Level Up

by Hadley Quinn

  “See?” he said to her. “We’re easy to please.”

  “Okay,” she chuckled. “But if any of you mistake my food for shit, we’re gonna have a problem.”

  That got a smile from every one of them, plus a few chuckles.

  “All right, then,” she said. “Come on up whenever you’re able.”

  She trekked upstairs in complete awkward silence, afraid to glance back. A minute later, it was hard to miss the sound of the cavalry coming up to the main floor. She watched in awe as they politely served themselves food onto the plates she’d set out—quietly like they were afraid to talk or make any noise.

  “Do you not like enchiladas, Kit?” she asked. He hadn’t served himself one and just went straight for the chips and salsa.

  The entire room came to a halt and the stillness made her heart pound in her ears. Some guys even stopped in mid motion, while others finally turned to face her.

  “How the fuck she know that was Kit?” one of them said. She was sure that guy’s name was Chuck.

  They all looked at her for an answer, even Gabe. Yes, she’d realized downstairs that Kato and Kit were twins, so she had to do some quick thinking as she memorized faces with names.

  She pointed to Kit’s hand. “Uh, your fingernail,” she said. A fingernail on his right hand was blackened like it’d been smashed recently.

  “Jesus, Gabe,” Chuck said. “You got her under your tutelage?”

  “Tutelage?” Ronan mocked. “I didn’t think you knew words like that, Chuckie.”

  Most of them laughed and Chuck flipped him the bird, and then they continued dishing up food.

  When she was close enough to Kit she quietly asked, “Are you a vegetarian?”

  “Well, yes…” he answered cautiously. He glanced across the room at Gabe, who was watching their interaction closely.

  “I can make an enchilada without meat,” she told him. “It’ll just take a few minutes if I heat it in the microwave.”

  “No, that’s okay…”

  But she had already left him. No reason to wait for him to turn her down. Gabe was already giving him a curious eye but Kit shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

  It only took a few minutes to make, and it was no big deal because she felt like she should make more enchiladas all around anyway. Those guys were eating faster than she could say ‘hot sauce.’

  It would take too much time to brown more beef, so she opened another package of grilled chicken and mixed it up in a bowl with the other ingredients. She rolled up a dozen more enchiladas and then put the dish in the microwave for a quick heat. They’d all been eyeing her preparation the entire time, and she could tell several were ready for more.

  While they ate, she listened to their banter from a corner of the kitchen. It was easy to distinguish personalities that way. Ronan was obviously the leader of the group just by the way everyone called him “Boss.” Chuck was the smartass, and Gabe seemed to have a problem with him for some reason; they kept making weird eye contact now and then. Jessop was the techie expert, but the glasses and slender figure didn’t give it away. It was the way he talked sometimes. Titus was involved in tracking or sniping of some sort, but he was the quietest and Ava couldn’t figure out much about him. The twins seemed to be multi-talented, like Gabe. She gathered that they were snipers, hand-to-hand fighters, and possibly involved in using their identical appearances to their advantage. She laughed when Gabe called them Kit-Kat.

  Ava remained in the corner, quietly making a grocery list. She had no idea how long these guys would be in her home. She figured a few days’ worth, just to be safe. By the time she was done with it, she noticed that the men were rinsing dishes in the sink and cleaning up the kitchen. She glanced around, surprised they were doing it so quietly and under Gabe’s supervising eye. She shot him a playful scowl and he smiled with pride.

  “So Ava, I have a question for you,” Ronan asked. All movement ceased except for Gabe, who immediately came to her side. “Do you speak German?”

  “Goddamn it, Ronan,” Gabe growled.

  “It’ll help,” Chuck added defensively from across the room.

  “I don’t fucking care! I told you she’s off limits and you go and do that?”

  “Fine, we’ll bring in another damn agent,” Ronan shrugged. “See if that’s quicker.”

  Ava could only stare at Gabe, who looked as pissed as he sounded. There was no way she was going to answer anything without his approval, but if they needed her help, what would it hurt? Obviously someone had taken the time to figure out she could speak a foreign language.

