Bodyguard by Melanie Shawn

18

Gage

“I feellike we’re going into a bomb shelter,” Savannah mumbled, trepidation in her voice. “Like maybe we’re not coming out for twenty years.”

“Yes to the first. No to the second.”

It was true, Bear’s safe house was nothing more than a door in the side of a hill. From the outside, anyway. If I knew Bear, the inside was sure to be a different story. She’d see in a minute.

I understood her hesitancy, though. So much had happened, and so much was still ahead of us, and she had almost no control over any of it. And probably didn’t even understand most of it. Anybody would be freaked out.

She glanced up at me, her eyes soft, a small and regretful smile flickering across her lips. “Part of me wouldn’t mind just holing up with you for twenty years. Part of me thinks that would be a pretty nice life.”

My heart clenched in my chest. I’d had the same thought. It was tempting. But, no. Running was no life. And besides—that’s not who I was.

“We can do better than nice. Trust me.”

She nodded. “I do.”

“Good.”

A buzzer sounded and the door gave when I pushed it. Bear must have seen us on his security screens.

We stepped in and the heavy door clanged shut behind us. When it did, the interior lights came on.

We were standing on a large, round metal platform, smooth concrete walls to the sides. About ten feet ahead of us, a steep metal ladder descended into darkness.

“I don’t know that I feel a lot better,” Savannah observed quietly.

We made our way down the ladder. It wasn’t a short climb. At the bottom was a landing with another reinforced steel door, much like the one we’d had to come through to enter from the outside.

Savannah may have felt nervous about this setup, but that was just because it felt unfamiliar to her. I, on the other hand, was feeling more confident by the minute.

The door buzzed like the one upstairs had, and then swung open on its own. Bear stood there, his hulking frame clad in all black as usual.

“Nice set up you got here,” I greeted him.

He nodded in appreciation, then gestured with his chin at the ladder behind us. “Check it out.”

He pressed a button and it retracted into the wall. I liked it. It was an unsurvivable drop from the top platform, and there would be nothing to attach any rappelling equipment to in the round smoothness of the floor or walls.

I turned back to him. “Smart.”

He nodded and stepped aside, allowing us to enter.

Bear and I didn’t need small talk. Hell, the exchange we’d just engaged in was practically flowery by our standards. The main thing was, we knew we had each other’s backs. We knew that in a place much deeper than words, and we had proved it over and over, not with words but with actions.

There was no one else in the world I would have entrusted Savannah’s well-being to. He was not only the most capable person I knew, aside from myself, he was also the only one I knew would take it as seriously as I would.

Inside the interior door, the bunker opened up to a sprawling, comfortable living space. In fact, it felt a little weird to even call it a bunker.

There was ample lighting, comfortable furnishings, and enough of a “decorated” feel to make it seem like a regular home.

“Oh!” Savannah exclaimed. “This wasn’t what I was expecting from...what we’d seen so far.”

“No need to live like a heathen,” Bear explained.

Damn. That was maybe the most philosophical thing I’d ever heard him say. He must’ve really taken a liking to Savannah.

“This place is untraceable?” I confirmed.

Bear looked at me like I’d lost whatever few marbles I’d had to begin with. “You know I don’t do traceable. There’s no connection between me and this place.”

Savannah looked around, clearly marveling at the homey atmosphere, set so deep beneath the ground.

“I don’t get it, though,” she said. “I mean...obviously you had to hire people to build this. It’s not like you found it on Zillow.”

Bear nodded. “Yeah. They never met me. We only communicated through email. They got paid by wire from an untraceable account in the Caymans. They think I’m a paranoid survivalist.”

I snorted. “Aren’t you?”

He smirked, the half-grin barely visible beneath his bushy beard. “Sure. They just have the wrong idea about what I’m trying to survive.”

“Bear specializes in this kind of thing,” I explained. “Safe houses. Identities. Complex plans. When protection needs go beyond bodyguarding, Bear is your man.”

Savannah shook her head wryly. “Well, then I think it’s safe to say that Bear is my man.”

Even though the dry tone in her voice told me that she was joking—or, if not quite joking, then at least not quite serious—it irked me to hear her calling anyone else, “her man.”

I shoved that down. It was unprofessional, and petty. I was neither of those things, and didn’t plan on starting now.

“So, tell me,” Bear said. “What are you in the market for? Safe house, identities, or complex plan?”

I considered. “I guess I’d go with complex plan. Safe house while we work it out. And identities if it fails.”

He nodded, like the answer was nothing out of the ordinary. Which, to him, it wasn’t.

“Then we’d better get down to work.”