Bodyguard Reunion

Jules licked her lips. “No husband. I’m divorced.”

He felt almost light-headed. Divorced. He shouldn’t be shocked. Lots of people were divorced. But for some reason, it wasn’t what he’d expected from Jules.

He had a thousand questions.

Most of them inappropriate. “Recently?” he asked. An enraged former spouse was always a security concern.

She shook her head. “Six years ago.”

He worked really hard to keep his expression neutral. His head was spinning. That meant...hell, she’d been married for less than eighteen months. “What’s your relationship with...him?” He knew his name. Bryson Wagoner. Appropriate since the man had needed a damn wagon to carry all his family money.

“Fine,” Jules said.

Fine. What the hell did that mean? The silence in the room stretched out.

“Well, what do you think?” Barry Wood asked.

He thought that very little surprised him anymore, but Jules had knocked his socks off. He thought his heart was beating too fast. He thought she was still the most beautiful woman that he’d ever met. “I think you’re right to be concerned,” Royce said.

“We appreciate your opinion.” If possible, Jules’s jaw was even tighter, and her lips barely moved when she spoke.

“It’s what I do,” he said, suddenly defensive. He and his partners were damn good at providing security. They had celebrities, politicians—hell, even some royalty—on their client list. A pharmaceutical CEO was nothing.

But that wasn’t true. Jules Cambridge had never been nothing. Royalty in her own right, she’d been her father’s little princess.

And in contrast, he’d been the commoner, who should have been content to stay outside the walls of the Fifth Avenue fortress, admiring from afar.

He’d been so damn stupid.

“Will you help us?” Barry asked.

There was no way.

Jules stood up, her movement jerky. “Barry, we need to discuss this. I can assure you that Royce is not going to be interested in providing the service.”

That was exactly what he’d been thinking. She had no right to take away his opportunity to turn her down. And it irritated the hell out of him to hear her say it so matter-of-fact.

She could take her business down the street. There were other security agencies in Vegas. A couple that were very decent. Not as good as Wingman Security, that was true. If only one of his other partners was available, he could refer her internally, but that wasn’t the case.

Jules was in trouble. You will beg for mercy. I will enjoy witnessing your pain. “Actually, it’s your lucky day,” he said, his gaze steady on her.

She opened her mouth.

“What you two need to do,” he said, switching his eyes to Barry, “is lock the door behind me. Don’t open it to anyone but me. Can you manage that?”

Barry nodded.

“Good. Then I’ll be back within the hour with my clothes and a contract.”

Chapter 3

“I’m sorry, JC,” Barry said, just seconds after the door closed behind Royce. “But I’m confused. You look very upset. I thought we’d agreed.”

She managed to smile at the man. She understood that he was worried. “I suspect you’re thinking that one hell of a slam is coming.”

Barry settled back against the cushions. “That was quite a night. You stalked off to your bedroom, your nose in the air. And it was a ferocious slam. Knocked the trim right off the frame.”

“All because I couldn’t go to a Metallica concert. I was fifteen.”

“Your father hated to disappoint you but he hated the idea of you getting hurt even more,” Barry said.

She was eighteen years older now. And while she hadn’t been able to understand her father’s motivations at the time, she did understand Barry’s now. She also understood the very real business reasons behind them. There was a twenty-million-dollar insurance policy on her life. As a result, they’d had to report the threats to the insurance company and they were insisting on added security.

So she had quietly acquiesced. Never dreaming that Royce would walk through the door.

Barry would have had no way of knowing about the relationship. After all, by almost anyone’s standards, it had been rather short-lived. And her father, if he had deemed it necessary to discuss Royce with Barry, would have only referred to him as Juliana’s summer indulgence. As best she could remember, he had never called Royce by name.

But he’d known his name and he would remember his name. It was the one way that she could very easily get Royce kicked off the job. If she mentioned it to her father, the man would immediately demand that Royce be replaced. He’d call his good friend Barry and that would be that.

And she’d be responsible, again, for causing trouble for Royce.

