My Biker Bodyguard

by Turner, J. R.

  Mitch grimaced. He hadn't thought of it that way. The idea seemed absolutely ridiculous the way she put it. On the other hand, when you didn't have much to go on, ridiculous was as good as anything. "Still, I'd like you try."

  "Why?" She looked at him now, her blue eyes as deep and dark as twin whirlpools. "Why are you in such a hurry for her to wake up?"

  "We never got her version of what went down. She went into the coma before we could."

  "What do you think she might know that you don't?"

  He shrugged. "It's hard to say. I'm hoping she saw the sniper's face. I heard three shots that night. He likely used the first one to blow through the glass. We found one bullet lodged in the wall, and then the one that hit Beth. The point is, we only have evidence of two shots. I'm hoping she can tell me something other than what Jared's already said."

  "What did he say?"

  "He said I heard right. Beth took the third shot, Jared nearly got hit by the one we found in the wall, and the other, which broke the window, just disappeared."

  In the absence of Jess's answer, he watched her, trying to figure out what was going through her mind. She splayed her hands on the tops of her thighs, knuckles white. He decided to change the subject. "Don't worry about all this. We'll figure it out when we get there."

  After a while, asked, "Jared, he's very in love with my mother, isn't he?"

  Mitch nodded. "Yeah, they're fairly inseparable. Except for now of course."

  She glanced at him, a frown marring her smooth brow. "I didn't see him this morning. Is he visiting at the hospital?"

  "He went to his office downtown. Might meet us at the hospital if he gets out of his meeting early enough." Mitch thought Jared probably needed the time at the office to destress from the troubles at home. In the months he'd been with the family, Jared only went to the office on golfing day.

  Jess plucked at the edge of her t-shirt and cast a shy gaze his way. "Do you think…do you think he likes me? Or is he that friendly with everyone?"

  Mitch smiled. "What's not to like?"

  "That's not an answer."

  "He likes you just fine."

  She exhaled and let her head rest on the back of the seat, her gaze returning to the view. "I never knew L.A. would look so much like Milwaukee, and at the same time so different. If I don't look up and see that mountain over there, I could be on Lake Drive back home. I feel like I'm in a movie. It makes everything so unreal."

  He peered out the window, nodding. "I know what you mean. It is hard to get used to."

  Jess fell silent again. He waited patiently for the next question, giving her time to prepare herself. "Will my mother look…bad?"

  "No," he said, remembering how Beth had looked as though she were simply sleeping the day he'd overseen her transfer to the private hospital, how he'd expected her to wake up.

  "That's good."

  Seeing her mother had to be something she'd imagined for most of her life. This couldn't be what she'd dreamed of all these years. "You'll do just fine. We'll be there shortly. Don't worry."

  Chapter Eleven Jess got out of the limo, surrounded by Mitch and the agents, and followed them through the glass doors. The presence of the agents directly behind her was something she found hard to get used to. At home, she rarely did things in more than pairs–she and her father, she and J.D., she and Trash, When you ran a business, someone had to stay behind and man the post. Now, however, she rarely stepped foot outside without three big guys surrounding her.

  The sun fell away to fluorescent lighting as they entered a silent hall. It stretched forward to the opposite side of the building. Halfway down, a large circular motif glowed in the multi-colored light cast from a stained glass window high above. They paused five feet away, Mitch turning to a small open area where a nurse sat, but Jess didn't pay them much attention.

  The hospital was beautiful, like a cathedral. She couldn't imagine the kind of money it took to recover in a place like this. The only time she'd ever seen anything so classic, so rich with wood and design, was when she'd stayed up eating popcorn too late and watched reruns of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

  The nurse nodded to Mitch, "Go ahead."

  Her heart picked up the pace with every step forward. By the time she stood at the door, with Mitch holding it open for her, she couldn't breathe. A uniformed police officer sat on a chair to her left, but she didn't acknowledge him. Mitch called him by name as he said hello. It barely registered. Her feet were rooted to the glorious tiles laid in the floor. Her gaze wouldn't unlock from Mitch's hand.

