Hidden Impact

by Piper J. Drake

  Jewel’s smile faded a fraction. Her eyes darted, focusing on Gabe then Maylin then back to Gabe. “I’m with Edict now. There is no walking away.”

  Gabe stiffened, his broad shoulders and back frozen for a split second before he relaxed again into the ready-to-move posture Maylin always admired about him. This tightrope walking on the edge of action was exhausting her and she wanted to shout. Make something happen.

  After a pause, Jewel flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Take the tiny woman back to wherever you plan to stash her and keep her under wraps. If she quits looking for what she’s lost, she can go back to her life with no worries.”

  Oh, no way.

  “Not likely.” Maylin took a step forward, but Gabe’s arm blocked her momentum. Anger burned away thought process and Maylin only wanted to get right up into Jewel’s face.

  Jewel laughed, a short bark. “Remember to look both ways before you cross the street, then.”

  Maylin opened her mouth to say something. A hundred questions crowded, jostling to be the first out. But Gabe was herding her to one side and into his rental car.

  “Stay down,” Gabe muttered before shutting the passenger-side door and striding around to the driver’s side. Once inside, he kept his attention on Jewel as he started up the car and pulled away from the curb.

  Scrunched up in the seat, Maylin fought a nasty internal battle with the part of her most likely to tell him where to shove his orders and jump out of the car. She could assert herself. Prove she was her own woman and go confront this Jewel person, try to make the woman tell her how to find her sister. But Gabe was a professional and obviously knew Jewel. The comments they’d tossed back and forth had too many layers of meaning, too many references to things unspoken. Too much history.

  Besides, Jewel had wanted Maylin to go with her. Reason enough to follow Gabe’s instructions. Call it intuition or instinct or questionable survival skill. Maylin didn’t trust Jewel in any way, shape or form.

  So she wasn’t going to ditch Gabe to go with the woman. But she wasn’t going to follow along blindly either. It’d been several long minutes and she was done with waiting for him to speak to her. “Are we far enough away for you to tell me why you stuffed me in the car instead of making that woman tell you where my sister is?”

  “No.” Gabe sighed. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  A little of the resentment loosened inside Maylin’s chest. He sounded sincere. It was hard to let someone else make the decisions, but Gabe kept proving he wasn’t taking her acquiescence for granted. “Apology accepted.”

  And to be fair, frequent traffic light stops meant they hadn’t traveled more than a few miles as yet. Washington, DC, and the surrounding areas were much more confusing to her than Seattle. The street layout didn’t make it easy for her to picture a map of the area in her mind or get her bearings.

  “You’re lucky I got there when I did.” Gabe’s grip on the driving wheel tightened. “You weren’t supposed to step outside the embassy.”

  Maylin shook her head. If he could apologize, so could she. “I’m sorry too. Could she have taken me off embassy grounds?”

  Gabe took in a deep breath. “She was trying to coax you, get you to walk with her. Then, it wouldn’t take much to snatch you off the street.”

  True. Maylin could picture it pretty readily. She closed her eyes and recalled several cars on the street. No black minivans or windowless work vans, but more than one had been an SUV or similar larger vehicle. Not hard to shove someone into one of those and drive away. She needed to take these things in more at the moment instead of in hindsight.

  “But why?” The question burst from her and she took a moment to slow down, try not to sound panicked. “Why do they want me at all? If they were trying to silence me, stop me from looking for An-mei, I understand why they would try to run me over. But these other things that have been happening. They’re trying to take me alive and I don’t understand.”

  It didn’t make any sense. And she needed for it to make sense or she was going to go crazy.

  “You’d be leverage. Your sister is capable of conducting valuable research. But they can’t beat her into doing what they want. They need her in reasonably good condition and able to think. That’s where having you in custody makes sense. They can threaten you to gain her cooperation. It’s a good sign because it could mean your sister is alive and resisting. As long as you’re loose, we’ve got a better chance of getting to her before she fulfills their use for her. And you’re turning out to be valuable.” Despite his positive words, Gabe’s tone remained serious. “They’re going to try harder and harder to get to you. I want to say as long as you do what I tell you to, you’ll be fine, but my team and I can’t anticipate every move. We’ll do our best, but your chances increase exponentially if you keep your calm and think clearly on your own too.”

  “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 bit
terness, 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