Protect My Heart by Judy Corry
Arie
“Hey,rookie. How’s your first day on the job?” The voice of my new supervisor, Jason, boomed through my phone’s earpiece. I sat in my truck and waited for my new assignment, Emma Howard, to finish putting her groceries in the trunk of her silver Toyota Camry.
“This internship will be more entertaining than I thought. Are supermarket accidents a regular occurrence for her?”
“Not usually.” Jason laughed.
“What about mood swings? You guys told me she’s an easygoing girl, but she seemed like she couldn’t make up her mind whether to be nice to me or annoyed.”
“Well,” Jason said. “From what we’ve observed from a distance, she seemed fine. But we’re not the ones right there up close.”
“Looks like I get to be the one to discover the answer to my question, then,” I mumbled into my phone as I watched Emma put her grocery cart away. I hadn’t figured teenage girls out when I was in high school; why had I expected it would be easier a few years later?
Once Emma had backed out of her parking spot, I put my truck in gear. “She’s on the move again,” I said. “I’ll check in soon.”
“Let me know if you need anything,” Jason said. “And try not to attract too many high school girls with that baby face of yours. Emma is our focus and the only one we need you to befriend.”
“That shouldn’t be an issue,” I said. That’s the last thing I needed—hormonal girls trying to distract me from doing my job. If I kept to the shadows this weekend, I could avoid any attention until I officially started school on Monday.
It was hard to imagine one girl would need this much surveillance. She was harmless. I almost felt bad, deceiving her the way I had.
But that was the nature of my work.
Secrecy was everything.
Being an undercover bodyguard for a teenage girl definitely wasn’t my dream job, but it would look good on my résumé. And I needed all the experience I could get if I wanted a shot at the Secret Service someday. My being here had been carefully orchestrated in preparation for the expected danger. If someone found out who I really was, it could ruin years of planning…and a lot of document forging to get me into the school in the first place. Not even the principal or teachers could know I was undercover. There could be absolutely no slip-ups.
I followed Emma back to her house and parked across the street at one of the houses Jason and Sophie owned. The night agent, Bruce, had just moved in a couple of months ago, which made it easy for him to keep an eye on her place all night.
Emma got out of her car, popped the trunk, and grabbed several grocery bags before walking into the two-story brick house. The homes here in Utah were a lot newer than the ones in my neighborhood back in Cortland, New York.
From what I’d been told, her house seemed like a calm and loving place. She lived there with two happily married parents. Her dad owned his CPA firm, and her mom was a homemaker who volunteered for a lot of community things. Her older brother and sister were out of the house, leading productive lives. Yep, everyone and everything in her life seemed to be perfect.
Just like everything in mine had seemed normal from the outside. But just like my family, hers had dangerous secrets of their own. And unlike her, I’d been able to get away from mine.
Even if I was about to pretend to be in high school again, I’d take it over the pitying looks of the well-meaning citizens of Cortland. Anything would be better than staying in a town where my dad was still considered the local hero.
