Читать книгу The Bodyguard: Protecting Plain Jane - Debra Cowan - Страница 11

Charlotte’s palm was sweaty around the wrapped bouquet of white roses she’d been clinging to for the past twenty minutes.

While Max chewed on his new leash at her feet, she sat at the tinted back window of her father’s limo, secretly watching the mourners huddled around a green tent some fifty yards from where the driver had parked near the beginning of the procession line. Her head ached with a terrible mix of guilt and grief. The sweeping hillside, studded with tall trees and marble markers, was curtained by rain and shadows, giving a twilight cast to the afternoon service.

The event-planning team her father had hired to put together a reception at the house later was to be commended for stepping in to help with the ceremony here, as well. Not only had they taken over the task of coordinating transportation from Mt. Washington Cemetery to the estate, they’d issued umbrellas to any guest who’d shown up for the wet proceedings without one.

Like a sea of black mushrooms sprouting across the hillside, the faceless mourners only added to Charlotte’s unsettled nerves. Logically, she understood there were people here she knew and could trust. But she couldn’t see any of them. Her father and stepmother would be standing beneath the awning with the family and minister. Audrey and Alex were there, too. She’d seen him drive up in his black SWAT uniform earlier, no doubt taking a break from work to attend the service with his fiancée. But without the anchor of a trusted friend or family member to cling to, an illogical sense of isolation was creeping in, making Charlotte question the impulse to pay her personal respects to an old friend.

A flicker of movement at the edge of the crowd caught her attention and she shifted in her seat. Her stepbrother, Kyle Austin, turned away from the ceremony to check his watch. The shoulders of his tailored gray suit lifted with a deep breath and another check of the time before he disappeared beneath his umbrella again. While she’d grown up with Richard Eames, the Austins had been part of the family for less than two years, and Kyle was such a workaholic at her father’s real estate development company that he barely knew the staff’s name. He was here strictly as a courtesy to her father.

Drawn to another ripple of movement, she spotted her stepsister Bailey’s strawberry blond hair. She was standing with her arm linked to a tall blond man. Charlotte squinted. If he bent down from beneath that umbrella and whispered to Bailey just one more time … Harper Pierce? Charlotte smiled as he kissed her stepsister’s cheek, recognizing the society prince she’d once gone to school with.

In the very next breath, she frowned. Harper had proposed to their classmate Gretchen Cosgrove last year. According to her best friend Audrey, within a month after Gretch was murdered, he’d made a play for her. Audrey, of course, an eloquent woman who rarely minced words, told him in no uncertain terms that Alex Taylor was the man she loved and Harper needed to move on.

Now he was spending time with Bailey? They knew each other well enough to hold hands and exchange a kiss? When had that happened? Gretchen had been dead for only four months. A man that desperate for constant female companionship seemed a far cry from the high-school soccer hero she’d once had a major crush on. When she was sixteen, even though he’d never looked at her as anything other than his study buddy, she’d willingly typed Harper’s papers and tutored him in whatever subject he struggled with in order to maintain the academic standards needed to play sports at Sterling Academy.

The notion of high school and longing for a boy of her own turned her memories to the stupid choice she’d made with one of Harper’s teammates the night of the prom. It was a plain girl’s foolish mistake to turn down attending with a friend and accept Landon Turner’s invitation. Finding out he’d issued the invitation on a lousy hundred-dollar dare, and had another girl waiting for him at the dance, had led to a humiliating exit. And to the man waiting in the parking lot. And the speeding van and the …

“Nope.” Charlotte turned away from the window, thinking she could turn away from the memories, as well. “I’m not reliving that nightmare again.”

And yet she was. Right now. Hiding away in a car because she was so damn afraid of some other stranger out there. How was she any less free of her kidnappers now than when they’d held her down and cut off part of her ear as proof of life for her father?

Landon had paid for his unwitting collusion with the kidnappers by being kicked out of Sterling Academy and losing his most prestigious scholarship offers. Once he’d outgrown the need to play pranks on the school’s resident bookworm, he probably had gone on to lead a normal, successful life.

But she was still paying for that night. She was still afraid, still obeying the threat that her kidnappers would find her and hurt her even worse, in any number of ways, if she tried to escape and trust her own decisions and be free again.

