Famous Last Words #4
Title: Famous Last Words
Fandom/ Pairing The Losers (comic 'verse, with some help from the movie), eventual Jensen/Cougar
Rating: R overall
Summary: Cougar was bleeding all over the bomb in his lap, the last time Jensen saw him. But that was then.
Link to Master List & Previous Chapters
"Tienes un arma?" Cougar asked, still staring back down the beach.
"No, man," Jensen winced. "Ditched the guns a few months back. Too much hassle to travel with. You?"
"Didn't think I'd need one." Cougar rocked his head back, his grin bitter. "Vámonos."
Cougar flexed his fingers and Jensen wondered, not for the first time, what kind of shot he was these days. It had been on the list of things he wanted to test, but nowhere near the top ten.
"Okay," Jensen brushed the sand off his bag, and when he looked up, Cougar was starting to fade out. Blinking, he caught on. "Don't go far," and an instant later, he might as well have been alone.
---
This was the kind of thing that would've been useful, once upon a time. Keeping Jensen as his center, Cougar spread himself out a few blocks in every direction. Going further out would've just caused confusion. Otherwise, though, it was familiar, keeping Jensen in his sights while scanning for threats.
He found none. It was more unsettling than he would've thought.
---
"So wait," Jensen asked, as he drew the curtains shut. "You mean to tell me you haven't shot a gun in over a year?
Cougar shrugged. It didn't matter if Jensen seemed surprised to hear it. Odds were, he'd be taking it up again fairly soon, and it didn't matter right now, anyway.
---
"What're we going to do?" Jensen rubbed at his neck. "It's not like we're players, any more. If he'd seen us once, she probably could've killed us already. Any time over the past year, she could've taken my ass out, and it would've been easier than something that's really. Fucking. Easy."
He was right. It didn't make sense, none of this did.
Cougar shrugged, admitting to only about half of the concern he felt. "Maybe my eyes tricked me."
"I've seen you make impossible shots, a thousand yards through the jungle, man." Jensen said, ominously. "You saw it, it's there."
---
The room proved to be clean, after a thorough bug sweep performed to the soundtrack of Jensen's complaints.
"Hey, man. I get it, I really do, but I chose this place at random and we moved fast. There's no way she could've prepped for us to show up here."
Cougar already knew as much, but it was calming to hear it spoken aloud. For now, they were safe. And he had an errand to run.
Leaving Jensen in the hotel room, he vanished when he hit the stairwell, and slipped through the night and across the plaza. The police department was on the opposite corner of the park, and though Cougar didn't know much about security systems-that had always been Jensen's purview- he had an easy time, getting through.
He had to wait a while for the locker room to clear out, but as soon as the shift change was completed, and the officers had left, he began to search.
The Glock 22 came first, but he had to dig around to find the ammunition, and wound up grabbing two extra magazines from the nearby lockers. It was solid enough, dependable, but it wouldn't be enough.
It was down in the evidence lockup that he finally found something capable of longer range, an M86 that needed, badly, to be cleaned. The scope was one of the older Ospreys. Functional, but nothing like the illuminated rangefinder he'd had before.
But it would have to do, for now at least. He could trade up later.
---
Resisting the urge to stand at the window, looking out for something he knew he'd never see, Jensen paced the room and tried to fucking think.
Odds were, he would only have one good shot at searching anything out before his presence was noticed. He had to make it count. Sitting down and starting a new IP address rotation on his computer, he tried to decide his approach.
How the hell do you track a ghost?
It was funny enough that, were Cougar there, he might've smirked. Probably wouldn't have laughed or anything, but still. Smirking, Jensen got to work.
Most of the security systems had been updated at least once in the past year, and the CIA databases were locked behind an entirely new system, but once he was in, he found the interior security to be comparatively weak.
Even better, the old file paths still worked. On the edges, he could see the backtrackers working around him as he passed them by, onwards to what he needed. Personnel, full history view, al-Fadhil, Aisha.
And surprise, surprise, give the lady a prize, there was nothing on file, anywhere, that indicated Aisha was still counted among the living. He was just starting to jump into Director Sanderson's notes regarding her last known standing when there was a knock at the door.
