Lisa Childs - In The Bodyguard's Arms

“Son of a bitch.” He cursed himself this time. Manny should not have left her. He needed to get back to her as soon as possible if he could even figure out which direction the damn cabin was in.

The smoke shifted, then began to take the form of a dark shadow. Before Manny could point his gun, the shadow raised a huge stick and swung it toward Manny’s head.

He ducked that blow but braced himself for the next as the shadow swung again. He was determined to strike Manny, determined to take him out. And Manny wasn’t certain he could see well enough to fight him off.

Chapter 4

“I can fly out in this,” Cole insisted, glancing out of the hangar into the nearly impenetrable fog that surrounded the old metal structure. He had flown in far worse weather conditions with enemies trying to shoot him down. “Lend me your plane.”

The older man snorted and shook his head. “Lots of dead pilots thought they could fly out in fog like this. They never made it wherever they’d intended to go.”

“I have to get to the UP,” Cole said. And those dead pilots hadn’t been him.

“And you want to crash my plane doing it?” Walt asked him. He didn’t know the old crop duster’s last name, just his first. “Where’s your little Cessna? You already crash it?”

“I lent it to a friend,” Cole said. “And now he needs my help.” That was what it had sounded like when Cooper had called him earlier. Someone had attacked the client, and Manny had disappeared while trying to track down the assailant.

Letting Manny go alone to the UP had been a serious mistake. Sure, the whole thing had seemed funny at first. Manny thinking he was protecting a man only to find a gorgeous supermodel instead had seemed like the ultimate prank, like the ones they used to play on each other in boot camp.

It would have been hilarious. Except for the whole dangerous stalker part of the scenario. There was nothing funny about that.

“Come on, Walt,” Cole pleaded, and he reached for his wallet. “I need that plane. How much will you take for it?”

Walt snickered. He probably didn’t think Cole could actually afford it. But then, Walt had seen his new Cessna, since they kept theirs in the same hangar, so he had to know that Cole could pay him what his old crop duster was worth and then some. “Money’s not the most important thing to everyone, son.”

It was to Cole’s family. They would kill each other over it if they thought they could get away with murder. And given how much money they had, they probably could.

“I’m sure your friend would rather have you alive than risking your life for him,” Walt said.

Knowing Manny as well as he did, Cole had to agree. Manny wouldn’t want him risking his life or even spending money on him. Manny was one of the few people Cole knew to whom money was not the most important thing. That was why he was such a good friend. Except for the other guys from their unit, Cole didn’t have many people like Manny in his life. That was why he couldn’t lose him.

“His life is in danger,” Cole said. “I need to get there.” He glanced out the open doors and shivered slightly as he noticed the fog had thickened even more.

Walt had moved away from the table where he’d been sitting. He squeezed Cole’s arm now. “And risking your life isn’t going to save his.”

Cole could have argued. He had examples. The missions they’d survived because they’d done exactly that, risked their lives for each other. “Walt...”

Walt squeezed harder. “Once the fog lifts, you can borrow the plane,” he said. “And all you need to do is fill the fuel tanks for me.”

But Cole suspected it would be too late for him to help Manny once the fog lifted. Hell, he suspected it was already too late.

* * *

Cooper Payne had told her to stay in the cabin. But with every second that ticked by, it became harder and harder for Teddie to do nothing.

Jordan Mannes was out there alone, half-blinded because of her. His life was in danger because of her.

Of course, he was a bodyguard, so his life was probably often in danger. And she had hired his agency to protect her. But she was the one who had blinded him, making it more difficult for him to do his job: to protect her and to protect himself right now.

She should at least try to help him. But how? She had dropped the pepper-spray canister outside. It was probably empty anyway, though. And really, if a guy as big as her Payne Protection bodyguard hadn’t been able to fight off her stalker, what would she be able to do?

The self-defense class she’d taken had taught her only the basics. She wasn’t trained in hand-to-hand combat like Jordan Mannes undoubtedly was. How did one qualify to be a bodyguard? What was his background?

Why was she so curious about him? Teddie hadn’t been curious about any man—but her stalker—in a long time. And all she’d wondered about him was who the hell he was and why he wanted to terrorize her.

Jordan Mannes had saved her from the stalker. So of course she would be curious about the bodyguard and about the kind of man who risked his life for others like he regularly did. She’d not known many heroic men in her life. Her own father had abandoned her before she’d even been born.

Maybe Jordan wasn’t as heroic as she’d thought. Maybe he had abandoned her, too. She could hardly blame him if he had after she’d pepper-sprayed him. But she’d heard no motor start up when he’d walked outside. Wherever he’d gone, he’d gone on foot. So he couldn’t be that far...

Could he?

Teddie paced the small confines of the cabin, walking back and forth across the living room with her heart pounding fast and hard as if she was outside running again. She ventured closer to the window, stuck her fingers between the slats of the blinds and peered out. She could see nothing outside. It was as if the darkness had wrapped itself around the little cabin like a thick blanket.

She shivered. Even though it was just early autumn, the temperatures dropped a lot at night in the Upper Peninsula. But it wasn’t the cold that had chilled her. It was that feeling she’d had—the one she’d gotten earlier in the woods—that she was suddenly not alone.

And then she heard it. The scrape of metal moving against metal.

Where was the noise coming from?

She tilted her head and listened intently, trying to identify the sound. What was making it? Or, more important, who was making it?

She peered intently around the cabin, searching the shadows. Jordan had said he’d searched it before rushing outside to rescue her.

So nobody could be inside.

And she had locked the door just like he’d told her to. But just to be safe, she headed toward the door to double-check. As she did, she saw the knob move, and now she knew that the scraping noise was the sound of a key sliding into the lock and turning it.

Someone was coming inside the cabin.

Her heart slammed against her ribs as fear overwhelmed her again.

When Jordan had told her he’d found the door unlocked, she’d known she had locked it. Somehow her stalker had gotten a key. And now he was about to get her.

The cabin was so small that there was no place for her to hide. It was also so small that if she tried to run out the patio door to the deck—which was the only other exit—he would see her for certain. He had already outrun her once; she knew that he would again, especially now that the muscles in her legs had cramped up. It took an effort for her to run just to the kitchen.

Even if he was too big for her to overpower, she had to try. She was not going down without one hell of a fight. She jerked open a kitchen drawer and grabbed the handle of the biggest knife in the utensil divider. With it firmly clasped in her hand, she moved toward the electrical panel hidden behind one of the cabinet doors. And she threw the switch that shut off all of the power, plunging the cabin into darkness as complete as the darkness outside.