Bodyguard Daddy

Garek could think of a reason, but it was too far-fetched to contemplate. Or was it?

He grasped his wife’s hand and tugged her toward the door. “Let’s find out.”

Maybe that was where Rus and Milek had raced off to, but he suspected they’d gone someplace else entirely. Amber and Michael were already dead, so desecrating their graves wouldn’t have harmed them.

Unless...

* * *

This is a mistake.

Amber knew it the moment she turned onto the street. She shouldn’t have come back here. “Sweetheart,” she murmured. “Maybe we’ll have to get Jewel another time.” Like never. Maybe it was good to have no reminders of the life they’d had to give up, because she had a feeling they would never be safe to return to it.

“No, Mommy!” Michael burst out. “I want Jewel!” Then sobs broke up his little voice.

And broke her heart.

He was too young to understand. And she couldn’t explain. She couldn’t tell a child that someone wanted them dead. It was too much for him to handle.

It was too much for her to handle alone. But she had no choice now. She could trust no one. Apparently she shouldn’t have trusted Agent Rus.

“Okay, okay, we’ll get Jewel,” she assured him. It was broad daylight. Surely no one would try to kill her now—with so many possible witnesses.

An older couple walked hand in hand along the sidewalk. A garbage truck picked up bins from the ends of driveways. A mailman cut across yards as he made his deliveries.

And in front of her house, a black SUV idled at the curb—a thin stream of exhaust emanating from its tailpipe. Her blood chilled. Someone was here. The SUV belonged to no one she knew now—not that she’d made many friends in their new town. She hadn’t wanted to get close to anyone and risk their discovering her secret.

I know who you really are...

Despite all of her precautions, someone had learned the truth. Someone knew who and where she was. She shouldn’t have come back.

“Mommy!” Michael exclaimed. “That man has Jewel.”

She saw him then—standing on her front porch—with the small bear clutched in his big hand. Sunlight reflected off his blond hair. And his eyes...

He stared right at her—as if he recognized her despite the dyed hair, despite the contacts. But then she didn’t look different enough. If Rus hadn’t betrayed her, then that must have been how someone had found her—by recognizing her.

And now so had Milek Kozminski. Or was he the one who’d sent the photos? Was he the one who’d warned her?

Another man stepped out of the house and joined him on the porch. Special Agent Rus. Of course he was who had led Milek to her. Was Milek the only one he’d told about her? Or had he told the man who’d fired the shots that night?

Despite her legs shaking as she trembled with fear, she pressed hard on the accelerator, and the minivan jumped forward.

“Mommy!” Michael cried out in protest. “I want Jewel!”

It wouldn’t matter whether or not he had the bear if they didn’t survive. She couldn’t trust Agent Rus—couldn’t trust he didn’t pose a threat to her. She knew Milek was dangerous; he’d already hurt her more than anyone else ever could have.

“We have to leave,” she told her son. “Now!”

His tears broke her heart, but she was too scared to cave—too scared to do anything but run. She pressed harder on the accelerator and sped away.

* * *

Milek watched her drive off, and once again he was paralyzed. Not with fear this time. But with shock. “She’s alive...”

The back windows of her vehicle were tinted, so he hadn’t been able to peer through the dark glass to clearly see his son. But there had been a shadow back there. Michael had to be with her.

They were both alive—just as Rus had claimed. But Milek hadn’t allowed himself to believe him—to hope. He’d needed to see for himself.

“Son of a bitch!” Nicholas Rus cursed and gestured at the vehicle following the minivan down the street. “That’s the Ghost.”

“Ghost?” Amber wasn’t dead; Milek had just seen her.

“Campanelli!”

“No!” The paralysis ended as he ran toward the running SUV. He pulled open the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel. He was already steering away from the curb when Rus jumped into the passenger’s side.

“Damn it!” the FBI agent cursed.

Milek didn’t know and didn’t care if he was cursing him. He had to catch up to Amber before Campanelli did. “How the hell did he find her?”

Rus cursed again. “I don’t know. I don’t know...”

At the moment it didn’t matter how, though—it only mattered that he had.