Grabbing the knife out of his boot, the same one he'd retrieved from Aisha's belongings, a year ago, he held it ready. Looking through the fish-eye lens, the hallway appeared bulbous and curved, and also very empty.
Why Cougar thought he had to knock, Jensen wasn't sure, but then he remembered. Rolling his eyes, he opened the door, saying "Christ, man, you seriously think I'd be jerking off at a time like-" and then he saw it, down on the floor. A wadded up piece of paper that hadn't been there before.
He may have poked it with his knife before carefully opening it. As soon as the corner was pulled away enough to see, he grabbed it, quickly, and darted back into the room.
After that, he just stared at the bloody ear for a while. Tried not to stare at the congealed dirty blood worked into the whorls, not to notice the jagged tears where the knife had met resistance. He kind of wanted to cry.
---
"…I mean, she could've killed me right then, if she'd wanted to, but instead she left this!"
Cougar stared at the ear on the table while Jensen finished explaining how it had arrived, but he had only one thing he needed to know.
"This the first time you've been found?"
"Yeah, I mean. Stegler, the other day, came here following Pooch, from the looks of things."
It made sense. Even if anyone had known he'd survived, Jensen had been a moving target. Pooch, on the other hand, had done what he could to protect his family, but he'd still gone back home. It hadn't been hard for Cougar to track him.
Stegler, with all his resources, would've had an easy time of it.
"Or." Jensen ran a hand through his hair. "For all I know, Stegler could have been followed."
Cougar nodded. It was a standard risk. There'd always been that chance, that much, at least, hadn't changed.
"So here's the thing," Jensen said, awkwardly. "I spent a good part of the year being sloppy drunk. Someone wanted to make a move on me, they could've. Easily. And they didn't, which leads me to believe…"
Relieved that Jensen had figured it out himself, that he didn't need convincing, Cougar finished for him. "They're not here for you. I should leave, draw them out." He was careful to speak casually, to make it sound like this was just another op. Risk minimization. Standard protocol, nothing to worry about. No big deal.
"Yeah," Jensen was scowling, knowing the game all too well. "Sucks balls, man, but. Yeah. Probably a good idea." He fixed Cougar with a strange look, like he was going to say more, but then something flashed across his eyes, and he sat up. It was only when he began speaking that Cougar recognized it as determination.
"Okay. Fine. This is what's going to happen. We run this like we did Munich," Jensen waved him back into the chair as he opened his computer's calendar. "Only this time, we're not picking a city in advance." Swiveling his eyes back to Cougar, he snapped his fingers a few times, fidgeting as he thought. He was making it up as he went along.
"On October seventh, watch the afternoon departures at O'Hare airport for a last minute delay of an outbound flight due to a navigation malfunction. Another day after that, that's where we'll meet up. Get to the library, find the note."
"You will leave it in the same book?"
"Yeah. I'll have a good chunk of this figured out by then. That work?"
Cougar turned the plan over in his head. It wasn't a guarantee that both of them would survive the next month, but it was better than the one he'd come up with, which had, more or less, been Leave. Disappear. And don't look back.
"Sí."
"Okay. Emergencies only. And by emergencies, we're talkin' I'm staring down another nuke or Aisha's already got one ear, and she's coming back to complete the set, you hear?" Jensen reached into his bag, grabbing a phone and tossing it over to him.
Cougar turned it on and found Jensen's phone number, already programmed in, and really, suddenly, that was the end of it. They were good to go, and the sooner they parted ways, the better their odds were of getting through this unscathed.
It should've been easy, he'd very nearly talked himself into disappearing once already. But that had been on his own quiet terms. This was something else completely, it had Jensen edging towards the window again, peeking carefully through the drawn curtains at the street outside.
He'll be safer once you've gone.
But mierda, just in case.
He stood up, brushing his hands on his jeans, the noise alerting Jensen to his presence once more. Smirking, he reached out his hand, and when Jensen shook on it, he grabbed him in a quick hug that could've meant anything, that hopefully translated as nothing more than hasta luego.
---
Jensen stared at the space where Cougar had been and wondered when it was that he had actually vanished. Not wanting to be so obvious, just in case the sneaky bastard was still lurking around, he turned his attention again towards the street below.
