Chapter 4
Tucker
“Enter!” Weggers calls, because of course he can’t say Come in like a normal human.
Hanna and I plop ourselves down into his two guest chairs and give each other a look. The look says This better work, but I have to admit I’m not feeling super hopeful.
Hanna called Weggers and begged for a spot on his schedule first thing this morning, then outlined a script to me for how we were going to present this to him.
I was supposed to let her talk, she said.
Excellent, because there was no way I was going to do the talking, and even if I did, there was no way I was going to do it in a way that would result in Weggers saying yes.
I was much more likely to tell him exactly how to fuck himself.
Then she told me what she was going to say—and what I needed to say—and I told her no fucking way, and she said to trust her.
So here we are.
“Arthur,” Hanna says, because after almost two years of being stuck in this stupid loop with Weggers, she has earned the privilege of first-name basis. “I need Tucker’s help, and he doesn’t want to help. Can you please tell him he has to?”
I grit my teeth.
Weggers looks delighted.
I can’t believe my grandfather paid this guy to do his legal work.
Except yes, I can. They’re two of a kind.
Not that my grandfather was an overeducated, self-important buffoon—more of a shotgun-toting curmudgeon.
But they definitely both had an asshole streak as wide as the whole Cascade Mountain Range.
“It’s a bad idea,” I say, through gritted teeth. Unfortunately, the gritting makes my resistance more convincing, and Weggers looks extra delighted.
“Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong with this wedding I’m putting on next weekend, and now the bride’s father is worried about the bride’s sister’s safety and wants her to have a bodyguard. And literally there is no one who can do it except Tucker. And he won’t. He’s refusing.”
Hanna pouts. Which—right there—should key Weggers in that there’s something going on. I’m ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure that the last time Hanna pouted she was wearing diapers. And even then it’s more likely that she scowled or rolled her eyes.
But instead of leaping from his seat and accusing both of us of manipulating the system, Weggers levels a stern glare at me. Or I think it’s supposed to be a stern glare. It looks more like a constipated moose.
“Tucker,” he says, and then—I kid you not—“tsk, tsk, tsk.”
If there weren’t so much on the line, I’d tip over his desk and run for the door.
“This is your sister we’re talking about.”
I cannot even begin to tell you how much I hate everything about this situation.
For one thing, I know this is my fucking sister.
None of this would be happening if it weren’t my fucking sister, because there is no one else on earth that I would contemplate reentering the private-security business for.
But also, the thing I am supposed to do next is one of the things I hate most in the entire world, which is pretending. Acting.
But this is my fucking sister we’re talking about so I cross my arms and scowl and say, “I don’t care.”
Weggers’s stern glare is warring with the delight he’s taking in my misery. It makes him look even more like a candidate for Metamucil.
“Tucker,” he says. “You know what this means, right?”
“It means I don’t even know why I’m here—” That much, at least, is true; I don’t know why I agreed to this stupid farce which I can’t believe is actually working, and I don’t know why I agreed to do something that I swore I’d never do again and—
See also: This is my fucking sister we’re talking about.
“You need to do the right thing!” he crows.
“Oh, wow,” Hanna says. “Oh, my gosh, Arthur, you’re right. It says it right in his letter.”
She is so far over the top that she has a view of the entire Deschutes Basin, but that doesn’t seem to register with Weggers.
He’s on his feet now, digging through the papers on his desk, producing that cream linen monstrosity, waving it in the air so that it narrowly misses giving me a paper cut on my nose.
(I can’t promise I wouldn’t have socked him if he had. A man has only so much self-control.)
“‘Tucker Hott,’” Weggers says in his gravest voice, “‘I know you’ll do the right thing.’”
Hanna doesn’t look at me. I don’t look at her.
She says to Weggers, “So he has to, right? He has to be the bride’s sister’s bodyguard from now till Sunday after the post-wedding brunch? And he has to stay with her—”
“Twenty-four seven,” Weggers says.
Hanna shoots me a quick look of alarm. “I don’t know if that’s necessary,” she says. “I mean, just enough of the time to make sure she’s not in—”
“Twenty-four seven,” he repeats. “He can’t leave her side. And I’ll give you two AirTags, one for him and one for the bride’s sister, and they’ll be keyed to my phone’s iStalk—”
“Find My,” Hanna says.
“Whatever,” Weggers says, waving a hand.
“And I’ll monitor them both to make sure they’re together from this afternoon through Sunday afternoon.
And also, of course, the bride’s sister has to stay safe.
That’s very important. If something happens to her, Tucker won’t have done the right thing. Obviously.”
“How do we define happens?” Hanna says.
“If her physical safety is compromised—”
“You mean, like she trips on the stairs? Or that kind of thing?”
“I’ll know it when I see it,” Weggers says.
“You’ll know it when you—”
I kick her, recognizing the edge in her voice, the ramp-up toward temper. We’re so close; no need to poke the bear.
“Got it,” Hanna says, with a surreptitious glare in my direction.
“No need to be armed,” Weggers says.
Startled, I glance his way. “I wouldn’t think so, in this case. Low-key situation, controlled environment, no explicit threat.”
I prefer to work unarmed when I can. Guns tend to escalate situations that can be defused without them.
“Anything else?” Weggers asks.
“No,” Hanna says. “I think that’s it. Thank you.”
“You can see yourselves out,” he says.
At her side, Hanna’s hands form fists.
We make it all the way to the car before she says, “Once this is over I’m going to have him disbarred.”