Page 37 of The Fourth Option
Audrey, the eldest and the self-appointed house diplomat, poked her head in. “Do I have to start confiscating the princess gear again?”
Jarrett raised an eyebrow. “Is that a thing now?”
“I have a whole drawer of mouse ears, wands, and pixie dust,” Alma whispered, looping the tie with deft fingers. “It’s starting to look like the Orlando TSA station’s lost and found.”
Outside the window, the indigo dusk of New Orleans stretched across the skyline. Jarrett’s gaze flicked to the digital clock on the nightstand. Sixty-seven minutes until cocktails. Forty-seven minutes until he stood in a ballroom of state troopers, DAs, city officials, politicians, and the urban elite. As one of five assistant special agents in charge, his competition to make it to the next level—special agent in charge—was fierce. Jumping from ASAC to SAC was not just a matter of moving from GS-14 to GS-15. It was politics, and tonight was an opportunity to show his bosshe was comfortable operating in and around those who filled the New Orleans society pages.
A knock on the front door cut through the chaos like a conductor’s baton. Then a chorus of little voices: “She’s heeeeeere!”
The babysitter barely had time to slide inside before the girls flung themselves at her in joyful greeting. Alma took a few steps into the hall and called down the stairway to the landing, “Brush teeth in twenty! No glitter on furniture! The babysitter’s in charge if anything catches fire!”
And then it was quiet.
In the mirror, Jarrett adjusted the now-perfect bow tie. “How do I look?”
“Like a black James Bond,” Alma said, slipping her arm through his.
“Does that make you my black Moneypenny?”
“I don’t think they were married, or even romantically involved.”
“You really think I need to go to this?”
She laughed at him. “Darling, for the past three weeksyou’vebeen telling me you need to get better at this kind of thing.”
“It’s ridiculous to me that with both the criminal branch and national security branch as part of my ASAC duties, I still have to hobnob.”
“And why did you take the job of multiple people?”
“Because Cappy retired and someone had to do it while they transfer a replacement.”
“And because Augie Lloyd knew you could handle the double duty. You can navigate these waters. Zip me,” she ordered, turning.
After he zipped his wife’s dress, she added, “There’s going to be a whole lot more of this in your future, Mr. Bond.”
He smiled. Her banter had taken the edge off.
She reached up and kissed him. “And, don’t forget,” she added.
“What?”
“Shaken, not stirred.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE LIGHTS SHIMMEREDlike constellations over the ballroom. Three stories above the Quarter’s clamor and a few miles upriver from the Ninth Ward, the gala at the Four Seasons radiated luxury with velvet chairs, monogrammed menus, and white-jacketed waiters.
Beyond the glass windows, the Mississippi moved without urgency, wide and dark and meandering through the hundred miles of swampy, unusable land until it reached the Gulf. Inside, New Orleans’s elite drifted from bar to banquette, each step choreographed, each smile stage-lit. There were judges and socialites, donors and retired generals, tech founders and law enforcement officers, all under the bright lights of the Crescent City.
Derek Matheson preferred the views from the thirty-third and thirty-fourth floor event spaces because he equated elevation with power, but the third floor ballrooms could accommodate more guests. Tonight was about quantity.
Nominally, the gathering was to benefit a charity called New Leaf NOLA, a youth initiative whose mission focused on mentorship, education, and opportunity. But nobody in that room had shown up to save children. They came to beseensaving children.
That was especially true of Matheson, who believed he was the only one who could claim to have actually saved children with the products he created in his labs. He leaned against the white-linen edge of a sponsor’s table, swirling a Topo Chico sparkling water in his hand. As a physician, Matheson eschewed alcohol, reminding anyone who asked him that the liver worked overtime to remove it precisely because it was a toxin. Moreover, his body was a temple. He liked his suits tight. Alcohol was empty calories.
At his side, Walt Kimbel tapped his arm.
“See those two by the bar?”
