Guarding His Witness

by Lisa Childs

  Chapter 3

  “Put down the gun!” Parker shouted as he pulled open the driver’s door of the SUV. He was not going to get shot in front of his own damn agency. And definitely not by a member of his team.

  “Damn it!” Clint cursed him. “I nearly shot you. Why the hell were you all sneaking up on me?”

  Parker was not alone. “You were sitting out here for a while,” he said. And he and some of the other guards—ones he’d borrowed from his brothers’ agencies to secure the perimeter during their meeting—had grown concerned. And maybe with good reason. “We thought something was wrong.”

  As Clint slid his weapon back into his holster, a grimace crossed his face with the movement. He was hurt.

  “What the hell happened?” Parker asked.

  Clint had warned him that he was the last man the witness would want to protect her. Apparently, Parker should have listened to him.

  The witness answered before Clint could. “He threw us out a third-story window,” she said.

  Maybe Clint was the one Parker should have been worried about. “What?” he asked.

  She had to be lying, maybe trying to get her bodyguard in trouble.

  “We were being shot at,” Clint explained. “When you all started creeping up on us, I thought the shooters might have followed us here.”

  “Not with the way you were driving,” the brunette remarked. From her disparaging tone, it was clear that Clint had not exaggerated how Rosie Mendez felt about him.

  “Are you hurt?” Parker asked her.

  She shook her head. “No. But he needs stitches and a tetanus shot.” Despite her hostility toward her bodyguard, there was concern in her voice. There was also knowledge; the hospital badge dangling from the pocket of her scrubs identified her as a registered emergency medicine nurse.

  “I’m fine,” Clint said, but as he slid out from beneath the steering wheel, he flinched again. He was not fine. But he was clearly focused on protecting the witness regardless of his injury and her resentment of him. He pushed past Parker and the other bodyguards to open the passenger’s door.

  “You need to go to the hospital,” she told him, and she stayed seated as if she intended to go with him.

  “The chief of the River City Police Department is waiting to talk to you and the others,” Parker said. And he felt a rush of pride that that man was his stepfather. His mother had married a good man this time. “I’ll have someone else take Clint to the ER.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Clint stated albeit through gritted teeth. “I am fine. I can do my job.”

  Parker sighed. “I can’t argue that—not after you saved her from getting shot and made sure you weren’t followed getting here.”

  Yes. He had chosen his team well. Too well to lose any of them. And one of them was already hurt, no matter how damn fine he swore he was.

  He’d known when he’d accepted this assignment from the chief that it would be dangerous. But he’d had no idea that the danger would start almost immediately.

  * * *

  Heat rushed to Rosie’s face. She must have sounded ungrateful to the bodyguards who’d gathered around the SUV. Clint Quarters had saved her from getting shot, and instead of thanking him, all she’d done was complain.

  But it was easier for Rosie to complain about Clint than to be grateful to him. She just couldn’t do it.

  Not after what he’d cost her. And no matter how many times he might save her life, he could never bring back the life lost because of him.

  Javier...

  She had no intention of going along with his being her bodyguard. That was the reason she walked into the Payne Protection Agency with him and the others. She intended to tell the chief of police exactly what he could do with his protection.

  Not that she could deny that she needed it. What had happened to that young officer who’d escorted her home? Had Luther really gotten to him? Either paying or threatening him? Or had the shooters taken him out first before Clint came to her rescue?

  And he had rescued her. But that didn’t mean he had to be the one to protect her until she testified. It looked as though the Payne Protection Agency had many other bodyguards. Several patrolled the parking lot and the outside of the brick building while many more stood inside the doors.

  She should have felt safe seeing all those armed and trained bodyguards. But the danger became even more real than when those shots had rung out. That had been so surreal and Clint had reacted so quickly that she was almost able to believe that it hadn’t happened at all.

  But then he stepped around her, and she could see his shoulder in the bright interior light. His jacket and shirt were torn and so was his skin, the edges of the wound ragged and oozing blood yet.

  It had definitely happened. They had come under attack and nearly been killed.

  “You really need medical attention,” she persisted.

  He shrugged off her concern. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re stubborn,” she said with frustration, that he wouldn’t listen to her. He might know about being a cop and a bodyguard. But she, as an ER nurse, knew about injuries like his.

  It couldn’t go untreated.

  “You have no idea,” another man murmured. It was the one who’d pulled open Clint’s door. He was tall with dark hair and blue eyes. “I’m Parker Payne,” he introduced himself.

  And she realized he was the boss.

  He led her toward another room, a conference room, and when that door opened, she saw who was really running the show. At least this show...

  Chief Woodrow Lynch. She’d met him before. He’d come to Javier’s funeral to express his condolences. Unlike Clint, he hadn’t been thrown out. He’d seemed sincere and determined to make certain that her brother’s killer was finally brought to justice.

  “I’m so glad you’re here, Ms. Mendez,” he greeted her. “We were getting worried about you.”

  “You weren’t the only one,” she murmured.