Milek sped up to close the distance between his SUV and the rental sedan ahead of them. “Is this it?”

The car’s windows weren’t tinted. He could see clearly inside—could see a big man was in the driver’s seat. But he must have had only one hand on the wheel, because he lifted a gun with his other hand and pointed it toward the minivan in front of him.

“That’s him!” Rus shouted. He lifted his gun as Campanelli had. But then he shook his head. “I can’t shoot—I can’t risk it. The bullet could go through the car and into the van.”

Milek didn’t need a gun; he had the SUV. He stomped on the accelerator, propelling the vehicle forward so its front bumper rammed the rear bumper of the sedan.

Metal crunched and tires squealed.

Was there a shot?

Had the man fired the gun?

Milek peered through the car to the van ahead of it. The rear window was shattered, glass raining down from it onto the street and into the back of the van. His heart constricted; fear squeezing it.

He cursed. “The son of a bitch...”

Campanelli had fired the gun. Had a bullet struck Amber or the little boy? Milek was certain his son had been in the backseat.

Anger joined his fear. He pressed harder on the accelerator and struck the sedan again. But as he struck it, the car catapulted forward and hit the van. Maybe that was why the minivan swerved—or maybe it was because Amber had been shot.

A cry burned Milek’s throat, but his jaw was clenched too tightly to utter it. A curse slipped through Rus’s lips and resonated inside the SUV.

Tires squealing, the van scraped along a row of parked cars. Metal crunched, sparks flying from the contact. Then the van swerved again across the street. The turn was so sharp, the van tipped and rolled onto the driver’s side. The car swerved, just missing the van as it squeezed between it and those parked cars.

Milek drove forward and stopped beside the undercarriage of the van. He didn’t care that the Ghost was getting away. He cared only about Amber and Michael, and making sure they were all right. But as he reached for the driver’s door, Nicholas Rus grabbed his arm to stop him.

“He’s coming back.”

Apparently the car had turned around on the other side of the van and was heading right toward them. But it wasn’t the vehicle they needed to worry about—it was the gun held out the window, the barrel pointed directly at them.

Bullets pinged off the metal of the SUV and shattered the glass. As it had rained into the van, it rained onto them. He and Rus raised their weapons and returned fire.

* * *

Pain throbbed in Amber’s head, pounding as fast and frantically as her heart. She blinked, trying to clear her blurred vision. But it wasn’t her vision that was blurred—or it wasn’t just her vision. The windshield had cracked like a spiderweb and ballooned inside—toward her face.

She blinked again as something trickled down her forehead and into her eye. She lifted her hand and brushed it away, and blood, bright red and sticky, smeared her fingers.

She didn’t care about herself, though. Her fear was all for someone else. Her baby...

Pinned beneath the steering wheel, she struggled to twist around—to peer into the backseat. Fear choking her, she could only hoarsely whisper, “Are you okay?”

Big tears rolled down his flushed face. He was terrified. Too scared to even utter the sobs that should have gone with his tears.

She couldn’t cry, either. She could barely breathe as her heart continued to hammer frantically in her chest. It sounded like a war zone outside the crumpled van. Gunfire erupted in angry bursts, probably as the men reloaded. She flinched with each shot.

Had it been a bullet that had shattered her rear window? Unlike the front window, which had only spiderwebbed, the glass had fallen completely out of the back window—some of it had fallen inside. Shards were strewn about the vehicle—like the other articles that had flown from the moving boxes when the van rolled.

She didn’t care about possessions, though. She shouldn’t have taken the time to pack them. And she shouldn’t have risked returning—even for Jewel. She had put her son in danger.

Had that bullet struck anything besides the glass? She reached out for Michael. Strapped into his booster chair in the middle of the backseat, he was up higher than she was, which put him in danger if any of those shots flew through that broken rear window.

The van lay on the driver’s side, the metal crumpled beneath her. Pieces of that metal and the plastic interior shell of the door protruded into her seat, poking her arm and her hip. She struggled with her seat belt, pushing the button to free the clasp. But it held tightly. Her fingers trembling, she pushed hard on the button and tugged on the strap.

