Single Mom's Bodyguard

by Lisa Childs

  Nikki shook her head, tumbling auburn curls around her delicately featured face. “No way.”

  “But I can help.”

  “We had the meeting—” she glanced to where light was glowing behind the blinds, with night having slipped into dawn “—last night. And you had no idea who could be behind any of this.”

  She still had no idea. That was why she wanted to go along, to learn who the suspect was. And to see Dane. She really wanted to see Dane.

  “I need to know what’s going on,” Emilia persisted. She had been wondering too long about the man in that horrible zombie mask and about Dane.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Nikki said. “You know what happened the last time you left this house.”

  Thinking of those gloved hands fumbling with Blue’s car seat had Emilia shivering with dread. “I know. That’s why Blue will stay here with every one of these Payne Protection bodyguards watching him. And just I will go with you.”

  “It’s not safe,” Nikki insisted.

  “Blue will be safe.” She had no doubt that Lars and Dane’s friends and the Payne family would protect her son. They’d done it before—when she hadn’t been able to get to him. She hadn’t been able to help herself then, let alone him.

  But she was stronger now. Everyone else kept pointing that out to her. She could help herself and her son. But first she had to know what was going on—who this suspect was.

  “I’ll be with you,” Emilia reminded her. “You will protect me.”

  Nikki narrowed her usually big brown eyes. But then she chuckled. “I will protect you,” she agreed. “By making you stay here.”

  Lars had affectionately referred to his bride-to-be as being stubborn and pigheaded. Until now Emilia hadn’t seen that side of Nikki.

  And until now, she hadn’t realized she had a stubborn side of her own. “I’m going,” she insisted.

  She was determined, not just to help in the investigation but to see Dane again. Despite his handsome face being so unreadable, she needed to read it.

  She needed to know if he had any feelings for her at all. Or if all the feelings were just hers—for him.

  * * *

  “Yo, it’s Manny the nanny!”

  Manny glanced up from the diaper he was changing to glare at Cole Bentler, who stood in the nursery doorway. He would have cussed out his so-called friend, but he didn’t know how soon kids started repeating stuff.

  Sure, Blue was probably too young. But he didn’t want to take the chance of the kid’s first word being something he’d said.

  Something wildly inappropriate.

  “Rub it in that I got assigned babysitting duty,” Manny remarked.

  “You should be happy,” Cole said, “that they still trust you after you got rolled yesterday.”

  Manny flinched. He hadn’t been the only one who’d gotten rolled. Emilia and Blue had been with him when the van had forced her little SUV off the road. His head began to pound with the memory.

  Damn concussion. While his head still hurt, at least his stomach had stopped rolling like the SUV had.

  Manny pointed at him and then gestured toward the window. On the street below were parked a couple of Payne Protection Agency black SUVs. Other bodyguards sat in them or paced the perimeter of the small yard. “Doesn’t look like they trust me all that much.”

  Cole shrugged. “Yeah, nobody’s getting in here...”

  “No,” Manny agreed.

  “That guy would be an idiot to try.”

  And he was smart, or they would have caught him before now. “Yeah, he won’t be breaking in here.” But he was desperate enough to force Emilia’s vehicle off the road the day before.

  He wasn’t going to give up. So he’d have to go after what he wanted another way. Manny tensed. “You better call everybody.”

  “You just said he’s not going to break in here,” Cole reminded him.

  “He won’t,” Manny agreed. “He’ll go after someone else instead.”

  Cole’s breath hitched as he must have come to the same conclusion Manny had. He pulled out his cell phone and pressed in a number. “Dane?”

  His phone must have been on speaker because Dane’s deep voice filled the nursery. “What’s wrong?”

  The baby kicked his legs and smiled, as if he recognized the voice, as if he cared about the man.

  “Nothing, we hope,” Manny answered for Cole.

  In his usual no-nonsense way, Dane asked, “Why don’t you know for certain?”

  “Because Nikki just left here with Emilia,” Cole replied now. “And they insisted we all stay behind to protect the baby.”

  Dane cursed as he realized what Manny and Cole just had. Emilia and Nikki were the ones in danger now.

  Another curse echoed Dane’s, in a deep, bellowing voice. Dane was with Lars. Hopefully the two of them could get to the women before anything happened to them.

  “What do you want us to do?” Cole asked.

  “Stay where you are,” Lars replied. “You don’t want to piss off my fiancée.”

  Manny shuddered. That was damn well the truth. He didn’t want to piss off any woman, let alone a Payne. That was why he intended to never get involved with anyone.

  “We’ll make sure they’re okay,” Lars assured them. And as if the guys were in a hurry to do just that, they disconnected the call.

  “They’ll make sure they’re all right,” Cole said, as if trying to reassure himself.

  Manny wasn’t reassured. After the crash the day before, he knew exactly how dangerous this man was.

  And how desperate...

  The minute he saw his opportunity, he would act.

  * * *

  “Why aren’t they picking up?” Dane asked as he pressed the button again for Emilia’s number. She probably didn’t want to talk to him. As he’d pointed out, she didn’t need him anymore.