With a weighty, sorrowful sigh, she pulled her black trench coat more tightly around the skirt and sweater she wore. She let her fingers slide into her pocket to touch the brand-new phone with the unlisted number that her father had given her. She could call for help anytime she needed to. Too bad there wasn’t a number she could call to make her feel truly warm and confident and normal again.

When the low tones of “Amazing Grace” filtered in through the walls of the limo, Charlotte turned her attention toward the green tent again. The service was winding down and people were moving, probably to lay a flower on the casket or express condolences to Mrs. Eames, her children and grandchildren. Charlotte’s heart rate picked up a notch in anticipation. She wanted to be one of those people trading hugs, holding someone close to share her grief.

But she couldn’t. Even if she could see some faces now, they were all strangers to her. How could she face them, wondering if the man who’d killed Richard and terrorized her was one of them? Was there someone else in that crowd waiting to knock her senseless and take her away from everything she knew and loved in exchange for her father’s money? Was there someone out there who wanted to kill her, too?

Besides, the mourners weren’t the only crowd at Mt. Washington today. Down at the bottom of the hill, at a restricted distance beyond the line of cars, was a gathering of reporters, complete with microphones and television cameras. They might be waiting for a glimpse of Jackson Mayweather or a sound bite from one of his stepchildren or second wife, but there’d be a crazy dash if they knew that, after ten years of hiding from Kansas City society, the Mad Miss Mayweather had ventured out of her ivory tower. And no matter how badly she wanted to pay her respects, she wouldn’t risk the potential media circus of her appearance detracting from the Eames family and the sadness of the day.

So she’d sit right where she was until the crowd cleared and her father came to get her to walk her up to the grave site.

When she realized she was watching the clock as closely as her time-obsessed stepbrother, Charlotte flipped her watch around on her wrist and reached down to scratch Max’s head. “We just need to be patient. After ten years of solitude, you’d think I’d know how to do that, right?”

Max answered with a sniff of her hand and a bored look in his round brown eyes. Leaving him to polish off his chew toy, she returned to the task of spying from her anonymous vantage point. The mourners were spread out across the hillside now, trickling down to their cars—walking in small groups, stopping to chat with old friends. As the crowd thinned, she spotted Alex and Audrey with one of the uniformed guards from Gallagher Security. Two motorcycle cops from KCPD cruised by, pulling into position at the front of the procession.

A tall man climbed out of a police SUV parked up ahead, hunching his shoulders against the rain as he crossed the road to speak to the traffic cops. Charlotte pulled one knee beneath her and sat up taller. She recognized that man in the black SWAT uniform. Salt-and-pepper hair. Air of authority. He was Alex’s captain, one of the men she’d seen him talking to the night of Richard’s murder.

A second man from Alex’s team, lanky, with dark brown hair beneath his black SWAT cap, climbed out from the passenger side of the SUV. He lowered the walkie-talkie he’d been speaking into and pointed up the hill.

Spinning in her seat, Charlotte followed the direction of his arm. She searched higher up the hill, beyond the green tent, and saw the policewoman with the blond ponytail looking through a pair of binoculars.

Charlotte searched the entire crowd, from one tree line to the next. If the rest of Alex’s team was here, did that mean …?

Trip Jones.

Her pulse skipped a beat then drummed into overtime. How had she missed seeing the oversize mountain of a man in the black uniform and boots standing near the media cars and trucks, squinting into the drizzling rain because he had no hat?

The water added nutmeg-colored streaks to his light brown hair. The rain had to be running down the back of his neck, making his crisp uniform damp and sticky. One hand rested on the butt of the gun strapped to his thigh, the other tapped at the tiny microphone clipped to his ear as his lips moved in some sort of terse reply. But she detected no hint of discomfort in his implacable stance, no trace of complaint in the methodical back-and-forth scan of his eyes.

“Maximus, I think we owe the guy a new hat.” And an apology. And maybe an explanation for her odd behavior.

And maybe while she was doing that, she could study those hazel eyes again, to see if she’d only imagined the gentle humor and unflinching support there when he’d handed her Max and told the others at that ambulance to bug off.

