Chapter 13
Deputy Wyant’s vehicle meandered past the quieter parts of Rose Hills, unaffected by the chaos just blocks away. This part of the small town was a mix of old-fashioned, older homes, with the charming look of a time gone by in American history, and newer homes of brick and vinyl siding, functional, neat, and solid as they squatted in the light dusting of snow. It was early enough that many of the homes were still lit up with their decorations and lights. One home looked as if someone had gone to the local store and purchased every string of lights they had, only to tack them on their entire house, garage, and fence.
“Yeah, that’s the Clark house. They do it up big here every year.” Wyant waved a hand out towards where it sat on the right hand side of the road leading out of town. “Usually there is a line of folk here to see it or stop and take pictures, but with everything tonight, folks I guess are staying away.”
It was a uniquely American sort of Christmas tradition that Peggy found charming, usually, and had this been a normal circumstance with just her and Steve here, she’d have convinced him to come look at this sort of display. “I’m sorry your town is going through this.”
“Especially after last year's bombing,” Wyant sighed. Without his hat on, he looked even more young than he had before, his dark blonde hair buzzed on the sides, cut short, neatly, on the top. He couldn’t be older than his early twenties, perhaps only just out of college. There was still the air of naivete about him, as if in disbelief that such awful things could be happening in the world, let alone his hometown.
“Did you know people in that explosion?” Peggy hesitated to ask, knowing he likely did.
“Uh…yeah, Mike, the owner of the shop, he was my ex-girlfriend’s dad.” He cleared his throat, perhaps out of nerves, perhaps out of the heaviness of the conversation. “He was a good guy. And Brian, one of the guys working there, he went to school with me back in the day.”
“How about Chad Davis?”
He hesitated before answering. “He was older than me by a bit, five years. I knew of him, but didn’t know him. He’d gone off to the military by the time I got to high school. Still, folks knew him well enough. My cousin was friends with him back then, said they couldn’t believe he’d just go and do something like that. But war does that to you, I guess. He went off to Afghanistan and came back and was never quite the same.”
His words made Peggy think of Stark. He had gone off to Afghanistan and was never quite the same again either. Unlike Chad Davis and the Extremis serum, he hid his hurts behind a miniaturized arc reactor and a giant mechanized suit, hoping that it would keep himself and all those he loved safe. Now, he was hiding from them, hoping to keep all those he loved safe. As per the Stark habit, their fears and worries mixed with their own self-interest and turned out the exact wrong reactions to any situation they were blind sided with.
From the back Jake spoke up. “So this Keener kid is just allowed to run around all over town with a total stranger?”
“He’s allowed to do pretty much whatever he wants,” Wyant shrugged, coming to a stop at an intersection just out of town and making a right. “But he’s not a bad kid, really, real bright from what I hear. His mom, Leanne, works at a diner on the other side of town, out on the highway, does the night shift, so that leaves the two of them to themselves most nights.”
“Two of them,” Peggy pressed.
“Oh, yeah, Harley and his sister, Lexi. She’s six…seven? Cute as a button. Anyway, Leanne’s husband up and skipped town when the baby was born, and so it’s just her and the kids.”
“She leaves them on their own,” Jake protested, askanced.
Wyant shrugged, a hint of disapproval in his frown. “I don’t judge. Folks around here have it hard enough getting by. Her people aren’t from around here, and besides, usually she gets the kids settled before work, though with Christmas, she may be picking up extra hours. Anyway, I know the Rodmans across the way keep an eye on things for her while she’s at work.”
That they may, but apparently these kind neighbors missed the fact that a perfect stranger had been hanging about with young Harley at least through the last day. “I’m sure she’s doing the best she can,” Peggy stepped in, soothing Wyant’s obvious annoyance. “And I am sure that Harley will have a perfectly acceptable explanation as to what was going on with Mr. Stark.”
Somehow, Peggy highly doubted the latter, but it seemed to diffuse the situation for the moment.
“Here we are,” Wyant announced as they pulled up to a gravel drive marked by a mailbox that said “Keener” on it. Gently, the deputy pulled off the asphalt road and towards the house, a faded white farmhouse with a weathered barn or garage tucked beside it; old, faded, and quiet for the most part. Despite it being mid-evening, the lights were out for the most part, save for a modest tree in one of the front windows and the ghostly glow of a television somewhere behind it.
Wyant led the way to the front door. “If you don’t mind, I think I should knock first. The kids know me at least, they’d open up for me. I help do crossing guard duty at the school.”
