The Bride's Bodyguard

by Beth Cornelison

  “Not in depth. He only knew we were doing sensitive, landmark research. He trusted me to handle the details until we had something…viable.”

  “Meaning?” Paige leaned closer, her stomach bunching in dread.

  Brent visibly swallowed, then licked his cracked lips. “We were trying to develop a potent, deadly strain of flu—strictly in the laboratory—so we’d have a way to test the viability of the vaccine we were working on. The recent scares with swine flu and avian flu brought home to the public what medical researchers have known for years. We need an effective way to stop a super-virus. The company that developed and sold the vaccine that could prevent a pandemic stood to make a fortune.”

  “You created a super-virus? The very kind of disease that could cause said pandemic?”

  He nodded. “Except…my super-virus is even more deadly that the Spanish flu that caused the 1918 pandemic.”

  She goggled at the idea. While she understood the concept in theory, the idea of creating what you hope to destroy seemed…sickly ironic. “What if this super-virus were to get out of the laboratory somehow? What if you started a pandemic with the disease you created before you found the vaccine you wanted?”

  “Come on, Paige. You know medical research well enough to know how carefully laboratory materials and specimens are handled. Extreme precautions are taken to avoid accidentally releasing bio-threats. Our man-made virus was perfectly safe in the lab. We needed it for our research.”

  Paige’s spine tingled as she keyed in on his choice of words. “Was safe? Past tense.”

  Brent stiffened and cut his gaze away again. The passion that had lit his face as he explained and defended the volatile research drained from his face, leaving him wan and pasty-looking. “Word of our man-made virus leaked out, and…I started getting calls.”

  “Go on.” Icy fingers closed around Paige’s throat.

  “Other companies wanted to buy our virus for similar research. We were sitting on a gold mine of potential revenue. I scrambled to file for the patent. Meanwhile, the offers I was getting…began to change. The sums grew. The buyers…” He sent a desperate, frantic look to her. “Foreign governments, leaders of private militia…the offers were staggering. But I knew these people didn’t want PMB-611 for medical research. They wanted to use it as a weapon. They wanted it for bioterrorism.”

  Paige was letting Brent’s revelation take hold when the initials he’d used snagged her attention. “PMB-611. That’s what you named the virus?”

  A telltale flush tinted Brent’s cheeks. “I—” He sighed. “Yeah.”

  “My initials are PMB.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And 611?”

  “Our wedding date. June 11.”

  Paige’s laugh held no humor. “You named your deadly super-virus after me and our wedding date?”

  He raised a hand. “I meant it as an homage to you, not an insult. I thought the virus would help Bancroft Industries become a leader in medical research, help us develop a vaccine that would save the world from a lethal pandemic. I thought it would earn the company more money than you’d ever dreamed. More money than your father ever imagined.”

  Paige sat back. She struggled to draw air into her suddenly leaden lungs. Brent used an ex-girlfriend’s name as a password on his computer. But her initials, her wedding date…she was immortalized with the name of a deadly germ that could start a catastrophic plague. Now she knew how Typhoid Mary felt.

  She forced enough moisture into her mouth so she could swallow. She lifted a scowl to Brent. “You sure know how to sweep a girl off her feet.”

  “Paige, you don’t understand. The vaccine we were working on—”

  “Forget it.” She gentled her tone. Stressing him more than this conversation already would couldn’t be good for his condition. “My feelings about the way you named your super-virus don’t matter in the grand scheme. Tell me about the bead. The nanotube.”

  Jake pulled the Taurus into a parking space near the print shop and killed the engine. Where the hell was Paige?

  His gut clenched. He feared the worst. Had the wedding crashers managed to grab her while he had his back turned? He found it hard to imagine they’d been able to walk in, nab Paige and get out of the store without him hearing or sensing anything.

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel as the only other logical scenario repeated in his head. She’d ditched him. He was loath to examine why that truth left such a hollow, achy feeling in his chest, why her abandonment felt like a betrayal, why Paige had the power to elicit such a strong gut reaction from him in the first place. Protecting her was a job like any other he’d been assigned. Why couldn’t he do his job without complicating things, letting things get personal?

