Hidden Impact (12 page)

“That’s both scary and sort of encouraging,” Maylin admitted. She very much hoped he was right about An-mei, though. Her sister was tougher than she looked. An-mei could hold on.

“It should be. You’ve got good instincts. We call it ‘situational awareness.’ You had a good distance between you and her. You knew where other people were around the two of you. Very good.” His praise warmed her. “I was also glad to see you holding your ground, not taking the bait.”

And Jewel had been baiting her. But why? Things had been happening so quickly and she’d been so focused on getting the Centurion Corporation team’s help...she hadn’t considered what value she had to anyone out there.

“I can’t imagine what it’d be like to live this way all the time.” Maylin gave in to honesty and the release of tension had her babbling. “You live in this state of constant vigilance. It’s exhausting to watch. There’s news articles about PTSD and how people live in a state of hyperawareness. I always tried to imagine what it was like, but until all of this, it never sank in. It’s all the time. Everywhere. How do you not go insane?”

Gabe sighed. “It isn’t a sudden thing that’ll be cured by a session of therapy. It doesn’t go away someday or get better. It’s a shift in worldview, a change in the way you look at everything around you. The first time I came home from a deployment, fuck, I wanted so bad to change my state of mind. I did. But I ended up going back overseas because things made better sense to me over there.”

His words were raw and yet his outward expression was blank. She wanted to have this discussion somewhere private where he could let his control ease up and let his emotions show on his face. But this was where they’d gotten into the topic and this was where she’d learn. And to be honest, she didn’t know exactly where they were. They’d driven on and off a combination of city streets and larger highways but it’d all been in a generally circular direction. At the very least, it was just the two of them. He’d have told her if someone was following.

“Did it help, going back overseas?” Not sure it was the right question to ask.

“It made more sense. It was simpler to follow the rules out there. There’s a system to it. People have skills, have their role to play, and they do their job or everyone on the team could die.” Gabe hesitated, then added, “I trust my fire squad. Lizzy, Vic and Marc. And I used to trust every member of my squadron. But when Jewel deserted, it left the entire squadron shaken up. The Centurions took a while to reassess every person in the squadron and the trust is still building. That’s twenty active individuals all looking around, wondering if they can rely on their teammates.”

To do their job, or everyone could die. Maylin swallowed hard.

“It wasn’t until later the forensics evidence came back confirming the bullet in me came from her weapon. We decided to keep it under wraps until we knew where she’d gone and, hopefully, why.”

“Edict?” She hoped she was remembering the organization correctly. Jewel had spat it out quickly, with such a tone of bitterness, Maylin wondered how she could stand the taste of it.

“Apparently.” Gabe nodded with a grim smile. “I’m still wondering about the reason. But I might not get that answer anytime soon. Simple answer would be better money, but with Jewel it’s not always about the ready cash. She could have other reasons.”

Or he hoped she did. It was unsaid and Maylin decided to let it lie for now. It wouldn’t help to continue to poke at the sore subject when there was no way to find out more.

She wanted to dismiss everything that was happening as fantastical. It sounded like a television show. A book. Not real. But wasn’t that the mistake people made? Her stepmother had told her if An-mei had disappeared, it must have been because An-mei had behaved irresponsibly going out on her own, and people didn’t just disappear from science conferences. “Overly dramatic” was exactly what Maylin’s stepmother had called her, and she wouldn’t believe anything bad had happened.

But it had. It was reality. And so was the life Gabe led.

“Was Jewel really baiting me?” Maylin’s hopes dropped to the floor at her feet. “Maybe she didn’t know anything about An-mei.”

Gabe tapped the top of the steering wheel with a finger. “Possibly. But then again, she doesn’t lie straight to my face. I think she was telling the truth back there.”

Which part was he referring to and where was the white rabbit? It was safer to latch on to the connection between Jewel and Gabe.

“I need a little clearer communication here. I got the impression the two of you were fine, what with the witty repartee, but I need a little more straightforward detail.” Maylin paused. It’d been nerve-racking listening, watching, unable to
do
anything. “So if she was telling the truth, you mean she could’ve shot you in the head at some point?”

And was there a chance Maylin could end up with a hole in the head herself?

“Probably.” Gabe’s jaw tightened. “There’s a history there.”

“I want to say I don’t need to know, but I’m running a little low on faith considering the way she oozed sex in your direction.” And Maylin hated admitting it. Hadn’t even acknowledged it herself until she’d said it out loud. She might not have done a lot of dating in her time but even she could see the tension between the two of them had been more than just former acquaintances or colleagues. “I don’t even know where we’re going right now. I need more information. About everything.”