“Good idea,” Peggy assured him, sensing the younger man felt he needed to assert some of his authority in this situation. She let him move ahead while she held back to speak to Jake. “Any sign of Stark about that you can see?”
“No,” he replied, glancing back towards the weathered shed. “Though if I were him and wanted to lay low, that might be a good spot.”
“That was what I was thinking,” Peggy murmured, quietly. Perhaps Tony had managed to get as far as this secluded house and stuck around to keep his profile down. “The other deputy, Richardson, said that no one saw him in his suit, which either means he chose not to wear it and stowed it somewhere or something is wrong and he couldn’t use it. Either way, that would be a good place to keep it.”
“Want me to check it out?”
“No, let’s check on the children first.”
As she said that, Wyant had already reached the door, opened the screen in front of it, and began knocking loudly. “Harley? Lexi? It’s Deputy Wyant! Open up, guys, I’m here to check on you.”
As far as opening gambits went, Peggy wasn’t sure it was the one she would have used with two children alone at home two days before Christmas, but then again, she wasn’t sure how she would have presented herself. She glanced towards the window to see if any lights came on, but none did. The deputy knocked again.
“I can see the TV on in there, Harley! You’re supposed to be asleep!”
The lights did not come on in the room beyond, but the flickering of the television stilled, as on the other side of the door little feet could be heard patting towards them. The wooden door opened, slowly, and in the darkness a pale little elfin face appeared, looking sleepily at them all. “Wassgonon?”
The poor mite was all of seven, if she was a day, in pink and green pajamas with some sort of cartoon character on the front. Her dark hair was frizzed and messed with sleep, and she stood at the door with no shoes, despite the cold outside. She blinked owlishly at them all, focusing on Wyant in sleepy confusion.
“Hello, Lexi, honey!” Wyant knelt down on the front stoop to be closer to her height. “We were just checking up on y’all, you and Harley. There’s been a big commotion in town. Everything’s fine, we were just worried.”
“Is Mama home?” She looked past Peggy and Jake, two strangers she didn’t even register, towards where Wyant’s squad car sat.
“Not yet, hon, she’ll be home later from work. Is your brother around?”
She nodded, dopely, pushing back hair from her face, before running the back of her wrist over her eyes.
“Where’s he at?”
She flung the same hand out of the door in the direction of the car. They all three glanced back, but Peggy guessed she meant the shed.
“Lexi,” she said, softly, hunching down on her knees to catch the tired girl’s attention. “My name is Peggy, I’m helping the deputy with a big case he’s working on. We are looking for a man who was here today. Did you see a man you hadn’t ever seen before around today?”
Lexi frowned at Peggy as if she didn’t understand a word of English, which, to be fair, she probably didn’t in the state she was in, and certainly not in Peggy’s British accent. Instead, Peggy reached for her phone in her pocket, quickly thumbing it on and looking for a picture of Stark.
“Did you see this man around your house today? Maybe around Harley?”
Silently, the little girl nodded her head up and down, her messy hair flopping over in her face again. She waved once more back towards the shed and uttered the word “mechanic”.
“Thank you, Lexi!” She gave the girl a warm smile, standing once more. “Deputy, since she knows you, maybe you can take Lexi here inside and get her settled back in bed? I think Agent Jameson and I can handle the shed for the moment.”
He didn’t look as certain about it, but he clearly also realized the little one was too out of it to manage getting herself sorted out on her own. “Sure, Director Carter! Come on, Miss Lexi!”
Gently, he rose, leading the little girl back into her house with soothing words about getting her back to her warm and safe bed so she could get ready for Christmas. Reassured that the girl was in good hands, she turned to Jake, who stood, shaking his head.
“Their mom is just lucky something worse didn’t happen while she was away.”
“Not every single mother gets the choice between working to provide for their child or staying home to watch over them. She’s probably working nights at a diner because it is the only job she could get and still be close to home.” It was a situation not unlike the one that Steve grew up in during his childhood decades ago. Sarah Rogers had been in much the same position Leanne Keener was in, raising her child alone, her husband dead, and no one really to help.
Jake at least nodded, ruefully, in agreement. “Guess it’s easy for someone on the outside to judge a situation like this when we don’t have to live it.”
“Mmm, what is that old phrase about assumptions?” They made their way around the house back towards the shed. It looked as if it had once been used for farm equipment, but now was more akin to a garage. Through the windows in the faded wooden walls she could see more flickering light. There was a set of double doors, mostly closed, though the right one was cracked ever so slightly. Peggy wandered to it, peeking inside.
