I found myself going back to the hospital, I knew Nick gave Steve the flash drive. After hacking into their camera's....he put it in the vending machine.
Smart but also stupid.
I buy out the gum and watch as he steps up to the vending machine. I smirk and stand behind him, blowing a bubble as he turns to face me. Steve suddenly grabs me and pushes me into the empty room across the hall, he slams me against the wall and holds my shoulders.
"Where is it?"
"Safe." I nod.
"Do better!"
"Where did you get it?" I tilt my head.
"Why would I tell you?"
"Fury gave it to you. Why?" I ask.
"What's on it?"
"I don't know." I shrug.
"Stop lying!"
"I only act like I know everything, Rogers." I roll my eyes.
"I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?"
"Well, it makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you." I nod.
"I'm not gonna ask you again."
"I know who killed Fury. Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists, the ones who do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years." I nod
"So he's a ghost story."
"Three years ago, Nat and I were escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran...somebody shot out our tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff, I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering Nat and the engineer, so he shot him straight through me and Nat." I pull up my shirt, "Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye bikinis."
"Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now." Steve says sarcastically.
I slightly smile, "Going after him is a dead end. I know, Nat and I tried." I take out the flash drive and hold it up. "Like you said, he's a ghost story."
Steve takes the drive. "Well, let's find out what the ghost wants."
Steve and I go to the mall, undercover. We go into an Apple store and stand at the computers. "The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up Shield will know exactly where we are." I nod.
"How much time do we have?"
"Uh...about nine minutes from..." I pop the flash drive into a MacBook Pro. "Now." I frown as I start to type, "Fury was right about that ship, somebody's trying to hide something. This drive is protected by some sort of AI, it keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands."
"Can you override it?"
"The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly." I smirk. "I'm gonna try running a tracer. This is a program that Shield developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from."
I keep typing as an employee walks up, "Can I help you guys with anything?"
"Oh, no. My fiancé was just helping me with some honeymoon destinations." I smile, not taking my eyes off the computer.
"Right! We're getting married." Steve nods.
"Congratulations. Where do you guys thinking about going?" Steve looks back at the monitor and sees the signal traced to somewhere in New Jersey.
"New Jersey."
"Oh." The employee looks at Steve for a moment. "I have the exact same glasses."
"Wow, you two are practically twins." I roll my eyes.
"Yeah, I wish. Specimen. Uh...if you guys need anything, I've been Aaron."
"Thank you." Steve turns to me. "You said nine minutes, come on."
"Shh, relax. Got it." He looks down at the location, "You know it?"
"I used to. Let's go." Steve pulls the flash drive from the computer and he pulls me out of the store. We look around as we see agents in the mall. "Standard tac-team. Two behind, to across, two coming straight at us. If they make us, I'll engage, you hit the south escalator to the metro."
"Shut up and put your arm around me, laugh at something I said." I say urgently.
"What?"
"Do it!" I whisper, Steve quickly puts his arm around me and laughs. He takes his arm off of me as we get on the escalator, I was standing in front of him, looking down to see Rumlow. "Kiss me." I turn to him.
"What?"
"Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable." I nod.
"Yes, they do."
I roll my eyes and quickly link my arm around his neck and pull his head down to me, I press my lips against his and smile as he holds my hip.
I open my eyes to see Rumlow passing us, I then pull away and bite my lip, "You still uncomfortable?"
"It's not exactly the word I would use."