Trust Me, I'm Trouble (19 page)

“I can’t,” I say, my voice getting wobbly all of a sudden. “Tyler—I can’t be responsible for another—” I take a breath and blow it out. “I just have to stop feeling, and it’ll all go back to the way it was.”

“Oh, Julep…,” Angela says, touching my arm. “I’ll admit, I’m not wild about you hanging out with, much less dating, anyone who does what she does for the kinds of people she does it for. But the way she looks at you—like you’re her center. I couldn’t wish much better for you than that.”

I shudder, some scab inside I’ve been jealously guarding finally breaking off and crumbling to dust, revealing the pink healing cardiac tissue beneath. Hope is a heady thing. I’m not sure it’s something I should be imbibing while trying so hard just to survive. I do feel about ten pounds lighter in the shoulders, even if my pestiferous, inappropriate heart is the least of my problems.

“But how—?”

The sound of the front door opening and closing puts me on instant alert. Angela and I are both here. Mike isn’t due back for days yet. I jump to my feet, moving in front of Angela and fumbling with my phone. Dani’s still close. My heart is pounding as I clumsily unlock the screen to dial her number. Heavy footsteps round the wall separating the foyer from the hallway. I was supposed to have time, damn it!

I press Call, praying I can keep us alive long enough for Dani to return.

“Julep Dupree!” Mike’s voice booms. “What the hell is this I hear about a
contract
?”

“T
hat’s all I know, Mike, I swear. Can I please go to bed now?” I cast a pointed glance at the clock; it’s three a.m.

Mike paces to the other side of the living room and back again. “Someone shot at you in an empty quarry on the way back from a prison. Then Ralph Chen came back from the dead with a samurai sword to defend you.”

“For the eighty-bajillionth time, yes. That is what happened.”

“And the shooting near Loyola? What can you tell me about the truck?”

I go from slumped to full-out prone on the couch and close my eyes. If he wants to keep on talking, he can go right ahead. If he wants me to stay awake just to watch him pace, he can kiss my—

“Wake up, Julep. You can sleep all you want in WITSEC.”

That
pops my eyes open. “I’m not a witness to anything that I haven’t already testified for, G-man. Witness Protection doesn’t apply to me. Even you can’t pull that many strings.”

“Watch me,” he says.

“Whoa. This is not my fault,” I object, sitting up again.

“The fact that I had to find out about it from a phoned-in anonymous tip is
most definitely
your fault. You should have called me after Dani’s car was vandalized.”

“So that you could come back and lock me in your guest room for the next two years? I think I’ll pass.”

“You should have trusted me!”

“Like you trust
me
?” I yell back.

He scrubs a hand over his bald head. “Look, we’re both tired. We can yell at each other tomorrow. Tonight, let’s just make a plan.”

I eye him warily, arms crossed. “Okay.”

“There’s an FBI safe house available. I checked with dispatch on my way—”

“No!” I say, pushing myself off the couch. “If you lock me up, I will get out and you’ll never see me again. Is that what you want?”

“Julep, be reasonable.”

“I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to since you arrested me. Well, except for a couple of missed curfews. But everything else, I’ve done. Court, community service, even
therapy,
for Pete’s sake. I’ve kept my end of the bargain. You owe me my freedom. If you won’t give it to me, I’ll take it. And I’ll never forgive you.”

“This isn’t some kind of
deal,
Julep. My responsibility as your foster father is to keep you healthy and relatively happy and, above all things,
alive.
Freedom doesn’t enter into it until you’re eighteen.”

“You are my
handler,
not my father!”

“You are a
kid,
not a criminal informant!”

“Hey.” Angela comes shuffling out of the back of the house in her pajamas. “What is all this yelling? It’s three in the morning.”

My eyes fill with water from frustration and embarrassment. The truth is, I don’t have much choice if Mike decides to push his solution on me. He’s ruining my life. Again.

“Both of you. Sit,” Angela says.