  “Do you need me to read something?” she asked. She absolutely did not like being on the spot like that, especially with six guys looking from her, to Gabe, to her again.

  “So you do speak German?” Gabe finally asked reluctantly.

  “Not fabulously,” she admitted honestly. “But I can translate it when I read it. Or even when I hear it. I could never speak it fluently—I can slowly when I think about it—but I can understand it just fine.”

  “Hallelujah,” Titus said under his breath, his Alabama drawl apparent.

  “That’s all,” Ronan tried to assure Gabe. “Just until we can figure something out.” He turned to Ava and said, “My team has eight men that can speak a total of twenty-six languages. Unfortunately our German tongue is not among us right now. We could use some help.”

  “I’m fine with it,” she agreed.

  “Hey, I’m still thinking about it,” Gabe said, holding a hand up for the guys to back off. They left him alone with Ava and eventually trickled out of the kitchen and back downstairs. “Ava, I don’t like it. This wasn’t supposed to involve you in any way.”

  “I don’t even know these people. I’m just going to be passing the information on to you guys.”

  “What if you hear stuff that doesn’t settle right? There’s no telling what you’re going to be listening to. It could be directions on how to scourge some prisoner’s eyeball, or how to rape a woman until she gives up information. Or worse, how to torture and mutilate a child until the parents give in to their demands.”

  Her stomach turned over but she didn’t flinch. Gabe’s attempts to dissuade her were good, but she still wanted to help.

  “Ava, there are all kinds of things that you might not be prepared to hear. I don’t want you to hear that kind of shit, okay?”

  She could feel his need to protect her and it warmed her heart. She placed her hand against his face and softly ran her thumb across the stubble on his jaw. “I understand you want to protect me, but maybe just let me try it. You know me, Gabe. If it’s getting to me, you’ll know. Okay?” He didn’t answer and she could tell he was caught in the middle. “This will help find your friend, right? So let’s find him.”

  “As soon as it’s too much, you’re done,” he said sternly.

  “I agree.”

  “Fine.” He motioned with his head for her to follow, but stopped suddenly at the top of the stairs. “And by the way, dinner was amazing. You’re amazing. I love you, Ava.”

  He kissed her until they heard, “What the fuck was that?” from downstairs.

  Gabe pulled away from her immediately and turned for the stairs. Ava followed, even though she wasn’t sure she’d be allowed to stay.

  “What is it?” Gabe asked, thundering down the steps.

  Ava hung out near the top of the steps to observe. Ronan turned around from a computer that all six of them were crowded around and said, “Some kind of explosion.”

  “In the compound?”

  “Yeah. Take a listen. And watch the heat monitor,” he pointed.

  He signaled to Jessop and the sound was replayed for him a few times. Gabe studied the screen at the same time. “That was inside the artillery room?”

  “If that’s the room we think it is,” Jessop answered. “I still can’t get a read on it. We need more to go on.”

  “Inside job?” Chuck asked. “C-4.”

 
Gabe was still watching the screen. He flipped a switch on another board and voices came from it. Only it wasn’t anything Ava could understand. It was a different language entirely.

  “We still can’t get a better sound from that?” Gabe asked.

  “Not unless one of us hooks up our own. Best I can do to piggyback another agency’s audio feed. You wanna get in there with ours?” Jessop said, holding up a black box.

  They all looked around at each other and Gabe seemed to brush off the thought. He listened to the voices again and said, “That’s not One and Two anymore.”

  “It’s not?” Ronan asked. “We have a Three?”

  “Three and Four,” Gabe corrected.

  “Two different people?” Kit scoffed, writing something down. “Is that Serbian, Gabe?”

  Gabe listened for a few seconds and nodded. “Yeah. But it sounds…learned.”

  “They gotta be from Wolf-5, right?”

  “Maybe. But I can’t tell with this fucking reception. Wait, they’re not talking C-4. They’re talking about PE4.”

  Ava could detect the surprise in his voice.

  “The fucking British?” Chuck laughed.

