Close Quarters With the Bodyguard

by Lisa Childs

  Which surprised Landon because he’d thought the guy had a crush on Jocelyn. But of course, now he knew that Landon was just her bodyguard—not her boyfriend. Except after last night—or this morning, actually—Landon wasn’t just her bodyguard.

  He wasn’t her boyfriend either. He wasn’t sure what the hell he was but in trouble. Deep trouble...

  “Why’s that?” Landon asked.

  “You have a very dangerous job,” Grohms said.

  “Jocelyn Gerber has a lot of enemies,” Mike Forbes added.

  A chill chased down Landon’s back as he realized the other man spoke the truth. Jocelyn did have a lot of enemies. So keeping her safe was going to require all his concentration. He had to redraw that line and make damn sure he didn’t cross it again.

  Both their lives depended on him staying focused. He had to protect her. And he had to protect himself, as well.

  Jocelyn stared down in confusion at the folder Landon slid onto her desk. “Where did this come from?”

  He lifted his broad shoulders in a faint shrug. “Male paralegal. I didn’t catch his name.”

  “I didn’t ask him for this,” Jocelyn said. She knew who her coworkers were; she didn’t need a list of names with their addresses, marital statuses and criminal history. Fortunately, not many of them had a criminal history beyond some speeding tickets, and one had a driving-while-impaired charge on his record.

  “You should have,” Landon said. “You need to find out which of them is working for Luther.”

  She sighed. “I’m not sure it is one of them.”

  “You’re not naive, Jocelyn,” he said. “You know it has to be one of them. I would have noticed someone following us to your house. The shooter had to know where you live.”

  She shivered. “That doesn’t mean they work with me. Someone in the police department could have found out.”

  He tensed, then begrudgingly nodded in agreement. “Maybe...”

  “You said yourself it’s possible that someone within the police department got rid of the evidence you and your unit brought me to bring to a grand jury,” she reminded him.

  “Not someone within my unit, though,” he said defensively. “We were all determined to get Luther off the streets.”

  She hoped he was right. Or the chief had put the wrong franchise of the Payne Protection Agency in charge of protecting the people associated with Luther’s trial. But another department had aroused her suspicions. Not like Landon aroused her, though.

  Just looking at him chased away the chill of fear from her as passion rushed through her. He was so damn good-looking. And now she knew how magnificent his muscular body looked with no clothes.

  How it felt.

  How he’d made her feel.

  She barely resisted the urge to wave the folder in front of her face to cool herself off. But she closed her eyes to shut out the temptation that he’d become.

  “I think it could be a CSI,” she admitted.

  “Wendy Thompson?” he asked with a gasp.

  She opened her eyes again. “Not Wendy. She didn’t handle the evidence for those other cases—just this one.” And that was why she’d been able to get a grand jury to indict—because the evidence hadn’t mysteriously disappeared before she’d been able to present it to them.

  He nodded. “That makes sense,” he agreed. “But CSIs aren’t the only ones with access to the evidence.”

  With the evidence locker in the police department, pretty much every officer had access. And when the evidence was sent to the district attorney’s office...

  “I know,” she said. “But let’s start with the CSIs. Let’s talk to the chief.” She could have just called Chief Lynch, but since she didn’t have court today, she needed an excuse to get out of the office. The space was too small to share with Landon for too long.

  His scent already filled her head. It was a combination of soap from the quick shower he’d taken mixed with male muskiness. She wanted to bury her face in his neck and breathe in it, breathe in him. And her body tingled with awareness and desire. She wanted him closer, wanted him touching her like she wanted to touch him.

  No. They could not stay any longer in her small office. She jumped up from her desk. “Let’s go.”

  “Don’t you want to see if he’s available first?” Landon asked.

  She shook her head. “If he’s not, we’ll talk to Wendy Thompson and see if she has any suspicions. We should check on her anyway. With the witness missing, Luther will probably focus all his attention on taking out Wendy.”

  If anything happened to that evidence or the evidence tech, Jocelyn’s case against Luther would be in serious trouble. Landon held the door for her, and when she passed him, her body reacted to his closeness—her pulse quickening, her skin tingling—and she knew she was already in serious trouble.

  With him...

  For years, there had been speculation that someone in the district attorney’s office was working for Luther. Some people even suspected it was Jocelyn. The real spy grinned at his reflection in the rearview mirror.

  That was perfect. He would have to figure out how to frame her for it. But first he had to get rid of her—because he worried that she would figure it out first.

  She was too damn smart.

  And she worked too hard.

  Or she had until this bodyguard had started protecting her. Of course, she’d been a little busy trying to stay alive to worry about work. That was why he couldn’t stop trying to take her life—it kept her from tearing his apart.

  And if she was dead, she could never discover the truth. He watched as they opened the door from the district attorney’s offices and stepped into the parking garage. When he’d seen the bodyguard standing at her door, he’d figured they might be leaving, so he’d rushed to the parking garage and started the vehicle he’d rented a few days ago.

