, dude! That's like... I dunno. I don't know how he must be feeling right now."

Sin's automatic reaction was to demand who had been there and go show them what a rank 10 would do to take them all, but he made himself stop. He closed his eyes briefly, trying to ignore the anger and tension that had built in his shoulders during the speech and took a slow breath. No matter what happened between he and Boyd, there was a part of him that was unflinchingly protective of the boy. It was the same part of him that unhesitatingly almost took several bullets just to keep Boyd out of
harm’s
way.

"I don't know what to do about any of this," he answered finally, evenly. "I completely fail at sympathy. My solution to this problem is gutting them all, and I've already tried the murder-to-avenge Boyd's honor thing, and it didn't pan out. He and I, we don't communicate very well. In fact, I'd say we rather fail spectacularly at it. It's better if I just stay the hell out of his problems at all."

"No, no, no!" Ryan snapped, his voice getting louder with each "no." He shook his head, eyes narrowing. "Jesus, you both do fail at communication. I don't know how two such smart, talented people can be so damn stupid. Either you ignore each other or you insult each other, that's basically what I'm getting here. And I know you both care about each other! He was so torn up about all of that France stuff--"

"What exactly do you know about France stuf--"

"And he thought you hated his guts, but I can tell just by your attitude that you obviously don't. The way you treat Boyd is like 500% better than the way you treated your previous partners and everyone damn else, but he doesn't want to see that, and you just want to be super dick and push him away! I don't. get it!"

Sin blinked, mouth parting and then closing. "And-- and what do you expect that I do to solve this?"

"Just go talk to him, damn it! Geez, is that so hard for both of you to understand? It must damn well be, because neither of you do it even though it's the easiest solution to it all." Ryan ran a hand through his hair, scowling and shaking his head as he put his gloves back on. "Just... just tell him what you told me if nothing else. 'Cause right now, I bet he doesn't think he has anyone on his side."

Frowning, Sin looked away briefly. Even as mad as he was at Boyd at the moment, the idea of that bothered him. Sin had spent most of his life being alienated from the compound. The possibility of Boyd lumping him in with the rest of them was disturbing, especially when it wasn't true. Sin's issues with Boyd were pretty specific.

"Well then, where is he if you think this plan will be so easy and fail proof? Can you tell me that as well?"

"I dunno. Carhart said that he needed a full report within the hour so he probably is going to have to go do that since he took responsibility for the mission. You should probably do one too."

"Fine."

Ryan's face broke out into a hopeful grin. "So you're really going to--"

Sin walked out of the door without listening to the rest of what Ryan had to say.

===

Boyd didn't even bother leaving the building as he knew his mother would be summoning him, so he was completely unsurprised to be alerted to go to her office immediately. Ann barely looked at him as she buzzed him into his mother's office.

He had just entered the room and barely even had time to close the door behind him when he felt a sudden stinging ache on one cheek. He blinked, stunned more from the act than the strength, and brought one hand up to his cheek as he looked over with widened eyes.

Vivienne stood to the side of the door, her entire attention focused on him for one of the few times in his life. Her eyes were like ice that had no bottom, absolutely frigid, and her posture was tense with fury. She had touched him so rarely for any reason that it took Boyd a shocked second to realize that she'd just hit him.

"What is the matter with you?" she demanded, her voice low and coldly furious in a way he didn't know he'd ever heard. It caused his throat to close and mouth to dry. "Have you no intelligence? No shame? Is there a shred within you worth saving?"

That cut through him and he felt any hope crumble for this meeting to resolve peacefully. Her words hurt him more than he expected. Did she really believe he was so worthless?

His mouth opened but no words would come. Even if he'd known what to say, it would been caught in his throat.

She raised a hand palm up to him, telling him immediately without words to stop. "Do not speak," she ordered coldly. "I do not wish to hear your excuses. I can hardly look at you. I am of half a mind to mark you for termination now and be done with the entire debacle of your existence."

Boyd swallowed but didn't dare speak, and that was the only thing that seemed to keep her anger from growing. She turned on her heel and strode back to her desk, jerking the chair out with white-knuckled fingers. He'd never seen her so obviously agitated. She typically kept a tight rein on her emotions even when angry. He couldn't help acknowledging that this was his fault too; this out of character display of his mother's.

"Where do I begin?" She leveled a hard stare at him that told him he had damn well better walk over to the desk and sit down immediately before she ordered guards to do it for him.

He followed the unspoken directive and lowered himself into the chair. He tightened his fingers around the arms of the chair and kept his back straight, but he couldn't stop the dread that grew in his stomach every second her unsympathetic stare drilled through him.

"Do you understand how difficult it is to be a woman and succeed in this type of environment?" Her eyes narrowed and lips tightened. "Can your insignificant brain even begin to comprehend how I struggled to be taken seriously? How much time and effort I exerted in order to reach this position-- the years I spent and the assumptions that were made along the way?"

She let the question hang in the air a moment and then leaned forward. "Years of despicable accusations of my integrity put into question simply for succeeding in a male-dominated world, and I was able to avoid it all. And you--" Her lips twisted into as close to a scowl as he'd ever seen, her typically calm face shifting to disgust. "You bring it all into question in seconds through your inability to consider the situation."

Boyd opened his mouth, automatically wanting to deny or apologize, but she stopped him with a raised hand again and a sharp, impenetrable glare.

"Do not patronize me, child," she said, voice dripping with contempt. "I am utterly uninterested in your reasons. While I cannot blame you for your dedication to the cause, I am disgusted by your actions. Do you realize the stigma of the valentine status? Do you understand the consequences of your actions?"

"But I didn't know," Boyd protested. "If I had--"