Gabe found Lian in her office in front of her laptop. She had it in her lap, sitting cross legged on the sofa that lined the wall to the left of the door. Lian was still in her combat gear, but she had taken off the long sleeved black shirt that she usually wore and was instead wearing a tank top. She looked up when he came in.
Gabe wondered what he looked like to her. His shirt was untucked and mostly unbuttoned, he had long since abandoned his shoes for a pair of flip flops he kept in his office, he hadn't shaved for days, and God knew what his hair looked like.
"You look like hell," Lian said as if reading his thoughts.
"It's been a long day."
Lian looked at a clock on the wall. "Already?" She flashed an amused smile at him. "Maybe you should go take a nap."
Suddenly, Gabe realized how much he had missed talking with her like this. In the past few months, he had rarely spoken to her about anything but work. But, of course, now their conversation would have to turn back to the task at hand.
"Nah, I'll be fine. How'd it go?"
"I downloaded that creep's hard drive and destroyed the evidence. I don't think anyone caught me, so I'd say the operation was mostly a success."
"Mostly?"
"Well, I did break a nail." Now it was Gabe's turn to smile, for the first time, he realized, that morning. Then the smile faded as he studied the woman's face. She may be acting cheerful, but Gabe knew her well enough to know that she was exhausted.
"Some of these files are encrypted," Lian continued, "but they shouldn't be any problem. Working with the tech guys downstairs, I should have them open in a couple of hours."
"Maybe you should get some rest. Let them handle it."
"I'm fine."
"You're about five minutes away from falling over."
"Look who's talking," she retorted.
"I got some sleep last night. You didn't."
"Yeah, jet lag's a bitch. I'll get over it."
"Yeah, because you're going home. Now."
Lian glared at him for a moment, then sighed. "Alright, alright. I'm going. Just lemme give this to Dylan and…"
"I'll take it down," Gabe cut her off. "You just get yourself home."
"What, you don't trust me?"
"I just don't want you be tempted to stay. Now save that, give it to me, and get your ass in your car." Lian glared at him again, but she turned off the laptop and gave it to him. Then she stood up, went to her desk, and started searching though the mound of papers on it for her car keys.
Gabe, realizing she was in no shape to drive, said, "Don't worry about it. Have Colleen take you home."
"Okay," she said exhaustedly and dragged herself out of the room, leaving Gabe alone without saying goodbye.
* * *
"So, did you meet any cute guys in Seattle?" Colleen asked Lian as she drove down the highway at breakneck speed.
Lian usually rather liked the good natured Colleen, but now she wanted nothing more than to beat the younger woman repeatedly over the head with a baseball bat. Did she ever shut up?
"Not really," Lian responded. Colleen was proficient in three topics: guys, guns, and sex. Lian would much rather talk about guns.
"But of course I should've realized you don't have an eye for anyone other than the director," Colleen rattled on.
"What?" Lian asked, suddenly wide awake.
"Of course, honey, no one blames you. He's a hottie, even at his age. Nice ass, too."
"What?"
"Oh come on, Lian, I've seen the way he looks at you."
"What?" Lian asked for the third time, and wondered if she would ever recover enough to say anything else.
Finally, Colleen shut up long enough for Lian to regain her composure. "There's nothing… nothing going on between us. We're just friends."
"Uh huh. Sure."
"It's true!" Suddenly, Lian was angry. Why was she defending herself to this woman? "Like it's any of your damn business anyway."
"Hey, girl, I didn't mean anything buy it. Logan's a nice guy. I was just saying you two would make a nice couple, that's all."
"Do you do anything else in the office other than setting people up?"
"Yeah, I do a little paperwork here and there, some inspections, then I read gun magazines all day. Hey, I just read about a modification to the HK-5…" Colleen had finally changed the subject to guns, and Lian would interject off and on to make it look like she was actually paying attention.
But on the inside, her head was turning. Did people really think that she and Gabe were…? No, it was ridiculous. They were just friends, that's all. Everyone could see that. Colleen was just a gossip who tried to make her life more interesting by making the lives of those around her seem more interesting. Lian rather pitied her.
Finally, they reached Lian's apartment complex. She thanked Colleen absentmindedly and got out of the car. Colleen said something in response, but Lian, already running up the stairs, didn't hear her.
Colleen Smith, as she returned to work, came to the conclusion that Lian Xing was a peculiar woman.
In Phoenix, Arizona, Teresa Lipan decided that her life officially sucked. Her low-profile spy operation had gone under in her absence, so Teresa had moved back to the city of her birth and was looking for another job. In the meantime, she was working in her mother's flower shop. She had long ago learned the art of floral arrangement from her mother, and some could say she even had a talent for it, but she couldn't count it as one of her favorite hobbies, much less something she wanted to do every day for the rest of her life.
