The Bodyguard. Julie Miller

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      “They’re here to help.”

      “Like you did?”

      Ouch. The big gray eyes nailed him with the accusation.

       Give it up, Jonesy. You’re not going to win this gal over tonight.

      “I’m sorry.” Apology colored her voice, and she reached out as if she was going to touch him. But she quickly snatched her hand back to her chest. “I shouldn’t have said that. All the rumors you’ve heard about the crazy woman at Mayweather Mansion are true.”

      “I don’t listen to rumors—”

      “It’s not your fault.” The woman was going into panic mode again. “Audrey? What am I going to do?”

      “C’mon.” Audrey wrapped her arm around Charlotte’s shoulders and turned her toward the door. “Let’s get you back inside. Alex, keep them away if you can.”

      “I’ll do my best, sweetheart. I’m gonna need you, big guy.”

      After stowing his Glock back in its holster, Alex squeegeed the rain from his sleek black hair and put up a hand to hold back the officers hurrying toward them. “I’m Alex Taylor, SWAT Team One. The scene is secure, guys.”

      One of the uniforms kept coming. “Is that your truck? You’re gonna have to move it. I’ve got two ambulances on the scene, with orders to get them in here.”

      Trip stepped forward, making a bigger blockade. “You need a coroner’s wagon, not an ambulance.” He nodded toward the BMW. “The vic is an elderly gentleman. Richard …?”

      “Eames,” Alex supplied the missing info. “Gunshot wound to the head.”

      The officer glanced inside the car, clearly questioning Trip’s authority. “I’ll have to check with my superior.”

      “Do that.”

      That took care of the first two officers, but the second wave was pulling up at the end of the alley, grouping up to assess and discuss the scene. The response to one frightened woman’s call for help was bordering on overkill.

      “Just how rich are the Mayweathers?” Trip asked.

      “Jackson Mayweather is worth more than you and I both will make in a lifetime—and then some. Once word gets out that his daughter has been harmed again …”

      “Again?”

      Alex grinned ruefully. “You read all those books and yet you don’t know front-page news? Charlotte was kidnapped when she was seventeen. Tortured. Ransomed for millions of dollars. Testifying at her kidnappers’ trial was the last time she made an official public appearance. According to Audrey, a situation like this could send Charlotte back into seclusion for … forever, I guess.”

      Kidnapped? Tortured? Trip felt the blood draining from his head at the memory of him wrestling the terrified woman to the ground. “You didn’t think I needed to know that before you sent me over here? I could have done some real harm.”

      Alex’s dark eyes narrowed, surveying Trip from head to toe and back up to his bare arm and the makeshift bandage there. “Maybe we need that bus, after all. What happened?”

      “Don’t ask.”

      More people arrived on the scene, this time ranking detectives wearing suits and ties. A pair of EMTs, carrying their boxes of gear, followed close behind. The crew of a news van was already unloading equipment and setting up shots.

      Alex’s deep breath matched Trip’s own. Any chance of secluding Charlotte from the cops and the media was quickly spiraling out of control. “If Charlotte didn’t call 9-1-1, who did?”

      Trip looked at the phone still clutched in his hand. He remembered Charlotte’s instant terror at the idea of the killer calling her again.

      “I think I know.” Trip lifted his gaze, sweeping the rooftops and bricked-up windows before he advanced to meet the red-haired detective striding toward them. The bastard was still here. The man who’d killed the driver and forced Charlotte to arm herself with an ancient sword was someplace close by—maybe even a part of the frenzy—watching, feeding off her terror. “Get the team on the radio. We need to set up a perimeter.”

       Chapter Three

      He was walking away.

      The biggest man in the room, in the whole parking lot, was walking away.

      Charlotte pulled away from the hand tugging at her wrist, pushed away the stethoscope sliding beneath her blouse and scooted forward on the gurney to peer through the lingering drizzle of rain to watch Trip Jones rise from the bumper of the second ambulance where he’d been sitting. He smoothed his big palm over the pristine white bandage where he’d been given sutures and a shot. He said something to the paramedic working on him and then turned to follow his commanding officer—a salt-and-pepper-haired man who’d introduced himself as Captain Cutler earlier—over to a meeting of bowed heads and nods with the rest of his SWAT team. Captain Cutler. Trip. Her friend Alex. Another dark-haired man wearing a perpetual scowl. A blonde woman with a ponytail.

      Surrounded by a busy anthill of uniformed officers, detectives, CSIs, reporters, EMTs and family members moving around the museum, alley lot and blocked-off street, her eyes were drawn to the controlled stillness of Trip’s SWAT team. Yes, they occasionally glanced around, or turned an ear to their shoulders when a message came over the radios clipped to their flak vests. But they were focused on their own discussion, gesturing occasionally, nodding agreement to one suggestion or another.

      Charlotte couldn’t explain her fascination with Trip Jones. Although she’d heard Audrey and Alex talk of him, she hadn’t met him before tonight. It had been years since she’d met any man who wasn’t family or didn’t come to the house.

      There was something to fear about all that size and strength and specialized training. For one irrational second inside that warehouse, she’d thought he meant to snap Max in two with one hand. Heck, he could have snapped her in two if he’d wanted, and she wasn’t any skinny twig of a woman. She hadn’t been pressed against that much man and muscle since, well … ever. He’d had every right to get physical with her, but he hadn’t hurt her. Although built like a mountain, he was perhaps more like a volcano—a quiet, intimidating presence on the landscape, friendly enough unless all that inherent power in him erupted. Then she could imagine he’d be a far scarier opponent than the man who’d wrestled her to the ground tonight.

      Fascinating indeed. She hadn’t dated or acknowledged a hormone since the kidnapping. Yet here she was processing an almost intellectual curiosity about a man. One she would most likely never see again.

      And who most certainly wouldn’t want anything further to do with a screwy piece of work like her.

      Charlotte could feel herself disconnecting from the confusion going on inside her head and closing in around her. It was a long-ingrained coping skill—but not the healthiest way of dealing with stress, so she turned away from Trip Jones and struggled to stay engaged with the three men sitting on each side of the gurney and standing with a notepad at the ambulance’s open rear door.

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