Bodyguard by Melanie Shawn
3
Savannah
I drewair deep into my lungs. Being here with Gage, it was the first time in days I’d felt like I could breathe. In many ways, it was the first time in years I felt like I could breathe.
“That night, my birthday...when I went home, there were U.S. Marshals waiting for me in my house, with my father. You know how worried I’d been. We’d talked about it.
“Well, as it turned out, that was well-founded. My dad’s boss was crooked, and he’d suspected it for a long time. He’d been planning to blow the whistle, and somehow his boss found out. I don’t know how. Hell, I don’t even know what he was going to blow the whistle on. He refused to ever talk about it with me, even after the trial.
“But that night, his boss tried to have him killed. The Marshals were there to take us into protective custody.”
I breathed in again, a deep and shuddering breath that shook my shoulders. My eyes filled with tears, even though I tried like hell to hold them back. “They wouldn’t let me tell you anything, Gage. They wouldn’t let me say goodbye.” She grabbed his hand in both of hers. “I begged, I swear to you. But they wouldn’t let me.”
He drew his hand back. His face remained passive. “That doesn’t matter now.”
A stab of pain rocked my gut, so powerful it nearly doubled me over. With all that had happened in the last forty-eight hours, and all of the danger I was in, I wasn’t sure how I could feel anything about this rejection from Gage. It was minor, in the scheme of things. But, damn. I sure did feel it.
Then again, he had always had my heart. He always would. Nothing about him would ever be minor to me. Nothing. No matter what.
I hung my head and took a few seconds to collect my thoughts, then looked back at him, nodding decisively. “I had five minutes to grab a few outfits and some toiletries. They wouldn’t let me keep any mementos, any photos.”
“They could be used to identify you,” he said flatly.
“Yeah,” I replied, my voice weak and thready. “Exactly.”
He gestured toward my neck. “You kept the necklace.”
My fingers flew to it, rubbing it for comfort as they had a million times before. “Yes,” I admitted, my voice little more than a whisper. “They didn’t know it was a personal memento. So they didn’t take it away. And I’ve never taken it off. Not ever.”
Silence hung between us for a moment, and I fought through the thick fog of my complicated feelings to push on through the painful story. “We pulled out of our driveway that night, sitting in the backseat of a government-issued sedan driven by two strangers, less than ten minutes after I’d left you at my front door. And that was the last time I saw my house, or this town. Until tonight.”
I paused, looking down at my lap, my chest heaving, my mind swirling. There were so many directions I could go next. So many things I wanted to tell him. Where I’d been. What my life had been like.
How much I’d missed him.
All of those things bounced around in my brain, vying for position. The result was that I said nothing.
Gage stepped in, though. He asked the one truly critical question. “What changed?”
I looked up at him, my face crumpling, grief and terror volleying for control.
“They found us,” I whispered. My voice had failed me. “Two days ago. I barely escaped. But they killed my father.”