Bodyguard

by Shirlee McCoy

  * * *

  The lady was back in the water, tugging the canoe out of the shallows. She probably thought she could escape again, but Esme Dupree was about to be disappointed.

  Ian Slade sprinted the last few yards that separated him from his quarry, his K-9 partner, King, barking ferociously beside him. Esme had to know they were coming, but she didn’t glance back, didn’t stop, she just kept dragging the canoe, splashing through the green water, alerting every predator in the area that prey was moving through.

  He grabbed her arm, was surprised when she swung around, a bowie knife clutched in her free hand.

  King growled low in his throat, a warning that Esme would be wise to heed. The Belgian Malinois was trained in protection. Smart, agile and strong, King had a bite as vicious as his bark.

  “My partner,” Ian warned, “doesn’t like when people threaten me.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?” She tried to pull away, but after three days of tracking her, there was no way Ian planned to let her go.

  “What would you call it?” he replied, dragging her back a few steps.

  “Defending myself.”

  King growled again, and Esme’s gaze shifted, her attention caught just long enough for Ian to make his move.

  He disarmed her with ease, grabbing her knife arm and twisting it until she dropped the weapon. Even then, he didn’t release his hold.

  Sure, her record was clean. She made a living planning weddings...pretty aboveboard, from the looks of it. But Esme was a member of the Dupree crime family, cut from the same cloth as her brother—a man who killed first and asked questions later.

  Ian knew that more than most.

  She yanked against his hold, forcing her arm into an angle that had to be painful. He might not trust her, but he didn’t want to hurt her.

  “Calm down,” he said, shifting his grip. “I’m Agent Ian Slade. With the FBI.’”

  “And that’s supposed to be comforting?” Esme ground out as she continued to tug against his hold.

  “More comforting than staying out in the middle of nowhere with your uncle still on the loose.”

  “He wouldn’t be loose if your team would focus on apprehending him rather than me.” She yanked hard, her boots slipping in the muck.

  She’d have gone down if he weren’t holding on to her.

  She didn’t seem to realize that there was no way she was going to escape. Ian was a well-trained federal officer, part of an elite group of agents. He was also a head taller than she was and seventy pounds heavier. Maybe more. Her bones were small, her wrist tiny, his hand circling it with ease.

  As battles went, this wasn’t a fair one, and he almost felt bad for restraining her.

  Almost.

  He knew what her family was capable of.

  Until she proved differently, he had to assume she was capable of the same. Even if he’d been one-hundred-percent certain that she wasn’t, he wouldn’t have let her go. Protecting her was his assignment. Keeping her alive until the case against her brother went to trial was what he’d agreed to do.

  Despite the fact that she was a Dupree.

  “Do you have any other weapons on you?” he asked, his fingers curved around her wrist. She’d stopped tugging. Maybe she’d finally realized she couldn’t get away.

  “If I did, I’d have used them already,” she spat.

  “On a federal officer?” he asked.

  “I didn’t realize you were a federal officer at first. If I had, I wouldn’t have pulled the knife.”

  “Good to know. Mind if I make sure you’re telling the truth about weapons?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  He could have forced the issue, but there wasn’t any point. She might try to run, but he didn’t think she’d attack him to do it. She had a clean record, no history of violence or trouble.

  “All right,” he said, releasing her.

  “Thanks.” She started walking to the canoe as if she thought he’d let her leave.

  “I’m not checking for a weapon, but I’m not letting you leave, either.”

  “It would be easier on both of us if you did.” She turned to face him, the darkening evening wrapping her in shadows. He couldn’t see her expression through the gloom, but he could see the pale oval of her face, the tension in her shoulders.

  “That would defeat the purpose of me and King spending the last three days hanging around Long Pine Key Campground waiting for you to show up.”

  “I didn’t ask you to come looking for me. As a matter of fact, I would have preferred that you didn’t, Agent Slade,” she responded.

  “Ian. We’ll be spending a lot of time together. We might as well be on a first-name basis.”

  “I’m not going back into witness protection.”

  “That’s fine. We’ll work something else out.”

  “I guess I should have been more clear. I’m not going back into any kind of federal protection. I’ve been on my own for a few months now, and I’ve been doing just fine.”

  “Until your uncle tracked you down,” he pointed out, and she stiffened.

  “I was tracked down long before I came to Florida,” she responded. “Or have you forgotten that poor woman who was murdered because she was in the same state you’d hidden me in?”

  He hadn’t forgotten.

  None of the members of the team had.

  Information about Esme’s location had been leaked to the Dupree crime family, and a woman who’d looked a lot like her had been killed. “I’m sorry that happened. More than I can express, but I’m not part of the witness protection unit. I work for the FBI Tactical K-9 Unit.”

  “It doesn’t matter who you work for. I’m not spending any more time with you.”

  “I wish that was how things worked, but it isn’t. You agreed to testify against your brother.”

  “And I plan to.”

  “That will be really difficult to do if you’re dead.”

