Thirty

Thirty

BECAUSE JACK’S THREAT level had been downshifted to white, there was no security team at his place—thank God. The last thing I needed in those strappy heels was to make my way through some kind of EP agent obstacle course of judgment and mockery.

The security cameras on the property were still running, of course.

I rang Jack’s doorbell, trying not to imagine Glenn surveilling me and saying, “Is that Brooks? In a dress? What the hell’s she got on her feet?”

I just had to hope nobody was monitoring them.

But Jack didn’t come to the door right away.

I watched an ant making its way across the concrete.

Then I rang again.

Maybe he was in the shower? I crossed my fingers that he hadn’t decided to cook, God forbid.

Then, a few minutes after my second ring, Jack opened the door—but only partway.

He’d gotten a haircut—and now it was spiking up in an intimidatingly movie-starish way, like he’d just finished a shoot for GQ. He was also freshly shaved. He had a Norwegian sweater on. And another change: He was wearing his contacts instead of his glasses. It was the first time I’d seen him without his glasses in real life.

All together? It made him look a little like a different person.

Less like Jack Stapleton the piggyback-ride giver—and more like Jack Stapleton the movie star.

Holy shit. Jack Stapleton was a movie star.

I felt a cramp of anxiety. The impossibility of it all hit me again.

Was this happening? I guess it was.

But that’s when Jack said, “Yes?” in a voice that sounded … blank.

Just a very slightly clipped tone—anonymous and disinterested, like he didn’t know me, and he was pretty sure he didn’t want to. Like I was maybe a cable repair guy. Or a political canvasser. Or a census-taker.

It was just that one syllable. But it was enough to register.

I took a step closer, expecting him to swing the door open.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he frowned. “Why?”

But that’s when Jack nodded back toward the interior of the house and said, “I’ve actually got some guests here right now, so…”

What was going on? He had asked me out, right? I hadn’t dreamed it, had I? “What’s going on?”

He frowned at me like he had no idea what I was talking about. “I’ve just got friends over, so … Kinda busy.”

He started to swing the door closed.

On instinct, I tried to use the Robby trick of blocking the door with my foot—forgetting, of course, about my ridiculous footwear—and Jack wound up shoving the door closed on it, the metal weather stripping slicing my toes and breaking the leather sandal straps.

The pain shot up my leg like a rocket. I snatched my foot back, let out a string of curse words, and then hopped around for a minute before I noticed I was bleeding.

When I’d settled, he said, “Anyway,” and moved to close the door again.

Jack gave an irritated sigh.

Jack frowned like he had no idea what I meant. The utter noncomprehension on his face was enough to flood my whole body with humiliation. Then, as if pulling a vague memory from the deep mists of time—and not, you know, yesterday—he said, “Ohhh.” Nodding. Like that explained everything. “The date.”

What the hell? He’d asked me out twenty-four hours ago. Was he joking? Sleepwalking? Drunk? And who accidentally injures another person—another living creature, even—to the point of bleeding all over the doorstep and just stands there like a psychopath? What was happening?

I turned the situation around in my head like I had one last puzzle piece, but it just wouldn’t fit.

But then Jack slid the piece into place for me.

He tilted his head, and in a voice nothing short of saturated with pity, he frowned in mock sympathy and said, “Did you think that was real?”

Everything in my body just stopped at that moment. My heart stopped beating, my blood stopped flowing, my breath stopped moving in and out.

Maybe time itself stopped, too.

Jack looked at me like I was supposed to answer that question—and waited. His face was all curiosity.

Jack’s eyes made an expression I can only describe as “incredulous disdain.” “Of course not.”

Of course not.

Then Jack added, “You really bought it? You believed me? That’s so funny.”

Jack gave a little shrug. “Fake,” he said.

I couldn’t seem to stop shaking my head. “You were…?” I didn’t know what I was asking.

But Jack just nodded big, like I’d made a great point. “I know, right? I got both of you with that one. A twofer.”

I felt myself sinking. “You were acting,” I said, trying to absorb it.

Jack gave a short sigh, like Try to catch up. “Do you remember when my mom said I really wasn’t that great of an actor?” Jack asked then. “That felt like a personal challenge.”

He shrugged. “It was something to do. Right? How else do you keep busy in the middle of nowhere?”

My head just kept shaking itself. “So … yesterday? All that … kissing?”

I felt lightheaded. I put my hand against the doorjamb to steady myself. Somewhere, in another universe, my bleeding foot was throbbing.

Weirdly, I handed it to him.

He checked the label. “Cheap.”