“We’re headed to Centurion Corporation headquarters.” Gabe’s response was sober, which was good because if he’d laughed at her, the twisting insecurity she was struggling to control would rip something inside her. After a pause, he continued, “We were a thing. It was a while ago.”

A thing. Did he consider what was between him and Maylin “a thing” too? Or did she not even qualify?

“Everybody has marks in their ledgers, sweetness. I’m not going to lie to you about this one.” Gabe shrugged. “Jewel and I were together. Bad idea for squadron mates. A relationship clouds your judgment in a mission. But what we had was all sex, no messy sentimental baggage.”

She should say something. He’d paused for her to respond in some way. “But you did care for her.”

He made a strangled sound. “In a complicated way. We had too much respect for each other to jeopardize a mission if things went south for either one of us. And we were good together...physically.”

Maylin shrank in on herself. She shouldn’t compare. The rational part of her mind was checking out, though, and what was left switched between raging jealousy and trembling embarrassment.

She’d come face-to-face with a former lover of his, a woman who’d worked with him as a mercenary with the skills to do all the things Maylin couldn’t. This woman would’ve been able to go after her family without the help Maylin had come to the Centurions for in the first place. And she knew something about An-mei.

Jewel had a lot of things Maylin didn’t and right now, it meant everything.

“Hey.” Gabe’s hand reached out, palm up, an invitation. She hesitated and then placed her own in his. His fingers closed around hers, engulfing hers. “What we have between us is a completely different chemistry.”

“It is?” And wow did she hate how vulnerable her voice sounded.

“I’m not sure what it is yet, but you’ve got me unhinged in ways I’ve never experienced before.” He squeezed her hand gently. “In a good way. And we have a promise.”

Yes. Once they found An-mei. But in the meantime, Maylin needed to ask one more question before she could settle and process it all.

“Why did you two end it?” It shouldn’t matter. There were more important topics. But trust seemed to be in short supply and this
did
matter on so many levels.

“She shot me in the back.”

Well, okay then. Maylin couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

“I told you before about my last mission, the husband whose wife was cheating on him. We were overseas, contracted to extract a military scientist and get him out safely. I’d gone in first, had the man with me, when our fire team encountered hostile fire. He’d picked up an M16, was firing to either side of me, scared out of his damned mind.” Gabe delivered the story in a monotone. He was sitting right next to her, but she had the sense he was far away. “When I took a bullet in the back, we all thought he’d been the one to shoot me. When I went down, he took two to the chest. My team got me out, and him too, but I was the one to survive.”

It took a minute for Maylin to connect what he was telling her to the reason he hated getting tangled up in emotional missions. “But it wasn’t him. It was Jewel.”

And there was some messy emotion there having nothing to do with the dead client or his wife and everything to do with Gabe’s lover shooting him in the back.

Maylin wanted to say something, anything. But she couldn’t undo any of those things. Instead, she listened. Because this wasn’t the kind of thing that was shared easily. She should absorb it, remember it with respect. And not hurt him by asking him to repeat it someday down the road.

“Jewel shouldn’t have been anywhere near that engagement. Her fire team was assigned to a different position guarding the secondary escape route. After the mission, she and her fire team left the Centurions before I even woke up from surgery. They’d come to the end of their contract, and no one would’ve thought anything of it. But our medical team managed to retrieve the bullet from me and ran forensics on it. It was a five fifty-six all right, the right kind of bullet, but it hadn’t come from an M16. It’d come from an AK, and none of the hostiles we encountered were armed with those. Hell, none of the other Centurions on that contract had been either. Just Jewel and her AK one-zero-one with an ACOG magnification mount, custom modified. And she’d checked in after the mission with her weapon in hand. She’d put the bullet in my back and only my Kevlar body armor saved me from worse damage when it hit. Otherwise, I’d be in a wheelchair.” Gabe shifted in the driver’s seat. It still hurt him, even if it was mostly healed. Maylin bit back concerned remarks because she didn’t think it’d help to point out the continued weakness. “By the time the results came back, she was in the wind. This is the first time I’ve seen her since.”

Hell of a way to break up with a lover. And no way was Maylin going to say it out loud. But she had to wonder what kind of unresolved issues it’d left behind. Could be an awful time to ask, but if not now then things could move too fast. There may not be a later.

“You’re very quiet over there.”

