She breathed in through her nose and out in a sigh.
Gabriel Diaz was her superior in the Safeguard Division, newly formed within the Centurion Corporation. He—and two other people who had made up their fire team—was one of the few people she allowed to use her childhood nickname. They’d spent time in the field, survived enough combat situations to not bother counting anymore and, in general, trusted each other with their lives.
Currently, she wanted to end his.
“What time is it?” She refused to look at a clock. The hotel’s heavy curtains were doing a fantastic job of blocking out daylight and she had planned to sleep in this morning.
“Oh-eight-hundred.” There was definitely amusement in Gabe’s voice. The bastard. “Are you with company?”
The face of the very attractive stranger by the elevator last night flashed into her mind.
She grunted and sat up. “Negative.”
There’d been police, as Gabe so cheerfully reminded her. The hot guy would’ve had complications in joining her for the evening. And while she had no issues with law enforcement in general, she did not want them parked outside her hotel room door advertising to the world she had company. Multiple deployments in the military gave her a preference for discretion. She’d rather forego fun times than have her choices in off-duty entertainment subject to misogynistic judgment.
“Then you can tell me about it.” He obviously didn’t have a snooze button.
As commanding officers went, Gabe was a good one. But aside from admitting whether their conversation could be overheard or not, she wasn’t prone to give him insight into her love life either.
Fortunately, he wasn’t asking about it. Police. He was asking about police.
“Technically, I was involved in an incident and finished before police arrived on the scene.” She could’ve stuck around to answer police questions but she really hadn’t overheard anything before she’d decided to clear her path to the elevator. “Looked like a shakedown or similar disagreement. One of the men attacked me and I defended myself. When he was neutralized, the other two engaged. I eliminated the threats with nonlethal force. Then I entered the elevator and came up to my room.”
Gabe was taking notes on her story as she related it. He’d craft it into an even more diplomatic statement if needed. “No worries, Lizzy, the police aren’t interested in questioning you or involving you in the charges for those men. They had some interesting history, more than enough to keep the police busy without needing to talk to you. Especially when it was determined you were a Safeguard resource on-site for an unrelated contract.”
“Then why did you wake me up?” she growled. If Gabe was using her nickname, they weren’t being formal so she didn’t have to be polite.
“Because seeing you in action can be inspiring.” Gabe remained unfazed. If anything, he sounded downright cheerful. “And in this case, it lined up another contract for you.”
She growled again without even trying to verbalize anything intelligible.
“Now, Lizzy, when you’re good and people are impressed, there isn’t any sense in being irritated about the cause and effect.” This time he actually chuckled. “If you give people a demonstration of what you can do, can you blame them for wanting your services?”
She clamped her mouth shut, refusing to rise to the bait. More often than not in the past year she’d had to deal with chronic instances of underestimation. Clients looked at her and didn’t believe she could be effective as personal security.
When she’d been active duty, she’d spent a decent amount of time proving herself. In the service, soldiers did as ordered and they worked as a team if the mission was to succeed—and in more cases than she wanted to remember, if they were going to survive—so people learned to trust her. She’d carried her own weight. The men and women who’d served with her had come to respect her for it.
Civilian clients didn’t tend to react the same way. The past year with the Safeguard Division had been smattered with a fair share of clients looking for big, burly bodyguards and not willing to believe little Isabelle Scott was capable of defending them. Or, and this bothered her somewhat less, she wasn’t the image they were going for when they’d decided adding a bodyguard to their entourage was the most trendy accessory.
Still, she had her pride to consider and she preferred to be on assignment as opposed to working the administrative side of things or training recruits over at the Centurion Corporation facilities just outside Seattle. She was too on edge to train, and she needed the active assignments to help burn off the deep anger still inside her.
Maybe she’d been looking for the scuffle last night. Just a little.