Hidden Impact (3 page)

He didn’t answer.

“Not that I’d set something like this up just to test you all.” The words came out in a rush as they braked hard. God, she hoped he didn’t think she had. The urge to turn in her seat to look behind them popped into her mind and she thoroughly squashed the idea. Facing backwards in a car would only make her car sickness worse, and potentially tragic, the way he was making free with the acceleration and sudden deceleration.

“You didn’t. We’re good enough to know a setup when we walk into it.” The amusement was back in his voice. He must enjoy it when she babbled like an idiot.

“Okay.” She got the acknowledgment out in a small whisper.

The car swerved as he took a hard turn and accelerated enough to push her back into the seat. “Try to look far ahead or close your eyes. This won’t take long.”

“Okay.” She glued her eyes shut instead and held on to the conversation.

“I’m guessing they put the listening equipment in when they learned their driver didn’t take you out. It was quick work and means a lot of things.” His voice had a gravelly tone to it and his words filled the close space of her car.

“They knew who I was and where I lived. I’m getting that. I don’t want to. But I am. I must’ve left my name, phone number and even mailing address on at least a dozen voice mails while I was calling around trying to get information on my little sister.” She swallowed hard. “I might need chocolate cake before this all sinks in as real.”

A pause followed by a quiet chuckle. “Cake?”

“Double chocolate. I have a special recipe.” She chewed on her lip and wondered if she liked the abrupt laugh from earlier or the softer one from just now. Either one gave her butterflies to chase away the anxiety. “Actually, I’ll make cupcakes and share.”

“Sharing is good.”

And her brain hit a dead end again. She doubted he wanted to listen to her babble about Guinness-infused cupcake batter and ganache spiked with Irish whiskey. He would probably rather drink either. So who could blame her when her thoughts circled back to the bigger elephants in the car?

“Who are they? Why would they be out to squash me flat?” She hoped against common sense that he had answers for her. He’d only met her tonight and still didn’t know even as much as she did about her sister’s disappearance.

Still, she had several more interrogatives lined up for him whether he had the answers or not. They were jumbled up inside her head, bursting to be let out on someone. Anyone. But preferably a person who could help her.

“The hit-and-run wannabe wouldn’t have made a pancake out of you. It would’ve been a sort of smashed and broken kind of mess...which I’ll stop telling you about right now. The point is whoever wanted you dead probably got a look at me and my partners.” He glanced up at the rearview mirror again, then cursed under his breath and made another sharp turn, then another. “They might’ve withdrawn to reassess and get a better idea of how much protection you had before attempting a second attack. That’s a good thing.”

“Oh.” Not sure how it was, but she’d opt for believing him since he was currently driving her away from harm.

“Hey.”

She looked at him, responding to the sharp command in his tone.

“You’re under my protection now. Centurion Corporation isn’t about to give them another opening to get to you.” He turned his head and his gaze burned into her for a long moment before he turned his attention back to the road. “We’ve lost your tail and I’m taking you out of the city. The rest we can start on in the morning. It’s going to be okay.”

His words sank in, and for the first time since she’d gone to the airport to pick up her little sister—and not found her—Maylin started to hope.

“So you’re going to help me find my sister?” It was a tenacious thing, this feeling, and she held her breath waiting for his answer.

He sighed. “I’m going to listen to what you know about your little sister’s disappearance. I can’t promise you’ll find her.”

She fell silent and stared out the window as the city lights gave way to the darkness of highway. Trees were huge shadows beyond the sides of the roads. She knew exactly what she wanted to say this time, but the majority of it was nasty, bad-tempered and definitely ill-advised considering how much he’d already helped her. Plus, his actions had only convinced her more that he and the Centurion Corporation were the help she needed.

“You’re not going to recommend a private investigator in the morning, though, are you?” And there was only a minimal amount of snark there. Honest. She’d tried.

“No.” His tone had gone flat.

See? Not wise. At all. And not even a leftover fortune cookie stashed in her purse to help her get back to firmer ground.

“I’m sorry.” Sincerity was the best she could dredge up. “I’m not sure how to give you the information you need, and I really want to present it in the most convincing way possible.”