He was just in time to see a familiar hat coming out of the hotel across the way and heading down the street. He wanted to watch longer, until he reached the corner, but if Cougar was being cautious enough to not give away Jensen's position, it would've been stupid to blow it himself. He let the curtain fall shut, and turned back to the room.
Nothing there but his bag, his laptop, the Glock Cougs had left him, and somebody's ear.
If he went online right now, he could pull up the surveillance down at the airport, and down at the docks, and he could probably catch sight of him. That was the entire fucking point, after all, of this Pied Motherfucking Piper act Cougar was playing.
Christ man, only it's been two minutes.
In a few hours, maybe in London, or Dubai, or, who knew, DC maybe, a CCTV camera would pick up his face. Somewhere in the mechanisms in the world, it would be filtered through facial recognition, and the chase would really be on.
If Jensen went looking for it, he could blow the entire game right now. The entire point of this was to not know.
He considered the ear again, and this time, when his fingers twitched, he honestly didn't know if they were searching out keys or triggers. He had to move out and move on. Get gone.
---
Cougar stayed mostly out of sight, stopping off down at the shipyard first, where he was careful to walk in the shadows, right through the path of a security camera he probably wasn't supposed to notice.
He paused, near a group of tourists who were regrouping before getting back on their cruise ship, and gave it a few minutes.
Once he was sure that if anyone had been there to spot him, they would have by now, he followed them towards the gangplank and fell to the back of the group before disappearing.
A few minutes later, heading inland again, he saw her.
Aisha's ponytail was sleek, this time, longer than before, and she stalked just as plainly as she'd done before, eyes scanning the shadows. Her eyes were no different, now. Harder, maybe, and they looked right through him as she continued on, down towards the ship.
Less than an hour later, Cougar was on a flight to Florida. The plane ascended above the resorts and restaurants and beaches as it turned to find its course, and if Cougar wasn't very careful, he could fall back down into it all.
Maybe, if he landed right, he could be back in that hotel room, with Jensen.
And if he didn't materialize, if he remained cast out over the air, invisible and weightless, Jensen might never know he was there.
And in a few hours, Aisha wouldn't know that he'd been spotted in a Florida airport, getting on a plane to who knows where. She'd redouble her search of the city. Maybe even find Jensen again.
And this entire thing would've been for nothing, anyway.
---
It was his third hotel room in twenty-four hours, and it was surprisingly depressing, knowing that he was going to be the only one using it. At least there wouldn't be time to build up stupid sentimental attachments to the place, this time around.
Cougar, this time, didn't materialize out of thin air. It kind of sucked.
Besides, he had work to do.
Stegler had left his card, with a penciled-in number scrawled across the back. Jensen went online and searched the number out, found that it belonged to a pre-paid phone, a burner, like the one Jensen'd been carting all over the world for months now.
Call. Don't Call. Call. Fuck.
The reality was this: a really unpleasant answer was still an answer, nonetheless, and a terrible plan was still a plan. And Stegler, for his part, hadn't screwed them over. Jensen dialed the number and tried not to think of the word yet.
He picked up on the third ring.
"Hello?"
"Hey, man, it's Jake. Ah. Jensen. This a good time?"
"I've got ten minutes," Stegler said. "I'm on my way to inform an associate's widow that her husband died in the service of our great country, and to try talking around the fact that his body, once it arrives, will be short two years."
"Shit," Jensen said. "Antigua?"
"Just a few hours ago." Stegler cleared his throat. "I'm assuming you're not calling unrelatedly."
"Yeah, well. I might be able to help you out on that one. See, I've got one of the ears, here. It seems to have been donated by a mutual, ah. Well. Far as I can tell, Aisha is back in business."
"Really," Stegler said, his voice cool, but only just barely. "You're sure it's not a fake-out?"
"Nah, man, pretty sure I spotted her, earlier today. Wasn't sure until I found her calling card."
"I hadn't thought that was your style."
Jensen let go the breath he'd been holding. "Yeah, ah. No. Not even a little. But that's why I'm calling, you know anything about what she's been up to? Or how, you know, why she's alive?"
"I don't know that she is, at this point, Jake. But I'll do some digging and get back to you. You spotting her, and my contact turning up dead can't be a coincidence. Is this a safe line?"
