Bodyguard by Melanie Shawn

46

Savannah

I openedmy eyes and saw Gage through the open door of the bathroom, brushing his teeth. I’d been asleep by the time he came to bed, and he was still up before me.

And he never set an alarm. He had a weird internal sense of time that he trusted to wake him up. The crazy thing was, it did. It always did. At exactly the time he wanted it to.

I smiled to myself. He was amazing. It seemed insane to consider myself “lucky” for any part of this utter shitshow of a situation, but I did. For one part and one part only. Gage. I was lucky that he was on my side. Without him, everything would be immeasurably worse.

“Good morning,” I called, sleep still present in my raspy voice as it traveled across the room and into the bathroom.

He turned and looked at me, toothbrush still in his mouth, and said, "Good morning," in response.

Well, technically that wasn't true. What he said was more like, “Goo Mo Nee,” as he tried to maneuver his lips and tongue around the toothbrush at the same time that he kept all of the toothpaste suds from falling out of his mouth…but I knew exactly what he meant.

I sat up in bed and pulled my legs under me, sitting cross-legged as I watched him go through the rest of his morning routine.

If he felt uncomfortable under the weight of my gaze, he never mentioned it. Or even slowed down.

When he was finished, he turned to me. “Okay. Go ahead and get ready. We’ve got work to do. We have information from Crypt, and it’s going to take all three of us to sift through it.”

I stepped into the bathroom, pulling my hair up and wrapping it around itself to form a loose bun as I did. I pulled out my toothbrush and some toothpaste and got ready to brush my teeth. The back of my neck was tingling, and I turned around to see Gage sitting on the edge of the foot of the bed, staring at me intently. "Are you just gonna sit there and watch me the whole time?" I asked.

He did his famous almost-smile thing, the one that I found so sexy. "Yeah, probably. Is that not what we’re doing?”

I blushed and had to laugh, then turned around and finished getting ready, struggling to make all of my movements smooth and graceful. I didn’t need Gage to see me looking awkward and uncoordinated.

We walked out to the living room, and Bear was there, munching on a croissant. He gestured at the pink bakery box on the counter, and I made a beeline toward it.

I knew that Bear had brought a lot of assets, not to mention a lot of skills, to the table. First and foremost, the safe house we were currently standing in, as a matter of fact. But, in my book, the baked goods he provided every morning were right up there with all of his bodyguarding skills. His skills were awesome, don't get me wrong – it's just that so were the baked goods.

“So, what’s on the agenda today?” I asked. I wanted to hear the answer as much to assure myself that progress was being made as to hear the actual specific information.

“We’ve got a crap-ton of data from Crypt to go through. He has a pretty good candidate in mind for who the son is, and I don’t think he’s wrong, but we need to be sure.”

Gage added, “Have you heard that saying, ‘if you shoot at the king, don’t miss’?”

I thought about it for a minute. “I don’t think so.”

“It basically means, if you attempt to assassinate the king, the repercussions will be swift and fatal. The only way to avoid that fate is if he’s dead, himself. So you can shoot at the king if you want to—but you only get one shot. And it better be dead fucking accurate.”

I paled, my gut roiling. “Oh, God. Right. What if we show up there to trade my father, only…we want to trade him for some kid Barlowe’s never even heard of.”

“Right. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen. And I know it’s not sexy, but the way we do that is research.”

I nodded, and moved to sit down on the couch. “I get it. I’m ready, coach. Put me in.”

Bear started down the hallway that led to the interrogation room. “Where are you going?” I asked.

He held up a wrapped bar. “Take Woodward his breakfast.”

I let out a short bark of a laugh. “Oh, right. It didn’t even occur to me that he’d need to eat. It’s probably for the best that I’m not preparing his meals. It would be hard to resist putting a little anti-freeze in them. Not enough to kill him, mind you. Just enough to make him really sick.”

Gage looked at me and I could swear I saw fresh admiration in his eyes.

Bear smirked. “He can survive a few days on granola bars. He’ll probably start complaining at one point. But he’ll have no idea how lucky he really is.”