Her Bodyguard

by Mallory Kane

  He shifted and clamped his jaw as the material of his shirt tore at the stinging place on his back. He felt sticky warmth and knew he was bleeding again.

  “All in a day’s work, sugar.”

  For some reason, that answer irritated her. She crossed her arms and turned away to look out the window, just as his phone rang.

  It was Brad. “Hey, Harcourt. What’s up?”

  Angela turned back.

  “Luke, I’ve been stuck in court all day, and I have a meeting starting in two minutes, but I wanted you to know that all the Picone kids showed up in court today, except for Tony.”

  “Tony. So you think he may be the one who’s after Ange?”

  “Who?” Angela said. “What’s he saying?”

  Lucas gestured for her to stay quiet.

  “I guess,” Brad answered. “Until two days ago, he was in court every day. Those two days, the brothers must have been having some kind of pow-wow. And now today, Nikki, Milo and Paulo, and even the brother-in-law, were there, but no Tony.”

  “Okay. Can you get me that picture?”

  “I’ll ask my secretary. I’ve gotta go. I’ll let you know if I find out anything else.”

  “Brad, one more thing. Why would Picone send the baby for this kind of job?”

  “You got me. I’d have thought he’d send Paulo. Word is that he’s a crack shot with a long-range rifle.”

  “Long-range? Are you serious?”

  “Things are changing. Paulo is suspected of picking off a rival lieutenant in broad daylight with a sniper rifle, but we couldn’t prove anything.”

  “I see. Well, keep me posted. Talk to you later.” Lucas hung up. So the hit man who was after Angela could be Tony Picone, the youngest of the brothers. The one who supposedly wasn’t involved in the family business. Had he struck out on his own? Or was he just the scout? Maybe Paulo was heading this way.

  “That was Brad? You didn’t tell him anything about Doug and the shooting.”

  “Nope.” And he wasn’t going to tell her about Tony and Paulo, either. He figured the less Angela knew about the hit man or men, the better.

  “Why not? Don’t you think he needs to know?”

  Lucas pulled over to the curb in front of their building and parked. “No. I don’t think he needs to know. He was on his way to a meeting, and the trial is winding down. What he needs to do is concentrate on putting Picone away. Knowing about Doug would just worry him.”

  She nodded. “I guess you’re right. But what was that about long-range?”

  “Plans,” Lucas lied. “He knows I’ve got to get back to Dallas soon.” He felt her suspicious gaze. She’d always been able to tell when he was lying. “I’ll call Brad on Monday and let him know what happened. Meanwhile, you go on inside. I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

  “What are you going to do?” Before the words were out of her mouth, her face changed. “You’re going to talk to Bouvier, aren’t you? Detective Lloyd said he was going to do that.”

  “I just want to check him out. See what he knows.”

  “Then I’m coming with you.”

  Lucas opened his mouth to protest, but the look on Angela’s face stopped him. He didn’t feel like arguing. And it didn’t matter. She’d never have to deal with Bouvier again. She was never going back to that apartment. After all this was over, he was going to make sure she moved into a safer place.

  “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go.” He guided her across the street with his hand on the small of her back. Inside the lobby, he headed straight for the door labeled Office and rapped sharply.

  He could hear someone moving around inside. He knocked again. As the door opened he stood back, leaving Angela in Bouvier’s line of sight. He didn’t want to take the chance that Bouvier would spot him and slam the door.

  “Angela,” Bouvier said. “Can I help you with something?”

  “You can help me,” Lucas said, stepping forward and setting his foot against the bottom of the door. “I’m Detective Lucas Delancey.” He flashed his badge, too quickly for Bouvier to focus on it. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Bouvier’s dark brows lowered. “Questions? About what?”

  “Let’s do this inside.”

  “Angela? I don’t understand. Is this about the deadbolts? ’Cause I was going to get them today.” Bouvier suddenly looked extremely nervous.

  “Inside?” Lucas said again.

  Bouvier looked behind him, then opened the door wider and stood back.

