“Hey, c’mon.”
No dice. Her eyes fluttered open and she focused on him for a moment before her lids were too heavy to lift again. He led her forward a couple of steps and she stumbled with him, blind.
Okay, fine. She was exhausted. He could understand that. And he should not have let her bump her head again, however lightly. She didn’t have a drop of energy left in her.
Giving up, he let her stand for a second. He bent over and gently put his shoulder into her midriff, hefting her over his shoulder. He could’ve been chivalrous and shit about carrying her in his arms but then he wouldn’t have a hand free to get the door to the cabin open.
Either he was going to regret having met Maylin Cheng or she was going to hate him. One or the other.
*
“It’s not like you to bring home strays.” The voice in the dark wasn’t angry or malicious. In fact, Lizzy had a way of maintaining the kind of completely neutral tone that left a man wondering if he’d see the dawn.
“Safest place for her, for now.” Gabe rubbed his jaw. “Everyone in for the night?”
“Yup.” His teammate stepped out of the shadows of the surveillance room and into the dimly lit hallway. Her hair was tied back and she wore a simple black T-shirt and jeans. Still wore her holster since she was on night watch. Even though she’d come out to greet him, she kept her gaze fixed on the security displays inside the room. “You were saying it wasn’t any kind of drunk-driving hit-and-run. I was thinking the trajectory of the car was straight as an arrow, heading toward the girl and on its way out of range. The girl all right?”
He shook his head. “Got to her apartment, found it bugged. Some fairly high-end audio surveillance. The team will need to head back to do a full sweep.”
One man trying to conduct that sort of search was definitely going to miss something. It was better completed as a team.
Even in profile, he could see Lizzy’s brows draw together. “Lot of effort invested in keeping tabs on a single woman. Wasn’t she part of the catering crew? Manager or something? Not usually the type to rate that much effort.”
He nodded. “Makes me wonder what is going on with her missing sister.”
Maylin Cheng didn’t seem the type to be involved with drugs or the black market. Outside of those, there wasn’t a lot to draw enough attention to a person to rate surveillance and assassination attempts. Mafia, maybe.
“You put her in the guest house?”
“At least until we decide on a safe house or secure hotel where she’d be more comfortable. Something we can look into in the morning. I checked over her car back at her parking garage. No obvious signs of tampering or tracking devices.” Course, he and Maylin had only been upstairs in her apartment for a very short time and he’d parked her car in full view of two different security cameras. There hadn’t been sufficient surveillance in the garage, but he’d made sure not to park in one of the blind spots. His mind moved on to the line of investigation he had for tonight. “If you can run queries on An-mei Cheng’s disappearance and background checks on both the Chengs while you’re on watch, I’d consider it a favor.”
Lizzy raised an eyebrow. “Any reason you’re not making it an order?”
As leader of their fire team, he was commanding officer. But they weren’t active duty military anymore. They didn’t have to live rank and position twenty-four seven. The structure of Centurion Corporation was more a hybrid of military and corporate organization. The corporate influence was especially apparent back at HQ in DC. His superiors at HQ oversaw contract acquisition and decided on resource allocation, sending squadrons made up of four to five fire teams, each all around the world.
For the most part, Gabe kept it simple. He commanded his fire team when they were actively on a contracted mission. Otherwise, they were more casual about their interactions within the bounds of earned respect.
He shrugged. “We’re not on official contract and I haven’t decided if we’re taking the job yet.”
She nodded. “Fair.”
Lizzy was more than familiar with the way he operated, so her response made him pause. He wasn’t committing to the job yet. “I’ll be in my room, but call me if anything comes up.”
“You got it.”