Page 40 of The Bodyguard

“It’s the job I need.”

Sawyer waited for Boss Man to back him up, but silence loomed. “I’m not an investigator—”

“Sure you are. I know what you do, Sawyer.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. Titan specialized in getting the job done. What the job might be? Every time, it was different. He’d worked hostage recovery situations as many times as he had infiltrated behind enemy lines. That was Titan’s bread and butter. If it involved helicopters, ammo, and need-to-know intel, Sawyer was your guy. But cold case… research? Intel gathering? He didn’t even know what to call it.

Sawyer shook his head. Angela knew what they did, and she knew enough to understand that out of everyone on the ACES team, he was the least qualified. Hagan liked to figure out puzzles. Liam specialized in surveillance. Sawyer just wanted to get in and get out. He’d walk into hellfire so long as it was on his to-do list.

He rubbed his hands over his face as though he could scrub away the mental contradictions. If his job meant he was supposed to smoke out a missing woman, that shouldn’t have been a problem. But doing so with Angela when they knew precisely nothing? That idea didn’t sit well with him. His eyes pinched shut. “This is a bad idea, boss.”

“You want someone else to go with her?”

Sawyer’s eyes flew open. “I didn’t say that.” He tried to ignore Angela’s glare boring a hole in the side of his head and failed spectacularly. “If we find her, then what?”

“Focus. Bull’s-eye on the problem first.” Jared’s forehead furrowed. “We don’t know what we don’t know. I can’t tell you what we’ll do with it once we know.”

Sawyer scowled. “If she exists.”

“She exists,” Angela hissed.

“If she’s still alive,” Sawyer corrected.

“She is.” Angela’s confidence scared the hell out of him. It was almost enough to quell the anxiety thudding in his chest. “Pham wouldn’t be trying to negotiate—”

“We don’t know that is who he was going to offer up in exchange—”

“Then we find them all,” Angela roared. “Like we should have done before.”

The truth was enough to suck the oxygen from the room. Sawyer didn’t disagree. But that didn’t change his mind about who should do what. He rolled his lips together and stared at Jared. Angela shouldn’t be involved. She was untrained and emotionally too close. For the same reason a surgeon shouldn’t operate on their loved one, Angela shouldn’t search for a victim of the same abductor, even solely to gather intel.

“Spit it out, Sawyer,” Boss Man ordered. “You think I’m wrong? She’s wrong? Whatever you’ve got to say, say it so we can move forward.”

Sawyer glanced at Angela.

“Angela’s not going to bite,” Jared muttered.

Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t know that.”

Sawyer ran his hand over his face and into his hair again, where his knuckles tightened. “I don’t understand why you would let her do this.”

“Because I asked, Sawyer,” she said.

“I’ve asked for a hell of a lot of things over the years, and you,” he said to Jared, “didn’t bother entertaining any bullshit requests.” Sawyer raised his eyebrows. “And now something comes along that puts Angela in danger, and you’re all ‘let’s go see what happens’?”

“Her location has been compromised,” Jared pointed out. “She’s gotta go somewhere. Why not go somewhere that no one would expect?”

“Let’s not forget,” Angela added, “I want to do this. Iaskedto do this. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

“Yeah. You can.” The muscles in Sawyer’s jaw ticked. “What if shit hits the fan? What if we find Mylene surrounded byPham’s ghouls? We’re unarmed. Unprepared.” He motioned to Angela. “Untrained.”

“We’ve talked about that,” Parker said.

“What?” Sawyer had walked into the conversation too late, powerless to the decisions made without his input.

“We mitigate the dangers. Prepare for the unexpected, arm you both appropriately, and provide training as needed.”

“Arm us both?” Sawyer repeated incredulously. Had he ever seen Angela hold a weapon?

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