And then Dad had up and decided to replace him. No reason, no explanation, just a meeting added to the calendar Mom and Dad used religiously, and Buck never looked at. They usually didn’t care, either. Most of the meetings and events were the boring, official kinds that Buck hated, and that they didn’t want him present in. On the rare occasion that he actually did need to attend, some admin or his bodyguard would push and prod him along. Or drag him along, on one memorable occasion two bodyguards before Bobby.
This time, though Dad apparently really wanted to cover his bases. Buck actually got a two-line text message on top of the ignored calendar event: Monday, 10am, my office. New bodyguard. Of course, Dad didn’t even have the courtesy of using full sentences. Too busy with people far more important than Buck, or something like that. It wasn’t a new development, but that didn’t stop something in his chest from shrivelling up every time he looked at that text message.
Bobby was frustratingly tight-lipped about the whole situation, too. He was too professional to say anything bad about the man who was paying his salary—or had been, until recently—but despite popular opinion, Buck wasn’t completely stupid or blind. He knew how to read between the lines, well enough to know that the change in assignment hadn’t been Bobby’s idea. There must’ve been some kind of NDA or gag order about it, official or otherwise, because no matter how much of a brat Buck was about it, or how earnestly and seriously he begged, Bobby wouldn’t tell him much at all. Despite a concerted campaign of wheedling in the week leading up to this meeting, Buck had managed to exactly two things about his new bodyguard, and not a single thing more. He didn’t even have a name, or a gender. All he knew was this: they were some ex-Army vet, and they were “good people.”
That latter was pretty high praises, coming from Bobby. Too bad Buck didn’t believe it. He’d met the ex-Army type before, was the thing. Quite a lot of them, in fact. Not one of them had been “good people,” in his experience.
