She didn’t have the heart to tell her mother everything that had happened last night. It would only cause her undue stress, something that the doctors said could worsen the Alzheimer's.
“Bad people?” Lila asked, her brow furrowing. “What do you mean?”
Bethany sighed. She had probably said too much already. “It’s nothing, Momma. The horoscope must’ve been wrong, that’s all. Maybe next time.”
“Well, I’d just like to know for sure that my little girl has someone at her side before I leave this world,” her mother said softly, pulling the blanket tight over her shoulders and leaning back on the bed. Her lips pressed into a deep frown as the light in her eyes dimmed. “I just want to make sure you’re not alone, Beth.”
Tears sprang to Bethany’s eyes. She jumped up from her chair and wrapped her arms delicately around her mother’s shoulders, placing a kiss on her sunken cheek. Despite all her craziness, everything her mother had done for her during her life was because of love. Bethany couldn’t hold it against her.
“Don’t you worry about me, Momma.” Bethany squeezed her eyes shut, holding back the tears. “I’m not alone. I’ve got my new job, remember? And speaking of, I need to run home and get a shower before I start my first day. Wish me luck?”
“Always and forever.” Her mother patted her on the cheek and smiled, hope glimmering in her brown eyes. “All the luck I have. You’ll need it. You were born under an unlucky star, you know?”
Bethany shook her head and snorted as she headed toward the door. She’d been reminded of that fact her entire life. Half of her thought it was utter nonsense. The other half seemed to think there might be something to this bad luck thing. After all, the past ten years seemed to be nothing but a string of bad luck and near misses for her. Hence, the good luck charm dangling from her neck. A little prevention never hurt anyone.
“My luck’s turning around this year, Momma. Just you wait.”
Lila’s attention had already returned to the crossword puzzle. She waved a hand in Bethany’s direction with a mumble. “Yes, dear. Whatever you say.”
As Bethany walked down the halls of the nursing home, her thoughts returned to that intense FBI agent. He’d been harping on her to do her civic duty and testify against one of the most powerful men in the city, but she wouldn’t deny that she’d been scared. Scared that Gerald Void would come after her. She’d lived her life under the assumption that if she just kept quiet and kept her nose to the grindstone, it would all work out. She’d be left alone.
And yet, they’d still tracked her down. Tore apart her apartment. Frightened her to the core. How many other people had they done that to? How many others had gone down without a fight just because they were too frightened to stand up and do what was right? The thought made her ill.
She was stronger than that. She wasn’t just collateral in a badly made action movie. She was a fighter. A warrior. She was her dying mother’s only remaining lifeline. If they wanted to come after her, they’d have to pay the price.
Then they’d find out just what it meant to mess with Bethany Reed.
With a determined frown, she tugged the white piece of card stock out of her purse and pressed a few buttons on her phone. It only rang twice before a deep, masculine voice answered. Bethany held it up to her ear and took a deep breath, willing her pulse to return to normal.
“Hello, Agent Troy?” She swallowed hard. “This is Bethany Reed. We spoke last night at the police station.”
There was a long moment of silence and Bethany was afraid she’d dialed the wrong number.
Finally, Agent Troy cleared his throat. “Miss Reed, I’m glad to hear from you. I was worried the Voids would catch up with you.”
“They nearly did.”
She walked out the front doors of her mother’s nursing home and glanced up at the sunrise splashing brilliant colors of orange and yellow across the eastern sky. With a deep breath, she called upon every ounce of bravery she had left.
“Agent Troy, I think I’m going to need your help after all.”
Chapter Four
Troy
“And that was when they killed him. At least, I think it was...”
Agent Troy stared through the one-way mirror of the interview room as Bethany Reed chewed nervously on her red-painted nails and recounted her story of the murder once again. She glanced in his direction, as if she could see him standing on the other side of the wall. He felt a twinge in his abdomen and rolled his shoulders under his suit jacket, trying to dispel the strange feeling.