And finally it snapped back. She settled heavily against that crumpled door, wincing as the metal dug through her clothes and into her skin. But that was only a minor discomfort in relation to her overwhelming fear for her son.

She reached up again—for the seat belt holding Michael’s booster chair against the backseat.

“Are you hurt?” she asked him. “Do you feel any pain?”

His eyes wide, he shook his head.

But she couldn’t trust he wasn’t like her—in shock, with so much adrenaline coursing through her that she might not have realized if she’d been shot.

What about Milek? Was he shooting or getting shot?

What the hell was going on outside her van?

Then suddenly the gunfire ended—leaving an eerie silence behind but for the squeal of tires against asphalt. Someone was driving away.

Who? Which shooter?

Did it matter? She could trust no one.

She had to get away. “I’m going to undo your seat belt,” she warned Michael. “And you’re going to fall. Fall toward me, and I will catch you.”

Tears still streaming down his little face, he nodded agreement.

But before she could reach the clasp, the door slid open on the passenger’s side of the van. And big hands reached through the opening, reaching for her son.

Terror overwhelmed her and she screamed. “No! Don’t take my son! Leave him alone!”

Chapter 4

“Where the hell are they?” Garek asked the question already echoing inside Logan Payne’s head as he stared down at the empty caskets.

Dirt slipped from beneath his feet as he stood on the mounds built up around those open and empty caskets. The graves were in a remote area of the River City Peaceful Acres cemetery—far from the street. So nobody had heard or seen anything—until the caretaker had stumbled across those piles of dirt. At least that was what the investigating police officer had shared with Logan.

The young officer was talking to Candace now, his head bobbing as he answered her questions. The kid didn’t know any more than he’d already told them, though. So Candace left him quickly to return to her husband’s side. Logan suspected there was only one man who could answer their questions.

Standing on another mound next to him, Garek clicked off his cell phone and shoved it into his pocket; his hand was shaking. Candace took it in hers. “Milek’s phone keeps going to voice mail.”

Logan also had his phone to his ear, listening to his half brother’s recorded voice. Special Agent Nicholas Rus. I am not available at the moment. Leave me a message, and I will return your call.

“Bullshit,” he cursed as he jerked the phone away. Rus hadn’t returned the message he’d already left him. “Nick’s is going straight to voice mail, too.”

Garek repeated, “Where the hell are they?”

With her free hand, Candace gestured toward the empty caskets and suggested, “A better question might be where the hell are they?”

The inside of both caskets was pristine. There had been no bodies decaying within them for a year. Logan doubted there’d ever been a body in either.

“Nick knows,” he said, and anger surged through him. He’d just begun to forge a relationship with the half brother who’d turned his family upside down when he’d shown up in River City. But it wasn’t Nick’s fault that their father had had an affair with Nick’s mother.

It was Nick’s fault for letting Stacy and Milek suffer, thinking that Amber Talsma and her son had died in a horrific crash.

“The son of a bitch must have staged the whole accident,” Garek said, his anger and disgust apparent. “How could he put everyone through that?”

Candace squeezed her husband’s hand, offering her love and reassurance. “He must have had his reasons.”

The comment gave Logan comfort, as well. No matter what Nick had done since he’d come to town, he’d had a reason for every action.

“What are you thinking?” Logan asked. “Witness protection?”

“She must have seen something,” Candace replied. “Maybe she witnessed her boss’s murder.”

DA Gregory Schievink had been gunned down outside his house. But if the rumors were true about the deceased DA and his assistant, Amber could have been with him—especially since his wife had been out of town at the time.

“But she’s been gone a year,” Garek said. His voice hoarse with anger, he added, “Milek has mourned her for a whole freaking year. Until...”

Nick must have told him that she was alive. He had probably revealed the secret while Milek had been helping the special agent keep Garek and Candace alive. Since then, everyone had noticed the younger Kozminski brother had been doing better.

“Some cases take a year or more to go to trial,” Logan said. Even after he’d left the River City PD to start the Payne Protection Agency, he’d had to testify in cases he’d investigated while he’d been a detective.