"It's golden," Jensen confirmed. "And look, man, I really appreciate it, but I gotta ask. I'm back in, for now, but it's not for the long haul. This isn't me signing up for a new mission."
"It's cleaning up an old one. I hear you. Figure if I ever get out of here, I'll have a few of those myself. Though I must admit, as far as loose ends go, Aisha?" There was a rush of air over the phone, either a snort or a sigh. "How she survived a nuclear goddamned explosion is something that I'm not looking forward to explaining to the brass."
Jensen bit back a wait until you see Cougar, because honestly? The less information that got out, the better. So he deflected. "Yeah, well, it's not like I came back and reported in the moment I cleared that scene myself, so..." Jensen rolled his neck, glancing again at the window.
"True, but my point was actually that we should play this one close. I'm keeping it between us until we have a better idea what's going on, and I'll keep your name out of it as long as I can. Getting the company in on it will probably just muddy the waters."
"Good," Jensen was relieved. "I owe you one, man. And look, about the other day…I was a total dick."
"We're good," Stegler said. "Showing up like that, I'm probably lucky I didn't wind up taking a bullet to the head."
"Well, you know," Jensen smirked. "You've got to be an optimist. There's always tomorrow."
He could hear him rolling his eyes over the phone. "Bye, Jensen."
---
Jensen hung up the phone. He'd found what he could. He'd talked to Stegler. It was nearly midnight, now, and it was probably time to get the hell out of Antigua. As soon as he figured out where the hell to go. First, he had to make sure his path was clear.
It wasn't hard to get access to the airport's security footage from this evening. It was several hours, though, before he was able to catch Aisha heading through the ticketing lines, her phone pressed to her ear as she waited. By the time she reached the counter, she'd ended the call, and Jensen had accessed the airline's ticketing system.
Station number six was in the midst of changing tickets from Trinidad to Miami. The ticket was obscenely expensive, and the bitch paid in cash.
There was no way to tell who was bankrolling her. And no way to tell, really, how she'd picked her destination. No way to tell if Cougar had shaken her, yet, or if she was on his tail.
Odds were, Jensen wouldn't get any more answers than he already had, but he watched her, anyway, just in case.
Maybe she was concerned that she'd be followed. Maybe it was just habit, like checking under your car for a bomb before climbing inside. It didn't necessarily mean anything, but she stopped at the third gate in the terminal, but didn't board when the flight was called. Instead, half an hour later, she slid from her seat and made her way to the boarding area a few gates down, and got on the Miami bound plane.
So the heat would be on in Miami. That was fine, Jensen hated Florida, ever since the trip to Disney World. Served that Donald Duck motherfucker right, though. Squawking bastard had that kick to the balls coming, dancing around like that.
If Aisha was heading there, odds were, Cougar had already arrived.
He considered pulling up Miami's security footage to see if he could spot him coming off the plane. Find out where he was going, next.
But, if Cougar was smart- and this, here, this was something Cougar had been amazing at even before joining the X-Men- he wouldn't be making himself known, any time soon.
Still, though. Right now, at the moment, at least, the digital coast was clear. Jensen could check, if he wanted to. A few keystrokes, and it would be so damned easy to find him.
Instead, Jensen booked a ticket for London, shut the computer down, and packed up his life again. Everything but the Glock.
Aisha was gone, so he probably didn't need it any more.
And getting guns into England was a bigger pain in the ass than talking your way out of a Serbian holding cell.
And he'd only had it for three or four hours, now. That wasn't enough time to develop some bullshit sentimental attachment. He'd always preferred Rugers, anyway.
And it wasn't like he wouldn't be able to replace it, if and- yeah, it was looking like when, now- he needed to.
But Cougar had gone and grabbed it for him. Had materialized in the middle of the room with it in his hand. It had gone from existence to nonexistence to back again right with him, and it was totally fucking stupid, but maybe it had been imperfect, incomplete. Maybe Cougar had left a molecule of himself mixed in with the metal.
He'd have to leave it behind in the morning. Ditch it in some trashcan on the way to the airport. Right now, though, he could lie here, hanging onto it for everything he was worth, and pretend that all of this was normal.
