Chapter Text
ONE
April, 2014
The tables were pushed too close together.
It would be easy to trip on them sober, and no one out on the club floor was anything close. Lights flashed through a haze of alcohol and bodies swaying to the beat of electronic pop.
Logan watched it all from the sidelines. She hadn’t come here to drink.
The man that sat next to her, on the other hand, had just drunk his fifth whisky down to the ice. His arm was lazily spread over the top of their booth. It was a casual, flirtatious gesture. A position chosen deliberately to block her in. His other hand toyed with his empty glass, condensation bleeding into the napkin beneath it.
“You said you knew where Monroe’s been staying,” she said, twisting a finger in his collar. She suppressed the urge to vomit at the onion-like stench of his sweat. “I don’t have all night.”
She was becoming impatient with the long game. Most of her tips were one-off jobs taken care of in a single night, but this one had been marinating for a full month. It required playing a role rather than just getting in and out. Logan’s hair–blonde for the night–was tied back in a sleek ponytail. A dusting of blue glitter caught the light at her eyes. Just another party girl out for a spin.
In the reflection of the mirrored wall behind them, she watched his lips quirk. His nerves were masked, but his foot bounced under the table. “Your man isn’t hiding. He’s protected.” He inclined his head towards the back of the club. In the dim shadows, a man in a dark suit stood with his arms crossed.
“Can you get me a few minutes?”
“Depends on how much it means to you.” He smiled, leaned in, and let out a sudden gasp of pain.
Logan’s knife was pressing into his thigh. So old fashioned, practically civil compared to the pistol holstered at her hip.
“Oh, it would mean so much,” she gushed.
Almost mechanically, he stood and walked away from their booth. Logan watched briefly before following at a languid pace. She picked up another drink at the bar and when the bodyguard moved out of the way, she stepped through into the curtained room alone.
Drink abandoned, her hand went for the pistol concealed under her skirt. As she crept through the shadows, she thought back to a week ago when she still imagined this job would be routine. It had begun that way. A concerned friend of an abused spouse had put in a request for one Henry Monroe to be eliminated. By any means necessary, the typical phrase. Logan had looked into it briefly and accepted the job.
Now that she was on her second club of the night, she knew she had been too hasty. It wouldn’t be the first time she had been set up. Though she tried to keep her sources close and her circle of leads closer, there was always the occasional stray. A CEO who thought she was getting too close to his profit margin. A lawyer who didn’t want her knocking on his door. The list only grew.
On the ground was a singular cufflink. A skull and six tentacles intricately etched into silver metal. If it was a luxury brand, she had never seen it before.
“I’m right back here, darling,” a voice echoed, just further into the room.
The story aligned. Logan slid her pistol back into the holster just before she came into view of Henry Monroe. His suit was white, slightly rumpled and stained with red wine. She was not the first to enter this room looking for him, but she would be the last.
“You’re an incredibly hard man to find,” she giggled. With her adrenaline high, it wasn’t hard to act drunk.
“Well, my darling, I promise you it will be worth your time,” he grinned, inviting her forward.
In a terrible way, Logan had always loved this thrill. The enchantment of being ten steps ahead of a monster. They were always lulled by something; normally money, sometimes lust. They were predictable in that way. Never saw it coming until it was too late.
“I wonder,” Logan said, coming to a stop in front of him. “What your wife might say about that.”
And that was always the other side of it. The images of what the abuser had done were sent along with the information she received. Court cases that had been dismissed. Prison sentences that were too short. Bruises, blue and bloody. Henry Monroe found not guilty.
“My wife?” Henry chuckled slightly. He didn’t understand. “And why would that matter to you?”
“Because she sent me.”
Before he could move or call out for his security, the blade of her hunting knife was pressed to his throat. Logan’s hands were much more comfortable wrapped around a revolver, but for a club like this she would have to keep it quiet. The walls were too thin.
“I’m not who you want. It's Pierce,” he gasped. “He’s the one running the payments! All of the checks, they go through him!”
Logan paused. This night had already been so long. “Pierce?”
Henry tried to nod but met the point of the knife. He winced. “Yes, Pierce. Alexander Pierce.”
Though she failed to see how it was relevant, she did know the name. He was a member of the World Security Council. She had seen him on television shaking the President’s hand two days ago. “This isn’t about payments, it’s about you.”
“Pierce won’t like this,” Henry warned, pleading. “If you kill me, they’ll never let you get away with it.”
She met his dark eyes and easily identified the final emotion coursing through them. Fear. “You don’t even know who I am.”