Of course, to do that, she’d have to meet him again. She’d have to be close enough to make that eye contact. She’d have to speak. Rationally. But she hadn’t seen any pigs flying around—

A sharp knock on the window beside her made her jump halfway across the seat. Max’s woof matched her startled gasp. Clutching her hand over her thumping heart, Charlotte reminded herself to breathe and called herself twenty kinds of fool once she identified the man with the wire-rimmed glasses waiting patiently outside the car.

Jeffrey Beecher was the executive assistant for the event company handling the memorial reception today. The earbud he wore and corkscrew cord that curled down beneath his suit jacket confirmed that he was the hired help. Her stepmother often employed Jeffrey and his crew to coordinate parties and fundraisers. Charlotte didn’t attend those functions, but her father ran thorough background checks and made sure that she was introduced to any staff who came onto the estate. Just in case she would need to leave her rooms during an event, she would be able to identify the employee and not go into a panic.

She briefly considered staying where she was and not responding to the knock. But Max had barked and she had yelped, and the man with the business suit and umbrella really was standing ever so patiently in the rain, so he had to know she was in here.

Just do it, Charlotte. She had no place to withdraw to right now. Engage.

Crawling back across the leather seat, Charlotte pushed the button and lowered the window a few inches—just enough to peek through and smell the green, woodsy dampness in the cool outside air. “Yes?”

Jeffrey’s umbrella blocked the rain as he bent over far enough to line his eyes up with hers. He adjusted his glasses on his nose and smiled. “Miss Mayweather. Sorry to intrude on your privacy. But I need to tell you there’s been a slight change in plans.”

“Oh?” She didn’t like change. She didn’t like surprises.

Something of her confusion must have read on her face, because he put up a hand and patted the air in a placating gesture. “Don’t worry. We’ll still get you up to lay a flower on the grave and say your goodbyes. But I’ll have to ask you to wait in the car a little bit longer.”

She reached down to stroke Max’s ears. “Is something wrong?”

He quickly shook his head to reassure her. “We weren’t anticipating the numbers of reporters here at the cemetery, so we’re having to improvise. Clarice,” his boss, “actually invited them to attend the reception. As long as they stay outside of the gates, of course.”

Charlotte climbed up onto her knees again, her gaze flitting over to the news vans and photographers and the mountain of a man keeping watch over them. Would they really try to intrude on the family’s privacy with Trip standing guard?

Her father apparently thought so. “Mr. Mayweather is going to send your stepmother and stepsister on to the house so that the press corps will follow them. Then he’ll come back for you to lay the flowers on the grave.”

“What about Kyle?”

“Oh, yes.” His gaze darted over to Kyle Austin, jogging down the hill. Charlotte saw her blond-haired stepbrother collapse his umbrella, climb into his white Jaguar and speed away from the service. She had no time to speculate where he was going in such a hurry because Jeffrey was pulling an envelope from inside his jacket and sliding it through the crack in the window. “Kyle said a man handed this to him, but he needed to get back to the office, so he asked me to deliver it to you.”

Charlotte plucked the envelope from his fingers. “What man?”

“He didn’t know him, but he said he had on a uniform of some kind. Your name is on the envelope.” Jeffrey shrugged. “I’m assuming it’s a condolence?”

She turned it over to see her name neatly typed on the front. But there was no return address, no glimpse of handwriting to give her any clue as to who it might be from. Maybe this was Trip Jones’s idea of sending her an apology?

Only, he wasn’t the one who needed to apologize.

She pulled the envelope into her lap and tried to be civil. “Thank you, Jeffrey.”

“No problem.” Something buzzed into the earbud he wore and he answered with a “yes, ma’am” before pulling away. “Sorry to intrude on your privacy, Miss Mayweather, but I’d better get to the estate and make sure everyone’s ready when the guests arrive. See you there.”

Probably not. Charlotte rolled the window up and sat back to open the envelope and pull out the neatly folded letter inside, alternately checking out one window and then the other for any sign of her mysterious pen pal. So a man in uniform had given it to Kyle. One of the security guards? Someone on the florists’ staff? A courier? Police officer? Trip?

Or someone very different.

It’s your turn, Charlotte.

All those brains, yet you never saw me coming.

I’m here now. Watching. Waiting.

The old man couldn’t stop me from getting to you.

No one can. I’ll take what you owe me and enjoy watching you squirm.

