Mountain Bodyguard

The gunfire from above had not abated. What the hell was going on up there? He gave Sean an update. “It’s Mason. I’m going up to the seventh floor where shots are being fired.”

“Copy that,” Dylan responded from the lobby. “I have the twins and the other kids. All secure.”

The children were safe. Good. “What about Lexie, the nanny?”

“The twins say she’s on the seventh floor.”

Mason’s gut clenched. If anything had happened to her because he’d let her take the elevator alone, he would never forgive himself. He spoke into the headset. “I’ll be out of touch for a few minutes.”

He unscrewed the earbud and welcomed the attending silence. His entire focus needed to be on Lexie.

Drawing his gun from the shoulder holster, he sprinted down the hotel corridor and through the door below the red Exit sign. He rushed up the concrete staircase to the seventh floor and eased his way through, moving carefully until he got his bearings.

The difference in decor on each floor was as subtle as the varying shades of beige on the wallpaper above the waist-high wood wainscoting. Antique-looking picture frames held sepia photos from the early 1900s, including many of Theodore Roosevelt, who was known for hunting in the Colorado Rockies and for establishing the National Park Service. Against the wall opposite the elevators was a claw-foot table with a floral arrangement and a teddy bear with the stuffing blown out of its chest. An unconscious man in a hotel uniform lay on the floor. Good guy or bad?

There was no sure way of telling. Down the hall was another unconscious man wearing only his underwear. Quick conclusion: the men who had been stripped were the real guards. The uniforms were being worn by impostors.

The rat-a-tat of automatic gunfire came from his left.

There were only fourteen rooms on this deluxe level, including a massive suite for the admiral and his wife. The floor plan was a B-shape with the elevators in the middle. Peering around the corner, he spotted the backsides of two uniformed men. When they tried to advance, a single shot repelled them. Lexie? Where did she get the gun?

Mason fired twice and got two hits. Both men reacted but neither went down. They must be wearing Kevlar vests under their uniform shirts. When they turned toward him, he saw Lexie dash across the end of the hallway. He hoped she’d run to the relative safety of her room.

No such luck.

While he and the impostor guards exchanged fire, she circled all the way around and came up behind him. “Mason, do you have another gun?”

“Not for you.”

“Don’t be a jerk. I’ve only got one bullet left.”

“Where’s your room?” he asked.

She pointed behind them and waved her key card. “It’s over here. I’m not sure it’s safe. There are two other thugs who aren’t wearing uniforms. They could be hiding inside.”

They were outnumbered, and the bad guys had more firepower. The best option was to retreat. “Take me to your room, unlock the door and I’ll enter first to make sure it’s safe. Then you follow me in.”

“You and me in the bedroom? Well, that’s the best offer I’ve had in a long time.”

He didn’t take his eyes off the two men who were laying down a steady barrage of gunfire; he didn’t need to look at her to know she was grinning. Calm under pressure, he liked that. What he didn’t like was the way she squatted down and tugged at his pant leg. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for your ankle holster. Aha!” She undid the snap and took his second weapon. “Thanks, I need this.”

She hustled down the hallway, and he followed. At her room, she unlocked the door and stepped aside. He entered, holding his gun with both hands as he searched the bathroom, the closet and under the beds. “All clear.”

Instead of obeying his instructions to follow him inside and lock the door, she braced herself in the doorway and dropped to one knee as she fired down the hallway. It was obvious that she knew what she was doing. Earlier, he’d been wondering if she had self-defense instruction. The answer to that question was a resounding yes. Lexie was dangerous.

When he pulled her inside and closed the door, he noticed the slash of red across her upper arm. “You’re bleeding.”

“Just a graze, but it really stings.” She looked down at the angled cut that dripped blood down to her elbow. “That’s going to leave a scar.”

He dragged a heavy silk-upholstered chair and positioned it in front of the doorway. He added a desk. The barricade would slow down any attacker long enough for him to get off a couple of accurate shots.