  Lucas let Angela precede him into the office. Bouvier sat stiffly behind a scratched wooden desk and Angela sat in a straight-backed chair. Lucas stood with his injured back to the door.

  “You’re the super for this building? Who owns it?”

  Bouvier shifted in his chair and rubbed the crudely etched tattoo on his left biceps. “A company that owns several apartment buildings around New Orleans. What’s this got to do with—?”

  “And you’ve got a couple of side businesses, right?”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “Guns.”

  Bouvier stopped fidgeting and stared at him.

  “Guns. You want to tell me about it?”

  “You think I’m selling guns? That’s crazy.”

  “Is it? What about Doug Ramis?”

  Bouvier’s eyes narrowed. “Ramis? What’d he tell you?”

  “It’s time for you to stop asking questions and start answering them. I’d be happy to take you downtown if you’d be more comfortable talking there.”

  “No. I can tell you this. Doug said he’d been mugged. He wanted to be able to protect himself, but he didn’t know how to shoot. I loaned him a gun so he could practice at a shooting range.”

  “You loaned him a gun. And he loaned you money in return.”

  “What?” Bouvier’s gaze wavered.

  “We’ve got you on a surveillance camera, accepting money from Ramis.”

  “You’ve—” he turned pale.

  “Clear as a bell. I can run you in for trafficking in illegal arms. I’m sure you know the gun Ramis was caught with was not street-legal. And with your record—”

  “Okay, okay. I—accepted money from him. He insisted. But that’s the only time. Swear to God.”

  “Sorry, Bouvier. I don’t believe you. But I tell you what. I’m not interested in Ramis. He’s small potatoes. Who else have you sold guns to in the last week?”

  “Nobody! I swear.”

  “No? How about a guy in a Cubs cap?”

  Bouvier’s face changed, and Lucas felt a jolt of triumph. Maybe his hunch was going to pay off. He waited. There were very few criminals who could sit in silence for very long while a cop stared at them and said nothing. For some reason, they always felt compelled to fill the silence.

  “Okay. A few days ago a guy in an orange shirt and a Cubs cap stopped me on the street asking directions. Then he started feeling me out about where to buy—you know—stuff like that.”

  A Cubs cap. Lucas waited. Angela turned toward him, her expression shocked, but he didn’t look at her.

  “He gave me three Benjamins, so I gave him a couple of names.”

  “Why you?” Lucas asked him, but he already knew the answer. The Chicago Cubs baseball cap cinched it. The man was her hit man. Apparently whoever he was, he was a pretty good judge of people. It hadn’t taken him any time to tap Angela’s own building super as a source for his weapon.

  Bouvier shrugged. “No idea.”

  “No kidding? Are you sure you didn’t know him from somewhere?”

  “I never saw him before—or since.”

  Lucas stared at him some more.

  Bouvier fidgeted and rubbed his thumb over his tattoo. “He might have noticed my tats.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. Where’d you serve?”

  “Big Muddy.”

  Lucas nodded. Big Muddy River Prison was located in southern Illinois, not far from St. Louis, Missouri. “Did you two have a nice tal
k about your mutual friends in Chicago?”

  Bouvier didn’t answer, but the panicked look on his face told Lucas all he needed to know.

  “What’d he look like?” Lucas growled.

  Bouvier shrugged. “Medium. Medium height. Medium build. Maybe a little on the skinny side. White. He kept his hat and his sunglasses on, but he looked Italian or something. You know, dark.”

  “Anything else you noticed?”

  “Nah. Just that he was nervous.”

  “Nervous how?”

  “He was always wiping his mouth and his forehead, probably not used to sweating.”

  “Did you ever let him into Angela’s apartment?”

  “No!” Bouvier wiped sweat off his forehead as his eyes darted back and forth from Angela to Lucas. “No, I swear. Look, I don’t know nothing about him, except his name is Tony and he needed a connection for a gun. That’s all.”

  “Have you seen him since?”

  Bouvier shook his head. “I haven’t been paying attention. I don’t like to be involved in the—other side of the gun business. You know?”