Scared yet?

“Oh, God.” The silent assault pushed the blood to her feet, making her feel dizzy, light-headed. Her vision blurred the vile words as she crumpled the letter in her fist. “Max?” She instinctively reached for the dog. “Max?”

He hopped onto the seat beside her and she hugged him tight. But she still felt cold, isolated, afraid.

“Why is this happening to me?” she whispered into the dog’s fur, rocking back and forth. “Why does he want to hurt—?”

The phone in her coat pocket rang and she screamed out loud. Max barked but licked her hand as her shaking fingers dug into the pocket of her coat.

It rang again, the chirping sound creeping along her skin and raising goose bumps. It was him. She knew it was him and she answered anyway. “What?”

A single, satisfied breath. And then, “Did you get my message?”

“Stop this.” Anger and confusion colored her plea. “I’m not like other people. I can’t handle this.”

Another soft breath ended in a low-pitched laugh. “Don’t you think I know that?”

Charlotte slapped the phone shut and hurled it across the limo.

It started ringing again as soon as it settled into a carpeted corner of the floor. “Stop it!”

She snatched Max’s leash and shoved the car door open. Her feet slipped on the red bricks that lined the road, and she grabbed onto the door handle to keep from falling. One shoe came off and tumbled into the ditch. She didn’t care that her stockings were soaking up the oily residue on the asphalt. She had only one thought in mind as she spun around to search the hillside. “Dad?”

Her gaze darted from umbrella to umbrella, from marker to marker. She needed the cool rain splashing her face to clear her senses enough to realize that she’d just captured the attention of half the people milling through Mt. Washington.

For an instant, Charlotte froze. Her skin heated with embarrassment, her thoughts raced with panic. The man who’d called her was here. Watching. Taking delight in her phobic reaction to his threats.

Stay in the moment, Charlotte. Don’t let him make you crazy.

What a fool she was. Just go home. Don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing you like this.

Using her hand more than her vision to guide her, she tugged Max’s leash and sidled around the front of the car. She knocked on the driver’s window, peered inside behind the wheel. Empty. Where had he gone? This wasn’t part of the plan.

“Did you need me, Miss?”

The smell of smoke filled her nose as she twirled around. “My father gave you specific instructions to wait …”

Uniform.

“I was just taking a cigarette break, ma’am. Union allows it. I was right over there.”

She read the name on his chest beneath the event company’s logo. Bud.

She didn’t know any Bud.

“Did you …?” She raised the crumpled note in her hand. “Did you give this to my brother?”

“Ma’am?” Bud tucked a toothpick into the corner of his mouth and frowned. “Is something wrong?”

“Charlotte Mayweather!”

She turned to the sound of the voice. Snap. A bright light flashed in her eyes and she jerked her face away.

“Hey, pal.” Bud in the uniform stepped between her and the photographer who was trying to snap another picture. “You leave her alone.”

Move.

The photographer with the receding hairline wasn’t the only reporter calling her name. While he traded curses with Bud, Charlotte blinked her eyes clear and looked over the hood of the limo, seeking out a familiar face. Any familiar face.

Red hair. “Audrey?”

The moment she spotted her friend hurrying down the hill with Alex Taylor at her side, Charlotte limped around the car on one shoe. With a click of her tongue to command him, Max leaped over the ditch with her and scrambled up the hill.

Another light flashed in her peripheral vision and she turned up the collar of her trench coat, pulling her head in like a turtle and skirting past a black-marble marker to reach her friends.

“Charlotte, what’s happened?” Audrey wrapped her up in a hug and Alex’s strong arms folded around them both.

“He called me on my new phone. He’s here.”

Alex urged them both down the hill toward the cars, his chin tipped toward the microphone on his collar. “Come to my location now,” she heard, as he guided them across the ditch. “And get those photographers back. Lassen, you son of a …” Alex pulled back and pressed a kiss to Audrey’s temple. “Get her in the car while I take care of this rat.”

With Audrey’s arm around her shoulders, they turned toward the limo. “Steve Lassen is that tabloid opportunist who gave me such grief during my gang-leader trial last November. He and Alex have history.”

Charlotte saw Bud circling around the limo, opening the back door for them. She planted her feet, tripping out of her second shoe before they stopped. “I don’t want to go with him.”

