Cain’s office was a large open bay with about fifteen desks separated by five-foot dividers. Never in my wildest dreams could I have envisioned how this day would end up. I knew I’d retire someday and have to box up my things, but I thought it would be after a long and distinguished career. There would be cake and punch and everyone gathered around. They’d tell exaggerated stories and roast me. I’d be the butt of jokes, at least a few. This day was different. There was no fanfare. No cake. No punch.
He headed straight to the supply room. While he gathered a few cardboard boxes, Jill quietly walked into the cramped room.
“How did it go?” she asked. She was now wearing a gray suit and carrying her pistol on her hip.
“I kind of resigned.”
“Kind of?” she said. “Is that even a thing? Sounds like kind of being pregnant. You either did or you didn’t.”
“Well, that hypocrite gave me his pen to sign my resignation letter that he had already typed up.”
Jill looked on wide-eyed.
“I told him to shove that pen where the sun don’t shine.”
“Oh, God.” She gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. “Yeah.” She nodded. “Yup. I’d say you resigned, all right.”
He looked straight into her blue eyes. “They don’t deserve you, either. You were right to decide to leave.”
She hugged him. “These assholes don’t deserve you. It’s shit like that—that’s why it’s getting easier and easier for me to leave the Service.”
“Let’s talk later,” Cain suggested. “When it’s more private. Rumors fly around this place.”
“Yes, they do.”
Cain headed to his desk. Colleagues circled around him as he opened the drawers and started going through his things. More than one apologized. “It’s a witch hunt, brother. I’m sorry.” Cain flipped through a few loose papers with notes on them. “Don’t need these anymore.” He tossed them into a trash can. He riffled through some business cards, discarding most of them but keeping a few he thought might be helpful later. He grabbed the challenge coins he had received from VIPs he had protected. He put those and a few other personal items he had collected from his travels into a box. He found the drawings and thank-you cards some children had given him when he and Tom had been tasked with participating in a local school’s career day. He placed the keepsakes in the box.
His desk phone rang. He instinctively reached out and grabbed the handset but paused.
“Maybe it’s POTUS calling—granting you a stay,” one agent remarked.
Jill leaned in, and Cain strained to hear her over the noise of everyone jeering and telling him what he should do. “Don’t answer it, Cain. You’re a free man now,” she whispered in his ear.
Cain took his hand off the handset. “I guess you’re right.”
He was walking toward the exit when Tom Jackson appeared.
“I’m sorry it all ended like this, Cain. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise.”
Cain scoffed. “For you or for me?”
“Let’s go, Cain,” Jill said.
Tom looked at Jill. “Hey, the men are talking here.”
“You’re such a sexist pig,” she said with disgust in her voice.
“She’s right, Tom,” Cain said. “We have a saying back home. On récolte ce que l’on sème.”
“What’s that mean?” Tom asked.
“You reap what you sow, and your storm is a-coming.”
“Oh, yeah? We’ll see about that. I won’t hold my breath for your Cajun voodoo to curse me.”
Cain looked around the room, and at the items he had placed in the box. “You know what? I don’t need this shit.” He turned the box upside down and dumped the contents into the trash can. He tossed the box on the floor and kicked it. It went flying through the open-bay office. Jill trailed him as he headed toward the exit. “Call me later,” she said. “Please.”
Chapter 27
The town house was only fifteen hundred square feet, but the moving company was expensive.
“If you can just wait about a week, I can give you a 15 percent discount,” the sales representative had said.
“No. I’ve gotta get outta here. I’ll pay your premium price.”
When the movers had finished boxing everything up, Cain walked through the house one last time. He wanted to make sure he had left nothing behind.
“No reason for me to ever come back,” he said aloud.
“Never say never.” The reply startled him. Jill had shown up unannounced.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came over to cheer you up. But more importantly, where are you going, mister?”