Mission 4: Betrayal Part 2

Ryan was watching Cathy from his perch several stories up. Laz was standing next to him, watching every suspicious person. Ryan had no idea were the sniper was hiding, but he was almost positive that there was one. He had a suspicion that it was a young brunette that he had been watching. She had been acting rather strangely and he was almost sure that she had been tailing Cathy earlier. Now she had disappeared, not a good sign.
Ryan spoke into his radio, “Just calm down, Cathy, and wait for my signal.”
“I’m trying to,” came the distressed response. “But you’re not helping.”
“She has a point there,” Laz commented.
Cathy’s voice came through again. “This is taking too long; when are you going to signal?”
“Now, go now!” Ryan yelled into the radio. Cathy burst from the bathroom and ran as fast as she could towards the door. She was almost to the door when she suddenly jerked forward and fell on her face.
Ryan and Laz whirled around to see a gun barrel being pulled out of from in between a vent in the wall a couple of stories up. Panic started to rise up in the two agent’s minds; Ryan thought of all the things he could say, what he could scream. He tried to sort all of these out in his mind and say the best one, but all that came out was, “oops.”
Laz flinched. “Ouch, headshot.”
The entire mall was going crazy by now; Cathy was lying dead on the floor, blood flowing from her head. There was no way that she would be coming back anytime soon. Ryan and Laz searched for a place to hide. They had no doubt that that sniper was coming after them now. Seeing a woman’s clothing store behind them, they ducked inside. This brought several strange glances from everyone inside, but the people quickly forgot about them when Cathy’s death became known. Everyone stampeded out of the store and drove away as fast as possible.
“Where do we go now?” Laz asked.
“Anywhere but here,” Ryan replied. They rushed out of the store and charged down the hall. They looked up to see a masked woman running with them on the floor above, or at least they assumed it was a woman because of her long hair. They stopped and started to turn around, but the woman jumped down in front of them and cut off their route.
“Wait,” she said, pulling off the mask. “I’m a friend.” She shook her head and flipped her brown hair back. Her brown eyes did indeed seem friendly, but they also seemed troubled.
“Wait,” Ryan said. “You’re that brunette that was following Cathy.”
She nodded. “That’s right, and my name’s Sarah.” A question started to form on the two agent’s lips but Sarah answered it before they could ask. “I was trying to protect Cathy from that sniper, but obviously, I couldn’t.” She led them inside a door that said employees only. “We should probably lay low for a while,” she advised. “That sniper could be looking for us.”
“How do we know that you’re not the sniper?” Laz asked.
She smiled. “You don’t.”
Laz groaned. “I hate it when people say that.” He motioned for Ryan to come with him and meet in the corner of the room.
“How do we know if we can trust her?” Laz asked.
Ryan shrugged. “Well, she is pretty.” It was true, the mysterious woman looked like she could easily win a beauty pageant if she tried.
Laz rolled his eyes. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
Ryan threw up his hands. “I don’t know, I was just saying.”
“Besides,” Laz said. “Haven’t you ever noticed that all girls in any secret agent story are always good-looking? No matter if they’re good or bad. If they’re not then they’re killed off right away.”
Ryan frowned. “That’s not true.”
Just then a homely cleaning lady burst through the door. Her face was covered in zits and she had a huge scowl on her face. “What the heck are you three doing here!” she bellowed. She started to let loose a flurry of curse words at them, but she was suddenly shot in the head and she sank to the floor.
“See what I mean?” Laz said smugly.
Ryan stroked his chin. “Maybe you’ve got a point there.”
Sarah grabbed them both by the arm and dragged them out the back door. “Come on,” she said. “We don’t want to meet whoever was on the other end of that gunshot.”
They rushed out the door and onto a fire escape that was out back. They ran down the stairs as fast as possible. As they were running, bullets started flying all around them. Whoever was above them was shooting at them! Ryan looked up and tried to see who it was that was shooting at them but he could never get a good look. They dodged the bullets and sped down the stairs until they reached the ground.
