Bodyguard by Melanie Shawn

36

Gage

Bearand I sat in the vehicle he used for hauling equipment, a small cargo van, watching the storefront window and door of the restaurant where Woodward was having dinner alone. The same restaurant he ate at, alone, every single week on the same night.

We knew he was alone, as usual, because we could see him plain as day, sitting right in front of the window like he was a damn mannequin in a department store display.

I swear to God, the guy had no sense of trade craft. A regular routine, everything in plain sight, no apparent sense at all that he was being surveilled…

The hairs on the back of my neck tingled. There was always the possibility that he was being intentionally stupid to draw us out. That we were about to walk into an ambush. If things went south in the worst way possible, at least Savannah knew all of Bear’s codes. He’d showed her how to get out of the safe house if we never came back. I couldn’t bring myself to be there for that conversation.

But, as much as it was theoretically possible that Woodward was faking his obliviousness, I didn’t think that was the case. The idiot had let himself be photographed taking an envelope of cash from a known bad guy. He’d fucking opened the envelope and riffled through it, for fuck’s sake. Just in case whoever was looking at the pictures had any doubt what was in it.

Still. My training, not to mention my natural instincts, would never allow me to let my guard down. And I liked it that way.

I mentioned the possibility to Bear, and he nodded. “Thought of that.”

“You think we need to change the plan?”

He shook his head. “Nah. Still the best plan. We’ll just keep an extra eye out.”

I nodded in response.

That was what I liked about conversations with Bear. We said everything that needed to be said, and nothing more. It was straightforward. Simple.

It was what just about nothing else in my life was at the moment, and I liked it.

Woodward put a few bills on the table and stood to leave. Bear fired up the engine and we both tensed, readying ourselves for action. If we were sprinters, we would have been on the “Get Set” portion of the On Your Mark, Get Set, Go sequence that started races.

Woodward stepped out of the front door of the restaurant and strolled down the street, for all appearances like he didn’t have a care in the world.

When he’d made it almost to the end of the block, Bear pulled away from the curb and we glided down the street after him.

We had now officially moved to “Go” status.

If Woodward stayed true to form, he would make a left at the end of the block, onto a much darker and more deserted street. A much better location to snatch him.

When he turned, we circled around the block so that we would come up on him from the ideal angle. We turned onto the street, pulling down our balaclavas, and saw that he was about ten steps away from the optimal point of action that Bear and I had identified earlier. Bear sped up and pulled to the curb, the vehicle angled to shield the action from the most vantage points possible.

It wasn’t lost on me that we were snatching him using essentially the same ambush technique that Barlowe’s men had used to roll up on Savannah and her father.

Of course, based on Savannah’s retelling, which included screeching tires and multiple men jumping out of the vehicle simultaneously like it was some kind of menacing clown car, their technique was shoddy at best. Not surprising. If things went according to plan, our operation was going to be nothing like that.

Nevertheless. Pulling up on someone as they were walking home from dinner—it was the same foundational concept.

I knew that the only likely significance was that it was the most logical move. They had probably settled on it for the same reason Bear and I had—it made the most sense.

Still. The coincidence felt significant, somehow.

When the vehicle had stopped completely, I jumped out. Woodward—whose technique was also shoddy at best—didn’t even take notice of me, and just kept walking. I opened the back slider and, when he was within a foot of my grasp, lunged forward, grabbed him, and tossed him in the back.

I shut the slider and was back in the passenger seat before he had even uttered a sound. He’d been too shocked to yell. Which worked out perfectly.

Bear pulled away from the curb and drove away, driving at a moderate pace, obeying the traffic laws.

It was amazing how much of our job basically consisted of not drawing attention to yourself in situations where your adrenaline is screaming at you to do something that would draw attention.

“What…what the fuck?” Woodward finally spluttered.

Bear and I were silent. We’d already planned to say nothing on the way back to the safe house.

Silence and non-engagement are two of the most difficult things for the human psyche to handle. That’s what made them such an effective interrogation technique.

And while we weren’t technically interrogating Woodward yet, in a sense we were—everything we did from this point until we actually started asking the questions was part of preparing him to break down, psychologically. Softening him up. Setting the scene.

I imagined the scenario from his point of view.

Bear’s van was used for hauling supplies. Bear knew that. I knew that.

Woodward didn’t know that.

From his perspective, it probably looked like a serial killer van from back there. Bare metal from floor to ceiling. Metal grating forming a cage between the cockpit and the cargo space. Tie down points on the walls and floors with metal chains attached to them.

I smirked a little. Then again, Bear had modified the locks and door latches to be inaccessible from the interior. So maybe this wasn’t this van’s first rodeo, after all.

Bear and I stared silently ahead as he drove, and it wasn’t long before Woodward started babbling in a high-pitched, frantic voice.

“Guys, listen. Listen, guys. I know Barlowe sent you. I get that everything went pear shaped. But you can’t blame me for that! I didn’t run the operation. He did! All I did was give him the intel. And it was good intel. Right? Right? I mean, you found them, didn’t you? Right where I said they’d be? It’s not my fault if his guys can’t handle a simple operation.”

Damn. That hadn’t taken as long as I’d thought.

His voice had devolved into petulant whining by the end of the diatribe.

The more I found out about this guy, the more I couldn’t stand him. But more than that, the more I was fucking livid that he’d been the one in charge of Savannah’s safety all these years.

I doubled down on my determination that she was never going back into WITSEC. Fuck. If this was the kind of clown they were going to entrust her safety to, she wouldn’t stand a chance.

The way he kept babbling and begging all the way back to the safe house, I would have expected more information to be forthcoming, but it was just more of the same. Every piece of useful information had come out in the first few sentences: namely, that he thought Barlowe had sent us, and that he definitely had been the one to give up Savannah and her father.

Not that there had been much doubt about that. But it was always convenient when they confessed within the first two minutes. It saved time, and bullshit.

I pulled out the secure phone I’d brought with me and texted the number of the phone I’d left Savannah.

“Package acquired. Thinks B sent us. Stay in bedroom until I get you. Your presence could be useful tool.”

She sent back a thumbs up, and I let another flicker of a smirk cross my face.

Only Savannah would reply to a coded operational message with a freaking emoji.