  “Apparently no one has figured out where the explosion came from.”

  “It came from the UK, dipshits,” Ronan chuckled at the screen.

  “They broke into the damn weapons holding and no one even knows it,” Kato laughed. “Wonder what they did to the guards.”

  “Well they better get the hell out of there soon,” Titus mumbled.

  “Those walls are six feet thick,” Kit said. “I wonder how they got away with drilling.”

  “When we had this on yesterday I didn’t pick up any sound like that,” Jessop said.

  “What about—”

  “Hang on!” Gabe hissed. He listened for almost a minute, concentrating intently on the sputtering words being spoken. Ava silently crept down to the fifth step and sat.

  “Holy fuck,” Gabe finally said.

  “What?” Ronan asked.

  “They’re talking about setting up ‘the American.’ ”

  “Oh, f—”

  Gabe held his hand up and listened again, but when he put his head in his hand, Kato murmured, “Bobby is fucked.”

  Ava’s heart dropped at the same time.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Ava decided that whatever it was that Gabe and his team had learned, it wasn’t good. She didn’t ask who Bobby was, but she assumed it was the friend they were trying to locate. Gabe had even asked her to go upstairs, so she did. She wasn’t sure what left her more confused—hearing bits and pieces of information, or none at all.

  She went to bed around eleven-thirty. Gabe knew where to find her so she wasn’t going to act like a mother hen to his team. She was sure they had things handled and could fend for themselves.

  However, something woke her a bit later. It was Gabe sitting next to her with his hand on her shoulder.

  “Ava, I’m sorry, but the German voices are back on the audio. Do you think you could help us out? Ronan is trying but he’s not comfortable with the little bit he’s picking up.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she replied, glancing at the clock. It was after one and she was sure that Gabe hadn’t slept a wink. And, if he was actually waking her up from sleep, she knew it must be for an important reason.

  She followed him downstairs, brushing her hair down with her fingers. She realized she was going to have to talk to people and really wished she’d brushed her teeth. Thankfully the German voices weren’t up to bat at the moment, so she slipped into the downstairs bathroom to take a pee and rinse her mouth with mouthwash.

  “Ava, it’s on!” she heard Gabe holler. She barely wiped her mouth before he was knocking on the bathroom door. She wondered if he would have opened it if she hadn’t already.

  She could hear the sputtering audio as she walked across the room. How Gabe was able to translate a foreign language with that nonsense was crazy!

  “I can tell it’s German and that’s about it,” she said regretfully. “How do you guys do this?”

  “It’s the best I can do,” Jessop said.

  “Yeah, I failed,” Ronan told her. “I just don’t know enough.”

  “Try this,” Gabe said, and he turned the sound down a little lower. “Close your eyes and just listen, don’t focus too hard. Just listen to them talk. Don’t worry about hearing each word.”

  Okay, that helped. She listened for about twenty seconds before she came up with the first bit of it. “They’re talking about food,” she reported.

  Chuck snorted. “Of course! Jesus Christ,” he murmured.

  Gabe hushed him with a hand and motioned for her to listen again. “What’s so funny?” he asked after a few seconds.

  Ava realized she was smiling. “Oh. They’re talking about getting some ‘real food.’ One of ‘em said, ‘I can’t eat this shit any longer.’ ”

  The guys all looked at each other while they kept listening. But the voices started fading and the words were indistinguishable.

  “They’re only passing an audio point,” Gabe told her. He looked at Ronan and said, “What do you think?”

  Ronan looked at Ava and asked, “You can’t tell if their native is German, can you?”

  “She’s not a fucking linguist,” Chuck scoffed. “Unless that lesson is a part of your bedroom repertoire,” he joked to Gabe.

  But Gabe didn’t think it was funny. “Shut your mouth, Deeks.”

  “Knock it off, guys,” Ronan growled. “Chuck, shut the fuck up unless you have something productive to say.”

  “They aren’t German,” Ava spoke up. All eyes turned to her. “At least I don’t think so. And one of them sounds like that guy from earlier. The ones that were in the artillery room speaking what—? Arabic, you said? No, Serbian.”

