The Accidental Bodyguard

by Ann Major

The beast was free and on the rampage.

  At long last.

  For Lucas the next few days were wonderful and terrible and desperately crucial. He had to win Chandra so completely that when she knew the truth, she would forgive him everything. At the same time he had to protect her and solve the mystery.

  Somehow Lucas had convinced the police and the press he knew next to nothing about the Moran case, and they turned their attentions elsewhere.

  Lucas had warned Pete not to reveal anything he knew about Chandra’s true identity before he’d taken her to San Antonio. Pete said that Chandra’s injuries hadn’t been as severe as the emergency room doctors had led him to believe. He also confirmed her belief that she couldn’t have done better with teams of surgeons and nurses caring for her. But when Pete got Lucas alone, he said Lucas was correct to fear her mental state was still very fragile, that she needed to be nurtured and protected and that she should not be told who she was and especially not that she was wanted for murder until she was a good bit stronger.

  “She is blocking the truth because it’s too horrible to accept.”

  “So, when can I tell her?” Lucas had demanded tensely.

  “Give her a week. Till Friday, at the very earliest. Say, what is she to you anyway?” Pete smiled. “I’ve never seen you so—”

  Lucas frowned, unwilling to say. “She’s…good with the boys.”

  “I’ll bet!” Pete flashed him a grin. “The family’s going to love her.”

  “Oh, yeah. For sure. She’ll fit right in. Another missionary. Just what we need.”

  “She’s just what you need. And you know it.”

  Pete changed her medicine and gave Lucas a sheet of instructions and joked that Peppin and Montague might indeed make good doctors. When Lucas and Chandra drove away from his house with Pete’s glowing report, Lucas’s spirit rocketed sky-high. He hugged her close for a very long time, feeling immensely relieved that she was over the worst of her injuries and that her amnesia wouldn’t be permanent. In fact, he was so thrilled by the prognosis that he decided to celebrate. For the next few hours he forced himself to set aside his fears for her and the sensation that danger was thickening all around them, and he simply enjoyed being with her.

  Lucas found an out-of-the-way restaurant and ordered a seafood dinner to go. Then he took her to a state park in the hill country where the warm air was sweet with the scent of cedar and a clear green river ran between tall limestone cliffs. They ate beneath the spreading branches of a live oak tree. Then they slowdanced beside his car to the music from a tape in the car player. They drove home in the star-spangled darkness, roaring along the straight interstate with the windows of the Lincoln partially down so that wisps of her hair blew against his cheek. He drove at a speed that made his blood rush with excitement, or maybe it wasn’t the speed that made his blood heat but the fact that she was nestled in his arms.

  It was two in the morning when the big car nosed its way through the white walls and up the drive to his house. They went inside and made sure the boys were safely asleep. Then he took her down to the beach where they walked hand in hand, barefoot along the water’s edge.

  He felt like he was in a dream as he led her running through the warm salt water and then across the sand up to the doors to the tunnel in the bluff.

  He started to unlock the heavy steel doors, but she turned white and said no, that she wanted to take the path up the cliff to the house.

  “But this is the shortcut,” he whispered, “and soon it’ll be sealed up for good.”

  She trembled and forced herself to take slow deep breaths. “The sooner the better. The very idea of it gives me the creeps.”

  He grinned. “You and my Realtor. I need to call a contractor.”

  She smiled at him. Then she turned and raced up the cliff path. He dropped the lock, and it banged against the metal door as he chased after her.

  Before they let themselves in through the patio doors that opened onto the deck, he sprayed the sand off their feet and ankles with the hose. Together they raced along the dimly lit corridors and stairways to his room, where they closed the door and she lit candles. Then they fell upon his bed and made love to each other greedily, desperately, as if they could never get enough of each other.

  And this time he didn’t practice safe sex because he selfishly knew that he wanted a baby from her. She was wonderful with his boys. And the image of her holding a baby, his baby, maybe a little girl with blue eyes and golden hair like hers, branded itself into his soul.

  But it wasn’t only the child he wanted. It was Chandra who was the ultimate prize. She had to be his, and he knew if he got her pregnant that would be still another bond that might make her want to stay with him forever.

  Even in love that ruthless quality in his nature that had driven him to excel in law drove him to conquer, obtain, acquire whatever he wanted. There was an insatiable, selfish completeness about his feelings for her that made him know he had to win her.

  For better or for worse, he was head over heels in love with her. He had to marry her.

  But when he told her so and asked her to marry him again, she held him very close and kissed him. Then she said no.

  Almost imperceptibly the tensions between Lucas and Chandra built during that week. The police talked to him again, as did the press. He told the reporters that he was no longer representing the Morans.

  Determined to be with Chandra every possible minute, Lucas worked at home as much as he could. But spending more time with her taught him how vastly different were their personalities and characters. She was cut of finer, nobler cloth than the base stuff he was made of.

  After reading dozens of Robard’s reports about her missionary work, Lucas couldn’t help but compare her inner purity to his own selfishness. He was unworthy, shallow, materialistic. He had lived solely for himself before he met her, seizing what he wanted with no thought of the consequences to others. He had charged to the max for his services, his only restraints being—can I get away with it without breaking the law?

