Page 95 of Seal of Honor
“Haven’t done laundry.”
“Or dishes. Or shaved. Or showered.” He stopped beside the desk, littered with pizza boxes and empty bottles of beer and water. “Are you sick?”
“No.” Gabe thought he should be embarrassed by the state of his apartment but couldn’t find the motivation for even that. Maybe he was sick after all. He never used to have a problem motivating himself. “I’ve been busy.”
“Doing what, internet stalking?” Quinn said, spinning the computer monitor around.
Shit, he’d left Audrey’s website up on the screen.
“I’m checking up on a client.” He crossed to the desk in three strides and swatted Quinn’s hand away from the monitor. When he tried to close out of the site, he found he couldn’t do it. Again. Audrey’s face smiled out at him from the page, and he just… couldn’t. He switched off the monitor instead. “That’s all.”
“You miss her,” Quinn said. “You should go see her, talk to her. Who knows? Maybe she’ll even forgive you for being an ass.”
“Wait.” A sneaking suspicion crept through the fog of depression hanging over Gabe’s mind, and he narrowed his eyes on his best friend. “Is this an intervention?”
“No. But, c’mon, man.” Quinn encompassed the apartment with a sweep of his arm. “This isn’t you. What the hell?”
Gabe felt a muscle tick under his eye and loosened his clamped jaw. “Can we talk about something else? Like the reason you’re here.”
“Yeah, but you’re gonna listen to me first. I know it’s none of my fucking business, but I have to say this. I’ve known you for twelve years, and in all that time, I’d never have dreamed of calling you a coward. Until now.”
Gabe ground his teeth as the blow hit exactly where Quinn had calculated it to: his pride. He was not a coward. “Noted. Now, can we get to work? You wanted to talk to me about the team.”
Quinn took a long drink from his beer, then propped himself on the armof the couch. “That mission in Colombia could have gone much worse.”
“No shit.”
“We were undertrained, under-equipped. We put our team in danger.”
“Yes, I’m aware.” Gabe couldn’t keep the heat out of his tone. He had put his team in danger, all because he had wanted back into the action. “And I’ve been working around the clock to rectify those problems.”
“When you’re not moping,” Quinn muttered but then held up his hand. “Sorry. Low blow.”
Gabe let the jab slide. “I spoke with Tuc, and he essentially wrote us a blank check, so Harvard is having a field day upgrading our tech. We’ve already centralized everything and implemented some high-level encryption protocols to improve our security. And I think I’ve convinced Danny Giancarelli to help Marcus with some negotiation training for us.”
“That’s a start, but what about the manpower?” Quinn asked, his attention focused on the half-empty beer bottle in his hand. “We were stretched thin in Colombia.”
“I’ve been looking at dossiers.” He nodded toward the leaning tower of files on his desk. “So far, I’m not liking our options. “A lot of them have either aged out or come with too many complications.”
“We need a sniper.”
Hell, no. Gabe saw where this was going and frowned. “I know what you’re thinking, Q. Didn’t I already make that decision?”
“Yeah, but we need a sniper,” he repeated. “A good one, at that. Seth Harlan’s one of the best, and he wants on the team.”
“In that case, why stop with Seth?” Gabe grumbled, sarcasm heavy in his tone. “Let’s just start a goddamn sanctuary for washed-up operators and spies.”
“Gabe, man. We’re the washed-up operators.”
The words hit him like a punch to the gut.
He scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “I know, Q. I know.”
“Seth wants a second chance. If we don’t give it to him, who will?”
Second chance.
In a flash of understanding, Gabe suddenly knew how the sniper must feel. In fact, hadn’t he felt the same way only a month and a half ago as he stood in his parents’ house in his dress whites, dreading his future? HORNET had given him and all of the other guys another shot. What was stopping him from doing the same for Seth Harlan?