---
Chapter 5
Fandom/ Pairing The Losers (comic 'verse, with some help from the movie), eventual Jensen/Cougar
Rating: R overall
Summary: Cougar was bleeding all over the bomb in his lap, the last time Jensen saw him. But that was then.
Link to Master List & Previous Chapters
"Tienes un arma?" Cougar asked, still staring back down the beach.
"No, man," Jensen winced. "Ditched the guns a few months back. Too much hassle to travel with. You?"
"Didn't think I'd need one." Cougar rocked his head back, his grin bitter. "Vámonos."
Cougar flexed his fingers and Jensen wondered, not for the first time, what kind of shot he was these days. It had been on the list of things he wanted to test, but nowhere near the top ten.
"Okay," Jensen brushed the sand off his bag, and when he looked up, Cougar was starting to fade out. Blinking, he caught on. "Don't go far," and an instant later, he might as well have been alone.
---
This was the kind of thing that would've been useful, once upon a time. Keeping Jensen as his center, Cougar spread himself out a few blocks in every direction. Going further out would've just caused confusion. Otherwise, though, it was familiar, keeping Jensen in his sights while scanning for threats.
He found none. It was more unsettling than he would've thought.
---
"So wait," Jensen asked, as he drew the curtains shut. "You mean to tell me you haven't shot a gun in over a year?
Cougar shrugged. It didn't matter if Jensen seemed surprised to hear it. Odds were, he'd be taking it up again fairly soon, and it didn't matter right now, anyway.
---
"What're we going to do?" Jensen rubbed at his neck. "It's not like we're players, any more. If he'd seen us once, she probably could've killed us already. Any time over the past year, she could've taken my ass out, and it would've been easier than something that's really. Fucking. Easy."
He was right. It didn't make sense, none of this did.
Cougar shrugged, admitting to only about half of the concern he felt. "Maybe my eyes tricked me."
"I've seen you make impossible shots, a thousand yards through the jungle, man." Jensen said, ominously. "You saw it, it's there."
---
The room proved to be clean, after a thorough bug sweep performed to the soundtrack of Jensen's complaints.
"Hey, man. I get it, I really do, but I chose this place at random and we moved fast. There's no way she could've prepped for us to show up here."
Cougar already knew as much, but it was calming to hear it spoken aloud. For now, they were safe. And he had an errand to run.
Leaving Jensen in the hotel room, he vanished when he hit the stairwell, and slipped through the night and across the plaza. The police department was on the opposite corner of the park, and though Cougar didn't know much about security systems-that had always been Jensen's purview- he had an easy time, getting through.
He had to wait a while for the locker room to clear out, but as soon as the shift change was completed, and the officers had left, he began to search.
The Glock 22 came first, but he had to dig around to find the ammunition, and wound up grabbing two extra magazines from the nearby lockers. It was solid enough, dependable, but it wouldn't be enough.
It was down in the evidence lockup that he finally found something capable of longer range, an M86 that needed, badly, to be cleaned. The scope was one of the older Ospreys. Functional, but nothing like the illuminated rangefinder he'd had before.
But it would have to do, for now at least. He could trade up later.
---
Resisting the urge to stand at the window, looking out for something he knew he'd never see, Jensen paced the room and tried to fucking think.
Odds were, he would only have one good shot at searching anything out before his presence was noticed. He had to make it count. Sitting down and starting a new IP address rotation on his computer, he tried to decide his approach.
How the hell do you track a ghost?
It was funny enough that, were Cougar there, he might've smirked. Probably wouldn't have laughed or anything, but still. Smirking, Jensen got to work.
Most of the security systems had been updated at least once in the past year, and the CIA databases were locked behind an entirely new system, but once he was in, he found the interior security to be comparatively weak.
Even better, the old file paths still worked. On the edges, he could see the backtrackers working around him as he passed them by, onwards to what he needed. Personnel, full history view, al-Fadhil, Aisha.
And surprise, surprise, give the lady a prize, there was nothing on file, anywhere, that indicated Aisha was still counted among the living. He was just starting to jump into Director Sanderson's notes regarding her last known standing when there was a knock at the door.
