Chapter Text
Carter Hall walked down the streets of Paris with a slight bounce in his step, causing his shaggy dark blond hair to bounce around his smiling face.
He whistled to himself as he walked down the streets back to his team’s safehouse, a tied plastic bag in each hand with Indian take out. The team’s favorite. He told himself to keep walking when he passed another small pastry shop. The team was hungry and he didn’t want to wait in another long line. Even for amazing desserts.
Somehow even though he was their spec ops team lead, he’d wound up drawing the short straw to go pick up dinner for another night of surveillance. Then again, he got to stretch his legs so he really didn’t mind.
Carter bounded up the tiny, European steps to their apartment. He shuffled both bags into one hand so he could reach into his coat pocket for the key.
He unlocked the door and made his way inside, locking it behind him. “I’m home darlings!” Carter jokingly called out. He set the bags on the kitchen table and began cutting them open with a pocket knife.
When nobody came out to the open style kitchen/foyer, Carter frowned, the hairs standing up on the back of his neck and along his arms.
He set the knife back in his pocket and reached under his coat for his shoulder holster, bringing out his hand gun. He cocked the safety off and began slowly walking back toward the rooms.
He slammed the first room’s door open and cleared it before entering, his heart beating a bit more quickly than normal due to the rising adrenaline but nothing that would impede his actions.
“Virginia,” he cried out as he saw his teammate lying on the bed in a pool of her own blood. Her long blonde hair now an ugly strawberry due to the soaked blood caked to it. He lowered his gun and rushed to her side, placing two fingers on her throat for a pulse, although he didn’t expect to find one.
You don’t lose that much blood and live. Lose more than a half gallon and you’re a goner for sure.
Carter forced himself to stand back up and examine the scene, wiping his bloody fingers on his jacket. The cut across her throat looked to be the first wound, and clearly what had killed her. The slashes across her torso were just…decoration. They’d been post-mortem or maybe while she’d been dying, her life blood spilling out despite her attempts to hold the wound closed as evidenced by her bloodied palms and fingers.
Carter turned away and gun held to the side, rushed to his final team member’s room. He found Sterling in a similar situation, although he wasn’t found asleep in bed, there had clearly been a struggle. As evidenced by his gun still taken apart and lying on his desk, he’d been in the middle of cleaning his gun and taken by surprise.
The wooden chair was broken and the mirror was smashed, showing he’d fought back against his attacker. But Sterling was still dead, a knife left behind in his chest from where he sat slumped against the back wall.
Wait, that’s my knife.
Carter pulled his hand back from where he’d been about to touch the evidence without gloves. He was a better spy than that.
Then he shrugged and made himself reach back once more, to yank the knife out of his friend’s chest. He couldn’t leave such damaging evidence behind anyways, so no worries about putting his finger prints on it.
What was Sterling doing with my spare knife?
Carter put the knife in one of his jacket’s many pockets. He then reached out and gently closed his friend’s eyes with one hand.
He walked away from Sterling’s room to his own, where he went into the bathroom and unscrewed the lightbulb in the unused shower. He pulled the cord down where his passport and papers were rolled up in plastic inside a paper tube around the wire. He stuffed them in another of his jacket’s pockets. He then carefully replaced the bulb so no one would know about the little hiding place, or as known in the espionage world, a slick.
Then he heard from the foyer behind the front door, “Police, open up! There have been reports of a disturbance!” shouted police officers in French. At least, Carter hoped they were police. This was beginning to feel like a trap to him. A trap to catch him surrounded by dead teammates.
He looked around, he hadn’t even had a chance to make contact with his superiors, let them know that agents were down. And he wouldn’t have time to do that if he were explaining himself to French police officers.
Besides, the French don’t know we are even here.
Carter opened his bedroom window and looked down. Then he looked to the right and saw a roof drainage pipe that led to the ground.
He stood out on the window ledge and grabbed onto it with his left hand. He gave it a good yank and it didn’t give at all.
Haven’t done this since I was a kid. Then he was sliding down it as the police forced their way inside the door to find an apartment empty of the living at least. But they would find two dead Americans who’d arrived with tourist visas.
Their covers were so good that French Intelligence would never know they had been there on the Company’s orders. So long as Carter Hall got away clean.
Carter found a dingy little bar and slid into it. He ordered a drink but didn’t bother touching it once it arrived. He just stared at the tv.
They’re dead. They’re both dead. If I hadn’t gone out for food for tonight…
Carter shook his head and took a long drag of his drink then. He needed to stay focused. He could still be in danger.
I need to find a safe place to make a secure call to Langley. Perhaps I’ll sneak into the American Embassy…
His eyes widened when he saw his face suddenly appear on the tv screen. A pretty, older newswoman was explaining in French that “American tourists were murdered in their rented flat by a dangerous criminal, seen fleeing the scene of the crime..”
Bullshit, nobody saw me. So how the hell is a sketch of my face on tv right now? And they didn’t get my nose right!
Carter slammed some money on the bar and hurriedly left before the bartender or any of the patrons noticed they were sitting with the scruffy faced wanted killer.
At least they didn’t have my name. But I think it’s time I got out of France. Fast.