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It took four days for the fisherman to put them ashore at a small port that he assured them received enough tourists for them to not stand out but not enough for there to be any regular official presences there. It took another three days of casing the small town for Aaron to decide it was safe and to find them a small beachfront house he deemed defensible. A week later Marta walked out of their bedroom to find Jason Bourne sitting at her kitchen table.
She gasped and the lopsided clay mug she’d been holding shattered on the floor at her feet, but she didn’t otherwise move. Bourne – and it had to be him, the man in front of her was tanner and his hair was lighter but she’d seen the news and it was him – could have killed her before she even knew he was there for one thing. For another, he had every gun Aaron had stashed around the place laid out in the middle of the table, not that he needed any of them to kill her.
But he had both hands flat on the table, away from the guns and in plain sight. “I’m not going to hurt you, ma’am.”
Marta had to wet her lips before she could speak. “Then what are you here for?” Her voice wobbled a little, but Aaron wasn’t supposed to be back for an hour, and she was so very much over her head here.
His voice was oddly gentle as he answered, “I need to talk to Aaron Cross.” Right, he didn’t care about wiping out everything having to do with Project Outcome, but he was probably unhappy that Aaron had stirred up media frenzy connecting him and Bourne.
She swallowed and was proud of how her voice didn’t wobble at all now. “He’s not here. He left days ago, said that I could take care of myself now.”
“Ma’am.” She tensed as he leaned forward, but he didn’t get up and he left his hands carefully away from the guns on the table. “All of his gear is here. I know he didn’t leave.”
She flushed and couldn’t stop herself from darting a look at what was clearly a man’s jacket draped over the back of a chair across the room.
He followed her eyes and she swore the corners of his mouth quirked up in a smile that was gone before she could really see it. But it didn’t feel like a mean smile, and his voice had a little more emotion in it as he said, “I’m not going to hurt him either. I just want to talk.” He met her eyes squarely now.
He seemed sincere, but so did Aaron when he was bluffing his way into something. “How do I know you’re not lying?” she demanded.
“You don’t,” he replied. “But I’m not with the US government now, as you’ve probably heard.” His lips quirked again in what was definitely a smile this time. “Us off the grid, escaped government projects have to stick together, you know.”
“But then why…” She flicked her gaze quickly down to the guns on the table and then back up again.
“Just trying to stop things from getting complicated.” He leaned back in his chair. “I need you to call him now, tell him to come back. Use whatever codes you’ve come up with if you want, but don’t mention my name over the line – I don’t think anyone is listening, but better to be safe.”
Marta doesn’t think they have a code for someone showing up in their kitchen who doesn’t seem to be hostile but is still Jason fucking Bourne and there’s no telling. “I could tell him we’re burned and not to come back.”
The smile is back. “Ma’am, do you really think he wouldn’t come back for you, even if the CIA had an operative per square inch in this place? He’ll come back as fast as he can as soon as you call, and it would be to everyone’s benefit if he didn’t come in hot.”
That is probably true. Keeping one eye on Bourne, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and called Aaron.
He answered on the second ring. “Marta?” She can hear the sounds of the market behind him, and he only sounded marginally concerned.
“Aaron, uh – “ she struggled to put her current situation into words that won’t send him into a state.
“What’s wrong? Who’s there?” he demanded. She must not have as much control of her voice as she liked to pretend.
“Nothing’s wrong, exactly,” she said, praying she was right about that. “But, um-“ She looked at Bourne, who nodded encouragingly.
Aaron, on the other end of the line, had gone emotionless. “Don’t say anything if they’ll hurt you. I’m on my way, twenty minutes tops –“
“There’s a spider in the house!” she blurted, because that is the only metaphor she can think of off the top of her head. She was supposed to talk about sailing conditions if the CIA was forcing her to call him, but that was the only code they had set up. “But it’s just one, and I’m not allowed to name him.”
“A…spider?” he asked, and across the room Bourne’s eyebrows have flown up. She grimaced at him and listened to the sounds of Aaron clearly slamming his car door over the phone.