  Exhaling sharply, he tried to focus on the problem at hand. He’d failed again. He’d let his guard down for seconds, and Paige had disappeared.

  Where would she have gone, alone, without transportation, without money?

  Without cover or protection. Damn it!

  The obvious answer left him in a cold sweat.

  The hospital. To see Scofield. Double damn it!

  Didn’t she know how vulnerable and exposed she was there? The thugs who’d busted up her wedding would be crawling all over the hospital, waiting for her. Even if the police or Paige’s family had added guards at Scofield’s door, they could have already gotten to Brent by now.

  He slammed a hand through his wind-mussed hair and muttered a blazing curse under his breath. After shouldering open the car door, he stormed back into the print shop to pick up the hard copies of the pages he’d ordered. He paid cash for the copies and jammed them into his backpack with the laptop. Striding back to the sidewalk, he scanned the street, hoping, praying Paige would scurry up to him with a smile and a story about how she’d just gotten hungry and stepped into the bakery next door for a bran muffin.

  But she was nowhere in sight. He gritted his teeth so hard they hurt. Mad at himself for letting her give him the slip, furious with Paige for putting herself at risk and terrified that her disappearance meant she’d been kidnapped, Jake debated his options.

  The hospital remained the best place to start. He needed to find a way to get to Scofield’s room and get Paige out without being noticed. A clandestine insertion was a cakewalk for him. He’d entered heavily guarded buildings and extracted persons of interest more times than he could count. But those missions had been well-planned, timed to the second. He could hear his commanding officer’s voice berating him, telling him that going in half-cocked could get him killed. Jake’s fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants approach had given his CO more than one reason to ream him out.

  And while going into the hospital unprepared was dangerous, Paige had left him no option. He had to get her out…and pray he wasn’t too late.

  Chapter 10

  “Like I said, the nanotube has a viable sample of PMB-611. Enough to infect several hundred people, say a room full of people at a concert or on a subway or airplane. The disease progresses fairly quickly and is contagious within hours of exposure.”

  “Long enough for the unknowing victims to start the global spread of the disease if dispersed on a key international flight.” Paige gnawed her lip. “Is…is the nanotube safe? C-can it break and infect me and Jake?”

  Brent shook his head. “Not as long as it is embedded in the ring. I had it encapsulated in the faux diamond.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Faux diamond? The hunk of rock isn’t real?”

  Another slight head shake. “It’s a special cut glass. An expert could tell the difference quite easily, but I only needed to disguise the nanotube, hide it in the fake ring for a few days. I had planned to—” He paused and swallowed hard.

  “Please continue,” she said with a hard glare. “What had you planned?”

  “I was meeting someone. Passing the nanotube off to them while we were in the Caribbean.”

  “A terrorist?” She couldn’t hide the scathing tone of accusati
on.

  He blanched. “No. I had a contact within CDC. After I swapped the decoy ring with your real ring, we picked a safe location to meet, to transfer the decoy, with the nanotube and sample to him, and—”

  “This location… Was it at sea? Were you meeting by boat?”

  He blinked as if stunned she knew. “How did you—?”

  “I saw the GPS coordinates in your planner.” If he was curious how she’d gotten his planner, he didn’t show it. “And I remembered you’d been insistent about deep-sea fishing on our honeymoon.”

  Brent turned up a palm, his expression pleading for understanding. “I knew how dangerous the situation had become, and I wanted the sample in safe hands in case…”

  She shuddered. “In case certain terrorists caught up to you and demanded the bead?”

  She interpreted his guilty look as a yes. “Who are they, Brent? How did they know about the bead and that you’d have it at the wedding?”

  “I don’t know what terror group they are with. Only that they are dangerous and well-funded, and they mean business.”

  Paige leaned closer, hardly believing her ears. “Why in the world would you get involved with people like that, Brent? What were you thinking!”