  “If I’d stayed in Wyoming, I probably would be. Then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  She had a point. A good one. Esme was the sole witness to a murder her brother had committed. Her brother, Reginald, and Angus would do anything to keep her from testifying.

  “We had a security breach,” he explained, snagging her backpack from the bottom of the canoe. “It won’t happen again.”

  “It won’t happen again because I’m not going back into protective custody.”

  “I’m afraid you are.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Have you ever been wrong before?”

  “More than I’d like to be.”

  “Good,” she retorted. “Then you won’t be upset that you’re wrong this time.” She whirled around and would have walked away, but King blocked her path, pressing in close to her legs.

  She shot a look in Ian’s direction, her eyes still flashing with anger. “Call off your dog.”

  “Release,” he said, and King pranced back to his side.

  “Thanks.” She probably would have walked away, but he held up her pack.

  “Forgetting something?”

  She reached for it and King growled.

  “He doesn’t like people taking things from me.”

  “I don’t like people touching my things,” she responded, her focus on King. She looked scared. He didn’t blame her. At home, King was goofy and friendly, funny and entertaining. On the job, he was intimidating, his tan face and dark muzzle giving him a wolflike appearance.

  “Sorry. I’ve got to check the contents before we move out.”

  “I think I made it clear that—”

  “You plan on going it alone. You’ve made it very clear. Unfortunately, my job is to get you to trial safely. I can’t do that if we
’re not together.”

  “We’re at cross purposes, then, and I don’t see us finding common ground.” She stepped back, and he thought she might be looking for an escape route. One that King wouldn’t be able to follow.

  “The common ground is this—we both want to keep you alive. How about you let me do what I’m trained to do?”

  “Which is?”

  “Protecting people like you.”

  King growled, the sound low and mean.

  Esme froze, but Ian could have told her the growl wasn’t directed at her. It was a warning. One that sent adrenaline shooting through Ian’s bloodstream. He grabbed Esme’s wrist, dragging her close.

  “What—” she began, but Ian held up his hand, silencing her so that he could listen. The evening had gone eerily quiet, King’s rumbling growl the only sound.

  He pulled Esme to the thick brush that surrounded the campsite, motioning for her to drop down into the cover it offered. She slipped into the summer-soft leaves silently, folding herself down so that even he could barely see her.

  King swiveled, tracking something that Ian could neither see nor hear. He wanted to think that it was a panther, a bear, an alligator, but King was trained to differentiate between human and animal threats. Besides, thanks to former team member Jake Morrow, the Dupree crime family seemed to always be just one step behind the K-9 team. There was every possibility that one or more of Angus’s henchmen was wandering through the Everglades.

  He thrust Esme’s backpack into her arms, leaning close to whisper in her ear. “Stay down. Stay quiet. Don’t move.”

  She nodded, clutching the backpack to her chest.

  King’s growl changed pitch. Whoever was coming was getting closer. It wasn’t local law enforcement, and it wasn’t a member of the K-9 team. They were back at headquarters waiting for word that Ian had finally found Esme’s trail.

  That left only one other option.

  Angus Dupree or his hired guns.

  Ian acted quickly, shoving the canoe into the water with just enough force to keep it moving. He gave King the signal to heel and went with him into the shelter of thick vegetation. Mosquitoes and flies buzzed around King’s head, but the dog didn’t move; his attention was fixed on a spot just beyond the clearing. Ian knew the area. He’d walked it several times the past few days, certain that Esme would arrive there eventually.

  She was smart.

  There was no doubt about that.

  Ian had done his research. He knew as much as there was to know about her childhood, her schooling, her college years. He knew she’d built her business without the help of her older sister, that she’d never taken a dime from her brother. Everything she had, she’d earned on the right side of the law by using the brain God had given her.

  The fact that she’d escaped witness protection and had stayed under the radar for months was even more proof of her keen intelligence. Smart people didn’t go into situations without a plan. Ian had visited the trailer she’d been renting at the edge of the Everglades. He’d seen the old boathouse and the dock, and he’d known she’d had an escape route in mind when she’d chosen to rent the place.

  All he’d needed was a map and a highlighter. He’d done some calculations, tried to think of how far someone like Esme would be willing to travel in a hostile environment. It hadn’t taken any time at all to figure out that the quickest, most direct route out of the Everglades brought her here.

  He’d staked out the area, walking a grid pattern every day, waiting for her to show.

  Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who’d been haunting this place looking for her. She was smart, but she’d have been better off leaving the area. She hadn’t had the backpack with her while she was in protective custody with the local police, and she hadn’t visited any of the local outdoor supply stores, either. He had to assume that she’d returned to the rental to retrieve the pack. Which meant there was something she needed in it. Money seemed more likely than anything.

  King’s growl had become a deep rumble of unease. Scruff standing on end, muscles taut, he waited for the signal to go in. Ian waited, too. He didn’t know how many people were approaching or what kind of firepower they’d brought. Backup was already on the way. He’d called in to headquarters as soon as he’d seen Esme paddling toward the campsite.

