Page 48 of My Super Sexy Spy
It came roaring up in my stomach. All I wanted to do was go home. When I got back to my condo, I wondered if I would ever leave. If I would really sink all the way into the agoraphobia that had always threatened at the edges.
At least I would have the internet, delivery, Leigh. There were worse ways to live. I already knew that.
“Who do you think you were…” Breath. Breath. “…stealing from all those months?”
Whipping around to face him, I winced. “What do you know about what I did on the streets?”
“I had you watched,” he wheezed. “Every night my investigator would find you. You didn’t panhandle…he told me that. You were too proud for hand-outs.”
I blinked. What was he talking about? “You had me watched?”
He nodded, and, watching him, I could see the effort he was exerting to keep talking.
He sighed and took a few hits of oxygen. “He told me he tried to give you money and you told him to piss off.”
It didn’t surprise me. People had offered me money. I took it from the women. I never took it from the men. If there had been some guy who had tried to offer me money, I would have assumed strings came attached.
“No,” I said, feeling my throat get tight. “I wouldn’t have taken any money from a man.
He tried for something that might have been a smile or a smirk. “I told him he had to get creative. Do you remember all those cars you stumbled upon that were unlocked and always had loose cash lying around? You think that was a coincidence?”
It was inconceivable. Impossible. I shook my head as if launching a denial. Yes, there had been unlocked cars. One with a wallet that had been stuffed with cash. I’d lived off that find for weeks. It’s how I was able to rent a motel room for the first time in months. I’d been able to sleep in a bed.
“They were different cars…” I said, my voice trailing off as I tried to think back. Big cars, small ones. Fancy ones with impressive names that probably didn’t belong in the sections of Philly where I’d been squatting.
I heard his attempts to suck in air and this time it hurt something in my chest. Like I was struggling to breathe, too.
“Always different cars. Disguises. Different investigators so you wouldn’t get suspicious. It wasn’t too difficult. They told me you never wandered much beyond a four-block area. It had always been easy to find you.”
Just like that, my entire teenage narrative changed. In an instant I’d gone from having no father, to having a father who’d sent child support and who’d basically funded me through my homelessness.
I’d gone from being a thief to someone who had just been taking the payments left out for me.
From a homeless and desperate girl to someone who had just been biding her time.
“Why didn’t you…” I cut myself off, not knowing what I wanted to say. “You could have just told me…”
“The father you never knew. A man you had never met. That I was sending proxies from Germany to help you? I was afraid anything more direct and you would run again. And I would never find you.”
I don’t know what I would have done back then if some investigator had approached me about my father. How could I? Suddenly, it was too much.
“I need air. I need to breathe. I can’t think. I can’t stay.”
“Come here, child.”
I winced at the near endearment, but still, I moved closer to him. From under the blanket that was tucked around his waist, he pulled out a purse. Black, unassuming, something I used to carry on my dates with Jared when I didn’t want to bring more than a credit card, a tampon and my condo key.
“Go see Paris,” he wheezed. “There’s euros, an Amex. Walk around and take in the sights. Think. Then come back and we’ll discuss the future.”
“There is no future for us,” I said immediately. I still took the purse.
He shook his head. “No, there is no future for me. But there is most certainly a future for you. Go. You’re safe. No one knows you’re in this city and Marta will follow you for your protection.”
“She drugged me, and she was in Venice along with a Russian spy, how do I know I can trust her?”
“I sent her to Venice to bring you back. That was all me. She’s a competent guard. She’ll follow you. At a distance,” he added when I glanced at Marta skeptically.
“I don’t know if I’ll come back to you,” I told him truthfully.
