Page 2 of Stay Close
The car is parked the wrong way around, and I see the wisdom of this when the man wrenches the door of the black Fiio open and throws me inside. I scramble in, he slams the door, and time slows down as I watch his breathtaking sprint beyond the windshield. My goodness. This is not Greg From Accounting.
In one fluid motion he enters, presses the ignition, and roars away from the parking spot. “Buckle up,” he says, though he hasn’t stopped to do so. The Fiio springs forward and I glance back. The shouting, multi-colored figures stumbling into the parking garage get smaller with every passing second.
I’ve seen action movies. I have a favorite Hemsworth brother. I know better than to start with the questions or begin crying about my luggage while he’s flicking frequent glances at the rear-view mirror and taking random turns at each roundabout. But when we're coming up on the outskirts of the city and he slows the car to a reasonable pace, I say, “Your name?”
“You’re Edith Spencer,” he says, delving into his suit coat and proffering a business card. “And I’m your close protection officer, Lucas Castillo.”
I turn the card over in my hands. Quality paper. No typos. Embossed with a black swan. Looks legit. My odds of being murdered in the forest drop considerably.
“Edie,” I correct. “Edith came on the Mayflower.” I bend over my purse, inspecting the contents. My passport survived the trip, but my manicure didn’t. I hold a hand out, muttering under my breath. Two nails were peeled off right at the quick. One is dangling. I chew it free. “What was that about back there? Did we wander into an ecological protest?”
He glances over, and I catch my breath. Sara’s been sending me GIFs of every cinematic bodyguard since the invention of the talkies and pestering me to message a picture of mine. I keptsending her images of middle-aged men in Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirts. I even made a bet that he’d look like a mall cop.
My stomach tightens. I’ve never been so happy to lose a bet. It doesn’t even matter that when I get back to Virginia, I’ll be cleaning the bathroom for a month. Lucas Castillo has green eyes, tanned skin, and hair right out of a ThumTac board titled “Unnecessary Hotness.”
“We didn’t wander into a protest.” He glances at the mirror again and switches lanes. “They were there for you.”
“Me? A junior partner working eighty hours a week, arbitrating a minor international dispute? A girl who dressed as the U.N. seal for Halloween? I’m not the kind of person people throw pies at.”
He doesn’t turn his head, but he grins and my heart lurches.
“Your firm hires protection officers for fun?”
“Not for fun, but I’m not Mr. Knickerbocker, Mr. Gouss,orMs. Astor.”
“Looks like you’re in the big leagues now.” He releases a sigh. “I’m sorry about what happened back there. I didn’t expect trouble at the airport. My agency kept the travel information confidential. Did anyone on your end leak information about your arrival?”
Leak information? I think back to the Pixy photograph and want to sink through the seat. “I made a post on social media.”
“Do you have privacy settings?”
I shake my head. “I’m not anyone special.”
Another grin, somehow calm and reassuring. “You are now, ma’am.”
“Edie,” I say. Suddenly I don’t like it so much when people call me ma’am.
“All right, Edie, we’re going to pull into this park so we can do an assessment. You see anything unusual or upsetting, you yell.”
He could be a doctor with this tone. “You might feel some pressure,” he’d say, walking you through having your bones reset with the confidence that he knows what he’s doing, has seen thousands of these cases before, and you’re going to be just fine if you follow his instructions.
Putting the car into park, he reaches for the door and I grab him by the arm, suddenly skittish. “Where are you going?”
“I have to change.”
“You have to change? You don’t have to change,” I say, my voice high and anxious. “I’m the one with scuffed Stuart Weitzman shoes, a missing coat, three ragged fingernails, appalling pants, and no luggage. You look great.”
Wordlessly, he leans forward, presenting a view of his back.
Lemon pie with generous amounts of whipped cream smears the sharp black suit. “I thought they missed—or you taekwondo-ed it away somehow.”
His lips twitch. “No.”
“Did you know it was pie?” I ask. He shakes hishead.
I reach into my purse for a folded handkerchief and begin scrubbing the seat. The task makes it possible to process the facts.
My assailant moved too quickly, forcing Lucas Castillo to take the blow meant for me. With each breath, it’s sinking in. I have a bodyguard, and he’s willing to risk his health, life, and dignity to prevent anything from harming mine.
