Page 20 of Gabe

Gabe sighed and pushed his glasses higher up his nose. He didn’t always wear them. They seemed to be mostly for reading paperwork.

I wished he would wear them more often. They gave his face more character and turned him from an emotionless rock to a stern school teacher with a secret badass side.

Of course, I would never say such a thing to his face. Then he’d probably never wear the glasses again.

“It’s because I know who this man is that I’m worried. I’m not sure that he can be brought down.”

“A bad guy with bad connections?”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Gabe shook his head. I noticed for the first time that there were dark bags hanging under his eyes. The man looked like he’d gotten the same amount of sleep I had.

None.

“Robert McLeod definitely has mob connections, though nothing has ever been proven. But that’s not what I’m worried about. It’s his legitimate connections that concern me. He’s got a lot of relatives in influential positions of government. He recently earned the title of Senator and there’s talk of him running for president in a few years. Quite frankly, I’m not sure it’s even possible to take this man out. Not without pissing off a huge portion of our government. Even if we could, it would take an army. I’m just one man, and at the moment I don’t have any backup.”

Tucking the picture back inside its folder, Gabe collected the whole thing and carefully set it aside. “So, I’ve decided, there’s only one choice. You need to learn to defend yourself.”

I choked on my last bite of egg. “Excuse me.”

“There’s no way I’m getting anywhere near Robert McLeod on my own. I’m going to need help, and that means I’ll be leaving this safe house more often than planned. I need to know that you’ll be able to defend yourself when I’m gone.”

“Okaaaay...” The singular word stretched between my teeth, like it was trying to escape but I wasn’t quite ready to let it go. “What exactly would that entail? Because I’ll tell you right now, I’m not handling any guns.”

“No guns,” Gabe assured me. “I wouldn’t have time to train you enough for you to use them with any efficiency. Nor do we have a safe shooting range for practice. No. We’ll just stick to basic defense. Are you done?” He pointed down at my empty plate.

As much as I wanted to argue, or come up with another excuse to think for a moment, I had nothing left. So, I merely nodded.

“Good. Come on.”

Leaving the plate still sitting on the table, Gabe dragged me out of the RV and into the clearing surrounding the safe house.

“Wait a minute,” I said when he took off his jacket and hung it over a tree branch. “You mean we’re doing this right now?”

“Yes. The sooner we get started, the better.”

He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves to reveal his forearms. It was easy to forget since he was always so buttoned up, but under his stiff exterior and formal suits, the man was well built.

Based on the rigid lines of muscle running down his forearms, he definitely hadn’t skimped on his workouts since leaving the army.

Watching him get ready for whatever “lesson” he had planned made me feel like I needed to be doing something. I stood there in just a pair of slightly too big sweatpants and an undershirt, so I didn’t have anything to remove. So, I did the only thing I could and tied my braids back into a ponytail. The familiar action always helped me get into the right mindset for work. Maybe it would help here as well.

“Okay, so what? You want to teach me how to fight?” I raised my fists into what I thought was a fighting stance. “All right. I guess we can give this a go.”

Gabe immediately pushed my hands back to my sides. “That’s not what we’re doing. There isn’t enough time for you to get proficient in hand-to-hand combat. Plus, you shouldn’t be fighting anyway. No, what I’m going to teach you is how to escape.”

“Escape?”

The day had only started, and it kept getting weirder.

“Yes, escape,” Gabe agreed as he removed his glasses and stored them in a pocket of his jacket. “Right now, your job is not to fight. Your job is to survive. If someone comes after you, you get away and you run.” His gaze briefly traveled up and down my body. “You’ve got long legs for your height. You should be good at running.”

I nervously scratched at the back of my head, and my fingers automatically found the raised edge of the scar hidden under my braids. “I used to run track in high school.”

The admission was barely loud enough to be heard over the sound of the rustling leaves. I wasn’t even sure Gabe heard me, for he gave no reaction. Instead, he studied me for a moment before suddenly grabbing my wrist in firm grip.

“If someone grabs you, what do you do?”

“Um...” I hesitated.

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