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The first time Thomas sees her face is through a piece of 5 inch thick bulletproof glass. It's not even all of her face, really: just the eyes, a hint of the nose. The color of her hair.
People who disappear are not considered to be in need of a nice view, alas.
He does not think she is beautiful. He thinks is she here to kill me? question me? if the former, how can I avoid that - if the latter, what about?
She smiles (he can tell from the skin around her eyes), and it feels like she's reading his mind, like she's a little amused at his presumption that the only possible reason she's here must be him.
He steps back, a little startled; she vanishes.
The sound of a door, opening. The sound of a gun, firing once. (He never did get to know his neighbor, but he imagines the guy maybe had it coming.)
The sound of a voice, probably hers. "You. What do you do?"
"Nothing much," Thomas says. It's instinct, by now: give nothing away. Not anymore.
"Cute. If you want my help getting out of here, I'm going to need a bit more than that."
"If not?" He's bribed a guard to bring him a cellphone within the next two days. From there on out, it should take him four, five hours to expand his options sufficiently to come up with a workable escape plan.
"Then I'll stop wasting your no doubt valuable time. I mean, gosh, you must be so busy in there."
"I am," he says, but it's a joke. He's not sure how long it's been since he's made one of those; most guards in this place have no sense of humor at all, and he doesn't like them enough to want to amuse them, anyway. "Still. Consider me warily interested. What's the offer?"
"You first," she says.
Who are you? he thinks. What is the answer that will make you useful to me? "I'm a programmer. Computers."
"Not toasters? Damn, I was really looking for a guy to reprogram my toaster."
"Now who's being cute?"
"I get you out, you don't shoot me in the back," she says. "Deal?"
"Deal," Thomas says. Thinking okay, so she's going to shoot me in the back. At some point. Not ideal, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
She doesn't shoot him in the back.
"I don't suppose you're looking for a job, by any chance?" Thomas asks her over coffee, while his cellphone is busy redirecting funds into his brand new bank account.
"Why?" He was right: she does smile with her whole face, eyes and all. "You hiring?"
"It just so happens that I am."
"I'm flattered, but I don't think you can afford me," she says. "No offense."
Expensive, Thomas thinks. Highly-skilled mercenary. Working solo. He still doesn't have anywhere near enough information. "None taken, and I think I probably can."
She gives him a number.
He doubles it.
I am the complicating element in this otherwise very simple equation, Thomas thinks, two weeks, three days and approximately six hours later.
They're in a hotel room in France, supposedly to meet with a guy who knows a guy who might know another guy. Thomas isn't sure yet if the guy holding a gun on Mai is, in fact, the guy he's supposed to meet (in which case, someone else is going to be dead very shortly as well) or if this is just one of those damn things that happen from time to time.
"Look," he says, spreading his hands in the age old gesture of peaceful intentions, "let's talk about this."
Mai widens her eyes at him a little. You want this guy alive?
He shakes his head once.
Five seconds later, it's over, and he thinks all right, so apparently I wasn't the complicating element. Apparently the equation was still simple.
Thomas doesn't ask who are you, really? where do you come from? what would I find out about you if I went digging? It wouldn't be hard to get answers; he's got a name, now, and a picture.
He knows how she likes her coffee, what color most of her clothes are, where she wears her guns, her knives - and that she doesn't actually need them to be deadly.
He knows, in a distant corner of his mind, that he loves her.
It's not a particularly useful bit of data.
"Any languages in the world you don't speak?" he asks her.
They're in Venice, Italy. There's a lot of water and some enjoyable architecture, but the man they've come looking far has thus far proven rather hard to find.
"I'll let you know if it's ever a problem," she says.
"Hear there's some skilled people in China."
She scowls at him.
"Japan? India? Finland? Norway? No?"
"I'll let you know if it's ever a problem," she repeats. "What did you want to do about dinner tonight?"
"Let's go out," he says. "Who knows, someone might see us and do something hasty and stupid."
Nobody does anything hasty and stupid, but the next week, they meet a guy who knows a guy who happens to have been kidnapped by some guys who are somehow under the impression that kidnapping is a valid recruitment strategy.
It's not ideal, but Thomas figures they can make it work. Might even work in their favor, if everything goes right. People who are rescued do tend to look kindly upon their rescuers, after all.
"You really know how to show a girl a good time," she tells him. None of the blood on her face and shirt is hers.
"I thought you might enjoy the work-out," he says, pulling off his headset. He doesn't think she needed him at any point, really, but he likes to have some small sense of - well, call it 'control'. Or 'usefulness'.
"Twenty-three guys, spread all through the building in groups of three at most is not a work-out." She's a little sweaty, but her breathing is already almost back to normal. "More, like, a warming-up."
"You don't have to convince me you're a badass; I already know."
She grins at him. "You really think it's all about you, don't you?"
"It's just you and me here, and I'm pretty sure you're not trying to convince yourself."
She turns her head. The building is still on fire. "Maybe I am."
"Look," he says, "Mai ... "
"What?" The light of the flames illuminates her face. There are strands of hair he might brush away. They'd be soft, he thinks and her skin would be warm under his hands.
"You're badass. Trust me."
"How would you know? You still haven't thrown me once, even when I'm going easy on you."
"You have your area of expertise and I have mine. It's what makes us such a great team."
"If we're a team," she says, "what did I go and have to get this guy for?"
"Think of him as, oh, I don't know. A minion? Is that the right word?"
"Only if you're looking to set yourself up as a villain." She sounds amused.
"He's getting a tenth of what I'm paying you," he says. "At most."
"Expendable, then," she says. "He's going to be useful for a limited time only."
"Yeah, okay. He's expendable. You're not."
"I need a shower," she says. "Would you like to come along and scrub my back?"
Very much, he thinks. "Sorry, but I think that for now, someone should keep an eye on our new recruit. Wouldn't want him to go around touching buttons he shouldn't. Another time?"
She nods at him once before she leaves the room.