Bodyguard by Melanie Shawn

9

Savannah

Bacon.

The thought popped into my head even before consciousness fully claimed me.

My eyes flew open as the events of the past few days flooded my mind. I sat straight up, casting my gaze frantically around the room, grasping for hints to show me where I was.

Gage’s cabin.

Okay. Yes. That’s right. I’d been so tired when we’d arrived the night before that the events had taken a few minutes to flood back. The hamburger. The nap. The bath. The sweats. And finally, the bed and blissful oblivion.

But it hadn’t quite been oblivion. Even as I’d drifted off—and even in my unconscious state, I thought—I’d been aware of Gage’s presence in the chair next to the bed. It had comforted me, made me feel safe. Safe enough to fall asleep...and for the second time that night.

Of course, I understood that exhaustion would eventually overtake a human body. There was no such thing as putting off sleep forever. But, still. I couldn’t help but believe it was significant that I’d stayed awake for over two days—running on nothing but coffee, adrenaline, and sheer terror—and had not felt safe enough to fall asleep until I’d been in Gage’s presence.

I knew I was safe with him. My logical mind told me that was ridiculous. That no matter how well-trained he was, no matter how good at his job, he was just one man. Up against God only knew what kind of organization, but definitely one powerful enough to find someone well-hidden by the government, someone with an entirely new identity.

The odds were not in our favor.

But I didn’t care. I didn’t know why I didn’t, and I wasn’t about to examine it too closely. I only knew that, deep down in a place beyond logic, I absolutely, one hundred percent knew that Gage would keep me safe.

That was enough for me.

I climbed out of bed and smoothed down my hair. I was sure I looked like a nightmare. No make-up, hair a tousled mess, drowning in Gage’s old sweatpants and T-shirt.

But, God, the smell of that bacon made it hard to care.

I followed my nose down to the kitchen and saw Gage standing at the stove, pushing slices of fragrant bacon around a cast iron skillet.

Damn. Was there anything sexier than the sight of a man cooking?

Yeah. Yeah, there is. The sight of this particular man cooking.

I took a deep breath and tied my rising feelings up in a knot, shoving them down inside the same box deep in my consciousness that I’d been shoving those particular feelings into since I was sixteen years old. It was bursting at the seams by this point. I’d stuffed it to the breaking point over the years. But now was no time to let it explode.

“Good morning,” he said, never turning around.

“Morning,” I replied.

“How’d you sleep?”

“Better than I expected,” I said honestly. “How about you? Did you manage to get any sleep?”

He gave a short nod. “I let myself sleep in the chair for an hour before I came down here to cook breakfast. It was enough.”

I sat down at the kitchen table, curling my legs up under me. “Huh. I must have really been out. I didn’t hear an alarm.”

He shrugged, an almost imperceptible movement of his shoulders. “I have an internal alarm.”

Well, fuck. That’s about the hottest thing I’ve ever heard. And it’s definitely not helping me keep those damn feelings locked away!

He set a plate in front of me, loaded with slices of bacon, a pile of scrambled eggs, and two slices of toast. Then he handed me a mug of coffee.

Neither of those things did much to help keep my feelings under wraps, either.

He sat down across from me with his own plate and cup of coffee.

I took a deep breath. Time to dive in, even if it was difficult. “So, I guess you need to hear more details about the night my father died. Right?”

He shook his head. “Later. Just eat.”

I nodded. He was a man of few words, but I couldn’t deny it—I liked the words he did say.

I picked up the fork that was sitting on the edge of the plate and dug it into the pile of fluffy, yellow scrambled eggs. My stomach growled. Again, I would've sworn that there was no way that I could be hungry under my current circumstances. With everything going on, all of the insane stresses and danger, who could think about something as inconsequential as food?

But, just like the night before with the hamburgers, my body had other ideas. It needed fuel. And Gage had made sure that I would get that.

As I worked my way through the eggs, bacon, and toast, I was surprised to discover that he was actually a good cook. I wasn't sure why that surprised me—after all, he was ridiculously good at pretty much everything he tried. But somehow it did.

When we had both finished our meals, he stood and took the plates to the sink, then returned and sat down across from me. We stared at each other in silence for a moment, sipping our coffee. Finally, he said flatly, “Okay. Tell me what you remember. Start from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”

I nodded, took a deep breath. “Okay. We were walking home. We’d gone out to dinner. Out of nowhere, a black sedan screeched up to the curb. Three men jumped out and ran toward us. I knew exactly what was happening. I’d had nightmares about the possibility for years. But when it actually, finally happened...I don’t know. I was frozen. Like my feet were cemented in concrete.

“My father turned to me. He screamed, ‘Run!’ That snapped me out of it. I whirled around and sprinted as fast as I could. I assumed he was running with me. But...”

I had to pause then, fighting against the lump that had formed in my throat, blocking the words even if I’d wanted to say them. Which I didn’t. Saying them out loud would make it real.

I shook my head to clear it, ran my hand over my face. I couldn’t afford to give in to emotion. Not now.

I took another deep breath and forged ahead. “I had made it maybe a block when I heard the shots. I froze again, but only for a second. I heard my father’s voice in my head again, telling me to run. I knew I had to listen. So I did. I ran straight to the bus station. I bought a ticket on the next bus pulling out. And when that bus arrived at its destination, I bought a ticket home.”

I stopped. Silence hung between us, the echo of the word ‘home’ hanging in the air. I hadn’t used the word intentionally, but of course that was how I still thought of the town where I’d grown up. The town where I’d met Gage, where we’d fallen in love. The town I’d been ripped from in the middle of the night.

Finally, he nodded. “Okay. I’m going to take you through it again. This time, I’ll stop and ask you questions, though.”

I shrugged, feeling defeated. “I’ll go through it as many times as you want. But I swear, that’s all I remember. I wasn’t like some badass heroine of a movie. I didn’t get their license plate or anything like that.”

“You remember more than you realize. I promise you. Now, tell me again. Start from the beginning.”

He took me through the story five or six more times, stopping to ask specific questions. And to my amazement, he’d been right—I did remember a lot more than I’d realized.

He asked me about things I never would have thought to include, like what the reason for the dinner out was, the occasion. How long it had been planned, who had chosen the restaurant. Whether we usually walked that route at that time of night.

How our assailants were dressed, small physical details that I hadn’t realized I’d noticed. The direction the sedan had been coming from when it pulled up, the speed, the angle it had stopped at, which doors the three men had exited the car from.

Even sounds in the night air that I hadn’t realized I’d heard. Gage pulled it all out of me, gently, little by little.

“Okay,” he said finally. “We’re going to do it one last time. This time, though, I want you to close your eyes. Block out everything but the memory. Picture it as clearly as you can. Place yourself back there. Relive every moment as if it were happening right now. And describe what you see.”

I closed my eyes. My stomach was on the verge of revolt. I wasn’t sure I could do this.

Talking about the memory was one thing. Even focusing on clearly remembering specific small details.

But closing my eyes and intentionally reliving those moments in all of their horrible clarity? Putting myself back there as if it were actually happening again?

God. I didn’t know if I was strong enough for that.

As soon as I did lean back in the kitchen chair and close my eyes, though, the room exploded in flashing lights that drove my lids to immediately open again.

My heart leapt into my throat, terror seizing me. Seeing the tense look on Gage’s face did nothing to comfort me.

“What is it? What’s going on?” I gasped.

He stood and motioned for me to go with him down the hall. “It’s the motion alarms I have installed on the perimeter of the property,” he explained. “Someone’s here.”