Grabbing the knife out of his boot, the same one he'd retrieved from Aisha's belongings, a year ago, he held it ready. Looking through the fish-eye lens, the hallway appeared bulbous and curved, and also very empty.
Why Cougar thought he had to knock, Jensen wasn't sure, but then he remembered. Rolling his eyes, he opened the door, saying "Christ, man, you seriously think I'd be jerking off at a time like-" and then he saw it, down on the floor. A wadded up piece of paper that hadn't been there before.
He may have poked it with his knife before carefully opening it. As soon as the corner was pulled away enough to see, he grabbed it, quickly, and darted back into the room.
After that, he just stared at the bloody ear for a while. Tried not to stare at the congealed dirty blood worked into the whorls, not to notice the jagged tears where the knife had met resistance. He kind of wanted to cry.
---
"…I mean, she could've killed me right then, if she'd wanted to, but instead she left this!"
Cougar stared at the ear on the table while Jensen finished explaining how it had arrived, but he had only one thing he needed to know.
"This the first time you've been found?"
"Yeah, I mean. Stegler, the other day, came here following Pooch, from the looks of things."
It made sense. Even if anyone had known he'd survived, Jensen had been a moving target. Pooch, on the other hand, had done what he could to protect his family, but he'd still gone back home. It hadn't been hard for Cougar to track him.
Stegler, with all his resources, would've had an easy time of it.
"Or." Jensen ran a hand through his hair. "For all I know, Stegler could have been followed."
Cougar nodded. It was a standard risk. There'd always been that chance, that much, at least, hadn't changed.
"So here's the thing," Jensen said, awkwardly. "I spent a good part of the year being sloppy drunk. Someone wanted to make a move on me, they could've. Easily. And they didn't, which leads me to believe…"
Relieved that Jensen had figured it out himself, that he didn't need convincing, Cougar finished for him. "They're not here for you. I should leave, draw them out." He was careful to speak casually, to make it sound like this was just another op. Risk minimization. Standard protocol, nothing to worry about. No big deal.
"Yeah," Jensen was scowling, knowing the game all too well. "Sucks balls, man, but. Yeah. Probably a good idea." He fixed Cougar with a strange look, like he was going to say more, but then something flashed across his eyes, and he sat up. It was only when he began speaking that Cougar recognized it as determination.
"Okay. Fine. This is what's going to happen. We run this like we did Munich," Jensen waved him back into the chair as he opened his computer's calendar. "Only this time, we're not picking a city in advance." Swiveling his eyes back to Cougar, he snapped his fingers a few times, fidgeting as he thought. He was making it up as he went along.
"On October seventh, watch the afternoon departures at O'Hare airport for a last minute delay of an outbound flight due to a navigation malfunction. Another day after that, that's where we'll meet up. Get to the library, find the note."
"You will leave it in the same book?"
"Yeah. I'll have a good chunk of this figured out by then. That work?"
Cougar turned the plan over in his head. It wasn't a guarantee that both of them would survive the next month, but it was better than the one he'd come up with, which had, more or less, been Leave. Disappear. And don't look back.
"Sí."
"Okay. Emergencies only. And by emergencies, we're talkin' I'm staring down another nuke or Aisha's already got one ear, and she's coming back to complete the set, you hear?" Jensen reached into his bag, grabbing a phone and tossing it over to him.
Cougar turned it on and found Jensen's phone number, already programmed in, and really, suddenly, that was the end of it. They were good to go, and the sooner they parted ways, the better their odds were of getting through this unscathed.
It should've been easy, he'd very nearly talked himself into disappearing once already. But that had been on his own quiet terms. This was something else completely, it had Jensen edging towards the window again, peeking carefully through the drawn curtains at the street outside.
He'll be safer once you've gone.
But mierda, just in case.
He stood up, brushing his hands on his jeans, the noise alerting Jensen to his presence once more. Smirking, he reached out his hand, and when Jensen shook on it, he grabbed him in a quick hug that could've meant anything, that hopefully translated as nothing more than hasta luego.
---
Jensen stared at the space where Cougar had been and wondered when it was that he had actually vanished. Not wanting to be so obvious, just in case the sneaky bastard was still lurking around, he turned his attention again towards the street below.
