“Ask the FBI for everything they’ll share,” I say. “Set up a meeting.”
Deck stands.
“You know most CEO’s have assistants, right?”
“And?”
“I’m not your assistant,” he grumbles, but I know he would do it.
“You’re making the meeting.”
“I’m not a PA.”
“You’re making the meeting.”
He points at me. “One day, I’m saying no.”
I huff out a laugh. “You won’t.”
He exhales. “Yeah. Probably not.”
At the door, I call out, “What happened with the barista?”
He doesn’t turn fully.
“Nothing.”
I glance up.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Silence, and he shifts.
“Yoda, do you know how hard it is to find a man who appreciates all this…” He gestures vaguely at himself. “…and has unresolved abandonment issues?”
I stare at him. “Maybe share less of your internal monologue.”
“And that right there,” he says, finally looking at me, “is why you’re single.”
When the door shut behind him, I looked out the window. Deck joked about my love life, but he was the only one who knew what happened with Charlie. The fear of losing someone doesn’t fade. It just learns how to sit quietly in the background of everything.
I reach for the phone.
Something about Mason Sterling wouldn’t let go. Instinct is the thing that kept me alive, and it was telling me the Sterlings weren’t just hiding something. They were protecting it.
And I’m going to find out what.
* * *
The rest of the day doesn’t move the way it should. It never does when something lodges itself in my head the way Mason has done. By the time I leave the office, the fog over the bay has lifted slightly, but it doesn’t feel like clarity. Just exposure.
The gym downstairs was loud enough to drown out thought, or it should have been. Deck wasn’t there, which made the space feel off.
The space is familiar to me. Steel, rubber mats, the dull thud of weights being dropped too hard by people who don’t know better. It’s loud enough to drown out thought, or at least it’s supposed to.
I warmed up, then moved to the bench press. The bar settled into my grip, familiar and grounding. I lifted on instinct.