There wasn’t much. It had the musty smell of an outbuilding, and reminded her of the garden shed that had once been her refuge as a girl, hiding from her mother and her endless teas. Inside she could just see a pile of what looked to be unused furniture and other odds and ends, things stored away, unused and forgotten. There were no voices, though a flickering light indicated someone was watching something on a screen. She pushed the door open further, as quietly as she could manage with the old wood, peeking around the corner silently, hoping to not startle its occupance.
There was no Stark there, but laid out on a workbench was indeed one of his suits, wired into what looked to be an electrical outlet. A young boy of perhaps eleven stared at a laptop computer screen, cheerfully consuming a bowl of candies and blissfully ignorant of the adult standing at his door watching him. Peggy sighed, softly, then knocked on the door she was leaning on, loud enough to get the boy's attention. It had the desired effect, the child jumped and whirled, nearly knocking over his bowl of small sweets, turning on Peggy with wide, startled eyes.
“I…I don’t know how this got here? It was here when I came in, honest! I was just…keeping an eye on it, really!” His words spilled out in a fervent rush of childish protests, none of which were remotely convincing, but evidently at least a little thought out beforehand.
“Just found it here?” Peggy arched an eyebrow, pulling the door open and letting herself in, crossing her arms as she did. Jake trailed behind her, but kept watch at the door rather than followed her in. “Do people often leave mechanized suits hiding in your garden shed?”
The boy’s expression quirked as he took a look around the space, before meeting Peggy’s gaze again. “Uhh…this is a barn, not a shed, and we don’t have a garden.”
He was smart, she would give him that. “You can stall for time, Harley, but we both know you are not unintelligent and we both know how this suit got here. Where is Tony?”
For all that young Harley Keener tried to play this entire situation as cool, he was still a child, and Peggy could tell by his reaction to Tony’s name he knew exactly who she was talking about. Still, he tried to play dumb. “Tony? Tony who?”
“Mmm,” Peggy sighed, rolling her eyes and standing in front of the desk where the suit lay. “Iron Man if you will then.”
Harley tensed, but shrugged. “Is he that guy who flew up through a wormhole in New York?”
“He is, but I have a feeling you knew that.” Peggy could already see why Tony would have connected with a child like this. She had a feeling he was likely the same way at Harley’s age. “Where is he, Harley?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” he shot back, half defiant, half stubborn, and more than a smidge terrified. She could see his hand creeping, slowly, to a device laying on the workbench by the computer; small, compact, and looking absolutely like some sort of Stark tech.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” she warned, mildly, nodding to where his right hand lay.
The boy flushed, glaring at her. “What do you want?”
“Just to find Mr. Stark,” she said, honestly. “I’m a friend and I’ve been looking for him since yesterday.”
“Yeah?” Harley eyed her up and down doubtfully. “Prove it?”
He was justifiably cautious. If she weren’t so desperate to find Stark, she’d have been impressed. “Prove it?”
“Yeah, if you are his friend, prove to me I can trust you.”
Peggy sighed, regarding the suit that lay between the two of them. “Mr. Jarvis, are you awake yet?”
“Hello, Miss Carter,” the AI’s voice responded, much to the surprise and awe of the young man sitting beside the suit. “How did you track the Mark XLII?”
“Dr. Banner traced the last flight plan you were working on at the mansion,” she responded. “The suit has been offline from the satellite, we couldn’t find it.”
“I apologize, the suit has been offline while Mr. Stark made some needed repairs. Given the current situation with the Mandarin, he wished to keep his location secret.”
“He managed that all right,” Peggy muttered. “Are you still offline from your main server?”
“For now, at least until Mr. Stark feels it is safe for his whereabouts to be generally known. Meanwhile, I am running system dioramas to ensure the optimal reboot of my cookies.”
“He’s having problems with words.” Harley's gaping expression shifted first from the suit, then to Peggy, then back to the suit again. “So you can barely talk, but you know her?”
“Of course, this is Director Peggy Carter, she heads up the Avengers. She is a close friend of Mr. Stark.”
“You could have just told me that,” Harley glared at Peggy, accusingly, leaning back in his seat with a petulant slouch.
“Would you have believed me,” she asked, pointedly, nodding at the device on the other side of the computer. “Tony left that with you. You must have been expecting someone to possibly show up. Perhaps one of those people in town with the glowing red hands?”
“You know about those?”
“I know they caused a lot of damage and hurt a lot of people.”
Harley nodded, gravely. “I heard the Sheriff is bad off.”