“Yes…but it seems like the type that doesn’t bite unless you poke at it?” she tried and immediately put a hand over her face. Bourne was openly laughing at her.
“Marta—“ Aaron sounded frustrated, possibly like he didn’t know what she was talking about while trying to drive an ancient jeep at incredibly unsafe speeds down a curvy, broken up road.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m completely fine. The – uh – spider hasn’t done anything. But he said I should call you. So I did, so you wouldn’t umm, step on the spider when you came back?”
“Marta—“ Aaron said again, sounding more concerned.
Marta gave up. “I’m going to hang up now,” she said. “Not because he’s making me or because I’m not continuing to be fine. But so that I don’t have to continue this ridiculous metaphor.”
Aaron made a frustrated noise, and she could tell that he was going to lecture her more on situation protocol at some point in the very near future, but all he said was “I’m fifteen minutes out. Be safe.” The line went dead.
Marta very carefully set the phone down on the counter beside her and took a deep breath before looking at Bourne. “What now?”
Bourne gave a half shrug, clearly still amused. “Now we wait for him to get here. You should clean up that mug so you don’t step on it,” he said with a nod to the floor at her feet. “And I will stay all the way over here so you don’t get alarmed.”
“Mostly I feel embarrassed at the moment,” she muttered as she stooped to pick up the broken pieces of pottery. She hesitated because the bucket they used for trash was on the other side of the room by Bourne and ended up just setting the larger pieces on the counter by her phone.
“You did fine. He’ll still come in wary, but he knows by your tone that you don’t believe yourself in any immediate danger. What he’s worried about now is you underestimating the real danger.”
“How do you know how he’s going to react to me?” she asked. She settled for grabbing a rag and brushing the tinier pieces into the corner. She’d clean it up later, if there was a later.
“Caring about someone compromises you.” She jerked her head up to look at him because that sounded personal, but he was looking down at the table. “So he’ll look to you first, to make sure you’re as fine as you said you were. If you were hurt, or if I was, say, using you as a shield, he wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet through my head.”
“Could he put a bullet through your head?” she wondered. Even isolated scientists in her department had heard the stories about Jason Bourne, and the mentions Aaron had made of him now and again had only confirmed most of them. If Jason Bourne wanted them dead, she thought even Aaron would be hard-pressed to stop him.
“That’s not something I’m interested in finding out, ma’am,” he said, looking up again. He was like Aaron, so personable, but she could see how easily his face and eyes would turn to steel. Emotional shutdown, ready to get the job done.
“Marta, you should call me Marta, not ma’am,” she corrected, because why not. Ma’am made him sound too military. Then she noticed he wasn’t looking at her anymore and looked over to see Aaron standing in the doorway, guns trained squarely at Bourne. “Aaron!”
“Marta, are you hurt?” He took his eyes off of Bourne for a split second to look at her, and Marta remembered Bourne saying that he would always look to her first.
“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “He hasn’t done anything. I just dropped my mug when I saw him.”
There was considering pause, and when Marta looked at Bourne she could see he was as still as Aaron. Both of them were so tense she could almost see their muscles quivering, but neither of them moved except to blink. “How did you find us?” Aaron finally demanded.
“It wasn’t easy,” Bourne admitted. “I knew where the CIA had lost you, but it took some doing to pick up your trail and not put them on the scent at the same time.”
“So why go through all the trouble? Last I heard, you had pretty effectively vanished into New York.” Aaron still wasn’t moving, and Marta shifted uncomfortably. She’d just been starting to relax here, to wrap her mind around the concept of settling down here with Aaron, and this conversation was reminding her of things she was just getting over being jumpy about.
“I just wanted to talk – share intel.” The tension in the room was almost unbearable to Marta, although neither man showed any signs of it. “I got enough information out when I left that Treadstone will never be operational again, and they’ll have to burn significant parts of Black Briar. But I had no idea Outcome – any of the programs they spun out of Treadstone – existed.”
“And you want to know how far all of this will fall out.” Aaron hadn’t moved, but the lines around his eyes relaxed slightly.
