“Thorough,” I said, stepping close to Glenn to look over his shoulder.
“Rat bait is no joke,” Robby said, but I ignored him.
“How did she come up with all this in twenty-four hours?” I said. “That photo of me just surfaced.”
“Maybe she had a contingency plan at the ready,” Glenn said, “for any girlfriend that might come along.”
“We’re fine as long as we stay on the ranch,” I said, surprised at how badly I wanted that to be true.
But Glenn was shaking his head. “You’re compromised now. You’re a risk to the client and to yourself.”
“We can minimize those risks if we—”
Glenn cut me off. “If we take you off the gig.”
Robby looked infuriatingly triumphant.
“Look,” I said to Glenn. “I can handle it.”
“But there’s no reason to,” Glenn said. “We have plenty of available agents who can take over.”
“I’ll take over!” Kelly volunteered from her back corner.
“But…” I wasn’t sure what to say. “What will we say to Jack’s parents?”
“Simple,” Glenn said. “It’s time to come clean.”
“About me?” I asked.
“About all of it.”
“You mean”—I said, feeling sparks of panic in my chest but trying so hard to sound like I was just clarifying for my mental file—“I’m going to have to tell them it was all a lie and then just … leave forever?”
“Pretty much,” Robby said with glee.
“Shut up, Robby,” Kelly and I said, in unison.
“I was okay with the deception when the threat level was yellow,” Glenn said. “But now it’s orange for the client, and it’s red for you. If you stay, you’re luring danger—toward yourself and toward them. They need to know what’s going on. Everyone’s safer if you come clean and go.”
I thought about that.
“You don’t want to put the Stapleton family at risk, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then it’s settled. You leave tonight.”
Wait! What? “Tonight?”
Glenn looked at me, like This isn’t hard. “Tell them today, then leave tonight. I’ll send Amadi with the car after dinner. And we’ll put an agent at your apartment to keep an eye on you for the next few days.” Glenn turned to check his roster.
I crossed my fingers for Amadi. Or Doghouse. Or Kelly.
“Taylor’s free,” Glenn said.
“Seriously?” I said. “She’s my nemesis!”
“Get over it,” Glenn said.
Then, with dread, I realized that if he was putting Taylor on my detail, that left Robby free for it. I said, “Who’s taking my place?”
Glenn knew what I was asking. But he played it like he didn’t. “Once everything’s out in the open, we’ll move a team in at the ranch and also place a team at the house in town. And I’ll put Robby on the principal.”
I saw it coming. “Come on!”
“Hey,” Glenn said. “It’s exactly like the op Robby ran in Jakarta. You want the best for your boyfriend, don’t you?”
“Don’t call Jack my boyfriend,” I said.
“Yeah,” Glenn said. “I guess that’s all over now.”
Robby nodded with a smirk that made me want to punch him in the face.
“But here’s the great news,” Glenn said. “You’re still in the running for London. And now you are free to go to Korea.” Then he tapped his watch, like Eyes on the prize—thinking I was getting exactly what I wanted. “Two short weeks.”
Twenty-Three
I COULDN’T EVEN muster the energy to pretend to jog back to the house. I just walked, all slouchy—protesting every disappointment in my life with bad posture.
Jack met me on the gravel road in his newly switched-out Range Rover.
“Saw the news,” he said. “Let’s go to the river.”
“Okay,” I said with a limp shrug, and climbed up to the passenger seat.
We didn’t talk on the drive down. I just watched the scenery with that slowed-down awareness that comes when you’ll never see something again. The barbed-wire fences. The rutted gravel lane. The grass fluttering in the fields. The tall pecan trees brushing the sky. The buzzards circling lazily overhead.
It was like no place I’d ever been—or would be again.