Chapter 22 Wes
Wes
Anew day, a new humiliation devised at the maniacal hands of Sienna Diaz and Raquel Ezra. I’m currently standing in the warm sun, under blazing film lights, talking with the other guys and trying to pretend like I’m psyched to be here because I’m so into Harmony.
Once we’re all in formation and the director cues us in, the show’s host, Chet Hodgkins, beams his megawatt smile at the camera.
A former NFL tight end turned TV announcer, he’s the kind of person for whom it feels like you need to use their full name, every time—more a product than a person.
Chet Hodgkins. “We’re back. Mountain Men, how did you enjoy your modeling gig yesterday? ”
Some of the guys really ham it up for the camera, I’ve noticed.
Guys who seem to have nothing to say in between shots suddenly become Mr. Personality once they get a shot at screen time.
I guess these shows always have people who are only in it to get famous.
Then again, I’m lying about my entire identity, so I guess I’m in no place to judge.
The thought curdles in my stomach, but I do my best to smile and be easy, carefree Nate R. “Awesome,” I echo along with some of the other guys.
Chet Hodgkins grins back at us. His teeth are so white—it’s a bit uncanny, but it must look good on camera.
“That’s great, guys. I’m sure we all know how important it is to give to charity.
And don’t worry, I’ve asked and yes, you can keep the red underwear from the photoshoot yesterday.
” Pause for laughter. “If you could use one word to describe the shoot, what would it be?”
“Humiliating,” one guy calls out, but his voice sounds good-natured, and the rest of us laugh.
I don’t particularly want to draw attention to myself, but I remember I’m supposed to be the “funny guy,” and I really do need to get my head in the game. So I look straight at the camera and wink. “Liberating.”
That earns some more laughter, and Chet Hodgkins shakes his head at the camera, still grinning.
“We have all kinds here, don’t we?” He claps his hands together, signaling a more serious shift.
“Well, the day is still young, and the Mountainettes are eager to make the most of it. Ladies, why don’t you join us now? ”
The four Mountainettes walk into the shot, arms linked together.
They were present yesterday throughout the shoot, watching us get our pictures taken and interacting with us through staged bits when the camera was rolling.
I saw Harmony in passing, but aside from one short conversation about my coonskin cap, we didn’t get a chance to speak much.
Maybe that means she’s already become more interested in one of the other guys.
The thought shouldn’t fill me with so much hope.
Once the Mountainettes are lined up next to Chet Hodgkins, he beams broadly at the camera.
“It’s time for the Mountainettes to get to know their Mountain Men better.
For the rest of the day, each Mountainette will choose the Mountain Man contestant of her choice to go on a date—just the two of them. ”
At this news, I feel the guys shifting around me, all of them eager to be singled out—whether for more screen time or more time with one of the women, it’s hard to say. I’m probably the only guy standing here hoping I won’t be picked.
Chet Hodgkins slightly angles his body toward the Mountainettes, while still keeping his face mostly turned toward the camera. “Allison, let’s start with you . . .”
I zone out slightly as Allison gives an obviously rehearsed speech and then chooses one of her contestants.
This will be the first prolonged one-on-one time the Mountain Men will be getting with the Mountainettes.
Whoever gets to spend this time with a Mountainette will probably be the first to start really building a bond with her.
I should be frothing at the mouth for this opportunity with Harmony.
So why do I wince as Harmony steps forward to take her turn?
Dumb question. I know why.
My eyes instinctively search for Nina in the crowd, but she isn’t here.
She hasn’t been here all morning. I try not to think about what that could mean—if Aaron Miller has somehow discovered she’s being onboarded as an informant for the FBI.
Who knows how desperate he could become if he finds out he’s under investigation.
How dangerous. If he’s prevented her from leaving, or hurt her in any way . . .
Stop it, brain, I tell myself firmly. It’s hard for me not to catastrophize when I’m undercover.
There are just too many things that could go wrong at any given point in a case.
Adding a civilian into the mix makes things that much more volatile.