  Ruthlessly he had gone after only the cases that could make him rich or famous. He had sacrificed idealism at the twin altar of his ego and ambition. He had sacrificed friendships, his first marriage, his integrity, even his sons.

  And though his love for Chandra had changed him to some degree, he knew that he would never be a white knight. Even though he felt ashamed and was determined to change, he could not totally remake himself. Thus he, who had always been so brashly self-confident, was afraid that she wouldn’t love him when she really knew him.

  He forced himself to back out of juicy cases, but signed on to defend a group of immigrants whose landlords refused to provide indoor plumbing.

  Less than pleased with the new Lucas Broderick, his law partners began grilling him about some of his decisions. They were furious that he’d lost the Moran case. He told them he’d quit the firm and go out on his own if they didn’t let him do as he pleased.

  More than anything, he was working to find some shred of evidence to prove Chandra’s innocence. Her memory didn’t return, but she was so intuitive abouthim that she sensed the darkening in his mood every time he returned from his office knowing Robard had found nothing to clear her, only more that incriminated her.

  The media coverage grew more shocking by the day, the rumors about her more vicious. The federal government decided to investigate her. What disturbed Lucas most was that the most damning stories about Chandra’s supposedly shady operation in Mexico were his own idea. Only he hadn’t ordered his men to spread those rumors. Someone who had been in the Moran library had.

  But who?

  According to Robard, every single person in that library had an airtight alibi the night of Santos’s murder.

  Lucas used some of his time at home to take care of mundane chores around the house that he never had time for. He met with the contractor and set Saturday as the day to seal the tunnel.

  The images in Chandra’s nigh
tmares were becoming clearer. The memory of Lucas in a room with gilt furniture and dying roses was becoming sharper. She said she remembered being locked in a dark room and repeatedly drugged with syringes. She remembered a man with black eyes.

  Practically all the Morans and everybody on the ranch had black eyes. Stinky’s were the darkest. But Stinky and Holly had been entertaining mourners at the ranch the entire evening of the murder. So had Hal. At least according to Stinky.

  Every night, after one of Chandra’s nightmares, Lucas would hold her close and comfort her until her face lost its chalky pallor and she could breathe and talk normally. Last night she had dreamed she’d crawled out of a van right before it caught fire.

  Every day that passed, his tensions and fears coiled around Lucas more tightly. He felt trapped in a spider’s web.

  Only he couldn’t see the spider.

  Their quarrel started with a phone call.

  Lucas and the boys were out by the pool, so Chandra, who had just gotten up from her afternoon nap, answered the phone. When Lucas came running inside to catch it, he found her leaning against the kitchen counter looking numb, her white face as frozen as if she’d just awakened from a nightmare.

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know. He won’t say anything.”

  Lucas tore the phone from her. “Who the hell is this?”

  The line was dead.

  Lucas slammed the phone down. “How many times do I have to tell you not to answer the damn phone?”

  “Well, excuse me for living,” she whispered tightly, rushing past him up the stairs. “I was tired. I didn’t think.”

  He raced after her, feeling fury, remorse, love—the whole impossible gamut.

  “I want you to tell me what is going on,” she demanded when he followed her inside her bedroom.

  “No. I need you to trust me.”

  She sat in front of her bureau and stared anxiously at her reflection in the mirror. With a tentative fingertip she pushed her hair and touched the fading zipperlike scar at her hairline. The scratches on her cheek were almost gone. She was growing stronger by the day. She spent less and less time taking naps.

  “Trust you? There’s nothing I want more. But that’s very hard when I have no memory. I feel so empty and yet I keep having these terrible flashbacks. I love you and yet I know that you’re keeping secrets from me.”

  “I told you. Pete said you need a week or so more to recover—”

  She whirled. “I’m sick and tired of being treated like a baby.”

  “You nearly died. You need to get well. I’ll tell you everything Friday.”

  “Friday? That’s three whole days away. I don’t know if I can wait.”

  Gently he tucked a stray strand of gold behind her ear. “Friday, I swear,” he pleaded softly. “Maybe it won’t even be that long. Maybe you’ll get your memory back before then. Maybe the guys who are after you will make a wrong move.”

  “But this waiting, feeling like we’re being stalked is hell. If I knew everything you know, maybe I could help you.”

  “Maybe. But right now your most important job is to rest and get well. If I don’t have all the answers by Friday, I don’t see that we have any choice but to do as you ask. Trust me…just a little longer.”

  She stared at him gloomily, moodily—hesitating.

  “I know it’s hard,” he said reaching for her.

  “Do you? You’re always so in control!” She spun away from him. “I can’t stand the way I feel—like we’re living under siege.”

  “Look, some bastard tried to kill you. I’m afraid he’ll try again.”

  “Why can’t I at least watch television? Or listen to the radio?”

  He shifted slightly, so that even if she wouldn’t let him touch her, he was near enough to feel the warmth of her body.

  “Because it might upset you too much. We agreed…Friday. If you don’t get your memory back or I don’t solve this thing, I’ll do it your way.”

  Again she moved away from him. “I—I feel so trapped and isolated—so afraid.”