She jumped. It hadn’t seemed like a lot of thinking, but maybe she’d chewed on it a lot longer than she’d meant to. “I don’t know what to say. And...to be honest I don’t know if I have a right to say anything.”

“You can ask and I can do my best to answer.” Gabe made the offer.

Hesitantly, Maylin went out on a limb. “Do you miss her?”

Hard to ask a question when you weren’t sure you wanted to know the answer. But it was important to know. She wasn’t good at communicating when it came to relationships, even if it was about a memory of good times gone by. Everything came out awkward and not quite the way she intended.

Gabe gave her question serious thought, his brows drawn together. “Yes and no. We had good times and we were good together back then. But it wasn’t something I craved after it was over. I think what I miss is the way we worked together. She was a good squad mate, excellent at her work. It’s hard to find people you can work with out there. There’s a sort of...easygoing confidence when you have good people at your back, and she is no longer one of them. Leaves an exposed spot. Does that make sense?”

“I’m sorry.” This time she wasn’t sure exactly why she had to apologize, but she wanted to.

“I am too. I trusted her.” Gabe ran his hand through his hair. “But the history is so you know who she is and what she is to me. It’s over. And you and me, we’re not sure what we’re doing, but it’s not a one-night thing. At least not to me. I want time for us to figure it out.”

What to say? He made it sound simple. What did she feel? “I’m glad.”

Stupid. Awkward. But it was what she was thinking. His story would take time to sink in and she couldn’t figure out more on the spot.

The corner of his mouth turned up. “Good. Hopefully I can add to that a little.”

Maylin blinked. “How?”

“Jewel’s other truth.” Gabe reached over with one hand and covered Maylin’s knee. The heat of his touch seeped into her skin. “She said you’d find your little sister faster with her and you wouldn’t have to go to the other side of the world to do it. An-mei isn’t lost in China. She’s here. In the US.”

Chapter Eleven

“This...is a really slow elevator.”

Gabe smiled at Maylin’s neutral tone. All things considered, she was holding up like a champ. Some women would’ve flipped their shit meeting an ex. And Jewel made confrontations with women a sort of sadistic stress reliever the same way some people walked into bars looking for a brawl. Add in how very good Jewel was at hand to hand combat, the average jealous woman ended up mostly broken and sadly humiliated. He did not want Maylin subjected to similar treatment. Especially since it was obvious Jewel had planned to take custody of Maylin.

Over his dead body.

Which was why he’d brought Maylin with him to Centurion Corporation headquarters. The hotel might not be secure enough, and he wanted eyes on her as much as possible now that Jewel, and Edict, had made a grab for her.

“We got the elevator out of a decommissioned submarine.” Gabe offered Maylin the tidbit of information. She rewarded him with an adorable expression, her delicately arched brows drawing together as she bit her plump lower lip. He could see the gears turning in her head as she tried to come up with reasons why they’d want to do that.

“Do all the buildings in the area have these?” she asked, finally.

Not a bad follow-up. “Other private military contractors might have made similar upgrades to their buildings, like this elevator and installing Thermopane or extra-thick glass.”

“I’m guessing the glass isn’t for energy efficiency.” Her lips twisted into a cute, wry smile. “Does it prevent people from listening in with those laser beam things?”

Or something.

Gabe nodded, though. Surveillance technology, bullets—the thick glass was a deterrent for a lot of things. “Not a bad guess. The elevators are actually safe areas in case the building is caught in the shocks from a nearby explosion. There’s safety mechanisms that clamp to the sides of the shaft, and extra shielding.”

She craned her head to look up at him. “Common concern for people in your line of work?”

“Let’s say we are potential targets and like to be prepared just in case.”

Hypervigilance, or some might say paranoia, but private military contract companies like Centurion Corporation had a tendency to build up defenses against the types of incursions they were hired to do themselves. Call it practice or peace of mind.

“It was an American submarine.” She was staring at the panel of buttons for each floor.

Gabe studied the panel. “Yes.”

Whatever she was seeing, he was missing it. He’d never been in a Chinese sub, but he didn’t think she’d ever been either.

“Well, I can’t be sure, but in normal elevators some floor numbers are skipped. Like thirteen.” Maylin pointed to the buttons for twelve and fourteen.

“Yeah.” Still not sure where she was going.

“In buildings in certain Asian communities, any floor number containing the number four would be missing too.” She pointed to the four button on the panel. “So this wasn’t a Chinese submarine.”

Huh. Learn something new. “The number four an unlucky number?”