  “Nikki isn’t picking up, either?” he asked as he watched his friend’s hand tremble slightly on his phone.

  Lars shook his head.

  “Where the hell were they heading this early?” Dane wondered. “The chapel?”

  Lars’s huge shoulders bowed slightly. “I asked Nikki to come over here.”

  “Why?” They would have been safer at the house. Both of them.

  “To hack into the police department case file,” Lars admitted. “She’ll be able to find out what Nick Payne learned about that coroner.”

  “She could do that by talking to him,” Dane said.

  Lars grinned. “Probably. But she likes hacking. And she’ll find whatever Nick might have missed.”

  If the coroner hadn’t gone to prison, then Nick must have missed something.

  “That’s all good,” Dane agreed. “But why is she bringing Emilia with her?”

  “I don’t know,” Lars admitted.

  Fear coursed through him. “And why the hell isn’t she picking up her phone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dane cursed. “Maybe because she can’t,” he surmised. “Something must have happened to them.”

  “Or she’s trying to make sure it doesn’t.” Lars drew in a deep breath, his chest swelling with air and with pride. “Nikki’s the best damn bodyguard there is. She won’t get run off the road or shot. She’ll protect them.”

  His friend sounded confident in his fiancée’s abilities. But Dane had known him too long to miss the fear in Lars’s pale blue eyes. No matter what he claimed, he was worried.

  That made two of them.

  “We need to find them,” Dane said. “We need to make sure nothing has happened.”

  “It hasn’t,” Lars insisted. But he reached for his phone again, pressing the button to call his fiancée.

  And like
before she didn’t answer.

  Dane’s hand trembled as he called Emilia again. Again his call went right to voice mail. Her soft voice filled his head: “I’m sorry. I’m not available to take your call. Please leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible.”

  Would it be possible for Emilia to get back to him ever again?

  Or had something horrible happened to her?

  Sure, Blue was safe. She’d made certain of that. But why hadn’t she been concerned about her own safety?

  She’d talked about the mistakes she’d made. He might have made the gravest mistake of all when he’d left her. Now he might have lost her forever.

  Chapter 24

  “Thank you for letting me use your phone,” Emilia said as she finished talking to Penny and handed the phone back to Nikki. Hers had died, and she’d left the charger at her house with Blue and his bodyguards. “I think you missed a few calls from Lars, though.”

  “That’s fine,” Nikki said as she pulled the SUV into a parking space outside the Payne Protection Agency. “We’re here. We’ll see him in a minute.”

  And Emilia would see Dane.

  “How’s Mom?” Nikki asked.

  “Your mom is awesome,” Emilia said wistfully. She envied the relationship Nikki and Penny shared.

  Nikki reached across the console and squeezed Emilia’s hand. “You know she’s yours, too, now.”

  Emilia’s heart warmed at the sentiment, but she laughed. “You’re marrying my brother—not me.”

  “You’re family, too,” Nikki said. “You’re my sister now. That makes Penny your mother, too. Why did she want to talk to you?”

  Penny had texted Nikki that she wasn’t able to get a hold of Emilia and she’d been worried. That was why Emilia had used Nikki’s phone to call her back. “She wanted to make sure that I’m all right.”

  “Premonitions again?”

  Emilia shivered and nodded.

  “She doesn’t get them about me,” Nikki said. “That used to bother me because it felt like I didn’t have the connection with her that everyone else does. Now I realize I’m lucky.”

  Emilia nodded again. “It’s unnerving. And now I feel like it’s going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  “No, it won’t.” Nikki squeezed her hand again. “We’re all going to work together to find out who’s after you. And we’re going to catch him and stop him. You’ll be safe. And Mom’s only premonitions will be about how happy you’re going to be.”

  Happiness had been so fleeting for Emilia. She had been happy with her son and her new job. But then the crying had started, stealing her sleep and her happiness and almost her sanity, as well.

  Even after that, she’d known moments of happiness—actually of a bliss she’d never known existed—in Dane’s arms. She glanced toward the building and shivered a little in anticipation of seeing him again.

  Then Nikki’s hand tightened on hers, almost painfully. And the other woman reached for her gun.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Do you hear that?”

  Emilia shook her head. “What?” But even as she asked, she realized what Nikki referred to—the distant wail of sirens. “Those sirens could be for anything,” she said. “A car accident. A fire...”

  Nikki shook her head. “There’s an echo of gunshots.”

  Then Emilia felt it too, like a vibration on the air. “They’re in the distance,” she said.

  So they couldn’t have anything to do with Dane or Lars.

  But Nikki didn’t look convinced. Her face was tight with anxiety, her eyes wide with fear. Maybe she was like her mother in more than just appearance. Maybe she had the uncanny ability to know when bad things happened, too.

  “I need to make sure they’re all right,” Nikki said as she reached for the door handle. Then she glanced back at Emilia. “You stay here.”

  “That gunfire is in the distance,” Emilia pointed out. “Not in the building. They’re safe.”

  Nikki nodded but not in agreement with Emilia. “You wouldn’t be if I leave you out here. They could come back. You’ll have to come with me.”

