Deadly Testimony (Safeguard #2)(3)
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.
She sighed. “What do you want, Gabe?”
“You’ve been requested for an assignment. Specifically. And both the US Marshals and police are more than happy to coordinate with you.” Gabe snorted. “I need you to get to the office in the next hour to meet the client and coordinate with his assigned protection.”
“If he has a marshal and police...” She didn’t want to finish the question she had at the tip of her tongue. Full respect to the city’s finest but there were instances where augmenting a police detail with private military contractors were advantageous. It was unusual, but not unheard of. Well, this would be a first for her working with a US marshal but she could imagine instances where it’d happen.
“This is by request of the client and he’s paying for this with his personal funds. You won’t be on the government’s or city’s payroll.”
Wasn’t that interesting?
She’d had a good long bath last night and a decent night’s sleep. Curiosity was winning this morning. “I’ll be there at the top of the hour.”
Chapter Two
Kyle Yeun was no stranger to corporate environments, and yet, admittedly, he’d never overseen projects of a military nature, whether they were government or privately resourced. So when he arrived at the offices of the Safeguard Division in downtown Seattle, he’d been expecting something...more outdated. A renovated warehouse, perhaps, or a stuffy windowless set of offices all in psychologically approved standard shades of beige. The city had been around awhile, after all.
Instead, the Safeguard Division was located in a relatively new corporate center. They had taken over an entire floor of a six-story building, maintaining an extremely wide-open office space. Not a conventional cubicle to be seen. Instead, there were clusters of comfortable chairs and table spaces to encourage collaboration. Privacy pods lined the interior wall to accommodate sensitive discussion, but the walls were all glass for complete transparency. Presumably, they were maximizing the natural light coming in from the floor-to-ceiling windows offering breathtaking views of Elliot Bay, Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains depending on which side of the building one was standing.
Each of those pods and some of the larger conference rooms seemed equipped with up-to-date videoconferencing equipment. Scattered across the floor, a few employees were working on laptops. There were even standing workstations and treadmill desks scattered here and there. For mercenaries, they presented a high-tech and, yes, sophisticated atmosphere. One conducive to creative thinking and group collaboration. Perhaps most surprising to him, it was welcoming for all that it was mostly empty.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a corporate office environment with similar ambience, at least not with his most recent employer.
“Where is everyone?” He spoke out loud to no one in particular. The deputy US marshal and two plainclothes police officers sitting with him glanced in his direction but didn’t immediately offer commentary.