Margaret Daley - Christmas Bodyguard

Maybe somehow the door wasn’t latched properly and the wind had blown it open. Yeah, right, and maybe no one shot out your tire.

As he tramped through his house with Joshua, checking the safe and other places he had valuables, he couldn’t shake the sensation his life would never be the same. He’d learned in business to be wary. Now that feeling would overflow into his personal life.

Back in the foyer, Slade paused near the front door as the sheriff came back into the house. Any adrenaline that had surged through him had subsided, leaving him tired and in need of some caffeine. “I don’t see anything missing,” he said. “I’ll check some more, but if nothing is missing, maybe no one was in here.”

Joshua stepped next to him. “There are other reasons why someone would be in here. I’m going to do a sweep for bugs. I’ll check your phones for any, too. I have my equipment out in the car.”

Elizabeth joined them in the foyer while Mary and Abbey remained in the living room, sitting on the couch. “Your daughter wants to go up to her room.”

“That’s fine. Would you go with her and check it first? I looked in and didn’t see anything, but a more thorough search would be better.” Slade peered toward his daughter who sat with her shoulders hunched, her chin resting on her chest. “Then I’d like to meet with you and Joshua in my office.”

Elizabeth stepped into Abbey’s bathroom and surveyed the luxurious room done in beige marble with accents of forest green. Making the rounds, she opened and closed each cabinet and drawer, then headed back into the large bedroom. She checked for likely places someone would put a listening device, even though Joshua would do a more thorough scan of the whole house later.

Abbey stood in the middle with her arms folded over her chest and a glare on her face. “Don’t forget under the bed.”

“I won’t.” Elizabeth inspected the walk-in closet, twice as big as her bathroom at Joshua’s.

“Oh, and I have a balcony.”

Elizabeth left the closet, shutting the door. “That’s a great suggestion,” she said in the calmest voice she could muster. Teenage kids could be the most difficult to guard. They didn’t like their privacy being invaded even for a good reason. She’d dealt with teens before, and she would deal with Abbey. The best way was to try to win her over, which might not be easy if her pout was any indication.

Before reaching the balcony, Elizabeth opened each drawer in her dresser, felt around, then shut it. The top one held a journal. Her fingers brushed over the bound book with horses on the front.

Abbey rushed toward her and snatched the journal out of the drawer. “That’s private. Don’t touch it.” She glared at Elizabeth and hugged the book to her chest.

“I wouldn’t look in it.” She could remember the diary she’d kept as a teenager—many pages of angst. “Do you see anything missing or moved?”

Skimming her look over her possessions, Abbey backed away. She returned her razor-sharp attention to Elizabeth. “No.”

Elizabeth swung open the French doors that led to the balcony and moved out into the December air, a stiff wind blowing the strands of her hair. Ten by ten with no easy access. Still, she would have Joshua wire the doors with sensors and secure them better.

True to her word, when she was back in the room she knelt on plush white carpet next to the king-size, dark-oak canopy bed with a hot-pink satin coverlet and looked under it. Nothing there but a single tennis shoe and one red sock.

When she rose, she peered at Abbey—the girl’s posture was defensive, one hand quivering when she raised it to sweep her long brown hair behind her shoulders. The dark circles under the teen’s eyes attested to the toll the past few days had taken on her. Something softened in Elizabeth. For a few seconds she recalled her own past fear, the feeling that the circumstances around her controlled her life. “All clear,” she said to reassure Abbey.

“Oh, good, I’m relieved to know there are no monsters under it. I quit looking for them when I was eight.”

“I know this can’t be easy, but I’m here to help you.”

“Don’t pretend you know what this feels like. I’m a prisoner.”

Elizabeth panned the room that lacked nothing, from a big-screen TV to a state-of-the art computer and sound system. “Not too bad a cell.”

Abbey snorted. “Are you satisfied everything is okay? I’d like to be alone, if that’s all right. Surely I can be alone in my own cell—I mean, bedroom.”

“I’ll be downstairs in your dad’s office.”

“Oh, good. That’s right below me. I’ll stomp on the floor if I need you.”

As Elizabeth made her way down to Slade’s office, she clung to the image of Abbey out on the porch. A young girl on the verge of falling apart and trying desperately not to—even using anger to keep herself together. Elizabeth did know what that felt like. But at least Abbey’s father had been right there for her. The love and worry in his expression reached out to Elizabeth and gripped her heart. How many times had she prayed to see something like that on her own father’s face?

She rapped on the office door. When she heard Slade say, “Enter,” she went inside. He sat in a chair behind his desk, swiveled around to face a large window that framed two horses frolicking in the pasture.

“Right now I can’t remember a time when I spent a day just playing, with not a worry in the world.”

The weariness in his voice beckoned her forward. “It’s been a while for me, too.” Even as a child she’d never felt totally free to be herself, to enjoy life without a concern. The thought made loneliness creep into her heart.

He rotated his chair around. His gaze snagged hers, intensity in his gray eyes and something else—vulnerability—that reached out to her, linking them. Her pulse reacted by speeding through her.

“I guess that’s a price we pay when we grow up.” He cocked a corner of his mouth in a half grin that faded almost instantly. “But my daughter shouldn’t have to worry about it quite yet.”

The appeal in those startling eyes, storm-filled at the moment, touched a place in her heart that she’d kept firmly closed for years. She wrenched her look away and swept around in a full circle. “Nice office.” Which was putting it mildly. From a huge mahogany desk with a large-screen computer to the sumptuous brown leather grouping along one side of the room to the floor-to-ceiling bookcases on the other wall, the office was luxurious to the extreme.

He rose. “Let’s have a seat over there where it’s comfortable. Joshua’s doing a walk-through with Mary. How was Abbey?”

“Not a happy camper.”

“I figured that. When she gets scared, she gets angry. The first year after her mother died, I thought my home was a war zone. Thankfully, she began to accept her mother’s death, and I nearly had my daughter back. Then she hit puberty. Everything changed. Did I tell you I don’t like change?”

“I’ll tell you a secret. Neither do I.”

“How do you do what you do?”

“One assignment at a time. It’s important for me to keep my focus on the present.” And she had to remember that. No more journeys into her past.

He took one end of the couch and beckoned her to sit at the other end. “I’m glad it’s Tuesday. I have the Thanksgiving holidays before Abbey goes back to school to get things worked out. It’ll give you two some time to get to know each other. To get her used to you being around.”

“We’ll get into a routine. That should help.”

At that moment Uncle Joshua entered with Slade’s mother-in-law, a woman in her early sixties with short silver hair and dark brown eyes. She came to right above Joshua’s shoulders, and he was well over six feet tall.