From the bathroom, he grabbed a fluffy white hand towel and brought it to where she was sitting on a carved wooden bench in front of a mirrored dressing table. He wrapped the towel around her wounded arm and brushed escaped curls off her forehead. Under her freckles, her complexion had faded to a waxy pale.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Sure. Fine.”

When the energizing effect of adrenaline wore off, he expected her to crash like a rock slide. And he wanted to be there when she unwound, to catch her before she fell, to hold her and tell her that life was going to get better. There was something about her that awakened his protective instincts.

As a rule, he kept his distance from other people and avoided committed relationships. Losing his brother had torn a hole in his heart and made him wary of deep connections. But Lexie’s grin repaired his pain. He wanted to be close to her.

He held her hand, marveling at her slender fingers and the delicate turn of her wrist. His gaze lifted to her dark eyes. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

“I know you’ll do your best.” She shrugged. “Sometimes there’s no way to prevent the bad stuff.”

Though she was acting nonchalant, the hollow echo in her voice surprised him. He could tell that this woman had experienced more than her fair share of tragedy. Immediately curious, he wanted to hear more about her life, her dreams and her plans for the future.

But this wasn’t the right time. Gently, he removed his gun from her clenched fingers. Her vulnerability touched him, but he also appreciated her strength. When she’d needed to be tough, she held off four bad guys—five including the unconscious one outside the elevator. Now she could relax.

He didn’t have that respite. An aggressive burst of gunfire echoed in the corridor like a call to duty. He stuck his earbud back in. Sean was screaming his name, demanding an update and informing Mason that they had a group ready to storm the seventh floor.

Gun in hand, he turned his attention to TST Security business.

Chapter Three

Leaving Mason to growl orders on his intercom, Lexie slipped into the bathroom, locked the door and leaned against it. Stillness wrapped around her. Inside this pristine tile and marble cubicle, the gunfire seemed far away.

Exhaling a sigh, she slid down the wall. Sanctuary! Not that she was truly safe. This peaceful feeling was akin to being in the eye of a tornado while danger continued to swirl, but she was glad for the momentary respite—especially glad she’d made it into the bathroom before she swooned like some kind of whimpering Southern belle.

Mason didn’t need to know she was scared. She liked him and wanted him to like her. And something told her that he wasn’t the kind of guy who enjoyed being around girlie girls. She’d seen the gleam in his eye when he watched her taking aim and when he tended to her bullet wound. As if on cue, the red-stained towel fell from her arm. Oozing blood smeared and saturated the blue fabric of her jumpsuit.

“Bummer.” This was one of her favorite outfits.

It didn’t hurt. Not much, anyway. But her body was having a reaction that was out of proportion to the injury. Was this some kind of panic attack? She was acutely tense. Her muscles twisted into knots. Her gut clenched. Other symptoms slammed into her, one after the other. She was light-headed. Her breathing was labored, and she smelled the odor of rotting meat. The inside of her mouth tasted like ash. Shivers twitched across her shoulders.

Her spine buckled, and she ratcheted down to the floor. She lay on her side with her wounded arm up, the white marble cooling her cheek. She tried to breathe deeply and calm herself. But she was too tense...and too cold, ice-cold. Her fists clenched between her breasts. Her pulse pounded. She pinched her eyes closed, hoping to blot out the terrible fear that threatened to overwhelm her.

She had to get control. I’m going to be all right. No matter how many times her conscious mind repeated those words, a deeper place in her soul didn’t believe it. I won’t die. Post-traumatic stress squeezed her in a grip so tight that her bones rattled. Everything is going to be all right. She wasn’t in mortal danger, not this time. This isn’t like the accident.

Her memory jolted. Flung backward in time, she heard a fierce metallic crunch and the explosion of the air bag from the steering wheel. Her brother’s little bronze sedan had been thrown onto its side and was skidding toward the edge of the cliff near Buena Vista. Cringing, she heard the grinding screech of her car door against the pavement. Should have taken the truck. Jake was going to kill her for wrecking his car. Not my fault. The other car—black with tinted windows—had crossed the center line and hit her front fender.

Her mouth opened wide as she desperately tried to scream. The air bag had stolen her breath. She could only gasp. And then her brother’s car was falling, crashing end over end, down the steep hillside and into the trees.

