Page 63 of With A Little Luck
A girl.
Hopefully she looks just like Quincy, because I’m an ugly motherfucker.
She can only take after her mother… But if she does, I’m never going to be able to sleep again. At least, not once she starts dating.
Fuck me.
It couldn’t have been a boy first? At least then, I wouldn’t have to worry about ending up in prison once any little fuckers come nosing around. I could leave the boyfriend tormenting up to him and not even end up being the bad guy.
It’s what my dads did with me. They didn’t even have to spell it out, and I knew what my job was.
Not to mention, boys are safer than girls in our world.
That won’t matter.
I’ll be around to keep both Quincy and the baby safe. I’m going to need to buy stock in a tracker company. That way, I’ll always know where they are.
Fuck, maybe Trigg’s obsessive ass wouldn’t make for a bad packmate, after all.
“Are you okay?” Quincy asks, laughing. “You’re normally pretty tan, but all the color just drained from your face.”
“I have four younger sisters,” I admit, running my hand over her stomach.
“That must have been a wild ride, growing up with such a full house.”
“It was.” I also remember how much hell they gave my mom. “When is your next doctor’s appointment? I want to go with you.”
“The day after tomorrow.” Her adorable nose scrunches. “Actually, it has to be after midnight, so not today but tomorrow. And you’re more than welcome to come. Will leaving the house be a problem? I know you and Trigg mentioned someone is after you?”
“We won’t let anything happen to you or the baby,” I say, really regretting letting her in on the Costa Maloney threat.
The last thing she needs is additional stress, but lying isn’t going to do shit to build trust between us.
“Right, but you do private security…” That pert nose of hers wrinkles again. “Why would anyone want to harm you for that? Or did I misunderstand why I’m here in the first place?”
Fuck.
The burning in my gut must mean I’ve developed an ulcer at some point between this afternoon and tonight. No idea if it’s physically possible to have it progress that quickly, but my stomach is fucked.
No matter how I try to spin it, I’m going to have to take one of two paths. I can either sugarcoat my job to the point of lying, or I can be up front and leave out the grisly details, which I would never tell someone like Quincy, anyway.
“Have you ever heard of off-the-books military contracts?” I ask.
“I guess. Maybe on one of those conspiracy theory documentaries or something.”
“They’re not conspiracy theories. The CIA isn’t supposed to work on American soil…” I mean, it’s pretty much an open secret at this point that it does, but they have to be sneaky about how and when they act. “The FBI has laws and fail-safes that limit what it can do, but private companies do not.”
“Okay.” The look on her face says she has no idea what I’m getting at.
“That’s a portion of our jobs. Other contracts are for disposing of human garbage that has no right being around the general public. The last is security contracts for high-profile businessmen or even politicians. That includes domestic and international kidnapping retrieval services.” Maybe if I sneak inthat wholedisposing of peoplebetween two that don’t sound awful, she’ll miss it.
“Why would someone need to hire your company to retrieve a kidnapped person here in the States? Wouldn’t the police handle that?”
Shit.
That is a valid question for someone who doesn’t understand how it goes.
“If someone high profile gets kidnapped, and the family wants to keep it off the news, they call us. Sometimes clients want a team outside of law enforcement because they have laws they’re legally required to follow, and we donot.”
