Page 35 of Line of Sight (Second Sight #4)

I STARED at my father in disbelief. He has to be kidding. This is a joke.

Then I dismissed the thought. Father didn’t possess a sense of humor.

“Why would you want me to go to Canada?”

Father drummed the desk with his fingers. “You’re in no position to argue. You have to agree you’ve had it easy all your life. I gave you a good job in the company, and you’re hardly ever there.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to fire back at him that it wasn’t as if I needed the money, right? Why suffer the boredom of a job when I had everything I needed?

He steepled his fingers. “You’re twenty-seven. It’s time you learned about responsibility. So… you’re going to Toronto. You’ll run the new company.”

Toronto. Even the idea made me shiver. What the fuck am I supposed to do in Toronto?

I leaned forward. “For how long?” I had to pin him down, get a clear picture of what this form of torture entailed.

“Let’s play that by ear. A few years, to start with.”

I gaped. I’d expected a couple of months, tops.

“Years? What’s a few? Two? Three? Four?”

Father shrugged. “Maybe longer.”

I prided myself on keeping my cool in all circumstances, but right then I lost it.

“Why can’t you be honest enough to come right out and tell me the real reason you’re sending me there?”

He blinked. Blinked again. “And what might that be?”

I could have told him in a heartbeat.

I make you nervous.

You can’t work out what makes me tick.

I’m unpredictable.

I’d blotted my copybook when I was just a kid, and I knew it.

That was why I’d been sent to boarding schools, camps, anyplace that was far from them.

They’d even insisted I live in student accommodations rather than remain at home, which I could easily have done.

That was the reason they’d sent me to psychologists, not that they ever learned a damn thing about me.

They probably suspected plenty. but I was way smarter than they were.

A line came to mind from The Silence of the Lambs . The last words of Benjamin Raspail.

I wonder why my parents didn’t kill me before I was old enough to fool them.

I sighed. “Fine. I’ll go.”

Father smiled. “I knew you’d come around to my way of thinking.”

Internally, I grinned. Not even close.

It had occurred to me that he was giving me a whole new backyard to play in.

My kind of play.