“We’re going to want to hear out your whole story when you’re better rested.” His words had defrosted a bit. “You’ll be able to think clearer and won’t be as likely to fumble any details. My entire team will be asking you questions—not just me—and we’ll need to do some research.”

“But time...”

“I’ll be using what little we have left of tonight to find out what I can about your new friends. They’re the most immediate link to what’s going on and probably connected to your sister’s disappearance. I will not be wasting time.”

So much confidence, assurance. She wanted to believe him.

“I really want to say you should get rest too. But I want you to get closer to figuring out what happened tonight and how it relates to An-mei more.” She cleared her throat. “Wherever it is we’re going... I don’t have a hosting gift. Does it have a kitchen and can I make you breakfast as a thank-you instead?”

He laughed again and flashed her a grin.

She was unreasonably giddy in response. “So do you like omelets? Or eggs Benedict?”

Chapter Three

Gabe pulled up next to the guest cabin and put the car into Park.

The last twenty minutes of the car ride had been quiet, peaceful even, as the twilight gave way to dawn and the events of the night had finally taken their toll on Maylin Cheng. She sat slumped in the passenger seat, her head tipped far to one side as she napped.

Impressive. As a soldier, he’d learned to nap anywhere, but she looked damned uncomfortable. Considering the best way to make sure she didn’t fall on her face the minute she got out of the car, he opted to disembark and walk around to the passenger side. Opening the door, he spoke quietly, trying not to scare the bejeezus out of her. “Maylin. Hey.”

She woke with a start, sitting bolt upright and pinning him with a wide-eyed stare.

So much for not scaring her. He held up his hands to show he meant no harm. “Remember me? Gabriel Diaz.”

Her eyes remained wild for a moment before recognition eased into them. “Ngh.”

He wasn’t sure she’d spoken coherently in any language.

“Let’s get you settled in to the guest cabin.” He took both her hands in his and helped her out of the car.

She bumped her head on the way out.

“Whoop. Careful there.” He sucked at this. If she ended up with a second bump, he had no good excuse for letting it happen. Thank god she didn’t have a concussion.

Her eyelids shuttered closed. She was asleep on her feet. Literally.

“Hey, c’mon.”

No dice. Her eyes fluttered open and she focused on him for a moment before her lids were too heavy to lift again. He led her forward a couple of steps and she stumbled with him, blind.

Okay, fine. She was exhausted. He could understand that. And he should not have let her bump her head again, however lightly. She didn’t have a drop of energy left in her.

Giving up, he let her stand for a second. He bent over and gently put his shoulder into her midriff, hefting her over his shoulder. He could’ve been chivalrous and shit about carrying her in his arms but then he wouldn’t have a hand free to get the door to the cabin open.

Either he was going to regret having met Maylin Cheng or she was going to hate him. One or the other.

* * *

“It’s not like you to bring home strays.” The voice in the dark wasn’t angry or malicious. In fact, Lizzy had a way of maintaining the kind of completely neutral tone that left a man wondering if he’d see the dawn.

“Safest place for her, for now.” Gabe rubbed his jaw. “Everyone in for the night?”

“Yup.” His teammate stepped out of the shadows of the surveillance room and into the dimly lit hallway. Her hair was tied back and she wore a simple black T-shirt and jeans. Still wore her holster since she was on night watch. Even though she’d come out to greet him, she kept her gaze fixed on the security displays inside the room. “You were saying it wasn’t any kind of drunk-driving hit-and-run. I was thinking the trajectory of the car was straight as an arrow, heading toward the girl and on its way out of range. The girl all right?”

He shook his head. “Got to her apartment, found it bugged. Some fairly high-end audio surveillance. The team will need to head back to do a full sweep.”

One man trying to conduct that sort of search was definitely going to miss something. It was better completed as a team.

Even in profile, he could see Lizzy’s brows draw together. “Lot of effort invested in keeping tabs on a single woman. Wasn’t she part of the catering crew? Manager or something? Not usually the type to rate that much effort.”

He nodded. “Makes me wonder what is going on with her missing sister.”

Maylin Cheng didn’t seem the type to be involved with drugs or the black market. Outside of those, there wasn’t a lot to draw enough attention to a person to rate surveillance and assassination attempts. Mafia, maybe.

“You put her in the guest house?”

