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29
Jensen
“Would you like another water?” the waitress asked.
“No, thank you. Can you tell me if Mary is done talking with your manager?” I replied, pushing aside the empty glass. One more and my bladder was likely to explode.How fucking long does it take to quit?I wondered.Is Mare back there listening to a lecture? Is she chickening out?
“Mary?” The waitress frowned down at me as she picked up the glass and put it on her empty tray. “I don’t think she’s with him anymore. I thought she left. Were you waiting for her?”
I stiffened, and suddenly a creeping suspicion hit me. My eyes searched beyond the nameless waitress as I scoured the restaurant’s dining room. “Would you please check the women’s bathroom for me? Just to make sure she’s not there.”
The woman shrugged. “Sure thing. Let me drop this off first.” As she walked off, I headed for the office.
The soft sounds of pots and pans and dishes clattering filtered out from the kitchen doors as the waitress headed inside to drop off her tray. I found the door to the manager’s office and didn’t even bother to knock. Shoving it open, I paused briefly as the slightly overweight man sitting in the chair shouted out in surprise as he jumped up from his computer desk.
“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing barging into my office?”
“Where’s Mary?” I demanded when I realized she wasn’t there.
“That bitch?” he scowled. “She ran out of here like fucking thirty minutes ago after quitting on me.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and took three giant steps forward until I could grab the man by his throat, turn, and shove him against the wood paneled wall of his office. His face grew even redder than it already had been. “How dare you!” he sputtered. “Unhand me.”
I reached into my back pocket, removed a switchblade, and flicked it open in front of his face. Suddenly, the man found the ability to be silent. Magic did happen. “First,” I began, “if you ever talk about her like that again in my presence, then you and my friend here are going to have a nice long private session together. Do you understand? Nod if you do.” The man nodded. “Good. Second, you said Mary left this room thirty minutes ago? Nod if that’s correct.” He didn’t nod this time, squeaking out a ‘ten minutes’ before wheezing as he stared hard at the blade. “Where did she go ten minutes ago?” I demanded.
“Th-the bathroom!” he forced out. “She went into the bathroom when I tried to talk to her—I ain’t going in there. I don’t want to be sued.”
I dropped him and turned, storming out of the office and into the hallway where the waitress was striding toward me. Her face was pale, and her hands were shaking as she looked at me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t think she’s … there was … I mean—there’s a mess in there.”
I took off, reaching the nearby bathroom in barely three strides. Slamming into it, I immediately stopped. There’d been a hell of a fight, and the sickening sense of dread grew as I took in the damage. The mirror had a large crack crawling halfway up the bottom, and it looked fresh. Everything that had been set on the counter was on the floor, soap dispensers popped open and leaking onto the tile. The paper towel dispenser had been ripped away from the wall, a footprint dented into the drywall above the shattered plastic. And all the while, I’d been sitting in the fucking dining room and hadn’t heard a goddamn thing.I should have heard something, I berated myself.
My hands shook as I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and pressed the speed dial for Ian. “You on the way back?”
I sucked in a breath as, for the first time in a long fucking time, the feeling of true terror crept into my chest. Then I said the worst two words I’d ever uttered in my life. “She’s gone.”
* * *
“What can you tell me?”Ian was calm. The calmest I’d ever seen him. I didn’t know what I’d expected from him when I told him that Mare had been taken, but it hadn’t been this. He hadn’t yelled at me. In fact, with no visible emotion, he’d grilled me about each and every detail I could remember—which wasn’t much. All of my damn training and I’d been relegated to a shell shocked almost-witness. Hell, I wasn’t even that because had I been in the bathroom with her, I would’ve damn well made sure she wasn’t taken. Now, who the hell knew where she was? She could be halfway back to her father or tied up and being tortured.
“I checked out your girl’s old place, sent some feelers out to the Witness Protection Marshals—they don’t even know she’s missing yet.” Wolf stated. I didn’t know the man well, but we were in the same business, and I knew as well as Ian and Archer did that Wolf was a legend. He was good at his job of being a mercenary. Dangerous … just like we were supposed to be. LikeIwas supposed to be. But I hadn’t been today, I’d made a mistake and Mare would pay for that.
Only half listening to Wolf and Ian’s conversation, I sat at the dining room table of our HQ as Archer clicked away on his computer across from me, tracking down a hacker friend of his to do some of his dirty work.
“Do what you can,” Ian said. “I appreciate any help at this point, man.”
Wolf grinned as he nodded. “Oh, don’t think you aren’t getting charged for this, brother. We trade in favors. But yes, I’ll help you get your girl back.”
Ian held his hand out, and Wolf took it. They shook once, and I felt eyes on me as Wolf headed for the door and quietly closed it behind him. “Jet.” Ian’s voice made me jerk. My callsign wasn’t barked or sneered, so I lifted my head and met his eyes. In the place of disappointment and anger, I found cold seriousness. “Come back to the bedroom, I want to talk. Let Archer work.”
Translation:Let me fuck you up away from the only one on this team who can actually do something. Or that’s how I perceived his words. Whatever the case, I stood and followed him. If he wanted to punch me, I was ready for it. I deserved it.
As soon as I cleared the back bedroom, Ian turned and crossed his arms over his chest. “What were you thinking?” he demanded.
I blinked. “I fucked up. I should’ve kept her in my sights, but I didn’t. I’m the reason she’s gone, the reason that she could be…” I trailed off. I couldn’t fucking say it. Hell. I couldn’t even fucking think it without wanting to vomit.
I straightened, broadening my stance. I fell back into my old military training—back when I’d been nothing more than an eighteen year old snot-nosed kid without any other place to go. Ian had been a god in my eyes back then. The couple years older, more reliable brother in my unit—to me first and then Archer when he came on a year later. Since we’d left the army, though, we’d grown much closer. For all the military’s faults, it had taught me one thing: loyalty. To these two men, but especially Ian, our leader. The only other who had ever gained my loyalty was Mare.
Ian stared at me hard, but as usual, I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. He was an enigma. “Let me ask you a question,” he started. “What do you think of Mare?”
