The Temporary Agent Read Online Free Page B

paused to take another look at the photo he had received.
    Stella wore her dark, curly hair cropped to the exact length of her oval face. Twirled strands often fell in front of her eyes, which she would pull back and tuck behind her ears with long fingers, only for those strands to fall free again, often seconds later.
    For some reason, Tom loved that gesture—the futility of it and that it was something she did so often that she didn’t notice doing it anymore.
    Prior to taking the selfie, Stella had shaken her head, tousling her hair so her face was partially obscured.
    Tom could still see, though, her dark-brown eyes looking boldly at the camera.
    Locking with his.
    He could see, too, her delicate features—Anglo nose, high cheekbones, sharp jawline.
    He’d never had beauty in his life before—beauty that slept when he slept, woke when he woke.
    Living beauty, breathing beauty.
    He couldn’t imagine life without that now.
    Not that he’d have to.
    Tom took one last look at the photo before deleting it along with their text conversation. He then deleted from his call history the incoming call he had missed.
    He kept his phone as clean as possible. And he only ever needed to glance at a number—any number, no matter how long—to commit it to memory.
    Returning his phone to his pocket, Tom went back to his lunch.
    The image of Stella would linger in his mind as he worked this afternoon, which was, of course, why she had sent it.

    Tom had washed up in the men’s room and was about to punch in and head back out to the shop floor for the second half of his shift when his phone buzzed again.
    Five rapid vibrations erupted in the bottom of his jeans pocket, followed by another five.
    Stopping to check the phone, Tom saw on the display the same unfamiliar number that he had seen just an hour before.
    He waited for the call to go to his voice mail, then watched the phone’s display for notification that he had received a voice message.
    Ten seconds passed. Fifteen seconds. Twenty seconds.
    Nothing.
    So either a long message was being left or the caller had hung up and left none at all.
    It was a minute past one o’clock now. Tom had missed punching in exactly on the hour, one of their petty foreman’s many requirements, but that didn’t concern him. Tom was the best machinist in the shop, could do this work in the dark.
    What was the man going to do? Fire him?
    What Tom was concerned about was the fact that it was unusual to receive a call from anyone but Stella.
    Actually, Stella rarely called, preferring to communicate by text.
    But in the six months he and Stella had been together, Tom’s phone had been virtually dormant.
    And while he was still using the same phone he’d purchased upon his discharge from the navy five years ago, he could count on one hand the people with whom he had exchanged numbers.
    The incoming number did not belong to any of those select few.
    In this day and age, no phone number could remain private forever. Tom understood that eventually his own would fall into the hands of some telemarketer and from there spread to countless others, at which point his only connection to the outside world—a limited connection, by his own choosing—would likely begin to ring frequently with numbers he did not recognize.
    Today seemed to be that day.
    Nearly another minute had gone by—no voice mail.
    This wasn’t a distress call, then, one that could not be ignored.
    The protocol in place had established that any attempt at contact by his former commanding officer would come from a specific number.
    That number and no other, so Tom would know to answer.
    Since this wasn’t that number, he was in the clear.
    Returning the phone to his pocket, Tom pushed through the thick fire doors and walked out onto a noisy shop floor crowded with heavy machinery that raged like giant beasts.
    The afternoon shift had begun without him.
    He glanced up at the glass-enclosed office. Seeing that Tom was looking at him,