His boss had told him to head back to his desk, that he’d take it from here, but Troy couldn’t seem to leave. His gut told him this woman needed protecting. She’d been stalked by one of the city’s most dangerous families, and yet had acted far braver than most would in her situation.
She’d called Troy early this morning, before he’d even rolled out of his bed. He’d be lying if he said that call hadn’t taken him by surprise. Despite the fact that he hadn’t been able to get the image of Bethany in her red dress and sandals out of his head, he’d fully expected never to hear from her again. Her soft, feminine voice on the other end of the line had jump started his day with a heavy dose of adrenaline.
He’d rushed to pick Bethany up from the nursing home and brought her here, to the Las Vegas FBI headquarters. She now sat in the interview room across from his boss—FBI director Agent O’Brien. O’Brien was the one man who had the power to pull Troy off of desk duty and send him into the field again. He also had the power to keep Troy forever relegated to secretarial duty. All because of one tiny mistake.
The thought made Troy grind his teeth.
O’Brien had a bald head and a neatly trimmed salt and pepper goatee. His short stature was a deceptive feature for a man who’d spent his career defending presidents and diplomats from the deadliest of foes. Despite his height, he had a presence that demanded respect and obedience. The only time Agent Troy ever felt an ounce of nerves was standing in front of that man to give his case reports.
“Thank you for cooperating with us, Miss Reed,” O’Brien said as he rose from his chair and gave her a long look. “Please, relax here for a bit longer while I decide on where we go from here.”
He exited the interview room with a heavy frown on his face. Deep wrinkles marred his forehead. When he saw Troy standing there, waiting for him, he gave him a grunt and walked past without a word.
“Didn’t I tell you she was the perfect witness?” Troy pointed at Bethany sitting behind the one-way mirror.
She’d taken to staring at her hands on the table in front of her, weariness glazing over her eyes. Despite the fact that gangsters had nearly pinned her down at her own apartment only hours ago, she seemed pretty well put together. If she could hold it together now, she could hold it together on the witness stand. It was a gut instinct, but Troy’s instincts were never wrong.
“Yeah, she’s the perfect witness.” O’Brien paused and buttoned the front of his black suit. He glanced at Troy over his shoulder and frowned again. “But we need to find more evidence before we go pointing fingers at the Voids.”
Troy groaned. He’d hoped that once his boss heard Bethany’s story, it would be all hands on deck. And that it would be him leading the charge at the helm. “They’re already after her, sir. You should’ve seen her apartment. They tore it apart. If we don’t act fast, they’ll scoop her up. You know that as well as I do.”
“We?” O’Brien turned to face him, displeasure washing over his features. “There’s no ‘we’ Agent Troy. You will return to your desk duty, as ordered. I’ll take over from here.”
Troy’s face turned red and he sputtered his reply. What more did his boss want from him? A written apology tattooed across his forehead for messing up? An airplane to scribe the note into the sky? He’d screwed up. That much he knew. But now there was nowhere to go but forward.
“Don’t argue with me, Agent Troy,” O’Brien said, rubbing the spot between his eyebrow
s with a weary sigh. “I hate to have to remind you, but the last time you were in the field, you ignored my orders. Which promptly resulted in you busting a terrorist ring and revealing the cover of one of our agents. And in doing so, abruptly destroyed three years of hard work. If you think I’m letting you off of desk duty anytime soon, you’re crazy.”
Swallowing hard, Troy snapped his jaw shut and fought against the spasm in his chest. It was true, he’d gone off his orders during his last mission. He had a reputation around here for being a little bull headed. But he’d just uncovered a deep terrorist operation right here in the heart of Las Vegas. How was he supposed to know that one of the FBI’s agents was already neck deep within their infrastructure? He thought he was going to be hailed a hero.
Instead, he got demoted.
“Sir, please, I’ll do anything.” Troy bit his tongue, hating the sound of begging coming out of his mouth. But he was desperate. “Just let me on this case. I brought it to you. Let me help.”
