Читать книгу In The Bodyguard's Arms - Lisa Childs - Страница 12

Chapter 3

Teddie choked and sputtered as the pepper spray wafted back into her face. Her eyes and nose stung painfully while her skin burned. She’d had no choice but to spray him.

The man had a gun, one he had been pointing right at her. This must have been the man from the cabin. He was bigger than the one who’d caught her in the dark, pulling her hair to stop her from running.

That man hadn’t stopped her from fighting. She’d kicked and clawed and screamed. But he hadn’t relented until this man had run from the cabin—or vaulted from it. Then the first man had released her and run off into the woods. Would he have done that if the two men were working together?

She didn’t know whom to trust, especially when she’d trusted so many of the wrong people in the past. That was why she’d dropped out of the public eye—because she’d had no idea which eyes belonged to her stalker.

Still on the ground, she scrambled away from the big man with the gun. Her eyes streaming, she crawled like a crab toward the cabin. The door onto the back porch stood open. She could grab the keys to the Jeep. She could drive away—if she could see.

Not only couldn’t she see but she also could barely stand. She tried to regain her footing, but her legs folded beneath her. She dropped to the ground again. Before she could get back up, a hand closed around her arm.

She’d dropped the damn canister after she’d released the pepper spray. There probably hadn’t been any left anyway. But she needed something to protect her. This hand was big and strong, bigger and stronger than the one that had gripped her hair and jerked her to the ground.

This man could easily hurt her if he wanted to, and after she sprayed him, he probably wanted to hurt her badly. She was still tempted to fight him the way she’d fought the other man. But this guy had that gun, which was why she’d played dead until he’d gotten close enough for her to use the spray. She knew, just like she hadn’t outrun the other man, that she wouldn’t have been able to outrun a bullet.

Instead of hurting her, this man helped her up. “Get in the cabin,” he urged her. “Lock yourself inside. I checked it already. It’s clear. He wouldn’t have been able to get around us to get in there.”

He sounded like he really wanted to help her—when he should have been furious with her. And yet she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t just manipulating her. Could she trust him?

She did need to get to the cabin—to her Jeep keys. Maybe by the time she got there, her vision would be clearer. But as she started forward, she stumbled, her legs still too weak to hold her. She’d already been physically exhausted when she’d been forced to run for her life. It was no wonder her muscles were protesting now.

The man caught her again, lifting her easily from the ground. He swung her up in his arms, but he stumbled, too, as he climbed the steps of the small porch to the back door.

Judging from the mammoth size of his arms and shoulders and chest, he wasn’t struggling with her weight. Like her, he had to be struggling to see. He made it up the steps and through the open back door. His shoulder struck the jamb, but that might have been just because of how wide his shoulders were.

She’d slung her arm around his shoulders just to steady herself. It wasn’t as if she had to hang on. He wasn’t about to drop her.

He had one arm under her legs, the other around her back. His arms were hard—like his shoulders and his chest—all sculpted muscles. She would have thought he was carved from rock—if not for his warmth. He wasn’t a statue; he was a man.

She needed to wriggle down to break free of his grasp. In the hand of the arm beneath her legs, he still held his gun, the barrel pointed down. The flashlight beam shone like a spotlight on the hardwood floor. What if he pointed the gun at her again?

She didn’t have the pepper spray to defend herself. But she was beginning to believe she hadn’t needed to use it.

“Who are you?” she asked as she stared up at his face.

Even with his spray-reddened eyes and skin, he was handsome. His complexion was tan, but that might have been more from nature than the sun. His hair was black, and his eyes were dark, too, but for the red rimming the deep brown irises. He was probably the same age she was: thirty. If they’d ever met before, she would have remembered meeting him.

“Jordan Mannes,” he said. “I’m the bodyguard from the Payne Protection Agency.”

She gasped in shock and regret. She had maced the man sent to protect her.

“And you’re Teddie Plummer?” He asked it like he was wishing she wasn’t but afraid she was.

She could understand his not recognizing her if he were familiar with her photographs. She didn’t look anything like her pictures right now with her baggy clothes and her hair all dirty and tangled around her face.

She nodded. “Yes, I’m Teddie.”

He emitted a short sigh. Of disappointment?

Although she couldn’t blame him for not wanting to protect someone who had hurt him.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re not hurt?”

She nodded again.

Then he released her and turned back for the door. “And make damn sure you lock it this time,” he admonished her. “I found it unlocked when I first got here.”

Her breath caught, and she shook her head. He had to be wrong. This had happened at her mama’s house. They had been certain they’d locked the door when they’d left for dinner. But when they’d returned, the door had been unlocked.

“It was locked,” she insisted. She remembered checking it twice after she’d closed it behind herself. “I always lock the doors.”

