Nathan dropped their bags in his front hall and went straight to the bar. He poured a hefty glug of fifty-year-old Macallan, downing what Emily estimated to be several hundred dollars’ worth of scotch in one swallow. She sat on the small loveseat; Nathan remained standing.
“I could downplay your influence on my path, Emily, but once you hear the story, I think you’ll see the impact you had.”
She remained silent, giving him the same focus he had afforded her.
“I was haunted by your abduction. But I will say that somewhere in my mind I felt that maybe you were safe. Mainly it was a feeling, but it was also your dad. He may not have even known he was doing it, but something about the wording of his emails, little things that an untrained reader wouldn’t see, planted a seed of hope.
“The SEALs I worked with went out on a lot of rescue missions. Other missions became rescue missions by default. We once discovered a captured Marine nobody knew was being held. Twice in Eastern Europe, we discovered groups of women preparing to be trafficked.” He walked up to where she sat then and fell to his knees with such a look of despair, she had to bite back tears. “I know it made no sense, but I looked at each woman, each face with such dread, praying it wouldn’t be you. Praying you had died rather than ended up like that.” He dropped his face into her lap and was quiet for a long moment. When his emotions were under control he stood and began to pace.
“When I resigned my commission and came to work at K-B, I tried to push all that stuff out of my head. A fresh start, a new life. About six months in, my friend Tox, who runs my security division, came to me. His friend had been abducted from a gas station in his hometown. She’d only been missing about ten hours, and because she was twenty, the police wouldn’t do much. It was a total no-brainer. We grabbed the guys from the old team who were close, five guys, three of whom work for me and two others, Finn and JJ, who both went to work for the CIA.”
“The Giant works for you?”
“Hmm?”
“There was a guy who interrupted one of our interview sessions, I nicknamed The Giant. Bald. Enormous.”
He chuckled. “That’s Tox. You know Chat. There’s also Twitch, she’s the little redhead who runs cybersecurity, and Ren, who’s sort of a utility player.”
“Ren? Like Ren and Stimpy?”
“No, but I’ll tell him you said that. He’ll love it. Ren is short for Renaissance Man. The guy is like the Swiss Army knife of humans. If you ever find yourself stranded in the middle of nowhere, Ren is the guy you want.”
He spoke with such fondness it warmed her heart.
“Anyway, Tox’s friend. It wasn’t exactly a high drama, headline news situation. Twitch hacked her cell phone records and found a frequently called number that belonged to a small-time dealer. Tox’s friend, Katie, was pretty clean-cut, and I think she got in over her head with the guy. Anyway, when she decided he was bad news, he didn’t take it too well and locked her up. Just for shits and grins, we broke down his door, zip-tied him and his buddies, and walked Katie out. Talk about bringing a gun to a knife fight, these guys couldn’t even speak, they were so outmanned. Tox stayed behind to drive the point home that his friend was not to be touched or even looked at again.”
“Wow, that’s amazing. You guys could do that as a business....” The sentence died on her lips as realization dawned.
“And that’s how The Perseus Project was born.”
“The Perseus Project?”
“Tox, Ren, Chat, and I came up with it. It’s more specialized than Bishop Security, less conventional. For people who can’t go through normal channels, like the family of someone in a cult, who claims to be there voluntarily, or someone imprisoned or abducted on foreign soil where diplomacy isn’t an option. Even an infant. We work with people when the victims, for whatever reason, have no voice.”
“That’s quite an altruistic business.”
“Not a business, exactly, but a service. People who can afford to pay, do. People who can’t, we cover.”
“You really are a superhero.”
“Nah, no superpowers, although after all this time we are really fucking good at it. I’d say it’s more of a calling.”
“That time I came here, and you were all banged up?”
“That was something else. Remember when I mentioned Bishop Security handles some off-the-books government work? In this case, the NSA and Homeland are tracking the possible sale of a biotoxin that was discovered in China. It’s a vague and complicated story that started with a group of construction workers discovering something from a Japanese World War II research facility. I was doing what should have been simple recon. There is so much rumor and speculation about the discovery that Cerberus, our contact within the government, asked me to talk to the men who found the item. See if we could learn any actual facts. It was an uneventful and unproductive trip until someone chased me down and ran me off the road. The construction workers were being watched, but the men who came after me weren’t expecting me to be armed and when I returned fire, they drove off. When I got back, I was banged up, but mostly just pissed I hadn’t gotten any usable intel.”
Emily couldn’t help but notice Nathan was telling that story like he was talking about a ski weekend in Aspen.
“You love it.”
“I do. All that daredevil cover shit I do to keep prying eyes off my real business? It’s only partly for show. I love that stuff.”
“Adrenaline junkie.”
“Nah, I love it, but I could live without it. I’m an Emily junkie. Totally and completely addicted.”
He stole her breath. “Come get your fix then.”