Page 8 of Just My Ex

“Personal issues?” my boss, Carla, raises her eyebrows. “You don’thavepersonal issues.”

I clear my throat, wondering how much to tell her. The less I say, the better. How much are you supposed to divulge when you’re asking for emergency personal time off?

I’ve never done this before.

“It’s a family problem.” I’m not about to explain the phone call I received in the middle of the night.

“Henry, you didn’t even take time off to get a proper divorce. This must be really serious.” She shakes her head, leaning back in her rolling chair. Her office is sterile since we need to be ready to strip it down and remove any trace her company even exists at any moment, if necessary. “The Ostlins aren’t going to like this.”

I wince at her mention of “divorce.” I hate that word.

Carla was a lieutenant in the Army, my platoon’s commanding officer. She’s about as warm and compassionate as a stick of rebar, but that’s what makes her company work so well. And she’s right. I’ve been at the Ostlin family’s beck and call for so long, I wonder how they’ll get along without me.

She studies me, frowning. “I can give you a month,” Carla says. “Don’t leave the country. I’ll inform the Ostlins you’re out for a while. Don’t make contact with them or anyone in their circles. No one needs to know you’re not in place like you’ve always been, right? And don’t get used to the cushy life, okay? Because I need you back and ready to go come May.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say. It’s a reflex. There’s not much I wouldn’t do for Carla—fifteen years my senior, a widow whose husband died in combat the year before I met her. When she retired and started the security company, I was one of her first recruits.

The Ostlin family’s need for security is the main bread and butter of Carla’s worldwide personal security company. The Ostlins are Swiss and French, government servants, a vastly interconnected, rich family. Evangeline—the head of the family in seniority and power—recently retired from service as a Swiss ambassador to France. They’ve been involved in some of the biggest human rights movements in the past half century. It’s an honor to serve them.

“Got it,” I nod, and then look her in the eye. “Thank you.”

I book the flight from D.C. to Denver as soon as I step out of Carla’s office, the price tag barely registering in my mind.

This is different from my job, when I fly first-class or in private jets, because this trip is on my own dime.

The thing is, there’s nothing about this trip that’s cushy, as Carla called it.

I never did have it in me to go into a long diatribe about what I do for a living, which means my family and friends make up all kinds of stories in their heads about why I’m gone for long stretches of time and why I prefer talking with my aunt Stella about her fifteen-step croissant recipe in great detail over discussing my job.

Carla deals in protecting people who need security in the most discreet of ways. Which means I’ve spent the last four years flying around the world, posing as a friend or nephew or accountant of a slew of members of the Ostlin family.

It was nothing like the four years I spent in the Army, a time period that has my thoughts twisted up in impossible circles. This security stuff? You go it alone a lot of the time, and I miss the camaraderie of my Army unit. I also miss the relative predictability of it, the regimented life.

But this kind of career is in my blood. At least it was until I realized exactly what my life was like without Quinn in it. And six months ago, when I learned she and Navie could be in danger? I woke up. I became more involved in Navie’s life, changing my schedule with the Ostlins as much as I possibly could.

A restless feeling filters through me. I protect people. I surveil. I head off problems before they start so that the Ostlins can do what they need to do when they need to do it.

And now, the people I love the most in this world are the ones needing my skills.

Yeah, Quinn and I are no longer married. That doesn’t mean my feelings for her disappeared into thin air.

I leave the office, the non-descript, back half of a brownstone in Washington D.C., and walk to my car in the parking garage two blocks down, where I check for any signs of forced entry, explosives under the frame, and anything stuffed inside the tailpipe.

What? I can’t unsee what I’ve seen in my work-life the last eight years, so I check. You would too if you knew the stuff I know.

I drive straight to the airport, trying not to think about what will actually happen when I show up at my brothers’ Longdale, Colorado resort. Because Quinn’s not going to be happy to see me. She may try to send me away because we’re not on the best of terms.

And no, I’m not asking for her permission.

She’s not going to like this.

But there’s more at stake than Quinn’s comfort. It’s her life I’m concerned with—hers and Navie’s.

Chapter 4

Quinn

Navie runs ahead of me, the purple sweater I’d just put on her in the rideshare falling off her shoulders as she navigates the steps in front of the Tate International Longdale, Colorado resort.

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