It was a few days. If they were indeed the best, that’s what she wanted, right?

She did not believe that the car last night had deliberately tried to kill her. If so, why back off? But the letters were not so easily dismissed. In a world where crazy things seemed to happen more and more often, the idea that somebody had come unhinged and was intent upon causing trouble for the CEO of a drug company was not a comfortable one. She’d been all for reporting them to the police.

She was all for staying safe.

She certainly didn’t want anybody on her team to get injured because she couldn’t get past history.

Plus, she had a very good reason for staying in Vegas. Family. She hadn’t told Barry, didn’t intend to. Knew it would get back to her father, and there was no way she was ready to have that conversation yet.

“It’s fine, Barry. We’ll make the best of it.”

Royce had said he was coming back with clothes. Which meant that he intended to stay with her.

There were two bedrooms in the suite. Plenty of space.

Right. When he’d run back to Texas and she’d stayed in New York, that had barely been a comfortable distance.

“I’m going to get some work done,” she said, “before Royce comes back.”

“I’ll stay,” Barry said.

She shook her head. “It’s not necessary. Go back to your own room and get some rest. I don’t think either one of us got much sleep last night.”

“You heard Royce.”

“I know, I know. I won’t open the door to strangers. I promise.”

Barry stood up. “I appreciate you going along with this. I really do.”

“I appreciate that you haven’t said anything to my dad about the threats.” She’d asked him not to and he’d reluctantly agreed. Of course, he had no way of knowing how strained her current relationship was with her father. For so many reasons, some known only to her.

“I won’t as long as we’re doing everything in our power to keep you safe. I’m not underestimating how uncomfortable it might be to have a shadow 24/7. But you know your safety is important to me. For a lot of reasons.”

She reached for his age-spotted hand. Squeezed it. “I know that it might be highly improper for the CEO to say this to the chairman of the board, but I love you.”

He smiled. “You’ve always been like a daughter to Eileen and me.”

“I know.” She walked him to the door and locked it securely after he left. Then she stood with her spine against the door, feeling the wood press against every one of her vertebrae.

Eight years ago, she’d made a bad decision for what she thought were all the right reasons.

And after he’d stormed out of her father’s house, she’d tried to forget about the hurt in Royce Morgan’s eyes. The hurt she’d caused.

It hadn’t been easy. Even though she’d thrown herself into her work, into planning her wedding.

And then into her marriage.

Her short, disastrous marriage.

Royce had looked shocked when she’d said she was divorced. He hadn’t known. But now that he did, would he demand an explanation? Would he think he was still entitled to one? Or would he not care enough to even ask? She wasn’t sure which question scared her more.

The only answer was to keep it strictly professional between the two of them, to not even venture into conversations that could take on a personal bent. To avoid a trip down a memory lane that was blighted by deep potholes full of deceit and regret.

She walked over to the table and picked up the folder that Barry had tried to show her earlier. Skimmed the executive summary that had likely been prepared by Barry’s assistant. It hit the high points of three different Vegas agencies and ended up with a paragraph that supported the recommendation of Wingman Security.

Elite security team. Top-notch references. Impressive clientele. Professional demeanor.

There was a handwritten note. “A little more expensive than the others, but consensus is, they’re worth it.” She didn’t recognize the writing.

That’s probably what had swayed Barry. He was nicer about it but came from the same school of thought as her father. If it cost more, it must be better.

Royce had clearly made a success of himself. And security made sense. She remembered him telling her that’s what he’d done in the military.

He’d been a decent and principled young man, although there were times when those qualities had been overshadowed by his beat-up leather jacket and motorcycle boots, his hair that was long enough to pull back in a ponytail and his language that was likely appropriate for the battlefield but not the boardroom.

He’d been different than anyone she’d ever met.

Now he was wearing silk pants, shirts with monogrammed cuffs and Italian shoes.

Time had changed them both. Things had been said. Actions taken. There was no going back.

Only forward. And the best thing she could do was try to get a few things done before Royce returned. Her laptop was still in her bedroom. She pulled herself away from the door.

