Bear Claw Bodyguard

by Jessica Andersen

  With each empty room, though, a hollow pressure built in his chest, because those same instincts said she hadn’t been upstairs. He would have seen her if she had been. Moreover, his gut said she was all the way gone.

  The realization filled him with a turbid mix of emotions. Disbelief, dismay, resentment, betrayal, grief…all of them mixed and mashed together until they formed the inevitable one-two punch of conclusion: one, he was too late to stop her from leaving. And two, she hadn’t wanted him enough to stay.

  “Damn it,” he said softly, not sure which of them he was madder at just then—himself for not pushing harder when he’d had the chance, or her for not pushing at all. Not that it really mattered right then—she was undoubtedly headed for the airport under police escort, although he would double-check to make sure she hadn’t gone off on her own. Either way, she was back on the road, he was back on the Death Stare case and the task force was about to move out and go after their primary suspect. Maybe things had turned out the way they were meant to, after all.

  “Forget that,” he muttered under his breath, and pivoted on his heel. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he knew one thing for sure: he wasn’t ready for them to be over. Not by a long shot.

  He was halfway across the room when he saw what should have been obvious to his detective self from the very first moment—namely that she’d left her knapsack behind.

  And Tori would never, ever leave her knapsack behind.

  Blood running suddenly cold in his veins, he backtracked to the computer station where she’d been sitting. That was definitely her knapsack, and when he tapped the mouse to awaken the computer she’d been using, her email was still open on the main screen. He scanned quickly, didn’t see anything that jumped out at him as being a reason for her to take off without her stuff. And yet… Digging into his pocket for the small flashlight he carried there, he clicked on the light and shined it at an oblique angle onto the waxed lab floor.

  There were scuff marks. Lots of them. All right near where she’d been sitting.

  “Damn it,” he grated, gut knotting on a surge of self-directed bile as the worst-case scenario—that she’d been taken—suddenly got way more plausible. “You rotten… Tucker!” he bellowed up the stairs, already moving in that direction. “We’ve got—” His phone rang, interrupting him.

  Thinking it was Tucker calling to tell him that she’d been spotted or, better yet, brought back in safely, he flipped open the phone and said tersely, “This is Williams.”

  “Jack?” The one small word, a single syllable uttered in a trembling version of Tori’s usual sass, nearly brought him to his knees.

  Heart thudding double time, he clutched the phone and rasped, “Tori, baby, are you okay? Where are you? How did you—”

  “No questions,” a man’s voice broke in, clipped and no-nonsense. “That’s rule number one. Rule number two is that you don’t let on, not even with a twitch, that you’re talking to me. If I see your people anywhere near me between now and when I get what I want, then the woman dies.”

  “Proudfoot.” Jack said the name like a curse.

  Ignoring the ID, the mayor said, “Just do what you’re told and nobody will get hurt.”

  “I don’t believe that any more than I did your campaign speeches.”

  “Then lucky for me I’ve got the leverage.”

  Damn it. Jack’s pulse hammered thickly in his ears and he was suddenly very aware of the thudding boom of footsteps overhead, as the task force started to move out. Although the forward scouts had no doubt already reported that the mayor wasn’t at home or the office—there was no way the bastard would make things that easy, he was slippery, not stupid—the warrants could be served, the searches conducted, a BOLO issued…none of which would do Tori any good.

  Maybe he could, though.

  “What do you want?” he said coldly, grimly.

  “Meet me at the old deli packaging plant in the warehouse district. You know the one I mean?”

  “Yeah, I know it.” Jack’s mind raced as the activity overhead increased and he imagined Tucker up there, checking the time and wondering where the hell he was. Pretty soon, he’d come down into the lab looking for his missing detective, and things would go from bad to worse. “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Make it ten or don’t bother.”

  “Wait!” Jack said quickly. “I want to talk to—” But the line had already gone dead. “No!”

  “Jack?” Tucker’s voice called down the stairs. “Time to go. And I need my phone back.”