  He hadn’t wanted to risk anyone seeing his. He pulled his hood tighter around his face and adjusted his dark glasses. He didn’t want to risk anyone seeing him either. But he had to take the risk of trying to kill her again.

  The longer Jocelyn lived, the more likely she was to discover his connection to Luther Mills. He had to kill her and her bodyguard, too.

  He couldn’t wait until they got into the SUV. He’d tried to follow the bodyguard before, but he drove too damn fast. They would get away from him if they got into their vehicle.

  Fortunately, he’d had his rental running beforehand. He’d already pulled out of his spot and gotten into position. So the minute they stepped away from the door to the building and headed across the parking area, he gunned his engine and bore down on them.

  There was no way they could outrun him. No way they could escape him.

  The man was definitely a bodyguard—with the quick reflexes and protective instincts. He shoved Jocelyn between two parked cars and jumped just as the rental’s bumper neared him. Instead of striking the bodyguard or Jocelyn, the car struck those other cars. Metal crunched and screeched.

  He pressed harder on the accelerator, cramming into that small space between those cars. Either they would crush Jocelyn and her bodyguard or his rental car would.

  But the bodyguard surged up from the ground to which he’d fallen with Jocelyn. His arm was outstretched, the barrel of his gun pointed at the windshield, and he began to fire.

  He ducked as the windshield shattered, but he kept his foot on the gas. He needed to take them out, needed for them to die. The shooting stopped, and he glanced up, peering through that broken windshield.

  And finally his front bumper struck the concrete half wall of the parking structure. Either they were beneath his car or the ones he’d crumpled, or they’d gone over the wall.

  He grinned. Either way, they were dead.

  And he needed to get the hell out of there before he was caught. He shifted into
Reverse and tried backing up. Those other crumpled cars caught on his, metal catching and twisting, rubber burning.

  But it wasn’t just the other vehicles he had to worry about escaping. People had rushed up behind him, a security guard and a couple of burly men he’d noticed inside the building. More bodyguards?

  They began to fire at his vehicle as they advanced on him. But finally his car jerked free of the wreckage. The back bumper struck one of the men, sending him flying back into another one—knocking them both to the ground.

  He shifted into Drive now and accelerated, careening around corners as he headed all those stories down to the exit to the street. He sped up as he neared the garage exit and crashed through the gate at the end. It wasn’t as if he could have used his parking pass. That would have been traced back to him.

  He had to make sure that nothing could be traced because now he wouldn’t just be facing conspiracy or aiding-and-abetting charges. He would be facing murder charges.

  Jocelyn Gerber had to be dead. There was no way she or her bodyguard could have survived a fall from the fifth story of the concrete parking structure.

  He waited for a flash of guilt or regret or something...but he felt nothing but triumph. Of course, if he’d had a conscience, he wouldn’t have started working for Luther Mills in the first place.

  Chapter 12

  The parking structure had been designed in such a way that every other level had an area of uncovered parking. So when the car had kept coming at them despite Landon shooting at it, he’d had no choice. He’d grabbed Jocelyn up from the asphalt and he’d leaped over the half wall to the level below them.

  It had just been a one-story jump down to the uncovered parking area. But the fall, and subsequent crash onto the roof of a vehicle, had knocked all the air from Landon’s lungs. They burned as he struggled to breathe.

  There was such a weight lying on them—on him. He moved his arms and reached up and found Jocelyn pressed tightly against him. He’d held her as he’d jumped, turning so that he took the brunt of the fall.

  It was what Clint had done when he’d leaped out of the witness’s apartment to avoid getting killed. But they’d fallen three stories into a dumpster. Landon had just struck the roof of an SUV. And Jocelyn was light. She hadn’t hurt him.

  But she wasn’t moving.

  He stroked his hand down her back and then up to her neck. He needed to check for a pulse. But before his fingers brushed her skin, she shivered and finally moved.

  And he sucked in a breath as his ribs, which must have been bruised, ached in protest along with a twinge in his lower back.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He should have been asking her that. But before he could, someone leaned over the half wall above them and called down, “Are you all right?”

  He tried to reach for his holster, but it and his weapon were trapped beneath her body. He had no way to defend them—to protect her—if that person started firing.

  But then he recognized the voice, and he focused on the face of the man leaning over the half wall. Unlike Cooper Payne’s team, who were all former Marines who wore their hair in military brush cuts, this guy’s hair was long and dark blond.

  “You all right?” Garek Kozminski asked again. “An ambulance is on its way.”

  Maybe Jocelyn had recognized him, too, because she moved against him, struggling to sit up. Not wanting her to fall off the car, Landon caught and held her. He was finally able to draw in a deep breath again, so he sat up. Then he helped her down to the ground again.

  Her legs nearly buckled beneath her. But he’d jumped down from the car and caught her before she fell. “You’re not okay,” he said.

  “I’m scared,” she said. “But I’m not hurt. What about you?” Her gaze moved over his body, reminding him of how she’d looked at him and touched him the night before.

  Heat rushed through his body. If he could feel attraction and desire, he wasn’t in too much pain. He shook his head. “No. I’m fine.” He glanced back up at Garek. “We don’t need an ambulance.”

