The Bodyguard (5)

It’s about predictions, and patterns, and reading the room before you’re even in it.

It’s not just something you do, it’s something you are—and my destiny was most likely set in fourth grade, when I was first recruited as a carpool monitor and got a Day-Glo sash and a badge. (I still have that badge on my nightstand.) Or maybe it was set in seventh grade when we moved into an apartment that was around the corner from a jujitsu studio, and I convinced my mom to let me take classes. Or maybe it was set by all those terrible boyfriends my mother could never stop bringing home.

Whatever it was, when I saw a recruiting booth near the campus jobs kiosk during my freshman year of college with a navy and white sign that read ESCAPE TO THE FBI, it was pretty much a done deal. Escape was my favorite thing. When I tested off the charts on conscientiousness, pattern recognition, observational skills, listening retention, and altruism, they recruited me right up.

That is, until Glenn Schultz came along and poached me away.

And the rest became history. He taught me everything he knew, I started traveling the world, this job became my entire life, and I never looked back.

The point is, I loved it.

You have to love it. You have to give it everything. You have to be willing to step in front of a bullet—and that’s no small choice, because some of these people are not exactly lovable—and getting shot hurts. It’s high stakes and high stress, and if you’re going to do it right, it has to be about something bigger than you.

That’s really why people who love this job love this job: It’s about who you choose—over and over every day—to be.

The luxury travel is pretty great, too.

Mostly, it’s a lot of work. A lot of paperwork, a lot of advance site visits, a lot of procedural notes. You have to write everything down. You’re constantly on guard. It’s not exactly relaxing.

But you get addicted.

This life makes regular life seem pretty dull.

Even the boredom in this job is exciting somehow.

You’re on the move. You’re never still. And you’re too busy to be lonely.

Which always suited me just fine.

That is, until Glenn grounded me in Houston—at the very moment when I needed an escape the most.



* * *



THAT SAME DAY Glenn took me off the Madrid gig, my car wouldn’t start—and so Robby wound up driving me home in his vintage Porsche in the pouring rain.

Which was fine. Better, actually. Because I still hadn’t invited him to Toledo.

Maybe it was the rain—coming down so hard that the wipers, even on the highest setting, could barely clear it—but it wasn’t until we made it to my house that I noticed Robby had been weirdly quiet on the drive home.

It was too wet for me to get out right then, so Robby turned off the car entirely and we just watched the water coat the windows like we were at a car wash.

That’s when I turned to him and said, “Let’s go on a trip.”

Robby frowned. “What?”

“That’s why I came to the office today. To invite you on vacation.”

“On vacation where?”

Now I was regretting the randomness of the choice. How, exactly, do you sell Toledo?

“With me,” I answered, like he’d asked a different question.

“I don’t understand,” Robby said.

“I’ve decided to take a vacation,” I said, like This isn’t hard. “And I’d like you come with me.”

“You never take vacations,” Robby said.

“Well, now I do.”

“I’ve invited you on three different trips, and you’ve weaseled out of all of them.”

“That was before.”

“Before what?”

Before my mother died. Before I got grounded. Before I got taken off Madrid. “Before I bought nonrefundable tickets to Toledo.”

Robby looked me over. “Toledo?” If he’d been confused before, now he shifted to full-on befuddled. “People don’t go on vacation to Toledo.”

“Actually, they have world-renowned botanical gardens.”

But Robby sighed. “There’s no way we’re going there.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll cancel.”

“What part of ‘nonrefundable’ don’t you understand?”

“You really don’t know yourself very well, do you?”

“I don’t see the problem,” I said. “You wanted to do this, and now we’re doing it. Can’t you just say Awesome and accept?”

“I actually can’t.”

His voice had a strange intensity to it. And in the wake of those words, he leaned forward and ran his fingers over the grooves of the steering wheel in a way that got my attention.

Did I mention that I read body language the way other people read books? I can speak body language better than English. For real. I could list it on my résumé as my native tongue.

Growing up as my mother’s child had forced me to learn the opposite of language: all the things we say without words. I had turned it into a pretty great career, to be honest. But if you asked me if it was a blessing or a curse, I wouldn’t know what to say.

Things I read about Robby in that one second: He wasn’t happy. He dreaded what he was about to do. He was doing it anyway.