“Char, the press …” She pulled the letter from Charlotte’s hand. Audrey’s pale cheeks flooded with color. “Where did you get this?”

Men in black uniforms were closing in on their position near the hood of the limousine. Orders were shouted, protests made. But the press was retreating to the opposite side of the road.

“Oh, my God.” Charlotte willingly turned her back to the cameras and squeezed Audrey’s hand, worried by her friend’s reaction to the threat. “This is just like the one I got last November. Alex!”

“Jeffrey—the guy organizing all this—said it was from Kyle, that a man in some kind of uniform had given it to him.”

Alex was back. He wound his arm around Audrey and read the note.

“Where’s Jeffrey now?” Audrey asked, futilely trying to look beyond Alex’s protective grasp.

“Leave that to the detectives. He’s back,” Alex announced grimly.

“Who’s back?” Charlotte whispered, more alarmed by the way Audrey’s cheeks blanched than by anything that had happened in the past few minutes.

“The Rich Girl Killer.”

It was a bleak, terrifying pronouncement.

“The man who killed Gretchen and Val?” The man who’d worked with a gang to terrorize Audrey? He was after her?

“Here,” Alex ordered, thrusting out the letter. Charlotte shivered from head to toe at the wall of black looming up behind her. She recognized the hand that reached around her to take the paper from Alex and shrank away from the fading bruise of a dog nip there. “Get that letter out of the rain—it could be evidence. I need to get Aud someplace safe.”

“We’ll get the family home.” Captain Cutler was there, too, snapping orders. “Jones, get this one back to the limo and tell that guy to drive.”

“Sorry, I’ve got to do this.” Trip’s deep voice seemed to hold a real apology as he stuffed the letter inside his vest and pulled Max’s leash from her fingers. But there was nothing forgiving about his big hand clamping around her arm, pulling her into step beside him. “But the closer you are to me, the safer you’ll be.”

“Let me go.” Charlotte struggled every step of the way. But her wet feet found no traction and Trip’s grasp on her arm showed no signs of freeing her.

“Get in the car,” Trip ordered.

Her eyes zeroed in on Bud, rolling his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other as he waited for her.

“No.” She didn’t know Bud, couldn’t ride with him. “No!” When she realized she couldn’t stop the freight train of Trip’s long strides, she reached up and grabbed a handful of his sleeve. Her fingers curled into the damp material, wrinkling it in her fist. “I don’t trust him. He’s wearing a uniform.”

Trip planted his feet and faced her, his hand on her arm the only thing keeping her from pitching forward at the sudden stop. “I’m wearing a uniform.”

There was no humor in the green-gold gaze bearing down on her now.

Her fingertips brushed against the muscle flexing beneath his sleeve, their pleading grasp stuttering at the unfamiliar sensations of hardness and heat. She snatched her fingers away, fighting the unexpected urge to hold on tighter, wiping the moisture from her glasses instead. “A man in uniform handed the letter to Kyle, who gave it to Jeffrey, who gave it to me. But I was watching you when I received it, so I’m guessing you didn’t—”

“You make no sense. Back up!” She flinched as he pointed over her head toward a reporter inching across the road. She flinched again when his hand settled on her shoulder. With a sotto-voce curse, he moved it away. He bent his knees, hunching down to bring his gaze more even with hers. “Why did you get out of the car in the first place? The plan was to take you up to the site after the procession had left.”

“But he said the plans had changed—”

“Who said? The driver?” He swung his gaze toward Bud, patting his chest where the letter was hidden. “You think he sent this?”

“He’s wearing a uniform.”

“Miss Mayweather?” a voice shouted from the other side of the road. “Does today’s visit mean you’re coming out of seclusion?”

“That’s Jackson’s daughter?”

“How does she look?”

Charlotte’s world shrank to the wall of black Kevlar in front of her face as Trip straightened and shouted a second warning to the reporters clamoring for the scoop of the day. She couldn’t tell if he was moving or if she was the one drifting closer when the cameras started flashing.

“Is your driver’s murder part of another threat against your family?” one reporter asked.

“Oh, my God.” It was definitely her who had taken that step away from the limelight. “I don’t want the Eames family to hear any of this today. It was a mistake to come.”

