Accidental Bodyguard. Sharon Hartley

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СКАЧАТЬ sorry?” Claudia asked, confused again. Either that or the wine was going to her head.

      “I suspect you are in need of some guidance.”

      “You’re probably right about that.”

      Marsali sipped her wine before speaking. “You are young yet. You see a handsome young man—a stud I think you Americans call them—and the hormones take over, no?”

      Claudia laughed, thinking of Jackson Richards. Could this woman read her mind?

      “And it is perfectly okay to enjoy yourself on occasion,” Marsali said. “But youth and beauty are your most precious assets. You must learn to spend them wisely.”

      Spend them wisely? Claudia stared at Marsali, trying to process a philosophy alien to anything she’d ever considered. She’d never met a woman like this. Maybe she’d seen a few in movies, but thought they were mostly fictional.

      “What did you gain from your marriage?” Marsali asked.

      “Not a damn thing.” Claudia finished the wine and placed her glass on the table, her mood vastly improved even though they were discussing her disastrous marriage to Carlos. Was it the wine or the company? She grinned. “I wanted out so badly I gave him everything.”

      “Oh, dear,” Marsali said with a disapproving frown. “Definitely a blunder. I wonder if it is too late to—”

      A drop of cold rain fell on Claudia’s arm. Several more quickly followed. Claudia looked up. She’d been so engrossed in this illuminating conversation, she hadn’t noticed the wind had died down.

      “Run for home, cherie,” Marsali squealed, gathering the wine and glasses. “Au revoir.”

      Until we meet again. Wishing she could see the wonderful Marsali again, Claudia dashed for Villa Alma. But that couldn’t happen. She’d let her guard down and put herself in danger. Marsali had seen her face.

      Too bad, though. It’d been nice having someone to talk to.

      * * *

      JACK WAS UP before daylight Saturday morning, stoked when he exited his apartment into a frigid morning. It had rained hard last night, and the plunge in temperature from the cold front resulted in a smattering of frost, a fricking miracle in Miami, something he hadn’t seen since leaving Ocala.

      But now the sky was clear and bright blue. Wearing sweats for the first time in years, he jogged two glorious miles along the beach and completed an upper body workout in the island’s state-of-the-art gym, another perk of his stint as the security director. The downside was how much time it took to get anywhere off island because of the ferry. To be safe, he’d have to be in line at 7:45 to catch the 8:00 a.m. departure. Lola would provide bagels at the meeting, so breakfast could wait.

      After a quick shower, he grabbed coffee at the Island Café and walked to the security office to run down Louise Clark’s tag number. He had maybe thirty minutes. He didn’t quite understand why he was in such a hurry. Learning about Ms. Clark wasn’t an emergency—or he hoped not, anyway. Yet his gut told him he needed to know the truth ASAP.

      He brought up the Department of Motor Vehicles website and entered the tag number.

      After a few prompts, the name Claudia Jean Goodwin materialized.

      Well, well, well.

      Was this Louise’s real name, or had she stolen the vehicle? The tag matched the vehicle description so she hadn’t switched plates. He jotted down the address, which was in the southwest section of Miami near Louise Clark’s bogus addy.

      So the woman in Villa Alma wasn’t who she said she was. He’d known something was off about her. She was either a thief or used a fake ID. Although another possibility was the Goodwin woman recently sold the car to Clark and the sale hadn’t yet corrected the website. Jack rejected that explanation. Clark claimed she’d owned her rusted car a long time.

      Was she on the run from the police? Did Santaluce know she wasn’t what she seemed? Would he find warrants under the name Claudia Goodwin?

      Needing a photo to confirm her identity, Jack entered Claudia Goodwin into a search engine and got hundreds of hits. He scrolled, found one for a nursing registry and clicked on the link, recalling the word hospital on the paper with the alarm code for Villa Alma.

      Sure enough, a photograph of a smiling Claudia Goodwin stared back at him. Louise Clark was a registered nurse, and her name was Claudia Goodwin.

      He itched to continue the hunt, but he had a meeting to attend. No time to sift through the links now to learn more about the woman residing in Villa Alma. How was he supposed to do his job with so many useless events crowding his schedule? And when had running down a license tag ever given him such a jolt of excitement?

      He looked forward to discussing all this with the lovely Ms. Clark. And why was that? He knew she was a fraud, but her very presence in Villa Alma tugged at him with an insistence that he didn’t understand. He constantly searched for logical excuses to show up at that impressive front gate. He resisted the urge to invent a security concern so he could talk to her again.

      She wasn’t a danger to Collins Island. He’d seen no evidence of criminal activity. Definitely no meth lab. Any threat was purely to Santaluce’s bank account. Jack shook his head. Yeah, and her being a gold digger didn’t hold together, either. Not with that hunk-of-junk car.

      He needed to go back into the field and dodge bullets. The mystery of Louise Clark was making him bonkers.

      Jack decided to leave Ike Gamble in charge while off island, so he finalized his instructions and returned to his apartment to retrieve his SUV. Driving the huge vehicle felt weird after motoring around in the tiny golf cart. Like a return to reality after spending a week in Disney World.

      After an uneventful trip across the channel, Jake noted an agitated, red-faced man arguing with a Miami-side guard. The fool had no clearance from a resident, so he was denied permission to board the next ferry. Clueless people, especially tourists, thought they could take a free joyride over to Collins Island and party on the exclusive beach. Happened all the time, although this guy seemed especially pissed.

      Jack waited for the outcome of the encounter to provide backup if his guard needed assistance. But the angry man finally gave up. He drove past Jack with a phone pressed against his ear.

      Out of habit, Jack jotted down the tag number.

      * * *

      TWO HOURS LATER, Jack sat at a polished conference table in the Protection Alliance’s office with Lola and the four other operatives working in the south Florida area. Agents grumbled about the all-hands meetings, but Lola insisted on a monthly gathering to keep everybody grounded, especially the men and women working undercover or in other dangerous circumstances.

      Jack suspected that Lola wasn’t just the office manager, but also the owner. Her position and source of authority remained murky, but no one argued with the fact that she was in charge.

      He’d almost completed his report on Collins Island, detailing how the security department ran smoothly.

      “What? No cougars this month?” asked Greta, a blonde German operative fluent in five languages, СКАЧАТЬ