The Bodyguard. Julie Miller

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       Scared yet?

      “Oh, God.” The silent assault pushed the blood to her feet, making her feel dizzy, light-headed. Her vision blurred the vile words as she crumpled the letter in her fist. “Max?” She instinctively reached for the dog. “Max?”

      He hopped onto the seat beside her and she hugged him tight. But she still felt cold, isolated, afraid.

      “Why is this happening to me?” she whispered into the dog’s fur, rocking back and forth. “Why does he want to hurt—?”

      The phone in her coat pocket rang and she screamed out loud. Max barked but licked her hand as her shaking fingers dug into the pocket of her coat.

      It rang again, the chirping sound creeping along her skin and raising goose bumps. It was him. She knew it was him and she answered anyway. “What?”

      A single, satisfied breath. And then, “Did you get my message?”

      “Stop this.” Anger and confusion colored her plea. “I’m not like other people. I can’t handle this.”

      Another soft breath ended in a low-pitched laugh. “Don’t you think I know that?”

      Charlotte slapped the phone shut and hurled it across the limo.

      It started ringing again as soon as it settled into a carpeted corner of the floor. “Stop it!”

      She snatched Max’s leash and shoved the car door open. Her feet slipped on the red bricks that lined the road, and she grabbed onto the door handle to keep from falling. One shoe came off and tumbled into the ditch. She didn’t care that her stockings were soaking up the oily residue on the asphalt. She had only one thought in mind as she spun around to search the hillside. “Dad?”

      Her gaze darted from umbrella to umbrella, from marker to marker. She needed the cool rain splashing her face to clear her senses enough to realize that she’d just captured the attention of half the people milling through Mt. Washington.

      For an instant, Charlotte froze. Her skin heated with embarrassment, her thoughts raced with panic. The man who’d called her was here. Watching. Taking delight in her phobic reaction to his threats.

       Stay in the moment, Charlotte. Don’t let him make you crazy.

      What a fool she was. Just go home. Don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing you like this.

      Using her hand more than her vision to guide her, she tugged Max’s leash and sidled around the front of the car. She knocked on the driver’s window, peered inside behind the wheel. Empty. Where had he gone? This wasn’t part of the plan.

      “Did you need me, Miss?”

      The smell of smoke filled her nose as she twirled around. “My father gave you specific instructions to wait …”

      Uniform.

      “I was just taking a cigarette break, ma’am. Union allows it. I was right over there.”

      She read the name on his chest beneath the event company’s logo. Bud.

      She didn’t know any Bud.

      “Did you …?” She raised the crumpled note in her hand. “Did you give this to my brother?”

      “Ma’am?” Bud tucked a toothpick into the corner of his mouth and frowned. “Is something wrong?”

      “Charlotte Mayweather!”

      She turned to the sound of the voice. Snap. A bright light flashed in her eyes and she jerked her face away.

      “Hey, pal.” Bud in the uniform stepped between her and the photographer who was trying to snap another picture. “You leave her alone.”

       Move.

      The photographer with the receding hairline wasn’t the only reporter calling her name. While he traded curses with Bud, Charlotte blinked her eyes clear and looked over the hood of the limo, seeking out a familiar face. Any familiar face.

      Red hair. “Audrey?”

      The moment she spotted her friend hurrying down the hill with Alex Taylor at her side, Charlotte limped around the car on one shoe. With a click of her tongue to command him, Max leaped over the ditch with her and scrambled up the hill.

      Another light flashed in her peripheral vision and she turned up the collar of her trench coat, pulling her head in like a turtle and skirting past a black-marble marker to reach her friends.

      “Charlotte, what’s happened?” Audrey wrapped her up in a hug and Alex’s strong arms folded around them both.

      “He called me on my new phone. He’s here.”

      Alex urged them both down the hill toward the cars, his chin tipped toward the microphone on his collar. “Come to my location now,” she heard, as he guided them across the ditch. “And get those photographers back. Lassen, you son of a …” Alex pulled back and pressed a kiss to Audrey’s temple. “Get her in the car while I take care of this rat.”

      With Audrey’s arm around her shoulders, they turned toward the limo. “Steve Lassen is that tabloid opportunist who gave me such grief during my gang-leader trial last November. He and Alex have history.”

      Charlotte saw Bud circling around the limo, opening the back door for them. She planted her feet, tripping out of her second shoe before they stopped. “I don’t want to go with him.”

      “Char, the press …” She pulled the letter from Charlotte’s hand. Audrey’s pale cheeks flooded with color. “Where did you get this?”

      Men in black uniforms were closing in on their position near the hood of the limousine. Orders were shouted, protests made. But the press was retreating to the opposite side of the road.

      “Oh, my God.” Charlotte willingly turned her back to the cameras and squeezed Audrey’s hand, worried by her friend’s reaction to the threat. “This is just like the one I got last November. Alex!”

      “Jeffrey—the guy organizing all this—said it was from Kyle, that a man in some kind of uniform had given it to him.”

      Alex was back. He wound his arm around Audrey and read the note.

      “Where’s Jeffrey now?” Audrey asked, futilely trying to look beyond Alex’s protective grasp.

      “Leave that to the detectives. He’s back,” Alex announced grimly.

      “Who’s back?” Charlotte whispered, more alarmed by the way Audrey’s cheeks blanched than by anything that had happened in the past few minutes.

      “The Rich Girl Killer.”

      It was a bleak, terrifying pronouncement.

      “The man who killed Gretchen and Val?” The man who’d worked with a gang to terrorize Audrey? He was after her?

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