“Miss Mayweather—hurry.” Bud was waving her toward the limo’s open door.

“This is crazy.” Trip grumbled his frustration and released her to pick up Max and drop all twenty-five pounds of him into her arms. Instead of pushing her toward the car, he tucked her to his side and hustled her in the opposite direction, half lifting her so that her toes touched the bricks and asphalt only every third step or so. “I guess you two are stuck with me.”

“Stop. Where are you taking me? Put me down.”

“I’m obeying an order.”

Too close. Too fast. She couldn’t breathe. She needed to think. Charlotte squiggled her hips and pushed with her elbow. If she let Max go, maybe she could free herself. But if she let go, there’d be nothing between her and Trip Jones. “You’re not listening to me.”

“You can have Bud or those reporters or me.”

Somewhere between the sensations of chilled toes and warm man, she’d missed seeing just how far he’d taken her. Her feet scraped the ground as he wedged her back against the side of a heavy-duty black pickup truck. Max was squirming, woofing under his breath at the flashes of light that warned the reporters were pursuing them, but Trip put an arm beneath hers to keep the dog in place as he pulled out a set of keys. The lock beeped and he had the door open before she pulled away from his helping hand and her fear found its voice. “I feel like I’m being kidnapped again.”

“What?” He retreated half a step, his eyes narrowing, perhaps judging her sincerity, perhaps deeming her a lunatic. “If you want to be safe, get in. Hell, I’ll give you the damn keys and you can drive if you’ll just move.”

“I don’t have a license anymore. I can’t drive. I’m afraid we’re at a standoff.” Instead of voicing the argument that rounded his lips, he put his hands on her waist and lifted her and Max into the truck. “Hey!”

After tossing aside a paperback novel that had been sitting on the seat, he reached across her and fastened the seat belt around her. “Now get down before those cameras or someone else gets a clean shot at you.”

He gave her a split second to pull Max out of the way before he closed the door and jogged around the truck to climb in behind the wheel. Charlotte’s fingers toyed with the handle then hesitantly reached down to pull the paperback from the floorboard. She ran her fingers over one of her favorite titles as she folded it shut. “You bent your book cover.”

Trip reached across the center console and snatched the book from her hands, tossing it onto the folding seat behind him. “It’s been a long time since anyone made me think I was some kind of stupid bully.”

Feeling trapped but a fraction more secure in here than she did on the other side of the door, she huddled against it, slinking down behind Max while Trip started the engine. “I never said you were stupid.”

“Nice distinction.” Trip scrubbed his hand over his face, taking the rain and his frustration with it, before turning to look at her across the seat. His deep voice rumbled inside the cab of the truck. “You’re my only concern, Charlotte. What I say to you will always be the truth. I’ve got your back. I won’t hurt you. And I won’t let you get hurt.”

“You can’t promise something like that.” She pulled off her fogged-up glasses and squinted to keep him in focus. “I know I’m a bit of …” an odd duck? a crazy lady? “a paranoid freak—”

“You’re not.”

“—but I have reason to be. It’s hard for me to trust anyone besides Dad … or Richard.” Her eyes lost focus as the grief and injustice of the day took hold again.

Trip put the truck into gear, honked to clear the road and pulled out. “Honey, I don’t need you to walk and talk like every other woman on the planet. I just need you to believe that I’m one of the good guys. Have a little faith.”

Hearing a grown man call her honey diverted Charlotte’s thoughts long enough to lose her grip on Max. The traitorous dog had no confusion whatsoever about Trip Jones. He walked right over to Trip’s lap and sniffed his face.

With a muttered reprimand and a tussle around the ears, Trip pushed him away. “Your dog likes me. Why can’t you?” He braked the truck before taking a hairpin turn toward the cemetery’s main gate. “Now hold on.”

As they picked up speed, Trip called his captain on his ear mike, giving something called a “twenty” and promising an ETA as soon as he confirmed a destination.

Like him? So she was a little fascinated with his taste in reading and the way he handled her dog and why on earth he’d call her honey. And she was more curious than she should be at the self-deprecation she’d heard in his “stupid bully” line.

But trust him?

Charlotte kept her eye on Trip’s stiff expression, held tight to Max and prayed.