“At least until we decide on a safe house or secure hotel where she’d be more comfortable. Something we can look into in the morning. I checked over her car back at her parking garage. No obvious signs of tampering or tracking devices.” Course, he and Maylin had only been upstairs in her apartment for a very short time and he’d parked her car in full view of two different security cameras. There hadn’t been sufficient surveillance in the garage, but he’d made sure not to park in one of the blind spots. His mind moved on to the line of investigation he had for tonight. “If you can run queries on An-mei Cheng’s disappearance and background checks on both the Chengs while you’re on watch, I’d consider it a favor.”

Lizzy raised an eyebrow. “Any reason you’re not making it an order?”

As leader of their fire team, he was commanding officer. But they weren’t active duty military anymore. They didn’t have to live rank and position twenty-four seven. The structure of Centurion Corporation was more a hybrid of military and corporate organization. The corporate influence was especially apparent back at HQ in DC. His superiors at HQ oversaw contract acquisition and decided on resource allocation, sending squadrons made up of four to five fire teams, each all around the world.

For the most part, Gabe kept it simple. He commanded his fire team when they were actively on a contracted mission. Otherwise, they were more casual about their interactions within the bounds of earned respect.

He shrugged. “We’re not on official contract and I haven’t decided if we’re taking the job yet.”

She nodded. “Fair.”

Lizzy was more than familiar with the way he operated, so her response made him pause. He wasn’t committing to the job yet. “I’ll be in my room, but call me if anything comes up.”

“You got it.”

Centurion Corporation Training and Recovery was a five-acre property tucked into the northwest corner of the Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park just east of Seattle. Heavily wooded, the acreage didn’t offer any clear line of sight for potential onlookers, but hidden cameras were installed all over the property in addition to the more obvious perimeter fence and no-trespassing signage for normal passersby.

The men and women stationed at the training center and barracks were responsible for surveillance over the main perimeter and training grounds. The recovery cabins were set apart and to the edge of the property to give people on R & R space. Almost always having returned fresh from hot spots overseas, the Centurions staying there were operating on a high level of awareness, so they maintained their own second-layer surveillance of their section of the perimeter. Mostly for the structure of scheduled watches and for peace of mind.

It did a person a lot of good to fall into a familiar routine.

Lizzy would see any intruders long before they got anywhere near the guest house or main building. He’d have plenty of time to get to Maylin if there was trouble, and she’d be surrounded by the rest of his team too. None of them were heavy sleepers, if they slept at all.

He didn’t. Not much anyway.

The kitchen in the main rest and recovery house was dark, but indirect lighting came on as motion sensors detected his entrance. A quick search of the commercial-sized refrigerator scored him some leftover Beefaroni and stir-fried broccoli. Not a winning combination, but it’d do.

Damn. He should have made her eat something. Slight build like hers, she probably burned up calories just thinking too hard. But there had been no waking the woman, even as he’d carried her into the guest house and laid her on the bed. She’d probably have slept through him trying to force-feed her. As it was, he’d removed her shoes, spread a blanket over her and left a note next to a bottle of water for her, letting her know to come up to the main house when she woke. Hopefully not too creepy.

Gabe headed down a second hallway, past the kitchen and a couple of other rooms. He nudged the door to his own open with his foot and took a good look before entering. In the middle of his safe zone, where the chances of an intruder were slim to none, and he still couldn’t relax.

Nobody would blame him. His teammates didn’t ease down from the heightened state of awareness they all lived in either. It kept people alive overseas. He’d done three tours already, two on active military duty and one as a private military contractor. He planned to go out on a fourth as soon as his team had enough time to rest and recover. That’s what the Centurion base in Washington State was for: training new recruits and recovery for teams recently returned. It was a good setup.

Setting down his dubious meal, he opened his laptop and jabbed the power button. While it booted, he shrugged out of his suit jacket and pulled his tie out of his pants pocket. Belt, shoes and socks came off next. He sighed. Something close to heaven when the damned dress socks were peeled off. He had no idea why the things were so uncomfortable. They didn’t breathe.

He snorted. Tough Gabe Diaz, luxuriating over the chance to wiggle his toes. What. The. Fuck.

