Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  The agents had their own procedures. They always checked the doors for signs of forced entry and always went in ahead of her—Harrison walking through the rooms for a security check while she waited with Green just inside the door for the all clear. Their system had worked just fine so far.

  “Tomorrow we’ll sit down and talk about how Mr. DuCharme could contribute his experience and time,” she said. She appreciated that Harrison and Green hadn’t challenged the new guy just yet, probably mindful that she’d had all she could take for one day.

  “Maybe we can—”

  She stopped talking when DuCharme came through the door that linked the garage to the rest of the house. She stared for a moment. Guess he knew something about security systems. She was too annoyed with him to be impressed.

  “Everything is okay,” he said with a grin. He pushed the button to close the garage door before coming over to open the car door for her.

  She followed him inside, shaking her head silently as she went. “Help yourself to anything in the kitchen. The coffee is up here.” She opened a cabinet then closed it. “I’m going to turn in for the night. Thank you all for your help today. Good night.”

  If that sounded too much like a retreat, she didn’t care.

  She headed up the stairs without looking back, kicked off her shoes as soon as she got into her bedroom. She closed the door, opened her window then sank onto the bed, resisting the temptation to fall over and succumb to sleep. A quick shower first to relax her aching muscles, then some rest. Thank God it was Friday. At least she didn’t have to worry about getting up early in the morning.

  She unzipped her gown then stood and let it slide off her body, enjoying the cool night breeze that caressed her heated skin. The voluminous creation of brocade had way too much material for a midsummer party. She shed her panties and bra and tossed them into the laundry basket, picked up the dress to place it in the dry-cleaning pile. She could hear the men talking downstairs, a low murmur of masculine voices.

  Daniel DuCharme.

  She hoped Cal knew what he was doing.

  The man was awfully … everything. And young. She was thirty-five and feeling much older. Working in politics added five years easily, losing her husband another five. It annoyed her that she cared. She shouldn’t. She’d seen Secret Service agents younger than DuCharme.

  But she hadn’t been physically attracted to them. The thought stopped her in her tracks.

  God, she was a fool. A surprised fool. She hadn’t expected ever to feel that kind of awareness again. She’d thought she’d buried all that with Ian. Apparently not.

  Ironic how those impulses would surface at the most inappropriate time with the most inappropriate man. Her body didn’t care, she supposed. It had been neglected for a long time and it was letting her know it was still alive.

  Part of the recovery process, probably. She had accepted Ian’s death and dealt with the grief. She had to, or die with him. Nobody could live with that much heartache. She’d chosen to go on. But she expected the rest of her life journey, or at least the next many, many years, to be solitary.

  She shook her head. She was too tired, her mind not thinking straight. DuCharme was her new bodyguard, nothing more, nor would he ever be.

  The extra man would come in handy. She’d been feeling guilty about the hours required from Harrison and Green, although at least they didn’t have to be on duty when she was on Capitol Hill. As long as she was inside, that location was secure enough. The rest of the time, the men divided the job into shifts, during which the resident bodyguard didn’t let her out of sight. It would make things easier to have those hours divided by three.

  She turned on the water and let it wash over her, let the heat relax her muscles. She always took hot showers, as hot as her skin could handle, even in the worst heat of summer. Ian used to tease her.

  Ian.

  It seemed impossible to have that closeness again with someone else—her body’s sudden awakening in DuCharme’s presence aside. She couldn’t think seriously about him that way, not for a second. But someone else: a quiet, gentle, older man. Someone who would settle for what was left of her heart.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad to have someone around again, someone who noticed the funny little things that made life theirs and unique.

  She tried to picture some man in his forties, a settling presence. Somebody who wouldn’t make her wish for impossible things like youth and passion. She tried to think university-professor cardigans and hair that grayed at the temples.

  She kept coming up with the picture of Daniel DuCharme.

  DANNY KNOCKED on the bedroom door. No response. He tried the doorknob. Unlocked. He knocked again, louder this time, then pushed in the door.

  Kaye Miller was just coming out of the bathroom, wearing a short terry robe that left her legs bare. Kaboom. They didn’t disappoint.

  There was a slight—very slight—twinge of guilt that he would notice such a thing under the circumstances. After all, he was here to protect her. Still, he was a man. He would have had to be dead not to notice, not to want.

  He forced his attention above her shoulders. “Sorry to bother you.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes,” he said, as he slipped back into bodyguard mode. “I was just wondering which of the guest bedrooms you wanted me to take.”

  Her mahogany eyes widened for a second then she recovered nicely. “The guards—” She cleared her throat. “Mr. Harrison and Mr. Green don’t usually come upstairs.”

  “I’ll have some equipment.” He needed his tools to be able to do his job right. “I don’t want to leave things all over your living room.”

  There was a quick flash of relief, masked immediately with a polite smile. “Of course. Pick whichever room you’d like.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be gone for a little while to get what I need.” He pulled a card from his pocket and handed it to her. “It’s my cell number. I should be back in an hour or so. Mind if I take the Mustang?”