  “Clint thwarted an attempt on her life,” Parker said.

  Jocelyn Gerber, the assistant district attorney, jumped up from her chair. She was tall and thin with pin-straight black hair.

  Rosie envied all of that—the height, the weight and the straight hair. Rosie wasn’t much over five feet tall. And if not for her busy schedule at the hospital, she would probably be carrying more than a few extra pounds. And even a straightener couldn’t get rid of her stubborn curls.

  “Are you all right?” Ms. Gerber asked.

  Rosie wasn’t certain if the woman was concerned about her or just about her case against Luther Mills. The young ADA was blatantly ambitious.

  Rosie nodded but turned back toward the chief. “What about your officer?” she asked. “The one you had protecting me?”

  The chief looked over her head at Clint. “There was no one at her door when I arrived at her apartment,” Clint informed him. “I’m not sure what happened to the officer.”

  “I’ll find out,” someone said before the chief could. The detective who’d arrested Luther made the offer as he jumped up from his chair at the long conference table.

  Rosie felt sick with concern that the officer could have been hurt because of her.

  Like Clint had been hurt...

  “You’re not going anywhere,” the chief told Detective Dubridge.

  “But you heard them—there’s been a shooting,” he said. “I need to investigate.”

  “Someone else is taking that case. You’re not the only detective with River City PD. But you are the only one with a hit out on you. You need to sit back down,” the chief said, and his tone brooked no argument.

  The detective must have sensed that as well because the tall, dark-haired man sat back down next to a small blonde woman.

  The chief turned back to Rosie. “Please, take a seat as well,” he di
rected her. He didn’t wait for her to comply before he stepped back from the conference table, took his cell from his pocket and made a call.

  Despite his injured shoulder, Clint pulled out a chair for her. Her knees shaking suddenly, she sank onto it and glanced around the long table.

  Jocelyn Gerber and Detective Dubridge were not the only people Rosie recognized. Judge Holmes sat at the table, too. He looked a lot like the chief, with iron-gray hair and an expressionless face. She couldn’t imagine anyone threatening that intimidating man. But then she remembered that Clint had said the person in danger was his daughter. She must have been the girl sitting between him and a burly bearded man. Despite the late hour, the young blonde looked as though she’d just stepped off the runway of a fashion show. In a sparkling evening gown, she was supermodel-status glamorous.

  Which made Rosie feel tired and dirty in the scrubs she’d worn for a double shift. They hadn’t been very clean even before she’d wound up in the dumpster.

  At least one of the other women around the table was dressed as if she’d already been in bed for the night—and alone, as Rosie had intended to be. She wore loose yoga pants and an oversize T-shirt. Her short red hair was tousled around a face devoid of makeup—of any color at all but for a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She was still prettier than Rosie felt, though.

  Not that she had anyone she wanted to impress. But for some reason, as that thought entered her mind, she glanced over at Clint, who’d taken the chair next to her. She wasn’t concerned about his opinion of her. But unfortunately, she was concerned about him. His handsome face contorted with another grimace and it was clear to see he was in pain. That might have had something to do with his boss, who touched his shoulder.

  “Are you sure there isn’t a bullet in it?” Parker asked him.

  “Bullet?” the woman in the pajamas asked, and there was something like eagerness in her voice. “Were you shot?”

  “No,” Clint replied. “So don’t start trying to dig a bullet out of me for evidence.”

  Apparently, she was the evidence tech who’d been threatened.

  So they were all here—all the people Luther Mills intended to kill. Maybe Rosie should have felt better knowing that she was not the only one. But she couldn’t feel good about other people being in danger.

  The chief clicked off his cell and stepped back to the table. His brow was furrowed, and it looked as though he had more lines in his face than she remembered him having.

  “Is the officer...” Dead? She couldn’t say it. Couldn’t say that word. She’d already said it too many times.

  The chief shook his head. “No. He’s alive. But he had been knocked out.”

  “Really? He wasn’t in the hall when I arrived,” Clint said. “And he never should have left her door.” He sounded suspicious. He seemed convinced that Luther had already gotten to the officer.

  But he was so young, so like Javier, that Rosie didn’t want to believe it. “Maybe he heard something and went to investigate,” she said.

  “The detective didn’t say where he’d been found,” the chief said.

  Rosie didn’t care. “Is he okay?” she asked. Concussions were serious.

  She glanced back at Clint. Had he hit his head as well as his shoulder? She wanted to reach out and run her fingers through his soft-looking golden hair. But just to look for a bump or a cut—that was the only reason. She resisted the urge despite her fingers twitching. When she requested a different bodyguard, she would insist he go to the ER.

  Realizing that the chief had hesitated a long time before answering her question, she turned back to him. “Is Officer Maynard okay?”

  She remembered his name because he’d reminded her of Javier. But she couldn’t remember the names of all the other officers who’d guarded her since Javier’s murder. There had been too many.

  Chief Lynch nodded. “He’ll be fine.”

