Page 112 of Morally Gray Daddies

“And so am I,” he said firmly. “However, I’ll take your request under consideration and do my best to refrain from employing you for an operation of this nature.”

I pressed the ignition button, waiting for what I knew was coming. It was Colbie, after all.

“Well, at least anytime soon.”

Chapter Ten

Aubrey

He knew.

I could tell by the way he kept glancing at me then looking away. I’m sure he expected me to start again at some point, especially once we were back in the SUV and on the road. But I wasn’t going to. I’d cried in the bathroom at the rest stop, but I got it out of my system there, and I’d no intention of starting again anytime soon.

Still, he kept surreptitiously studying me until finally…

“Yes, I was crying back there,” I said, “but I’m fine now, okay?”

He looked away, and I could tell from his frown he didn’t believe me.

“I wasn’t going to press.”

Except you did. “Can you blame me?”

“No. You’ve been through a lot. It’s perfectly understandable.”

“Thank you.”

“If you feel the need to?—”

“I’m fine.” And then I added, “Sir.”

“Very well.”

But it wasn’t ‘very well’, and he knew it as much as I did.

Little towns dotted the highway at regular intervals, beads spaced out evenly every twenty-five miles on the gray string of asphalt that linked them. We didn’t pause in any of them as we passed through, even when the sun slipped behind the mountains towering to the west and left the SUV hidden in shadow. Somewhere between the town behind us and the town ahead his phone buzzed, and he took it up in one hand, glancing at the screen.

“Well, that’s settled,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Where we’re staying tonight.”

I swallowed to push down against the anxiety that rose inside me.

“My handler has arranged a safe house for us.”

I replayed his words in my head. “You just said… handler,” I mused, glancing over at him. “And ‘safe house’. Both of which make it weirdly sound like this was some sort of government- arranged… thing.”

“It wasn’t,” he replied firmly. “At least in the purest sense of the word. But you’d be surprised…”

What the fuck? “Are you… Do you work for the government?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m an independent contractor, but I do work for certain government entities on occasion.”

Now I shook my head. “Every time I think I understand some part of this, I realize I don’t.”

“All that you need to understand is this: you are going to be taken care of. Provided for in ways you can’t possibly imagine right now.”

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