Teresa had tried her best, for the sake of her mother, to lead something resembling a normal life. She kept her apartment clean, ate more than just frozen dinners, and even had a steady boyfriend. But her apartment was a shit hole, her cooking sucked, and she had reason to believe that her boyfriend was sleeping with someone else.
Thinking about him was a mistake. "That bastard," she said aloud to the empty shop for what had to be the hundredth time that morning as she stabbed some innocent rose into a Styrofoam block. Unfortunately, when trimming the roses she had missed a thorn, and that thorn, as if to pay her back for the mistreatment of the flower, stabbed her in the thumb. Teresa swore and stuck her thumb in her mouth.
At this moment, someone walked in the door. Teresa immediately turned around so the customer wouldn't see her sucking her thumb and grabbed a tissue from the counter behind her. She put on a superficial smile and felt prepared enough to turn around and help some dumb ass teenager order a corsage for the prom or some dumb ass husband pick out a bouquet to smooth things over with his wife after forgetting their anniversary. As she thought about it, most men were dumb asses.
But it wasn't a man who entered a shop, but a woman. "Lian," she said, coming from behind the counter to greet her friend with a hug and a genuine smile. Lian hadn't changed much, except for her hair, which had grown out to cover her shoulders.
"It's good to see you, Teresa. How have you been?"
"Don't ask. So what brings you to this corner of hell?"
Lian paused for a moment, then said, "I've come to ask a favor of you." From the expression on her face, Teresa realized that Lian thought she was going to get chewed out. That she was expecting an earful about how the last favor had nearly gotten her killed. And, to be fair, Teresa probably would've been pissed if she hadn't been bored out of her skull.
"Sure. Whacha need?" Lian blinked in surprise, then quickly regained her composure. Little, Teresa decided, phased Lian. She looked around the flower shop briefly before she answered.
"It's Mara. We've got a lead on her, and we could use some help that we can really trust."
"What about your own people? Can't you trust them?"
"Yeah, but they're practically a bunch of kids. And besides, we need most of them at their own posts. You know, national security stuff. Gabe and I were going to go after her alone. Unless, of course, you want to come along."
"Hell yeah, I want to come along. I've got a bone to pick with that bitch. Besides," she added, "It's so fucking boring here."
Lian looked once more around the flower shop. "I can only imagine."
"Well, give me a few hours to get my shit together and tell my mom goodbye."
"How is your mom?"
"I'm fine! Teresa, you'd better go pack!" Mrs. Lipan called from the back of the shop. The two friends giggled.
"Okay, mom!" Teresa called back. "You heard the woman," she said to Lian, "let's go."
* * *
"So here's the deal," Lian explained to Teresa when they finally arrived at Lian's apartment. "Aramov's working with a pharmaceutical company called ARC Industries to test new strands of the Syphon Filter virus."
"Wait a minute, wait a minute. I thought we'd destroyed all of the viral labs and shipments."
"So did we, but localized outbreaks started showing up in Africa about a month ago."
"Great. So the bitch is out, working with one of the most powerful drug companies in the States, and she probably wants you and Gabe dead."
"Do you wish you'd stayed home?" Lian asked her friend. It was great having Teresa back. There weren't a lot of women in their line of work, and it was nice to be able to talk to someone who wasn't male or Colleen Smith. There was that new girl, Deirdre, to talk to, but Lian didn't know her very well, and she really didn't seem to be the sociable type.
"Not a chance," Teresa answered. "So, how do we stop Mara?"
"The information I got refers to a warehouse in Germany where they are storing the virus. We're gonna go see what we can find there, and close down the operation."
"You don't sound entirely convinced that this is going to work."
Lian sighed. "You're right, I'm not. I dunno. It all seems too…"
"Easy?"
"Yeah." Lian had gone talked it over with Gabe several times, telling him that it was too easy to break into the office, that it was too easy to hack those files, and that everything was just too obvious. But, in the end, they decided that they still had to follow this lead. Or, at least Gabe had decided. Lian still had serious reservations.
"And we're gonna go through with this, even though it might be a trap?"
"Gabe says we have to try."
Apparently, her irritation with the man had entered her voice. "You don't seem too happy with that," Teresa said.
Lian considered dropping the subject, but instead nodded. "I told him all of this, but he wouldn't listen to me."
"Well, it is pretty hard to talk Gabe out of something once he's set his mind to it."
"Yeah," Lian agreed, "He's such a pain in the ass sometimes." Lian laughed to try to cover up her bitterness, but she saw that Teresa didn't fall for it.
"He really pissed you off, didn't he?"
"Yeah," she said again, looking down to the floor. It wasn't like her to complain. Gabe had been good to her. He risked his life, more than once, to save hers. She would always be grateful for that. Why should she be angry with him?
Teresa opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment the doorbell rang. Lian went to answer it. It was Gabe, of course. Without a word to her, he went immediately to Teresa and greeted her with one of his rare smiles. Lian stared icily at the back of his neck and slammed the door shut. He still didn't acknowledge her. Yes, she was angry.