  “Could he be the leak?” Detective Dubridge asked. He must have picked up on Clint’s suspicion.

  The chief shook his head. “He doesn’t have access to everything that Luther found out about the upcoming trial. No one in the police department does.”

  The detective and the chief turned to the assistant district attorney. Jocelyn Gerber’s pale face flushed. “You’re saying there’s a leak in my department?” She sounded deeply insulted.

  “If the leak is there, why do we need a private security company?” The crime scene tech asked the question Rosie had opened her mouth to ask as well. “Why can’t we just have officers protect us?”

  “Because the officer at Rosie’s was so effective?” Clint asked the question. “She had no protection when I arrived. She would have been killed for certain.”

  She shivered as she realized how true that was—with all those bullets flying, there was no way she would have survived. Despite all the locks on the door, they would have gotten inside her apartment—they would have gotten to her.

  Luther Mills had no intention of letting her testify against him.

  “I think the private security firm is a great idea,” Jocelyn said. “Because I don’t think the leak is in the DA’s office. A higher-ranking police officer or a detective would be able to get information about the trial.”

  Dubridge glared at her. “Are you accusing me of helping out Luther Mills?”

  “Not at all,” she assured him. “But you’re not the only detective with the River City PD.”

  “He just thinks he is,” the blonde sitting next to him murmured.

  Rosie felt like an extreme outsider in this meeting. All these people appeared to know one another much better than she knew any of them except Clint Quarters. And her animosity and resentment for him wasn’t the only animosity and resentment in the room.

  Jocelyn ignored the comments and continued, “I just think the witness is the only one we need to worry about protecting at the moment.”

  Detective Dubridge nodded in agreement of that. “She’s right. The only assassination attempt was made on the witness.”

  The witness. That was all she was to them. Suddenly very cold, she shivered.

  The chief shook his head. “You were all threatened,” he said. “You will all have a bodyguard.”

  The room erupted with protests, everyone arguing. Even the judge. He argued with his daughter, who clearly didn’t want a bodyguard either.

  Detective Dubridge’s deep voice was the loudest. “How the hell is Bodyguard Barbie going to protect me?” he asked disdainfully.

  And the blonde sitting next to him bristled with anger over his chauvinism.

  Rosie would have preferred the blonde to Clint Quarters. She would have preferred anyone to Clint Quarters. But she doubted her protests would be heard above all the others. So she stood up and turned toward the chief. “May I speak to you alone?”

  “Ms. Mendez needs a bodyguard more than anyone else,” Jocelyn Gerber said. “As the eyewitness to the murder, she needs to make it to trial.”

  That was all the prosecutor cared about, apparently—getting a conviction. Rosie cared about more than that; she wanted justice for her brother and she wanted Luther Mills to never be able to hurt anyone else. Being in jail wasn’t preventing that, though.

  Would being in prison? She hoped so.

  “She’s the only one who really needs protection,” Detective Dubridge added. “The rest of us have lives to live, work to do.”

  “And I don’t?” she asked, her temper snapping.

  He’d been so nice to her when Javier had been shot. But maybe, like Jocelyn Gerber wanted that conviction, he’d only wanted that arrest. Getting Luther was all they seemed to care about.

  But she had patients and a job she cared about as well. The hospital was short-staffed. If she didn’t show up to work, people could die. Or she could lose her job. Then how would she support her
self after the trial? How would she pay her rent and her bills?

  The chief stepped forward and took her elbow. “Of course you may speak to me,” he said as he escorted her from the noisy conference room. “But Parker Payne will join us.”

  She didn’t care who joined them as long as it wasn’t Clint Quarters. But he’d stood up when she had, as if he’d needed to shield her from bullets inside the protection agency. She grabbed the chief’s arm. “Not him. I don’t want him to join us.”

  Even though he had saved her life, she didn’t want Clint Quarters anywhere near her. Maybe it was partially because he had saved her life that she didn’t want him near her. She didn’t want her feelings for him to change out of gratitude. She wanted to keep hating him. She needed to keep hating him.

  * * *

  Clint was hurting like hell. And it wasn’t just his shoulder. His entire body ached from hitting whatever the hell had been inside that dumpster. But he’d already been hurting, even before he’d jumped out that window.

  Since Javier died, he’d been aching with guilt and regret and loss. He’d really cared about that kid. He couldn’t imagine how badly Rosie hurt.

  And he didn’t want her to hurt anymore. He had to be the one to protect her.

  “I need to be in that meeting, too,” he said as he followed Parker, the chief and Rosie out into the hallway.

  “No!” she protested sharply. “I don’t want him.”

  That was no doubt what she was going to tell Parker and the chief. That would she would be okay with any other bodyguard but him.

  He’d already warned Parker that was how she would feel, that she would not want him protecting her. But even if for some reason Parker took him off the case, he wouldn’t stop guarding her.

  He intended to keep at least that promise he’d made to Javier. He would make sure nothing happened to his sister, even if protecting her caused him more pain.

  Even if it cost him his life.