Chapter 12
The whiplash of all the various time zones across the United States over the course of the last week was finally catching up to Peggy. She caught her reflection in the light of the quinjet’s windows, darkened now with the early onset of winter evening, and attempted to hide it with a discreet hand over her mouth.
“Rough night last night?” Jake glanced sideways towards her from his seat in the pilot’s chair.
“Mmm, rough few nights of sleep.” Most of the week, actually, since Steve left with Romanoff on their mysterious mission. Rather than dwell on the question of their whereabouts, however, she shot her companion a sly, knowing smile. “Hopefully yours was a quiet night?”
Despite serving as Peggy’s favorite and most frequent chauffeur, Jake Jameson was a SHIELD agent and no idiot. He could sense her fishing a mile away and gave her a look that said he was well aware of what she was up to. “Quiet enough, given Sharon’s state of mind. She hardly had any sleep, not since the explosion in Kuwait.”
Peggy only felt a small twinge of guilt for teasing him. “I know. I’m glad she could at least rest some.” In truth, she was worried for her niece. She had been handed this case, her first large one, and given everything she was handling it well. That didn’t make it easy for her. A case like this, with so many civilian casualties, was never easy for anyone. “I’m glad you could be there for her.”
Beside her Jake nodded, pointedly fixing his attention to the darkened skies in front of them. “Me too. Sharon’s an amazing person. I care a lot about her.”
His words were carefully said, Peggy noted, diplomatic in his choice. Nothing of love, at least not yet, but they were certainly not a blustering attempt at shameful denial on what was going on between them. She considered them for a long moment. “It has to be hard in our business, finding anyone you can trust to be that intimate and vulnerable around. I can see why you two would gravitate to one another.”
“Do you?”
His question surprisingly caught Peggy short. Did she? It didn’t occur to her till then that while she knew Sharon exceedingly well, Jake she barely knew at all. Despite the fact that Jake had served almost exclusively as her pilot over the years, certainly the one she tended to call on the most for her many jaunts in SHIELD vehicles, she realized she had spent precious little of that time getting to know the man. She certainly didn’t know him enough to make that sort of statement.
“You caught me out,” she admitted, sheepishly, shrugging her shoulders under her safety harness. “I own it! I was surprised when I found out about the two of you together.”
He wasn’t offended by that. If anything, he seemed amused. “I didn’t figure you were paying enough attention when it happened. You were preoccupied with getting Cap out of the ice, which was a legitimate worry, I get it. Besides, Sharon wanted to keep it quiet. In our line of business, you know, it’s hard to keep up relationships of any sort, and we really just hooked up at first for fun more than anything else.”
“I’m not one to judge,” Peggy reassured him, smirking at his amused expression. “Honestly, you and Sharon assume just because I was raised eighty years ago that I am some sort of scandalized prude? We had sex in the 1940s. How is it you term it? ‘Hook up culture’ happened in 1942 as well.”
“I’m not saying it didn’t, it’s just…I don’t know, I forget sometimes you are the same age as my grandmother.”
Peggy just did smother her mild outrage, and that only because he was likely not wrong, she was probably the age of his grandmother. “Be that as it may, I still am not scandalized. I understand. As you said in this line of work we have to find our happiness where we can. No one gets that better than I do.”
“That part I gathered you understood,” he acknowledged, with a seriousness that wasn’t normal for the usually debonair pilot. “I mean, I saw you with Cap. That had to be hard, thinking he was dead, finding out he was alive, waiting to bring him back around.”
When she thought about it, it still brought burning tears to her eyes, despite the fact he was alive and well now. “It was,” she admitted, softly. She cleared her throat, blinking the mist from her vision. “So, should I have the ‘what are your intentions with my niece’ discussion with you, or save that for her father to grill you?”
“My intentions are to enjoy the time I spend with Sharon, at least for now, and not to hurt her. Anything else...we will see.” Underneath the earnestness, there was a thread of firm resolve in Jake’s words. “I know you two are close. She looks up to you a great deal.”
“I know,” Peggy murmured, recalling well their first meeting and Sharon’s amazement that she even existed. “I adore my niece. She doesn’t need my permission or my protection for anything, not if you two are happy with the way things are. Sharon can handle herself.”
“That she can,” Jake agreed, relaxing just a small bit for the first time since this conversation began.