“Come on,” Ryan called. “Our car is right here.” They all jumped inside Ryan’s Porsche and Ryan stepped on the gas. They peeled out of the parking lot and drove away. Once they were farther away, Ryan slowed down.
“So Sarah, I don’t believe we ever told you our names. Name’s Cruise… Ryan Cruise.” He stuck out his hand and Sarah shook it.
“Do you steal all your lines from James Bond movies, or just a mix of secret agent movies?” she asked, trying to cover her smile.
“Who me? Of course not.” Ryan acted surprised.
“I’m Laz,” Laz offered.
“Hi Laz,” Sarah said. “In case you’re wondering, I work for IMF.”
“You do?” Ryan was shocked. “So do we!”
“Really?” Sarah said. “Well at least I won’t have to explain what it is to you then. That’s always a problem.”
“Yeah, we get that a lot to,” Ryan nodded. “How come we’ve never seen you before if you work for IMF?”
“There’s more than one team that works for IMF, you know.” Sarah pointed out.
Ryan paused for a second. “There is?”
Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, didn’t you know that?”
Ryan coughed. “Yeah, yeah, of course I did.”
Laz spoke up again from the back, “he’s lying.”
Sarah grinned again, it seemed as if she couldn’t help but smile at Ryan. “Yeah, I guessed as much.” Then she turned serious. “Well, I used to work for IMF. My team was dismantled a few weeks ago and I’ve been on the run ever since.”
Ryan frowned. “Dismantled? What do you mean?”
Sarah made a slashing motion across her throat with her finger.
Laz flinched. “I’m sorry, we know what it feels like to lose a team member.”
Sarah frowned and folded her arms. “Not every agent. I lost every man and every woman. I’m the only one left.”
Ryan drove up to his house and parked the car. “Do you have any idea who’s behind this?” he asked.
Sarah looked at him. “I’ll give you one guess.”
Ryan thought for a minute while they got out of the car. “Space aliens?”
Sarah shook her head. “No, of course not. The emperor.”
“Why would he take out his own IMF team?” Laz asked.
Sarah lowered her voice to a whisper. “Because, we know too much.”
“Know what?” Ryan scratched his head.
Sarah gave a frustrated look. “Well you don’t have to worry about it. Because you’re obviously clueless!” She walked away and sat down on the curb.
Ryan looked at Laz and shrugged. “What’d I say?”
Laz only shrugged back. “You understand woman better than I do.”
“But I don’t understand woman at all.”
“Exactly.”
Just then, Ryan’s cell phone rang. Ryan flipped it open, “Yo.”
“Ryan,” came a woman’s voice. “This is Kayla.”
“Kayla,” Ryan said. “Just the woman I needed to talk to. We’ve got an angry girl on our hands and I don’t know what to do.”
Kayla ignored his comment. “Tim’s been captured, Ryan.”
“What? By who?” Ryan asked, shocked.
“I don’t know,” Kayla replied. “The emperor would only tell me that he was on a mission by himself and he fell into enemy hands.”
“Great,” Ryan sighed. “Two agents in one day.”
“What?” now it was Kayla’s turn to be surprised. “What’re you talking about?”
Ryan paused. “I don’t know how to say this but… Cathy’s dead.”
For a few seconds, Ryan was met with nothing but shocked silence. Then Kayla nearly exploded. “Dead? What do you mean, dead? How is that possible? You’re lying!”
Ryan held the phone from his ear. “What do I say, Laz?” he asked.
Laz shrugged. “I don’t know any better than you do.”
Kayla started to burst into tears on the other end of the line. “Look, Kayla, please don’t cry.”
Kayla sniffed. “Okay, what do you need me to do?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“Well,” Ryan thought. “Have all the agents gather here for a meeting. At least, all the agents we have left…”
Kayla started to burst into tears again. “Oops, I didn’t mean that last part Kayla. Don’t worry, Cathy won’t die in vain; we’ll find out what she knew if we die trying… that was just a figure of speech, we’re not gonna die.”

To be continued...