And not another word exited his lips. With a clean swipe of the silver blade, he slumped forward in a blossoming pool of his own blood. One of his arms had fallen onto the table with him, and the cuff was void of ornament. She lifted his other arm with the flat of her blade, careful not to touch any skin. There on the crisp white shirt was the crest with the skull.
On her way out of the room, she grabbed the other cuff link off the floor and tucked it into the pocket of her skirt. It could be nothing, but she left nothing to chance. Clearly, Henry Monroe was up to even more than what his wife knew about.
Outside, the night air stung her bare arms. It reminded her of New York and the times she had gone out to the bars with her coworkers. They were the few moments she allowed herself to act her age. It always felt like there was an impenetrable layer between her and reality.
But tonight, Logan walked swiftly through the dark. She had stashed her gear in a narrow alley between a mom-and-pop café and an abandoned laundromat. The warm orange glow from a crooked streetlamp cast long shadows. Here, the city noise thinned out to a distant rumble.
She pulled the black hoodie over her shoulders and a pair of sweats over her skirt. The blonde wig came off next, and she ran a hand through the sweat of her short, black hair. The pistol she tucked into a hidden flap in her backpack, next to a folder of engineering schematics for a noise-dampening tunnel system that was due at the office tomorrow morning.
Logan leaned back against the graffiti-tagged wall and let her head rest there. A minute. Just one minute. She used to try and name the people she helped. But the names blurred now, running together with the city streets. New York, D.C., the killing all felt the same. She had started out long range, rifle shots that were clean and clinical. The past few months she had gotten closer. Started dressing for the situation rather than her usual dark clothes and steel toe boots. What this job didn’t pay in cash it paid in blood red satisfaction.
From her waistband she withdrew the cufflink and stared at it. Alexander Pierce.
Before she could change her mind, she pulled out her burner phone and took a picture. With it, she sent a short text: Got anything on this?
⊹
It wasn’t until the next evening that Logan thought about the cufflink again.
She had woken up early to make sure she hadn’t tracked anything identifiable into the house before her sisters woke up for school. They ate breakfast together before leaving on the same train. Eight hours of blueprints and meetings later, Logan was worn to the bone with exhaustion.
By late afternoon, the world had turned golden brown. It was a light that only seemed to happen in spring just before the trees had blossomed. Logan shoved her hands deeper into the pockets of her jean coat to rid herself of the lingering chill.
Her eyes ached from a day under fluorescent lights, but some of the pain was eased as she watched her youngest sister’s lacrosse team finish their practice. Ramona always insisted she could take the train home by herself, but she never argued when Logan inevitably showed up. It was on the way from her office, anyway.
Her phone buzzed against her leg. She rifled through her bag and withdrew her work-issued BlackBerry only to find that the cracked screen wasn’t lighting up. Frowning, she dug deeper and closed her fingers around the vibrating flip phone. Her blood ran cold as she recognized the programmed pattern of the buzzing.
She flipped it open and lifted it to her ear. “Not really a good time.”
From the other end, Jude huffed. “I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important.” Without further greeting, she launched into what she had called for. “I did a little research on that picture you sent me last night. You pulled that off of Monroe, didn’t you?”
Across the field, Ramona had noticed her sister’s arrival. She waved wildly, red hair catching in the wind like ribbons. Logan forced a smile and waved back before turning away.
“I didn’t pull it off him. Found it on the floor, the other one was still on his person,” she said quietly.
“Tomato, tomato, it belonged to Henry Monroe.”
Logan bit her inner cheek until she tasted blood. “And? What was it, a crime ring symbol for someone too rich for gang tattoos?”
Jude’s voice came out in a higher pitch. “No, this isn’t a gang. It’s huge. You know your vendetta against SHIELD?"
Logan scoffed into the phone. “I don’t have a vendetta against SHIELD. Just a strong distaste.”
“Well, whatever it is, congratulations. You’ve officially killed someone in their payroll chain.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m very sure. Your guy Monroe was knee-deep. Honestly, there’s probably more than a few people thanking you for taking him off their plate. I found offshore accounts tied to front organizations under the Pierce Foundation — yes, that Pierce, the Security Council guy. A lot of the transfers were labeled ‘Project Insight.’”
It was alarming, but none of it connected to anything else she had heard. “What does that have to do with SHIELD?”
“No idea. I’m not sure if SHIELD even knows. I didn’t get very far, though, anything beyond the first layer of connections is locked down solid.”
The girls were wrapping up their practice, streaking across the field towards their coach. Logan’s heart rate jumped. “And what about the cufflink?
