He was all sharp edges with a brooding darkness that set your pulse racing. His eyes blue fathomless pools. It was like looking into a void. Ice cold.
He was a cold hearted assassin. She was trained to take him down.
A Dark AU Van McCann story (thi...
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By some miracle Raj survived his injuries, and Jen stayed in Paris with him for the following week whilst he underwent surgery and was strong enough to be transferred to a hospital back in the UK. Meanwhile I was flown home the very next day amid a whirlwind of speculation that the criminal network that Van worked for were losing a grip on their stronghold and were acting out of desperation by ordering such a brutal attack. Although Van had taken out the primary target by administering a deadly poison, the other two gunmen had been given different assignments. They had been tasked with eliminating all agents by any means necessary, and any resulting loss of life would only serve to get their violent message across. They weren't going to back down and they were a force to be reckoned with. Twenty innocent lives had been cruelly snatched away, seen as nothing more than collateral damage.
Van evaded capture yet again, and I was lauded as some kind of hero for taking out two killers.
"Lyla, you never cease to amaze me, you said you wouldn't let me down and you didn't. Absolutely incredible work."
Paul's praise settled over me like a suffocating blanket, and I could only manage a weak smile. "I was just doing my job. And if I'd acted quicker I probably could have prevented all those people from being killed."
"Nonsense!" Paul said forcefully. "You couldn't have foreseen what was about to go down. Many more would have lost their lives including Raj if you hadn't taken that gunman down when you did. And as for wrestling Van's gun out of his hands and shooting the other attacker..."
Paul trailed off, shaking his head in amazement, glowing with pride. I looked down, unable to carry on looking him in the eye. I felt sick to my stomach about the lies that I'd told and the knowledge of what I was doing in Van's hotel room whilst innocent people lay dead and dying.
No one seemed to question the glaring holes in my improbable story. Like what happened to Van's gun after I'd managed to unarm him and shoot the other assailant. Or how the dead man ended up in the bathtub of the hotel room that Van had been occupying. All they were interested in hearing about was how I'd courageously faced up to Van once again and escaped with my life intact. I was relieved that Jason was following up leads in Berlin as he would have likely seen straight through my charade.
"You'll be pleased to hear that there's going to be plenty of assignments coming up," Paul said, poring over the stacks of paperwork on his desk. "I know how you hate being stuck in the office."
Those words would usually have my heart racing with excitement, but they elicited the opposite reaction this time. I'd been thinking of requesting to be taken temporarily out of the field again, worried that my severe lack of judgement between right and wrong when it came to Van could result in someone from my team losing their life. But how was Paul to know? He was caught up in celebrating this apparently valiant version of me that was very far from the shameful truth.
"But I'll be needing to follow up some leads in the office following on from what happened," I mumbled uneasily. "There's plenty more agents champing at the bit to get out there."