He sat down and shoveled a mouthful of Beefaroni before logging on to his laptop and bringing up the VPN. Once he was on Centurion’s private network, he quickly scanned his email for urgent messages. One from headquarters caught his eye. The subject read “Safeguard Project” but it wasn’t marked at high priority so Gabe flagged it to look at later and focused on the task at hand.

He shot out a couple of inquiries to see who might be active in the area. Mercenaries followed the jobs, and people in his line of business tended to bump into each other again and again. Somebody he knew probably had an idea of who was after Maylin or had gotten wind of the job involving her.

One net cast, he started the first of the information searches he had planned to catch other fish. Lizzy would verify Maylin was who she said she was and that her sister really was missing.

Not that he didn’t believe her, but Maylin was emotionally compromised. Too close to the situation to think clearly or evaluate circumstances objectively. Even if he wanted to believe her, he needed to confirm the veracity of her story via third-party sources. Meanwhile, he wanted to get an idea of what this missing person looked like.

An-mei Cheng was a fairly easy-to-find person, at least on the internet. First-generation Chinese American, born and raised in the Seattle area. Her father’s family was from northwestern China. Her mother had been from Beijing. She was a few years older than the little sister he’d pictured from the way Maylin spoke about her. Regardless, both sisters looked young in the way most people of Eastern ancestry managed, with smooth skin and ageless eyes. He was betting a lot of people mistook them for way younger than they really were. Maylin’s maturity came from her air of competency and the confidence she exuded. At least, when she didn’t have to deal with assholes like him.

Water under the bridge, Diaz. You’re helping her now.

Still, this was the last kind of job he wanted for him or his team. This kind of job sucked a person in, made them care. It was the kind in which only a sociopath could avoid getting emotionally invested. He’d been there and been burned, bad. Nothing about this was going to end well.

But he’d decided to help Maylin, at least far enough to ensure she didn’t end up dead in the near future. And who the hell else would be able to? Nobody in the Seattle area had the resources Centurion had.

His smartphone rattled on the desk with a notification. There wasn’t much point setting them to vibrate when the vibration could be heard across the damn room. He picked up the phone and gave the screen a swipe.

Lizzy had completed her search already.

He pushed away from his laptop and headed back up the hallway to the surveillance room.

“Lizzy.”

She didn’t turn from the multiple monitors this time either.

“Search didn’t take long.” Lizzy reached for a pile of printouts. “To be honest, I was curious after tonight’s fun so I started a basic background query on Maylin and her sister before I settled in for surveillance. Finding out how An-mei Cheng disappeared was quick because there’s not much out there to find.”

Curiosity and paranoia worked hand in hand, mostly to their benefit. Lizzy would have given him a heads-up right away if anything about Maylin’s situation set off red flags. Gabe took the printouts from her. “You’re a freaking goddess.”

“Basic” for Lizzy was more detailed than most background checks run for standard employers. There’d probably be more in there about Maylin and her sister than they knew about themselves.

“Yes, and how about you stand night watch for me next time I need to switch shifts?” Lizzy sounded cold but a small smile played on her lips. “This missing person—police haven’t done more than contact the authorities in China. They’re sticking to the exact letter of standard operating procedure. The US Embassy over there has an alert for if she comes back to the embassy over the next couple of days, but there’s no active search for her. Again, standard procedure. They’re assuming she went off to party or sightsee, maybe lost her passport. They’re waiting to see if she contacts them.”

The same basic runaround Maylin had been getting. So far, her story was turning out to be accurate.

“What was she doing over there?”

“Our person of interest is some sort of uber smart person. A PhD in gene therapy and genetic recombination. She wasn’t just attending a scientific research conference, she was a guest speaker. Not the sort who’d go on a drunken binge and miss her flight home. Profile isn’t a match.” Lizzy’s face remained neutral. Her arms were crossed and she tapped a finger on her bicep the way she did when she was chewing on inconsistencies. “Both women are bilingual too. They speak Mandarin, so it’s not like An-mei Cheng couldn’t ask for directions to get to the authorities or the embassy.”

Not like she couldn’t call for help.

“Seems to be a high-profile person, though.” Gabe wondered why the authorities were so laid back if an important researcher, a guest in the country, hadn’t turned up yet. Not as big a surprise that they weren’t responding to worried family members like Maylin. Unless you had clout on the international scene, there was little a person could do so far away from the country in question.