  "Jess," Mitch whispered.

  She broke her gaze from his hand with an effort. Step one. Next she needed to breathe easier or she'd never get the chance to take the last step–which would be her first step to see her mother. Lord, that doesn't make sense. I'm rambling in my own skull.

  Mitch waited. When she gave him her full attention, he said, "This isn't a good idea. We should leave."

  She reacted as if he'd poked her with a cattle prod. "No, we can't. It has to be now."

  His mouth quirked, not fully forming the smile in his eyes. "Okay."

  She took a step forward, paused at the threshold, not quite ready to look in the room, and glanced up at Mitch. He was so smart. He'd done that on purpose–telling her no so she'd say yes. Telling her to leave, so she'd stay. "You're good."

  He only smiled and tilted his head toward the room. "Your mother's waiting."

  Jess nodded and exhaled, squaring herself mentally to turn. When she did, she could only see the bottom end of the bed, the rest was further in the room, behind the door.

  Those are my mother's feet under that blanket.

  She began to shake, the way she'd shaken when her father told her about being alone for all those days by herself. She'd always known her mother had left, but never that it had been five days before anyone had found out. Now, the woman who'd done that to her, a woman who'd fallen into drug addiction and crime, who'd cleaned up her act and gotten sober, had written to her daughter, hoping they could see each other, know each other, was just a few feet away.

  Somehow, she made it around the door. Her feet continued to carry her to the edge of the bed, but her mind only knew what her eyes were seeing. She floated in a strange, disconnected state, away from herself, as if her body operated automatically, without direction or guidance from her.

  Her mother's hair, where it wasn't grey, was darker than her own. The face, soft and lax in deep sleep, looked slightly surprised. Her mother's eyebrows arched more. But otherwise, Jess saw her nose, her mouth, and her own chin on the face of the sleeping woman.

  Did you ever wonder what I looked like?

  Aside from a small patch of white bandage in the hollow between her collarbones, the I.V. and two small monitors, one of which showed three lines, the top one her mother's heartbeat, this could have been a hotel room, a place where she could wake her mother and relax as if on vacation.

  Instead, her mother slept at a depth that Jess couldn't reach. She touched the edge of the guardrail, the cold metal a reality anchor in her ocean of confusion. How was she supposed to behave? She felt like she was at a funeral and expected to say something about the person in the coffin, something kind and full of insight, but she had no idea what to say about a mother she'd never spoken to in living memory.

  Part of her wanted to shake the woman, demand she wake up so she could hear everything she ought to know about what had happened to her growing up without a mother. A child's voice resonated within her.

  Momma, don't go!

  All the times she'd been nervous–her first period, her first date, her first school dance, all the firsts where a mother is not just wanted, but needed desperately.

  Come back, I'm sorry, I'll be good.

  All the sleepovers she couldn't have because her dad was raising her, and a tattooed, long-bearded man wasn't the sort of guy other kids' parents wanted watching their young daughters.

  Oh God, I remember it a
ll. Staring out the window, watching her disappear with the bag over her shoulder, waiting there while the sun went down, while the cars stopped passing on the street. Getting hungry, eating from a box of cereal that was near empty.

  All the times when girls bragged about their mothers taking them shopping, about how much their mothers interfered with their lives, and all Jess could think of was how wonderful it would be to have anyone notice she was low on underwear.

  Where were you? Did you have fun? Did you even care?

  Most of all, she wanted Beth Kramer to know that she'd once been Beth Owen, the mother of a little girl, a daughter who'd needed and loved her no matter what. Jess wanted Beth Owen back, she wanted that love, and she didn't know if this person with a new name, trapped under white blankets and captured by a coma, would ever even want to be that woman again.

  She cleared her throat and glanced at Mitch, surprised by her reaction, too heartsick, too angry, to attempt speaking directly to her mother.