My knees fold under me, but I stay perched on the edge of the couch, ready to bolt to Dani’s if I need to. Mike sits, too, but he’s about as relaxed as I am.

“There has to be some kind of compromise we can agree to,” she continues. “Julep, you can’t possibly think we’d be okay with you wandering off in your usual way while someone’s out to kill you.”

I open my mouth to retort, but she holds up a hand.

“Mike, you can’t possibly expect someone like Julep to submit to incarceration. It would kill her.”

Mike grinds his teeth. “It’s not incarceration if it’s for her own safety.”

Angela gives him a sour look. “It would feel like it to her. Stop being so pigheaded.” Then she turns to me. “Julep, what would be an acceptable concession on your part?”

“I could agree to a five p.m. curfew. And I would stick to it. Both attacks happened after dark. Most attacks do.”

“That’s not—”

Angela gives Mike a withering glare. “Agent Ramirez,” she says, ice in her voice. “Your counteroffer?”

He sits silent for a moment, clenching his jaw against his nearly uncontrollable urge to take charge. I know him too well. We’re too much alike.

“Home by five p.m. on weekdays, twenty-four seven on weekends, and mandatory security detail at all times.”

“No way!” I shout, standing again.

Angela’s superior glare turns on me. I deflate under it and collapse back onto the sofa.

“Your turn,” Angela says to me.

I chew my lip, thinking. “Home by five p.m. on weekdays, twenty-four seven on weekends, and Dani is my security detail. My
only
security detail.”

“Dani is only one person, and she’s not trained—”

“I can’t have suits following me around everywhere I go, they’ll ruin—”

“Hold it!” Angela says, and Mike and I fall silent again. “It’s like refereeing a boxing match with you two. Here’s what’s going to happen. Five p.m. curfew on weekdays, home twenty-four seven on weekends. Dani will escort you everywhere, and I mean
everywhere.
And when you’re here, a team of agents will monitor the house.”

I exhale a shaky breath. It sucks, but it’s not a safe house. “Okay,” I say.

“Mike?” Angela says.

“Fine,” he growls. “I’ll set it up.”

“Good. Now, can we all please get some sleep? My shift starts in three hours.”

“God, yes,” I say, getting up again. I drag my sorry self to the guest room and collapse onto the bed, still in my priest disguise, hands bound in gauze. I’m asleep before my face hits the pillow.

• • •

Six a.m. comes awfully quickly when one is up until three a.m. the night before arguing with recalcitrant parental types. And I’m made even grumpier by the fact that it’s summer and gloves covering up my damaged hands will stand out more than my hands would. I finally settle on a light jacket with sleeves that have holes for my thumbs. The sleeves cover only half the scratches on each palm, but it’ll do.

Dani picks me up on time, like a total jerk, looking fresh as a daisy. I want to punch her and eviscerate Mike by the time I shamble into the NWI office. Coffee. I need coffee.

Five minutes later, I’m at my desk, sipping my coffee like it’s the only thing keeping me sane, when I get a text from Sam’s untraceable burner phone.

Saw you hobbling in the front door this morning. Fun party last night?

I tap back:

You have no idea.

I’ll fill him in on Ralph and the hit attempt, but not over text.

As I’m putting my phone away, Joseph walks in. He looks casually gorgeous, as always.

“Oliver and Sally, I have a new project for you. I put some time on your calendars to meet the project lead later this morning. Aadila, you’ll be taking over Julep’s project for today. Julep, you’ll be working with Duke on developing initiate training. Jane, I have some data entry….”

I tune out the rest of his project assignments. Duke? Why is Duke still singling me out? Is he trying to distance me from the other interns? Is he trying to con out of me what I’ve discovered so far? There isn’t much, to be honest. He probably knows everything I know. Ugh, I do not have enough brain for this today.

