Part 23
Gabriel moved back behind the counter and reached for a recently-washed rack of shot glasses, checking them over before sliding them into place under the counter. He reached for the stool he kept in the corner and sat on it as his gaze tracked over the waitresses, doing a mental headcount to make sure they were all accounted for. Most of the girls didn't deal with the customers beyond asking for their orders, more comfortable with limited interaction than they were getting involved in any kind of conversation.
Most of them came off of the streets, or recommended by Father Augustine, the priest who ran the women's shelter a few miles away. His hand came up to rub the crucifix that hung from the chain around his neck along with his dog tags, reminders of his life before and his endless search for absolution since his decision to retire.
He had seen too much in his years with the Company and each mission had taken a little more of his heart and soul, eating away at his humanity. He had tried to become the cold, unfeeling automaton they wanted him to be in order to complete his assignments without forming any emotional attachments that could compromise the mission, but after almost twenty years he had resigned. Too many times over the years he had seen innocents sacrificed for the good of the mission, forced to stand back and let it happen because if the death of one innocent resulted in saving a thousand, it was considered a successful job. His last assignment had been more than he had been able to stomach and he had resigned, knowing that in addition to forfeiting his soul, his hesitation had made him a liability in the Company's eyes and another mission like that would result in him becoming a target for one of their snipers.
He had been seconds away from blowing his cover and compromising the entire mission his last time out, but his loyalty to the Company and the oath he had sworn had pulled him through at the last second. The mission had been a success, and no one had cared about the innocent blood that had been spilled, but it still haunted him to this day. It had been the most gruesome torture he had ever seen anyone put through and the memory of the pregnant village woman's screams could still be heard in his nightmares. He knew there was no forgiveness for what he had done; he should have stepped in and stopped it from happening, so many times over the years, but he had always upheld his duty to ensure the success of the mission.
Father Augustine had heard his confessions, torn from the depths of his tortured soul when an alcohol-induced decision had forced him to seek absolution from the man of God. Despite the Father's assurances that his soul could be saved from an eternity of damnation, he had his doubts and he had decided to do whatever he could to make up for his past. The girls who worked for him were given a safe place stay in a large boarding house not far away, with a woman who made sure they were taken care of during their stay.
The woman had been recommended by Father Augustine when he had learned of Gabriel's intentions, and he had liked her immediately. She was close to his age, maybe a few years younger, divorced, and alone. They had struck up a friendship as well as a partnership of sorts; in exchange for providing room and board at a reduced rate for the girls who worked for him, he spent his time off helping her renovate the old house. Even though they were complete opposites they had become very good friends over the past few years, working together to help young women get off of the streets, out of bad situations, and back on their own two feet. The women never stayed for very long, a few months at most while they found their strength and learned to stand on their own again.
The sound of someone calling his name brought him out of his thoughts and he lifted his head to look at the woman standing on the other side of the counter. "Whatcha need, Stone?"
"A couple beers." She nodded towards the man waiting near the door, letting Gabriel know that one of the beers should be non-alcoholic.
"What's goin' on with you an' Hawkins?" he asked as he retrieved the bottles and removed the caps.
"Nothin' that I can't handle." She smiled fondly at the overprotective bar owner as she accepted the cold bottles.
"And his comment about…?" He let the question trail off, knowing there was no reason to mention her dead lover by name.
"You worry too much, big man."
He shook his head and was turning to go back to his perch when he noticed Maria at the opposite end of the counter watching Stone walk outside with Guerin. He wasn't sure what their relationship was exactly, but since she had started working for him the man had been there almost every single time she had a shift.
He had finally asked Guerin about it because the man came around on occasion, but in the month and a half that Maria had been working at the bar he had spent more time there than he had the entire time the place had been open. Gabriel hadn't bought the weak excuses the man had given, and he doubted that it was a coincidence that Guerin was spending more time at the bar now that Maria was working there.
He chuckled to himself as he settled down on his stool once more, watching Maria as she went back to serving the customers even though she kept shooting lingering glances at the door Guerin and Stone had left through a few minutes earlier. The young woman liked to talk and it hadn't taken long for her to discover which of the customers were willing to converse and which ones wanted to be left alone.
Over the next couple of hours as closing time came and went her gaze strayed to the door frequently. She carried on her end of the conversation with some of the waitresses, but Gabriel could see that her heart wasn't in it; normally she was animated and talked a mile a minute, but since the kiss between Guerin and Stone she had been withdrawn and her thoughts were obviously elsewhere.
His eyes followed her as she gathered her jacket and purse, walking outside with the other girls under Raphael's watchful gaze. He reached for the half-empty bottle of Scotch on the table in front of him and refilled his glass as he prepared to face his ghosts in the silence that followed closing time.
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Maria pulled into the garage and glared at the empty spot where the motorcycle should have been parked. She had really hoped that he would be home when she got there, but apparently he had decided to spend the night with Stone.
"Self-centered asshole," she muttered as she walked into the house and slammed the door behind her.
