Beatle #2
He couldn’t help the chuckle that slipped out. “No, waste of good food.”
The man reached their table and settled onto the opposite bench with the ease of someone joining old friends, the wooden seat groaning under his weight. Up close, the blue eyes were sharp and assessing but not unkind—the eyes of someone who made decisions quickly and lived with them.
“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Lennon,” he greeted them, his voice seemingly genuine and welcoming.
“My sincere apologies for being late. I trust that you two have been able to enjoy yourselves?” His cadence carried the warm and casual familiarity of someone who’d been their acquaintance for years.
As if they'd all planned to meet there, at that stall in the market.
As if this were nothing more than a lunch appointment.
Beatle didn’t allow himself to show it, but he was unsettled that the big man called them by their last name. Choosing to address them that way was a scare tactic, he knew. Hell, he’d used that one himself in the past. Interesting play. Let’s see where this goes.
“No worries,” Beatle said. “We already started eating. I hope you don’t mind.” He shifted his weight on the bench—a minor adjustment, casual to any observer—that brought his hand a few critical inches closer to the weapon at his back.
The man laughed and waved dismissively, his large hand cutting the air.
“Oh, please! Enjoy yourselves. The food here is amazing.” He paused and, with a lowered voice, said, “The name's Gil, by the way.” He extended his hand across the table with the relaxed expectation of someone who had never been refused.
Beatle took it. The handshake was brief and firm, communicating exactly what two men of a certain background always communicated in that specific exchange. I know what you are. You know what I am. Let's not pretend otherwise.
Both men assessed each other across the scarred wooden table, the market noise swelling and ebbing around them.
“So, I hear you are looking for someone,” Gil asked. He settled back onto the bench with his arms loose at his sides, his posture open in the deliberate way of a man who wanted to be understood as non-threatening. He was skilled enough to pull that off with most people.
I’m not most people. The big man across from him could have been handcuffed and blindfolded, and Beatle would have still considered him a threat.
Beatle shrugged and said, “I don't know where you heard that. I’m on vacation with my wife.” The words came out flat and level.
Gil chuckled, a low sound that didn't reach the calculation behind his eyes. “Alright, friends, let's try this again.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table, blue eyes direct and utterly unimpressed. “Go home.”
The command was given in a firm and authoritative tone. Go home. Not a request or a suggestion. Two words, delivered with the complete, unhurried certainty of a man who was long accustomed to being obeyed.
Casey's voice broke the silence before Beatle could respond, sharp with the fire she kept banked beneath the surface. “I'm sorry, what? If you think you can—”
“Casey.” Beatle's hand found hers under the table, his fingers wrapping around her knuckles—not silencing her, never that, just grounding her. Grounding himself. He held Gil's gaze. “You’re going to need to explain.”
Gil ran his tongue over his teeth, his brows arching as he turned an idea over, before he nodded. He’d made a calculation. A decision.
“I am not at liberty to discuss the nature of an ongoing operation,” he said with grave seriousness. “But I can assure you that we have it under control.”
Beatle asked, “Who is we exactly?”
Gil’s smile grew back to the wide and pearly crescent from earlier. “I am not at liberty to discuss the nature of our organization.”
Beatle sighed. “Well, what can you share with us, then?”
“That you need to go home.”
“And we can trust you … because?”
Because you walked into a market in broad daylight and sat down at our table like you owned the air around you?
Because you know our names, our faces, why we're here? Because whoever sent you knew enough to find us before we found them? And, the more obvious fact, that if this man had wanted to harm them, then he wouldn’t have tipped his hand in this way.
“Well, for starters,” Gil said as he pulled out his phone, “I have my own team already in place who are prepared to pull the marine biologist out at a moment’s notice.
” He scrolled for a moment before turning the phone to Beatle, swiping left to show a series of long-distance photos: an armed group in the jungle, caches of weapons, headshots of who Beatle assumed were the leaders of this group, and then …
The marine biologist. Doctor Gabriella Valentino. This guy knows where she is.
Gil pocketed his phone and fixed Beatle with a look that was almost sympathetic.
“Listen, you two lovebirds,” he said with an affable smile, “whatever good-natured quest this is you’re on, I'd really rather not have the US government on my ass over it. Not when I am already trying to get the mafia out of it.”