She laughed. “A lot of people are superstitious. Pretty sure that’s a cross-cultural thing. In Chinese superstition, the number four sounds like the word for ‘death.’ I don’t consider myself particularly superstitious, but in an exceptionally tall building, going to one of those floors does give me a cold chill. Maybe I’m not quite as Americanized as my stepmother despairs.”

Having knowledge of one’s ethnic roots gave a depth to a person. He envied her. Growing up, his mother’d put most of her effort into making them the All-American family with little to no emphasis on where she or his father’d come from. After his parents died, he’d spent his time in the foster system with only the name Diaz and a mirror to tell him about his background. His identity had been built with his own two hands in the service, then with the Centurions.

After a moment, she shook her head. “Ugh. Speaking of my stepmother, she also thinks I watch too many of those police procedural dramas on television. She might be right, and I hate admitting that, but after watching those, the idea of having one of these elevators in your company building totally makes sense in my brain.”

“You like watching those?” Along with Asian dramas and Japanese cartoons. Funny how unreal those shows were, and yet reality could be even less believable. Then again, if the average public found the things he’d seen in real life entertaining then he’d consider the human race doomed. He’d seen some sorry examples of what people were capable of.

She had her eyes on the floor light indicator, watching the slow progression upward. “Sometimes. There’s usually a marathon of one series or another going on and I like to watch while I’m experimenting with recipes in my free time.”

The elevator finally came to a stop and the doors opened to an atrium of polished dark marble. No insignia marked the floor or walls. As they crossed to a set of glass doors, only a small removable plaque marked the office space as Centurion Corporation. “You messing with ingredients for your business or for home?”

It was fun to watch her in a kitchen. Always in motion, taking charge with a confidence he found irresistible.

The receptionist inside had seen them coming and the magnetic lock disengaged with an audible click. He reached out and pulled open the glass door, motioning for Maylin to precede him.

She answered as she walked by, her tone calm and still conversational. “I look for new recipes to add to my themed menus, but they’re usually made to serve a small dinner party. Scaling up to catering for between fifty to a few hundred isn’t always simple math. There’s practicality in food prep to be considered and approaches to presentation. Plus, deciding whether it can sit out as long as it would need to for a buffet. And every once in a while, kitchen chemistry can be unexpectedly exciting.”

He snorted as they approached the reception desk. “You make it sound like pots explode.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her shrug. “Not saying they don’t once in a while. There’s also the occasional fireball.”

Huh.

“Hey, Diaz.” The young man at reception looked to be about sixteen. In reality, he was in his midtwenties and had been deployed with the Air Force as an officer once before deciding to move to the private sector. Caleb was doing his training with corporate before coming out to the Seattle branch to train with his new squadron. Officer training in the military had given him polish, the Centurion Corporation would give him seasoning. “We’ve been expecting you. Just need your associate to present a valid photo ID and sign in.”

Maylin gave Caleb a smile as she pulled out her real driver’s license. From over her shoulder, Gabe gave Caleb a warning glance as he caught the kid trying to get a better angle as Maylin leaned forward to sign on the electronic signature pad. Seriously, it was both attractive and infuriating the way she was unconsciously tempting. At least Gabe had confirmation her effect wasn’t exclusively on him.

Caleb snorted as he assembled and handed her a plastic visitor badge with a label affixed to it displaying her name and identifying Gabe as her escort, all business now. “Here you go. Wear this someplace visible at all times. It’s only good for the day. Red hatch marks come up on it after eight hours.”

His ability to do his job and remain unintimidated by the older Centurions without insulting anyone was part of the reason he had a good future with them. He knew his stuff, got along with everyone, accepted each of them with their relatively dangerous quirks. Good man.

Maylin nodded. “Got it.”

“You don’t seem surprised.” Gabe guided her beyond reception and down a hallway past a standard grey cube farm.

She clipped the badge to her shirt. “I’ve done catering for corporate luncheons. Badges are pretty standard. Some of them have an expiration date and some of them have this sort of visual thing to show the badge isn’t good anymore. Had these kinds of badges before but wasn’t expecting this level of formality in an organization like yours.”

“We do business with all levels of corporations and government.” Gabe led her to a small conference room at the back corner. The entire wall was glass, so anyone could easily see in, but it had a white noise generator and the exterior window was thermo-glass. Normal in appearance, but a secure place to put her for the time being. “Can you wait here? I’m going to report in and probably bring someone to come talk to you. Caleb will probably stop by in a minute to see if you need water or anything. Restroom is right next door.”

“Okay.” Maylin took a seat. She didn’t appear completely serene, but she wasn’t freaked out either.