  “That’s why I stay home as much as I can.”

  Her wide luminous eyes said, But I’m afraid of you, too. Aloud she whispered, “Lucas, you’re in all my nightmares now, and you’re always against me.”

  “No! I’m on your side. I swear it. You belong to me. I belong to you. I love you. I would lay down my life for you.”

  She didn’t answer.

  He got down on his knees in a posture of supplication. “Look into my eyes. What do you see?”

  She knelt, too, and cupped his jaw with her fingertips. As she stared at him, the flame in her eyes lit an answering spark of emotion inside him.

  “I do see love. Pure love,” she whispered at last, “but I’m not sure if I can trust that.”

  “What else is there to believe in? What else is worth dying for?”

  The late-afternoon sunlight was streaming through the windows. She looked wan and very vulnerable and so tired he could almost feel her exhaustion. He felt the same ache he always felt when he watched her sleep in the afternoons or at night when he comforted her after one of her nightmares.

  Her luminous blue eyes continued to search his, distrusting him even though he knew she saw all the way into his heart. “I would die for you, too,” she said.

  He nodded, although he wasn’t satisfied, and pressed his lips together tightly. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Lucas, last night I dreamed about that man’s gray face again. It caught fire. His skin melted. But I saw a mustache this time, and the color of his dead eyes. They’re brown—almost black. Who is he? Why does he haunt me? Why do I feel so guilty every time I see him staring at me with open-eyed horror?”

  Santos.

  Oh, God.

  Tell her.

  Lucas’s hand closed around hers and gave it a nervous squeeze. “Friday.”

  Eight

  “Gotcha!”

  The good-for-nothing lardy bodyguard never saw the horseshoe aimed at the back of his skull.

  One minute the oaf was staring at the placid brown bay. The next he was crumpling heavily forward into the grass. Then the bloody horseshoe was picked up by a black-gloved hand and pitched onto the grass with the others. Slowly the watcher leaned down and grabbed the guard’s ankles. The limp body was dragged, feet first, head bouncing along the stone path past the rose garden and into the garage. The doors were opened and the inert body was dragged inside the tunnel.

  The beast felt excited as he heaved the bloated guard beside the other unconscious guard, who was gagged and bound. This was almost as good as shooting Santos and setting his body on fire.

  Murder was the best of all highs.

  Especially when it meant you didn’t have to share what was rightfully yours with someone you hated.

  The beast, who had stalked Lucas Broderick and Chandra Moran for the past week, should know. For the beast, the real person, had killed four times. And loved it.

  The first murder had been the hardest.

  The second had been Gertrude Moran.

  The third—Miguel Santos.

  The fourth had been that other self that had dared to inhabit the same body and had tried to cage the beast.

  The false person had been pleasant and likable and had had lots of false friends. The false person had not cared that the beast seethed with rage and hurt and hatred every time the false person was nice to the false friends.

  But the beast had vanquished the false person forever. There would be no more smiles that made the shared lips feel stiff or twitchy, no more lies that nauseated the real person.

  While he thought, the beast methodically stripped the bodyguard and tied and gagged him. Next the beast put on the bulky uniform, the badge, the gun.

  Then the beast felt powerful. All powerful—like a god.

  The beast locked the brass padlock to the tunnel and strutted out of the garage into the brilliant, late-afternoon suns
hine.

  The oversize uniform was hot and scratchy.

  So the hell what?

  It would be dark soon, and cooler.

  From the edge of the lawn, standing in a thicket of mesquite and tallow trees, the beast watched Lucas’s Lincoln sweep into the drive. The black eyes narrowed as Lucas got out of the car with an armload of roses. The eyes became slits when Beth rushed out of the house and laughingly blushed as she took them. Her showy golden hair swirled about her shoulders as the lying bastard lifted her and made love to her first with his gaze and then with his lips.

  Damn the bitch.

  How the hell had she gotten out of that van? She should have fried.

  Anger suffused every cell. Damn the lying betraying bastard lawyer for hiding her.

  Obscene gurgling sounds came from the back of the beast’s throat as Beth kissed Broderick deeply and passionately.

  Fingers itched along the smooth trigger.

  A silent voice cautioned, “ Wait till it’s time.”

  A station wagon filled with six or seven boys rolled up. Both back doors were kicked open. Broderick’s two brats spilled out of the house and raced toward the wagon.

  After a parental lecture from Broderick and hugs from Beth, the little devils got in the wagon with their duffel bags to be driven away.

  But the nosy kid with the ponytail lowered his silver sunglasses and stared long and hard at the beast until the wagon rolled out of the drive.

  Melting into each others’ arms, Beth and Lucas obviously thought they bad the house to themselves and were looking forward to a romantic evening.

  Little did they know.

  The beast couldn’t wait to sneak up on them and whisper, “Gotcha!”

  Nine

  Lucas sped home by way of Ocean Drive. There was a sailboard regatta on the bay. Not that he paid the slightest attention to the brightly colored sails rounding the final mark before skimming downwind toward the finish line as gracefully as butterflies. Nor did he note the landscaped mansions with their sculptured green lawns, palm trees, scarlet bougainvillea and pink oleander.