Bulletproof (Unknown Identities #1)

by Black, Regan

  Now who was being straightforward? A shiver of unease slithered down her spine like an errant raindrop under her collar. He wasn’t kidding and the worst of it was she believed him. Completely.

  She had a good nose for bullshit and John Noble was the real deal.

  “I can’t tell if you’re bragging or trying to scare me,” she said when they paused at the traffic light.

  “Just stating a fact. That’s what you prefer, right?”

  Apparently, he’d done some digging on her too, not that it would be a challenge. A quick search through past Torch issues would give him a good picture of her type of reporting. Inexplicably, it raised her opinion of him.

  “I prefer the truth, yes,” she admitted. “More importantly, I prefer getting the truth out to the public.”

  “Despite the risks.”

  “Yes,” she said through gritted teeth. Was everyone against her on this point? “Exposing the truth is worth it.”

  “Can’t tell the story if you’re dead.”

  Was everyone preaching from the same book? That was the one truth she preferred to ignore. She braked for a red traffic light and swore softly as the minutes ticked by. She could not afford to be late to this meeting. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To keep me alive.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  Relieved somehow, Amelia moved with traffic as the light changed, but the man beside her was the one checking their surroundings.

  “Are we being followed?”

  “Hard to tell in this weather. Everything’s covered with a wet layer of gray.”

  He was supposed to be the expert no matter the conditions, she thought. “It should be snow, not rain.”

  “It’s weather. It will change.”

  She sighed at his pragmatic outlook, a little envious. It hadn’t changed for days and she wasn’t sure how much more she could take. The incessant wet layer of gray, as he put it, meant people were using The Torch as makeshift umbrellas more often than for the news.

  She caught him peering at his side mirror. “What is it?”

  “Take the next left.”

  “That’s the wrong direction,” she argued.

  “So go around the block.”

  Smart ass. “I’m running late enough already.”

  His gaze snapped from the side mirror to her. She would have sworn she felt the impact, though it wasn’t physically possible. “I’ll take the turn,” she managed, struggling to breathe under the weight of those unyielding eyes.

  Blind obedience wasn’t her strong suit and she didn’t intend to ever count it a skill, but she recognized when it was time to concede a minor battle. No, she wouldn’t give driving directions the benefit of ‘battle’ status. This was an early skirmish in what needed to become a functioning, temporary partnership.

  She made the left turn and slowed for the traffic backed up on the street. “Keep moving,” he ordered.

  “I wish.” Was he blind? She flipped a hand toward the congested street in front of them. “Welcome to Boston.” Now she really would be late. Damn it. She rapped her fist against the steering wheel.

  “Relax. I think we’re clear.”

  “Great. Color me relieved.” The fear of last night’s attack was fading under her current irritation. She didn’t work well with others and a bodyguard who guided her into traffic jams was not helpful. “If I miss this meeting I’ll lose the source.”

  “Call and reschedule.”

  “Aren’t you full of wonderful ideas? It isn’t that easy.”

  At the next light she zoomed through the yellow, ignoring the chorus of car horns protesting the way her car partially blocked the intersection.

  “Why not? Your source wants to share information, correct?”

  “Oh, sure. There’s no risk at all, it’s as simple as chatting over coffee.” She shot him a look that let him know her opinion of him was dropping rapidly. “And here I’d thought you’d done some remedial background on me.”

  “No.”

  “Obviously,” she grumbled. But his denial was a lie. He’d known her on sight and she’d known it had been their first in person meeting. However his card had found its way into her purse, his was a face she wouldn’t forget.

  “Extensive background,” he said shifting in his seat to face her. “What do you promise your sources to get them to open up?”

  “Anonymity.”

  He laughed, a rusty, low rumble that sounded decidedly out of practice. “Your source can’t be anonymous in the middle of a busy city with security cameras on every corner.”

  She flicked a hand at the windshield again. “What is with this weather? Traffic shouldn’t be this bad on a weekend morning.”

  The car inched forward while her blood pressure crept higher. She needed the information this source had promised, needed some part of this story to go right.

  Dire possibilities echoed through her mind, no matter how she tried to think positively. She gave herself a mental shake. She could not tackle this from a point of fear. She was onto something... every fiber of her being knew it and last night was just that much more confirmation. The traffic light at the next block flashed red and the message in blood leaped to the center of her thoughts again.

  “Brakes!”

  She stomped hard on the pedal. Tires squealed against the wet pavement, but the car stopped just shy of the bumper in front of her.

  “Let me drive,” he said, reaching for the door handle. “You’re distracted.”

  “Stay put. I know where we’re going.” She jerked the car into the next lane. The intersection cleared momentarily and she realized the light was flashing because a cop was directing traffic.

  She flipped her turn signal, but he shook his head. The street she needed was blocked by a barricade. “Damn it.”

  “Use the garage there,” he pointed, “and we’ll walk.”

  “Not to Sudbury,” she grumbled.

  “Who the hell meets in Sudbury?”

