Bodyguard Daddy

“I suspect he already knew,” he said. “He just had to confirm.” And once the hired killer had confirmed it, he’d come after her—after them.

She uttered a very unladylike curse.

Milek drew out his cell phone and held up the screen showing the call log. “He’s not the only one who knows.” He hadn’t had to play his messages to confirm that. He knew his family well.

Ever since Amber’s accident a year ago, they’d been watching him closely. They had noticed the difference in him after Rus had shared the truth with him. Garek had made his suspicions clear that he thought Milek was working for the FBI agent. With his new wife’s help, he would have kept digging. But it wasn’t just Garek and Candace who’d been calling him. The entire Payne family had called.

“They all know...”

She let out a soft gasp. “Stacy?”

He glanced at the call log again and nodded. She’d called too many times to just be checking on him. She knew.

“She’s going to hate me.”

“She’s going to be happy you’re alive.”

“For how long?” Amber asked. “The shooter knows I’m alive. And he wants me dead.”

“I’m not going to let that happen,” Milek assured her.

She shook her head. “You won’t be able to stop him.”

“I stopped him today.” He wasn’t sure if it had been his shots or Rus’s that had come close enough to either injure or scare off the killer.

“You can’t be with me every minute,” she said. “I need to wake up Michael and get out of here.” She reached for the handle of the slider.

He covered her hand with his and stopped her from opening the door. Her skin was cold and silky to his touch. He tightened his grasp. “You can’t hide.”

He couldn’t lose them again.

“I can,” she said. “I just won’t make the mistake of trusting Agent Rus again.”

“Rus didn’t betray you,” he said. “If someone hadn’t dug up your graves, I’m not sure he would have ever told me where you were.”

“Then why did he tell you that Michael and I were alive?”

Because he had been suffering. But he doubted she would believe him. Since she was already having trouble trusting, he wasn’t going to push his luck. Not when he had another proposal to make.

“It doesn’t matter why,” Milek said. “But now that he told me, now that I know you’re both alive and in danger, I intend to keep you and Michael safe.”

She stared up at him and asked, “And how do you intend to do that?”

“By bringing you home.”

She shuddered. “To River City?”

“To my place,” he clarified. “I want you and Michael to move in with me.” Of course, doing that might actually put her in more danger—from him.

* * *

He hunched down in the driver’s seat and stared up at the hotel room where, moments ago, two people had stood on the balcony.

They hadn’t seen him following them from the crime scene. But then, he was the Ghost. Nobody ever saw him—until it was too late. Until today...

Frank lifted his fingers to his forehead and flinched. A bullet had grazed him. He hadn’t had a call that close in a long while. It had shaken him.

He didn’t want to actually become a ghost. But he had to make some more. He glanced down at the screen of his phone where a news broadcast played. It was out now.

Their graves found empty, Amber Talsma was believed to have faked the deaths of herself and her young son. There was speculation about all the reasons why.

Only Frank knew the truth—the whole truth. He was a professional, though, so nobody else would ever know. And because he was a professional it was time he finished the job. He could have tried when they’d been on the balcony, but he hadn’t had a clear shot. So he would wait. He was a patient man.

But he didn’t have to wait long before his targets walked out. The man had the boy clasped in one arm and his other arm wrapped protectively around the woman. But he wasn’t actually offering them much protection. He wouldn’t be able to draw his weapon this time. He wouldn’t be able to return fire when Frank started shooting.

Chapter 5

She was the one with a new name. New hair. New eye color. New career. Home. Life.

But Milek was the one who had changed. He wasn’t the man she remembered—the one she had loved. She had fallen for his sweet sensitivity. She saw none of that in the man who had pulled her from the wreckage of her van.

So why had she agreed to go home with him? She didn’t even know him. She’d already been scared to return to River City—since that was where it had all begun, where Gregory had been murdered, where she’d nearly been gunned down, as well. And living with Milek? Being with him all the time? That terrified her.

But he’d been insistent that they needed to leave the hotel. Now. Because she’d wanted to be gone before Agent Rus returned, she’d readily agreed.

Now, as she walked with him across the hotel parking lot, she wasn’t certain she’d made the right decision. Milek had proved over five years ago she couldn’t trust him with her heart.

But could she trust him with her life and Michael’s?

He had changed. He was no longer the sensitive artist he’d once been. He was a bodyguard, all steely-eyed and focused.

Even now, as he walked her and Michael from the hotel with an arm around each of them, he wasn’t focused on them. He was focused on everything around them. The parking lot was dark, the light from the hotel faint. She could see nothing.

But she felt the moment he did. His body tensed, and his grip on the gun he held against her side tightened.