“Though, if you do hurt her…”
“I understand completely that I will be a dead man, absolutely,” he joked, throwing up his hands from the steering in self-defense with a laugh. “I knew what I was getting into, dating a Carter.”
“Did you?” She threw a version of his own words back at him, teasing. “Well, brave man, then.”
“I am just saying, I am the one flying this plane. You are the one putting trust in me.”
Peggy pretended to consider that. “Fair enough.”
It was a silly idyl in the silence of their flight. Within minutes, Jake was studying the screens between them, pointing to a map that showed them hovering over the airspace outside of Chattanooga, in southeast Tennessee. “We should be there in ten minutes. I’m guessing with their later start that Banner and Thor are about ten minutes behind us. I’ll send coordinates to their pilot where to meet us.”
“Good,” she replied, glancing out of the quinjet and into the darkness below. There wasn’t much she could see, save for the occasional lights marking the various small towns. Slowly, Jake brought the quinjet further down from cruising altitude, close enough that she could begin to make out roads and buildings below, nestled in the valleys between smaller foothills. This part of Tennessee sat at the western foot of the Appalachian Mountains, where rolling peaks crested into deep ravines. Slowly, he made his way towards the town, a collection of lights hugging either side of a singular road running through it. Even from this height, however, Peggy could quickly see that something was off.
“There’s a fire down below,” she muttered, as Jake maneuvered over the town’s airspace, looking for a place to set the quinjet down.
“I see that,” he acknowledged. “There is a large empty patch right by the railroad tracks below, I’m going to set us down there.”
“Right,” she affirmed as she looked at the scene down below. As it turned out there was more than one fire burning, as several buildings in what looked to be its downtown center were on fire. Emergency vehicles lit up the night sky alongside the strings of Christmas flashing an eerie red and blue. A block away from the burning, old brick buildings, another scene of disaster lay, as more emergency vehicles clustered around what looked to be a downed water tower, twisted metal heaped and crumpled where it stood, the land and streets around it covered in water in the freezing temperatures. What had been a Christmas tree lot now was washed out at ground zero of the disaster.
“What happened here,” she muttered, more to herself than to Jake.
“Don’t know,” he replied anyway, lowering the quinjet to the ground. “But if Stark was here, I am guessing Killian might have found him?”
Peggy hoped that Jake’s hypothesis was wrong. “Let’s get on the ground and see who is in charge here.”
The spot Jake had found for their landing was a block removed from the center of the worst action. At one point in time it might have had buildings there, judging from it’s squared off shape, but now was just a patch of snow-covered, winter-blasted grass with railroad tracks that ran across it. On the other side of the street was a restaurant, strung in Christmas lights, and a martial arts gym, closed and dark for the night.
“It’s a bit brisk,” Jake muttered, pulling on a downy coat as Peggy zipped up her own. This time of day Los Angeles was still sunny and perhaps forty degrees warmer than Rose Hills at the moment. She shivered, wrapping a scarf around her neck, stepping out into the frost, towards the paved road and the small crowd of people spilling out of the restaurant, all chattering in hushed, fevered excitement.
“Excuse me,” she called, drawing the attention of several wide-eyed citizens. “What’s been going on?”
A tall, bearded man, standing out in the cold in a t-shirt and flannel jacket, jerked his whiskers in the direction of the quinjet. “That thing yours?”
“It belongs to the agency we are with,” she offered, reaching into her pocket for her badge. “We are with SHIELD, we were here on a case and came up on the emergency in progress.”
A woman in a much heavier jacket than the bearded man spoke up. “There was a commotion at Walker’s. There were shots. Heard the sheriff is in critical condition.”
“Shit, Larry?” The bearded man swore, tugging his beard as several others gasped in concern. Someone asked if anyone had called Sheila. Peggy supposed that must be someone tied to this sheriff.
“What happened,” she insisted, cutting into the growing commotion with an edge of authority. It brought the chattering down as the woman’s attention was jerked back to her in surprise.
“Errr…I am not sure. All I now is there was a ruckus at the bar, things got out of hand, people started shooting. They exploded the coffee shop across the way, though.” She waved down to where the fire was still smoldering. “And then someone else got the water tower.”
“They think it’s terrorists?” Someone in the crowd asked, half-fearfully.
“Who the hell would want to blow up someplace like this,” someone else shot back.
“But that Mandarin is running around blowing things up! He got the Chinese Theater and that air base! Who says we aren’t next?”