“It’s an old symbol, and the usage dates back to World War Two. An organization called Hydra.”
“Nazi?”
“Started that way, then they got a little too bold. It all ended with Captain America in the forties but we all know how that one went.”
“Not all things that die stay dead,” Logan sighed, staring up at the pale blue sky. The clock was running out on this conversation. “So what does this have to do with Henry?” What have I gotten myself into now?
“He was an indirect connection to this Hydra organization. Laundering, funneling, feeding something. Whatever it was, it’s bigger than him.” Jude hesitated, tone softening to something almost personal. “You need to lay low for a while, Logan.”
“I can’t just disappear.”
“Then be smart about it,” Jude shot back. “Because right now, your name’s sitting in a flagged data cache I shouldn’t have been able to access. Someone’s already looking at you.”
“It’s a fake name,” Logan answered, keeping her voice steady. “Alison Roberts. I’ve only used that one for a few months, You said it was still clean.”
“It was until last night.” Jude’s voice was tinny through the speaker now, low and urgent. “Send me the original job file, all of it. Whoever hired you, I want their data trail before it disappears.”
And with that, the call ended.
She hadn’t expected direct sympathy from Jude. The fact that the woman had dug so deep after one picture was more than enough care to expect. They weren’t a team. Hardly even acquaintances. Jude helped her verify her jobs and got her a fake identity when she needed one. Hardly enough to form a friendship.
But if Jude was worried about this enough to tell Logan to step back, it was bad. Logan felt the wave rising above her. Another thing to outrun.
Ramona ran over to her soon enough and they walked together to the metro stop outside of the high school. Logan tried to listen as Ramona babbled about her day, but by the time the train pulled up she had barely caught anything other than the words history project.
“So, are you excited or what?” Ramona asked, bouncing on her heels.
“Sure,” Logan replied absently.
Ramona kicked her lightly in the shin. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
She glanced up, finally giving her sister her full attention. “Excited for what?”
“Your date,” Ramona sang. “With that girl you matched with online?”
Oh, yes. The online dating account that Ramona and their other sister Remi had made without telling Logan. A classic scheme borne out of too much time watching Disney Channel. Logan had been against it, but she had relented. What was the harm?
“You forgot, didn’t you,” Ramona frowned. “Are you gonna bail?”
“No, I didn’t forget,” Logan coughed out. A lie. “And I won’t bail. But this is the only time I’m going to do this.”
“Come on,” Ramona whined, hanging on the pole in the middle of the train car like a woman scorned. “You have no social life, you haven’t dated anyone since we left New York.”
Logan adjusted her bag. She had been on dates with a few different men and women. Nothing that had lasted longer than a few dinners. “I have a full time job, Ramona.”
She moved so quickly, her lacrosse stick almost whacked a man in a suit in the face. “Everyone has a full time job! And they’re dating!”
Logan grabbed the lacrosse stick and shot an apologetic smile at the man, who looked ready to hit Ramona with his newspaper. “I’m busy, Ramona, that’s all I’m trying to say. There are things that take priority over dating.”
Unsaid went the words that Logan never uttered to Ramona and Remi. Becoming a legal guardian at the age of 21 had stolen whatever was left of her chance at a normal young adulthood. There would be no dating, no clubbing, no grad school, no vacations. She never wanted them to believe it was their fault. She never wanted them to want anything, not in the bone-gnawing way she had.
Ramona’s bright blue eyes darted up to meet Logan’s. Too wise for her age. “I just want you to have a normal life. After everything. You deserve it.”
Her heart clenched. A normal life. After all of those years in Tennessee, that’s what they had here in the city. But nothing had been normal, not for a long time. The world itself felt altered, somehow. Like aliens spilling from the skies of New York had shaken everyone into the realization that things could never be normal again.
“Plus, you’re almost thirty. You need to get out there.”
Logan laughed. “I appreciate that. But it isn’t your job to take care of me.”
Ramona just sighed and stared out the window as they rattled towards the Petworth metro stop. “Well, someone has to.”
When they arrived at the worn brick of their apartment building, the piece of notebook paper that said out of order was still taped to the elevator for the second week in a row. Ramona took the stairs two at a time. Logan let her dart ahead while she ruminated for four flights of stairs over the cufflink with the skull.
Her cover had been blown before. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes an accident, but never this quickly. It would take a trip uptown to see Jude before she could take on another job. If Jude had been right, which she always was, it was for the best if Logan stayed home this weekend, anyways.
And then the date. The date. The woman she had matched with was brunette and gorgeous. They had a few things in common based on their profiles and the ten lines of text they had exchanged before deciding to go out on a date. It would be fun. It was good for her. At the very least it would get Ramona off her case.
