Rebecca York - Guarding Grace

He was totally unprepared for the attack. Grunting, he dropped his hold on her shoulder.

Free of his control, she struck out with her foot, catching him in the balls. He screamed as he doubled over.

But he wasn’t the only one she had to worry about. Another man dropped over the side of the roof, charging toward her.

If she ran, she had no chance. So she played deer in the headlights, standing still and breathing hard, forcing herself to wait until he was almost on her. Then she moved, using her body weight to shove the first guy into the second.

They both went down.

A curse rang out behind her as she turned and sprinted away, knowing this was her last chance.

Her lower lip wedged between her teeth, she kept moving, braced for the pain of a bullet slamming into her back.

Instead, just as she turned the corner, another man stepped into her path, trapping her.

“Come on,” he said.

As he took in her wide-eyed look, he snapped, “I’m not one of them.” “Then who?” “The cavalry. Come on.” “Where?”

“Away. Let me help you, before they catch up with you.” With a gun in his hand, he gestured toward a car pulled up at the curb. The guy looked tough and capable but subtly different from the men who’d broken into her apartment. Making a split-second decision, she climbed into the car.

Her heart was pounding so hard that she thought it might break through the wall of her chest.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“It looks like I’m your bodyguard.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“You put up a good fight, but they would have gotten you in the end.”

She sighed, eyeing him. “What’s your name?” “Brady Lockwood.”

Oh Lord. She should have recognized him! But the photos she’d seen of him had been old. He hardly looked like the same guy.

“You’re John Ridgeway’s brother.”

Brady drove toward Georgetown with no particular destination in mind. The one thing he knew was that going home wasn’t an option at the moment. Despite claiming to be her bodyguard, he still didn’t know if he was going to end up taking Grace Cunningham to the cops. And he sure as hell didn’t trust her enough to let her into his apartment.

As she sat next to him, she radiated tension. Yeah, well, she should. She’d been involved in something pretty nasty this evening.

He saw her hands trembling. She was on the edge, and maybe he could use that to his advantage.

Turning off Wisconsin Avenue, he pulled onto a side street and under a streetlight that gave him enough illumination to see her.

When the car came to a stop, she glanced around in alarm. “Where are we?”

“On the run. But you look like you could use a friend.” “I’m fine,” she protested.

“Of course not. You’ve been through a rough couple of hours.”

He cut the engine, then reached across the console and gathered her close, stroking his hands over her back and shoulders, then into her hair, feeling her tremble.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he whispered.

She stayed rigid for a moment, then relaxed against him. As he kept stroking her, murmuring low, reassuring words, he was having trouble fitting her into the murder scenario he’d constructed on the way to her apartment. The picture he’d seen made her look like the soul of innocence. The woman clinging to him gave the same impression. Yet he’d also seen her dispatch a couple of tough guys in the alley. Let’s not forget about that.

“I’m scared.”

“Yeah. I understand.”

He’d taken her in his arms for purely mercenary reasons, yet he couldn’t keep himself from reacting to the softness of her skin, her light flower scent, the clean feel of her hair.

Careful, Brady, he warned himself. This is no time to be taken in by a woman who could work her way into a weekly liaison with the head of the Ridgeway Consortium.

Yet she didn’t seem like one of John’s honeys. He went for women who were flashier, blonder. Women who knew that John Ridgeway might be able to help them along in the world.

She was more like Brady’s own type. A lot more. Or was it that he had stayed away from any romantic relationships for too long? And the first young, pretty woman who came along was tugging at his emotions in unexpected ways.

He should distance himself from her, but he stayed where he was, captured not only by the physical attributes of the woman but also by a sense of connection.

Her voice woke him up to reality.

“It wasn’t a coincidence that you showed up in the alley in back of my apartment.”

“Yeah.”

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“I stopped by my brother’s house. He had your address and your photo in a personnel file.”

“Okay.”

He reminded himself that he should be the one getting information, and he didn’t want to be staring over Grace Cunningham’s shoulder when he questioned her. He wanted to be looking into her eyes. Would they shift to the side or stay steady?

Easing away, he asked, “Are you feeling better?” “Some.”

“Who was after you?”

Her gaze turned inward as she considered the question. “I’m not sure. Could be security guards from the Ridgeway Consortium,” she said in a flat voice.

“The news said my brother was alone when he died.”

She moistened her lips. “That’s a lie.”

“Oh yeah? How do you know? Were you with him?”

“No.”

“But you were having an affair with him,” Brady said because he wasn’t going to get sucked into feeling sorry for this woman. Or feeling anything. He’d said he was her bodyguard. But that was for his convenience, not hers.

Her eyes shot up to him and her voice turned hard as she said, “I was not having an affair with him. He didn’t appeal to me that way.”

“You just said you were with him when he died.”

She gave him a glacial look. “That’s not what I said at all. I said he wasn’t alone. I wasn’t with him. There’s a difference.”

He kept the questions coming. “You were supposed to be working on a research project with him, but you were really having a liaison.”

“No,” she said again. “He was using me for something else.”

CHARLES HANCOCK WAS a man used to making life and death decisions—and collecting the huge fees his clients were willing to pay.

Tonight he sat on the leather sofa in the den of his McLean mansion. The floor-to-ceiling drapes were open, and he could look out over his property.

The television played softly across the room. One of those programs he liked on Animal Planet where a macho guy ran around jumping into alligator pools or sticking his hand into scorpion holes. Charles was always hoping one of the fools would get chomped to death. Or stung by a stingray, like that Australian guy.

The show was good background for cleaning his Glock model 17L, a sweet little handgun if he’d ever seen one.

He glanced at the clock. It was ten and time for Anderson Cooper. The boy came across as steady and reliable. Charles had made that a rule of his own life.

He had no illusions of his own power. Or his own tragedies. After his wife and son had died in a terrorist attack in Egypt, he’d vowed to devote himself to the greater good of humanity. As he saw it. His goal was a stable society—with power in the hands of the people who knew how to wield it.

He stayed in the background, quietly giving substantial amounts of money to causes he thought would make a difference. Like his college scholarship fund for disadvantaged kids. A lot of people had written them off, but he understood that the better chances those kids had in life, the more likely they were to stay out of trouble.