  "Go ahead, Jess." Mitch nodded toward Beth. When she didn't reply, he leaned close to Beth and said, "It's Mitch, Beth. Jessica, you're daughter, she goes by Jess now, she's here too."

  His dark eyes returned to Jess, so warm compared to the stark white of the blanket. "Say hello."

  Inching forward, she half bent over the bed. "Hello."

  He straightened. "Go on. Keep talking."

  She exhaled and nodded. "I-I got here yesterday. I'm staying in your house." She trailed off, not knowing if that was a good thing or not. "I hope it's all right. I met your husband, Jared. He is very nice."

  God, could she sound anymore inane? Her face burned. This was too hard, she couldn't keep up this false good nature. "Mitch, this is crazy. I want to go now. I don't want to do this."

  I don't want to see her this way. That might be selfish, she thought, but there was no making this feel right. "Let's go back. Okay?"

  "Are you sure? I could give you a few minutes alone with her."

  Jess glanced back at her mother who'd not so much as breathed differently. There wasn't any indication she knew they were in the room. They had trespassed on her mother's privacy, while she was most vulnerable. Jess wouldn't want to have a bunch of people staring and talking at her if she were in a coma. "Yes, I'm sure, let's go."

  She turned away from her mother and the shaking intensified. Her legs felt weak and her vision went dim. Holy cow, am I really going to faint?

  She stopped, gulped a deep breath, and waited for the room to stabilize. Mitch placed an arm around her back to support her. She was shocked. She'd thought everything had been going so well, she'd even felt kind of numb. Why, suddenly, couldn't she stand on her own two feet?

  "You just turned as white as ghost. Are you going to faint?"

  She shook her head gently, afraid too much would make it worse. "Don't be silly."

  She didn't shrug off his arm as they started forward. Again the world wobbled and she grabbed his shirt in a fist until the last of the dizziness faded. She smiled. "Sorry, I guess maybe I was a little…thrown for a loop there."

  "No need to apologize."

  She released his shirt, her hand visibly see-sawing in the air. A current of nerves continued to race through her system, but she felt better, a little stronger and even as she straightened, the vibrations decreased.

  As she opened the door, an alarm rang, pulsing in conjunction with an amber light above her head. She shrieked and jumped back. What did she do? She snatched her hand away and noticed the sound came from everywhere, not just in her mother's room. Heart thudding hard, she asked, "What the hell is that?"

  "Fire alarm," Mitch said over the buzzing rhythmic bray. He pushed her away from the door and pulled his gun. "Stay here."

  He opened the door, pistol lowered at his side, and stuck his head out. Dimly, she heard him ask the officer, "What's happening?"

  Beyond him, nurses and patients rushed up and down the corridor. The amount of noise and people scared her more than the alarm itself. The silent church-like hospital looked like Armageddon.

  "Don't know. Someone's pulled the fire alarm." The officer stood in the door and shook his head. "I'll check it out."

  Mitch nodded and stepped back into the room, shutting the door closed behind him. "We'll wait here. I don't want to risk losing you in the confusion."

  She nodded, silent with tension. Her thoughts twisted down a passage of what if's that only added to the growing anxiety inside her. She yanked herself back, repeating the mantra in her head, "This will end, this will end, this WILL end."

  What would she do when it was over? I wish they'd shut off the alarm. When this was over, she would spend the rest of the summer laying the sun. If I live that long. She'd lie there and think of nothing but her next daiquiri. Please, won't someone stop that damned alarm? Jess covered her ears. Each pounding bleat forced her pulse into a too-fast rhythm.

  Agent Davis burst into the room. "C'mon, we have to clear out. Now."

  Jess dropped her hands as Davis went to her mother.

  "What's going on?" Mitch asked, following the agent to the bed.

  Davis started piling all the devices Beth was hooked up to along the inside of the guardrails. "There's a bomb threat, we've got to go. Now."

  "A bomb threat?" Mitch paused, holding the I.V. bag of clear liquid in midair. "At this very minute? While we're here?"