And when that civilian is Nina, sweet, lovely Nina, with her reluctant smiles and those dark, expressive eyes .
. . I’m going to have to work twice as hard to stay focused on the mission.
“Gentlemen, I really appreciate you putting yourselves out there yesterday,” Harmony begins, sweeping her gaze over each of her six remaining contestants in turn.
“As most of you know by now, giving back to the community is one of my core values, and I was so impressed to see how willing all of you were.”
I fight to keep my face blank, despite feeling a twinge of instinctive dislike. Listen, I also think helping people is important, but in my experience? When you have to go around announcing to everyone how charitable you are, you’re usually doing it for yourself, and not for other people.
I’m probably being ungenerous, though. Most likely, Harmony was encouraged to say something like that by one of her producers. And why shouldn’t she take the opportunity to establish her brand and try to go after her dreams?
“But I think it’s obvious that one of you put his dignity on the line more than the others,” Harmony continues with a laugh. “And that willingness to go above and beyond really impressed me. So today, I’d like to take Nate R. on my date.”
Nate R.
Holy shit, that’s me.
I almost don’t manage to curb my look of dismay, but at the last minute, I transform it into one of surprise, instead. “Even with the coonskin cap?” I ask, earning some more laughter from the other contestants.
“You can leave that one back at the cabin,” Harmony quips.
She reaches out her hand to me, so I take it, joining her as we wait for the last two Mountainettes to reveal their picks.
All the while, my mind is racing. This is good.
This is good! This is exactly what Morrie and I have been planning.
When I steal a glance over at him, I see him holding up double thumbs-ups, grinning wildly.
I wish I could muster the same enthusiasm.
And it’s not because of Nina. Well, not only because of Nina.
In all the times I’ve had to pretend to be somebody else, I’ve never had to pretend to be falling in love with somebody.
As an abstract concept, it felt like something I could do, to achieve the necessary end goal of gaining Aaron Miller’s trust. But now, with Harmony standing right beside me, her hand in mine, I don’t know how I’m possibly going to be able to pull this off.
When I trained to become an undercover agent, I was warned that it’s easy to lose yourself.
Most human beings are naturally empathetic.
There’s a reason why laughter is contagious; if someone else laughs, our instinct is to laugh with them.
If we see someone hurt, we feel sorry for them.
We seek connection with other people, and we do that by feeling what they feel, intuitively responding to what emotion is shown to us.
So when you go undercover and someone is kind to you, laughs at your jokes, confides in you, it’s incredibly difficult to remain neutral to them.
Even if you go in with the mindset that all of your interactions are pretend, that they aren’t real to you, the fact that they’re real to someone else makes it hard not to get sucked in.
Try as you might to remain removed, emotions always get involved. Always.
Earlier in my career, I thought taking on physically dangerous tasks, like going undercover for a drug cartel, would be the most difficult part of my job.
But it’s really the emotionally dangerous missions that can fuck you up.
Like befriending someone. Integrating yourself into their family.
Growing to genuinely like and care about them.
I’m not worried that I’ll fall in love with Harmony. My heart is otherwise preoccupied. But what am I supposed to do if she starts falling in love with me?
As if she can read my thoughts, Harmony turns to me now, smiling. The cameras are still rolling, but this isn’t a moment that’s been orchestrated by the show. It’s just a small exchange between the two of us. “Are you excited?” she whispers.
Hearing the nervousness in her voice, the hopeful hitch, my heart clutches painfully in my chest. Wrong. This is wrong. I do my best to smile. “Can’t wait,” I murmur back.
The producers give the four Mountain Men who were selected for one-on-one dates a short amount of time to change and get ready.
We’re herded back to our respective rooms. To get a better sense of “who we really are” (ha), we’re meant to wear our own clothes from home on these one-on-one dates, so there’s no one from the wardrobe department to help us get ready.
As I go through the motions of getting dressed, my mind is spiraling. I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t fucking know if I can do this.
