The Phoenix

Back before he was Gabriel – when he was still a child, with his old name, his old life – his father, a carpet salesmen from Rockford, Illinois, had been a ‘gray man’. Gabriel’s dad lived a gray life in a gray house full of gray dreams, and he’d died of that grayest of diseases, lung cancer, at the pathetically young age of forty-seven. Those were not footsteps in which Gabriel intended to follow, on any level.

His dad’s morals had been gray too. A serial, yet oddly joyless philanderer, he had broken his wife’s heart and spirit until she too became gray, a shadowy ghost of her former self. People told Gabriel that his mother’s depression had been a lifelong illness, that it began long before she’d even met his father. But the little boy didn’t buy that. Not at his mother’s funeral, when he was eight years old. And not now. His father had broken his mother. That was the truth.

Gabriel had vowed never to break a woman. Having inherited his father’s high libido, abstinence was never a realistic option. Instead, a far neater and simpler solution presented itself: never marry. Never commit. A loner by nature, the solitude had suited him well. For the last decade he’d been ‘married’ to The Group, as passionately devoted to the cause as the most ardent lover to his bride, and as addicted to the adrenaline as any junkie. He’d changed his name, partly in dedication to his new life, but also to leave behind a childhood he wanted desperately to forget, to sever like a rotten limb.

His new life wasn’t perfect. It was true he didn’t like Mark Redmayne, but then who did? He hadn’t joined The Group to make friends, or to gain anyone’s approval. As for romance, while it was true that scores of beautiful women had come and gone from his life, none of them had had their hearts broken. Gabriel wasn’t in the ‘hearts’ business, and he never made promises he couldn’t keep. All in all, it was a highly satisfactory way of living.

Leaving his car in the usual place, he pulled out his day-pack and began the final, two-mile trek up to Camp Hope on foot. He remembered it well from his own training, and always felt a frisson of excitement, returning to the place where it all began. But today was different. Today the ‘frisson’ had become a raging fire in his chest. His eagerness to see the girl was bordering on the worrisome.

You’re here to do a job, he reminded himself. A vital job. He forced himself to think about the drowned child on the beach, about the evil insignia burned onto his tiny foot.

Focus.

‘Looks like you’ve got a visitor.’ Christine nudged Ella in the ribs and pointed breathlessly to the handsome man walking up the path towards their cabin.

‘He’s waving at you!’ Christine squealed excitedly. ‘Oh my God, is that the guy who recruited you? You never told me he looked like Ryan Gosling!’

‘He doesn’t,’ said Ella tetchily, pulling out her earphones and scowling in the man’s general direction. More casually dressed than the last two times she’d met him, in Nike running pants, sneakers and a black sleeveless T-shirt, and with a light film of sweat glistening on his muscular shoulders, she had to admit he was looking disarmingly handsome this afternoon. She, on the other hand, looked ‘clean’, having come straight from the shower after training, but with her scratched, make-up-free face, wet hair and skinny legs covered in bruises, she was hardly at her most alluring.

‘You took your time,’ she hissed at him, once he came within earshot.

‘You’re lucky I came at all,’ he drawled. ‘Believe it or not, Ella, I have other things to do besides hand-holding you. But when the camp supervisor said you’d begged to see me—’

‘Hand-holding?’ Ella spluttered, so angry it was hard to speak. ‘Begged?’

Ignoring her, Gabriel turned to Christine, his eyes roaming admiringly and unashamedly over her ample assets, displayed to considerable advantage in the tiny denim hot pants and pink bikini top she was wearing. ‘I don’t believe we’ve met.’

‘I don’t believe we have,’ Christine panted, staring with an equal lack of shame at his ripped torso. ‘I definitely would’ve remembered you.’

‘Likewise.’

‘I’ll give you two some privacy, shall I?’ Ella said archly, gathering her things furiously and stuffing them into the bag at her feet. ‘Begged’ to see him indeed! If she’d begged for anything, it was the information he’d promised her and then deliberately withheld. If it weren’t for Dix and the progress she was making controlling the voices in her head, she would have walked out of here a week ago, with or without Gabriel’s help.

‘Don’t be silly,’ he said patronizingly, his eyes still locked with Christine’s. ‘I’ve come here to talk to you. We’re going for a drive.’

‘Oh no we’re not,’ said Ella, folding her arms across her chest defiantly. ‘Anything you have to say to me you can say right here.’

Ella gazed sullenly out of the Maserati’s passenger-side window as the last of the trees sped past, giving way to open fields and even the occasional ranch.

‘Are you always this moody?’ Gabriel asked, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. ‘Or is it me?’

‘It’s you,’ said Ella.

Silence resumed.

‘They told me your name was Gabriel,’ Ella said eventually, pronouncing the word as if it offended her. ‘You don’t look like a Gabriel to me.’

‘Don’t I?’ No one had ever commented on his adopted name before. It was a bit disconcerting.

‘No,’ said Ella. ‘The angel Gabriel? That’s definitely not you.’

He grinned. ‘Not all of us Gabriels are angels. How are you enjoying your training?’ he asked, changing the subject before she decided to quiz him any more on his name. That was a conversation that could lead them back to his past, and he definitely didn’t want to go there. Especially not with Ella.

‘It’s appalling,’ Ella said bitterly. ‘It’s utterly inhumane.’

‘You realize that the mission you’re being trained for launches very soon?’

‘You realize I’m not going on any mission?’