MAIZE

He didn't say anything right away, but the look in his eyes spoke volumes, enough that she knew something was coming.

The day had been filled with a flounder of chaotic activities, but they both were suddenly reminded by one important detail that hung in the air between them. A certain agreement had been put off until now due to the distractions of the day had kept their minds mostly away from the topic, a conversation that needed to happen that was now slightly overdue. The one look in the detective's eyes said it all. One day with a bit of chaotic humour did not deride them from their current predicament. She had seen this coming.

'I didn't follow you out here for no reason. I'll be a gentleman and grab us something to drink, but then we need to talk...'

The past night's conversation had slipped her mind due to the short disorderly mayhem that had arisen shortly after what was supposed to be their chance to go over exactly what had happened earlier that same day, but she was reminded of it now and knew immediately, why the detective stopped her.

"You want to take the time to talk now that things have calmed down." It wasn't a question, simply a mere statement, clearing the air if you will.

Alec nodded once, seeming not surprised that she had immediately caught on. "No time like the present," he answered. "And I think we both know it's important."

She agreed. "Here or in private?" Maize asked. Who knew exactly what would come up in their conversation, and the two agents still hadn't heard everything that had gone down on the highway. Whether they decided to disclose all the facts or continue to keep it to themselves, for the time being, would probably be determined in their fortuned discussion. Alec clearly had something on his mind, and somehow she could get the sense that he didn't want to disclose it to the others right away.

"In private," he answered, not to her surprise. "We can wait until after dinner and then meet outside."

That sounded like a reasonably well plan. That way they could also avoid Ryder and whatever inquires he might have to them sneaking off around his property. She did trust Ryder, but she also knew that Alec did not. There was no way he would be joining their conversation either—despite the fact that he basically already knew all the facts from what Maize had told him, though it would probably be best not to tell Alec that.

She nodded. "Deal."

* * *

They did exactly as they said.

He was standing out there before she came out. His form outlined like a silhouette in the sun that was slowly sinking behind the horizon of trees and tinging the sky with the colours of fire and mist.

It was a silent mutual agreement to walk as they spoke, that way they wouldn't be caught standing still in a spot they felt they might be overheard. Not that that was a big concern, the five of them were supposedly the only ones out there for miles, but even so, with what they had been through so far, paranoia was a bound thing, and whatever was on Alec's mind made him seem conflicted about something. He was oddly silent for the first little while. But anyone, especially her, could tell from one look at his face that it was because his mind was being anything but.

When it was clear his brain was too busy with whatever was nagging him to begin, she was the one who started and broke the silence with an easy icebreaker. "Alright, yesterday night you said to get comfortable because you said we had things to talk about, but as I recall, we were interrupted before that could happen. You didn't say anything about what it was about, though I did take a wild guess based on your expression and the fact that it's a little obvious at this point," she said. "What happened yesterday, what about it?"

Alec answered, "I got time to think about it."

"And? What is it you came up with?" She asked, knowing he had to have had something to have dragged her out here just to discuss. She really was trying not to be impatient.

Alec still had that distance contemplating look in his eyes as the skin around his eyes tightened and his gaze furrowed. It was an entire minute before he spoke. "Call me crazy, but something about this entire mission...seems off," he surprised her by saying.

Maize thought she had to do a double back. That was it? He wanted to talk because she thought their mission felt 'off' to him? She couldn't hold back the sarcasm in her reply, "Gee, I'm not sure. On the run from the FBI and a vengeance-seeking cartel gang...hm, nope, seems like our regular Tuesday to me," she drawled.

"Oh for fucking hell—I'm being serious, Maize!" He snapped in response to her dismissive sarcasm.

She derided, "And you assume I'm not?"

"Dammit, Maize! No. Just, listen, alright?" He didn't continue until she had given him a receding nod that she wouldn't interrupt and he took a deep breath and sighed. "Look...don't you think it's a bit strange? When you think about it, we've been jumping from place to place at complete random. Why is that?"

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the seemingly pointless question. "Um, duh, because we were running, and that's usually how things go when you're trying to escape from bad guys chasing you. It's not like we had a plan ahead of time each time we had to skip out on a place," she bit sarcastically.

"Right, then how did they catch up so fast?"

The question wasn't the thing that suddenly caught her off guard, but more the tone he used to direct it.

It was for that reason that she decided not to retort with the obvious, and was at a momentary loss of thought. Suddenly 'it was mere bad luck' was not a liable answer to go by.

"Each time we went somewhere," he strained as he continued, having caught onto the fact that his words had put her at a loss. "Each time they caught up much quicker than they should have, don't you think? At first, with the safe house, I assumed it was a coincidence. They could have had someone following us from the airport so I didn't think much of it then. But then it happened again, at the casino, only a few days after we showed up there. No one should have known where we were going—hell at the time, we didn't even know where we were going. So how did they know to send the local guys there only a short few days?"

