Steve was in the living room, lounging for the moment. There were no emergencies, no press things, nothing he was needed for. So he was taking advantage of the down time to watch some TV.

"Hey," Bucky said as he walked in. "I think we should let her go." No beating around the bush on this one.

"What?" Steve blinked at him, sure he misheard, or was missing some context somewhere. Because that was not what Bucky had been saying at all the past few weeks.

"She shouldn't be clinging this hard to a mission at this point," Bucky replied. He tried to put what he intrinsically knew into words. "Not a chance. But she is. We need to find out why. So we need to let her go."

Steve looked at him for several moments before he sighed. "Is there any kind of tracker we can put on her?" he asked. "I don't really want to just let her loose without some kind of insurance."

"Stark can probably come up with something," Bucky said. He shook his head a bit. "I know this is the right thing to do. We need to find out why she's clinging so tight to her asset. She said her asset is her mission, Steve, we need to know why."

Steve held his hands up. "Not arguing," he said. "I just want to make sure she doesn't slip off and cause mayhem for a while, that's all. I'll go talk to Stark, see what he can come up with."

Bucky nodded.

"Make it quick," he said. "She's getting twitchy, and that's not good."

Steve nodded and got up, heading straight down to the labs.

"Tony, I have a project for you, need it done as soon as you can manage."

That made Tony pause.

"That urgent?" he asked, moving aside a couple of holograms. "What's the rush, Cap?"

"I need a tracker," Steve said. "Something to put on the attacker upstairs." He was quiet for a moment. "We're letting her lead us to wherever she's supposed to report. Bucky's idea. We just need to be able to track her."

"Wait, you're letting her go?" Tony asked. "How is this a good idea? Didn't she try to shoot you? Since when do we let them go?"

"We're letting her go temporarily," Steve amended. "So she can take us back to her base, and we can find out more about her. Buck's pretty sure she didn't exactly volunteer to become an assassin."

"This can't be a good idea," Tony said. He waved a hand. "Gimme a couple hours, I'll come up with something."

"Thanks Tony. Let me know when you're done." Steve headed back up to the main level to find something to keep himself busy for a few hours.

Tony just waved a hand again, already working on the issue.

A few hours later, he brought up a working tracker and tossed it to Steve.

"Here, go tag your pet assassin," he said.

Steve grinned and handed it over to Bucky. "That would be your job," he said with a shit-eating grin.

"Punk," Bucky said as he took the tracker. But he did head to the girl's room and slip inside.

Colbie looked at him, as she always did, but she was frowning now. He never visited twice in one day, unless--

Her shoulders slumped, just a little. Apparently they'd gotten sick of keeping her and hoping she'd talk. So they were going to eliminate her now.

"Hold still," Bucky said as he slowly approached her. Grabbing her quickly, he put the tracker on her where she wouldn't be able to get it off, at least not easily. Then he let her go and backed off. "We're going to let you go collect your asset."

Colbie blinked at him, completely bewildered.

"What?" she asked, sure she'd misunderstood somehow. "Why?" She actually looked rather nervous.

"She's your mission," Bucky replied. He watched her carefully. "Go and bring her back here, and we can make sure neither of you ever gets the Chair ever again."

Colbie was quiet for several moments, eyeing him. He was acting like a handler, which was an odd change. But she nodded to show she'd heard, absolutely still other than that.

Once she nodded, Bucky took her by the arm and led her out of the room. Hopefully, she knew better than to struggle by now, but he could catch her even if she did.

Colbie didn't struggle or try to bolt, because she knew where she was, she knew she wouldn't get far. So she remained deceptively docile for the moment.