Agent O’Brien gave him a long, piercing look. His dark blue eyes seemed to be scanning him over for every single defect. Troy tried his best not to squirm under the scrutiny. There was no telling what his boss was thinking. He’d been trained to withstand the toughest of enemies and keep his country’s secrets at all costs. The man was locked down tighter than a bank vault twenty feet below the ground.
“I tell you what, there is one very important thing you can do for this case.” Agent O’Brien pressed his lips together in a sour frown. He walked toward Troy, until they were only a foot apart.
“Tell me.” Troy looked down at his boss, wanting to grab the small man by his shoulders and shake him. That would be a deadly mistake, of course. No one shook Agent O’Brien like a rag doll and lived to tell about it.
He’d do anything. Anything to get out of that cubicle.
“You can get Ms. Reed her lunch,” O’Brien replied, a slow smile curling the left side of his mouth. He winked up at Troy and gave a gruff chuckle. “And keep the poor girl company. She’s had quite a day.”
Disappointment hit Agent Troy like a semi-truck going eighty on the interstate. He clenched his abdomen against the feeling, doing his best to keep the emotions from entering his face. O’Brien stared up at him for a moment longer, his blue eyes darting back and forth between Troy’s. With a satisfied smirk, he turned to leave.
“Learn to follow orders, Agent Troy, and you’ll be off desk duty in no time,” he called over his shoulder. “Even the inconsequential ones.”
Grumbling to himself the whole way, Troy walked down the block to pick up two to-go boxes of Wu’s Chinese and came back to FBI headquarters. Agents darted out of his way in the hallways, as if he carried a black storm cloud over his head. By the time he entered the interview room, he was pretty sure he’d ground his molars down to their roots.
“Agent Troy?” Bethany looked up from her hands with a startled look. Her large brown eyes blinked twice as she studied his face. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
Instantly, a strange calmness washed over Troy. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that this wasn’t all about him. Bethany had had her life turned upside down in a matter of a day. She’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“It’s nothing.” He placed the boxes on the table and took the seat across from her. “Just my own problems. Nothing to do with you.”
“Okay...” She eyed him as if she wasn’t sure he was telling the truth. Then she looked down at the boxes and sniffed the air. “Is that Chinese?”
“I brought you lunch.” He pulled the boxes out of the bag and spread them out in front of her. “And mine. I hope you don’t mind some company as you eat.”
“I don’t mind.” She swallowed hard and looked up at him. “As long as you don’t mind me stuffing my face. I haven’t eaten anything since last night. I’m starving.”
“Sounds good.” Troy felt a small smile tug at his lips. He liked a girl with an appetite. “Dig in.”
After all the boxes had been attacked, Agent Troy filled his fork with a bite of fried rice and quietly studied Bethany as she sighed contently over an egg roll. She really did seem like the perfect witness to bring down the Voids. Neatly dressed. Articulate. Not a whiff of crazy about her. At least, not yet.
But Troy needed to know for sure.
“Tell me about yourself, Miss Reed,” he said nonchalantly, taking a bite and chewing slowly.
She glanced at him over her egg roll. “Please, call me Bethany. What do you want to know?”
“All right, Bethany. How about you start with where you were born and how you ended up here?”
“Des Moines, Iowa.” She shrugged. “My dad passed away in a car accident when I was five, so my mom moved us to the Las Vegas area.”
“Why Las Vegas?”
He studied her expression, her mannerisms, for any sign of deceit. So far, she seemed blissfully unaware of his close observation. There was a carefree vibe to her movements. Free of the shuttered self-consciousness he’d come to see in most of the women he’d known over his three decades.
She leaned her elbow on the table and smiled at him as if he were a close friend. “To tell you the truth, my mom thought it would bring us luck. We’d just finished putting my father six feet in the ground when a piece of paper blew across the cemetery and on the grass in front of us. It was a newspaper clipping from the Las Vegas Sun.” She made a face and wrinkled her nose. “How that thing got there, in the middle of Des Moines, Iowa was anybody’s guess. But my mom took it as a sign of good luck and packed us up the next day.”
