Hidden Impact (Safeguard #1)(39)
“I am too. I trusted her.” Gabe ran his hand through his hair. “But the history is so you know who she is and what she is to me. It’s over. And you and me, we’re not sure what we’re doing, but it’s not a one-night thing. At least not to me. I want time for us to figure it out.”
What to say? He made it sound simple. What did she feel? “I’m glad.”
Stupid. Awkward. But it was what she was thinking. His story would take time to sink in and she couldn’t figure out more on the spot.
The corner of his mouth turned up. “Good. Hopefully I can add to that a little.”
Maylin blinked. “How?”
“Jewel’s other truth.” Gabe reached over with one hand and covered Maylin’s knee. The heat of his touch seeped into her skin. “She said you’d find your little sister faster with her and you wouldn’t have to go to the other side of the world to do it. An-mei isn’t lost in China. She’s here. In the US.”
Chapter Eleven
“This...is a really slow elevator.”
Gabe smiled at Maylin’s neutral tone. All things considered, she was holding up like a champ. Some women would’ve flipped their shit meeting an ex. And Jewel made confrontations with women a sort of sadistic stress reliever the same way some people walked into bars looking for a brawl. Add in how very good Jewel was at hand to hand combat, the average jealous woman ended up mostly broken and sadly humiliated. He did not want Maylin subjected to similar treatment. Especially since it was obvious Jewel had planned to take custody of Maylin.
Over his dead body.
Which was why he’d brought Maylin with him to Centurion Corporation headquarters. The hotel might not be secure enough, and he wanted eyes on her as much as possible now that Jewel, and Edict, had made a grab for her.
“We got the elevator out of a decommissioned submarine.” Gabe offered Maylin the tidbit of information. She rewarded him with an adorable expression, her delicately arched brows drawing together as she bit her plump lower lip. He could see the gears turning in her head as she tried to come up with reasons why they’d want to do that.
“Do all the buildings in the area have these?” she asked, finally.
Not a bad follow-up. “Other private military contractors might have made similar upgrades to their buildings, like this elevator and installing Thermopane or extra-thick glass.”
“I’m guessing the glass isn’t for energy efficiency.” Her lips twisted into a cute, wry smile. “Does it prevent people from listening in with those laser beam things?”
Or something.
Gabe nodded, though. Surveillance technology, bullets—the thick glass was a deterrent for a lot of things. “Not a bad guess. The elevators are actually safe areas in case the building is caught in the shocks from a nearby explosion. There’s safety mechanisms that clamp to the sides of the shaft, and extra shielding.”
She craned her head to look up at him. “Common concern for people in your line of work?”
“Let’s say we are potential targets and like to be prepared just in case.”
Hypervigilance, or some might say paranoia, but private military contract companies like Centurion Corporation had a tendency to build up defenses against the types of incursions they were hired to do themselves. Call it practice or peace of mind.
“It was an American submarine.” She was staring at the panel of buttons for each floor.
Gabe studied the panel. “Yes.”
Whatever she was seeing, he was missing it. He’d never been in a Chinese sub, but he didn’t think she’d ever been either.
“Well, I can’t be sure, but in normal elevators some floor numbers are skipped. Like thirteen.” Maylin pointed to the buttons for twelve and fourteen.
“Yeah.” Still not sure where she was going.
“In buildings in certain Asian communities, any floor number containing the number four would be missing too.” She pointed to the four button on the panel. “So this wasn’t a Chinese submarine.”
Huh. Learn something new. “The number four an unlucky number?”
She laughed. “A lot of people are superstitious. Pretty sure that’s a cross-cultural thing. In Chinese superstition, the number four sounds like the word for ‘death.’ I don’t consider myself particularly superstitious, but in an exceptionally tall building, going to one of those floors does give me a cold chill. Maybe I’m not quite as Americanized as my stepmother despairs.”
Having knowledge of one’s ethnic roots gave a depth to a person. He envied her. Growing up, his mother’d put most of her effort into making them the All-American family with little to no emphasis on where she or his father’d come from. After his parents died, he’d spent his time in the foster system with only the name Diaz and a mirror to tell him about his background. His identity had been built with his own two hands in the service, then with the Centurions.
After a moment, she shook her head. “Ugh. Speaking of my stepmother, she also thinks I watch too many of those police procedural dramas on television. She might be right, and I hate admitting that, but after watching those, the idea of having one of these elevators in your company building totally makes sense in my brain.”
“You like watching those?” Along with Asian dramas and Japanese cartoons. Funny how unreal those shows were, and yet reality could be even less believable. Then again, if the average public found the things he’d seen in real life entertaining then he’d consider the human race doomed. He’d seen some sorry examples of what people were capable of.