  “Not possible,” Chuck shook his head. “These two are guards on opposite ends of the property.”

  “Jesus Christ, she’s right,” Gabe suddenly said, slapping the table. “I knew there was something familiar about them but I was too busy trying to translate.”

  “The ‘mmm’ in between certain words, right?” Ava asked.

  “Exactly.” He flipped on a recording that must have been from earlier and listened for a minute. Ava couldn’t understand the words, but she heard that familiar “mmm” before a phrase.

  “So we’ve got three languages now that belongs to one individual,” Gabe said.

  “You’re gonna determine that right now?” Chuck scoffed.

  “Yes, I am. I’m betting that’s Herron-7.”

  “No way,” Chuck argued. “Herron doesn’t speak German. Does he?”

  “Well he does now.”

  “So we’ve got an American agent inside Radic’s weapon’s compound—?”

  Chuck closed his mouth as Gabe looked at Ava. Right. Names she wasn’t supposed to hear. She pointed for the stairs and made her exit. She heard Gabe say, “Thank you, Ava,” on her way up.

  “Any time.”

  ***

  What the hell was all of that?” Ronan asked Gabe after Ava left.

  “What was what?”

  “How the hell did she figure out that was the same person?”

  “I don’t know, but I should have figured it out,” he said, shaking his head.

  Chuck smiled. “Ah, a bit of rivalry—”

  “It has nothing to do with her figuring it out instead of me, you dumb fuck. I just should have known. There was something right there and I couldn’t put my finger on it. With the static and the language, I didn’t catch it right away. I guess she could hear the sounds and rhythms, not the words.”

  “You sure it’s Davis in there?” Ronan asked.

  “Positive. He does that thing with is mouth when he speaks, and that’s how it comes out as a ‘mmm.’ I told him a thousand times to knock it off when we were in Kosovo.”

  “So he’s in Radic’s compound, huh?” Ronan said.

  “As a guard, no less
.”

  “Who mentioned the American earlier?” Kit asked.

  “Wasn’t Davis. It was the other guy with him.”

  “So Davis knows that Bobby is there,” Ronan stated. “Or at least some American.”

  “I assume he knows because of how they conversed,” Gabe answered. “Now we need to figure out what the hell he’s doing there and if he can help with Bobby.”

  Gabe rubbed his eyes for the third time in five minutes. The damn computer screens were bugging him and he stepped away.

  “When was the last time you slept?” Ronan asked him quietly.

  “I haven’t. I doze, I don’t sleep.”

  “We’ve been apart for six weeks, Gabe. I’ve certainly caught up on some sleep.”

  “I told you, I’m really fucked up right now. I just can’t sleep. Five minutes here and there. That’s how I get by.”

  “What about your girlfriend? Doesn’t she notice that?”

  “Don’t get me started.”

  “So she’s worried about you,” he stated.

  “I can’t get her to understand when it comes to that.”

  “You won’t take a pill because of what happened to Curtis,” he concluded with a sigh. “Buddy, go upstairs and get some sleep. We’ve got a good eight to ten hours of work ahead of us, and I don’t need you right now. You did a hell of a job giving us what you did. And you can give Ava a great big ‘thank you’ by getting some sleep, huh?”

  Gabe wasn’t going to lie, he was all for it. With the guys in the house, it was all the security he needed. But there was no way they could stop the nightmares from coming. What if he had one in the middle of the night and Ava got caught in the middle of it?

  “Is there another room upstairs?” Ronan asked, sensing his fear.

  “Yeah, right next to hers.”

  “I’ll crash there, okay? Nothing’s gonna happen, Gabe, and if it does, I’ll be right there. Okay?”

  “This really freaks me out,” Gabe admitted, thankful that the other guys were busy with other things and couldn’t hear.

  “I know. But you gotta take a step forward, okay? Ava seems great. I can tell she supports you and wants you to be okay. She’s gonna be good for you. Just let it happen. Let her help you.”