When I step outside the room, Morrie is waiting for me in the hallway. I can see by the grin on his face that he’s ready to give me shit, as usual. But when he catches sight of my expression, he sobers immediately. “You need the recording?” he asks me.
“I need the recording,” I confirm grimly.
This isn’t my first time going undercover with Morrie. We always have an escape hatch in case things start to get too real once I’m deep undercover, if I lose sight of what it is I’m trying to do. I’ve never had to use it so early before.
Morrie takes me back into the room and locks the door. Without saying a word, he hands over his phone. I pull up the file and listen to the recording he has saved there.
The voice is a woman’s. Mabel Winthrop. I can hear the strain of emotion as she struggles to tell her story matter-of-factly. “My husband, William Winthrop, was a deacon in the Church of Light. The senior pastor was Aaron Miller . . .”
I listen as Mabel recounts how her husband was taken in by Aaron’s charm, by his pretend kindness, by his enthusiasm for William and the work they would be doing together.
She describes the complete trust that Aaron put into William, and says that William happily reciprocated, believing that Aaron had been called by God, and that together, they would do great things.
Unfortunately the tale quickly takes a dark turn as Mabel tells how William began to have some doubts.
He made some financial discoveries in the church records that he asked Aaron about, believing there must have been some mistake.
Not too long after that, Aaron and his family left town.
And William was left behind with a paper trail of bank statements, deposits that he never knew about, withdrawals that were made under his name but that he never authorized.
All of it added up to an embezzlement charge that not only landed William in prison, but lost him his church, his congregation, and his community.
“That life was everything to William,” Mabel states. “He worked so hard. He truly believed that he was doing God’s work. He would have done anything for Aaron, and in return, Aaron betrayed him. He framed him. He humiliated him. He broke him. He—”
Her voice breaks off as she begins crying.
By now, of course, I’ve listened to this recording so many times I already know how it’s going to end. It doesn’t make it any easier to hear.
Not long after his imprisonment, William found a way to die by suicide in prison.
Mabel was left behind with their three young children.
As if that sorrow wasn’t enough, Mabel was ostracized from her church community, who still believed that her husband had committed these terrible crimes against them.
“Those people were our family,” Mabel tells us in a choked voice. “And then we were nothing to them.”
I stop the recording, breathing heavily, as I try to regain control of my emotions. This is what I’m here for. This is what I can’t lose sight of.
William Winthrop was just one of the many people betrayed, framed, humiliated, and broken by Aaron Miller. And if I can’t find a way to stop him, he’ll just keep doing this again, and again, and again.
There has to be proof. He’s smart but he’s not invincible. Everyone makes mistakes. Even Aaron Miller.
I just have to find a way to prove it.
I look up to see Morrie watching me, his face grim. “You good?” he asks.
For once there’s no trace of anything sarcastic or snarky in his voice.
As much as he gives me shit, Morrie is in this undercover operation with me.
He’s been trained to help me through it, and to pull me out when it seems like I might be getting in too deep.
He also knows exactly what I need to hear to keep my head in the game.
I finally manage to nod back at him. “I’m good.” And I am. Or at least, I will be.
Morrie gives me an awkward pat on the back. He’s not much of an affectionate guy, but I know he means well. “Come on, Gandalf,” he says with forced enthusiasm, making a halfhearted fist pump.
“Gandalf?” I repeat quizzically.
“Yeah, he’s, like, a cool wizard or something. You’re into that stuff, right?” Morrie shrugs. “I thought it’d be inspirational.”
I scoff. “Gandalf would never go undercover. He’s too high-profile.
” I consider it. “I guess maybe Bilbo might be the closest thing to an undercover agent that Tolkien writes? Since he misrepresents himself to Golem and Smaug to get the information he needs.” Shaking my head, I pat his back sympathetically. “But nice try.”
Morrie rolls his eyes at me, and I’m relieved to see we’re falling back into our usual pattern. “How will I ever live down my shame at getting that wrong,” he deadpans.
I shrug, grateful for the return to normalcy. “We all have our cross to bear . . .”