Bodyguard

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Nah,” she said. “What we really love is being objectified, used, and cast aside. Why else would I have gotten a job here? I mean, aside from the incredible health plan and the awesome 401K.”

  Decker laughed as she tugged her tray free, and headed toward the bar.

  He watched her go, aware of the attention she was getting from the other lowlifes in the bar, noting the soft curve of her waist, and the way that, although she wasn’t very tall, she carried herself as if she stood head and shoulders above the crowd. He was also aware that it had been a very long time since he’d sent a woman flowers.

  They were in some serious shit here. Whoever set up this ambush had paramilitary training.

  There were too many shooters set in position around the building. He couldn’t take them all out.

  Well, he could. The setup was professional, but the shooters were all amateurs. He could take them all out, one by one by one. And like the first two on the roof, most of them wouldn’t even hear him coming.

  But Jimmy Nash’s hands were already shaking from clearing that roof. A cigarette would’ve helped, but last time he’d quit, he’d sworn it was for good.

  He washed his hands in the sink in the men’s, trying, through sheer force of will, to make them stop trembling.

  It was that awful picture he had in his head of Decker gunned down in the parking lot that steadied him and made his heart stop hammering damn near out of his chest.

  He’d do anything for Deck.

  They’d been Agency partners longer than most marriages lasted these days. Seven years. Who’d have believed that was possible? Two fucked-up, angry men, one of them—him—accustomed to working alone, first cousin to the devil, and the other a freaking Boy Scout, a former Navy SEAL …

  When Tess had called him tonight and told him what she’d overheard, that HQ essentially knew Decker was being targeted and that they weren’t busting their asses to keep it from happening …

  The new Agency director, Doug-the-Prick Brendon, hadn’t tried to hide his intense dislike of “Diego” Nash, and therefore Decker by association. But this was going too far.

  Jimmy used his wet hands to push his hair back from his face, forcing himself to meet his eyes in the mirror.

  Murderous eyes.

  After he got Decker safely out of here, he was going to hunt down Dougie Brendon, and …

  “And spend the rest of your life in jail?” Jimmy could practically hear Deck’s even voice.

  “First they’d have to catch me,” he pointed out. And they wouldn’t. He’d made a vow, a long time ago, to do whatever he had to do never to get locked up again.

  “There are other ways to blow off steam.” How many times had Decker said those exact words to him?

  Other ways …

  Like Tess Bailey.

  Who was waiting for him in the ladies’ room. Who was unbelievably hot. Who liked him—really liked him—he’d seen it in her eyes. She pretended to have a cold-day-in-July attitude when he flirted with her in the office. But Jimmy saw beyond it, and he knew with just a little more charm, and a little bit of well-placed pressure, she’d be giving him a very brightly lit green light.

  Tonight.

  He’d let Decker handle Doug Brendon.

  Jimmy would handle Tess.

  He smiled at the pun as he opened the men’s room door and went out into the hallway. He pushed open the ladies’ room door, expecting to see her, live and in person. But she wasn’t there. Shit. He checked the stalls—all empty.

  It sobered him fast and he stopped thinking about the latter part of the evening, instead focusing on here and now, on finding Tess.

  He spotted her right away as he went back into the hall. She was standing at the bar. What the Jesus God was she doing there? But then he knew. Decker and Mondelay had ordered drinks.

  And he hadn’t been specific enough in his instructions, assuming “get your ass in the ladies’ room” meant just that, not “get your ass in the ladies’ room after you fill their drink order.”

  The biggest problem with her standing at the bar was not the fact that she was bare-breasted and surrounded by drunken and leering men.

  No, the biggest problem was that she was surrounded by other bare-breasted women—i.e. the real waitstaff of the Gentlemen’s Den. Who were going to wonder what Tess was doing cheating them out of their hard-earned tips.

  And sure enough, as Jimmy watched, an older woman with long golden curls, who looked an awful lot like the masthead of an old sailing ship—those things had to be implants—tapped Tess on the shoulder.

  He couldn’t possibly hear U.S.S. Bitch-on-Wheels from this distance. Her face was at the wrong angle for him to read her lips, but her body language was clear. “Who the hell are you?”

  Time for a little secondary rescue.

  He took off his jacket and tossed it into the corner. No one in this dive so much as owned a suit, and his was ruined anyway. He snatched off his tie, too, loosened his collar, and rolled up his sleeves as he pushed his way through the crowd and over to the bar.

  “Oh, here he is now,” Tess was saying to Miss Masthead as he moved into earshot. She smiled at him, which was distracting as hell, because, like most hetero men, he’d been trained to pick up a strong, positive message from the glorious combination of naked breasts and a warm, welcoming smile. He forced himself to focus on what she was saying.

