a client. This was Trey, and what we had was real. I wasn’t sure how to explain it to them, so I wanted them to see for themselves.
In the end, I called Ryan. He was the one who handled the company's PR, so if this blew up in my face, he would be the one who had to handle it. Like he handled the stuff with Rand, my conscience reminded me. But this really was not the same thing. This was more. I doubted Rand would see it that way, though. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly and then laughed. I reminded myself of Trey preparing for a rally. I needed to calm down and make the call. It wasn’t like I was getting up in front of an enormous crowd of people—I was calling my brother. I shook my head at my ridiculousness and dialed the phone.
“Hey,”
“Hey, you got a few minutes?” I asked.
“Sure, I’m just doing some paperwork on the Pullman case, what’s up?”
“What’s happening with Pullman?” I asked. It was a general surveillance job that I was running before this one. I’d handed it off to him with my other cases.
“Nope, not your case anymore. Point is it was paperwork, so I have time, so what do you need?”
“I want to bring Trey to Sunday lunch.”
“Linner. If you keep calling it lunch, they will decide linner doesn’t work and go with something even more stupid like lupper or dunch. You know how Mom is.”
“Fine, linner. I want to bring Trey to Sunday linner.”
“Thank you. Now, back to business. You want to bring a client that someone was shooting at yesterday to Mom’s house for family linner? If you’re missing hanging out with us so much you feel you need to be there, we can have one of the guys relieve you. You don’t have to bring him with you.”
“I’m not bringing him as a client. I mean, he is a client, of course, but that isn’t why I want to bring him.” I stopped and waited, wondering if he would make me say it.
“Why else would want to bring him to Mom’s…oh. Roman, tell me you didn’t.”
“I did, but it’s not some casual thing,” I insisted. “It’s more than that.”
“Rand is going to be pissed. After you went off on him and stuck him on surveillance duty for doing the same thing.”
“It is not the same thing,” I insisted. Just the thought of what Trey and I had being compared to a quick fuck in a vineyard with someone Rand never planned to see again rankled.
“I seriously doubt he’ll see it that way.”
“I know. But I’m bringing him with me. I wanted to give you a heads up.” I wasn’t going to argue with them about how this was different. They would just have to see for themselves.
“Why not wait until the job is over?” he asked.
“You know how it is with stalker jobs. They can drag on for months. I’m not waiting that long.”
“Okay,” he sighed. “I’ll let everyone else know.”
“You don’t seem as shocked as I expected.”
“Roman, you’ve never been good at hiding things, even when we were kids. And when you called me yesterday to tell me about the shooting attempt, you didn’t sound like a bodyguard calling in a report. You sounded like a man who’d just seen someone he cared about get shot at. I just didn’t realize it was mutual.”
“It is, but nothing’s changed. He’s still in the closet until at least the election.”
“And you think the stalker knows?”
“I do. And after what happened here yesterday—”
“He’s escalating.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. Hopefully, that means he’ll get sloppy and we’ll catch him, but it makes me worry about all the public appearances.”
“So why doesn’t he stop doing them? He isn’t the one running for reelection.”
“I wish he would, but his father’s convinced that he has to be there, and he’s guilted Trey into doing it. This family is fucked up—”
“But they’re his family.”
“Only one he’s got,” I said.
“And that’s why you’re bringing him to Mama’s.” Ryan had always understood me better than anyone else, and he was right. I wanted to bring him to my family because he didn’t have one of his own, not one that loved him and took care of him the way mine did, anyway. I wanted him to see what a real family was like. One where you were loved because of who you were not because of what you could do for them,