As she crossed the threshold of her bedroom, she heard a buzz from the cell phone that she’d left on her bed. She glanced at the number and let out a sigh of relief. Charity was finally calling back.

“Hi,” she said, trying to sound casual. “How’s it going?” Their relationship was too new, too fragile, for her to chastise the young woman about taking a full day to return the call.

“Not so good,” Charity said, her voice barely a whisper.

“What’s wrong?” JC asked, picking up her pen. She always thought more clearly when she had something to write with.

“Nothing.”

Charity sounded...bad. Not that JC had that much experience talking to her. This was only their second conversation in two months. “I was hoping we could meet for lunch,” JC said.

“That’s probably not a good idea,” Charity said.

No way. She was not going to let Charity blow off the meeting. She’d told Royce that she’d come because Miatroth was a major sponsor and she was presenting. That was true, of course. But the real reason she’d agreed to attend was that it gave her a reason to be in Vegas, an opportunity to get to know Charity better.

A woman should know her sister.

“I won’t take no for an answer,” she said, still keeping her tone light.

There was silence on the other end. Then a sigh. “Listen,” Charity said. “I’m in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” JC asked, clenching her pen.

“The kind I don’t want to talk about on a cell phone. Can you come here?”

Royce had been very specific—she was not to leave the hotel. And she’d promised him. “I don’t know,” she hedged. “It’s complicated.”

“Isn’t everything?” Charity said, sounding resigned. “Never mind. I’ll figure something out. I’ll call you—”

“Where are you?” JC interrupted. She just knew that if she failed Charity this one time, the woman might never call her again. She could not risk that.

Charity rattled off an address. JC scribbled it down, then read it back.

Since the day she’d discovered her dead mother’s diary and realized that everything she’d believed to be true might not be, she’d had so many questions.

And Charity might be the only one with the answers. “I’m on my way,” JC said. “We’ll talk when I get there.”

* * *

Royce called Trey from the car and got him started on the contract. Then he swung by his apartment and packed enough dress shirts and slacks to get him through a couple days. He added a few more casual things and his toiletries. Before zipping up the bag, he added boxes of ammunition for the Glock he carried. He hoped like hell he wouldn’t need it, but he believed in being prepared.

Then he was out the door a second time. When he got to Wingman Security, the paperwork was ready.

“Rico is going to be impressed,” Trey said. “You wrapped this one up fast.”

Royce debated telling Trey that he had known the client years before. The partners didn’t keep secrets from one another.

But he just wasn’t ready to talk about it. Wasn’t ready to admit that seeing Jules had been a blow, almost taking his breath away. He folded the papers and stuffed them in his jacket pocket. “I’ll be at the Periwinkle for the next few days. Suite 1402.”

“Nice digs,” Trey said. “Have you had a chance to check out the hotel?”

“Some.” He’d looked on his way out. “Main entrance is on ground level. Both an elevator and an escalator gets you to the lobby, which is on the third floor. Elevator from there goes to floors four through forty. No key-card access required for any floor.” That meant that anybody could access any floor, which was not good. “On the fourteenth floor, there are six suites—three on each side of the elevator bay, which is in the middle of the hotel. Stairs at both ends of the hotel. Those do require a key card to open the door on any floor, including the first.” That was better news. That meant that people couldn’t simply wander in off the street, find the stairs and get anywhere in the hotel. “Hotel connects via overhead walkway to a separate three-story conference center.”

“Sounds good,” Trey said. “Stay in touch.”

“I will,” Royce said, and walked out the door.

When he got back to the Periwinkle, he pointed at the spot where he wanted his car parked and gave the valet an extra hundred bucks to convince him. Nothing impeded a quick getaway like having to wait for a car to be brought around. That was a beginner mistake.

He hadn’t even been a beginner when he’d started the agency four years ago. Not with his military experience.

He liked to think that he always had a plan, a backup plan and an it’s-going-to-hell-fast plan.