  “Right.” The longer he talked to Bouvier, the more irritated he got with Angela. What was she doing living here, around all these lowlifes?

  He stood and pulled out a card. “Tell you what, Bouvier. If you see your friend Tony again, you call me.” He stuck a finger in Bouvier’s face. “You say one word to him and I’ll drag you in as an accessory to attempted murder. Got that?” Bouvier swallowed.

  “Have you got that?” Lucas growled.

  “Yeah. Yeah. I swear.”

  “And another thing. You put a padlock on Angela’s apartment and hold her stuff until we come and get it. Don’t turn it over to anyone. Anyone, but me. You got that?”

  Bouvier held up his hands. “Yeah, I got it. Swear to God.”

  LUCAS MANAGED TO STAY BEHIND Angela until they got inside the lobby of the abandoned building.

  “I can’t believe what Mr. Bouvier did,” she said as she climbed the stairs ahead of him. “He sells guns? And I actually thought he was a nice guy who’d watch out for me.”

  “How did you decide he would watch out for you?”

  “He told me he would.”

  Lucas laughed. “Yeah, well, you’ve always been a little gullible.”

  “I have not.”

  “Oh, yeah? What about the time Brad and I convinced you that bats fed off bat trees, and if you followed one, you could find a tree that grew baseball bats.”

  “I was eight.”

  “And now you’re—what? Twenty-eight? And you still believe a guy is nice, just because he tells you he is.” Climbing the stairs aggravated the stinging and burning of his wound, but not so much that he couldn’t appreciate Angela’s backside in the snug-fitting pants. He hung back so it stayed at his eye level.

  He probably ought to enjoy it as much as possible while he had the chance. Because once the danger to her was over, and he was reinstated, there was a chance he’d never get to see it again.

  “There’s nothing wrong with believing the best of people.” She threw the remark over her shoulder.

  “There is if it could get you killed. Try being just a little suspicious when something seems too good to be true.”

  She turned and caught him staring at her butt. To her credit, she didn’t mention it. “Too good to be true. Like how you happened to show up at the very moment I discovered Doug was watching me? And never once thought it would be appropriate to mention that you put spy cams in my apartment, much less that you’d been suspended from the Dallas police force! What did you do?”

  “Nothing. Just tried a little too hard to stop a guy from putting his wife in the hospital. It was my bad luck that the abuser was the son of a Texas senator.”

  She stared down at him. “What do you mean ‘a little too hard’?”

  “That’s the part you heard?” Lucas snorted.

  “I heard all of it. So they suspended you for excessive force. Is that why Ethan called you a cowboy?”

  “He called me a cowboy?”

  Her gaze traveled slowly down his legs to his tooled cowboy boots. “I don’t think he was referring to your boots, was he?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows. Are we going to stand here and talk about it on the stairs?”

  She sniffed and whirled around. And Lucas was pretty sure she swayed her hips more than absolutely necessary as she stalked up the stairs.

  For Lucas, it was all good. He got to watch her very nice butt—an innocent pastime, considering that there was no way in hell he’d ever act on any attraction he felt for his best friend’s kid sister.

  Plus, the madder she was at him, the less likely she was to notice bloodstains on the back of his jacket before he could slip into the bathroom.

  He decided to add a little more fuel to the fire. “By the way, speaking of my little brother, it’s quite a coincidence that he showed up to take that call, isn’t it? Why didn’t you call 911?”

  “When you gave me your phone? You said to call your cousin.” Her voice sounded defensive.

  “If I’d said to call 911, Doug might have panicked and used that gun.”

  “Well, I called Dawson. He must have called Ethan.”

  “Yeah. I figured that out.” He laughed shortly. “You’d think he might have been busy or off duty or something. There should still be a few cops around who aren’t kin to me.”

  “What’s the problem between you and Ethan?”

  “When I moved to Dallas, he felt like I abandoned him and Harte.” Lucas felt the sting of guilt in his gut.