“What case?” Garek asked. “There have been no arrests in the DA’s murder. If Amber witnessed the shooting and was alive, there would have been an arrest.”

While Garek hadn’t always been on the right side of the law, he understood how it worked.

“That’s true,” Logan acknowledged. “There must be some other reason...”

But what? Why the hell would an FBI agent have helped the assistant DA fake her death and that of her son?

Logan punched in Nick’s number on his cell again. But just like before, it went straight to his voice mail.

Where the hell are they?

* * *

He had her son. He had taken him away before she could reach for him—before she could rescue him. Then the front passenger’s door opened and big hands reached inside for her.

Instinct had her shrinking back against the crumpled driver’s door. But then stronger instincts kicked in—of a mother protecting her child. And she struggled from beneath the steering wheel.

“Wait,” a deep voice advised. “Don’t move. You might be injured.”

She recognized the voice and the hands. Those same hands had lifted her son from the backseat. Those hands had once touched her, caressed her...

Held her.

“Where’s Michael?” she asked. “Where’d you put him?”

“He’s out here,” Milek replied, even as he leaned inside the van. “He’s safe. For the moment...” His silver eyes darkened to gray—with concern, with fear. He was worried that whoever had been shooting at them might return. “We need to get you out—if you’re not hurt, if you can move.”

She was moving. But as she moved the van rocked, threatening to roll over again. Her breath caught, trapped in her lungs, as fear overwhelmed her. Then those hands slipped beneath her arms and easily lifted her, as if she weighed no more than their child.

Once she cleared the passenger’s door, he didn’t put her down, though. He held her, his arms tightly clasping her against his madly pounding heart.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Are you?” she asked. “I heard the gunshots.” So many gunshots...

She shuddered at the memory. At least there had been no sound the night those bullets had been fired into her home. At first she hadn’t understood why the windows had shattered, why the pictures had fallen off the walls. She’d figured it might have been an earthquake; there had been a couple of small ones in the area around that time. But then she’d heard the car drive away, tires squealing, and when she’d stepped outside, she’d seen the shells on the ground.

“We’re fine,” Milek said. And he must have accepted that she was, too, because he set her on her feet. She hadn’t realized how badly her legs were shaking until they nearly buckled beneath her.

He caught her, wrapping his arm around her to hold her up. His other hand touched her face, his fingers skimming from her temple over her cheek. Just as it always had, her skin tingled from his touch. “You’re bleeding.”

He turned away from her and spoke to someone else. “Rus, we better take her to the emergency room.”

Special Agent Nicholas Rus stepped forward, her son in one arm while the other was against his side, his gun grasped tightly in his hand.

Fear slammed her heart against her ribs. But Michael was blissfully unafraid. Because he recognized the man who had helped them hide, he trusted him.

Amber couldn’t do that anymore. She pulled away from Milek and reached for her son. “Give him to me,” she said, her tone sharp. “Let go of my son!”

Michael’s silvery-gray eyes widened with shock. He looked so much like his father. Did he see it? Did he see how much he looked like the man who’d originally lifted him from the van? Why had Milek handed him over to the FBI agent?

To help her from the van? Or because he still didn’t want their son?

But before she could take the boy from Rus’s arms, Milek reached for him. He easily clasped their son against his chest. “He’s fine,” he assured her.

Michael didn’t look fine, though. His little brow was furrowed as he stared up at his father. Maybe he saw it now—the similarities between them. “You look like somebody,” Michael said and confirmed her suspicion.

“Aunt Stacy,” Amber quickly answered. “Milek is Aunt Stacy’s brother.”

Their little boy’s eyes narrowed as he continued to study his father’s handsome face. Was it possible Milek had gotten even better looking the past year? His already chiseled features were even more defined—his cheekbones sharper, his jaw squarer—harder. But his lips looked soft, kissable...

She had kissed them so many times, but that had been years ago. Would he kiss the same now? Would his kiss—his touch—affect her the way it once had?

Maybe she’d hit her head when the van had rolled. Why else would she be having such inane thoughts? Such desires? She didn’t want Milek Kozminski anymore.

