3
Being a bodyguard, as far as Hunter could tell, was the most boring job on planet Earth.
He glanced around the surveillance van, suppressing an urge to sigh. True, the vehicle looked like something from a James Bond movie, with monitors lining the inside so they could watch the view from the dozens of cameras on their client’s estate. They could see almost every room in the house and around most of the grounds with cams, and there were other cameras equipped with motion detectors, which would rotate from time to time when an owl or fox triggered them. There were banks of lights to show the status of the alarm sensors on every door and window, and even sound detectors with waterfall displays so they would know if any window pane between here and the next county was broken. But none of the high-tech gadgets interested him in the slightest and staring at the unchanging displays was mind-numbing in the extreme.
His gaze fell on Payne, who was engrossed in some finicky adjustment of one of the displays, and he frowned thoughtfully. He didn’t understand why Payne had agreed to train him, when Hunter had done his best to be as off-putting as possible. Despite Hunter giving monosyllabic answers to any questions and not saying anything beyond that, Payne had acted friendly toward him, not just professional and polite. He was puzzled and a little unsettled, but there didn’t seem to be a damn thing Hunter could do to change it.
It was also hard to believe someone as short and lean as Payne had managed to take Hunter down. Even though Hunter wasn’t in peak form — months of recovery had taken its toll — he was still big and strong enough to handle most men in a fight. Payne must have studied martial arts, and he had reflexes faster than anyone Hunter had ever seen before. He also knew how to use those baby blue eyes of his to devastating effect, and Hunter grudgingly admitted, if only to himself, he wasn’t as immune as he would have liked to be. Which made the current situation all the more unbearable.
Still, this was something he would have to endure, as he’d endured the heat of the desert and the fact they couldn’t have booze or chocolate or half a dozen other things he’d taken for granted before his first deployment. He could get through this, and then he’d be sent back where he belonged. After that… he cut off the thought before it could even form, knowing he shouldn’t get too far ahead of himself. It was a hazard in his job, and one he’d learned to deal with. If you started thinking too far ahead, you could lose focus on what you needed to be doing at the moment, and that could get you dead in a great big hurry.
The sigh escaped before he could stop it, and he growled in silent annoyance. Maybe Herc and the folks at L&G thought doing this was going to help Hunter get better, whatever that meant, but from where he was sitting, he felt like he was being punished instead.
“Doing okay, big guy?” Payne swiveled his chair to face Hunter, giving him a friendly smile.
Hunter kept his expression impassive. “Yes.”
“No questions for me?” Payne asked, widening his eyes slightly.
At another time and another place, if Payne had looked at him like that, Hunter would have been tempted to ask him out. He’d always been a sucker for wide eyed, appealing looks, especially from men as attractive as Payne. But it was out of the question, even if Hunter had been tempted.
He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling a little irritated. “No. You explained the equipment, described the client, and made me aware of the threat. I can’t think of anything else I need to know to sit here and stare at a bunch of screens.”
Payne’s lips quirked up as he leaned back and stretched as much as the confines of the van would allow. The hem of his tight black tee-shirt rode up enough to reveal a stripe of fair skin above the waistband of his black and white camo pants.
“I get the impression you don’t think much of surveillance work.”
Hunter wanted to growl, but he bit down on the impulse, even though he wondered if Payne was being deliberately provocative. It seemed likely; the man was too damned smart and sure of himself.
“Oh, I think a lot of it,” Hunter said, his tone dry as dust. “Just none of it positive.”
“You don’t think it has any value?” Payne didn’t appear to be either surprised or defensive, merely curious.
Hunter was tempted to shrug and end the conversation, but he wasn’t ready to be quite that rude — or at least not yet. “I didn’t say that,” he said. “I’m not stupid, you know. I realize it’s necessary to maintain a secure perimeter at all times in a dangerous situation. But my talents are different. Maybe Herc thought since I can stare at wiring diagrams and spend hours tracing circuits to disarm a bomb that I’d be good at this, but I think I’d rather have my fingernails pulled out.”
“Wiring diagrams and tracing circuits both take patience and attention to detail,” Payne pointed out. “So how is it different from this?”
“Because the danger there is real and immediate. This kind of work, you’re hoping nothing happens, right? You can even have that hope, because the threats to this guy could be someone just pissing up a rope. I’m used to being in the dirt. We can hope nothing happens, but it always does. Always.”
“Is that what you want?” Payne cocked his head as he watched Hunter, still leaning back in a relaxed posture. “You’d rather have danger than hope?”
Giving Payne a narrow-eyed glance, Hunter chuckled, but the sound was bitter. “I’ve lived with danger so long, it’s part of me now. If I’d wanted to do this kind of thing for a living, I would’ve mustered out with the others when Herc left Lawson and Greer. I know what I’m good at, and it’s what I want to do.”
“What happens when you can’t do it anymore? Something like this could be a handy backup skill to keep you in the field even if age or an injury moves you out of demolitions,” Payne said.
The question sent an icy finger down Hunter’s spine. Stack had loved the work as much as Hunter did, but then he’d found something he loved even more, and Hunter had secretly envied him. Then the work had killed him, and none of it mattered anymore. Stack’s death had blown a hole in a lot of lives, including Hunter’s.
“I’ll cross that bridge if and when I come to it,” he said. Privately, he figured he’d end up going the way of Stack sooner or later, but at least when he did, he wouldn’t leave a family behind to figure out how to get along without him.
“It happens to the best of us sooner or later,” Payne said as he swiveled to check a monitor, but the movement turned out to be a cat running across the lawn. “But there are always other avenues. My mentor is former Mossad. Ghost tried retiring, but it didn’t stick, so now he’s the head of Herc’s new training facility. D-Day is doing a lot more training than field work these days too. Priorities shift when they need to.”
Hunter gave a snort. “D-Day’s priorities shifted, but he’s still D-Day. Once a merc, always a merc — at least for the ones who are real mercs to begin with.” He gestured to the screens. “I can’t see Daryl Greer sitting in front of these damned things for more than five minutes without putting a fist through one of them.”
“I can’t see it either,” Payne said, chuckling. Then he turned a wide-eyed, curious look on Hunter again. “What’s the difference between a real merc and — say — someone like me?”
“You?” Hunter asked, surprised at the question. “I don’t know you, so how could I say?”
“Well, you know I never worked at Lawson and Greer,” Payne said. “But otherwise, you’re right. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. But we’re going to be working together for a while, so maybe we should change that. Is there anything in particular you’d like to know?”
