1
“You wanted to see me, Herc?” Payne Gibson knocked on the door frame and poked his head into Cade Thornton’s office after his PA, Lexy, waved him through.
Normally, he didn’t stop by Hercules Security headquarters before his shift — overnight watch duty on a multimillionaire businessman who’d received death threats over a class action lawsuit he was embroiled in — but he’d woken up to find an email from Herc requesting a meeting with him.
Herc glanced up from his computer. “Thanks for coming so quickly,” he said, gesturing to a seat in front of his desk. “You’re just the man I need to see.”
“Is this about the Peterson case?” Payne asked as he took a seat.
“Yes and no,” Herc said, regarding Payne with a serious expression. “You’re doing great work on it, by the way. But what I really wanted to know is if you’d be willing to take on a partner. A trainee, I suppose, at least in surveillance.”
Payne’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline, and he leaned forward in his chair, surprised by the question. He’d been with Hercules Security for five years, and this was the first time Herc had asked him to take on a trainee. It felt like a mark of honor, as if he’d finally arrived… or maybe it just meant he was now officially an old-timer in the company.
“Sure, I’m willing,” he said, imagining a fresh-faced, eager newbie he could take under his wing and become a respected mentor for, as his mentors had been for him.
“Before you commit, I need to give you a complete briefing on the man in question,” Herc said. He turned his computer monitor around to face Payne, and with a few key taps, he displayed two pictures. On the right was the face of a man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties, with short cropped brown hair and a close-cropped beard emphasizing his square jawline. He looked into the camera with a slight smirk on his lips, and there seemed to be amusement in his blue eyes.
The same man was pictured on the left, but the changes in him were striking. No longer smiling, he seemed to starethroughthe camera, almost as if he didn’t know it was there and wouldn’t have cared even if he had. He looked haggard, with dark circles under his eyes, and he seemed to have lost weight. But the biggest difference was a scar tracing a vivid red line along his right temple and back into his hair. The picture must have been taken a month or two after the injury which had caused it, for the hair growing back in the area stood out as a silver streak amid the brown.
“This is Hunter Callahan about five months ago,” Herc said, pointing to the picture on the right. “And the other is of him three months later.”
Payne recognized the thousand-yard stare, and he turned wide, round eyes on Herc. “That guy has seen some shit,” he said. “You want to tell me what I’m getting into here?”
“Hunter was one-half of Lawson and Greer’s best demolitions team,” Herc said quietly. “He used to go by the nickname Able, but he is vehement about no one calling him that any longer. The other half of the team was Mark Hansen, known as Stack. You may recall the names if you read the after-action report on D-Day’s little outing with the Eastern Light in Europe about a year ago. They’re the guys we borrowed from L&G to deal with the nuke.”
“I think everyone in the company read that report,” Payne said, remembering how widely it had circulated after word got out about D-Day having tackled a truck with a live nuke in it. Despite the brevity of Herc’s description, it didn’t take many pieces for Payne to get the picture, especially given Herc’s use of the past tense. “Let me guess. Something happened to Hansen.”
“It did.” Herc managed to convey a great deal of sorrow and regret in only two brief words. “I have the full after-action report for you to read, but those are just facts, and I wanted to tell you about the real men involved. I knew Stack well. He was already an old-timer when I went to work for John Lawson and Matthew Greer. He was one of their original team when they formed the company. Able — Hunter — came in two years after I did, a cocky little son-of-a-bitch out of Army Special Forces. He was kind of like D-Day, but with a little officer spit-and-polish. His special skills involved blowing the shit out of things, so he and Stack were teamed up. Mark was a no-nonsense kind of guy, and I think he kicked Hunter in the ass and made him grow up. They were a hell of a team. I was at Stack’s wedding, where Hunter stood as his best man, and when Stack’s son was born, he asked Hunter to be the godfather.
