“You need answers and we both need them fast. There’s only a couple of days to the trial.” He raised an eyebrow. “I would like to stay alive both to testify and to walk away afterward. My best chances seem to be remaining with you, at all times. I mentioned that a few minutes ago and will keep doing so until it sinks in. Besides which, helping you find the person or persons trying to kill me seems as if it would increase my probability for survival. I don’t want to walk out of the courthouse only to be shot from a distance.”
She gritted her teeth. “That could happen before the trial if you try to tag along with me.”
“You’ve already shown me how to navigate the streets, blending and changing my appearance as we go.” He tapped the tip of his index finger to his temple. “While I didn’t enjoy the wig, I found the endless change of hats and shirts you seem to have in your backpack wildly entertaining. A couple walking the streets of downtown doing a bit of afternoon shopping is much less likely to draw attention than a lone woman circling a corporate building looking for a way inside.”
He had a point. Worse, she was inclined to agree with him.
“The point behind you being under my protection is to keep you safe and hidden.” She sighed. “You seem to have a serious problem with hiding.”
He gave her a sharp smile, one that made her the slightest bit uneasy. Oh, he wasn’t threatening. But it wasn’t a soft civilian smile either. He was his own kind of dangerous. “I don’t take well to cages, even gilded and especially when I can’t order room service. I am also safest when you are with me or I am with you.” He rolled his shoulders and slipped his hand into his pocket, the overall effect managed to look both relaxed and incredibly sexy at the same time. The man should be on the cover of a freaking magazine. “Besides, I’ve been in the building before and I can get us both in again with minimal effort. It gets you your answers faster and keeps me from sitting here wasting away from boredom.”
Interesting proposal. “Won’t they know you’re not working for your old company anymore?” Worse, wouldn’t they report having sighted him? “It isn’t exactly keeping a low profile walking up to a security desk and handing over your ID.”
He tipped his head to one side, considering. “Perhaps but unlikely. Phoenix Biotech is notorious about keeping communication with our vendors to an absolute minimum need to know. I can recall several projects where the vendors weren’t aware our internal resources had moved off a particular project or left the company. They weren’t involved in my most recent projects so there’s no reason for them to have found out I’m no longer there.”
It was convenient, which made her suspicious. Maybe she was leery of Phoenix Biotech after having been blown up leaving one of their facilities not too long ago. And perhaps the current line of conversation was blurring the line between Kyle Yeun as a client versus Kyle as a partner.
There were too many questions. She needed to start finding the answers. And considering who his previous employer was, she felt more inclined to keep him close.
From a practicality perspective, she was out of contact with Safeguard and her team members. Solo. Their police detail and US Marshal counterparts were also probably not fond of her at the moment or likely to suddenly coordinate in her choice of investigation. His suggestion would save time and in this scenario, the faster she could enter, investigate and exit, the better.
“Okay, we’ll head out about lunchtime.” There’d be more foot traffic with businessmen out to lunch. “Your idea was good, but you’ll need to be dressed for work to make your visit look good. We’ll do a change or two en route, but you’ll walk into the building in your own suit.”
Risky. But if they kept moving, it should still work well.
He nodded. “I presume we’ll be working out the details for the next few hours to lunch?”
She nodded.
“Well then, I’ll heat up some of the leftovers for us to snack on as we chat.” He stepped toward the refrigerator.
“I know I skipped breakfast, but aren’t you eating kind of often?” Not that she minded. She could eat, right about now.
“It is very healthy to eat small portions throughout the day. I prefer to eat five or six times, every two to three hours, if possible.” With one large box in the microwave, he was taking out the various boxes and stacking them in some sort of order. It reminded her of when Victoria lined up her guns for cleaning. Meticulous and precise. Orderly.
“You’re enjoying this.” She couldn’t see his face but he straightened and ran a hand through his thick black hair.
“This is constructive. I enjoy planning, preparing and ultimately executing a well-laid-out project.” He turned to face her, leaning back against the table with his hands braced on the table edge on either side of him. “This is much better than sitting still, watching streaming videos, waiting for people to come kill me.”
“They will try.” She didn’t know why she needed to add the qualifier. There was a flat, resigned look in his eyes. He was selling himself short.
On some missions, mentality meant the difference between being trapped or getting out alive. If you believed you were going to die, you generally did.
For his part, Kyle seemed to warm at her correction. “People will try to kill me. At least in this, I am living before we find out if they succeed.”