  “Be right there,” he called back, heart thudding a sick, urgent rhythm of Don’t tell, don’t tell, don’t tell, don’t tell.

  For a boy who’d been raised practically from birth to be a cop, the idea of deceiving his commanding officer was untenable. But for a man who’d finally found a woman worth fighting for—maybe even worth changing for—the idea of risking her life by going against Proudfoot’s orders wasn’t an option either.

  Trying desperately for a middle ground, he typed a quick text into his phone but didn’t send it. Then he put his phone by Tori’s knapsack, made a quick detour to the break room where the CSIs left their personal stuff in open lockers, and pocketed the keys to Alyssa’s personal vehicle. “You’ll get it back in one piece, I promise,” he said to the empty room as he imagined Tucker’s fiery wife glaring at him for the well-intentioned theft.

  And then, staying casual, he strolled upstairs and right out the front of the P.D., much as he had done in the militia encampment. This time, though, his palms were even sweatier and his gut tied even tighter in knots, and the moment he was out of the line of sight of the others, he sprinted for Alyssa’s boxy SUV and had the engine cranking in no time flat.

  Still, though, he could feel the seconds ticking down, the time running out, and it made him frantic. He hit the gas and sent the vehicle hurtling out of the parking lot just as the SWAT bus rolled in. He caught sight of surprised faces as he zoomed past and swerved onto the main drag, then punched it to just catch the end of a yellow light.

  Ignoring the startled honks of protest, he accelerated away, heading for the warehouse district even as the rest of the task force dispersed to the mayor’s properties to lie in wait for him.

  Jack, though, knew where Proudfoot was. What he didn’t know was what it was going to take to bring him down, and how the hell he was going to do it without Tori getting hurt. Because she was his priority now. And, if he got lucky, maybe tomorrow as well, and all the tomorrows after that.

  Don’t get ahead of yourself, he cautioned. And edging the gas pedal even closer to the floor, he sent the SUV flying through the city, feeling like he was back on his home territory, and ready to kick ass, take names and punish the bastard who’d raped the city’s coffers, exposed its citizens to a poisonous drug and dared to touch his woman.

  Proudfoot was doomed. He just didn’t know it yet.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Do it,” Proudfoot growled, pressing the sharp needle tip of a filled syringe against the side of Tori’s neck like a metal caress. “Unlock the damn machine and I’ll let you go.”

  She couldn’t stop the whimper, couldn’t control the slamming of her heart, couldn’t find the confident, sassy woman who’d learned to handle herself over the years.

  Then again, she’d never had to handle anything like this before.

  She had never in her life hated being pint-size as much as she did right now. Logic said that even a stronger, taller woman would have had trouble with Proudfoot armed and completely uncaring of her pain. But it was still demeaning to be so thoroughly overpowered. Her skin throbbed with bruises from her futile struggles, and her wrists stung from where the bungee had rubbed her raw. He’d taken off the cord, but it lay nearby, coiled like a nylon snake. She was sick and shaking, impotent. And she hated it, hated him.

  He was leaning over her, practically on top of her as she sat at the console of the DB-Auto she’d fried the day
before. His breath was hot on her crown, his muscles hard where he gripped her, crowded her, getting off on having her at his mercy, thanks to the filled syringe of Death Stare, along with the snub-nosed pistol he’d made a show of safetying and sticking in his pocket, as if daring her to go for it.

  They were alone in the lab trailer, just as she and Jack had been the day before, but that was where the similarities ended because the trailer was parked inside a huge city warehouse, and activity hummed just outside. She had glimpsed other vehicles from the encampment, along with additional lab space, production areas and more of the paramilitary militiamen, now with white-coated drug cookers in the mix.

  And it was those glimpses, along with the fact that she knew the truth about the mayor now, that said no matter what he claimed, no matter what he’d told Jack, he couldn’t afford to let either of them go.

  The sick terror rose higher, making her shake as she sat there motionless at the console, refusing to unlock the machine, because she knew that once it was working again, she was dead. So she was stalling, giving Jack time to get there.