Babble started rising up from the crowd as Peggy turned to Jake, jerking her head up the street towards where the main crux of the conflict appeared to be. He followed her lead as they marched up the slushy street, towards a phalanx of first responders in various uniforms.
“Excuse me,” Peggy called, catching the eye of an paramedic as he finished wrapping up the ankle of a resident sitting in the back of an ambulance. “Who is in charge here?”
The paramedic turned and pointed to a man in an oversized brown jacket and a large brimmed brown hat, seemingly directing four different people demanding his attention all at once. Peggy thanked him and marched over to the harried fellow, a tall, skinny man who looked somewhat overwhelmed with the situation happening around him.
“Chattanooga is sending a team up, so make sure they get over here,” he said to another officer in a similar outfit in a thick, his words thick with a deep Southern drawl. Whatever they were discussing, the subordinate understood, nodding and moving around Peggy as she brushed past.
“Excuse me, Sheriff!”
The man paused to frown at her, looking her up and down. “It’s Deputy. Who are you and what do you want?”
“Deputy, then,” Peggy corrected, holding up her badge. “Director Peggy Carter, I’m with SHIELD.”
“SHIELD?” His thin, dark eyebrows nearly crawled under his hat. “The hell is SHIELD involved in all of this now?”
“It might be tied to one of our own cases,” Peggy conceded, sensing this wasn’t precisely going to make him happy. The name badge on the right side of his jacket read “Richardson”. “Are you the one in charge then, Deputy Richardson?”
His expression went grim as he flicked a brief glance at his name badge. “I am for now, at least as the senior most deputy on the force. Sheriff is in critical condition and being rushed to the hospital as we speak, so I’m afraid you will have to deal with me.”
As he spoke, a man in fire gear wandered up, breaking into their conversation. “Think we will get the blaze contained in the next hour or so, Jeff, but the coffee shop is a loss and so is the shop next door.”
Peggy craned around to see the buildings in question, smoke pouring out of them both, but the flames that had been licking at them both as they flew over seemed to be lessening. The fireman was right, the one she guessed to be the restaurant was gutted, already blackened inside, while the boutique next to it looked nearly as bad. The shop's front window had a Christmas display of goods, all blackened and charred. What had been a decorated tree in the display was now nothing more than blackened wire and melted plastic.
“Thanks, Reggie,” Deputy Richardson replied. “What’s the update on the tower?”
“Flooded everything back there; the martial art studio, the shops, all the houses, at least until it washed away. People are bailing out basements there, gonna be lot of damage. Good thing the fire’s are going out as we are already running out of water pressure.”
“Shit,” Richardson cursed, gloved hands at his wait. “Right, grab Wyant over there, have him get a hold of Darlene in the office. She’s going to have to get a hold of the county health department, get an order issued.”
“Got it,” the firefighter said, clapping the deputy’s shoulder before turning and marching several steps before bellowing “Wyant!” Peggy guessed the younger officer who turned around was the person in question, as he rushed up to speak with this “Reggie.”
“Well that don’t just beat the fuck all,” the deputy huffed, turning back to Peggy and Jake. “Assholes took out the water tower the night before Christmas Eve, which means no water pressure, which means no fresh water. Folks have family in for the holidays, hotels are booked up, and nowhere to go to get anything.”
Peggy turned to blink in the direction where the mangled tower had stood. “What happened?”
Richardson held out his hands, expansively. “All hell broke loose, Director. He glowered, jerking his left thumb to a building over his shoulder with glass shot out of its windows and what looked like a forensic specialist going over the inside of it. “Someone attacked the Sheriff in Walker’s Bar. Witnesses say some woman comes in and begins harassing Eileen Davis and this man she was talking to, attempts to arrest him. Sheriff intervenes, because if anyone is making an arrest they at least let our office know about it first. Rather than giving a straight answer, she apparently somehow turned her hand into fire, heated up the metal badge she had in her hand and shoved that in the Sheriff’s face, before grabbing my colleague's side arm, shot them both. Stephenson’s dead, and not sure if the Sheriff will even make it to the hospital.”
Peggy couldn’t help but gape at the bar in question in mild horror. “She just…turned her hand to fire?”
The deputy shrugged, somewhat helplessly. “That’s what the witnesses say. I know everyone had a few drinks in them, but I don’t know if there is enough alcohol in the world to make that up.”
Peggy glanced to Jake who frowned, taking stock of the rest of the scene. “I’m sorry for the loss of your colleague and for the Sheriff. I hope they are able to save him.”