The air around us suddenly looked strange, like it was made of fumes. I wondered if I might faint.

We hadn’t been “speaking of bored,” but okay. “Sure,” I said.

His eyes looked dull and flat. “They’re going to laugh so hard at this story. It’s so hilarious when you think about it.”

And then, without even waiting for me to respond, he just … closed the door. Presumably to go recount the story of the dumbest, most gullible security guard in all of history to some vicious group of A-list movie-star friends gathered around a charcuterie board.

This was how the love of my life would end? With me as the butt of Jack Stapleton’s joke?

It’s so hilarious when you think about it.

I have no idea how long I stood there after that. For all I knew, time had collapsed in on itself in an infinity loop.

My brain felt like white noise. My throat felt like sand. My entire being positively vibrated with shame. The humiliation was total. There was no cell in my body that wasn’t saturated with it.

He was acting. He was acting. He’d been acting the whole time.

Of course he was acting.

Of course.

In slow motion, I squatted down to take off my sandals, and I noticed for the first time how bad the cut was on my injured foot, and how slippery the blood was making the sole.

Next, barefoot and bleeding, I stood back up.

He’d been acting.

As if going through a checklist, I swallowed, pulled back my shoulders, and lifted my chin. I clutched my dumb little purse with one hand and let the shoes dangle from the fingers of the other.

And then I limped back down the driveway as if the whole world were watching me go.

IT TOOK A thousand years to reach my car.

For one thing, I was walking barefoot on crushed granite, which feels more like broken glass than you might expect.

For another, all my senses were going haywire.

So I had to take it slow.

From the outside, I probably looked like a woman with a foot injury, sensibly taking her time.

The inside, of course, was a different story. My mind was positively assaulting itself, replaying every minute of that encounter at Jack’s front door over and over so vividly that I could barely see in front of me.

It’s a wonder I didn’t wander off into traffic.

It’s a wonder I didn’t die from misery.

It’s a wonder I didn’t just cease to exist.

But … in the end … I made it to my car.

A car that had been driven here by a very different person than the one returning to it.

I walked up to it, bent over, and pressed my head down against the hood.

What the hell just happened?

The person I should have been hating at that moment was Jack. Obviously. I knew that. I should have hated him for being the most callous, soulless jackass in the history of the world. I should have burned with incandescent and purifying rage.

But Jack wasn’t the person I hated right then.

The person I hated was myself.

I hated myself for being taken in. For being fooled. For wanting to be loved so badly that I’d so easily become somebody’s mark.

I should have known better.

I should have protected myself better.

The part of me that was always supposed to be on guard, and on alert, and on duty—the part that was tasked with the job of protecting the rest of me—had failed. Massively.

Again.

I was supposed to anticipate these things. I was supposed to keep a watchful eye. I was supposed to keep all my flaws and shortcomings forever at the front of my awareness so I’d never foolishly—ridiculously—hope for more.

I knew that. I’d known it since the night of my eighth birthday.

Later, I decided, I’d get angry at Jack. I’d summon my self-righteous rage, and salvage my dignity, and find the strength to carry on.

I was not the asshole here. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

I’d stand up for myself, eventually. I would.

But right now, in this surreal moment of aftershock, the only thing I could manage to feel was just apocalyptically disappointed in myself.

Leaning against the hood of my car, I was astonished at how physical my reaction was.

My head was spinning. I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt dizzy.

Flashes of what had just happened kept appearing on the screen of my mind without my permission. Jack opening his door in full movie-star mode—his face totally blank, like I was a stranger. Jack tilting his head in mockery as he said, “Did you think that was real?” Jack slicing the hell out of my toes, and then watching, emotionless, as I bled in front of him. Jack’s posture as rigid as a mannequin as he waited for me to catch up, grasp my own contemptible stupidity, accept my fate, and move on.

Hey—

Wait a minute …

Jack’s posture as rigid as a mannequin?

Jack Stapleton—famous sloucher and world-champion manspreader—with posture as rigid as a mannequin?

That didn’t seem right.

With that, my thinking started to shift. I know that he’d just told me it had all been a joke and that he’d never really liked me. But the longer I stood there, the more I started to wonder if I one hundred percent believed him.

It was hard to know what to believe.

But the more I thought it over, the more I wondered if the besotted version of Jack I’d seen so much of last night was more convincing than the psychopath I’d just met.

Now my brain shifted gears, and I started flipping back through the pages of my memory with purpose to reread that moment.

Some things about it were off, for sure.