"I told you already, it was Martinez," she said. "He explained everything, how he got a hit from the gang and gave us up."

"I know. But how did the gang even know to call him?" Alec asked out loud as he slowly began to draw in his point. "He can't be the only rat in Mexico that they could have thought to ring up. You're telling me you don't think that seems like a major coincidence?"

Maize thought about it for a minute and shrugged, though her dismissal was starting to feel fallacious. "They could have called more, we don't know. Wrong place wrong time for us, right time right place for him..."

"But what if it wasn't?"

"What are you saying?" She questioned. "Listen I can't read your mind, I need you to explain it to me straight."

"It was that thing that the assassin said before they took off," Alec muttered that last part a little bitterly. "Her employer sends his regards? I mean, what kind of bullshit is that?"

"Who knows," she answered. "But it does confirm that someone did hire them, someone who probably wants Kishan found the most."

"But it was more than that," Alec said lowly. "It was that other thing she said, about her employer's identity being 'personal'. I know I don't have any idea what she possibly meant by that, but the way she said it...makes me feel like the two of us are missing something, something big in the grand scheme of whatever's really going on," he stated.

"You think so?" The idea contemplated in her head.

Alec nodded firmly. "And I've got to tell you, the thought kind of pisses me off."

Maize let out a humourless laugh at that. "I can't say I don't understand the feeling."

He gave an acknowledging nod. "I didn't figure you would," he replied as his gaze furrowed deeper in thought. "But this...it's odd. You have to admit, two high-class assassins sent on a job to attack us on the road and nearly smash our car to bits, only to leave us alive in the end? It makes no sense. If anything, it feels like whoever's pulling the string behind those two...is just did that to toy with us."

"Toy with us?" she repeated confusedly.

It seemed he had merely been entertaining the idea as he said it, but suddenly he seemed more certain. "Why not? You said so yourself; if they wanted us dead, we would be. And they could have easily done so when we were both down, so why didn't they?"

"You make it sound like you wished they had killed us," she mused out loud. "You realize that if you're actually right about this and there is some manipulator working in the shadows, that just makes our job that much more complicated."

"Worried you can't handle it?" His remark was merely meant to be teasing, but Alec's voice seemed to have lost some of its usual chaff under the weight of the topic.

"You wish," she snorted with a note of derision as they shared a slightly easing look. "Listen, even if this crazy-sounding speculation is more than just a speculation, all it will take is getting both agent's names cleared, once that happens, they'll most likely be moved into some protective custody provided by the bureau and we won't have any reason to worry about the gang because they'll have been too late. Their main intent is to try and kill Kishan before he can relay his information to the Feds, that's why they set it up so that he couldn't go back, but they don't know that we have someone working on it. We only have to hold off a little longer until all that is cleared."

"Right..." Alec trailed off, his eyes flickering to the side with a hint of a grimace. Maize raised an eyebrow in question. "Thing is...I don't think the investigation is going so well on the Cheif's side."

"What? What do you mean?" she blurted incredulously.

Alec sighed. "Last time Chief and I spoke on the phone, there wasn't anything to tell me other than the fact that he had nothing."

"Why didn't you tell me this before? When was the last time you spoke to him?"

"The casino, I got a call to him asking about the case, but was pretty disappointed by the answer in the end."

"But that was a good little while ago, he had to have gotten something worthwhile by now," Maize said.

Then suddenly Alec got a distantly hard look in his eye. "I'm not so sure. The old man isn't an idiot, he was a cop for thirty years before becoming captain. If he hadn't been able to dig up information on the FBI's supposed undercover opp, it's probably because someone is going the extra length to try and hide it from anyone willing to look."

"Who?"

"God," Alec replied dryly. "Jeez, how should I know?!"

Maize was instantly annoyed by his irritated tone. "Do you have to be so damn short-snappy? If this is how you deal with partners in cases then it's a wonder how you ever solve anything," she said.

"I don't prefer working with partners for that exact reason," he muttered in response as he shot her an annoyed look. It was a moment before he took a deep breath and sighed, attempting to push down the frustration that was not meant to be directed at the bounty hunter. "But to your question, if I had to guess, I'd say it's someone...in the bureau."

"You're accusing someone in the FBI of being a double agent for the gang?" she repeated, shock flashing briefly in her eyes.

"Possibly," Alec shrugged. "If so, they could be the same person or working with the same person who killed Kishan's superiors in that staged car accident."

Maize nodded absently. "I hate to agree with you..." she began. The facts were not at all lost on her. "But I wouldn't out rule either of those as possibilities..."

