AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Robby shook his head. “Nobody comes here on purpose.”
Glenn seized the meeting back. “Jack Stapleton’s not coming here on purpose, either.”
“He’s from here,” Doghouse volunteered, proud to know some trivia.
“Correct,” Glenn said. “He’s from here. And his parents live on a ranch out past Katy on the Brazos River. And his mother was just diagnosed with breast cancer, and so he’s coming home to stay for a while.”
“That’s why it’s happening so fast,” Doghouse said.
It was fast. We’d normally take weeks, at least, to get prepped for something like this.
“Yes,” Glenn said. “She got her diagnosis on Monday, and her surgery is scheduled for Friday morning.”
“Aggressive protocol,” Amadi said. His father was an oncologist.
Glenn nodded. “From what I understand, it wouldn’t be your first choice of cancer. But it’s not unbeatable.”
We all noted the double negative.
“What’s the duration of the assignment?” I asked then.
“Unclear. But it’s my understanding that Stapleton intends to stay for the run of her treatment.”
“Weeks?” I asked.
“At least. We’ll know more when the family does.”
It was so strange to think of Jack Stapleton as having a family—or as having any kind of life outside of his primary role of giving us all something to ogle about humanity.
And yet, there it was. Jack Stapleton was a real person. With a mom. Who was sick. And a hometown. And now he was coming to Houston.
Glenn changed the slide show to a series of photos of a modern, three-story house. “He’s rented a place in town near the medical center. We couldn’t get access until today, but here are some photos from the rental listing.”
What normal people would have seen in those photos was a brand-new, high-end, luxurious modern house, with high ceilings and huge windows and lush landscaping. It had a pale-blue front door with a potted fiddle-leaf fig plant next to it. It looked like something out of Architectural Digest.
But we all looked at those images through a different lens.
The fiddle-leaf fig made for a pretty picture, but it wasn’t relevant to anyone in this room. Unless we could hide a security camera in it. The high wall around the yard meant it would be hard for a stalker to scale it. The circular driveway out front was a little too close to the structure. That giant oleander bush would need to be trimmed. The rooftop patio would be easy for a sniper to access. In night shots, the lighting out front was much more about mood than visibility.
Glenn walked us through the security features. “Security cameras galore—even one interior, motion-activated, in the front hall. Top-of-the-line alarm system and high-tech locks with remote access. Though the client’s representative says he forgets to use it.”
Red flag. Uncooperative client.
I raised my hand. “Did he hire us? Or was it, like, his manager or something?”
Glenn paused. And with that pause, we all knew the answer. “A little bit of both,” he said. “His manager technically hired us. But it’s at the strenuous urging of his team. And the studio that’s about to make the Destroyers sequel.”
It was not uncommon for our clients to have “teams.”
“Why is the team ‘strenuously urging’ him to hire security?” I asked.
“He’s had some stalkers in the past,” Glenn said, “and one of them lives here in town.”
The table gave a collective nod.
“So the first strategy, of course, is to conceal the fact that he’s here at all for as long as possible. But that’s a wild card. He is widely recognizable—”
Kelly let out a “Ha!”