Twenty feet inside, remembering Jules’s love for dark chocolate, he extended his arm toward the sterling silver tray, only to draw it back fast. His job wasn’t to bring her candy. His job was to ensure that the CEO of Miatroth stayed safe while in Las Vegas.

He got to the fourteenth floor, walked down the hallway and rapped on the door. And waited. Just like before. This was getting old.

He knocked sharply, loud enough to make most everybody on the floor take a look out their peephole to see if it was their door getting assaulted.

When that didn’t get a response, he yanked his phone out of his pocket, jabbed his index finger on Barry Wood’s telephone number and took a deep breath.

“Hello, Royce,” Barry said.

“Are you going to open the damn door?”

“What?”

“I’m standing in the hallway. I’ve been standing in the hallway for five minutes.”

“Royce, I’m back in my room on the twelfth floor. JC had some work to do. I made sure she locked the door behind me when I left.”

A chill spread across the back of his neck, as if someone had slapped an ice bag on it. “Call the front desk. Get somebody up here with a key. But text me her cell number first.”

Royce hung up and waited for the text. It came and he dialed. He heard it ring, then switch to voice mail. He swallowed. “This is Royce,” he said fast. “Call me. Please, just call me.”

He called twice more before Barry and somebody in a navy blue suit wearing an assistant manager name tag showed up. He waited impatiently while the man used his key to open the door. Then he was into the suite, moving swiftly through the rooms.

She wasn’t there.

Her clothes were still in the closet. Her sundry items still on the bathroom counter. Her stupid phone on the bedside table.

No signs of struggle.

He turned to the manager. “I need to know if Ms. Cambridge left this hotel and I need to know it five minutes ago.”

“Can you describe her?”

Right down to the heart-shaped tattoo on her left inside thigh. “Five-six. A hundred and twenty pounds. Dark hair, above the collar. Fair complexion. Very dark blue eyes. She’s...beautiful.”

The man relayed the information to whoever he’d dialed on his cell phone. From what Royce could tell, the call got transferred a couple times. Finally, the man nodded. “She got into a cab about twenty minutes ago. By herself. Seemed fine. Gave the valet a five-dollar tip.”

At these kind of places, the valet gave the cab driver the instructions. “Does he remember the address?”

Royce waited impatiently while the question was asked again and answered. The manager nodded. “Bell Street and Howard Avenue.”

Royce knew Vegas like the back of his hand. There could be absolutely no good reason for Jules to be in that part of town. Drugs were sold there. But not the kind you bought with your prescription card.

Add in the guns and the human trafficking and you had all the things that tarnished Sin City’s sparkle.

He was running for the elevator when he heard Barry call from behind.

“What are you going to do?”

“Whatever it takes,” he said.

Chapter 4

Sweat was running down the back of JC’s neck by the time the cab came to a complete stop. She’d wanted to ask the driver to turn down his heater, but for the last fifteen minutes she’d listened to the man, who was probably fifty in a world where fifty didn’t look like thirty, quietly beg the person on the other end of the phone to please let his mother keep her dog. He’d promised repeatedly to replace the carpet that said dog must have ripped up.

Her own mom had loved her little Yorkie. And after she’d died, the dog had never been the same, even though JC had watched her father try to woo the dog over. Instead, the animal had seemed to mope around her parents’ home for months until one night the little guy had fallen asleep and never woken up.

She’d figured he’d died of a broken heart. She’d understood the feeling. The loss of Lara Cambridge had been sudden and very horrible.

“Twenty-six fifty,” he said.

She gave him a hundred and got out of the cab.

He rolled down his window. “I don’t have change, lady.”

“I don’t want any,” she said.

It was enough that for a brief second, the man’s tense posture, the stiff way he held his head, it all seemed to relax. He rolled his window up. Stopped halfway.

“Best be careful in this neighborhood,” he said. Then he pulled away, leaving her alone. Cars, mostly old, were parked on both sides of the street. There was little grass and only a few trees to soften the rough appearance of the small wood-framed houses that lined the road. A big dog running behind a chain-link fence barked, startling her. She saw a swing set in one yard with a rusty slide that couldn’t possibly be safe for a child.