He was just in time to see a familiar hat coming out of the hotel across the way and heading down the street. He wanted to watch longer, until he reached the corner, but if Cougar was being cautious enough to not give away Jensen's position, it would've been stupid to blow it himself. He let the curtain fall shut, and turned back to the room.
Nothing there but his bag, his laptop, the Glock Cougs had left him, and somebody's ear.
If he went online right now, he could pull up the surveillance down at the airport, and down at the docks, and he could probably catch sight of him. That was the entire fucking point, after all, of this Pied Motherfucking Piper act Cougar was playing.
Christ man, only it's been two minutes.
In a few hours, maybe in London, or Dubai, or, who knew, DC maybe, a CCTV camera would pick up his face. Somewhere in the mechanisms in the world, it would be filtered through facial recognition, and the chase would really be on.
If Jensen went looking for it, he could blow the entire game right now. The entire point of this was to not know.
He considered the ear again, and this time, when his fingers twitched, he honestly didn't know if they were searching out keys or triggers. He had to move out and move on. Get gone.
---
Cougar stayed mostly out of sight, stopping off down at the shipyard first, where he was careful to walk in the shadows, right through the path of a security camera he probably wasn't supposed to notice.
He paused, near a group of tourists who were regrouping before getting back on their cruise ship, and gave it a few minutes.
Once he was sure that if anyone had been there to spot him, they would have by now, he followed them towards the gangplank and fell to the back of the group before disappearing.
A few minutes later, heading inland again, he saw her.
Aisha's ponytail was sleek, this time, longer than before, and she stalked just as plainly as she'd done before, eyes scanning the shadows. Her eyes were no different, now. Harder, maybe, and they looked right through him as she continued on, down towards the ship.
Less than an hour later, Cougar was on a flight to Florida. The plane ascended above the resorts and restaurants and beaches as it turned to find its course, and if Cougar wasn't very careful, he could fall back down into it all.
Maybe, if he landed right, he could be back in that hotel room, with Jensen.
And if he didn't materialize, if he remained cast out over the air, invisible and weightless, Jensen might never know he was there.
And in a few hours, Aisha wouldn't know that he'd been spotted in a Florida airport, getting on a plane to who knows where. She'd redouble her search of the city. Maybe even find Jensen again.
And this entire thing would've been for nothing, anyway.
---
It was his third hotel room in twenty-four hours, and it was surprisingly depressing, knowing that he was going to be the only one using it. At least there wouldn't be time to build up stupid sentimental attachments to the place, this time around.
Cougar, this time, didn't materialize out of thin air. It kind of sucked.
Besides, he had work to do.
Stegler had left his card, with a penciled-in number scrawled across the back. Jensen went online and searched the number out, found that it belonged to a pre-paid phone, a burner, like the one Jensen'd been carting all over the world for months now.
Call. Don't Call. Call. Fuck.
The reality was this: a really unpleasant answer was still an answer, nonetheless, and a terrible plan was still a plan. And Stegler, for his part, hadn't screwed them over. Jensen dialed the number and tried not to think of the word yet.
He picked up on the third ring.
"Hello?"
"Hey, man, it's Jake. Ah. Jensen. This a good time?"
"I've got ten minutes," Stegler said. "I'm on my way to inform an associate's widow that her husband died in the service of our great country, and to try talking around the fact that his body, once it arrives, will be short two years."
"Shit," Jensen said. "Antigua?"
"Just a few hours ago." Stegler cleared his throat. "I'm assuming you're not calling unrelatedly."
"Yeah, well. I might be able to help you out on that one. See, I've got one of the ears, here. It seems to have been donated by a mutual, ah. Well. Far as I can tell, Aisha is back in business."
"Really," Stegler said, his voice cool, but only just barely. "You're sure it's not a fake-out?"
"Nah, man, pretty sure I spotted her, earlier today. Wasn't sure until I found her calling card."
"I hadn't thought that was your style."
Jensen let go the breath he'd been holding. "Yeah, ah. No. Not even a little. But that's why I'm calling, you know anything about what she's been up to? Or how, you know, why she's alive?"
"I don't know that she is, at this point, Jake. But I'll do some digging and get back to you. You spotting her, and my contact turning up dead can't be a coincidence. Is this a safe line?"