Other people had told her that they couldn’t recall a single moment of their accidents. In the midst of their traumatic events, they experienced amnesia. Not her. She felt every twist and turn as the car plummeted. Fully conscious, she braced herself for what would surely come next: the gas explosion that would tear her limbs apart and the flames that would sear her flesh.

That wasn’t the way it turned out. Though the driver who had hit her fled the scene, there was a witness in another vehicle. She was rescued, taken to the hospital and stitched back together. The doctors fixed as much as they could.

Replaying the accident—the worst moments of her life—lessened her current panic. The terror that had threatened to smother her receded into the shadows of her mind. She forced her thoughts back to the present reality and focused on what had just happened. She’d been attacked by five armed men.

Instead of sliding deeper into fear, she chuckled to herself. This definitely wasn’t like the horrible feeling of helplessness in the car accident. When it came to self-defense, she did okay. Not a big surprise, as she’d been trained by her three older brothers, who ran a karate dojo. And her dad, a Marine Corps sergeant, had insisted that she know how to handle rifles, pistols, handguns and other weaponry.

Thinking of the DeMille men calmed her. Even though they were a thousand miles away in Austin, Texas, they were watching over her. They’d made her into what she was today: an independent, stubborn, kick-ass tomboy. A survivor.

When she’d encountered the first man outside the elevator, she knew—without the slightest doubt—that she could take him down. Lexie had earned her brown belt in karate when she was fifteen.

Shooting at people was more difficult; she didn’t want to kill anybody. If Mason hadn’t shown up, she had no idea what she would have done. He’d taken a risk by charging onto this floor to help her. Of course, security was his job...but still, she was grateful.

There was a tap on the door. “Lexie, are you all right?”

She scrambled to get her legs under her. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? It’s quiet in there.”

“I’m fine,” she repeated.

She should have turned on the shower. Mason wouldn’t have knocked if he’d heard water running. Struggling, she lunged to her feet and hit the faucet in the sink. There! Was that enough proof enough that she was fine and dandy?

Her reflection in the mirror confronted her. Not a pretty sight! Her arm dripped blood, her makeup was smudged and her ponytail was tangled like a bird’s nest. What she needed was a shower, but stripping off her clothes while bad guys were on the prowl seemed like an invitation to more trouble—naked trouble.

She went to the bathroom door, pressed her ear against it and listened for the sounds of battle from the outer corridor. There were distant pops. This wasn’t the kind of cheesy motel where you heard every cough and sputter from the neighboring room, but gunfire was loud. She expected to hear somethi—

“Lexie?” Mason knocked again.

She jumped backward with a yelp. Off balance, she stumbled into the wall beside the huge Plexiglas shower with four separate spray nozzles. “Fine,” she shouted. “I’m perfectly fine.”

He opened the door.

“I locked that,” she said.

“And I picked the lock.” He strode toward her.

Whether she wanted his protection or not, Mason was here. He guided her across the marble floor and lifted her onto the counter with double sinks. “Do you want the outfit on or off?”

“On, of course.” She pushed at his chest, accidentally staining his light blue shirt with blood. “Jeez Louise, I’m sorry.”

“Jeez Louise?” He lifted an eyebrow.

“I don’t swear. It’s a nanny thing.”

“Did you used to?”

“Hell, yes.” She felt a grin spread across her face, and she was amazed by how swiftly her mood had transformed. Mason was magic. “I have three brothers.”

He nodded. “Every other word was obscene.”

“Not as much as you’d think. Dad didn’t tolerate bad language.”

“Was he a religious man?”

“Worse. A marine sergeant. Discipline was his middle name.”

“My older brother was in the corps. He worked with the admiral in the Middle East.” His shoulders flexed in a tense shrug. “I’d like to think that one of the reasons TST Security was hired was the admiral’s good opinion of my brother.”

Being from a military family, she was sensitive to the fact that he spoke of his brother in the past tense. “I wonder if your brother knew my dad, Daniel DeMille? He was stationed in the Middle East, too. He retired five years ago.”