  He hadn’t brought his own car, had wanted the opportunity to talk to her on the way home from the party. And he wanted to get a feel for the Mustang anyway, should he need to drive it in an emergency.

  “Of course,” she said. “The key is on the peg by the garage door.”

  She stepped forward and took the card from him, but didn’t look at it. She was probably uncomfortable with his presence in her bedroom. Oddly, so was he. Too bad. They weren’t done yet.

  “Does anyone have a key to your house? Parents? Boyfriend? Housekeeper?”

  “My housekeeper,” she said. “My parents are gone.”

  “I’ll be changing the locks. I don’t want anyone to have access until this current situation is resolved.”

  “The doors …” She hesitated a second. “The front door is really old.”

  An antique. He nodded. That was the trouble. Anyone with a hairpin could pick it. “I’m not going to damage it. You can have everything back to normal as soon as this is over.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “I know increased security is inconvenient, but it could be worse,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. “You could be president.” Then it occurred to him that she very likely wanted to be president. She was on her way, wasn’t she? Man, she was way out of his league.

  “I do appreciate your help.” She folded her arms. Her robe slid a few inches down her shoulder from the movement, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Can I help you with anything else?”

  “No,” he said, even though he had a list of questions. They could wait until morning when she was dressed.

  He had to be losing his edge. Since when did he let a patch of skin get to him? Rafaela flashed into his mind, a Brazilian model, the girlfriend of some serious South-American badass whom he’d kept under surveillance last summer by hiring on to be Rafaela’s bodyguard. Rafaela had the lovely habit of not wearing clothes inside the walls of the villa, a habit he enjoyed but wasn’t
particularly affected by.

  Two square inches of Kaye Miller got him hotter under the collar than three months with Rafaela. “Good night,” he said. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Did Mr. Harrison come up with a schedule that’s workable for you? The rotation I mean,” she called after him.

  He stopped at the top of the stairs and looked back. “We left the rotation as it was. I’ll be here 24/7.”

  She blinked. “All the time? You said you just needed the room for the equipment.”

  “I’ll be sleeping on the couch downstairs. It’s better-positioned.” He prepared himself for a list of objections. The pet peeve of every bodyguard was people whose life was in danger but who resisted protection.

  “You think it’s that bad?” she asked instead.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Unlike the majority of the cases he worked, he didn’t have a file on her, hadn’t had a chance to do any research. He would remedy that at the earliest opportunity. “I’m not taking any chances.”

  She thought for a moment, and he expected she might complain about the imposition. But when she spoke, all she said was, “Thank you, Mr. DuCharme. Goodnight.”

  Danny, he wanted to remind her as he drummed down the stairs, but shrugged it off. She would have plenty of time to get used to him.

  He set the existing security, went out the back door, checked the perimeter of the property again, reconsidered the number of censors he would need. He crossed between the flowerbeds and watched Harrison and Green in the Town Car in front of the house. They looked alert, keeping an eye on the street. Good.

  Danny stepped out of the shadow of a hemlock. They spotted him within a few seconds, nodded to him. Kaye Miller should be okay until he got back. He had asked both men to stay on duty until morning.

  He hadn’t told them he would be back before that. He wanted to test them. The stakes were too high to settle for an untried team. Quickest way to mess up an operation and get killed was not knowing the limits of the men you were depending on.

  He went to the garage, checked the silver Mustang for tracking devices and foundnone. He hadn’t expected any. If it weren’t for her statement about the Capitol Hill parking pass in the other car, he would have dismissed the case as random violence. Was the attacker really someone from the Hill? Or was there a chance that Kaye Miller’s own tag had reflected off the other car’s window?

  First thing in the morning, he would head over to the police lot that held the wreck and check it over.

  He pulled out and cast a last glance at the house then took off to get his bag of goodies. He would secure the place, find who was after Kaye Miller, and maybe somewhere in between there, he’d have some time to figure out the woman—from a strictly professional point of view.

  When it came to the personal side of things, he might as well call the mission Operation Hands Off. Aside from the obvious obstacles, she belonged to the Colonel.

  KAYE DOZED, keeping an ear out for Ian’s labored breathing. She’d spent countless nights like that, in the lightest of sleeps, her senses attuned to the signals of the ravaged body of the man she loved.

  He breathed. Everything was well. She dipped a little further into sleep, her muscles relaxing.

  Ian breathed. Something pricked her instincts. The breathing came strong and even, not at all like Ian’s shallow struggles for air. The oddness of that, and something else, brought her awake.

  She knew it had been just a dream before she even fully opened her eyes and saw the bed empty next to her. The familiar pain welled up in her heart.

  She wanted to go back to the dream, back to Ian, even if just for a moment. She closed her eyes. The sense of loss was so acute just then, it burned her throat. A second ago in her dream, she could have reached out and touched him, snuggled with him, heard his voice. Maybe if she fell asleep right away, she could still go back to that place. Sometimes it happened.

  There was the breathing again. She stiffened instead of relaxing into it. She wasn’t dreaming. The breathing was real, closer now. There was somebody in her room.

