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Brady bobbed his head. “Sheisperfect. She’s feisty. If anyone can handle the boys, it’s her. But that doesn’t mean she’ll take the job. We fucken kidnapped her. She’s the kind of girl who takes that personally.”
Who wouldn’t take that personally?I thought to myself.
“It would have been fine if you didn’t open your mouth,” Rogan argued. He mimicked Brady’s New England drawl and added, “She’s, like, wicked fucken smaht to notice that.”
For once, Brady didn’t have a response.
Rogan merged lanes and set the cruise control. “The offer is a good one. We’re paying her a lot. She won’t turn that down.”
“She will if she thinks she can sue us for more.”
Rogan shook his head. “I don’t think she will. And if she does, then we’ll settle. That’s why we have insurance.”
Most insurance companies didn’t cover the kind of thing we did. We had to use a company in Switzerland that shielded itself in dozens of layers of shell companies. The premiums were high, but it turns out kidnappingcouldbe insured. If we needed to pay Heather Hart a settlement, we would be fine.
“I don’t care about any settlement. I care about the boys. Who’s going to nanny them if Heather says no?”
“She isn’t going to turn down the offer,” I said.
Both of my partners twisted with surprise. They had a habit of forgetting I was there when they were arguing.
“Why do you think that?” Brady asked.
“Because Heather needs a challenge,” I said.
Brady’s face twisted skeptically. “How the fuck do you know that?”
“Because I don’t just talk. I listen, too.”
“He’s got you there,” Rogan said.
Brady laughed. “Well then listen here. I come from a long line of talkers. To my family, it’s the same as breathing. Why do you think she needs a challenge?”
I thought back to all the research I had done last night. After Heather and her friend infiltrated our suite, I used facial-recognition software from the suite cameras to match her against a worldwide database of social media photos. From there I harvested all her social media accounts, her address, and the rest of her history. It was the same sort of scan we did on anyone who seemed like a threat to one of our clients.
Eugene Howard’s acting class had its records shared on a cloud drive, which was easy to hack into. Easy for someone like me, at least. Then I looked up Heather’s high school record, including notes from her teachers.
From Mrs. Wall the kindergarten teacher all the way up to Eugene Howard the acting coach, every teacher Heather ever had agreed on one thing: she needed to be challenged. Otherwise she got bored of the subject. But if presented with an obstacle, or a difficult puzzle, she wouldn’t be able to stay away.
And that’s exactly what Micah and Dustin were: a nannying challenge.
“She’ll take the job because she wants the challenge,” I said. “Trust me.”
“You wanna bet on it?” Brady asked, lips curling into a big smile.
“I don’t wager.”
“Must not be confident in your analysis then…” he teased.
I only smiled to myself. I was quite confident.
“Speaking of confidence,” I said, “what was Heather referring to during the interrogation?”
“Which part?” Rogan asked.
“The part about kissing you last night.”
I knew Rogan better than I knew my own family. Heck, hewasfamily to me. Years spent together on deployment had a way of forming a connection, and we’d had enough trouble and close calls to last a lifetime.
