Lisa Childs - Soldier Bodyguard

There was no way out without knocking down a door. And she just wasn’t strong enough. Cole’s voice echoed inside her head, taunting her like her cousins used to taunt her. Damsel in distress. Damsel in distress.

No. It wasn’t that she wasn’t strong enough to break down a door. She wasn’t big enough. She was stronger than Cole knew, stronger for which he’d given her credit. And while she couldn’t bust her way out of the garage physically, she could do it mentally.

Couldn’t she?

Her vision began to blur and not just from the smoke and the darkness. Her lungs burning, she was beginning to lose consciousness. She couldn’t do that or she would lose it all.

Her life. Maisy...

Thinking of her sweet little girl renewed her strength. She stumbled through the smoke toward one of those cars and pulled at the driver’s door. It was locked with the damn keys in the ignition.

She stumbled into another bay, toward another door, but it was locked, as well. How had someone managed to start all the vehicles without Astin knowing?

Where was the chauffeur?

She stumbled toward another vehicle but tripped as her feet hit something. And she fell. A body broke her landing, saving her from the concrete on which Astin lay. His hat had been knocked off, and blood spattered the ground and the side of the nearest vehicle.

“Oh, no!” she gasped. And more tears burned her eyes, but these weren’t from the fumes. Astin was such a sweet man. And like anyone who worked for Xavier, he had become part of the family—dysfunctional though it was. She felt his wrist, hoping to find a pulse. And her breath shuddered out when she found one, albeit weak. She leaned closer, making sure that he was still breathing.

He was. But barely. He needed air. And so did she. She wasn’t certain she would have been able to perform CPR, had he stopped breathing.

She had to get them out.

She pushed herself to her feet again and as she did, her hands scraped the concrete and something metal. A crowbar lay next to the chauffeur’s body. She wrapped her fingers around it but it was harder to lift than she’d thought it would be.

And she could barely think...

Her mind was so foggy, like the air in the garage. She couldn’t see. She could barely stand, her legs threatened to fold beneath her. But she couldn’t give up.

She had to find a way out. A way back to her daughter.

Gathering all her strength, she lifted the crowbar and swung it at the car door. It bounced off the car window and fell from her grasp, clamoring to the concrete beside the vehicle.

What the hell was the glass made of? Why wouldn’t it break? Was she just that weak?

Coughing and sputtering, she dropped to her knees to pick the bar back up. But she couldn’t summon the strength to stand again. Her legs—all of her muscles—felt like jelly.

She was so weak and foggy-headed that she thought of lying down beside Astin. Wouldn’t Cole come to her rescue like he always had?

Then again, she’d told him she didn’t want his protection. She didn’t need his help. She’d lied to him and to herself. But she’d had no idea—until now—just how much danger she was in...

The bomb hadn’t been a mistake, except that it had claimed Emery’s life instead of hers. Someone clearly wanted her dead. And she was afraid that someone might be about to get his wish.

“We need a crowbar,” Manny said as he struggled with the service door on the side of the garage. Fumes seeped out from beneath it into the mudroom that separated the house from the garage in which vehicles rumbled. Someone had locked the door from the inside, and he could guess who.

But it was clear that Cole, who’d shaken his head as he’d read the suicide note, refused to accept it. Maybe he was right to be suspicious of it, though.

Because it wasn’t a lock on the inside keeping the door closed but a lock on the outside, a lock that had been filled with some kind of industrial strength glue. It stuck to Manny’s palms as he wrestled with the knob. He cursed and kicked at the door.

Fortunately, it wasn’t the only one in the mudroom. Another door opened onto the sidewalk to the driveway. Cole rushed through it and around to the front of the garage. Smoke furled beneath the overhead doors, too, seeping out.

Cole tugged at the handle of one, but he couldn’t raise it. And as he struggled with it, Manny heard one of those rumbling engines roar as someone pressed on an accelerator. Wood splintered and tires squealed as the vehicle barreled through the door.

And through Cole?

He didn’t see his friend, who moments before had been standing in front of that door. He only saw the long, black limousine that had rammed through it. And he saw behind the wheel of that vehicle, the woman with long black hair.

She wasn’t dead.

But she might have just killed Cole.

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