“We’re going to play a game,” he whispered to their son. “We’re going to play hide-and-seek. You and your mother are going to hide. You’re going to hear bangs again but you’re not going to come out until I tell you to.”

There was that sensitivity—just a glimmer of it—when he tried to convince their son that the danger they were in was just a game.

After that brief explanation, he acted fast, though. He passed their son to her and stepped in front of them. “Run back into the hotel,” he told her.

Before she could say anything, shots rang out. She didn’t know who was shooting—Milek or whoever he had seen in the darkness. She couldn’t ask. She couldn’t move. Fear paralyzed her.

“Run!” he yelled.

And finally her legs moved. Michael clasped closely to her chest, she ran straight for the hotel lobby. But the glass doors stopped her, drawing her up short. Was she locked out?

Slowly they began to part. So the automatic opener was just slow. Too slow. She ducked as more shots rang out. Something whizzed past her head. She hoped she imagined it, but then the glass of those slowly parting doors shattered.

She shrieked.

And Michael echoed her scream, his body trembling against hers. She swung him out of her arms and through the narrow opening. As Milek had told her, she told their son, “Run!”

He was smaller—a smaller target. The shooter was after her. Not Milek. Not Michael. But he was putting those she loved in danger. Anger coursed through her—along with the fear. And she thought fleetingly of running back—of trying to negotiate with a killer. Her life for the lives of her son and Milek. But her little boy paused in the middle of the lobby, staring back at her, his eyes wide with fear. He needed her; he needed his mommy.

She squeezed through the metal frames of those shattered doors and caught up with him, swinging him back up into her arms. But she didn’t know where to go. Outside the gunfire continued. And inside all she could hear was screaming. And crying.

But she and Michael had gone silent—probably with shock. The screaming and crying emanated from behind the check-in and concierge desks. She could have carried Michael back there. But the night clerk’s fear would terrify Michael even more.

She needed to take him somewhere safer. She had the key to the room Special Agent Rus had booked for them. But how had the shooter found them? Had Rus told him where they were? Or was it Rus out in the parking lot—shooting at Milek?

She shouldn’t have trusted the FBI agent. She hadn’t been certain she could trust Milek when he’d told her that they needed to leave right away, that he would take them home with him where he would be able to protect her and Michael.

He was protecting her now, putting his own life in danger to save her and their son. Maybe he was the one man she could trust. And she might be losing him...

Panic pressed on her heart, painfully squeezing it. The gunfire grew louder—the shots even closer now. Windows splintered next to the already shattered doors. And vases and pictures broke, exploding into sharp fragments.

Clasping Michael more tightly in her arms, she ran again—through the lobby to the bank of elevators and the stairwell. She couldn’t go back to the room Agent Rus had booked for them. He could be the one shooting at Milek and the hotel, and he had a key to that room. She had to go somewhere, though, somewhere safe from the person so determined to kill her that he didn’t care who got hurt or worse along with her.

Was Milek okay? Would he survive?

Or would he die her hero?

* * *

Glass raining down around him, Milek ducked down between two rows of cars and cursed. He’d thought the hired assassin was called the Ghost because he had eluded the authorities for so long. But maybe he was called the Ghost because he was impossible to stop. No one could kill the already dead.

No one could see them, either. Milek hadn’t sent Amber back to the hotel with their son because he’d seen the assassin or the gun. The darkness complete, there had been no glimpse of the man or glint of his weapon.

Milek had felt his presence. When he and Amber and Michael had stepped into the parking lot, Milek had instinctively known they weren’t alone. Maybe it was the year of being a bodyguard that had honed those instincts—instincts instilled in him since childhood when his father had groomed him and his brother to be thieves. Those instincts had also told him it wasn’t another hotel patron hanging out in the lot. It was someone waiting for them.

Waiting to kill them.

He’d barely passed Michael to Amber and sent them into the hotel before the gunfire had opened up. He’d heard the glass break—in the cars around them and in the hotel lobby windows. Had they been hit?

He had heard only one scream. But then Amber wasn’t a screamer. She was too controlled for that—too strong. And she must have passed that strength onto their child, because no screams could be heard from Michael now, either.

Unless...

His heart pounded frantically with fear, but he couldn’t consider such a horrific possibility. They hadn’t been hit. But the shooter was getting closer to the hotel—firing more shots through those windows.

A shriek rang out.

It wasn’t Amber’s. Her voice wasn’t as high-pitched. It wasn’t a child’s cry, either.

Had someone else been hurt? Caught in the cross fire?

