Page 29 of Stay Close
“I’m trying to figure out how to tell Edie—my client—that she needs to wear a tactical vest without freaking her out.”
He gives a low laugh. “If you manage to do it, let me know how. Our princesses think they’re made of Kevlar. Prince Noah used them in the military, so he’ll do it if the threat is high enough.”
“How high is that?”
Nils breathes a laugh. “Active shooter within a block perimeter. The queen is almost as bad.”
I grin. “It’s good they trust us, but I don’t have superhuman powers. We can only move so fast.”
That’s the part that keeps me up at night. It’s a new worry. Before Edie, I was almost sure IwasSuperman. After…
“My reflexes will never be fast enough.”
Nils nods. “Do you have a motive?”
“He doesn’t fit the profile of everyone else screaming at each other. He doesn’t seem to care about fish or Mother Earth.”
“Anarchist?” Nils asks.
“Nationalist. We think we’ve linked his accounts with another that bangs on about the royal elopement. Seems he prefers pale skin and Scandi names.”
He nods and carefully controls his lift.
“Are you married?” I ask the older man. At the sound of the words leaving my mouth, I tip my head up and curse under my breath. What’s happened to you, Castillo?
Nils nods. “Coming up on thirty years.”
“Did it make you lose your edge?”
His eyes flick to my hand, where a ring isn’t.
“Just curious.”
He grunts. “I started in the special forces, and my wife was understanding. That lasted a few years. Then the last time I was infiltrating a foreign jungle, I kept thinking about how mad Paula would be if I wasn’t there to get the oil changed on the car for the rest of her life.”
Not so long ago, I wouldn’t have understood this story. “You still do security. Our nationalist might shift focus, and you’ll be the one left dealing with him. What does your wife say about that?”
“You want a pretty ending with a bow, go read a fairy tale.” Nils clenches his teeth as he struggles to complete a lift. “We made a trade. My wife fell in love with a man who likes to get shot at. But I love her too, so I do my security work closer to home so I can go to football games on the weekend and come home for dinner.”
I point at the clock with a smirk.
“Except when I’m on rotation,” he qualifies.
Nils heads off to the showers, and I do a circuit that ends in sparring with a punching bag.
How much did kissing Edie rattle me? Enough to start asking seasoned security professionals their secrets to maintaining a healthy work/life balance.
The idea of needing to think about these questions so soon is ridiculous, but I can’t laugh. Instead, I land punch after punch on the dense bag and try to get my head straight.
This is not the time to lose focus. No matter how much I want to be with her, I can’t broach the subject at an Italian restaurant over a leisurely bottle of wine and a lobster risotto.
Instead, I broach the subject of a bullet-proof vest on our next drive into Handsel.
“I’ll look like a bear,” she says, a grimace wrinkling her nose. “I can’t.”
“Do you trust me?”
She writhes on the seat. “That is not fair.”
