Code Name: Untraceable

Chapter Twenty-Three: Where the Hell Is Bob?

The team had just made it back to the compound.

Everyone was tense. No one was talking.

Yelena sat on the arm of the couch, chewing gum angrily. John paced like a lion in too-tight tactical gear. Ava looked two seconds from snapping. Bucky stood in the corner, arms crossed, eyes narrowed-calculating.

Alexei was eating someone's leftovers. No one asked whose.

Then the door opened.

Val walked in, tablet in hand, her heels clicking like an executioner's drumbeat.

"Where the hell is Bob?"

Six heads turned to her instantly.

Then-like they'd rehearsed it, badly-they all answered at once.

"He's getting lunch."
"He's taking a walk."
"He's in the medbay."
"He flew back to HQ."
"He's doing recon."
"He's pooping."

Silence.

Val blinked. "Pooping?"

Alexei raised his hand. "That one was mine."

Yelena jumped in. "He's fine. We just... split up."

"Strategically," Ava added. "On purpose."

"For intel," John nodded. "Very important intel."

Val's eyes narrowed. "You lost him."

"No!" they all said at once.

Then-less confidently-Bucky muttered, "He stayed behind."

Everyone turned to glare at him.

Val's expression went from suspicious to lethal. "Stayed behind where?"

No one answered.

Because they didn't want to say her name.

They didn't want to tell Val that Bob Reynolds, anxious sunshine boy of destruction, had stayed behind in a fortified ghost bunker with the most unpredictable woman any of them had ever met.

So Yelena cleared her throat and said:

"He'll call you later."

Val stared.

"I'm going to ask one more time."

They braced.

"Where. Is. Bob?"

And every single one of them said something different again.