Troy felt alarm bells go off inside his head. He squinted at her and slowly lowered his fork. “Your mom moved you across the country because she thought she saw a lucky sign?”
“Yep, pretty much.” She ducked her head as her cheeks turned pink.
“And is that something you believe in?” His gaze cascaded down her neck to the four-leaf clover charm hanging from a silver chain. “Luck?”
It felt like a dirty word rolling off his tongue.
“I don’t know. Sometimes.” She clutched at her necklace and turned her hazel eyes to his. “Don’t you?”
He knew it. He knew there had to be something wrong with her. So much for the perfect witness. She was a quack. Her mother a quack. And now, they’d have to build their entire case around her quackery. So much for this case being his way off the floor and back into the field.
“I don’t believe in luck,” Troy finally answered. He crossed his arms over his chest and harrumphed. “Anything I have in life, I worked hard to get it. There was no luck involved.”
“Really?” Her red lips quirked into a disbelieving smile. “Not even an ounce of luck?”
He harrumphed again. “None.”
There was a knock at the door. Troy rushed to answer it, eager to put space between himself and the strange Bethany Reed. Agent O’Brien stood there, a grim expression on his face. He marched past Troy and beckoned for him to stay.
“I’ve had my agents look into your claims, Miss Reed.” He gripped the back of the metal chair Troy had just vacated and lowered his voice. “We’ve got intelligence that a Freddy Mack went missing yesterday night. He is a known associate of Gerald Void and an assistant campaign manager. Your story checks out. We’ve got some leads on where Freddy could be now, but we’re going to need some time before we bring Mr. Void in.”
Bethany’s eyes grew wide. She dropped the wonton she held halfway to her mouth and gasped. “But if you don’t arrest him, he’ll come after me again.”
Panic gripped her gaze once again and her face went white. Troy had the sudden and strange urge to grab her hand. To comfort her. He’d never done anything like that in his life. It was an alarming feeling. With a shake of his head, he pushed away the thought and tried to refocus on what his boss was saying.
“We’re going to keep you safe, Miss Reed,” he continued. “As of this moment, you are in protective custody of the U
nited States Federal government. Until we can arrest Mr. Void and all those involved, you will be under the witness protection program.”
Bethany’s jaw fell open and shock washed over her face.
“Oh, and Agent Troy?” Agent O’Brien turned to face him, a subtle smirk on his face. “Did you still want in on this case?”
Despite Bethany Reed’s oddness, Troy didn’t even have to take a second to think. He nodded his confirmation. This was his chance.
His chance to take down Gerald Void and prove himself once again.
“Good, because you’re going to be guarding Miss Reed,” Agent O’Brien answered, slapping Troy on the shoulder. “Your new assignment is to pose as her husband. Keep our witness safe and I’ll rethink your desk duty. Fail me, and you’ll find yourself chained to a cubicle for the rest of your career.”
With that announcement, Agent O’Brien marched right past him and left Troy to stare down at his new charge in horror as the truth began to sink in.
He’d just been demoted to babysitter.
Chapter Five
Bethany
Bethany shot out of her chair and shook as the news of her fate washed over her. She’d come willingly to them. Had spilled everything she knew. And now, she was being ordered to go into the witness protection program? Didn’t she have a choice in the matter? If she had her way, Gerald Void and his men would already be in custody and she’d be walking into her new job an hour from now, without a worry in the world.
“You can’t do this,” she moaned, clenching her teeth against the frustrated tears stinging at the corner of her eyes.
“Actually, we can.” Agent Troy turned to face her. His sculpted lips had turned down into an even deeper frown than usual and his cheeks burned bright red. “We’re the Federal government and you’re in our protection now. Think of it as a blessing.”
Faking Ever After with the Bodyguard: A Sweet Fake Romance Page 3