Page 42 of The Agent
Realization struck her, and the food in her stomach soured. “You saw Matt, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” He stowed the serving spoon back in the rice and glanced at her from under his eyebrows. “You want to know what I think?”
She nodded, her throat tight with a strange combination of fear, anticipation, and residual rage toward her ex. If he was her stalker, she would be tempted to do him real physical damage.
“I don’t think he’s your stalker. Not because he’s a decent person but because he was relieved when I accused him of it.”
“Relieved?” She didn’t understand.
“I had a gun. He had no idea why, so he was afraid. When I told him the reason I was there, he became less afraid. Fear is fundamental, so I believed his reaction, even though I wouldn’t trust a single word he said otherwise.” Tully took a bite of beef and rice and chewed.
Natalie watched the strong muscles of his throat as he swallowed, feeling a little charge of heat run through her. “So if not Matt, then who?”
“Well, I’ve moved Dobs Van Houten to the top of the suspect list after today. I’ve arranged for one of my people to keep an eye on him.”
“Dobs? He was so pathetic.” Natalie shook her head as she tried to picture him jamming knives into her photograph. “I could see him sending emails and maybe even dropping off letters. But breaking into my car? And that horrible picture?” A shudder caught her unawares. “He seems too ... bland for that.”
“He threatened to throw his wife down the stairs.” Tully’s voice was as hard as granite.
Natalie’s fingers curled into a fist. “Men do things in their own homes that they wouldn’t dare do outside them.”
Tully reached across the table to lay one of his big hands over hers, his warmth and strength coaxing her fist to unclench. “You’re not wrong, but stalking is cowardly too.”
“I suppose.” She turned her hand to wrap it around Tully’s. “I want to take a break from worrying about my stalker. Let’s talk about you.”
Tully gave her fingers a squeeze before he went back to his second helping of dinner. “There’s not much to talk about.”
“I don’t believe that.” He might affect a simple cowboy vibe, but she saw the shadows in his eyes. However, those were his secrets to keep. For now. Tonight she didn’t have the strength to pry. “What was your favorite subject in high school?”
His laugh held a note of relief at the easy question. “Nothing. I didn’t much like school. I cut whenever possible.”
“Because you were bored.” He was too smart to have found it difficult.
“Didn’t see the point. Until I realized I could get out of town if I went to college. So I worked my tail off to get the grades.” He took a sip of the beer he’d switched to and grinned. “Still didn’t like it, though.”
“You liked school enough to get an MBA.” And he’d gone to a very prestigious school.
“A means to an end. The red tape of the FBI didn’t suit me. I needed to learn how to start my own business.”
“You met Derek and Leland in class?” She would have loved to have seen that first meeting between the three men. Derek, with his movie-star good looks and his sharp financial acumen. Leland, the preppy-faced computer genius who refused to don a suit. And then Tully, the former FBI agent who sported cowboy boots and a gun. “How on earth did the three of you decide to join forces?”
“Derek and Leland were roommates by pure random chance. We all got assigned to the same first-year learning group. That’s where we discovered that we had one powerful connection.”
“What was that?”
“We hated learning groups.”
Natalie grimaced in sympathy. “Are those like group projects?”
“Yeah, where ten percent of the group does ninety percent of the work. And you have to pretend that everyone’s contribution is equally valuable. Not only that, it was the same group for every project.” He harrumphed. “We didn’t give a shit that everyone got the same credit but we got real tired of babysitting the lazy-ass members of the group.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, it became apparent early on that Derek was a wiz at numbers, and Leland was on a tech level so far above the rest of us that we didn’t speak the same language. So I made the executive decision to give them sole responsibility for those areas of all our projects. Then I kind of ran interference for them.”
So Tully had taken over the leadership role. She could imagine that his confident physical presence and his FBI mystique had intimidated the rest of the students into obedience. Derek had told Alice that he and Leland had originally been a little afraid of Tully.
“When our first project came back with a high grade, everyone kind of settled down about the division of labor.” Tully smiled reminiscently.