  A shadow appeared a hundred yards out, and King crouched, ready to bound toward it. Ian gave him the signal to hold, watching as two more people stepped into view. A posse of three hunting a lone woman. If Esme had been bedded down for the night, they’d have been on her before she’d realized what was happening.

  An unfair fight, but that was the way the Duprees did things.

  One of the men turned on a flashlight, the beam bouncing across the camping area and flashing on the water. Twenty feet from the shore, the canoe floated languidly.

  “There!” the man hollered, pulling a gun, the world exploding in a hail of gunfire.

  TWO

  If she’d been in the campground, she’d be dead.

  Every bullet fired, every ping of metal against metal, reminded Esme that her family—the one she had loved and admired and been so proud of—wanted her dead.

  Traitor. Benedict Arnold. Turn-tail. Judas.

  Uncle Angus had whispered all those names as he tried to choke the life out of her four nights ago. The words were still ringing in her head and in her heart, mixing with the echoing sound of the automatic weapon Angus’s hit men were using.

  She wasn’t sure what had happened to Ian and King. Either they’d run or they were biding their time, waiting for an opportunity to strike. One man against three didn’t seem like good odds, and it was possible Ian was waiting for backup.

  He could wait until the cows came home.

  Esme was leaving.

  She slithered through muddy grass and damp leaves, praying the sound of her retreat was covered by gunfire. Eventually, they’d stop shooting. When they did, her chance of escaping undetected would go from slim to none.

  Who was she kidding?

  It was already that. She might get out of the Everglades. She might get out of Florida. Eventually, though, Uncle Angus would find her. He had money backing him, and he had a lot riding on his ability to silence her. If she testified against Reginald, everything the two men had built—the entire crime family they’d grown—would collapse. He’d been chasing her for months, and he wouldn’t give up now. Not with the trial date approaching. A few weeks, and she’d be in the courtroom, looking at her brother as she told the jury and judge what she’d seen him do.

  She shuddered, sliding deeper into the foliage.

  She wasn’t going to give up on life, and she couldn’t give up on saving the one remaining bright spot in her very dark family tree.

  Violetta.

  They hadn’t seen or spoken to each other since Esme had gone into witness protection, but they were sisters, bound by blood and by genuine affection for each other. As far as Esme knew, Violetta hadn’t been involved in any of Reginald’s and Angus’s crimes. Whether or not she’d known about them, however, was a question Esme needed to ask.

  After she testified and shut her brother’s operations down for good.

  The gunfire stopped, and she froze, her belly pressed into damp earth, her heart thundering. They’d check the canoe, find it empty, realize she’d escaped.

  She had to get farther away before that happened.

  Taking a deep breath, she slithered forward, her pack slung over her shoulder, the soft rustle of leaves making her heart beat harder. A man called out, and someone splashed into the water, cursing loudly as he went.

  She used the commotion as cover, moving quickly, trying to put as much distance between herself and the campsite as possible.

  “FBI, K-9 unit. Put your weapons down or I’ll rele
ase my dog,” a man called, his voice carrying above the chaos.

  She froze again. Ian was still there. She hadn’t intended on spending much time with him. The entire time they’d been talking, she’d been planning her escape, trying to work out a solution to the newest problem. Just like she did when she’d planned a wedding and there was a hiccup on the big day.

  “I said, drop your weapons,” he repeated sharply.

  A single shot rang out, and someone shouted. A dog growled, and Esme could picture the dark-eyed, dark-faced K-9 racing into danger.

  Two against three.

  One weapon against many.

  She couldn’t leave.

  No matter how much she wanted to.

  She couldn’t abandon a man to almost certain death.

  Esme didn’t have a gun, but she had surprise on her side. She scooted back the way she’d come, the dog growling and barking, men shouting, chaos filling the darkness. She was heading right toward it, because she didn’t know when to quit. Another thing Brent had said to her.

  He’d been right.

  She never quit.

  Not even when the odds were stacked against her. Hopefully, this time, it wouldn’t get her killed.

  She crawled closer to the edge of the campsite, dropping her pack and grabbing a fist-sized rock from the mud. Reginald had taught her to play ball when they were kids. He’d shown her how to throw a mean right hook, to take a man down with a well-placed kick. She’d loved him as much as she’d loved Violetta, and she’d soaked up everything he’d had to offer. Until she’d realized that the road he’d chosen was one she had no intention of traveling. Then she’d distanced herself from her brother and, to a lesser extent, Violetta. That had been eight years ago. Even after all that time and all the years away from Reginald’s coaching, she still knew how to fight.

  She stopped at the edge of the clearing, her heart pounding as she waited. The campsite had gone silent. No gunfire. No barking dog. Sirens were blaring in the distance, the sound muted by the thick foliage.

  Somewhere nearby, a branch snapped, the sound breaking the eerie quiet. King barked again, and someone crashed through the brush just steps from where Esme lay.