He’d made his intent clear: he wanted to repair what was between them and explore even further once this nightmare was over.
And most of her wanted it too. There was a tiny part of her warning of betrayal and whispering about keeping secrets. She didn’t want to turn to someone she was supposed to be able to trust and have them turn away from her. Wasn’t sure she could survive Gabe turning away from her.
Coward.
Yup. She was.
“We have news and we are starving.” Marc came into the kitchen full of barely contained energy, giving Maylin a rakish grin. Victoria and Lizzy were barely a step behind.
Gabe had already closed his laptop and moved it out of the way, so Maylin started putting their bowls up on the breakfast counter for them.
“One of these days, perhaps we should use an actual table.” Victoria perched on a stool despite her words and leaned forward to take in the scent of the steam rising from her bowl.
“Do you ever have time?” Maylin placed spoons and forks across each bowl. “Normally we’d go with chopsticks, but there aren’t any here besides the ones I use for cooking.”
“With food this good, we should start making time.” Victoria sipped delicately and closed her eyes, uttering a hum of appreciation. After a moment she looked around again and nudged Marc. “We could stock chopsticks, couldn’t we?”
“There were way more kinds of chopsticks than I thought possible when I looked.” Marc set his fork and spoon aside in favor of picking up his bowl and sipping straight from the rim. Totally okay in Maylin’s opinion. She did the same when she was alone in her apartment. “Plastic ones, metal ones, wood ones. Some of them were pointed at the end. No clue which kind worked best and I wasn’t about to get the disposable ones we get from Chinese takeout places.”
Maylin warmed at the thought he’d put behind it. “I’m all about whatever works.”
Besides, she wasn’t sure how much longer she’d be here. Or if she’d be a regular visitor...after.
There would be time to think on it later, closer to when they’d gotten through it all. But now there were much more important things.
“What did you find out?” Maylin couldn’t touch her bowl, even though she’d mostly decided to make this dish for herself.
Marc glanced at Gabe before answering her. “Your sister isn’t in the California facility. We suspected as much the last time we checked in and this trip confirmed it.”
“But Phoenix Biotech had quite a few interdepartmental communications going by actual physical mail to locations throughout the US.” Victoria tossed the information out there between noodles. “It’s very likely she’s being kept at one of three of those, judging by the lengths taken to secure the envelopes and then make them look like normal mail.”
“Only three to search through? And we know the addresses of each of them?” Maylin almost bounced in excitement. Then she caught sight of Marc wielding his spoon. “Ah! Don’t cut the noodles!”
Gabe paused midbite and slurped up the rest of his noodle instead, almost choking.
Marc slowly put down his spoon. “Okay. Why?”
Embarrassment burned Maylin’s cheeks but, well, they needed all the luck they could get. “To cut the noodles is to cut short longevity.”
Silence.
Marc’s eyebrows were raised, but after a minute he shrugged. “Okay. Good a reason as any. They’re pretty slippery anyway, so cutting ’em would be more trouble than it’s worth. It’s fine to slurp them, though, right?”
In answer, Maylin handed him an extra paper towel.
Lizzy chuckled next to him.
Maylin’s loaner phone screen flashed, catching her attention from where it sat on the counter. It was a game notification. Hope flared and Maylin headed for her phone.
Victoria managed to gather her noodle in her spoon and eat it all at once. After a moment to chew and swallow, she continued. “Montana, Oregon, North Dakota. All northern tier. We’ll analyze the three locations tonight to see which is most likely. It’s going to be time consuming if we need to do reconnaissance on each one.”
“I’ll see if we can leverage trainees to do some of the analysis in parallel. Can you work some satellite magic?” Gabe had directed his question toward Marc, who was working on slurping.
Maylin shoved her phone in the midst of them. “There’s a new message in my inbox. It’s from a new account. But it’s got to be An-mei. Got to be.”
“Are you sure?” Victoria sounded suspicious.
Excitement buoyed Maylin and she nodded vigorously. “My account is set to private. Only users who know my exact user ID can send me messages, and who is going to know an eleven-digit user ID off the top of their head?”
Gabe stared straight at her. “You have your sister’s memorized.”
“And she has mine,” Maylin finished with a grin. “Besides, look at the message!”
There it was on the phone screen: