Page 137 of The Bodyguard

Twenty-Seven

THE DAY BEFOREThanksgiving, my phone rang, and when I checked it, it read: POSSIBLE SPAM.

I answered anyway, if that gives you a sense of how lonely I was.

But it wasn’t a telemarketer.

It was Jack Stapleton.

“Hey,” he said when I picked up, and I knew him from one syllable.

I could also hear he was grinning.

Then suddenly he was FaceTiming me—me, still in my nightgown with hair pointing in ten different directions—and I could see he was grinning.

“Did you miss me?” he asked, looking pleased with himself.

I was distracted by the reflection of myself in the phone. “No,” I said, pawing at my hair.

“So nice to see my favorite nightgown again.”

“Why are you calling me?”

“Important business.”

“How do you even have my number?”

“I sweet-talked it out of Kelly.”

“I’ll bet.”

“The point is,” Jack said, “I’m calling to tell you about the plan we came up with to catch the stalker.”

“You came up with a plan to catch the stalker?”

Jack nodded. “A sting operation. To catch her in the act. And then haul her down to the clink. And then scare, pressure, and cajole her into, you know, not murdering you.”

“That’s the plan you came up with?”

“Yes,” Jack said, looking pleased with himself.

“You got Glenn on board with that?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “Glenn, Bobby, and a bunch of police.”

It was so strange to see his face again, even through the phone. Since leaving, I had tried to avoid anything that might force me to see it—watching television, scanning magazines in the checkout aisle, or even, since that whiskey endorsement, glancing at buses as they drove by.

I hadn’t anticipated getting a FaceTime call.

“Look,” I said, “I hate to disappoint you, but it’s almost impossible to do anything about stalkers.”

“Thanks for the negativity.”

“I’m not sure if what you just described is even legal.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got a whole team of advisors.”

“Why would you even care about the stalker? You’re leaving after Thanksgiving, anyway. Two more days, and you’re out.”