He was brave, she would give him that. “What were you doing there?”
“I was helping Tony out.” He shrugged under his hooded sweatshirt, far larger than his small body. “He needed someone to show him where everything was.”
“The bar, then?”
“Yeah, though I took him to the bomb site first, then he went to the bar, and then all hell broke loose.”
“He didn’t take you into the bar, did he?”
“No, he made me wait across the street.” Harley sounded offended by this. “I was standing there when I heard the screaming, and then there were gunshots, and people started running. I stuck around in case Tony needed help, but when the fire-glowing lady came out, he had to make a run for it.”
She would need to have a conversation with Tony about using children as allies in adult fights. Harley had no business being anywhere near what had happened, especially if his mother didn’t know of his whereabouts. “Is Tony all right? Did he escape?”
“Oh, yeah, he took one of the glowing guy’s cars and he headed out. I don’t know where yet, he said he would let me know so he could let JARVIS know.” He gestured to a phone on the table near him. “Till then, I am waiting for my call.”
“You shouldn’t be waiting at all,” she pointed out, looking at her watch. “When does your mother get off work?”
“Don’t know for sure,” he replied, shoulder’s rising diffidently. “She’s been doing extra shifts for Christmas.”
“Do you have her number?”
He scowled. “Yeah?”
“Good, because I will put in a call to her and have her come home.”
That scandalized the poor boy. “No, don’t do that! I promised Tony I would take care of his stuff!”
“And you have done an admirable job, but this is dangerous, Harley. What if those people arrive looking for Mr. Stark’s suit?”
“They won’t,” he shot back, with the assurance of a child. “They all got blown up.”
Peggy didn’t have the time to explain Extremis to him or how it worked. “Still, Harley, I can’t allow for you, or your sister, or your mother to get caught up in this.”
“But you need someone who knows how to work things,” Harley insisted, his jaw set mulishly. “What if you need help with getting JARVIS or the suit up and running? Do you know how to do it?”
Peggy would have applauded his cheek if she wasn’t so frustrated by his insistence. “Do you know how to do it?”
“Yeah,” he said without missing a beat.
“He has a point, Miss Carter,” JARVIS spoke into the argument. “He does have the skills to at least help me get the suit pencil.”
They both stared at the suit and poor JARVIS’ gaffe.
“I think he means ‘operational’,” Harley offered.
“Yes,” Peggy sighed. “Fine, I will make this bargain. We will still call your mother and let her know what is going on, and in exchange I will allow you to stay up with the suit until Mr. Stark calls you. Then I am going to give him an earful, put you to bed, and no more arguments. Deal?”
He didn’t look happy about it, but nodded. “Deal.”
“All right, now, Deputy Wyant is in with your sister. Can you give me your mother’s number so I can call her…”
“Director Carter!” Wyant’s voice called from outside. “I think you need to see this!”
Jake, who had been standing at the door, looked to her, then held the door open as she rushed for the house, followed close by Harley at her heels. Jake made up the rear, as they skidded through wet and slushy grass to the front doorstep and into the small, warm, and somewhat shabby living room. Lexi was nowhere in sight, presumably she had been tucked upstairs, but the television was still on. On the screen, the Mandarin sat in a throne like chair, at his feet lay a man in a suit, bound and crying, as the figure held a gun towards his head. What the Mandarin was saying, they couldn’t hear, as the television was too low.
“What channel is this,” Peggy demanded of the deputy, who was staring, horrified at the screen.
“I don’t know, one of the local ones.”
“How is it getting here on this channel feed?”
“I don’t…”
Without warning on the screen there was a blast, just loud enough to even make it through the low volume of the television, as the Mandarin’s arm jerked. The man who portrayed him stared directly into camera, his eyes never leaving those of his audience who were watching in horror at what they had even witnessed. All four of them in the Keener’s snug living room jerked and gasped.
The image soon faded out to the familiar symbol of the Ten Rings over a cool bar background.
They all stood in silence, ignoring the open door and the cold coming in from the outside. It was Wyant who spoke first, his face pale as he stared at the screen and the frantic local newscasters who were all trying to make sense of what had just happened. “Did…did he really just shoot a man on live television?”
Peggy turned to Harley, who looked up at her with frightened eyes.
“No,” she replied, firmly, shaking her head and reaching a hand to pat the top of the boy's head. He surprisingly didn’t move. “No, we know the Mandarin is a fake, and I am guessing that was all just a bit of playacting.” She couldn’t be sure, though, and it horrified her that she even had to question it. “I think that it means that the man behind it is getting desperate, though, which means we need to find Stark.”