They had been living together for two months and she was no closer to discovering why the Granolith had sent her to this universe or how she was going to get back home to her Michael. She had fallen into a routine since getting the job at Azrael's Sanctuary; she and Michael still argued about everything under the sun, but they had actually had several conversations that were civil on the rare occasion when they weren't arguing. She was getting to know him little by little, but nights like this one always reminded her of her situation.
She had finally managed to get him trained so that when it was time to eat he came to the kitchen table and they ate together. The man had an appetite that wouldn't quit; he ate everything she cooked and he had quickly grown fond of the dishes that combined sweet and spicy foods. It hadn't taken long for her to realize that his table manners weren't as animalistic as she had been led to believe during their first few meals together, something she should've known. If he protected movie stars, politicians, and dignitaries, he had to have good manners when the time called for it; his boss wasn't going to send him on jobs like that with the table manners he had displayed in front of her. She couldn't believe that she had fallen for that act once she had realized that he had been hoping she would be so disgusted with his behavior that she'd be content to leave him to his meals in front of the television.
Convincing him to let her use the Range Rover hadn't been easy, but after a while he had accepted that she wasn't going to take off and he had stopped insisting on driving her to work. The downside to that was not knowing where he was or who he was with when she wasn't home. She tried to not think about that, but it wasn't going to be so easy since she had seen him kissing Stone and she had watched them leave together.
She dropped the keys on the counter out of habit and retrieved one of the ice-cold bottles of beer from the refrigerator, uncapping it before going into the living room and reaching for the television remote. After several minutes of scrolling through a ridiculous number of channels and not finding a single thing worth watching she turned it off and threw the remote back in his chair. She began to pace in an effort to relax, but after a while she gave up on that and went to find something to eat.
Fifteen minutes of looking through the cabinets and the refrigerator left her without finding a single interesting thing to eat. She didn't know why she was bothering anyway; she wasn't the slightest bit hungry, she was just looking for something to do that would keep her busy and that would help her relax at the same time. She paced around the house for a while, but the tension was only getting worse and if it continued she was going to end up with a vicious headache.
A bath and some soothing music, she thought. That would help. She walked to her room to get her things together so she could go take a bath and her gaze slid over the picture that still sat on the nightstand, but was now encased in a sterling silver frame. Keeping busy was a necessity and it kept her mind from going places that she couldn't let it go; left unoccupied it reminded her of how much she missed talking to her best friend, Liz, and how she even missed Kyle telling corny jokes and explaining Buddhism and enlightenment to anyone who would listen.
She carried her robe into the bathroom, hanging it on the hook behind the door before turning the water on. After testing the water and deciding that the temperature was just right, she plugged the drain and tossed some bath salts in. While she was waiting she wandered into the living room to get one of the CD's that Michael favored, carrying it back into his bedroom and sliding it into the stereo system. She adjusted the volume and walked back into the bathroom, taking a long drink from the bottle in her right hand, without even noticing the bitter taste as she swallowed the amber liquid. It was a habit that she had picked up from Michael; he had offered her one the first night he had joined her on the back deck and they had carried on a semi-civil conversation. Over time she had started to acquire a taste for the drink and she usually had one when she got home from work.
Maria reached out to turn the water off as soon as it reached the level she wanted and then moved to put the bottle on the counter so she could strip out of her clothes. She slid into the bathtub, hoping that it would take her mind off of Michael and what he was doing. Or who, her mind taunted, quickly supplying her with a mental picture of him kissing Stone to go along with the thought.
It took very little time before she decided that the music was not helping her to relax. It was having the opposite effect as it created a seductive soundtrack to the images playing in her head. Her imagination was creatively supplying a wide array of possible scenes and she could quite easily see Michael kissing Stone; not the way they had at the bar, but the way her Michael had kissed her… deep, hard, with an edge of desperation at times, but always tempered with gentleness and love. She could picture him slowly removing her clothes, his big, rough hands caressing every inch of bare skin as it was revealed to his hungry gaze.
In her mind it was getting more and more difficult to separate the two men, but in this scenario it was impossible. Michael Guerin belonged to her, regardless of space and time, and the thought of him making love with any other woman made her physically ill. It felt like it had been years since she had been with him, since she had kissed him and made love with him.
If she didn't discover why the Granolith had sent her here she wasn't going to be able to go home and she would lose her chance to be with him again. If she couldn't go home she was going to lose her Michael; he wouldn't even be alive in their universe. The need to be with him again, to experience the feelings and emotions that he created within her was a physical ache and she quickly shoved them back into the little box where she kept them under lock and key, hoping to stop the hysteria that she could feel building.
Her thoughts automatically went back to Michael and Stone and anger immediately resurfaced as she imagined them making love. It was a safer emotion to deal with and it wasn't exactly a hardship to get mad at him. Her temper was building as the bath water cooled and by the time she stepped out of the bathtub she had worked herself up into a very bad mood. She was ready for a fight and she was sure he would oblige since he was always easily provoked.
