Brent’s family and mine were supposedly safe from the investigation with the amount of hush money being paid out to the government, cops, and lawyers crawling around threatening a federal indictment.

It was a great time—not.

Sloane kept trying to get me to come over to her house after the festival, and I couldn’t bring myself to even respond to her. She was a scary broad and her family hosted the meetings for everyone to participate in activities I couldn’t bring myself to attend. Sooner or later, I’d have to oblige for fear of what would happen if I didn’t play nice.

Since she couldn’t get me to respond, she decided to bomb Kelly’s phone asking when we were coming by for girl’s days. Yay.

I tried to stay in bed for two days, but responsibilities called, and I had one final briefing before the dreaded meeting with Augustus Vaughn. James came in to show me documents and make sure I was at least eating.

The documents went over my head and I couldn’t muster much of an appetite.

I needed to have my head on straight.

Leaving from my class for the day, I cringed at the thought of the walk across campus with my own personal security to keep me ‘safe’ from the dangers that may be lurking in every corner. The perks of being who I was, I guessed.

The guy that came with James didn’t talk much.

“Care for lunch, James?” I shot out into the silence of our walk.

He grumbled, “We should get to the office, Miss Montgomery.”

“Fast food?”

“We can pick something up, if you’d like.”

“What’s your favorite?” I tried making conversation. I didn’t have many people I could just chit chat with that I positively trusted, so my guards got the short end of the stick from me bugging them with small talk.

He seemed to ponder over it. He towered over me at six foot five and had an imposing broad figure. “Burgers.”

“So, we’re getting burgers for lunch!” I almost fist pumped at the excitement of having some nice, greasy food in my stomach.

James smiled at me. The other one never expressed much and always refused to come inside, even as the nights kept getting colder. Too professional, but at least I had eyes on the outside of my house around the clock.

Successfully conning them into lunch with me, we ate in near silence in the car. I blurted out a few things to which James responded, and the other one didn’t bat an eye at. He also didn’t agree to eat with us.

“Do you like your job?” I asked.

“Some days,” he replied quietly, finishing up his food and discarding it into the bag. “Time to go.”

He started up the engine and we were off for me to face my fate.