Harley nodded, solemnly.
“You go get your mother’s number. Deputy Wyant, if you can call over to Mrs. Keener, have her come home, let her know that it isn’t an emergency but it would be best if she did return.”
That shook Wyant out of his stupor. “Err…yeah, I can do that. Come on, Harley.”
“Someone needs to check in with Sharon about that broadcast,” Jake pointed out.
“I should probably call her anyway, give her an up…”
As if on cue, Peggy’s pocket buzzed. She shot Jake a bemused look as she pulled it out, Sharon’s number on the ID. “We were going to call you about the...”
“Pepper Potts is missing.”
Peggy was so caught in the situation in Rose Hills that it took her a long moment to hear what Sharon had actually said. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Pepper is missing. Her detail got caught behind her and when they got to her hotel, she was missing.”
Panic welled up in Peggy, for Pepper and her person, primarily, but for Stark when he found out as well. “They were supposed to be with her at all times.”
“They were, but she stopped at a grocery store on her way back from the house site. They lost eyes on her, thought she headed back to the hotel. Her car is there, she isn’t.”
“Damn,” she yelped, despite Harley’s presence in the room, staring at the television with its frantic newscasters, the word Mandarin sticking out like a sore thumb at the bottom third of the screen. “How did he get to her?”
“We are getting security footage now. My guess, Killian or one of his soldiers was laying in wait there and got to her before any SHIELD personnel could. She dropped off her car with the valet, went inside, but when our team did the check in her door was open, her groceries were on the ground. He likely grabbed her as she was going into the room.”
She had asked Pepper to be careful…
“This means Killian knows Stark is alive, likely that he was here in Rose Hills.” She turned to Harley, watching the proceedings half in wonder and half in worry. “Harley, do you know if any of those people chasing Tony happened to get away?”
He solemnly shook his head with a childish shrug. “I didn’t see anyone. I thought they were all down because no one chased us. Tony took their car, and I didn’t see anyone.”
Considering the regenerative properties of the serum, that didn’t mean terribly much. “One of them survived and informed Killian what happened.” She looked to Jake. “He’s got Pepper.”
His already grim expression turned even more so. “That complicates things.”
“Just a little.” She turned her attention back to Sharon on the other end of the line. “What do you need out of me?”
“Right now, to find and contain Stark. You saw what he did when it was his buddy! His house got destroyed. The last thing we need is for him to complicate this in the middle of an investigation.”
She wasn’t wrong, but Peggy couldn’t help but feel a bit defensive of Tony. “He is the one who figured out about the soldiers before we did. It was why he was in Rose Hills. We had to have Maya Hansen tell us.”
“So, what, I should let Stark go full Call of Duty on all of this? Killian is too much of a security risk for me to let Stark loose on it all by himself. His vigilante antics were cute when he first started this suit business, but now he is only going to get in the way and potentially cost lives.”
“But what if he doesn’t,” Peggy insisted. “He might be the one who can help us find Killian in the long run.”
The long exhale of breath on the other end of the line indicated that at least her niece was listening.
“Look, you have every agent in the field looking for this man, but Stark thinks outside of the box. He’s maddening, yes, but he’s the best we got at the moment.”
On the other end of the line she could practically hear Sharon pacing. “Fine, find him and see if he can get us what we need. That little Mandarin show of Killian’s just now means that he’s aware that we know what he’s up to. He’s trying to force the issue, get the government on his side before we can tell the truth, and give himself some protection. We need to catch him before he can do that.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said, hanging up at Sharon’s goodbye. She glanced at the television, where the coverage seemed to be all on the Mandarin’s apparent murder of a Roxxon employee on national television. How could he escalate from that?
“Harley,” she asked, quietly, letting her eyes slide to the boy leaning against the couch. “You said Mr. Stark is supposed to call you back. Do you know when?”
He shook his head. “Just to sit by the phone and wait for his call.”
With a sigh, she turned to Deputy Wyant. “Call their mother. I’m going to go sit out in the shed with Harley here and wait for Stark’s phone call.”
The young man blinked, then nodded. “Sure thing, Director Carter.”
She turned to Jake. “Think you can check in with Banner and Thor?”
“Sure,” he replied. “Then what?”
“We will see if Tony pulls anything brilliant out of his bag of tricks,” she muttered, placing a guiding hand on Harley’s shoulder. “Come along, let’s keep JARVIS company, shall we?”