Bodyguard by Melanie Shawn

37

Savannah

Sitting in the bedroom,perched on the edge of the bed, I couldn’t stop my foot from tapping up and down. My nerves were right on the edge of fraying. In fact, I couldn’t remember ever having been so on edge.

It was just the…sitting and doing nothing. No responsibilities. No tasks to take my mind off of the torturously slow passage of each millisecond.

Hell, I didn’t even have any old People magazines so that I could figure out what the Kardashians had been up to.

All I could do was sit. And wait. That sounded simple enough in theory, but in practice, it was the hardest thing in the world to do.

Finally, Gage came into the bedroom. His face was worried, and that sent a flash of fear through me, as well. “What is it? What happened?”

He shook his head. “It went fine. Bear has Woodward handcuffed to a chair that’s welded to the floor in his secure interrogation room.”

I laughed, a note of hysteria infiltrating the sound. “Bear has a secure interrogation room? Complete with a chair welded to the floor, and handcuffs? Wait…what am I saying? Of course Bear has a secure interrogation room complete with a chair welded to the floor and handcuffs.”

I realized I was babbling. It was a release valve for all of the pressure that had built up inside me like steam while I’d been waiting.

I took a deep breath, steadied myself. Tried again. “Why did you look so worried when you came in just now, then?”

He hesitated for a second, then said, “I was worried about you.”

I closed my eyes and my heart filled with warmth. He cared about me. He might not love me like I loved him. There was no real way to know, he wasn’t exactly a Chatty Cathy when it came to his feelings. Or anything else, for that matter. But he did care about me.

“So, how’s it going? With Woodward, I mean.”

He nodded. “He’s singing like a bird.”

I returned the nod. “Good. That’s good.”

A sudden thought struck me then, though, and my eyes narrowed. “Wait…that doesn’t mean that you’re not going to let me see him, though, right? Just because I won’t be needed as a ‘useful tool.’ I still want to see him. I deserve it.”

My voice was strident, and choked. Much more intense than I’d anticipated sounding, but my emotions got away from me.

Gage nodded. “Yeah. You’ll get to see him. We don’t know what other information he might have. Things that we don’t know to even ask about. There’s a chance that seeing you will surprise him enough to make him blurt something out.”

A whisper of a grin touched Gage’s lips. “Besides. We’ve been asking him so many questions about Barlowe that he’s figured out we weren’t sent by Barlowe. He’s sharp, that one. So, once he’s not as afraid of us, he might clam up. You’d be a good lever to pry his mouth open again.”

I nodded grimly, my jaw set, eyes narrowing. “I have some things I’d like to pry out of him. Believe me. Not so much information, though. More like internal organs.”

Gage nodded. “Understood. I’ll come get you when we’re ready for you.”

I nodded. “Believe me. It can’t come soon enough.”

There was that ghost of a smile again. “Understood.”