Page 138 of The Bodyguard

“That’s the thing, though. I might not be.”

I didn’t mean to, but I held my breath.

“My mom had this idea that I should maybe stay for a while. Do some fishing. Hang out. Do a little personal healing.”

“That’s a great plan,” I said.

“You still don’t like my stalker plan, though, huh?”

“I don’t even know the details. But I can tell you already that it’ll never work.”

Jack smiled. “But guess what?”

“What?”

“It already did.”

I leaned closer to the phone. “You did it already?”

“We did it already.”

How did I not know about this? “And it worked?”

“It worked. I’m a genius. I’m also very lucky.”

“Nobody tells me anything.”

“I put some posts on social media as a lure saying I couldn’t wait to spend a lazy weekend at my house in Houston.”

“That was enough to lure her to your house?”

“The Kennedy Monroe video didn’t hurt, either.”

“I need to talk to you about that.”

But Jack was celebrating his triumph. “And then, when the Corgi Lady showed up, we arrested her for trespassing.”

“That’s not going to stick.”

“No. We were going try to scare her with lawyers and threats and doomsday scenarios, but then something better happened.”

“What?”

“She used her one phone call when they booked her to call her sister—who wasted no time hopping on a plane to Texas, packing up her conversion van, and moving her, corgis and all, home to Florida.”

The sister had apologized profusely to Jack and promised to keep her on her meds. “She’s always been mostly harmless,” she’d said. “She was fine until the divorce last year. We should have made her come home sooner. We’re on it now.”

“That was easy,” I said to Jack. Then I frowned. “Was it too easy?”

“There’s no such thing as too easy.”

“But I mean, how reliable is this sister?”

“I don’t know, but a stalker with her sister in Florida has got to be better than a stalker all alone right here in town.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Anyway,” Jack said. “That’s why I’m calling.”

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