“Yeah,” the deputy replied, gruffly, clearly distraught despite the stoic face he was putting on it. How could he not be? A loss of an officer in the line was difficult anywhere, more so in a small town where everyone knew everyone else. “You know, after last year, we thought the craziest thing that could happen to Rose Hills was behind us, but I guess not.”
Peggy gathered he meant the explosion of Chad Davis. She hadn’t missed the fact that he had mentioned an “Eileen Davis” in his story, talking to an unknown man before being harassed. “The man who this woman was attempting to arrest, does anyone have a description on him?”
Richardson shook his head. “People were too busy trying to scramble away in a panic, no one caught, it I don’t think. Best description I got was a dark haired man, jeans and flannel, had facial hair, but that is it.”
Save for the flannel, on the surface at least that could be Stark. “Do you have any security footage?”
That made Richardson snort out loud, staring at Peggy as if she were joking. “No offense, Director, but this ain’t the big city. Folks around here barely remember to lock their doors let alone put in security cameras. Maybe a few of the places do, but not Walker’s Bar.”
Considering she was from a time when such things didn’t even exist, she shouldn’t be surprised that Rose Hills wouldn’t, and once again noted how much she was falling into the habits of reliance on modern technology. All she could do was shrug in vague hope. “Did Mrs. Davis give any more detail on him?”
The other man’s expression narrowed. “You are mighty fixed on this other guy? Something I should know about?”
An overwhelmed, small town deputy he might be, but he wasn’t a rube, and Peggy couldn’t treat him as if he was. “He was asking about Chad Davis, wasn’t he?”
Richardson crossed his arms, darkly. “So she said. Who is he, and who were the other folk, and what does that have to do with two of our men down and all this destruction?”
Where could she even begin? “The man was Tony Stark, he was here in Rose HIlls following a lead on the bombing in Hollywood the other day.”
Whatever the poor deputy had been expecting, it hadn’t been that.
“Tony Stark…like…Iron Man? Fella who stopped all those aliens in New York?”
“Among other people, yes,” Peggy just did manage to not roll her eyes at the idea that Tony alone had fought off Loki and his minions.
The deputy, however, was still working out just what Peggy’s statement meant for him. “Wait…didn’t his house get destroyed by that terrorist yesterday? That Mandarin? I thought he was killed.”
“No, because he was here in Rose Hills last evening.” Where he could have been or if he was still here, she didn’t know.
Jake reached a hand to her elbow, catching her attention for a moment. “FYI, Peggy, we have Banner and Thor incoming. They are going to park by us. You want me to meet with them while you chat with Deputy Richardson?”
“Please,” she confirmed, as Jake wandered off through the crowd of emergency personnel, back the way they came. She turned her attention back to the deputy. “Other members of the Avengers will be here soon, I am happy to volunteer them to you for any assistance you might need.”
“Avengers?” He shook his head, still processing this latest piece of news. “Um…sure…I suppose. I mean…they were the ones fighting aliens in New York and London, right?”
“Earlier this year, yes.”
He nodded, vaguely, scrubbing at the late-day stubble on his chin, perhaps wondering why alien fighting heroes had anything to do with Rose Hills. “Right, listen, so Tony Stark? Why was he here in Rose Hills talking to Eileen?”
“Because of Chad Davis,” Peggy admitted, frankly. “Because Sergeant Davis didn’t blow up that repair shop on purpose or because of any post-traumatic stress. He was part of an experiment, one that went horribly wrong. That woman who was here tonight and took out your men was another one who was a part of it. Those aren’t bombs exploding, deputy, they are people. Stark had the lead on it and had come here to investigate.”
Deputy Richardson looked distinctly as if he wished she had said it was aliens instead. He swallowed, gaped at her, then shook his head. “I thought the strangest thing I would have to do today was pull over someone who had a bit too much Christmas cheer.”
“I understand that,” Peggy huffed, sympathetically. “This wasn’t precisely what any of us expected for our holiday week, but here we are. Did any of the witnesses happen to catch where Mr. Stark went to in the chaos?”
“No, not precisely. One of them saw him run into the coffee shop there, chased by the woman. That’s when there was a fire and explosion. She ended up on the major line over there.” He pointed a gloved finger towards one of the large electrical lines leading to the row of buildings. “We got her down a bit ago and she’s dead. Coroner is picking her up, I can have forensics send you guys what they find out.”