  “I didn’t know they were terrorists at first! I…I’d arranged to sell them the virus before I smelled a rat. When I started getting cold feet and questioning them, the arrangements turned ugly fast. They threatened me, ransacked my house, started following me. They…grabbed me once. Late at night. I’d been at the office working, and…” He shivered visibly and closed his eyes. “Let’s just say, they demonstrated their lethal potential.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? How could all this have happened to you without me knowing?” she asked.

  Opening his eyes, he found her gaze. “I made sure you didn’t find out. To protect you and…because I was ashamed. I—I lied to you, covered my tracks and…planning the wedding kept you busy, distracted.”

  Paige rubbed her temple. “So how did they first contact you?”

  “They had posed as buyers for the Department of Defense, for our government, the military. I thought it was my civic duty to cooperate with the DOD. And I thought about how the money would set us up for life. They offered a hell of a lot of money for the sample, and…I saw a chance to—”

  “Get rich quick?” she offered when he let his words trail off.

  A muscle in his jaw twitched, and he sent her a scornful glance. “What if I did want to make a fast buck? A lot of bucks? I was doing it for you!”

  Paige shot up from her chair, her hands fisted at her sides. “For me? Don’t you dare try to lay this at my feet! I don’t care about money. I wasn’t marrying you for your bank account. You know that!”

  “No, you were marrying me to make Daddy happy, weren’t you?”

  She gasped. “I—”

  “Don’t try to deny it, Paige,” he said softly. “I know it wasn’t because you loved me. I could see that much in your eyes.”

  She opened her mouth to deny his claim, but no sound came out. It was the truth, after all. But she hated the pain in his face.

  “Tell me something. If those men hadn’t arrived and interrupted the service—” His expression was bleak. “Would you have gone through with it? Would you have married me?”

  “Of course! I’d made a commitment to you. I—”

  “I saw your reluctance. Heard the hesitation in your voice.” He sighed. “The truth, Paige. What would you have done?”

  She blinked back the burn of tears. “I…don’t know.”

  “And now?” he asked in little more than a whisper. “What are you going to do now? What happens to us?”

  Her chest twisted at the forlorn look in his eyes, the dim hope that flickered across his face. Could he really have had feelings for her? Did he still?

  “There is no us, Brent. Not now. Not after all that’s happened.” She swiped at the moisture that dampened her cheek. “I’m sorry. I should never have promised to marry you when I knew deep in my heart it was a mis—”

  When she hesitated, looking for a word that wouldn’t hurt his feelings, he said, “Mistake?”

  “A…misrepresentation of my feelings for you. I misled you to believe—”

  He laughed without humor. “Come off it, Paige. I’m smarter than that. I knew you didn’t love me. You aren’t that good of an actress. I knew what we had was an arrangement of convenience.”

  “And that was enough for you? Don’t you want more for yourself?” She thought about the arguments she’d had in the past with Zoey on this subject, the happiness she saw between Holly and Matt. The confusing feelings Jake evoked in her and the temptations she’d faced around him the past few days. “What about passion and romance and the real, deep-down joy of being with a person who makes you feel alive and whole and…”

  Paige dropped heavily back into her seat, realizing what she was saying. Jake made her feel…feminine, alive. For the first time in years, she woke with an excited contentment about what the day to come might hold. She was falling in love with Jake.

  “Paige?” Brent’s voice jerked her attention back to the hospital room. “What is it? You look upset.”

  She shook her head, as if doing so would clear away her tangled feelings toward Jake. Her issues with Jake could wait. Right now, she needed answers. Needed to get out of the hospital and back to the campground before someone saw her and recognized her.

  “Never mind what I was thinking. What’s important now—besides you getting well, getting back on your feet—is that you tell me everything I need to know about your contact at the CDC and what Jake and I are supposed to do with the nanotube. How do we get these terrorists off our backs?”

