CHAPTER
57
ON THE WAY BACK TO New York, Devine and Montgomery stopped and had lunch at a restaurant on the water. They sat at an outside table overlooking Long Island Sound. It wasn’t too hot; the breeze off the water was pleasant and refreshing and the views were lovely.
Still, Montgomery stared sulkily off before glancing at Devine.
“Doesn’t sitting here just make you want to chuck it?”
“Chuck what?” he asked.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Travis.”
He sat back and looked out to the water, where a sailboat was cutting through the waves. “Got to make a living. I’m not rich. I’m not even well-off enough to take a vacation.”
“I’ve got my portfolio.”
“Then you can chuck it, Michelle.”
“Not that much fun alone. You could come along for the ride.”
“There are about a million other guys who’d be a lot better for you than me.”
“And I can’t make that decision for myself?”
“Yes, but I also have to make that decision for myself.”
She hiked her eyebrows. “And you have no interest?”
“I think you know that I do. But I’ve got baggage that you don’t need to deal with.”
“And you think I don’t?”
“And you don’t believe that’ll be a red flag for them to hunt us down if we suddenly disappear together?”
“I suppose it would be.” She studied him closely. “Why are you really at Cowl, Travis? You don’t strike me as a person interested in that world at all.”
He started to tell her the standard line, but then he decided to be more candid. His conversation with Campbell had made him reevaluate things. And Montgomery had stuck her neck out for him. She deserved something close to the truth.
“I left the Army under a sort of cloud. It messed with my head. My old man always wanted me to go for the money, so I decided to do what he wanted.”
“Even though you really didn’t want to?”
“I guess it was a form of self-punishment. Force myself to do what I hate.”
“What the hell happened in the Army to make you want to do that to yourself?”
“I can’t talk to you about it. I can barely talk to myself about it.”
“Okay, I guess I understand that,” she said slowly, but looking disappointed.
“You said your family situation wasn’t a ball of fun,” he noted.
“I’m the black sheep, I guess. Never lived up to my promise, or so my mother told me.”
“Come on, you’re only what, twenty-two?”
“Almost twenty-three. I should have graduated from college by now. I’m way behind, Travis. No way to catch up, really. It’s like being in the nineteenth century and suddenly realizing you’re a washed-up old maid at age eighteen.”