She wanted only her son.

“Does that make you my uncle?” her little boy asked.

Milek coughed. “No. I’m not your uncle. I’m your—”

Whatever he’d been about to say was lost—swallowed by the sound of sirens. Had he been about to admit he was their son’s father?

“We need to get out of here,” Rus said. “Now!”

Milek pointed toward her forehead. “She needs to go to the hospital,” he said, “and have someone check her out and make sure she doesn’t have a concussion. And she’s going to need stitches.”

She lifted her trembling fingers to her head. The blood was just trickling now. “No...”

“Mommy,” Michael exclaimed, his bottom lip beginning to quiver. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine,” Amber assured her son and his father. Despite her ridiculous thoughts about Milek, she didn’t think she had a concussion. She had never lost consciousness, and she had no pain. “I didn’t hit my head. It’s just a scratch.” Which could have been caused by broken glass or crumpled metal or maybe even one of those flying bullets...

“We need to get out of here,” Rus said, “before anyone else sees you and knows you’re alive.”

Amber pointed toward the wreckage that had once been her minivan. “Obviously someone already knows.”

And didn’t want her to stay alive. Rus hadn’t put away his gun yet; it was still clasped tightly in his hand. For protection? Or as a threat?

Instead of being intimidated, she was angry. Her life, and more important her son’s, had already been threatened. She narrowed her eyes and glared at Agent Rus. “How do they know? Who did you tell?”

“Me,” Milek said. “He told me.”

Had telling Milek put her and Michael in danger?

* * *

Her breath feathered across his ear as Amber leaned close to him and whispered, “He could have told someone else.”

Despite the warmth of her breath, he shivered slightly. It was cold outside—where they’d gone onto the hotel balcony to talk. Through the partially open sliding door, they could see their son—sleeping in one of the twin beds in the hotel. He’d seen her suspicion of the FBI agent. If Rus hadn’t left the room, she probably wouldn’t have left their son’s side. Milek hadn’t wanted to leave it, either. And they’d left the door open, so they could hear if he cried out or if someone tried to come through the door to the hall.

“He didn’t need to tell anyone else.”

“But he must’ve,” she insisted. “For the whole past year, nobody bothered Michael and me...until those photos showed up today.”

She looked at him then—with that same narrow-eyed stare she’d given Rus—as though she was interrogating him on a witness stand. She must have missed that—the cross-examination; she wouldn’t have had much chance of doing it over the past year.

“I have no reason to want you dead,” he said. And every reason to want her alive.

She kept that stare on him, unblinking. She looked so different—with the dark hair and contacts. But yet she was so familiar, too. “You haven’t asked me why...”

“Rus told me,” he said, “about the shooting.” About her and their son nearly being killed in their own home.

“You haven’t asked me why I didn’t go to you after the shooting happened.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t need to ask you why. I knew...” He had already let her down.

But she told him anyway. “I didn’t think you’d care...”

He flinched. But she wasn’t trying to hurt him. She was only stating what he’d made her believe. That he didn’t care about her or their son.

“So why did you come here with Agent Rus?” she asked.

They were just on the outskirts of the little town where Nick Rus had helped her hide. Rus had gone back into town to talk to the authorities, who were no doubt trying to figure out just what the hell had happened on her block. A traffic accident or a drive-by shooting.

Both.

Things like that happened all the time in River City. He suspected that wasn’t the case in this scenic little town. Why had it happened here? Why did someone want Amber dead?

“He told me you and Michael were alive.”

“So?” she asked. “You didn’t want to see me all the years before I died. Why did you want to see me now?”

He wanted to tell her how her death had affected him—how it had devastated him. How he’d realized when he’d lost her and their son that he had lost his reason for living. But after how he’d treated her, how he’d rejected her and Michael, he had no right to those feelings.

He peered through the slider, making certain their son slept soundly, so he wouldn’t overhear their conversation—even with the door only partially open. He didn’t want to traumatize him any more than that afternoon probably had. “Someone dug up your graves.”

She shuddered.

“He opened the caskets,” he said.

She expelled a shaky breath. “He knows they’re empty, then.”