“My brother was killed six years ago in Afghanistan.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” He peeled off his suit jacket, tossed it into the bedroom and started rolling up his shirtsleeves. “Now I’m going to clean your wound.”

She pointed toward the open bathroom door. “What about those thugs in the hallway?”

“My partners have it under control. The local police and sheriff are on the way.” He tapped the listening device in his ear. “TST Security has rounded up all but one of the bad guys. He locked himself in a room down the hall and thinks he’s safe.”

His full lips quirked in a wry smile that told her the criminal hiding in one of the rooms was making a big mistake. She asked, “What’s going to happen to him?”

“While he’s watching the door to the hallway, one of the snipers on the roof is going to bust through a window.”

“And you’d like to watch,” she said.

“Oh, yeah.”

His tone reminded her of the DeMille men, but there was nothing brotherly about the tingling she felt when he touched her arm. He moistened a washcloth under the hot water she’d been running in the sink. Holding her arm below the elbow, he cautiously wiped away the blood.

“The cut isn’t too deep,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll need stitches, but you should have a doc take a look.”

“Sure.” While he focused on taking care of her, she studied him. Her father would approve of his buzz cut and no-nonsense attitude, but she was more impressed by his deep-set dark blue eyes and high cheekbones. His tanned forearms showed that he spent time outdoors, but her thoughts about him required an indoor setting... A bedroom scenario, to be specific.

He lifted his gaze. What would it be like to wake up and see those eyes looking back at her? He was almost too handsome, too good to be true. Please, Mason, don’t be a liar or a cheat.

Using a clean towel, he patted her arm dry. When he reached behind her head, unfastened her ponytail and let her curly hair fall to her shoulders, his face was near hers. If she tilted her head and leaned in, their lips would touch.

Impulsively, her fingers snatched his striped silk necktie, and she held him in place. He was mere inches away from her, so very close that she felt the heat radiating from his body. She smelled his aftershave, a citrus and nutmeg flavor with a hint of something else...the indefinable scent of a man.

“You smell good.” She hadn’t intended her voice to become a purr, but that was what happened.

“So do you.”

Her gaze twined with his, and she tugged at his necktie to pull him a half inch closer. She wanted to kiss him, but the situation was messy. She was sitting on the countertop at a weird angle. If she pressed her body against his chest, she’d smear the blood all over his shirt. More important, she barely knew this man and could be setting herself up for a world of embarrassment.

He ended her indecision. She should have known that he would. Mason was a take-charge kind of guy. He buried his fingers in her untamed hair and held the back of her skull so that he was supporting her. Then he kissed her.

Crazy, wild sensations bloomed inside her. He kissed the same way he seemed to do everything else: with skill and finesse. His lips were firm, and he exerted exactly the right amount of pressure.

His tongue traced the line of her mouth, slipped inside and probed against her teeth. She opened wider for him. Her tongue joined with his and—

There was a hammering noise from the door to the hallway. A deep voice shouted, “Mason, you in there?”

They broke apart so quickly that she bit the inside of her cheek. “Bad timing,” she muttered.

“I have to go.”

Twenty questions popped inside her head. Can I see you again? Will there be another kiss? Can I give you my phone number? She said only one word aloud. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Saving my life.”

He dropped a light kiss on her forehead. “My pleasure.”

As she watched him walk out the door, she whispered, “The pleasure was all mine.”

* * *

PEERING THROUGH THE infrared scope of his rifle, Anton Karpov scanned the windows on the seventh floor of the mountain hotel, trying to catch a glimpse of Franny. Earlier tonight, he had watched her through the crosshairs on his scope. She’d been outside on the terrace, meeting and greeting, laughing and smiling. She looked good—damn good. Until tonight, he hadn’t paid any attention to the nanny.

But now he knew. Anton had positively identified Franny DeMille, the chick he’d almost moved in with. Why was she calling herself Lexie? How the hell did she get to be a nanny?

The Franny he knew was a kick-ass daredevil who couldn’t care less about kids and didn’t know a damn thing about taking care of them. When he was dating her, she’d told him—flat out—that she didn’t want babies. Hey, great news for him. He wasn’t meant to play daddy. He wasn’t serious about her, either. Still, it made him mad when she dumped him. It was supposed to be the other way around. He made sure she knew that.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and he answered.