Milek cursed again. But he hadn’t fired toward the hotel. He was firing in the direction from which the shots seemed to be coming. There had to be a silencer on the assassin’s gun, because Milek heard only a faint whoosh of air when a bullet left the barrel. But he still couldn’t see the shooter.

So Milek was just wasting ammo now. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his last magazine. He needed to make these shots count. He needed to hit the Ghost this time or he risked becoming one himself.

Because a hired assassin wasn’t about to run out of ammo. The man would have enough bullets left to kill Milek and Amber and Michael if he found them.

He prayed she had listened to him—that she would hide herself and their son where the killer wouldn’t be able to find them. Because he wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to protect them.

As evidenced by the shriek, there were other people in the hotel, though. The night clerk and the concierge. Maybe a bellhop. And several other hotel guests. Someone would have called 911 by now.

Help had to be on its way. The Ghost wouldn’t stick around; he wouldn’t risk getting caught. Unless Milek could distract him until the police arrived...

“Frank!” he called out. “Frank Campanelli!”

Movement ceased. There were no more whooshes of air, no more breaking glass. He’d stopped shooting; he was listening.

“Yeah, Frank,” Milek continued. “The police know it’s you who killed the district attorney. They know it’s you who fired the shots into Ms. Talsma’s home. And the FBI agent saw you today.” Apparently Nick Rus could see ghosts. Milek had been so totally focused on Amber and his son that he hadn’t gotten a good look at him. “You’re a wanted man, Frank. You’re not going to get away with this.”

A chuckle came from out in the darkness.

Of course the assassin had no fear of getting caught. No one had come close to apprehending him during his long and infamous career.

“The special agent who’s after you—it’s Nicholas Rus,” he said. As Milek talked, he moved closer to where that chuckle had come from. “He’s the agent who brought down Viktor Chekov. Rus is River City’s version of Eliot Ness.”

Hunched low, Milek slipped between the rows of cars. One of his father’s lessons on how to be a thief had been about moving silently. Like everything they’d been taught, Garek had picked it up more easily—was better at it, even now. But Milek was good.

If he’d been driving to the hotel, he knew Frank wouldn’t have been able to follow them the way he must have followed Nicholas Rus. Rus was a good agent, but he wasn’t a bodyguard. He didn’t know all the ways and means of protecting an endangered client.

But Milek had wanted to sit in the backseat—close to his son. He hadn’t been able to stop staring at the little boy and it hadn’t been just to make certain Michael was okay. While he’d had his reasons, Milek regretted never seeing his son, and for the past year he’d thought he had missed the opportunity of ever getting to know his child.

But maybe that car ride to the hotel was all the time he would have—because another rule of being a bodyguard was giving up your own life to protect your subject. And Milek had never been as willing to do that as he was now.

That was why he spoke again. Frank would know where he was, that he was getting closer. But it was a risk Milek had to take, so he could pinpoint the hit man’s exact location and make his remaining bullets count.

“Rus didn’t bring down Chekov alone,” Milek continued. “He had help.”

Frank snorted; Milek was close enough now that he clearly heard it. “Feds never act alone,” Frank said. “A whole bunch of Feds have tried to take me down, and they haven’t succeeded yet.”

“It wasn’t other Feds who helped Rus take down Chekov,” Milek said. “It was me and my brother.”

Frank laughed again but cocked his gun.

Milek heard the telltale click of the bullet sliding into the barrel. He was close.

And Frank knew it, too.

Close enough that neither of them would be able to miss now.

“Not that I care,” Frank said. “But who the hell are you?”

Garek was the cocky one—the one who enjoyed annoying other people. Milek had never understood his brother’s enjoyment of that until now—until he wanted to infuriate the man who had tried and was trying to kill the only woman Milek had ever loved and the child they’d created together.

“I guess you should know the name of the man who’s finally going to bring you down,” he agreed. “I’m Milek Kozminski.”

There was no snort now. No laughter. Frank Campanelli knew who he was. For the first time, Milek found an advantage to being as infamous as he and his family were.

Frank said, “You worked for Chekov.”

Garek had. But Milek would let the man believe whatever he wanted.

“Your family...”

“Is basically a bunch of criminals,” Milek finished for him. “Maybe that’s what it takes to catch one...”

The saying was actually it took a thief to catch a thief. But maybe it was also true that it took a killer to catch a killer.

Milek had killed before. And in order to protect Amber and Michael, he would willingly kill again.

Frank laughed, but the chuckle was gruff and shaky with nerves. He must have realized he wasn’t dealing with a Fed or a regular bodyguard.

He probably thought he was dealing with a man like himself—one with no scruples or morals or conscience. Unfortunately, Milek had a conscience. But he doubted it would bother him if he took out a hired assassin—a man who’d killed again and again for money.