Jack had only opened the door partway, for example—but he was much more of a fling-the-door-wide-open kind of guy. I’d assumed he was trying to keep me separate from his friends, but if he was really enjoying the joke he’d just played, wouldn’t he let them see me? And if he was really a sociopath, would he have cared if I’d seen them?

I kept scanning for abnormalities. There had been an unfamiliar tension in his face—like he was trying to look relaxed without actually being relaxed.

And had the expression in his eyes been coldness—or intensity?

Had the tightness of his voice been irritation—or anxiety?

I kept flipping through the interaction, scanning everything with different eyes—until one moment stopped me still.

Right after he said he’d been acting, just after he gave me a nod of confirmation, Jack had glanced to his left. Almost like there was somebody standing right next to him. And the emotion that had flashed across his face right then, in the second of that glance, was pretty unmistakable if you’ve been in this business long enough.…

It was fear.

SOMETHING WAS WRONG.

There was something in that house Jack was afraid of.

Someone.

I grabbed my keys, hit unlock, and dived into the back seat for my iPad.

I logged in to check the security footage on Jack’s camera, scrolling back and forth at time-lapse speed.

Nothing on the driveway cam. Nothing on the backyard cam. Nothing on the pool cam. But then, suddenly, on the motion-activated interior camera in Jack’s front hall, I saw Jack talking to a tall man in jeans. Slowing down to get a better look, I wondered if this might be one of the “friends” Jack claimed were there.

Until the man pulled out a 9 mm pistol and pointed it at Jack’s head.

Holy shit.

I scrolled through the footage fast, trying to get the basics. I saw Jack put up his hands, but then lower them again. I saw them both turn toward the door, and then I saw Jack open it, just a few inches, and the other man take a step back and settle into a stance a few feet away with his gun pointed straight out.

That was enough.

That was all I needed to see.

I called 911 to get the police on the way.

Next, I called Glenn.

Glenn wasn’t following. “Brooks, what are you talking about? He’s threat level white.”

I knew he was right. Of course. I didn’t have a weapon. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t even have shoes. Remember when I said footwear really is crucial? That was back when I thought there was nothing worse than high heels.

As I moved toward the house, I rated my survival chances at a solid fifty-fifty.

I mean: I was good at my job. But I wasn’t a superhero.

Part of being good at this job was making smart choices.

Was this a smart choice?

Not a chance. But I didn’t care.

Only one thing really mattered to me right then: Two people on Jack’s side were better than one. Even if I was barefoot, weaponless, backup-less, and injured, I wasn’t leaving him in there alone.

Of course he would say that. Of course he would use the one thing I wanted the most to try to keep me from getting myself killed. It was his best leverage.

Except for one thing. The thing I wanted most wasn’t London anymore.

The thing I wanted most was Jack.

I hung up the phone.

Screw London.

I was already running.

I KNEW THE door code. I let myself in.

The ground floor was empty. There’s a stillness you recognize in an empty room once you’ve been doing this for a while. But I checked everything anyway—every closet and nook. Even the pantry.

Nothing.

Passing the dining table, I saw a charcuterie board with a bottle of cabernet, open and breathing, next to it. And next to the wine bottle? A corkscrew.

At last. A weapon. I grabbed it as I went by, without missing a step, and—because women in this world somehow don’t deserve pockets—shoved it into the side of my bra.

The second floor was empty, too.

They’d either left the house, or—

They were on the roof.

I took the stairs to the third-floor game room two at a time.

I edged my way past the pool table to the door that led to the rooftop patio.

I cracked the door to peek out and evaluate the scene—and, there, I beheld the most surreal sight: The bulb lights strung up around the roof’s edge were glowing, the downtown skyline was lit up by the setting sun, the sky was deepening purple as it gave itself over to night … and there stood Jack Stapleton, his wrists and ankles bound by zip ties, and facing, maybe six feet away, a man exactly his same height, dressed in a ripped T-shirt and dirty jeans, aiming a gun at him, finger on the trigger.

Any other agent would’ve waited for the police.

But there wasn’t any time. A finger on a trigger was one impulse—or one itch, or cough, or sneeze—away from doing irreversible things.

Time to intervene. However I could.

I was just slipping out, ready to gently announce my presence with my hands up so I didn’t startle the gunman, when three things happened at once.

One: As I slid through the doorway, a burst of wind flashed across the rooftop from nowhere, yanked the door handle from my fingers, and slammed the door closed with an almost sonic boom that startled even me.

Two: At the sound, the gunman jerked in my direction and apparently pulled the trigger as he did, because …

Three: He shot me.