Bodyguard by Melanie Shawn

33

Savannah

Walkingthrough the rooms and halls of my childhood home, I understood why I’d been so reluctant to come back here. Why the thought of it had literally taken my breath and stolen my ability to stand.

It wasn’t because I was afraid it would be the same. It was because I was afraid it would be different.

And it was. And, again, I couldn’t breathe, and I was finding it hard to stay upright.

They had changed everything about the house. Every single thing.

Of course there was all new furniture, but it was more than that. The walls were painted different colors. There was new cabinetry in the kitchen, and all new appliances. The carpet was gone, replaced with vinyl woodgrain flooring.

Objectively, it looked great. I couldn’t quibble with their taste. The only issue I had with it was that, in modernizing the house, they had bulldozed my childhood.

Yeah. That was what my nervous system knew enough to be afraid of seeing, even before my brain had gotten there. That the place I revisited so often in my memories now only existed there—in my memory.

You really couldn’t go home again. At least not if you were me.

I hung back and let Gage do all of the searching. He knew what he was looking for, and he knew proper search technique. It made sense.

Back at the safe house, he had told me he only needed me to come along in case he had a question about the layout of the house, or the construction. I knew that was crap. First of all, I knew nothing about the construction of the house. Secondly, as far as layout went—he’d spent almost as many waking hours there as I had during the two years before the Marshals had taken us. He knew that layout like the back of his hand. He must’ve.

No, I suspected his real reason for bringing me along had been that he was scared to leave me. And it wasn’t just his protective instincts. I would have been objectively safer back with Bear, who had stayed behind to start sifting through a massive data dump that Crypt had delivered overnight.

My suspicion was that he had driven off and left me once before, and I had disappeared on him like a thief in the night. I had been snatched away. I thought that he must have a deep-seated fear, and potentially a realistic one, of that happening again. The stakes were just too high. So he didn’t let me out of his sight.

I couldn’t blame him, really. I sure didn’t want him out of mine.

In fact, I was trailing him around the house like a little duckling, so lost in thought that, when he stopped abruptly in the upstairs hallway, I didn’t even notice at first that the door we were standing outside was the one that led into my former bedroom.

He looked at me long and hard, searching my face.

“I’m fine,” I assured him. “It’s fine. I swear.”

He gave a decisive nod and we walked in.

It wasn’t the gut punch I expected it to be. Maybe all the rooms that had come before it had smoothed the way, worn off the sharp edges.

Or maybe it was that it looked so completely different now that I barely even recognized it as having once been mine. It wasn’t even a bedroom anymore, it was a home office.

When Gage had finished his search, he turned to me. “Did you have any typical kid hiding places? Loose floorboard? Vent with a loose screw? That kind of thing?”

I shook my head. “Nah. Even if I had, it would have been dumb for my dad to hide something in a place I accessed all the time. But, no. Nothing like that.”

He nodded. “Okay. Then we’re done here. Let’s go.”

We left the house the way we came, and just after we’d climbed back in the SUV, Gage’s phone chimed. He pulled it out and tapped on the screen.

“Bear found some photos in the data dump he thinks look significant.”

He studied the phone screen for another moment, then turned it to face me, asking, “What do you think?”

There were photos covering the breadth of the phone. The phone was small and the picture quality wasn’t great. They looked like stills from a security camera feed. I could see, though, that they showed two men on the street, talking intently.

Gage slowly swiped through several in the series. In two of the last images in the series, an envelope changed hands.

When he’d stopped on the last pic, I reached forward to pinch and expand so I could see the faces better.

“Oh...my God,” I breathed, my hand flying up and pressing against my forehead.

“What?” Gage asked. “I recognize Barlowe. Who’s the other man?”

“That’s Marshal Woodward,” I answered, my voice shaky. “He’s our handler.”

Shit.

I couldn’t believe what I was looking at on Gage’s phone screen. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. Well, I had at least that many for Marshal Woodward.

I couldn’t believe he’d sold out my father. For what? For money? It was...unfathomable. Disgusting.

In fact, as the shock wore off a little and the reality sunk in, I really thought I might vomit. Or maybe pass out. All I knew was that the world was spinning and so was my stomach. My knees were trembling and I really didn’t think I’d be able to stay conscious much longer.

Just as my field of vision started to darken around the edges, I felt Gage’s strong arm encircling my shoulder, pulling me to him as he kissed the top of my head. “You’re okay, Savannah,” he soothed in a low, even voice. “Just breathe. Just breathe.”

I took his advice and sucked in a long, deep breath. Then another, and another. I had to admit, it helped. My vision cleared and I sat up. “Okay,” I said, nodding. “I’m okay.”

He returned my nod with a clipped one of his own. “Good. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“First, back to the safe house to get an update from Bear and regroup.”

“And then?”

His lips narrowed into a grim line. “And then to get some answers from fucking Marshal Woodward.”