  "Doesn't matter, we can't stay in here." Davis pulled the bed away from the wall and unplugged the monitor. Jess jerked back from deep inside herself as the lines on the monitor went black. If her mother quit breathing, or if her heart stopped, no one would know.

  Jess lurched forward, moving before her feet could. She had to do something, keep watch, anything to help. She couldn't stand feeling useless anymore. She wanted the Glock. Hell, the sniper could be out there, ready to pounce, and with the only guns available tied to the men occupied by her mother's bed, her sense of security completely disappeared.

  "Wait, wait!" She stopped the bed from rolling out the door. "Let's think about this. Do we know that this isn't about my mother?"

  "Why?" Davis asked, but Mitch remained silent, staring at her.

  "Is there someone else in this hospital under protective guard?" Jess wanted to run for the exit and had to force herself not to dash willy nilly out the door. A bombing wasn't an event she wished to attend, thank you very much. But if the real threat was outside?

  Davis shook his head and straightened. "No, there's no one else on guard here. But there are a lot of wealthy people, people with families waiting to inherit. The threat could be meant for anyone, or any number of reasons."

  Before she could respond, Mitch said, "Or, it could be false and the sniper is waiting outside for us to bring both Jess and her mother into the open."

  Jess nodded. "Exactly."

  Davis froze. "We can't risk it. We've got to assume there is a bomb."

  "We can't just trot Beth and Jess out the front door."

  Mordstrom dashed into the room, half his hair sticking out. "What's taking you so long? C'mon."

  "Wait," Davis said. "They think this might be a setup, a way to get the women into the open."

  Jess didn't like the idea of being blown to smithereens, but she didn't want to walk outside, into the open, where they could get picked off like ants under a magnifying glass. Out seemed better than banking on the bomb being far enough from the room. "Is there another way out of here? Or a saferoom, like back at the estate? Somewhere else we can go?"

  The men all looked at each other. Mitch answered, "I don't know. But let's not sit here talking about it. If there is a bomb, we should get moving now."

  Through the open door, people raced in both directions. Jess watched a woman in a suit, purse in one hand, keys jingling in the other, credentials bouncing from a cord around her neck as she jogged away from the front door. "Let's follow her."

  "Good, now move." Mitch dropped the I.V. on the bed as he grabbed the guardrail and pushed Beth into the hall.r />
  Jess slipped into the stream of people and kept her eyes on the woman in the grey suit. She couldn't keep up with her as she tried to help the men force the bed through the crowd.

  People shouted, an elderly woman waved scrawny arms in the air, her mouth agape in terror, as an orderly pushed her in the opposite direction. A door opened where the hall turned to the left and a stream of people erupted outward from the stairwell beyond. Some wore hospital gowns, others were dressed in ties and coats. They all looked frightened.

  A voice cut over the sound of the alarm, directing all personal to evacuate their patients in an orderly fashion and reassemble outside at their designated areas. An elderly man whipped down the hall on a motorized wheelchair. He came too close and glided over her toe. She only had a moment to think about the pain before the lady in grey dodged through a set of double doors. No one else followed her.

  She pushed through, saw the woman disappear to the right.

  "Wait, Jess," Mitch called behind her as the doors flapped closed. She'd gotten too far ahead.

  Jess spun around and held open the closest door. Davis propped it open as he went through and nodded her forward.

  They all moved in a silence, made more intense by the alarm's monotonous tone. Jess skirted a cart full of cleaning supplies. When they reached the end of the hall, she saw where the woman had gone.

  Bright sunshine streamed in from a delivery bay. She paused, afraid of stepping into the sunshine, afraid it would act as a spotlight for anyone watching the exit.

  "Wait here," Mitch said, his gun in front of him as he stepped around the door. The agents joined him, adding their guns to the defensive front line. All three disappeared from view.

  Jess went to her mother's side. She patted her absently on the shoulder. Thoughtlessly, she murmured, "It's gonna be okay."

  The agents returned, alone. Jess waited for Mitch to appear, but he didn't. "Where's Mitch?"

  Davis answered. "He's getting the limo."