Page 10 of Exit Strategy

And if he could raise a hand against her?

If the woman had come to the door, anytime during that smoke, things might have gone the way she wanted. After I tossed the first butt, I considered lighting another one, but there was no need. I didn’t know what she was doing to get ready, but my patience was just gone. I left the front of the apartment, walked down the stairs, and to my car. I had thought too much, and now I needed to act.

I stopped and looked back. Maybe there would have been a flicker of movement, a sign of the woman. Maybe she was just fucking sitting on her couch, waiting for me to piss off, or she might have been furiously dry shaving her lady garden, or twisting into some ridiculous lingerie. The best thing she could have done for me was drop the pretense, drop her knickers, and show me her bottom.

But everything had to be involved and difficult.

I pulled the door of the car shut and pressed the start button. I hated that. Just give me a bloodykey.

I sighed.

Bad luck seemed to follow me through every job I had ever had, and it seemed that nothing had changed. I had been hired to be the head bodyguard to a leading Hollywood celebrity, and now, I knew, if what I suspected was true? I had just become his number one threat.

If I didn’t end up in jail after this job, I needed something that literally could not be fucked up.

I put the car in gear and headed toward the Rex mansion, up in the hills.

4

Calanthe…

I was sitting at the table, working on a jigsaw puzzle, one of the few things I was allowed to do, but pretty much only nature scenes – which was honestly fine for me. I liked them well enough, sometimes daydreaming about the sounds that would come with actually being there. The rushing water, the rasp of the leaves in the trees as the wind swept through them… you know, just transporting myself into the scene and away from here if I could.

It was a long way from where I thought I would be, though. I had been First Among First Daughters, a Youth Leader in the Youth Corps, I had dreams. I hadn’t dreamed of being a doctor or a lawyer, or a judge. There were plenty of First Daughters who were better suited to that. What I had dreamed of had been to become a politician, a leader. My goals hadn’t been so lofty as Madam President, but becoming a congresswoman? A senator? Totally attainable. I could have used my connections with the New Eden Centre, with August Emerson, with the celebrities we knew – junior senator, then senior senator.A career…

What cabinets and committees could I have been attached to?

Ways and means?

Oversight?

The possibilities had seemed endless.

The number of puzzle pieces was not endless, and I put the last piece in place. The rolling hills and flowers were complete, and it was another puzzle finished. There was at least a sense of peace and purpose when I did these puzzles. I sighed.

Of course, that sense of peace wasn’t to be. Not for long anyway, especially when Arik was home. Usually, it was just him talking on his cellphone, loudly through his Bluetooth, or laughing obnoxiously atTMI Newz, the gossip show after the nightly news that he was watching in the other room. I, of course, wasn’tallowedto watch, even though the volume would be turned up loud enough that it was impossible to miss a thing.

Everything had to be loud, over the top, in your face when it came to the Arik Rex.

He had a thing for watching the celebrity gossip programs. I hated it when he did that. He took such delight in the misfortunes of his A-list celebrity compatriots and was so quick to fly into an incandescentragewhenever he himself was caught at something or featured in a way he didn’t like.

The only thing that seemed to make him angrier was when the paparazzi and the gossip mags focused onme, his much younger and beautiful wife. He loathed it when the attention was off him and placed on me as I was supposed to merely be anextensionof him and not my own person.

Misogyny thy name is Arik,I thought to myself.

“Trouble in Paradise?”I heard the annoying and smarmy Miss bitchy blonde, Heather Dee bleating loudly from the living room.

“Looks like it,” her lumbersexual male counterpart, Rob Dee, agreed.

“Last week, we showed you footage and photographs of Calanthe Rex, Arik Rex’s young wife, going into a fertility clinic popular with the celebrity jet set due to their strict confidentiality and secrecy.”

“That’s right, Heather. Except now, we’ve got an exclusive and confidential source that says Mrs. Rex isn’t going to the clinic forfertilitytreatments as has been widely reported.”

“Oh, no! Robby, I thought according to Rex and his people, Calanthe was trying really hard to conceive,”Heather declared.

“Apparently not,”Rob said. “According to our source, Mrs. Rex has been trying just the opposite and has been receiving injections for birth control!”

“I wonder if Mr. Rex knows that,”Heather said, laughing. The television went silent, and then I heard him stand. A few moments later, his rage exploded from the living room. He screamed, all venom and bile. How dare they spread those stories, not without speaking with him first. The audacity of going live before even thinking of talking to him. Something was thrown across the room and shattered. I jumped and scattered the puzzle pieces I was trying to put back in the box. There was more screaming – how he would cut them off, make the calls he had to, to make sure they lost their jobs.

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