Milek cocked his gun.

This was it. His last magazine. His last chance to take out the Ghost—even though he risked becoming one himself. He didn’t care, though. He didn’t care about anything but Amber and Michael. To save their lives, he would gladly give up his own. So even knowing he would draw Frank’s gunfire, he straightened up from where he’d been hunched over between the cars. He would rather have Frank fire at him than into the hotel any longer.

And now Milek was close enough to the Ghost that the hit man might not miss him when he fired back. As Milek squeezed the trigger, gunfire erupted again.

* * *

They were gone. Nicholas Rus had searched the entire hotel. But he found no trace of them. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing—since he had found no bodies. Of course, that didn’t mean they weren’t dead.

It would be more of a surprise if they had survived.

The hotel looked like a war zone. Shattered glass. Broken vases. And the parking lot was even worse.

Cars had been destroyed, their windows broken, the metal dented with bullets. Could anyone have survived such an onslaught of gunfire? Even Milek Kozminski...

Nick shone the beam of his flashlight on the asphalt. The fragments of glass sparkled in its glow—except for those fragments spattered with blood. The blood, thick and dark, pooled around the fragments, too.

Someone had been hit. Maybe badly.

He hoped like hell it had been Frank Campanelli. But if the Ghost was dead, where was his body? Where were Milek and Amber and the boy—if they hadn’t been hurt?

His cell rang; he felt it vibrating inside his pocket. But he hesitated to reach for it. He knew who it would be and what they would want to know.

He had already answered enough questions for the night—when he’d had to explain the accident scene to the local authorities. He hadn’t admitted to them who’d been driving the van, though. He hadn’t wanted any more people to know Amber Talsma wasn’t really dead. That was why he’d convinced her and Milek to leave the scene—why he’d driven them to this hotel—thinking they would be safe here.

He had been a fool—a fool to let someone follow him and a fool to think that anyone, even Milek, could have protected Amber from as highly skilled an assassin as Frank, The Ghost, Campanelli.

He’d been a fool to think he could keep it from getting out that she was alive. On the way back to the hotel, he’d heard the report on the radio—the news of their empty graves and the speculation that she must have faked her death. Everybody knew she was alive now.

His phone stopped vibrating before he ever reached for it. But that was fine. Whichever one of them who’d called would leave a voice mail—like all the voice mails they’d left before demanding information from him.

But Nick had no answers for the Payne/Kozminski family. He didn’t know where Milek and Amber and the child were—let alone if they were all right.

Had Frank taken them—taken their bodies? Maybe after he’d let his targets get away last time, he had needed the evidence of their deaths in order to get paid.

“Son of a bitch...” he murmured into the darkness.

An officer glanced over at him. The local authorities had been called here. Nick had heard the calls come in to Dispatch while he’d been talking to a detective.

Shots fired at the Harbor Hotel.

“Why do you want to go to that call?” the detective had asked when Nick said he needed to leave.

He’d said nothing.

“Who are you protecting?” the detective had asked.

But that was just the thing. Rus hadn’t protected anyone. He’d left them behind—with the killer, who must have followed him to the hotel. They hadn’t even had a vehicle in which to escape. He’d taken the shot-up SUV to the police department. So where were they?

Maybe Milek had utilized the skills his father had taught him and stolen a car. Nick found himself actually hoping the guy had committed a crime. But nothing had been reported stolen. The only report had been of those shots fired.

Shell casings gleamed in the darkness, illuminated when crime scene techs took flash pictures of the casings beside which they had already placed evidence tags. So many shots had been fired.

And the blood...

He should have been here. He shouldn’t have left them alone—not with a notorious killer after them. He cursed again, but silently—the words echoing inside his mind.

His phone began to ring once more—vibrating madly inside his pocket. He didn’t need to answer it; he could feel the anger and frustration of his family.

They probably didn’t think of him that way. But he had begun to think it—that they were his family. He had never had a real family before. Until she had died a year ago, it had been just his mom and him, and she’d been no Penny Payne. There had been nothing maternal about her.

Nick had gotten more love and attention from the neighbors. Of course, as an adolescent he’d been annoyed to have the younger kids tagging along; Gage had even followed Nick into the marines and then into the Bureau. Recently he’d quit the Bureau, though, and reenlisted in the marines.

And Annalise...

Nick’s heart contracted in his chest. He couldn’t think about Annalise anymore—not the way he used to think about her. He had destroyed that relationship just as he’d probably destroyed the one he’d been building with the Paynes. He stared down at the puddle of blood and felt as if his own was draining away.

Nick hadn’t just lost the woman and child he’d been trying to protect for the past year. He had lost his family, too.

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