Read Online The Strategist by John Hardy Bell - Free Book Online

told George and Gracie to stay extra-vigilant. Judging from their reaction to the music, they were doing just that.
    Aside from the sound of clawed feet scurrying against the wood floor downstairs, the night had fallen back into silence. Julia put her head on the pillow and closed her eyes. She saw the Audi in her mind, and wondered if it had been outside of Camille’s house while she was there. It couldn’t have been , she concluded. If it was, she would have noticed it sooner.
    But what if it had been there? And if it had been, how many other times could she have missed it? For all she knew, he could have been following her for weeks. Something was making her nervous enough to look outside before she left the house every morning. Yet she was always quick to dismiss her fear when she saw nothing to support it. But she now knew the fear was legitimate, and its source had apparently been in her rearview mirror all along.
    When she called Camille earlier in the evening, she had done so reluctantly. She wanted to tell her about the Audi and all the reasons she believed it may have been following her, but she was afraid to hear what the words would sound like as they came out of her mouth. It is one thing to think someone may be stalking you. It is another thing to give an audible voice to it. Julia was almost relieved when Camille didn’t answer and gave no thought to leaving a voicemail. She couldn’t even fathom how such a message would begin.
    But she knew that the time for avoidance was over. Julia had wanted to tell her so much more about what was happening: work, the affair, the flash disk, and how the three were so intricately intertwined. But like the child who promises to bring her failing report card home to show her parents, she chickened out.
    It was true that Camille was dealing with a lot, and Julia adding her own problems to the mix would probably be more than her already full plate could handle. But Camille was also the kind of person who could easily cast her own problems aside to come to the aide of someone else, especially when that someone else was her best friend. The fear of being a burden wasn’t the reason why Julia couldn’t bring herself to tell the story. It was the fear of being judged by the one person in the world who still thought the absolute best of her; the one person who would never believe her to be capable of doing the things that she had done; the one person who still saw enough good in her to be disappointed by the bad. Some things in the world were worth preserving, even if you had to lie through your teeth to preserve them. Even though Julia knew she couldn’t get away with outright lying, she had been determined to withhold the full truth for as long as she could.
    She had gotten away with telling a great many half-truths, down to the urgent work message that was actually a service alert from her cell phone provider. But that now had to change. Julia had promised a full accounting. And she had every intention of making good on that promise.
    It no longer mattered if Camille judged her or looked differently upon her. Despite the image she may have displayed to the world, the truth of who she actually was lay in the files of that disk. Camille had to know that truth, not merely for the sake of having a more accurate picture of Julia’s life, but also in the interests of saving it.
    Her law enforcement background would offer a much-needed perspective. If Camille told her that she should reconsider doing anything with the disk, that it was too dangerous or too destructive to ever see the light of day, it would remain safely hidden. If Camille thought it needed to be released, and promised to be there to help her through the nuclear fallout, Julia would be in the phone with her attorney within five minutes.
    Even though it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which option she would advise taking, Julia was prepared for the consequences of both. She would not have been able to