  Ten minutes later, much longer than Paige had felt it was safe to spend with Brent, she had detailed information about Brent’s CDC contact, what little information he knew about the terrorists who’d contacted him and a general plan in mind to bring this whole nightmare to an end.

  Holly had been waiting for her in the women’s restroom for almost thirty minutes now, and Paige was anxious to trade clothes again, don the scarf and sunglasses and slip out a back door of the hospital. She glanced nervously down the corridor outside Brent’s room before she headed toward the elevator. She made it halfway to the nurses’ station, saw nothing suspicious.

  Then a strong arm seized her from behind….

  Covering her mouth with a wide hand, her captor pulled her into a supply closet.

  Icy terror balled in her stomach. A scream formed in her throat, but the smothering hand kept her from drawing the air she needed to voice it.

  “Be quiet, and don’t panic,” a low, familiar voice rumbled in her ear. “I’m not going to hurt you, Holly.”

  When his grip loosened, Paige spun around, landing a punch on Jake’s arm. “That’s for scaring ten years off my life!” She raised her chin and glared at him. “And it’s not Holly. It’s me.”

  Jake did a double take, lifting a wisp of the wig for closer examination. He wore hospital scrubs a size too small for him and a surgical mask, which he jerked down to talk. “Paige?” Then hotly, “How about the scare you gave me?” He returned a dark glare and lowered his volume again. “Jeez, Paige, I thought you’d been kidnapped by those goons! I’ve been going crazy for the last hour!”

  She held up a hand to cut him off. “Save the lecture. I know you said you thought it was too dangerous, but I’ve been careful.” She poked him in the chest. “Even you thought I was Holly.”

  He scowled. “Because I only saw you from the back.” He gave her clothes and wig a more thorough scrutiny. “Not bad though. Those her clothes?”

  “Yes. And she’s waiting for me in the downstairs restroom as we speak, so…can this argument wait until we get back to the campground?”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw, giving away his continued frustration with her. She had a lot to make up to him for worrying him. But the information she’d gotten from Brent s
hould go a long way toward that end.

  He gave a tight nod. “Let’s go. I’ve got the car in the rear parking lot.” He started for the closet door, then sent a guarded look over his shoulder to her. “You go first. We shouldn’t be seen together. But I’ll be right behind you. In case of trouble.”

  Her heart still thumping double-time thanks to Jake’s grab, Paige eased back out into the hall and walked quickly, but not so fast that she drew attention, to the elevator. The car arrived and just before the door closed, scrubs-clad Jake slipped in with her.

  “Was Brent awake? Did you learn anything?” he asked.

  “Yes and yes. It’s worse than we thought. We were right that the bead is in my wedding ring. The bead has a nanotube inside that contains a deadly virus.”

  Without looking at her, he shushed her under his breath. “Not here.”

  “You asked!”

  “A yes or no question. We’ll get into the details later where it’s safe.”

  The elevator dinged as they reached the bottom floor. With a huff of frustration, Paige stepped off, glanced around the lobby, then headed for the ladies’ room where Holly waited.

  Her sister rushed over when she entered. “About time! How did it go?”

  “We alone?” Paige asked, glancing toward the empty stalls.

  “Yeah.”

  Paige started unbuttoning the blouse to return to Holly. “Jake’s waiting for me outside. I have to go back into hiding with him until…until this mess gets resolved. Tell Mom and Dad that I’m safe. I’m with Jake, and…this should all be over soon.”

  “I hate this, Paige! We’re worried sick about you! It’s bad enough that Zoey’s flitting around the country, incommunicado.”

  Paige handed the blouse and stretchy pants back to Holly. “I’m sorry. I don’t really have a choice. Please, be safe. These men could try to hurt you to get to me.”

  Holly’s brow furrowed. “Dad’s hired extra security since the wedding. Both at Bancroft and at the house.”

  Paige nodded as she pulled on the last of her own clothes and the scarf-and-shades combo to hide her face. “Good.” She pulled her sister into a hug. “I love you. Take care of my new niece.” She laid a gentle hand on her sister’s abdomen.