Not bad considering he’d only told her they were coming to corporate to regroup and consider next steps. Not nearly as much information as she deserved, but he didn’t want to promise anything until he’d confirmed he had the go-ahead. She was putting a lot of trust in him so he hadn’t wanted to give her empty promises. He turned to leave and paused.

Ah, hell.

She looked up, eyes wide in surprise when he returned to her. He brushed a stray hair from her cheek. “You’re safe here. I want to be sure you know.”

She swallowed, her shoulders relaxing a fraction. “Okay.”

Her run-in with Jewel had hit Maylin harder than she let on. For all that her expressions gave away her surface emotions: confusion, surprise, anger—he really shouldn’t enjoy anger as much as he did—she was incredibly good at hiding her worries and insecurities.

He was going to need to see to it that he took those into consideration. Might have been easier for the other people in her life to just assume she could handle all the things, but he refused to leave her struggling. Recent intimacies notwithstanding, he found himself wanting to see her smile real smiles more often.

It was good for her to be wary of Jewel—there was no doubt which of them would come out on top in a fight. Jewel had the training and experience behind her to best most women and many men in hand to hand. But he needed to do something to reassure Maylin about what was between them, that he and Jewel were done. That might take a while. For the time being, he could address Maylin’s anxieties about what players were in the mix when it came to the kidnapping.

“And we’re going to get help for your sister. Edict complicates things, but it’s not a showstopper.”

“You haven’t told me much about Edict yet except that they’re another merc-...contract group.” Despite her assertion, her words came out in a whisper instead of a challenge. And he couldn’t blame her for thinking of mercenaries when it came to them.

It was a label. Most people had the worst meaning in mind when they thought of mercenaries. But he was what he was and he still made his choices based on what he decided was the right thing. Labels didn’t bother him much.

“There’s not a lot to tell you yet besides that. We’ll get facts here and as soon as I have them, I’ll share them with you. Trust me a little while longer.”

“Only if you promise to make the next long elevator ride more fun.”

She might have meant it as a joke, but desire roared through him, taking him by surprise. The visual of her with her head thrown back as he took her up against the wall of the elevator took over his entire mind for a full minute.

Down, boy.

“Careful what you wish for.” Wrestling as he was with the idea of the multitude of elevators he could take her to, he couldn’t be blamed for how gruff his voice had become. Right?

Desire sparked in her eyes. “Let’s table that for another time.”

Of course she had to mention tables. This conference room was looking tempting too, glass and all.

He watched her, wondering how he could be struck by how beautiful she was multiple times a day. Not as if he ever found her unattractive, but he just never got used to it. She took his breath away. And as he saw her own breath catch under the weight of his gaze, he had a hell of a time wrenching his mental processes back to the mission at hand.

“I’ll be back soon.”

* * *

“You look wound up tighter than a violin string.” The man behind the desk stood immediately and came around to pull Gabe into a quick hug, pounding him once on the back. “You need to go get laid or something.”

“You’ve got a way with words, Harte.” And he wasn’t particularly wrong either. Gabe just had a specific lady in mind and a mission to complete first.

Harte was one of those men who could head into a bar and walk out with his choice of women. He wasn’t pretty, per se. He oozed charm, though, and cleaned up good. He could also carry off the day-old-scruff look and still have women hanging all over him. That said, Harte’s advantage was his brown hair, brown eyes, slightly taller than average height stats. Anyone taking a description of him would get very little in the way of distinctive details to go on if they were trying to track the man down.

People instantly liked and trusted Harte when they met him, then couldn’t quite remember a day later. A very nice talent in their line of work. Besides, Harte actually enjoyed speaking to people. It was why he coordinated what major contracts they took and negotiated the terms, most of the time.

“How’s the missing girl job going?” Harte dropped into one of two armchairs arranged in a conversational grouping with a leather couch to one side of his office.

Gabe sat on the edge of the other, leaning forward so his elbows rested on his knees, and threaded his fingers together. “Good news and bad news.”

“Always the way. Gimme the bad news first.”

“We’re going to have to go through Edict to get to the missing girl. And since it’s Edict, they’ve got deep pockets funding them.” Gabe watched Harte closely to gauge his reaction.

Harte didn’t move but his expression darkened. “Professionally speaking, they get things done.”

“True.”

And private military contractors like Edict made the term
mercenaries
an insult to the rest of them. A big part of the reason Gabe had joined Centurion Corporation after he’d been discharged had been the ethics the Centurions held higher than money. Maybe not as noble as the US military branches, but simple and humble: do the right thing.