He shook his head now. “It wasn’t when I showed up earlier. So make sure you lock it behind me when I leave.”

“You’re leaving?” Not that she could blame him after what she’d done to him.

“Somebody’s out there, right?” he asked as he looked over his shoulder at her. “That’s why you screamed?”

She shuddered as she remembered that hand in her hair, jerking her head back. “Yes. Someone was chasing me through the woods.” Her voice cracked with a resurgence of the fear she’d felt when she’d been running, trying to escape him. “And then he caught me.”

“Did you recognize him?”

She shook her head. “It all happened so fast,” she explained. “He caught me from behind, but when he jerked me around, I couldn’t see his face. He had a ski mask on...” So the pepper spray probably wouldn’t have affected him—had she had time to shoot the contents of the canister in his face.

“You’re sure you’re not hurt?” Jordan asked.

“N-no,” she stammered. She wasn’t physically harmed. But she might have been in shock. No. If she were in shock, she would have been numb. And she was feeling too much now: too much achy pain from overexerting herself and too much fascination with her bodyguard. “I’m fine.”

“Good,” he said, “because now I’m going to try to catch him. He couldn’t have gotten very far yet.”

“No,” she agreed. “I kicked him—hard.” She was surprised he’d been able to move at all, let alone run, when Jordan had rushed out of the cabin.

The bodyguard’s mouth curved into a slight grin that Teddie couldn’t help but find sexy. He had sensual-looking lips. “Good,” he said again, his deep voice even deeper with satisfaction. “Then he probably didn’t get far at all.”

“But how will you find him?” she asked. “You can’t see.” She couldn’t, and not as much of the spray had gotten in her eyes and face as in his. How was he even standing?

When the volunteer in her self-defense class had been sprayed, the young man had writhed around on the floor in agony until they’d taken him to the ER.

Jordan Mannes stood strong and steady now, unlike her. Her legs still trembled with exhaustion and...

She wasn’t sure what she was feeling anymore. Fear. Excitement. The adrenaline rush had yet to leave her, her pulse raced and her skin was flushed. But maybe that was just from the spray—or from how easily Jordan Mannes had carried her.

She shook her head, trying to clear it. Too many sleepless nights and too much fear had taken its toll on her senses. She was losing them.

“You need to let me take you to the clinic,” she said. “Or at least try to wash out your eyes.”

“No,” he said. “There’s no time. I have to find the guy who grabbed you.” He touched his red face and grimaced. “Did you think I was him—coming back—when you sprayed me?”

“I didn’t know who you were,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting the bodyguard to arrive for a couple of days yet.”

“I flew here.”

Her skin chilled as a wave of doubt crashed over her. “There’s no airport for over a hundred miles and that doesn’t take commercial flights.”

“I didn’t fly commercial,” he said. “I didn’t want to waste any time getting here.”

Which had been damn lucky for her if he was telling the truth.

If he was who he claimed he was.

Could she trust him?

“I’m going to check around outside.” He opened and closed the door behind himself before she could protest any further. But through the door, he shouted, “Lock it!”

He was worried about her safety. But what about his own? Not being able to see, he could walk right into danger before he even realized it, kind of like when he had rolled her over and she had pepper-sprayed him.

A pang of regret and concern struck her heart. She wished she hadn’t hurt him. And she hoped he would not get hurt even worse.

“Be careful,” she called out through the door as she locked it. But she suspected that her warning was too late. That he was already gone.

Whatever was going to happen to Jordan Mannes would happen, and even though she wouldn’t be the one doing it this time, it would still be her fault because that madman out there was after her.

Jordan Mannes was only doing his job.

* * *

Over the past few years as a bodyguard, Cooper Payne had heard fear in the voices of many women. Hell, even as a Marine he had heard it—in the voices of friends’ families, in his own family.

He heard fear now in Teddie Plummer’s voice as she spoke through the speaker on his cell phone. “I think he’s been out there too long,” she said. “But I haven’t heard any gunshots.”

“Why would he be shooting?” Cooper asked with concern. “Who would he be shooting at?”

“At the man who attacked me,” she said. “Mr. Mannes went back out to see if he could find him. But he can’t see...”

It was late. And in the UP, it would be especially dark. “He has a flashlight—”

“Yes,” she said. “But he still won’t be able to see.”

Cooper’s head began to pound. Not only was she afraid, but she was also so distraught she wasn’t making sense anymore. “He will be able to with the flashlight—”

“He can’t see because I pepper-sprayed him earlier.”

A curse slipped through Cooper’s lips. What the hell kind of situation had he sent his friend into?

Before Cooper had started his own branch of the Payne Protection Agency, his brother Logan had tried to send him off on an assignment to protect some reality star who claimed to have a stalker. She’d made up the whole thing just to get publicity to launch a film career.