And honestly, I’m nervous to see him after my interview with Mr. Antolini, which until this very moment I’d completely forgotten about. I left the number Mr. Antolini had been repeating in my priest pants back at the Ramirezes’. I need to have Sam analyze it. I would have brought it with me, but with everything that happened with the hit attempt and Mike coming home, I just didn’t think of it.

In any case, I can’t imagine what could have happened to turn Mr. Antolini into the bombed-out shell of a man I saw, but it can’t have been good. And Mrs. Antolini being a fraud is almost as frightening. Who the hell was I working for? Part of me is screaming that I should ditch this hot mess of a job immediately. Like, walk right out the door without laying eyes on Duke Salinger again. But my mom is still somehow connected. The blue fairy, the bar. She’s
missing.
I can’t abandon the job without knowing with absolute certainty that NWI has no connection to her disappearance.

“Julep?” Joseph is looking at me expectantly. Crap. What did I miss?

“Yes?”

“Are you going to go meet Duke in his office, or just sit there staring off into space?”

“Heading up now,” I say, jumping to my feet and grabbing a spiral notebook.

Hurrying up the curling ramp, I branch off onto the executive floor and hustle to Duke’s office.

“Ah, Julep. So glad you’re here. Come in, come in,” Duke says from the sofa area. He shuffles some papers out of the way so I’ll have room to sit.

“I’m not sure how I can help. I don’t know the first thing about inspiring people.”

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To learn.”

I smile. “Right.”

“We’re not going to do much in the way of design anyway. It’s more of a brainstorming session. I find I develop my method best when I have a fresh mind as a sounding board—the fresher, the better.”

“Well, not to toot my own horn, but I can get pretty fresh when the situation calls for it.”

Duke chuckles, deep and rumbly. “Fair enough. So let me start by asking you, why do you think people come to NWI?”

“Because they’re lonely and confused?”

“That’s part of it,” he says. “But why are they lonely and confused?”

I think back to what Duke said yesterday afternoon. “Because they’re trying to fill their emptiness with the wrong things?”

“Yes, exactly. This workshop I’m building now is about developing a life purpose, because dedicating your life to a purpose is a healthy and effective way of filling the emptiness. What do you think of that?”

Even my thoughts feel heavy, that’s how tired I am. But I do my best to rally. Duke is likely testing me. I have to pass if I want to earn any useful information.

“I think ‘purpose’ is too broad. Making millions of dollars is a purpose. But I don’t think that’s what you’re going for.”

He smiles. “Excellent point. What would you call it, then?”

I think for a long moment, turning ideas over in my head and then discarding them. Though sluggish, the grifter part of me is starting to juice up at Duke’s line of questioning. It’s interesting, thinking about people like puzzles you can coax into putting themselves back together again.

“How about ‘aspiration’?” I say finally.

“I like it,” he says, and writes it down on a notepad. “I like the double meaning—hope and breath. Two things we can center the workshop around. I like to include movement when I can. People seem to retain the lesson better when kinesthetic exercises are involved. But what about the hope part? What does hope symbolize to you?”

• • •

Two hours fly by in what feels like minutes. Duke really gets into the discussion, gesticulating, striding around the office, lighting up like a crystal chandelier whenever something I’ve said sparks an idea he hadn’t thought of. And I’m caught up in his vision. I can’t seem to help myself. His charisma is irresistible even for me, another grifter expecting the sting at any moment. I’m falling for his game, chomping at the line and welcoming the hook, because the payout—peace, self-acceptance, happiness—is
that
tempting.

“Fabulous idea,” he says after my last suggestion. “I may have to cite you as a resource on this, with all you’ve contributed.” He looks at his watch. “But on that note, it’s time for lunch, and Joseph will have my hide if I keep you away from your regular duties too long.”

“Sure thing,” I say, my stomach growling at the mention of lunch.

I make my way to the door, but before I leave, I turn back to watch Duke shuffling thoughtfully through the papers on the table. “You know, you’re not what I expected,” I say before I think better of it.