Herc paused and drew in a breath. “Three months ago, Lawson and Greer were on a deployment near Fallujah, guarding a group of American ‘military advisors.’ They’d run across some IEDs and the unit had even fragged a couple of would-be suicide bombers. But then the twisted bastards got the idea to send in someone no American soldier would shoot on sight. It was a seven-year-old kid, wearing enough C4 to blow the entire camp straight to hell. Able and Stack were called on to defuse the kid’s vest while the camp was evacuated. The kid was petrified. He was told he had to do it or his mother and sister would be killed. He held onto the trigger, though, refusing to blow himself and everyone else up. But when they got the vest off the kid, a timer went off. They’d already detached most of the C4, but one block was enough. Stack threw himself over the vest to protect Hunter and the kid. They lived…He died.”
Payne gazed at the more recent photo of Hunter Callahan with a sharp surge of sympathy. “Shit, that’s rough. I’m guessing a bad case of survivor’s guilt on top of PTSD?”
“I think that’s likely,” Herc said. “One problem when you deal with smart people, though, especially ones who know the drill, is that psychological tests and interviews don’t give you the whole picture. Hunter is damned smart, and the psychologists said he seems to be fine now. Of course, they don’t know him the way Matthew Greer, John Lawson, and I know him. He’s hurting, but he’s shut everyone out. The fact he refuses to answer to the nickname he’s had for fifteen years is proof enough of that. Matt and John aren’t about to send him back into the field, no matter how good he is or how much they need him, not with what he’s carrying around inside. So they asked me to take him on as a ‘temporary assignment.’ We’ve told him we want him to have some time away from the battlefield. So when I said I’d help him out, I immediately thought of you.”
“I take it this is less about me training him in surveillance and more about my background?” Payne asked dryly. He had a BA and a MA in psychology, and he’d been toying with the idea of pursuing a Ph.D.
“That’s part of it,” Herc admitted. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, which is why I was asking, not ordering. It’s definitely in the ‘above and beyond’ category, but you might be his last hope. He’s not going to go for counseling, and we can’t force him. But Ghost trained you in infiltration, and you’re not only smart and have the training in psychology, you’ve been in combat before. You can understand what he’s going through. Maybe you can’t help him, and he’ll end up washed out no matter what any of us do. But maybe you can get inside his head and show him the way back out.”
It was a tall order, especially for someone who wasn’t a licensed therapist, but Payne had always been driven to help people. He wasn’t sure whether it was due to the example his father had set or his own basic nature — perhaps a little of both — but it was a fundamental element of who he was, one he couldn’t change or ignore.
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “When do we get started?”
Herc grinned, obviously pleased. “I’ll email you the after-action report and give you a couple of days to review everything. How about you come by here next Tuesday around four, and I’ll have Hunter here. You can meet him, and I’ll let the two of you work things out.”
“Works for me.” Payne gave Herc a questioning look. “Is there anything else I should know going in that isn’t covered in the report?”
Herc’s smile grew wicked. “Well, at the risk of giving you too big of an ego, I’d say using those big blue puppy eyes on him might help. Hunter walks on our side of the street, and as I recall, he’s got a weakness for a pretty face.”
Payne laughed and batted his lashes at Herc, although he knew Herc was immune to his charms. Herc’s husband, Jude, was the one who held Herc enthralled. “Duly noted.”
“All right, then, check your email later.” Herc paused, his expression turning serious once again. “I do appreciate this, Payne. Hunter Callahan has saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives by risking his own. If you can help him, you’ll be doing a favor not only for me personally, but for everyone else he might save in the future. And if you can’t help him, I don’t think anyone can.”
“Oh, good, no pressure,” Payne said as he pushed back his chair and stood up.
Herc rolled his eyes. “Go on, get your smart mouth out of here,” he growled, but there was no heat in it. “Before you make me wonder if I’m doing Hunter a favor after all!”
“Pfft!” Payne grinned unrepentantly at Herc. “I got my nickname for a reason,” he said as he sashayed to the door. But despite his flippant demeanor, he was already thinking about Hunter and ways he could bring Hunter out of the dark place he was mired in.
Hunter Callahan needed Payne’s help, and he was going to get it — whether he liked it or not.
