Alice Sharpe - The Baby's Bodyguard

“I escaped. They butchered the others. As for identifying me—they threw my watch in with the corpses and set the whole thing on fire.” He looked away as though catching his breath. Her own seemed to come in short gasps as her imagination provided images of what he’d just described.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured.

His nod was barely perceptible.

She didn’t know him well, had only spent one night of her life with him, but he’d helped her that night more than he’d ever, ever know, and now she sincerely wanted to return the kindness. He looked as though he needed it.

On the other hand, it was clear he didn’t want anything from her but confirmation of some terrible, ill-conceived suspicion.

“Let me tell you what the Tierra Montañosa government told the Staar Foundation,” she said. “The rebel group who carried out the attack call themselves the Guerrilleros de Tierra Montañosa although they deny they had anything to do with it. I guess they always do that. Their rhetoric is freedom from tyranny, but the truth is they’re a Marxist group. I’ve read about them since, well, since the ambush. They’re terrible people.

They—”

He waved away her dialogue. “You think I don’t know who they are? I was down there to protect people like you from groups like the GTM. It was my job as a bodyguard to know all the organizations and their goals, so don’t try to tell me about them. What I want to know is who gave them the inside information to carry out the ambush at Costa del Rio. They had to have inside help to pull that off. They knew where we were going to be and when we were going to be there. You’re the one who made the arrangements.”

“Yes, I am.”

“So who else knew what they were?”

“Until a few minutes before the convoy left, no one knew but you. There’d been threats, we’d been warned to keep it secret.”

“What about the founder’s son, what’s his name, Hugo Correa?”

“What about him?” “Did he know?”

“No, of course not. You’re not suggesting Hugo Correa had anything to do with the rebels, are you?”

“What’s wrong? Is it politically incorrect to point a finger at a dead man?”

“Mr. Correa isn’t dead.”

Jack’s brow furrowed. “Run that by me again.”

“You don’t know?”

“No, damn it. I’ve been back in the States two weeks. My first thought was to enlist the aid of my sister. I found she was in the middle of her own drama and needed my help. When that was over, I discovered she’s pregnant so I left her out of it. As far as Hugo Correa goes, the last I saw of him, he and a couple of the others were being driven away in a truck with about three dozen guerillas pointing assault rifles at their heads. Later we heard they were killed.”

“The foundation had kidnap insurance for its officers so they paid off a huge sum to the rebels to get their people back. We heard the rest of you were going to be used to negotiate the release of jailed GTM members.”

“It didn’t work out that way,” he said softly.

“Mr. Correa and the other man were in the hospital for weeks. Apparently Hugo Correa tried to escape by jumping out of the truck and took a bullet in his leg and it got infected. The other man, a guy by the name of Harrison Plumber, had a digestive disease of some kind. As soon as Hugo got out of the hospital, Santi Correa turned over the day-by-day operations of the foundation to his son and more or less resigned.”

Jack rubbed his eyes. “Ah mi dios,” he mumbled. Looking at her again, he added, “Just tell me who it was.”

“Who what was?”

“Who were you working with? And why? Did you do it for money? What other reason could there be, what else could you possibly want from these people?”

“Of course I didn’t do it for money!” she said, but the word money thundered in her head. Money. “I didn’t do it all,” she mumbled.

“People do terrible things when money is dangled in front of their noses,” he said.

She looked out the window at the ocean across the street. It couldn’t be …

“Hannah?”

She looked at him without really seeing him. She was remembering the day David showed up at her place with a bundle of money he wanted her to keep and had sworn her to secrecy. It had surprised her—their relationship had been a little rocky—and suddenly he was talking about marrying and moving far away….

How could that have anything to do with this? Yet now that she’d made the connection why couldn’t she get it out of her head? She sucked in a tiny breath.

“I know you seduced me the night before the ambush,” Jack said. “All I want from you now is the name of the man or woman who put you up to it.”

She barely heard him. She had to think. Operating on autopilot, she got out of the car and grabbed her handbag. Her instinct was to walk, to move, to get away.

He was at her side in a moment, taking her arm. One giant question raged like a wildfire through her brain. Had David been involved? And if he had, what did she do now? What could she do now?

They crossed the two-lane road to the far side, then threaded their way through rocks, driftwood and seaweed. Jack released her arm and she stumbled up against an old, dead tree lying on its side.

She turned immediately to face Jack. He looked amazing standing in the wind and sun, his white shirt stark against his skin, his cerulean eyes burning. Those eyes now seemed to watch the way she massaged her arm. Did she sense regret at the roughness of his grip? Probably not.

“You’ve been watching me for days, for weeks,” she said, relieved to have finally identified the cause of her uneasiness. Not that it helped much. His being on the scene might explain that creepy someone-is-watching-me feeling, but it was more than compensated for by his accusations and the potential for disaster his presence in Allota could mean. She added, “I’ve felt your eyes on me.”

“No,” he said. “I just got to California last night.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m not the one who lies,” he said.

She sank down on the log, trying to organize her thoughts. She had to get home—alone. To do that, she had to convince Jack she had nothing to do with the ambush so he would go look under another rock.

Squinting, she peered up at him through strands of windblown hair. “Whether you believe it or not, I’m no more or less than you thought I was the night we met.”

“A woman grieving over her boyfriend’s death.”

Over the guilt. She’d been about to tell David she didn’t love him, she wanted him to take his money and go away and then he’d died in a stupid accident. “Mr. Correa told me I could bow out of going with him to South America for the opening of the new school and I almost did. Everyone blamed my sadness on my grandfather’s illness and that was part of it, but the other part was all my inconsistent feelings about David’s death. In the end I went and that’s where I met you. You’d known David, you were sympathetic and kind. You talked to me, you helped me. It’s as simple as that.”

“Say it like it is,” he insisted, stepping in front of her. Leaning over, he pinned her in place with his arms, his brown hands stark against the bleached wood. He lowered his voice; his face was just inches from hers. “Don’t wrap it up in pretty words, cariño. Your boyfriend was dead less than a month. We had a couple of drinks, you cried, and then we had raw, messy sex. The next day, I slept in. I never sleep in. I was late leaving you. I felt groggy and slow. I was late getting to the Correa vehicle, too, and I played catch-up until the minute the lead car came across the overturned truck in the middle of the road and all hell broke loose. You weren’t there. Why not?”