Debra Cowan - The Bodyguard - Protecting Plain Jane

They were speeding away as a needle pricked her arm.

“Charlotte!”

Someone had pushed her down to her knees and shoved something warm and furry against her.

“Charlotte, you’re all right—stay in the moment.”

She fought inside her head to ground herself, to find her way back to reality. Her pants were wet. Something cold and wet was soaking into her jeans. Max. Max had his front paws on her shoulder and was licking her face. Her hands crept around his neck, hugging him tight. “Good boy. Good boy, Max.”

“Stay in the moment,” the deep voice beside her commanded. She took a deep, calming breath.

And then she saw the white van. “No.”

It stopped at the bottom of the hill. They were coming.

“I won’t go. Don’t take me!”

He turned her bruised face into the stale bedding. “I’m tired of waiting for my millions. It’s time to show Daddy just how serious we are.”

And then she felt the cold scissors squeeze her earlobe. “No!”

“Charlotte!” the voice snapped. “Honey, I don’t want to touch you right now. Listen to my voice. Stay in the moment.”

“Trip?” She pulled one hand from Max’s fur and reached out.

The driver’s door opened and a man climbed out of the van. “Charlotte Mayweather?”

He looked right at her. He was coming for her. She backed away.

“I have something for you.” He held up a small package wrapped in plastic.

Charlotte answered with a scream.

Ignoring the barking dog jumping at his legs, Trip threw his arm around Charlotte and twisted to put himself between her and the perp. He muffled her screams against his chest, pressed his lips against her hair and muttered every apology he could think of as he took her down to the slick wet grass and rolled his body over hers, waiting for the attack.

“Gun?”

“Remote?”

“Bomb?”

He heard the speculation over his radio, heard a slew of curses, then Randy Murdock’s harsh, “Drop it! Get down on the ground! Now!”

“Madre de Dios!” Trip turned his head at the thick Latin accent and saw Randy’s blond ponytail flying as she kicked aside the package and put the driver on the pavement. “I surrender! I surrender! Por favor! ”

Murdock hooked her sniper’s rifle over her shoulder, put her knee in the man’s back and cuffed him. Captain Cutler pointed his gun at the windshield as Sergeant Delgado approached the rear of the van at rifle-point and swung it open. He paused, climbed inside, then jumped back out to the ground and flattened himself on the road to look beneath the van.

He could read the results in his team’s posture even before he heard Delgado’s report. “Clear. The van’s clear.”

“He’s clean,” Murdock reported, rising after frisking the driver for weapons.

“Let me up.” Charlotte’s panicked screams had subsided to a hoarse plea. “I’m okay, Trip. I need to see him.”

“Not yet.” He got around the dog’s frantic need to get to his mistress by grabbing him by the collar and pulling him down to the ground beside them. “Clear” wasn’t the same as “all clear,” and Trip had no intention of any surprises popping out to finish whatever the driver had started.

Captain Cutler lowered his weapon to a forty-five-degree angle and came around the van’s front bumper while Sergeant Delgado turned his back to the van and circled, eyeing each direction along the asphalt and into the trees that dropped off to the bottom of the hill across the road. The captain nudged the plastic bag that had tumbled into the ditch with his toe, then knelt beside it.

The dog pushed against Trip’s shoulder. Or maybe it was Charlotte. “I can’t breathe.”

Cutler holstered his gun. “No weapon. I repeat, no weapon.” He plucked the bag from the water draining into the brick ditch and stood. “I’ve got one red-rose corsage with a note attached.”

“A note?” Charlotte’s breathy terror entered Trip’s ear and went straight to the heap of guilt already twisting his gut. “For me?”

“Charming son of a bitch. Let’s get this guy up,” the captain ordered. “Do you speak English?”

“Yes.”

“Did you write this note?”

“No, sir. No, I just deliver.”

“Let’s get you moving, too.” Trip shifted his weight off Charlotte and rolled to his feet, bracing as he pulled her up in the same movement. “The RGK used a bomb when he went after Audrey last year,” he explained, suspecting an apology alone wouldn’t erase the wide-eyed shock behind Charlotte’s glasses. “I wasn’t taking any chances of a replay of that attack. And after shooting at my truck, I’m not waiting to see if he graduates to real bullets. Are you hurt? Are you with me?”

She had one hand on her ear, the other clutched tightly around Max’s leash. Her eyes were transfixed by the van, but hopefully not focused in the past.

He’d protected her like the cop he was trained to be. But it was the man in him who cupped her cheek in his gloved hand and tilted her face up into the rain. “Charlotte?”

The rain splashed on her glasses, making her blink. Then some of the haze cleared away and she slowly shook her head. “I’m not hurt.”

But she was still rubbing her ear. Had she hit her head on the way down? “Honey?”

He pushed her hand away and brushed aside her hair. Her earring was missing.

“Don’t.”

She jerked away, but he’d already seen it. The jagged line. The tiny white scars and stiff molded skin. She’d lost part of her ear and plastic surgeons had rebuilt it. No wonder she was so sensitive about him touching her there.

“Honey, I …” But the stamp of her features warned him she didn’t want an apology. A quick scan up the hill a few feet led him to the gold earring. She snatched it from his hand and clipped it back on. “Are you with me?”

This time she nodded. She wiped the rain from her glasses and looked him in the eye. “The kidnappers took me in a white van. I was flashing back.”

“I suspected as much.” How could a woman he wanted to reach for so badly not welcome his touch? He had to remind himself that protecting Charlotte wasn’t about what he needed, and he curled his needy fingers into his palm. “Can you walk? Stick close. I intend to find out what this guy wants.”

Trip tried not to read too much into Charlotte capturing his hand and holding on with both of hers as he led her down the hill. Yeah, maybe she was more scared of her stalker and the rest of the world than she was of him right now, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still afraid of his big, bad self barging into her life and into her personal space.

He wasn’t ready to let go, either. He raised his voice, not needing the radio to communicate. “What’s in the note?”

Captain Cutler assessed Charlotte’s condition before handing over the package. His curse matched the captain’s. Charlotte didn’t need to see this.

Don’t despair, Charlotte. You’ll be joining your old friends soon. Not even your new friends can stop the inevitable. I’m counting the days until we’re together for the last time.

“A red rose with silver ribbons. That’s the corsage I had at prom. I dropped it in the parking lot before I was abducted.” Charlotte’s hands pumped his. “What does it say?”

“Uh-uh.”

The stubborn woman snatched it from his hands and read it, anyway. “Oh, my God.”

He took the vile message from her and handed it back to the captain. “Our guy’s a voyeur. He’s around here somewhere, watching her reaction to this.” While the captain dispatched Murdock up the hill to get the best recon of the cemetery, Trip pulled the pale-faced driver away from the van and turned him so Charlotte could get a good look at him. “You know this guy?”