Page 3 of The ARC Unit: Breach

The man waiting beyond baggage claim confirmed my name as Mia Mercer and led me outside without offering his. After the second one-word answer, I stopped attempting conversation and slept through part of the drive instead.

When I woke, Stuttgart had given way to a dense forest. My phone had lost service and a security fence appeared beside the road a few minutes later.

The compound beyond it looked exactly like something several governments would choose if nobody involved was allowed to care whether the people living there were comfortable. Concrete buildings sat behind the perimeter with little effort made to disguise what the property had probably been before ARC took it over.

The largest looked like an old military operations barracks, with a garage attached to one side and several dark vehicles parked nearby. Farther back, part of the grounds had been converted into a training area.

The driver stopped outside the main building, unloaded my suitcase onto the pavement and returned to the SUV before I had even finished adjusting the strap of my carry-on.

“That’s it?”

He nodded through the open window. “That’s it.”

Then he drove away.

I watched the SUV disappear toward the gate and wondered whether leaving a woman and a suitcase in the middle of a secure military compound technically counted as good customer service.

The doors behind me opened before I could decide.

I recognized Raven immediately. The thick, dark curls did most of the work, but the pistol holstered to his side confirmed it.

He came down the steps in navy cargo pants and a navy sweatshirt, looking younger than he had in the personnel photograph and considerably less like someone who’d spent his adult life working around intelligence agencies.

“Mia Mercer?”

“Raven.”

He smiled when he reached me. “You already know who I am.”

The British accent was more prominent than I expected and a quick reminder that this unit was international.

“I had nine hours and a folder.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

Before I could answer, he took the handle of my suitcase.

“I can carry that,” I said.

Raven looked at me as though this information had never been in dispute.

“I know.”

“Then why are you carrying it?”

“That’s how my mother raised me,” he responded.

I followed him toward the steps. “Your mother raised you to take women’s luggage without asking?”

“She raised me to help. Jeez, you’re making it sound much worse than it is.”

“I’ve known you for thirty seconds.”

“Plenty of time to misrepresent my upbringing, apparently.”

I laughed for the first time since landing, and Raven answered with a sweet smile. He carried the suitcase through the doors and left it beside the bottom of a metal staircase.

The inside of the building made the exterior look luxurious. The operations floor occupied most of the ground level, with a high ceiling crossed by old steel supports and fluorescent fixtures that gave the concrete walls a washed-out gray cast. Someone had installed brighter industrial lights above the main work area, though they didn’t do much to make it feel less like a military building that had been repurposed rather than renovated.