Bourne nodded, tight, jerky. “They’ll be too busy covering their own asses to do much for a while. But all’s it takes is one agency with a grudge or a lucky picture, and they’ll come.” He laughed, and it wasn’t a good sound. “You just want to live a quiet life and have them leave you alone, but at best we’re lost property to them. At worst, we’re proof of their failures. They can’t control us, but they won’t stop trying.”
Aaron was silent for a long moment, and then he gestured towards the small, open-walled sitting area at the back of the house. It couldn’t be seen from the road, and there weren’t any boats in sight on the ocean side. Bourne got up slowly, raising his hands to shoulder height. He walked the opposite way around the room from Marta; Aaron mirrored his steps until Bourne was in the doorway and Aaron was by her. “Are you alright?” he asked again, voice low.
She risked putting a hand on his side, where it wouldn’t affect his arms if he had to move. “I’m fine. I think he really wants to talk.”
“Stay out here,” he said. He kept his eyes on Bourne, but he did lean slightly into her hand.
“Like hell I will,” Marta said sweetly. Bourne’s face quirked up in a hint of a smile again, while Aaron’s face turned stony. “I want to hear what he has to say. I deserve to hear what he has to say. And anyway, if he can get through you out there, where I am in the house is going to make no difference.”
Aaron didn’t answer her, but she could feel his resigned sigh, and he gestured for Bourne to go out into the sitting area. “At least stay behind me?” he asked, tucking one gun back in a holster and moving to follow Bourne. Marta followed, deciding to lean awkwardly against the doorway. Neither of them had sat, but Bourne seemed to be minutely relaxing.
“As I said, I just want to know what you know about Project Outcome, and any other programs coming from Treadstone,” Bourne said. “And I can give you what I know about who’s still in the field or in office that was connected to Treadstone. In case they get an interest in you. Between the two of us, we might be able to get a clear picture of who’s in the game.”
“But why?” Aaron demanded. “They think I’m dead, and they terminated the rest of the program. You’ve completely evaded them, and no one with an ounce of self-preservation is going to take on your case again.” Aaron had told Marta some of the stories that surrounded Jason Bourne. The name was an overnight legend in the undercover world. The details changed, but no one could deny that he’d apparently gone through every department and agency that had come up against him. No matter what he said, he really didn’t need their help to keep the agencies off his back.
“And I was completely off the grid in India, and they found me. They found me, and they killed M—“ Bourne pressed his lips together, breathing through his nose. He looked at Aaron. “They’ll go through her. If they find you, they’ll use her to get to you.”
Aaron went completely rigid, and although he didn’t look at her, Marta could tell he wanted to. Marta could see how hard his jaw was clenched from the doorway. Bourne, however, was looking at her. Quick, darting glances from her to Aaron and then briefly to down to where his hands where clenched in front of him. He looked…like he used to have his own little bungalow out of the way, she realized. Her and Aaron, it could have been Bourne and whoever he lost. Maybe was, for a while.
She entered the room and approached Aaron from the side where he could see her. “I think you can put that away,” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder. “And we can all sit down, and talk about what we need to do so that doesn’t happen again to any of us.”
Slowly, Aaron did as she asked and put the gun away. He always teased her about how bad she was at reading people, but if she had caught the look in Bourne’s eyes, then he had seen it too. Bourne lowered himself into a chair when she motioned at him. Aaron stared at him until he’d gotten completely settled and then turned his attention to Marta so that both men were staring at her.
She shrugged at them. “Well? I don’t want to be a statistic or a pawn, but I’m not the one with knowledge about the agents in charge.”
Aaron shared a look with Bourne that seemed to last forever, but then he suddenly reached out and drew her in to squash into the oversized chair next to him, pressed against his entire side. Across the room, Bourne suddenly unfroze, sitting back into his chair and relaxing his military posture.
Marta listened to them tossing names of organizations that probably still had a hit out on her and tried to concentrate on how she could feel Aaron breathe beside her instead. Forewarned was forearmed, and maybe, after this, they could stop living on borrowed time and have a chance to keep this.