  He would come, she knew. No matter how badly she’d hurt him back at the P.D., he would come for her. She only hoped he realized just how dangerous Proudfoot was with his back against the wall and his scheme coming apart around him. More, from what she’d overheard, she knew he wasn’t even the boss of the outfit. There was a bigger, badder mastermind behind it all…yet Proudfoot was claiming he would let her go if Jack did what he said.

  She had seen his eyes when he’d said it, though, knew it was a lie.

  Don’t trust him! she’d wanted to scream into the phone. She hadn’t dared, though, because two of the militiamen—dark-haired twentysomethings with matching haircuts and shark-dead eyes—had been hanging on to her at the time. So she’d stayed silent then, and now she kept telling herself that Jack knew his job, that he would find a way to bring backup and surround the warehouse before making a move, intending to catch the criminals in addition to rescuing her.

  Part of her, though, feared that he wouldn’t go that route—it was the part of her that knew that if the situation were reversed, she would do exactly as his captor demanded, hoping against hope that she’d be able to get him free uninjured. Oh, Jack.

  “You’ve got ten seconds to get started,” he said, pressing the needle into her skin hard enough to prick her. She felt a tingle and her heart stuttered in her chest. Gasping, she flinched back, in a move that earned her a dry, nasty chuckle.

  “Didn’t like that, did you? Or maybe you did like it. Is that it?” He came at her again, this time with his thumb on the plunger. “You want a taste of the action? Is that what it’s going to take to get you going?”

  She lurched off to the side of her chair as nausea churned and her head started to spin. Were the symptoms psychosomatic, or had some of the drug already entered her bloodstream?

  Abruptly losing interest in the game, he lifted the syringe, pointing it upward as he grabbed her arm, yanked her upright and shoved her once more toward the console. “Unlock it. Now.”

  His voice was cold, his eyes hard, his skin slick with sweat even though it was chilly and damp inside the trailer. And she was running out of time. She had to think of something, a way to stall, a way to escape—but her thoughts kept scattering like starlings flushed from a New England oak, swerving and darting with rough, raucous screeches. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I need my laptop. It’s back at the crime lab. It’s got my—”

  “Yo! Mr. Mayor!” a man’s voice shouted from outside the trailer. “Got a visitor here.”

  Proudfoot’s face split in a fierce, feral smile. He didn’t take his eyes off her as he raised his voice to call, “Bring him in. I think our little amateur hacker here needs some encouragement.”

  “No,” she whispered, understanding now why he’d wanted Jack there, too.

  The same two toughs who’d helped the mayor earlier—she thought they might have been the men she and Jack had bumped into on their way out of the trailer before, looking for revenge now—came through the door hustling Jack between them at gunpoint. His hands were up, his holsters empty and his shirt torn, but his eyes went immediately to her, searching with silent rage and a secret agony that let her know that he’d been scared for her, that he cared, that he hadn’t totally given up on her just yet.

  And thank God for that.

  “Tori,” he said, voice breaking on her name.

  “Shut it,” one of the toughs said, jabbing him all the way into the trailer with the butt of his machine gun.

  Proudfoot straightened away from her, attention fixed on Jack. To the men, he said, “Did you see anyone else?”

  “Didn’t even get a whiff. He’s alone.”

  “Good. Keep him over there.” Turning back to Tori, he said, “I don’t for a second believe that you need your laptop, or any other damn thing except what’s inside your head.” He lifted the syringe and depressed the plunger until a bead of clear liquid ran from the tip. “Unlock the machine, or your boyfriend here gets the needle.”

  Steely-eyed, Jack met Tori’s gaze. “Do it. Save yourself.” But his urgent expression seemed to be telegraphing something else, and when he turned to snarl at one of his captors and then looked back at her, she saw his mouth move in a one-word command: Stall.

  New energy coursed through her at the hint of a plan, of a possibility for rescue. She felt a flush stain her cheeks, but fought not to let anything else show.

  “You heard him.” Proudfoot spun back to her. “Get going.”

