Page 76 of Out of the Shadows

She peeked at Gavin and the humor in her fled. He was focused ahead of him, but the crinkle between his eyebrows was on full display. His mind was elsewhere.

“You doing okay, boss?” she asked, popping the top of her energy drink and taking a swig.

He glanced down at her and cringed. “How do you drink that?”

She held the can out to him. When he shook his head, she shrugged and took another drink. “It’s good. It’s like a liquid Jolly Rancher. I’ll have you know, I used to drink the full-sugar ones. This bad boy has zero sugar. So it’s notthatbad for me.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he murmured.

“To be fair, I did drink a big bottle of water this morning.”

His lips pursed. “After how many cups of coffee and energy drinks?”

She chuckled. “Fair point, but one bottle of water is better than none, right?”

“True.” A tired smile ghosted his lips as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his down jacket. “I just worry about you, B.”

She sobered at his words, at the dark look that flashed over his face. “I know, and I appreciate it. But I promise I’m trying to be better about eating and properly hydrating.” Well, hydrating in general. But whatever. “Believe it or not, this is only my second can of the day. Before that whole passing-out incident, I would have usually already had at least four.” More like six or seven. On top of the three to four cups of morning coffee. But the way the guy was grimacing at her admission, she didn’t want to give him a heart attack.

“What else is bugging you, boss?” When he gave her a pointed look, she rolled her eyes. “Gavin. You’re worried, and I know it can’t just be about my energy drink consumption.”

He remained silent as they passed the easy trail she’d taken with Wilson. They veered to the right, and he held a branch up for her to walk under. “All of it. The shootings. The not knowing. Constance freaking Whitcomb. The fact that we’re stretched so thin with the McClintocks at the safe house.”

“Are you thinking of hiring another team?”

“I probably should, but it’s so damn hard to find good people. The teams we have are solid, but we basically have them booked out through the middle of next year. I don’t want to have anyone burnout.” He let out a weary sigh andscrubbed his hands over his face. Dropping his arms, his shoulders straightened, and he inhaled deeply. “I don’t want to talk about that though. We’re here to clear our heads. Tell me something non-work related. Maybe something about your childhood. I know you said you spent most of it at boarding schools, but did you have fun? Get into trouble?”

Bean made a face. “You met my mother. Fun wasn’t a high priority. But I suppose my childhood was fine.” She fought a cringe. That had sounded horrible. It hadn’t been bad, just... different. “Looking back, I definitely had an unusual upbringing. Boarding school at four. Done with high school by twelve. Two undergrad and two master’s degrees by eighteen.” She shrugged. “But at the time, I didn’t really know any better. It wasn’t until I was around thirteen that I realized I was an anomaly.”

He took her hand and squeezed. “You had friends and stuff, right? You were happy?”

Her chest tightened, and she frowned. Happy? That old feeling of not fitting in settled heavily in her gut. She wanted to be honest with Gavin, but she also didn’t want to be a complete downer. “I think the better word is focused. Determined. The boarding school I went to had kids of a variety of ages. When I started, I was the youngest, so it was hard to talk with the other kids. I’d mentioned Marie?—”

“The cook who gave you your nickname.”

A small smile bloomed, both from the memory of the woman and the fact that he’d remembered. “Yeah. Other kids came and went, but she was the one constant. I talked with her a lot. Picked her brain on what adult life was like. Watched sitcoms in the evening with her.”

“She was like your mother figure?”

Bean heard the warmth in his voice and nodded. Marie was the one who’d baked her cookies for her birthday, the one she’d run to when she’d been twelve and thought she washemorrhaging, thought she was dying. Marie was the one person she kept in contact with from her childhood.

“At my school, since kids graduated high school at different ages, once you started your college courses—if you were too young to live on-campus at your university—you were transitioned into the boarding school’s ‘college’ dorms. It was hard to make friends. At that point, even though most of us were going to Stanford, everyone was kind of doing their own thing.”

Gavin looked at her in utter bafflement and appeared to be choosing his words carefully. “That sounds... impressive, for sure. But, honey, that sounds...”

“Boring?” She chuckled because, holy shit, it did sound boring. Luckily, she’d never known anything different, so she’d never noticed how lonely her childhood had been. “I obviously had a hard time relating to other kids. I mean, do you know what happens when you take a group of socially awkward, too smart, introverted kids and put them in a room together?”

He shook his head.

“Absolutely nothing. We didn’t talk to each other or engage in regular teenage mischief—or what I’m assuming teenage mischief is based on what I saw on TV—but I swear, I did have my share of fun. When I was thirteen, I got really into RPGs.”

Gavin’s jaw dropped, and he stopped dead in his tracks. A look of horror crossed his face. “Rocket-propelled grenades?”

She blinked. Twice. Then she burst into laughter. “Oh my God, Gavin, it’s obvious you weren’t a nerd as a kid. Role-playing games. You know, online computer games?EverQuest,World of Warcraft,Gothic—that kind of thing.”

“Holy shit,” he wheezed, slapping a hand to the center of his chest. “You had me worried there for a second. I mean,what the hell kind of fancy-ass school letsteenagersplay with heavy-duty weapons.”

She shook her head, wiping a tear of hilarity away. “It was a school for super nerds. The only warfare was simulated.”

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