  She was facing the other side of the bed, the sound coming from behind her. She stayed still, against the instinct to turn. The new guard? She’d told him she didn’t like the security guards upstairs. At the least he should have knocked. Or did she not hear it in her sleep?

  Daniel DuCharme. He didn’t seem like the type who would sneak into a stranger’s bedroom to watch her sleep. If Cal said he was okay, then he was. But if not him—

  In a split-second decision, she flipped and rolled across the bed, dropping to the floor instead of landing on her feet as she had planned. There was a small pop somewhere behind her.

  “No!” She was trapped in the blanket.

  Not for long, but long enough. The man was next to her already. What moon came in the bedroom window showed nothing but a ski mask. He was tall and thin, a gun in his hand.

  “What the hell?” He swore at her as he shot again and missed.

  She didn’t recognize his voice. Where was her security detail?

  She rolled under the antique four-poster bed, clear through to the other side. The bedroom door was closer to the attacker than to her. He’d get there first. He was already coming. She darted into the bathroom and locked the door behind her just as the man’s shoulder slammed into it.

  “Why are you doing this?” She didn’t expect an answer, nor did she get any.

  Where was everybody? She had three bodyguards. How did she end up alone with a murderous maniac?

  She could have used a phone. No way to get to the one on the nightstand. She looked around for anything she could use to protect herself. Soaps, shampoo, lotions, towels, hairspray—she grabbed the latter, tucked it into the waistband of her pajamas and pushed the chair, the only movable piece of furniture against the door.

  She opened the window and looked down to the tile patio a good twenty feet below her. Were she downstairs, the security system would have gone off. The upstairs windows didn’t have any sensors. Could she jump? Only as a last resort. Even if she didn’t break her neck, and chances were good that she would, she’d probably break at least a leg. If she couldn’t run away, being down there wouldn’t be much use. He could easily pick her off from the window once he broke through the bathroom door.

  She leaned out as far as she could. “Help!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “I need help!”

  Why wasn’t anyone coming?

  Normally, she would have either Harrison or Green. Whichever man was on duty usually spent some time sitting in the car out front, making his rounds around the house every half hour. Tonight she had both agents—she’d seen them from her bedroom window before she’d gone to bed. The night was warm. They would have the car window down. Would they hear her? Or were they talking, distracting each other?

  The door shuddered behind her again and again. She needed a weapon. What? She had nothing remotely usable in the bathroom. She pushed into her walk-in closet. There. If she could rip the clothes bar out of the wall … She yanked off everything, dropping suits by the armload on the floor, and grabbed the bar, braced one foot on the wall. The braces didn’t even budge.

  Pop. Pop. The man outside the door was shooting at the lock. She didn’t have long.

  “Dear Lord, help me.” She glanced up as she pulled harder, desperate, and saw the small panel in the ceiling. The attic. No dropdown stairs, unfortunately. They’d never used the place for anything.

  Kaye ran back and grabbed the chair. The lock was still holding the door but just barely.

  “My security is coming. Go away!”

  She rushed to the closet. From the chair she pushed the panel open, pulled herself up—no light up there, no electricity at all, she would have to manage in the dark.

  She looked down at the chair. Couldn’t leave that. It would negate any advantage she had gained by coming up here. She hooked her knees over the ledge and dropped her body down. If she had a moment to
think things over, she would have never done it. As it was, she had to act on the first idea that popped into her head, no time to look for a saner one. She stretched out all the way, her arms hanging low, her fingers brushing the chair’s back.

  God, was she really doing this? She had no coordination. Zip. Zero. People only did things like this in the movies. Even there, they used body doubles.

  She wiggled. Another inch and she would have the chair. Either that or she would fall and break her neck. She stretched and got a firm grip, pulled herself up with the chair and set it aside. Apparently, desperation gave you wings. She’d barely rolled away from the hole when the bathroom door burst open.

  She scampered blindly into the darkness, tripping on beams. The attic went on forever. Then her head smacked against something. The roof sloped. She reached the end and crawled into the corner, felt around and came across the brick chimneystack, squeezed in beside it.

  Where on earth were Harrison and Green? What time was it? Had DuCharme ever made it back?

  She could see nothing but the shaft of light coming up from below, the only sounds her own breathing and the thumping as the man jumped again and again to reach the opening. And then he did, blocking the light for a moment.

  He came up, stood still for a few seconds, looking around.

  “You shouldn’t have run,” he said. “You shouldn’t have run.”

  She was in the shadow of the chimney, the darkest spot in the dark attic. Could he see her? Panic rose, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Could he hear that? She could hear him move around as he hunted her, the rustling of the insulation, the small bumping sounds when his shoes met a beam.

  She wanted to ask who he was, why he wanted to hurt her. She kept her mouth shut, knowing he was unlikely to answer. All she would accomplish by talking would be giving away her location.

  She waited, willing her breathing to slow, ignoring limbs that were going numb from the lack of movement. The hot attic made her sweat, fiberglass insulation sticking to her naked arms, pricking them. She itched all over, but didn’t dare as much as flex a finger to scratch.