"The gang can buy top-notch assassins, why not someone at the bureau?" Alec supplied thoughtfully, though his tone read that he was anything but blithe about it.

The unfortunate truth was; everyone could be bought or tempted by many things, most often to not, money. Money was a corrupter that more often than not tore people away from their morals to satisfy their own selfish gain. It was in human nature to be greedy. And no matter what way you looked at it, law enforcement officers were human just like the rest.

"You're right, it's entirely possible," she said. "But also not something we can do anything to investigate or prove. Not from all the way out here..."

"I know. That's what's so damn frustrating..." the detective muttered heavily.

Maize asked, "Have you relayed any of your suspicions to the Captain yet?"

Alec gave a shake of his head. "No, haven't gotten the chance to try and get in touch with him. I don't know how he'll react when he finds out we're all the way up in Canada, I doubt any of us thought the mission would have gone so far...But I'm sure he already has his own speculations. He hinted as much the last time we spoke anyway," he relayed with thought.

There was silence for a moment.

"Well...I trust him," Maize said, the words practically slipping from her mouth in a moment of blatant honesty that surprised even herself.

The Captain had always been a good man to her, and one she respected greatly—not for his accomplishments but as a person. She had a gut feeling that as it came down to it, she knew he was doing everything in his power not to let them down.

A smile appeared on Alec's face though he did not turn to look at her. "So do I," he replied, almost with a new regeneration of aspiration. "Always have, always will."

Maize smiled. "So, we just have to do our job and trust that he's doing his."

Alec nodded, but he still seemed distracted by something with his own thoughts.

"Either way, let's be ready."

"For what exactly?" Maize's voice was quiet and listening. They were in one of the most remote places she could think of, unknown to the outside world, with a guy and his trained canine that knew more about evading people than he did anything else, it was practically his living. But that didn't entirely limit the possibilities that something could go wrong, even in a place where they were. Something could always go wrong. And it was that feeling that fuelled the small embers of unease that burned in the pit of her stomach like a ragged claw.

"For anything," the detective answered dourly. "Somehow I've got a feeling...whatever's going on in the shadows, it could come to hit us hard when we least expect it." His words rang with heavy truth as his eyes gaze forward hard. "And who knows what they'll try to throw our way next."

* * *

Meanwhile, as the detective and bounty hunter were talking outside, Ryder was heading to his room in a more aggravating mood than he could ever remember letting himself be in—and at the cause of such a small group of people too.

I hate cops, he thought over and over again with a burning temper. So damn annoying.

His room was his private space. Though he was issued to living in the large house fairly unaccompanied, he had never been one to need a great many things, included a big living place. Having learned at a young age, that everything you thought you ever had could be ripped from you at an instant, and if you didn't know how to get by on nothing, then you didn't get by at all. Despite the many appliances and gadgets he had stored away over the years in this large place, he wouldn't care if suddenly it were to all go up in flames. There were only perhaps a few treasured items that he would not be able to abandon so easily, but in the end, he could survive with very little. This house he lived in was more of a base than anything else. He often didn't spend many nights there for long periods, as work called from all different kinds of places. He had always known how to take care of himself, he prospered on the things he had at his disposal in any given place or time. Nothing was ever given to him, so sometimes you just had to seize it at will.

He entered the room with a nudge of the door. Almost everything within followed an either dark or grey aesthetic; the walls, the bed set up, the desk, his shelves. The curtains were drawn over the window just as he had left them that morning, and the light that peered through the room was minimal. He was just about to pass by the dresser to open them up when he stopped.

His eyes slowly lifted to the old picture frame, holding an even older photograph that was taken long, long ago. Within the shot was a man, captured when he was in his young forties. The man's hair was a lighter shade of brown than it had been normally, after many days spent outside under the bright rays of the sun. His skin too, where exposed in his face and forearms, was dark and tan from countless hours in the outdoors. He was decked out in green army camo-uniform, the badge of the Canadian military stitched onto his right shoulder, while a C14 Timberwolf army grade rifle was slung over his other. The same rifle that currently resided hung up in Ryder's room on the lower floor. Nothing but a memento now.

In the photo, the man was smiling directly at the camera, and in the light of the sun from the angle captured in day, the most memorable thing to behold of the army man's appearance was the gaze of his unique steel-grey coloured eyes.

Ryder's own similar gaze stared back at the photo distantly, his face reflecting nothing of the swirl of emotions that surged within him at the sight.

14 years since that photo had been taken. Nearly 12 years since the man within it had died.

Ryder didn't even remember the last time he had actually looked at the photo on the dresser, other than just the frame. For a specific reason. He never wanted the pain of always having to look at it, just it being there, serving as a remembrance and a reminder was enough.

Which is why he always left the picture frame facedown.