"It's golden," Jensen confirmed. "And look, man, I really appreciate it, but I gotta ask. I'm back in, for now, but it's not for the long haul. This isn't me signing up for a new mission."
"It's cleaning up an old one. I hear you. Figure if I ever get out of here, I'll have a few of those myself. Though I must admit, as far as loose ends go, Aisha?" There was a rush of air over the phone, either a snort or a sigh. "How she survived a nuclear goddamned explosion is something that I'm not looking forward to explaining to the brass."
Jensen bit back a wait until you see Cougar, because honestly? The less information that got out, the better. So he deflected. "Yeah, well, it's not like I came back and reported in the moment I cleared that scene myself, so..." Jensen rolled his neck, glancing again at the window.
"True, but my point was actually that we should play this one close. I'm keeping it between us until we have a better idea what's going on, and I'll keep your name out of it as long as I can. Getting the company in on it will probably just muddy the waters."
"Good," Jensen was relieved. "I owe you one, man. And look, about the other day…I was a total dick."
"We're good," Stegler said. "Showing up like that, I'm probably lucky I didn't wind up taking a bullet to the head."
"Well, you know," Jensen smirked. "You've got to be an optimist. There's always tomorrow."
He could hear him rolling his eyes over the phone. "Bye, Jensen."
---
Jensen hung up the phone. He'd found what he could. He'd talked to Stegler. It was nearly midnight, now, and it was probably time to get the hell out of Antigua. As soon as he figured out where the hell to go. First, he had to make sure his path was clear.
It wasn't hard to get access to the airport's security footage from this evening. It was several hours, though, before he was able to catch Aisha heading through the ticketing lines, her phone pressed to her ear as she waited. By the time she reached the counter, she'd ended the call, and Jensen had accessed the airline's ticketing system.
Station number six was in the midst of changing tickets from Trinidad to Miami. The ticket was obscenely expensive, and the bitch paid in cash.
There was no way to tell who was bankrolling her. And no way to tell, really, how she'd picked her destination. No way to tell if Cougar had shaken her, yet, or if she was on his tail.
Odds were, Jensen wouldn't get any more answers than he already had, but he watched her, anyway, just in case.
Maybe she was concerned that she'd be followed. Maybe it was just habit, like checking under your car for a bomb before climbing inside. It didn't necessarily mean anything, but she stopped at the third gate in the terminal, but didn't board when the flight was called. Instead, half an hour later, she slid from her seat and made her way to the boarding area a few gates down, and got on the Miami bound plane.
So the heat would be on in Miami. That was fine, Jensen hated Florida, ever since the trip to Disney World. Served that Donald Duck motherfucker right, though. Squawking bastard had that kick to the balls coming, dancing around like that.
If Aisha was heading there, odds were, Cougar had already arrived.
He considered pulling up Miami's security footage to see if he could spot him coming off the plane. Find out where he was going, next.
But, if Cougar was smart- and this, here, this was something Cougar had been amazing at even before joining the X-Men- he wouldn't be making himself known, any time soon.
Still, though. Right now, at the moment, at least, the digital coast was clear. Jensen could check, if he wanted to. A few keystrokes, and it would be so damned easy to find him.
Instead, Jensen booked a ticket for London, shut the computer down, and packed up his life again. Everything but the Glock.
Aisha was gone, so he probably didn't need it any more.
And getting guns into England was a bigger pain in the ass than talking your way out of a Serbian holding cell.
And he'd only had it for three or four hours, now. That wasn't enough time to develop some bullshit sentimental attachment. He'd always preferred Rugers, anyway.
And it wasn't like he wouldn't be able to replace it, if and- yeah, it was looking like when, now- he needed to.
But Cougar had gone and grabbed it for him. Had materialized in the middle of the room with it in his hand. It had gone from existence to nonexistence to back again right with him, and it was totally fucking stupid, but maybe it had been imperfect, incomplete. Maybe Cougar had left a molecule of himself mixed in with the metal.
He'd have to leave it behind in the morning. Ditch it in some trashcan on the way to the airport. Right now, though, he could lie here, hanging onto it for everything he was worth, and pretend that all of this was normal.
---
Chapter 5