  “I was just telling Crystal about the practical joke, you know,” Tess said, crossing her arms in front of her, “that we’re playing on your cousin?”

  Well, how about that? She didn’t need rescuing. The Masthead—Crystal—didn’t look like the type to swallow, but she’d done just that with Tess’s story.

  “Honey, give her a little something extra,” Tess told him, “because she did, you know, lose that tip she would have gotten.”

  Jimmy dug into his pocket for his billfold, and pulled out two twenty-dollar bills.

  Tess reached for a third, taking the money from his hands and handing it to her brand-new best friend. “Will you get those two beers for me?” she asked Crystal.

  The waitress did better than that—she went back behind the bar to fetch ’em herself.

  Tess turned to Jimmy, who took the opportunity to put his arm around her—she had, after all, called him honey. He was just being a good team player and following her lead, letting that smooth skin slide beneath his fingers.

  “Thanks.” She lowered her voice, turning in closer to him, using him as a way to hide herself—from the rest of the crowd at least. “May I have my shirt back?”

  “Whoops,” he said. Her shirt was in the pocket of his jacket, which was somewhere on the floor by the rest rooms. That is, if someone hadn’t already found it and taken it home.

  “Whoops?” she repeated, looking up at him, fire in her eyes.

  As Jimmy stared down at her, she pressed even closer. Which might’ve kept him from looking, but sure as hell sent his other senses into a dance of joy. It was as if they shared the same shirt—she was so soft and warm and alive. He wanted her with a sudden sharpness that triggered an equally powerful realization. It was so strong it nearly made him stagger.

  He didn’t deserve her.

  He had no right even to touch her. Not with these hands.

  “Are you all right?” Tess whispered.

  Caught in a weird time warp, Jimmy looked down into her eyes. They were light brown—a nothing-special color as far as eyes went—but he’d always been drawn to the intelligence and warmth he could see in them. He realized now, in this odd, lingering moment of clarity, that Tess’s eyes were beautiful. She was beautiful.

  An angel come to save him …

  “I’m fine,” he said, because she was looking at him as if he’d lost it. Crap, maybe he had for a minute there. “Really. Sorry.” He kissed her, just a quick press of his lips against hers, because he didn’t know how else to erase the worry from her eyes.

  It worked to distract her—God knows it did
a similar trick on him.

  He wanted to kiss her again, longer, deeper—a real touch-the-tonsils, full firework-inducing event, but he didn’t. He’d save that for later.

  And Decker always said he had no willpower.

  He looked out at the crowd, trying to get a read on who was shit-faced drunk—who would best serve as a catalyst for part two of tonight’s fun.

  “Did you find a way to get Decker out of here?” Tess asked. He could see that he’d managed completely to confuse her. She was back to folding her arms across her chest.

  “Yeah, I cleared the roof.” He wondered if she had any idea what that meant. He glanced back at the room. There was a man in a green T-shirt who was so tanked his own buddies’ laughter was starting to piss him off.

  But Tess obviously didn’t understand any of what he’d said. “The roof? How …?”

  “I called for some help with our extraction.” Jimmy explained the easy part. “We’ll be flying Deck out of here—a chopper’s coming to pick us up, but first we need a little diversion. Have you ever been in a bar fight?”

  Tess shook her head.

  “Well, you’re about to be. If we get separated, keep to the edge of the room. Keep your back to the wall, watch for flying objects and be ready to duck. Work your way around to that exit sign, and … Heads up,” he interrupted himself.

  Because here came ol’ Gus, right on cue, searching for Tess, wondering what the fuck was taking so long with their beers, impatient to send Decker to the parking lot where he’d be filled with holes, where he’d gasp out the last breath of his life in the gravel.

  And here came Deck, right behind him, the only real gentleman in this den of bottom feeders, ready to jump on Gus’s back if he so much as looked cross-eyed at cute little Tess Bailey from support.

  “When I knock over that guy sitting there with the black T-shirt that says ‘Badass,’ ” Nash instructed her, meeting his partner’s gaze from across the room just as Gus spotted him with Tess. Gus reacted, reaching inside of his baseball jacket either for his cell phone or a weapon—it didn’t really matter which because he was so slo-o-o-w, and Deck was already on top of both it and him. “Lean over the bar and shout to your girlfriend Crystal that she should call 911, that someone in the crowd has a gun. On your mark, get set …”

  Fifteen feet away, Decker brought Gus Mondelay to his knees and then to the floor, which was a damn good thing, because if it had been Nash taking him down, he would have snapped the motherfucker’s neck.

  “… Go!”