Across the street, several houses up, she saw an old woman wearing a housedress, her back to the street, sweeping her sidewalk. She glanced again at the scrap of paper where she’d written down the address and Charity’s brief directions. Apartments on the corner. Had to be the three five-story brick buildings that were bunched together as if there might be safety in numbers.

She’d been so distracted after talking to Charity that she’d run out of the hotel without her phone. Hadn’t realized it until she was already blocks from there. If she had it, a quick call to Charity would have made it easier. Instead, it took her several minutes to identify that apartment 302 was in the middle building. She walked across the yard that was more weeds than grass, grateful that she’d pulled on her flat-heeled boots before leaving the hotel. She was almost at the door when she saw a police car cruise by.

It was the kind of neighborhood that likely required regular patrol. There were two officers but neither seemed to glance her direction. Eyes were focused straight ahead.

She reached for the handle of the glass door that looked as if someone had thrown a slice of pizza at it, hadn’t been happy with their aim and tried it again. That or it was dried vomit.

She was sticking with pizza.

Inside, there was a very small lobby, maybe five feet by five feet. Mailboxes, thirty of them, lined one wall. Directly across was the elevator that looked a hundred years old, which she thought was likely not possible, since the building had probably been built in the seventies or eighties. But the painted doors were scratched and dented and when they opened, the smell of urine was oppressive. She got in and pressed the three with her elbow.

The idea that Charity was living in the place made her sick. And the knowledge that if circumstances had been different it might have been her instead made her arms feel heavy as the elevator slowly climbed to the third floor.

When the doors opened, the heat hit her. How could it feel as if it was eighty-five in the hallway when it was fifty degrees outside? She quickly glanced both directions. All five doors were closed.

She found apartment 302 at the end of the hall. Stood outside the door, her fist raised to knock.

She had some idea what to expect. Charity had no social media accounts, at least that she’d been able to find. But the private investigator she’d hired had unearthed a senior class picture of the girl taken six years ago.

She’d stared at that photo for weeks that had turned into months, working up her nerve. The idea that she was opening a door that might never be fully shut again was a bit terrifying. She could be inviting trouble into her life, into her father’s life. Maybe unnecessarily.

She’d almost managed to convince herself that it was too great a risk, that it didn’t matter. But in the end, she’d realized that she had to know. She had to know if what her mom had believed to be true was indeed fact.

Had to know the extent of her father’s betrayal.

She pressed a hand flat against her stomach, which was rumbling with nerves. What was Charity going to think of her? If she’d done any searching, she’d have seen plenty of JC. Miatroth’s recent clinical trials in the war against pancreatic cancer had gone amazingly well, and in the last month, JC had been interviewed many times.

She’d have preferred to orchestrate a meeting, to set it up just so to give her and Charity the optimal opportunity to get to know each other. But Charity’s admission that she was in trouble had changed all that.

Her plan was to meet Charity, find a solution to whatever trouble she was in and get back to the hotel before Royce returned so that he never had to know she’d left in the first place.

Otherwise, he was going to have one more reason to believe that she couldn’t be trusted.

JC knocked sharply on the door.

It swung open. And there she was.

Charity had big dark eyes that seemed to fill her narrow face. Her straight hair was almost black, much darker than it had been in her senior class picture, and hung down past her shoulders. There was a silver ring at the edge of her right eyebrow and her nose was pierced. Those were also new in the last six years. She was wearing a shapeless olive green cotton dress with a drawstring waist and flip-flops.

Too thin, almost waiflike, and JC’s first impulse was to feed her. “Hello,” said JC. Should she hug her? Nothing about Charity’s body language told her that would be the right move. She settled for extending her hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m JC...uh...Juliana, but I go by JC.”

Charity didn’t move. Instead, she glanced at JC’s extended arm, then settled her gaze back on JC’s face. The silence stretched on.