Ahead of her, Ramona was pounding on the door to be let in. She had lost her apartment key twice, and both times Logan had to have the door re-keyed. Ramona wasn’t allowed to take an apartment key with her to school anymore.
“Don’t make so much noise,” Logan called up the stairwell. Irony echoed back with her voice.
The apartment door swung open and Ramona excitedly greeted whoever was on the other side. Logan frowned. Remi and Ramona were at the exact age where they were almost always at each other’s throats. There were no pleasant greetings between the two of them.
As Logan reached the door and crossed the threshold, she saw who it was. Sam. She must have forgotten that he was coming over.
Logan tried to keep her tone light, but it still came out as an accusation. “What are you doing here?”
Sam Wilson was sitting on the couch casually with his shoes off; Remi must have let him in a while ago. “Watchin’ baseball. Braves are up one against the Mets.”
Logan bit her inner cheek. The Mets were Sam’s team, and the Braves were Logan’s. Possibly the only thing she had inherited from her father. “How long have you been here?”
“About a half hour. Remi let me in.”
Sam had a key, just in case. He never used it.
Logan glanced at the puppy-themed calendar tacked to the wall. She hadn’t written anything down for today. “Did Remi eat dinner yet?”
“No,” he spoke slowly, reminding her of another plan she had forgotten. “We’re going to get tacos and see that movie with the puppets.”
“Muppets,” Ramona corrected him as she kicked off her running shoes. “You’re coming too, aren’t you?”
It took Logan a second to realize who she was talking to. “Um, no, I don’t think so, buddy. I have a project that I need to finish up for work.”
“Work, huh?” Sam said, leaning forward on the couch. “Gonna be a late night?”
Logan glared at him now, eyes flashing a warning. “Not too late.”
Sam was the only one who knew about Logan’s after hours job. Besides Jude, who hardly counted, Sam Wilson was the only living soul that knew about the blood covering Logan’s hands. She hadn’t wanted to tell him, but he had known about it ever since Logan’s older brother had died. After that point, Sam had inserted himself into their lives so fully that it would have been impossible for him not to find out.
“You’re never gonna guess who I saw again today,” Sam told Ramona as she settled next to him on the couch.
“Who?”
He leaned back with a smug look on his face. “Captain America.”
Logan rolled her eyes. “Sam, come on.”
“It’s true!” He laughed as Ramona’s eyes went wide. “Every morning he’s out on his run around the mall the same as I am.”
“I bet you’re getting smoked,” Remi said, walking into the room. Her strawberry blonde hair was piled in a bun and sunglasses were perched on the crown of her head.
Ramona looked ready to explode. “Can you please please please ask him to sign my trading cards?”
Logan went to the magnet-covered fridge and pulled out a can of diet coke. She leaned against the counter, out of view of the small living room as Remi argued with Ramona about how Steve Rogers was probably an asshole in real life. Logan huffed and took a sip of her soda.
The only part of the living room that she could see from her angle was the mantle, a rickety old shelf that held a clustered row of photographs. Remi with a science fair ribbon, Ramona’s latest lacrosse picture, and even a small photo of Logan at her college graduation. In the middle of it all was the star-studded blue triangle of her brother’s casket flag. His Air Force portrait sat next to it. Ronald ‘Ben’ Riley.
After the Battle of New York, she hadn’t thought there could be anything worse. Two months later, an Air Force officer had knocked on the door of her apartment and proved her wrong. Ben, killed in action in the skies of Afghanistan right in front of his flight partner’s eyes. Sam Wilson had shown up at their door mere hours later. Only the beginning of his debt of guilt.
Once Sam had formally retired from the military and Logan had moved her sisters up to D.C., he started checking in on them. It started out as courtesy calls to make sure they were settling in. He helped Logan move the furniture around and brought them dinner without being asked. Then it escalated. He came to all of Ramona’s lacrosse games. He came to watch Remi’s orchestra concerts. Things that Ben had hardly been around for himself.
Logan hadn’t been easy on Sam since it had all happened. Every time he showed up, she felt that familiar, brittle anger spark in her chest. Because he’d been there. Because he’d lived. Because every time she saw him, she was reminded of the terrible words she had said the last time she’d seen her brother.
After Sam had left with promises to be back by nine and the noise of the apartment had settled to silence, Logan curled up on the couch with leftover chicken and a bottle of beer. Her computer screen danced between articles and images related to Hydra. The baseball game continued to play in the background until the final crack of a bat.
The Braves lost.