"I was kind of hoping it'd be the other way around, actually," Gabe said with a quick little grin, turning back toward the woman behind the desk. 'Janet', read her nametag--one of those plastic clip-ons you could slid a piece of paper in. He held out his hand over the desk with a warm smile.

"Mary." He spoke with an accent, a quiet one, just enough to indicate that he was probably from the Middle-East but not enough for someone to pinpoint unless they'd heard it before. "I just came into the country and I was hoping ... I could lend a hand."

His gaze was steady and open, with the sort of understated sympathy of someone who had witnessed exactly what these women had endured--so much so that their only inclination was to help. It was a little more than that, though. Not just a sympathy, but a velveted sort of wiriness which indicated he'd been there too. The depths of that despair, that need for rescue without any way to see from where it might come. He'd been there and come out of it, and now he just wanted to be the light for other people.

It wasn't even a lie.