Was that what Teddie Plummer was up to? Theatrics in order to get into the theater?

“I didn’t think he would be here already,” she explained. “I didn’t expect the bodyguard you sent to get here for at least another day or two.”

“He flew in,” Cooper said.

“He got here just in time,” Teddie said, and her breath rattled the phone as her fear increased. “I was coming back from a hike when someone chased me through the woods. He had caught me. If Jordan hadn’t rushed out when I screamed...”

If she was this good an actress, she would not have needed to stage any publicity stunts to break into movies. She couldn’t be faking the terror Cooper heard now.

“He’s been out there too long,” she murmured again. “Can you send someone else up here?”

Cooper knew that Cole would go. He would leave in a minute even though he would have to borrow someone else’s plane since Manny had his. But with the fog that had just rolled into River City, Cooper suspected all flights would be grounded.

“Nobody would get there in time now,” Cooper said. If Manny were in danger right now...

“Then I’ll go out there,” she said. And he could hear the deep breath she drew in to brace herself.

“No!” Cooper said. “The guy already tried to grab you once. If you go back out there...” and if he had already taken out Manny, then there would be no one to protect her.

Damn it, he should not have sent Manny off alone on this assignment. Cooper had had no idea just how dangerous it was. And unfortunately, neither had Manny.

* * *

He had been gone too long. The son of a bitch could have circled around the woods and gone back to the cabin. If she’d been telling the truth, if she had locked the door when she’d left earlier, then the bastard must have a key.

Because the lock hadn’t looked picked. The jamb hadn’t been broken. No. If she had locked the door, then someone had just let himself inside, and he could have done it again the minute Manny had walked out and left her alone and unprotected.

But he’d had to check out the brush he’d seen moving right after Teddie had pepper-sprayed him. He hadn’t found anyone hiding in those trees, not that he was certain he’d searched in the right place. All the damn trees and brush looked the same to him.

What he could see of them...

His eyes kept streaming as the spray continued to burn them. He blinked repeatedly and peered through lids that felt swollen and raw. Damn it.

Everything looked the same. He wasn’t sure where he’d been or even where the cabin was now. A light shone in the distance, beyond the trees in which he found himself. Was that light glowing from the cabin? Or another house?

He hadn’t seen any other homes along this road when he’d driven the motorcycle he had rented from the private airstrip to here. He’d had no idea then if he was heading in the right direction. But her cabin had been the only one he’d found. Not that there couldn’t be others set farther back in the woods.

This was bad.

There were no street lamps here because there were no streets. No sidewalks. He had no idea where he was or how to get back to her. He rubbed his eyes again and tried to focus.

He needed to get back to the cabin. He needed to make sure she was safe. He should have at least left her the gun for protection. She might be able to hit her target. He wasn’t certain that he would be able to.

As Manny moved toward that light, it wavered. Maybe it only appeared that way because of his eyes, though. They continued to burn, but it wasn’t just from the spray anymore. As he walked closer, he realized the light came from a fire burning inside a circle of rocks. He’d stumbled upon someone’s campsite.

He hadn’t walked that far, so whoever was camping here was close to the cabin. Close enough to watch Teddie?

Despite the warmth of the flames, he shivered. Was that where the guy was now?

Nobody sat around the campfire. On the other side of it, a sleeping bag was rolled up next to a knocked-over tent. Had the person been setting up camp or taking it down?

And where the hell was he now?

Manny blinked several times, trying to clear his vision. But the smoke was making it worse. Instead of moving away from the fire, though, he moved closer, circling around it to investigate the sleeping bag and the tent.

Maybe there was a backpack lying there, too. Or at least something that would give him a clue to the camper’s identity. But as Manny stepped closer, he found the only thing that lay atop the collapsed tent was a ski mask—just as she’d described her attacker as wearing.

It wasn’t cold enough for the camper to need the mask for warmth. No. This was the camp of the man who had attacked Teddie. So he must have started the fire. He intended to come back, then.

Should Manny wait for him to return?

Nerves of uneasiness moved through his gut. He was more concerned about where the hell the guy was now than if he would come back here. Had he returned to the cabin?

Was he going to try to attack Teddie again?

Manny had had to carry her into the cabin, she’d been so exhausted from her earlier struggle with her attacker. He doubted she would be able to fight off the stalker a second time.

“Son of a bitch.” He cursed himself this time. Manny should not have left her. He needed to get back to her as soon as possible if he could even figure out which direction the damn cabin was in.

The smoke shifted, then began to take the form of a dark shadow. Before Manny could point his gun, the shadow raised a huge stick and swung it toward Manny’s head.

He ducked that blow but braced himself for the next as the shadow swung again. He was determined to strike Manny, determined to take him out. And Manny wasn’t certain he could see well enough to fight him off.