She hummed and clucked for a moment, and then polished off the Diet Coke. That was my mother's subtle way of calling bullshit.
I scowled at my dive watch. It was five minutes before noon on Wednesday during the slow, humid part of summer when everyone colluded to get the fuck out of Washington, D.C. August in the Beltway was a swamp-ass misery, and I knew all about summertime misery. I grew up in the Mississippi Deltawithout air conditioningand spent two years in Afghanistan before receiving my honorable discharge from the Navy. I could handle heat. It was everything else that was giving me trouble.
"When's my next meeting?"
She cracked open another can, and then said, "You're due in Corpus Christi on Tuesday evening for a private dinner meeting with State Representative Rang Brattis at his country club. He'd like full service security for his home, land, and family as he gears up for a U.S. Senate campaign."
These guys. Seriously. They all thought there was a price on their heads. Big prices, too. That their coiffed wives and sweet, virginal daughters were one charity event or photo op away from being abducted and sold to the highest bidders. I'd come to realize it wasn't that they had an irrational fear of assassins or terrorists, but that they had something that required safe keeping. Whether it be information or business dealings or questionable relationships, they knew something dangerous could leak out. That was why they never blinked before agreeing to my terms and fees.
"Fuck it," I murmured. If the world was falling apart this weekend, I wasn't going to be the one putting it back together. Not this time. "Keep my calendar clear until after Texas."
"Jordan Elijah Kaisall," she seethed. "I don't care how old you are, you don't speak to me with that mouth."
"Yes, ma'am," I replied automatically.
Mama Trish wasn't particularly religious, but she was a big fan of phrases likeoh, sugarandcheese and riceandjeepers. She did not swear. There was one time when I was in grade school when she'd closed her fingertip in the car door and yelledFudgy nuts!but that was the closest thing to profanity I'd ever heard from her.
She took another pull from her soda, then huffed out a breath. "Your calendar is blocked."
There was a knock at the door, and I knew it was one of my tactical teams. When I wasn't setting up white-glove protection gigs for politicians and businesspeople, I was taking on government contracts. Mostly covert, mostly situations that never made their way to the newspapers, mostly so deep into those shades of gray that white and black were barely a memory. These guys shone in that type of work. They found needles in haystacks, and then quietly destroyed the needles. Or they took a shit-ton of needles and convinced the world it was a haystack.
Either way, they were talented as hell.
"The crew is here. I'm gonna go out to Montauk. Maybe Will and I can figure out some of this sh—sugar," I said. I didn't want to be here for this. I'd bet anything that Renner had left a data transmission bug of some sort, and I didn't want to regret letting him go without rearranging his face. He played dirty like that, dirtier than anyone else in the business. "Call me if you need me."
"Wait a flaming second," she said. "You're not driving to Montauk now. Not after spending the past eighteen hours on a flight from Saudi Arabia. Your knee—"
"It's fine," I interrupted, yanking on a pair of shorts. It was a bizarre style choice—cargo shorts, dress shirt, tie—but these guys didn't care. They wouldn't bother blinking twice if I was bare-ass naked. I switched off the speakerphone and opened the door for the team. "I'm fine. My leg is great. Do you have any plans this weekend? Are you seeing that dude Marco again?"
There was a thorough background check waiting at the top of my inbox about her newest beau. I wanted my mother to be happy and she definitely deserved to enjoy herself after raising my punk ass on her own and helping me start this business almost fifteen years ago, but I fuckinghatedthese online dating sites. Holy hell. There was one week last year when she had four dates with four different men. Seven days, four dates. I didn't know anyone—man or woman—with that kind of game. I had to assign one of my analysts to full-time monitoring of her suitors.
She sighed. "You push yourself too hard, Jordan," she said softly. "I'd like you to slow down, and take a deep breath. Take a day off. Maybe even two days. You're allowed to do that, you know."
"I know, Mom," I said, leaning against the kitchen island. "Now, about this Marco—"
"Would you stop it? I'm not talking about dating with my son. I already know that you pulled a profile for him, so you have all the information you need right there." She paused, sipping her soda. "Did you think the data boys weren't going to tell me that you had him investigated?"
There was no possible way for this week to get worse. Especially not now that I had to remind some of the assholes working for me whatcovertmeant.
"Try to have some fun this weekend, Jordan. Do you remember what that is? Fun? Where you do entertaining things and not look at your phone all the time?"
"Vaguely," I said. My rendition of fun involved trading insults with Will, or swimming five miles at the gym each morning, or eating bacon at every meal.
At the same moment, one of my techs held up a dime-sized electrode, the kind used to transmit extensive amounts of data, and said, "Got a live one, but it's got sisters."
Fuck this week.
