“Job.” I laughed, and shook my head. One more piece of the puzzle slid into place. “I’m your job. So you’re some bodyguard?”
“Something like that.”
“Did my dad hire you?” I asked.
“Something like that.”
“Are you going to tell me anything?”
“No,” he replied.
“No?” Did he really expect me to go along with all this without him telling me what was happening? “Why the hell not?”
He glanced at me, clearly annoyed. “My job is to keep you safe, not answer questions that will only make you…less safe.”
“Less safe. Wow! Fucking unbelievable. You ruin my life, and I get riddles.”
“Don’t start,” he warned.
“Screw you.”
He huffed. “Nice.”
“What do you expect me to say? Oh, thank you, Santiago. Thank you for stalking me, making me think I’m crazy, and then tearing me away from my life without so much as an explanation as to why I’m being subjected to…your job?”
“Ask your father,” he replied coldly.
“He’s not here. Otherwise, trust me, I would.”
We pulled onto the freeway, and Santiago’s dark eyes continued scanning the mirrors.
“So,” I said, “are you going to tell me who you are and why you’ve been stalking me?”
“I told you. It’s my job. I work for your father. But let’s get one thing straight: I never asked for this assignment. You,” he glanced my way, “chose me.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“The photo.”
Oh. My brain ran a couple of queasy laps. I picked out a photo. I put it on Facebook. My dad saw it. Poof. Santiago. No, the pieces still weren’t forming an explanation of any sort.
I ran my hands over my clammy face. “I’m guessing my father isn’t the photographer who took your picture. Probably isn’t a photographer at all.”
“No,” he said.
“And you’re not a model,” I said.
“No.”
“Is your name even Santiago?”
“No. That’s the name you made up. My name is Paolo. I’m actually Italian, not Spanish.” I hadn’t noticed before—too busy going out of my mind, I supposed—but his accent had changed.
He hit the fast lane, but kept the speed under eighty.
“Well, that’s a start. And my dad, what is he? Some spy? An assassin? Do you work for the CIA?”
Paolo continued concentrating on the road. “No.”
“Then what?”
“We keep an eye on things and we gather information. There is no name for us,” he said, his accent now completely unmasked. Der iz no name for usss…“We don’t exist.”
Jeez. Well, that explains oh so very much! “Have you been trained in the fine art of not answering questions?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
He sighed. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, but that’s all you’re getting. My job is to keep you alive. Not to make you feel better or answer your questions. If that were the case, I’d never get a day off.”
What a jerk!
“For the record,” I said. “You don’t need to try.”
“Try what?”
“Being an azzzhole,” I said, mocking his accent. “It comes naturally.”
He grumbled something in Italian under his breath and focused on the road. I suddenly wished I’d taken a foreign language—specifically, Italian. Because whatever he’d said, it sounded mean.
I sank into my seat and looked out the window to my right, trying to process the drastic turn my life had just taken. Sadly, so many things began to make sense, while others made less and less. My father’s constant distance from me and my mother, for example. Had it been to keep us safe from whatever crap he was mixed up in? Now that I thought about it, he did act pretty shady. Sometimes he’d fly in unexpectedly in the middle of the night, always bringing some stranger with him who he’d introduce as a “business associate.”
“Oh my God!” I snapped my fingers. “That’s where I’ve seen you before! You were his driver.” A few years ago, my father had come for a quick one-day visit on my birthday. As a gift, he took me shopping. I remembered how odd it seemed that his chauffeur followed us around in the mall. Santiago—Paolo—was some sort of bodyguard. My only question: Did he protect me from criminals or work for one? Or both? Anything seemed possible at this point.
“You remember me?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“Why are you so shocked?”
“You didn’t look at me that day. Not once. You were too busy glaring at your father.”
I remembered now. It was right after I’d spotted my dad in San Francisco with that other woman. But, of course, Paolo knew all about that. Didn’t he?
“Yeah. It was a pretty shitty day,” I said under my breath.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Apparently not that sorry because you used that little tidbit of info to blackmail me into following along with your sick little game.”
“Like I said,” he replied briskly, “I’m sorry. But your father wasn’t actually doing what you think.”
“You expect me to believe that?” I asked. “Because I know what I saw.”
He didn’t respond.
“Let me guess. I should ask my father?”