  Emilia had had every intention of doing just that. But Nikki was super vigilant as they headed the short distance to the lobby doors. She kept walking around Emilia, as if trying to protect her from every direction, from every threat. Emilia had thought that vigilance unnecessary until she saw the lobby door.

  The shattered glass was strewn across the sidewalk leading up to that door. And drops of blood were spattered across those fragments.

  She gasped.

  As if trying to protect her from what she was seeing, Nikki stepped around her. A gasp slipped through her lips, too, and her grip tightened on her gun. “I’m going inside alone.”

  “No,” Emilia said, following Nikki through the doorframe that was empty of all its shattered glass. The other glass inside the building had been shot up, too. The walls of Nikki’s office lay in fragments on the commercial carpet. Desks were overturned, and blood spattered one of the solid walls, droplets running down the dark paneling.

  Nikki shivered. “What the hell happened? Is this why Lars was calling me?”

  Emilia began to tremble as a horrible thought occurred to her. “What if they killed each other?”

  Nikki didn’t deny the possibility, just murmured, “There are no bodies.”

  But there was blood. All those bullets hadn’t missed. Someone or two had been struck. They were bleeding. Hurt. Maybe dead...

  Emilia shuddered, blinking back the tears stinging her eyes. “Where are they?”

  Nikki walked around the building, checking every office. The place had been destroyed. But it was empty. “Cooper is going to go ballistic,” she murmured, her lips trembling as tears pooled in her eyes.

  Emilia wasn’t the only one frightened. They were both so on edge that when the phone rang, they screamed. The ring sounded like Emilia’s. But her phone was dead.

  “It’s in here,” Nikki said as she picked up a cell phone from the conference room table.

  “It’s my ringtone,” Emilia said. Neither Lars nor Dane used music; theirs was just the standard ring. “How—how is that...”

  “It’s the cloned phone,” Nikki said as she handed it to Emilia.

  Her hand trembled. “What—what do I...” But she knew. She had to answer it. So she clicked the green button to accept the call and another button to put the call on speaker so Nikki could hear, too. “Hello?”

  “Emilia?”

  He sounded so surprised that he must not have expected her to be the one to answer the phone. But yet he’d recognized her voice.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  He ignored her question. “It’s good to speak to you directly.”

  Nikki stood before her, making a motion to draw out the call as she flipped open a small laptop she always carried in her purse, and started silently tapping the keys.

  “You could have spoken to me the other night,” she said, “when you broke into my house. Or when you ran us off the road yesterday.”

  The guy chuckled. “I had nothing to say to you then.”

  “And you do now?”

  “Now I have something you want,” he said.

  Nikki’s eyes widened. And she mouthed the words, “Your brother?”

  Was that where Lars had gone?

  “What—what’s that?”

  He chuckled again. “You must be at the office, or you wouldn’t have found the phone,” he said. “So you know what’s missing. Or should I say who?”

  She blinked hard, fighting those threatening tears. “What did you do?” she asked. Had he killed both Dane and Lars? “Where are they?”

  “They?” He snorted. “I figured you
would only be concerned about one of them.”

  So he’d killed the other? Who had survived and who had died? Her heart ached for both men. Emotion overwhelmed her, choking her, so that she had to clear her voice to ask, “What do you want?”

  Why was he terrorizing her?

  “You know what I want,” he said. “And if you want to see your boyfriend again, you’ll give up your son.”

  So Dane was alive.

  For now...

  But how long would he remain alive when this crazy man realized she had no intention of giving him Blue?

  * * *

  Dane had to be dead.

  That was the only way the men would have been able to take him—if they’d dragged his dead body out to that van. Lars had chased it as far as he could, firing shot after shot at it. He’d blown a tire, but it had kept going, the rim sparking against the asphalt once the rubber had ripped away. It had kept going. But Lars hadn’t been able.

  Damn gunshot wound...

  His thigh was numb now. But that might have been from the belt Dane had strapped around his leg to stop the bleeding. Once he’d applied the makeshift tourniquet, Dane had turned back to the men who’d fired their way into Payne Protection.

  And he’d taken on all of them alone.

  A couple of them had been shot. Lars knew he’d hit at least one. And Dane had probably hit more than that before they’d gotten him.

  When Lars had finally gathered his strength again to run after them, Dane had already disappeared. He’d had to be in the back of that van—which was undoubtedly another stolen one. As Lars limped back toward the brick building that was Cooper’s franchise of Payne Protection, the pain returned, shooting through him.

  He wasn’t going to make it. Both legs folded beneath him and he dropped to the asphalt in the parking lot. He was so close—so damned close...

  But knowing he couldn’t make it all the way back to the building, he lifted his gun to shoot at an SUV in the lot. The trigger just clicked. He’d emptied the chamber and all his magazines. So instead of shooting the gun, he hurled it toward that vehicle. At least he’d had enough strength left to propel it through the window.

  An alarm rang out and the lights flashed on and off on the SUV. He lay back on the asphalt and waited. As he’d predicted, footsteps echoed as someone ran toward him. But he wasn’t sure who was coming—friend or foe.