The voice on the other end was the leader himself. There had been a lot of talk at meetings about how no single person was more important than another. They were equals. Some had special skills or areas of expertise, but their group didn’t operate within the structure of a hierarchy.

Anton didn’t buy in to any of that phony, mealy-mouthed philosophy. While others talked about all for one and “the greater good,” he held his silence. There was only one truth he believed in: dollars and cents. He’d been associated with the leader for almost ten years, performing special tasks for decent pay.

Quietly, the leader said, “Move out. I’ll contact you later, Tony.”

Long ago, Anton had Americanized his name to Tony Curtis after the old-time movie star. He even looked kind of like that Tony, with his curly black hair and blue eyes. The real Tony Curtis was usually cast as a pretty boy hero, and that didn’t suit Anton Karpov, not at all. He only changed his mind when he saw the movie star play the role of Albert DeSalvo, widely believed to be the Boston Strangler.

“Are you sure I should go, sir?” He was one of the few who knew the leader’s real name, but he seldom spoke it. “I have a couple of angles for a clear shot.”

“I’m tempted, Tony. I’d like to kill those idiots who got caught.”

“Is there any chance they won’t spill their guts?”

“Oh, they’ll talk. The admiral’s men are skilled interrogators.”

“Is that a problem?”

“They don’t know enough to worry about. They’re unimportant.”

The leader didn’t seem concerned about losing five men. The less influential members of Anti-Conspiracy Committee for Democracy, also known as AC-CD, had access to a limited amount of information. They were assigned simple jobs. Tonight, the only thing they’d been required to do was disable the hotel security and fill in for them, leaving the way open for more experienced operatives. The trained, experienced staff, led by Anton/Tony, would have kidnapped the admiral.

Anton/Tony slung his rifle over his shoulder and rose to his feet. “It was the nanny who messed up the plan.”

“How could a little girl like that be such a big problem?”

The leader didn’t know her. For a couple of seconds, Tony felt superior to the man who usually gave the orders. For a change, it was Tony who had the ace up his sleeve, information the leader wasn’t privy to, and he was tempted to hold back.

But he didn’t care about showing how smart he was and gaining power in AC-CD. He was after a quick payday, and the best way to separate the leader from his cash was to show him something he might want to buy. Franny was a prize he could set before the leader.

“She says her name is Lexie, but I recognized her tonight. The nanny is a karate expert. It’s Franny DeMille, my old girlfriend.”

“You don’t say.” The leader’s voice dropped to a low, thoughtful level. “If you asked her to help you, would she?”

“We didn’t break up on good terms, but I could always get her to do what I wanted.” Not exactly true, but he wished it so. When he’d been with her, he was a better man. “She’ll do what I say.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

Before leaving his sniper nest, Tony pulled up his balaclava to cover the lower part of his face. Silently and stealthily, he made his way through the forest. His experience as a hunting guide was why he’d been pegged for this assignment. He could be trusted to blend with nature and not be seen. And his skill at marksmanship was worthy of a world-class assassin.

Chapter Four

In the rustic-style foyer outside the banquet hall, Mason conferred quietly with his partner Dylan, whose tall, wiry frame had been transformed from nerdy to sophisticated by a tailored black suit and a striped silk tie. Likewise, his messy brown hair had been tamed in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. They were waiting for the admiral’s wife to leave the hall and join them. Prescott had asked them to escort her to the conference room, where he and several branches of law enforcement and the military had gathered.

“NSA, CIA, Interpol, army and navy intelligence,” Dylan said. He pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up on his nose. “The gang’s all here.”

“How do you know their affiliations?”

“They were all at the banquet.” As part of security procedure, he had vetted the invited guests and used facial recognition software to make sure they matched their stated identity. “Some of these guys are high-ranking hotshots. On six of them, I got an ‘access denied’ message when I searched for further info.”

“Did you?” Mason asked. “Tell me the truth. Did you dig deeper?”