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Michael took a drink from the chilled bottle he was holding as his gaze followed Stone around the pool. They had stopped to buy a couple of six-packs after leaving the bar, riding around for a while before they had stopped at one of the more expensive hotels near the outskirts of the city. Neither of them had been interested in having sex; their sexual history consisted of stolen moments in the middle of war zones and in the immediate aftermath of missions where they had barely made it out alive. Sex between them was always in-the-moment, when the need for the affirmation of life overrode everything else; it had never been based on anything more than that and neither of them was interested in hooking up outside of those occasional moments.
They hadn't gotten a room at the hotel because their relationship had never extended to spending a night together outside of missions. Michael wasn't interested in any kind of intimacy and, like him, Stone didn't get involved in relationships; when they weren't working they hung out on occasion but they never took things to that level. The two kisses at the bar were about as close to sex as they had ever gotten outside of those rare times when they were in the field and a mission got too tense or just went all wrong.
He turned his head to the side when the gate at the pool entrance opened, the well-oiled hinges not making a sound. He glared at the young couple as they stumbled inside, limbs tangled together, giggling and shushing each other, and he rolled his eyes at them. They sobered when he cleared his throat, their startled gazes staring at the gun and badge lying on the lounger between his spread knees. "Get lost," he growled.
"Hey, we've got a right to be here," the young man stated adamantly.
Michael shook his head when the kid attempted to put on a brave face in front of his girlfriend. "Sign says the pool's closed after eleven, and according to my watch it's well after midnight."
"Well, you're here."
"And I have a gun; do you really wanna continue this discussion?"
"Y'know you're an asshole, right?" Stone asked when the young couple left, her voice raised to carry from the other side of the pool.
"Like I care." He slouched down further, the soles of his boots scraping against the concrete as he extended his legs. He watched her, his eyes trailing over her body appreciatively as she stripped out of her clothes and dove into the pool naked. Stone was nearly twelve years older than him, but the woman kept her body in perfect shape; he had seen women half her age who didn't look anywhere near as good as she did. She wasn't drop-dead gorgeous, and he had definitely been with women who were more beautiful, but she was completely comfortable in her own skin and she was confident in her abilities, and that only added to the overall package.
"So, when're you gonna tell me what's goin' on between you and the little motormouth?" Stone asked when she surfaced at the edge of the pool in front of him.
He leaned over to place the empty bottle in the cardboard carrier and pulled a fresh one out, uncapping it and dropping it on the ground. "Who says there's anything to tell?"
"I've been watchin' the two of you and she's not under your protection; I know that's the story goin' around, but that's not it."
"You're so sure about that?"
"Rumor has it that you've been there pretty much every night since she started working at the bar, and I know for a fact that before that you weren't a frequent customer. As I recall, you prefer that dump closer to your place where you can pick up women for a quick tumble in the sheets before heading back home. I also know that she's driving your vehicle and she's not staying over at the boarding house with the rest of Gabriel's girls." She smiled knowingly and pushed away from the edge to swim a few laps around the perimeter of the pool before returning to her spot in front of him. "Only stands to reason that if she's driving your vehicle and not staying with the girls that she'd have to be stayin' out at your place… and, Michael, if I recall correctly you've never even taken a one-night-stand home with you, so what would make you let this girl stay under your roof for an indefinite amount of time?"
Michael shrugged, neither confirming nor denying her observations.
"You're attracted to her," she guessed.
"Yeah, that's what it is," he muttered sarcastically.
Stone snorted at his tone. "Like I said, I've been watchin' you, and while she watches you when she thinks no one's looking…" She grinned. "You're doin' the same thing. It's pretty obvious that you haven't slept together, and I've never known you to spend this much time with a woman that you weren't fuckin'. Come to think of it, you've never spent this much time with a woman that you were fuckin'."
"You think ambushin' Hawkins like that was a good idea?"
She accepted the subject change without blinking an eye, motioning at the six-pack that belonged to her. She had gotten away with that conversation longer than she would have thought possible, so she took the bottle he leaned forward to hand her and took a long drink. "Hawkins has the makings of a damn good agent, Michael; he's got great instincts in the field, but he needs to be more focused. He's young and he lets his emotions influence his actions." She set the bottle down and crossed her arms on the still-warm concrete, propping her chin on them as she watched him. "That's an interesting question considering the way you kept baiting him."
He chuckled. "He had it comin'." He leaned back in the lounger and stared up at the sky. "I can't believe you fucked that little bastard… twice! If he's that bad in the sack, why'd you bother givin' him a second go-round?"
"Had to have all my facts straight before I busted his chops; he's a mouthy little bastard and you enjoy fuckin' with him, so I knew he'd eventually say the wrong thing and you'd call him on it."
"It's nice that I'm so predictable," he muttered.
Stone regarded him solemnly, thinking about him and the new waitress at the bar, but she only said, "Maybe you're not as predictable as you think you are." She pushed away from the wall to swim a few more laps before calling it a night.