Both men assessed each other across the scarred wooden table, the market noise swelling and ebbing around them.
“So, I hear you are looking for someone,” Gil asked. He settled back onto the bench with his arms loose at his sides, his posture open in the deliberate way of a man who wanted to be understood as non-threatening. He was skilled enough to pull that off with most people.
I’m not most people. The big man across from him could have been handcuffed and blindfolded, and Beatle would have still considered him a threat.
Beatle shrugged and said, “I don't know where you heard that. I’m on vacation with my wife.” The words came out flat and level.
Gil chuckled, a low sound that didn't reach the calculation behind his eyes. “Alright, friends, let's try this again.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table, blue eyes direct and utterly unimpressed. “Go home.”
The command was given in a firm and authoritative tone.Go home.Not a request or a suggestion. Two words, delivered with the complete, unhurried certainty of a man who was long accustomed to being obeyed.
Casey's voice broke the silence before Beatle could respond, sharp with the fire she kept banked beneath the surface. “I'm sorry, what? If you think you can?—”
“Casey.” Beatle's hand found hers under the table, his fingers wrapping around her knuckles—not silencing her, never that, just grounding her. Grounding himself. He held Gil's gaze. “You’re going to need to explain.”
Gil ran his tongue over his teeth, his brows arching as he turned an idea over, before he nodded. He’d made a calculation. A decision.
“I am not at liberty to discuss the nature of an ongoing operation,” he said with grave seriousness. “But I can assure you that we have it under control.”
Beatle asked, “Who isweexactly?”
Gil’s smile grew back to the wide and pearly crescent from earlier. “I am not at liberty to discuss the nature of our organization.”
Beatle sighed. “Well, whatcanyou share with us, then?”
“That you need to go home.”
“And we can trust you … because?”
Because you walked into a market in broad daylight and sat down at our table like you owned the air around you? Because you know our names, our faces, why we're here? Because whoever sent you knew enough to find us before we found them?And, the more obvious fact, that if this man had wanted to harm them, then he wouldn’t have tipped his hand in this way.
“Well, for starters,” Gil said as he pulled out his phone, “I have my own team already in place who are prepared to pull the marine biologist out at a moment’s notice.” He scrolled for a moment before turning the phone to Beatle, swiping left to show a series of long-distance photos: an armed group in the jungle, caches of weapons, headshots of who Beatle assumed were the leaders of this group, and then …
The marine biologist. Doctor Gabriella Valentino. This guy knows where she is.
Gil pocketed his phone and fixed Beatle with a look that was almost sympathetic. “Listen, you two lovebirds,” he said with an affable smile, “whatever good-natured quest this is you’re on, I'd really rathernothave the US government on my ass over it. Not when I am already trying to get the mafia out of it.”
His admittance was alarming to Beatle.That's an interesting choice of words.Beatle filed that observation away with the precision of a mind trained to catalogue things he didn't yet understand.A private contractor? Not affiliated with a government. But obviously connected enough to know that we are government. And connected enough to already be executing an extraction.
“And finally,” Gil continued, leaning back again, “since I am honor-bound by my contract, there is an operative undercover in that group whom I plan to find. He's affiliated with the marine biologist. My team pulling this off is a win-win for me.” He paused. His blue eyes were steady and entirely serious, but his smile didn’t falter. “Which is why I can’t risk you two jeopardizing my operation or getting injured. I appreciate what you are trying to do, and you can tell the one digging around,” he paused to look at the watch on his wrist, “Tex, that we know he’s pulled classified information. However, we are willing to waive the consequences if you two leave the city. Am I understood?”
The market moved around them—vendors calling, children running, the radio from the shop front shifting into something slower and sadder. The two men beyond the food stall had drifted further away. The grey pickup truck had not made a third pass.
Beatle waited for a heartbeat. Let the silence do what silence did—separate the men who could hold it from the ones who couldn't. He was typically the one who put others on the spot likethis, who sprang shackles of silence on a person, watching them sweat and worry before they conceded.
He knows everything. That’s impressive, and somehow he almost knows what choices we will make.He decided to take a risk.
“Do the words 'The VEIL' mean anything to you?” Beatle asked, careful to watch the man’s reaction.
Only a slight twitch of his eye gave him away. “Never heard of it.”
Tex said to pull out if they were involved. He had seemed pretty worried, but if this man is part of that covert operation, somehow I feel like he’s still telling the truth about wanting to save the girl.
Beatle glanced at Casey before looking back to Gil. “I was getting a little homesick, anyway.”
Casey made to protest, her breath drawing in sharp, but Beatle turned to press his lips to her cheek—warm skin, the faint salt of the afternoon on her, the smell of her that lived underneath everything else and always,alwayssteadied him. “He knows too much,” he murmured against her skin, low enough for only her. “About us, about this group that has Gabriella, their numbers, their location, who is in charge. This guy and his people are in a better position to help than we are. I think we have to trust him.”
Think?No, this wasn’t thinking. He didn’t know enough about Gil or what “The VEIL” stood for to have a clear and logical line of thought. This was instinct, plain and simple.In the absence of intel, instinct is king.And his instincts had kept him breathing through things that should have killed him dozens of times.