I play with his hair. “There might be times I don’t know how to be ‘Sir’ to you, and you’ll have to settle for plain old Jordan.”
Eyes still closed, he nods. “I know, Sir. As long as I haveyouthere, though. Youunderstandme. Even just being able to let my guard down around you and know you’ll never bullshit me will be a huge help.”
Dang, he hasn’t had a dedicated body man who knows therealhim in…ever. His aides or chief of staff—and sometimes Leo—rotate through those duties, depending on the event and whatever else might be going on.
“Why isn’t staff here right now?”
“I planned it that way. I said I had personal business to attend to and wanted privacy. I might have hinted it had something to do with Duck.”
“Ah. Well, that technically wasn’t a lie, I guess. This was personal business.”
Even with his eyes closed he still smiles a little. “No, Sir. It wasn’t.”
“Where are your phones?”
He points to a laptop bag over in the corner near his messenger bag. “They’re off right now.” His gaze meets mine. “You should turn your personal cell off.”
“It is.”
“When do you want to tell Leo about this, Sir?”
“Not until he gets back from his trip.” I rub Elliot’s head. “If the secret makes it that long.”
“You want to wait?”
“Honestly? I don’t know what to say to him right now. Plus, I don’t know how he’s going to react, no matter what you say.”
“You should keep it turned off, then. Your phone.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s probably got a tracker app on it. Unless you already removed it, or you got a new phone since you left DC.”
The laughter dies in my throat when I realize he’s not kidding. “What?”
“Leo’s a little protective. Which I know is a funny way to spell ‘stalker.’” He smirks. “When we first got together, he’d sometimes show up at events I was at. Sometimes I knew he was there—he’d let me see him. Sometimes, I didn’t know he was there, but he’d say something later, so I knew he had been there and watching me. Something he could only know because he’d been there and watched me. Then, there were times I felt he was watching me, even though I didn’t see him. He never told you about that?”
“No.”
“He probably did that to you when you were still with him.”
I think about the times I could almost feel his presencehere, in Tallahassee, and now I…wonder. “But…atracker?”
He shrugs. “You have the same phone you did before?”
“Yeah?”
“How many times did you give Leo your phone so he could check it for malware?”
“All the time. It’s what he did for a living. I mean…” I think about it. “He had my passcode, just like I had his. We used each other’s personal cell phones all the time. We had no secrets.”
Or did we?
“Ask him. He won’t lie about it.”
It’s not outside the realm of possibility that he did. That would be like Leo. I could totally see him doing that.
I don’t know how to feel about it, either.