  It was a valid question, one she’d asked herself in recent days, but she ignored him as she worked her way out of town toward the smaller community to the west of the city. Was her source making a quiet statement as a modern revolutionary? Possibly. More likely he knew the area and people and felt comfortable there.

  Taking advantage of every patch of open road, she raced toward the destination. It was her only hope of catching her source before he bolted. Grateful for the lighter traffic, she cursed the wet roads that required caution.

  “Private or public place?”

  “Public,” she replied truthfully, slowing down to take the fork toward the historic Wayside Inn. “To anyone who might care, we’ll look like two people chatting over coffee and scones.” She slid a glance his way. “You have to wait out here. It won’t take me long.”

  She drummed her fingers against the steering wheel as she pulled into a parking place.

  “Not a good idea,” he said when she turned off the ignition and dropped her keys into her purse. “I can’t protect you when you’re out of my sight.”

  “I don’t have time to debate it. My source will bolt if he sees you. He’ll bolt if there’s another delay.” She knew she was right about the bolting, but she was guessing that her source was male. This was their first in-person meeting, every other drip of information had been fed to her online or by phone with a device that altered the caller’s voice.

  “You can convince him I’m trustworthy.”

  “I’d have better luck convincing him you’re deaf.”

  He shrugged, his gaze scanning the thick trees surrounding the parking lot. “I’m just here to make sure you survive.”

  She clung ruthlessly to her fraying patience. “Please wait here in the car?”

  “No.”

  The single, calm syllable resonated through her system. He would not change his mind and there was no quick way for her to lose him out here in Sudbury. The stone maiden had met her unmovable match.

  “Fine.”
Her mind cycled through possible excuses and words of comfort for her source. She’d promised him anonymity and having a man like John Noble tagging along would be a problem. An emergency siren blared nearby, but the sound washed over her, an afterthought quickly forgotten as it faded into the distance.

  Per her habit, she ran through her mental prep list for an interview. Her digital voice recorder was tucked into her coat pocket for easy access. She turned off her cell phone and added it to the general disorder inside her purse. She looped her arm through the strap and tucked the purse under her coat to keep it dry.

  She turned up her coat collar and reached for her door handle as John reclaimed his trench coat.

  “Keep up.” Amelia said, suppressing the very feminine awareness that his long legs wouldn’t have any trouble matching her pace.

  He stuck closer than a shadow as she hurried toward the inn. Shaking off the rain at the door, it didn’t take long to realize she’d been stood up. Two tables were occupied on opposite ends of the room and clearly no one was keeping an eye out for her.

  Something must have spooked the contact. She could only hope it wasn’t her bodyguard. Well, that was the whole purpose of a fallback meeting place. Refusing to give up, she said, “Let’s go.”

  John raised an eyebrow and looked around the room again. She had the strangest feeling he was memorizing the faces and taking an inventory. For what purpose she didn’t want to know.

  She gave the hostess an excuse and they returned to her car. She started the engine, then sent a text message to the phone number she had in her call log assuring her contact she was on the way to the secondary meeting site. John buckled up without a word. Suited Amelia. She didn’t need the distraction.

  They’d almost reached the alternate location in Sudbury when the flashing lights of emergency vehicles flared across the road, ricocheting off of the wet windows and streets. A policeman in a yellow poncho directed her down a side street, away from her destination.

  “What the hell is going on?” She tried to make some sense of the trouble with one eye on the road and one eye on the rearview mirror.

  “How close is your next stop?”

  “Close enough.” She found a parking place on the street and turned off the car. “It’s not like I can get much wetter.”

  Meeting at the inn would have been more comfortable, but maybe her contact had the right idea. In this weather no one was apt to listen in and the uniformity of raincoats and umbrellas gave them an additional layer of privacy.

  They trudged up the street, two more bystanders joining those crowded around the scene.

  She couldn’t see past the clustered shoulders and umbrellas. With no apology, she shouldered her way between people to get closer to the trouble in the street. “Gawkers,” she muttered.

  John set a hand on her shoulder, preventing her next maneuver. “Stay put for a minute.”

  Exasperated, she spun around and found her view full of his dark shirt and tie. Slowly her eyes traced up across the freshly shaved terrain of his throat and over the trim beard accenting his jaw until her gaze was locked with his. She stared into those hard, green depths, heedless of the rain catching in her eyelashes. The ability to breathe deserted her.

  There had to be a remedy for this strange, magnetic pull he held over her. Her melting mascara might have been enough to break the spell, if he hadn’t dropped his gaze to watch her lick a raindrop from her lips.

  Something deep inside her wanted to reach out and capitalize on his distraction. To discover if the rain tasted different after trailing across his skin.

  Blinking away the peculiar thought, she cleared her throat. He wasn’t here to fulfill some long-buried fantasy, he was here because Bernie insisted she was in danger. “This meeting is essential,” she managed to squeeze out between gritted teeth.

  “So is your safety.”

  “I have to get across the street.”

  “Can’t get the story to your readers from the grave.”

  The hair prickled on the back of her neck. For a bodyguard offering protection, he gave considerable voice to her imminent demise. There was no arguing with the statement or with him, based on the implacable expression he was sporting.