  “Abandoned them? Why would he think that?”

  “He had good reason.”

  “What good reason?” she persisted.

  “Never mind. It was probably a good thing Ethan did take the call. I might not have been able to convince another cop to let me question Doug. Or to get his bail hearing put off until Monday.”

  “Monday? Are you expecting all this to be over by Monday?”

  He hated to burst her suddenly floating bubble of hope, but he didn’t believe in lying to people just to make them feel better. He shot straight from the hip. Forewarned was forearmed.

  “There’s no telling. I doubt it, actually.” He took a deep breath. “Even with the information from Bouvier, I’m no closer to finding your hit man than I was. Doug sort of threw a monkey wrench into the works.”

  At the top of the stairs, Angela headed toward the refrigerator.

  Lucas paused on the landing. He needed to get to his duffle bag and grab a clean shirt, then escape to the bathroom before she had a chance to notice that anything was wrong. But the bag was on the other side of the cot. And the cot was on the other side of her. There was no way he could reach it without turning his back to her. And that was a calculated risk.

  He’d been doing this dance all afternoon without having any idea whether there was blood on his jacket. Hell, there probably wasn’t. But if he could just get into the bathroom and get cleaned up, then he’d no longer have to worry about it. He could stick his head out and ask her to hand him the bag, as if he’d forgotten to get it.

  He sidled toward the bathroom door.

  “Want some water?”

  God, yes. Suddenly, his mouth was so parched and dry that he couldn’t swallow. And he felt slightly woozy, as if his head were encased in a soap bubble. A hot, suffocating soap bubble.

  There’s water in the bathroom. He just needed to get there.

  “Lucas?”

  “No.” He turned, hoping the shadows in the corners of the room were dark enough to hide any blood. Hoping that she wasn’t looking. Hoping the increased stinging on his back didn’t mean he was bleeding again.

  He’s almost made it to the bathroom door when a metallic clatter echoed across the wooden floor. He looked down automatically, but didn’t see anything.

  “What was that?” Angela asked

  “Don’t know.”

  She headed toward the sound, toward
him, looking around on the floor. He didn’t care what had made the noise or where it had come from. All he cared about was getting to the bathroom before Angela saw any blood.

  “Here it is,” she said, bending down to pick it up. “Lucas? Oh, my God! It’s a bullet.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Lucas! Where did this bullet come from? It has blood on it.” She started toward him. “Wait. What’s that on your collar?” she cried.

  Lucas didn’t stop. He reached the bathroom door in two strides and slammed it behind him. Make that almost slammed it. She caught it before it closed and shoved it open. It hit the wall with a bang.

  “You’re bleeding. You did get shot. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He fingered the torn back of his collar. “It’s nothing,” he growled. “Would you bring me my bag? It’s on the other side of the cot.”

  “Nothing? That’s blood!” She held out her hand. “And this is a bullet.”

  He shrugged carefully. “Doug pulled his gun and I dove for his knees. I wasn’t fast enough.”

  He felt her measuring gaze, almost as hot as the sting of the bullet, on his back. “So if you hadn’t moved he’d have shot you in the stomach? Oh, my God! Lucas!”

  “Or missed. I’d have probably been better off just stepping out of the way. I’m pretty sure hitting me was an accident.”

  “Take your coat off. I need to see how bad it is.”

  “It’s not bad.”

  Bending over the sink, he splashed cold water on his face. He suppressed a groan as the material of his shirt pulled at his wound. “Get my bag?”

  “Don’t you dare lock me out. If you do I’ll call Dawson and tell him and Ethan that you’ve been shot.”

  He lifted his head and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She knew him well enough to know that threat would work. “Okay. I won’t.”

  She harrumphed but turned around and went to grab his bag.

  He reached for the towel he’d bought when he set up camp here. It hung on the handle of an old-fashioned hand-cranked paper towel dispenser.

  By the time Angela was back with his bag, he’d dried his face and neck and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls of tepid water from the tap.

  “I brought you a bottle of water, too.”