  “The security guard does,” Garek replied as he glanced over his shoulder. “He got hit when the guy backed up.”

  “Did you get a look at him?” Landon asked.

  Garek shook his head. “No. You?”

  Landon cursed. “No. He had a hood drawn tight around his face and dark glasses.”

  “I’m surprised you saw that much with the tinted windows,” Garek remarked.

  Landon wouldn’t have seen that much had he not broken the windshield. He must not have hit the guy, though, not if he’d been able to escape. “So he got away?” he asked for confirmation, a sick feeling roiling through his stomach.

  Garek sighed and nodded. “Sorry...”

  It wasn’t his backup bodyguard’s fault. It was Landon’s. He should have made damn certain the man had not escaped. Hell, because of that disguise, he didn’t even know if it had been a man trying to run them down.

  He was no closer to finding out who was after Jocelyn than he’d been after the shooting. He only knew that the person was getting more and more bold, which meant he or she was getting more and more desperate.

  That was not good. Desperate people were unpredictable. There was no way to know when they would try to take out Jocelyn again.

  The only thing Landon knew for certain was that they would try again and would keep trying until they were either caught or succeeded in killing her.

  Jocelyn could not deny that someone wanted her dead. She wanted to deny it. She wanted to go on believing all those threats she’d received were empty. But they weren’t. Somebody was determined to make good on those threats.

  Somebody was determined to end her life.

  “Will the security guard be okay?” she asked Landon as the ambulance headed out of the parking structure with the middle-aged guard strapped to a stretcher in the back.

  “Looks like it’s just a broken leg,” Landon said.

  How did her bodyguard not have any broken bones? He’d taken the brunt of the fall when he’d propelled them off the half wall onto the level below and the roof of an SUV.

  “Are you really okay?” she asked him.

  “No,” he admitted.

  And she glanced at the ambulance, willing it back even as it raced out of the garage. “You should have said—”

  “I’m pissed as hell,” he said. “This idiot shouldn’t keep escaping. We should be able to catch him. I should be able to catch him.”

  Whoever was after her wasn’t one of Luther’s young, careless crew members. It was somebody wiser and far more careful. Maybe it was someone within her department. She shivered as she considered it.

  Some of them stood around now, watching her from the other side of the crime-scene tape Spencer Dubridge had had an officer string around the wreckage. They’d already told the detective what they knew—which had been damn little. And so much time had passed between the attempt on her and Landon’s lives and the detective’s arrival that their assailant could have ditched the vehicle and circled back to the garage to stand with her other curious coworkers. She knew they were just curious and not concerned about her. None of them was going to help her.

  And neither she nor Landon could help the detective. They hadn’t gotten a good look at the driver or at the car. They’d been too busy trying to stay alive. No. Landon had been too busy trying to keep her alive.

  Once again, he’d willingly put his life at risk for hers. But he was just doing his job. She had to remember that, so she didn’t get all sappy and fall for him.

  Because for the first time in years, she felt sappy and overemotional. She blinked furiously against the tears stinging her eyes. And finally she dashed them away, hopefully before anyone had seen them. She didn’t want to show any weaknesses to her coworkers or to the police officers present or especially
to Landon.

  He might suggest that she ask to be removed from the case. She probably wouldn’t have to ask, though. She’d recognized the blond-haired bodyguard. At first she’d thought he was her boss’s husband; then she’d realized he was her boss’s brother-in-law. Either way, Amber was going to learn about this latest attempt on her life.

  Detective Dubridge walked back from where he’d just peered over the half wall. Keeli Abbott stood near him, but not as close as Landon stood to her.

  “Damn, Myers, I thought you and the others were taking the easy way out when you quit the vice unit to become bodyguards,” he said. “Now I see how damn dangerous your job is.” He glanced at Keeli now, and there was a furrow between his brows.

  Landon shook his head. “It’s dangerous for the same reason that vice was—Luther Mills.”

  “You think Luther was behind this?” Dubridge skeptically asked.

  “Ultimately,” Landon said.

  And it was probably true—if someone from her office had tried to run them down—that person was working for Luther. That was why Jocelyn could not be taken off his case. She had to make sure that Luther was finally brought to justice.

  She had to make sure that he couldn’t hurt anyone else anymore.

  Parker had just had a close call—too damn close. If not for Clint, he would have died. And he had too much to lose: his beautiful wife, his children...his agency. His friends.

  He didn’t want to lose any of them. So he’d made a call, warning them all that Luther was extra dangerous.

  He might have put out a hit on all of them—not just the people associated with his trial, but on the people trying to protect them.

  He might have put out a hit on the entire Payne Protection Agency. Unfortunately, few of them had seemed surprised by the news.

  “What happened?” he asked Landon.

  “Another attempt...”

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “Is Jocelyn Gerber?”

  “Yes and yes,” Landon replied. But he didn’t sound all right. He sounded angry as hell. But he’d survived and so had Jocelyn unharmed, so he’d done his job.