  Out of options and out of time, she turned slowly to the console. It would take only a couple of minutes for her to undo what she’d done to the programming, although the mayor wouldn’t know that. So she started keying in commands, using as many steps as she could possibly come up with. As she worked, she glanced repeatedly at Jack, who glowered at his guards and pretended to ignore her. Each time she looked over, though, his fingers curled slightly, miming a caress.

  The move warmed her, reassured her. Not just because of the intimacy that it implied, but also because she noticed it and understood it, just as she had caught his nearly invisible cue that she needed to stall. They were right back on the same page, working as the partners they had become up in the backcountry, though they were on his turf now, deep in the heart of the city.

  They might have come back down to civilization and the real-world problems it represented, but they hadn’t totally left behind what they had found up in the mountains.

  “Hey,” Proudfoot said, catching her looking too long at Jack. “Knock it off and hurry the hell up! We haven’t got all day.”

  Unfortunately, she didn’t know how long they did have. What was Jack waiting for? Would she know it when it happened? And how much longer was it going to take? Think, she told herself. Stall! But she was almost done with the programming, didn’t know how to stretch it out any longer without making it obvious.

  The panic she’d held at bay since Jack’s arrival threatened to overtake her once more, reminding her that she was powerless, useless, couldn’t save herself never mind help him. Worse, what if they didn’t get out of there? Her heart shuddered at the thought of never getting to apologize to him for wimping out back at the P.D. Because that was what she’d done.

  “You can do this, Tori.” His voice reached her, stroked along her skin like the caress of his hands had done the night before. “Go ahead. You can do it.”

  “She’d better do it,” Proudfoot growled, “and soon.”

  Ignoring him, she stretched out her hand toward Jack, mouth working wordlessly for a moment before she got out, “I thought I’d never see you again.” And though she might be stalling, it was the absolute truth. “I thought that it was over, that—”

  “Don’t,” he interrupted, voice low. His eyes were locked on hers, clear and cerulean-blue, as if cleared now of all the doubts and regrets that had clouded them earlier. Her focus tunneled down to that sight, making it seem as if the
y were alone in the room when he continued, “We both made some wrong assumptions about some things, maybe some too-fast decisions about others. We can fix it, given time.”

  But time wasn’t on their side, was it? More, she didn’t need to wait, didn’t want to wait. She wanted him to know what was in her heart here and now, without any strategy or plan, and without holding back the usual reserve that had protected her for so long…and in the process, she realized now, had hidden her away from things, too.

  She had felt more in the past few days with him than she had in years of no harm, no foul encounters. And, granted, not everything she’d felt had been positive—he made her mad sometimes, made her crazy other times—but each of those feelings had been sharp and real, and they’d made her feel so damn alive she almost couldn’t stand it. Even now, with Proudfoot looming over her, his patience running out, her blood buzzed from the almost-palpable connection she shared with the man who stood across the room from her at gunpoint, his eyes steady on hers.

  I don’t want to lose this, she realized. She didn’t want to lose him. Her heart drummed against her ribs at the realization.

  “Then we’ll take whatever time we need to fix things,” she said, and felt something unlock inside her as she made the decision. “We’ll back up, take it slow, get to know each other. We’ll do it your way, and I’ll stick around for as long as it’s working for both of us.” Her lips trembled into a smile at his shock. “It’ll be a different kind of adventure for me.”

  “No,” he said, sounding shattered. “I don’t—”

  Without warning, gunfire split the air outside the trailer, followed by the sound of running feet, shouted orders, cries of alarm.

  “Tori, take cover!” Jack shouted and flung himself on his captors, somehow wrestling both of them to the ground simultaneously.

  Heart lodged in her throat—both from the attack and from his “No, I don’t…” because she didn’t like the sound of that—she started for the kneehole of the nearest metal desk, but then swung around, screaming a “No!” of her own at the sight of Proudfoot heading for the fight with the syringe extended, going for Jack’s broad-shouldered back. “Jack, look out!”