  Frustrated on more levels than she cared to analyze, she turned back toward the street. “That’s my meeting place.” She tilted her head toward the Revolutionary Cemetery shrouded in rain, the old grave markers splashed with red and blue from the emergency lights. “Do you see anyone?”

  She started to work her way closer, but before she’d managed a few paces, she felt his hand on her shoulder again. “Wait here.”

  “No.” Her source had surely run from all this commotion, but she needed to see for herself. She understood people and though they’d never met, she knew she could recognize her source by the body language if given half a chance. Around her, people in the crowd murmured but no one wept or mentioned names. In a community the size of Sudbury that meant the problem in the street involved strangers, but this seemed like a big crowd for a distracted tourist induced accident.

  Please, don’t let it be my contact. It couldn’t be, she decided. A thought like that was simply a paranoid side effect having a bodyguard. She and her source had been too careful in light of the careers and lives on the line with this story.

  “Let me do my job,” he growled at her ear.

  “You’re here to enable me to do mine.” She studied his features, noticed the wariness in his eyes as he studied the cemetery across the street. Had he noticed a threat she’d missed? “What happened to keeping me in sight?”

  The glare he leveled on her made her think twice. She couldn’t let him intimidate her or having him around would derail her story anyway. Holding her ground, she folded her arms across her chest and glared right back.

  “It’s crowded here.” She leaned closer, ignored the teasing spice of his scent. Whatever aftershave he wore, it was one she’d never smelled before. “Anything could happen to me.”

  His lips thinned. “Keep up.”

  She followed as he moved down the block, away from the center of the commotion. Retreat wasn’t in her nature any more than blind trust, but she had the feeling bucking his instruction at this point would make matters worse.

  With everyone distracted, he crossed the street and came up on the cemetery from the opposite direction. On this side, there were more official personnel and fewer bystanders blocking her view.

  A grim view.

  The body in the street was tangled in a morbid embrace with a bicycle. She took in the details in short bursts. The bike was a basic ten speed and the victim, male, wasn’t wearing the rain gear a serious cyclist would have in this weather. He’d been slim, but based on the hands, she put him closer to thirty than twenty. The rain washed the blood toward the storm drain in trickles of red-tinged water. First responders were doing what they could to assess the scene as police officers and EMTs dealt with the one witness seated on the bumper of an ambulance.

  Ah, the witness was the local, Amelia realized, listening to the questions and answers. Through tears, the witness repeated how the bicyclist had just cut in front of her. No time to stop. No, she’d never seen him before. No, she wasn’t speeding.

  Because of the high tourism in the small town, the speed limit along this roadway was low. Too low for an incidental impact to kill a cyclist that way.

  “Something’s off,” she said to John.

  “I know.”

  Raising a hand to keep the rain out of her eyes, she followed his gaze, narrowed once more, as he studied the shadows at the edge of the cemetery. Turning, Amelia did the opposite, studying the people across the street. If that was her contact, dead, someone made him that way.

  Why and how were foremost in her mind as a chill that had nothing to do with the rain turned her skin clammy under her coat.

  “Hey! You can’t be over here,” a patrolman said, striding toward them. “Officials only.”

  She was about t
o give the standard reporter’s response when John stepped forward, extending his wallet and a badge of some sort. “Can we help at all?”

  “Not unless you can get the medical examiner here faster.”

  The patrolman’s entire demeanor relaxed and Amelia made a mental note to take a closer look at the badge John had offered.

  “Sorry,” he replied. “Any ID on the victim?”

  “No.” The patrolman shook his head and turned toward the witness. “Mrs. B is gonna have a tough time getting past this. Why are the two of you in town? Something going on I don’t know about?”

  “We had a new interview on a cold case out of Boston,” John said with one of those shrugs understood by overworked law enforcement men and women everywhere. “Saw the commotion and stopped. We’ll get out of your way.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised her that her bodyguard knew the same lesson she’d learned early in her career: act like you belong and people treated you as if you belonged.

  Of course, the opposite was also true. The thought flitted through her mind as she spied a dark umbrella moving quickly away from the crisis area. In the muted sea of trench coats and umbrellas in dark and neutral colors, she couldn’t be sure that was the person she’d come to meet. She caught the only distinguishing feature, a flash of blond hair, between the umbrella and the upturned coat collar. Even as she watched, whoever was under that umbrella picked up speed and people were cursing as they were forced off the sidewalk and into puddles.

  Her instincts prickled, it could simply be an annoyed bystander. Maybe it was someone who saw too much and felt ill. Or it could be her panicked contact making a hasty exit.

  Stay put or follow? Adrenaline rushed through her veins.

  The debate was over before it began. She moved to pursue. If she hurried, she could use the cover of the emergency vehicles and cut off the person before they turned off this street.

  She was several paces away when John’s voice reached her. “Hold up!”

  “Catch up,” she muttered, keeping her eyes on that blond hair. This person might only be a coincidence, but with the story slipping out of her grasp, Amelia refused to leave any stone unturned.