“If you could,” Peggy was already fishing out one of her business cards to pass to him, ignoring the disturbing image of a dead body hanging over the wire like hanging laundry. “Did anyone see him after that?”
“No, but I guess he made a run for it and was followed, because ten minutes later the water tower went down. I’m guessing from what you said, must have been a friend of hers, could do the same thing she could with the fiery hand and stuff, ‘cause how else could they bring it down?”
“No one saw Mr. Stark in his Iron Man suit?”
“No,” the deputy shook his head, definitively. “People would have noticed that.”
Which meant that he was perhaps close, still, perhaps trying to keep a low profile. “And no one saw him hanging about any particular place? Was there anyone he was talking to?”
Richardson bristled, slightly, in irritation. “Director, I haven’t had time to go interview people and do a thorough investigation. I’ve been trying to manage a crisis here.”
He was right, and Peggy was keenly aware that she was taking his attention away from it. “My apologies, you’re correct. I’ll let you get back to your job, but if you are all right with it, I can send my people over.”
“Thanks,” he replied with a gruff nod, turning to his subordinate, Wyant, who had been waiting patiently to have Richardson’s ear. Peggy turned, looking down the street to where Jake was returning with Banner, bundled in his heavy winter coat, and Thor, wearing little more than a light jacket, a t-shirt, and jeans, but carrying his ever present Mjölnier with him. The hammer alone got him multiple stares as the Prince of Asgard wandered through the chaos in the small Tennessee town, watching it all with keen interest.
[
She met them halfway with a grateful smile. “Thank you for coming out.”
Banner glanced around with a baleful eye. “Boy, couldn’t tell that Tony was here or anything.”
Peggy snorted. “The situation on the ground is one deputy dead, the sheriff critically injured, he may or may not make it. Stark is nowhere to be seen and the woman who assaulted him I am guessing is one of Killian’s Extremis soldiers. She was killed, another may still be on the loose. The most pressing issue they have at the moment is that their water tower was taken out in the conflict.”
“He doesn’t do anything by halves, does he?” Banner regarded the emergency vehicles and the fire engines. “What do you want us on?”
Peggy wasn’t even sure. “The deputy up there, Richardson, seems to be the point person, but I am guessing that’s because he was the most senior officer left after the sheriff and his man went down. Still, he might be able to give you guys more direction on how to help.”
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she heard her name carrying over the cold air. “Director Carter!”
She turned to see the younger deputy, Wyant, dashing over. “Director! Think I may got a lead on someone who was with Mr. Stark!”
“Finally,” she breathed, as the young man skid to a halt in front of her. “Who?”
“Ben Pruitt said he saw that man with the Keener boy before everything happened. Didn’t think much of it at first, thought he was maybe Leanne’s new boyfriend or something.”
As none of these names had any meaning to Peggy, she simply blinked at the young deputy, hoping her confused silence would prompt him to elucidate her. It sadly still took him a moment to catch on.
“Oh, right, you don’t know! You aren’t from around here!” He flushed, nervously pushing back his broad-brimmed hat. “Um, the Keeners' place is down Main Street, all the way out of town, by Brices Store Road.”
“Do you think you could get us there,” Peggy asked.
“I…” He paused, glancing back at Deputy Richardson. “I’d have to ask. Richardson needs me, you see, but…maybe?”
She took a deep, fortifying breath. “Right, how about this.” She turned to Banner and Thor. “This is Dr. Banner, this is Thor of Asgard, they are both a part of my team. They are happy to help you all out with whatever you need here. Perhaps you can help me introduce them to Deputy Richardson so he can help them assess. Meanwhile, if you could drive myself and Agent Jameson out to the Keener house, I would appreciate it greatly.”
“Errr…” The young man twisted his hands together briefly, before nodding, uncertain. “Uh, sure, I guess that would be all right.”
“Good!” She glanced between Banner and Thor. “Do you think I could leave you two here for an hour or so while I try and track down Stark?”
“Sure, I guess.” Banner seems to be calculating the situation before them. “I’d have to chat with this deputy to see what we could even do.”
“And I will follow Dr. Banner’s lead in this,” Thor replied, staunchly, perhaps as much because he was distinctly out of place in this situation as it was out of any sense of loyalty.
“That’s settled.” Peggy looked back to Deputy Wyant. “Let’s see if we can find this young Mr. Keener.”