Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 47606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 238(@200wpm)___ 190(@250wpm)___ 159(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 238(@200wpm)___ 190(@250wpm)___ 159(@300wpm)
He tipped his head sideways, pondering that. “But I’ll be organized, won’t I?”
“You will be that.”
His sigh was long. “It’s bad in here.”
“Yes, it is. The layout of this office, as you’ve already pointed out, is really atrocious.”
“Yeah. And?”
I shot him a look.
“I’m asking what you’re gonna do.”
“For starters, there will be bins and binders and plants. I see bookcases and a coatrack and more plants. My God, man, there is nothing alive in here, and there’s no windows and no fan. What are you doing to circulate the air, and what creates oxygen?”
“Already this is too many questions.”
“We need things like an air filter, a fan, new lamps, and again, plants. So very many plants.”
“Do you need me here for any of that?”
“Of course. It’s your office. You need to make the—”
“No. It will take another year if I have to make decisions.”
“Fine. Then all I need is a credit card.”
“Okay,” he sighed, and got back on the phone with Tanya Howard from HR, who was really lovely and long-suffering. She didn’t just have to make sure that Colton had an assistant, but that lots of the ASAs had help, as well as taking care of all the judicial personnel, from paralegals to court reporters to victim advocates. She was swamped. “Yeah, so, Walsh will work for me, and whatshisname can have Georgia.” He was quiet a moment. “Yeah, Irwin. That’s right. Irwin can have Georgia. He’s pretty chill. I’m sure she’ll love him.”
Before I left that day, he passed over his platinum American Express.
“I was kidding,” I told him. Already, even after three hours, the piles on the desk at least appeared manageable, half the documents having gone into his fancy cross-cut shredder because it was all old information. “You have to make decisions on colors, and textures, and what kind of decor you want, and—”
“No. You do it.”
“What if you hate it?”
He gestured around him. “This is worse.”
It was true. His office resembled a prison. Gunmetal-green walls were uglier than I thought they would be. Maybe it was called institutional green. Either way, a sad color.
I was given the keys to his office, and my badge would get me inside the building, even on the weekends. He had no idea how excited I was. He trusted me, and it had been ages since I’d cared enough to want that from anyone.
It made no sense, but when I was standing and he was sitting on the floor, even though he was the boss and I was the assistant, he didn’t seem to care how it looked; he was utterly confident in who he was. He didn’t need to talk down to me or make me feel small so he could feel big. People who didn’t know him only saw the rough exterior. They didn’t hear his voice when he was soothing a child, didn’t see a man who would sit in silence with victims, never rush them to hear their stories, instead simply waiting.
I had transformed his office so much so that when we left the state’s attorney’s office, a friend who took over his office asked him to leave everything as it was. I felt really good about that, and though I did leave the décor, I brought all the plants with us. As though my yucca cane, my bird-of-paradise, or my five-foot snake plant could even live without Colton. I was certain they all needed his frenetic energy for life.
“What are you thinking about?” Colton asked softly.
“Sorry,” I said, stepping free of him, smiling sheepishly. “I don’t know why I’m being so sentimental today, thinking about the past. That’s not like me.”
“I know why,” he replied almost sulkily, taking my hand again, not my arm like normal, and walking me down the street.
“Why?”
“Because this thing with your ex is scaring the crap outta you.”
I nodded. “Yes, that seems well reasoned.”
“Oh, thank…you,” he said, having started out with sarcasm, but stopping because something had caught his interest as we reached the street we had to cross to get to the pub. Even though the snow was falling steadily now, it had warmed up a fraction, which was always strange. What was even stranger was that after a total of nine years in the city, I could tell that.
“Is something wrong?” I asked him.
He tipped his head toward the entrance of the pub, and I saw the men there in trench coats, scarves, gloves, and trapper hats. They looked like they were freezing to death.
“That’s probably the protection for the men waiting for us inside.”
“Why would FBI agents need protection?” he asked. “From whom?”
“Whom,” I repeated.
“Whom is correct,” he declared. “Heathen. But FBI agents don’t need protection.”
“Gen Antonov is scary,” I promised him. “Or, if not Gen, then whoever else is hunting for me.”
“No. Still not buying it,” he said, his eyes never leaving the men across the street even as he yanked me sideways after him. “Walk with me, and we’ll see what—”