The Socialite and the Bodyguard

He had a feeling that what he’d thought she was, what he’d seen of her on TV, was going to turn out to be her organization, a persona made up by a full staff. Her organization—the people around her, her schedule, her image—was like a machine. Since they’d met yesterday afternoon, he’d caught glimpses of the woman inside that machine, and was beginning to wonder if she wasn’t trapped in there.

Don’t get sucked in.

He took a drink of mineral water as Mike and Dave returned to their favorite subject and went on about the bloody combat that football really was, and how they were all warriors. Part of him itched to set them straight—if only to distract himself from Kayla—but another part of him knew it wasn’t worth it.

Stick to the job, Welkins had said.

Trouble was, she was the job. And he would have liked only too much to stick real close to her.

If he had any brains, he would leave her to Dave and Mike, walk on back to coach and ask the first pretty woman he saw if she wanted to join the mile-high club with him. He had to get this restlessness out from under his skin.

Except, with Kayla Landon next to him, he didn’t feel like walking away.

“I’m thinking the threats to the dog might have something to do with her. Could be someone wants us distracted while he goes after Kayla,” he told the two men, interrupting a playoff story.

There was a brief pause as they gave him some hard looks.

“We protect her. You stay out of the way and keep your eyes on Tsini,” Mike’s eyes flashed as he issued his warning at last, the true reason for their coming over.

The two had been eyeing him since he’d shown up at the apartment last night. They obviously didn’t like the idea of anyone sticking his nose in their business.

Nash ground his teeth, but somehow managed a nod, silently cursing his latest assignment all the way to Hades. Ivan prevented further friction by calling the two bodyguards to the front to settle some dispute between him and Fisk. Then Nash was finally able to turn his attention to the e-mail.

He’d seen her type in her password earlier and had no trouble getting in now. She had only one unread message.

The sender field was blank. The subject field said: Did you like my gift?

He could have waited until she woke and asked her to open the message and let him look at it. Instead, he reached over and clicked.

No text, only an attachment. He had to wait until the program ran a virus scan before he could open the picture file.

The image was grainy, but good enough to make out what was important. The picture showed Kayla’s living room with her sitting in her pod chair and Nash on the couch, holding up the blue fur coat.

Could have been taken with a cell phone. By someone who’d been in Kayla’s apartment yesterday when he’d arrived. Which meant all the people who traveled with them in first class right this minute. The cooking-show crew had stayed in the kitchen the whole time. Her staff had been coming and going from the den. And this picture had been taken from there.

By one of her people. One of her friends.

Oh, hell. She was really going to hate him for telling her that, he thought as his blood heated. If there was one thing he couldn’t forgive, it was betrayal. In his eyes, maybe because at the core he would always remain a marine, betrayal of a teammate was the ultimate sin. He couldn’t stand the thought that a member of her own staff would betray her.

And he couldn’t even talk to her about this right away. He needed a chance to observe her interacting with the staff first. Once she realized that whoever was harassing her was one of them, she would relate to them differently. He wanted to get a fair assessment of her relationship with each and every person before suspicion hit her and she pulled back.

He looked at the people in first class. Nobody was watching him. The message had been sent in the last couple of minutes. But anyone could have sent a saved message with a surreptitious click on their cell phone, just reaching for a second into their pockets. Or they could have timed delivery set up from a remote computer.

That was a trail Dave and Mike might not have been able to trace back, but Nash had his sources. He forwarded the note to his own e-mail account, then deleted the original.

He didn’t have the previous threatening notes with him. They were already at a lab, along with the fur coat, to be dusted for fingerprints. They weren’t much to start with—pictures of poodles printed off the Internet, DIE in big block letters printed underneath. But now he had one more clue.

It should have made him happy. Except that one thing about this whole setup bugged him. Why would the bastard send a picture like that? Sure, the photo would make Kayla nervous, would make her feel she wasn’t safe even in her own home. But it also narrowed the field of suspects considerably. And that was decidedly not to the sender’s advantage.

HE DIDN’T WANT to kill her. He looked out the plane’s window and saw her face even in the clouds. He loved her. He’d hoped that harassing that dumb dog of hers would distract her from the “accidents.”

But she wasn’t distracted, she was thinking, thinking, thinking. He could see it in her eyes every time he looked at her. And she was smart. He couldn’t let her figure it all out. She would never forgive him.

He’d set up a last warning for her this morning, but as she was talking with the new guy, Nash, in the back while the pilot announced that soon they would be landing, he saw that fire in her eyes. And he knew what they were talking about. She was never going to quit.

He reached for his cell phone and sent a text message. He couldn’t say he didn’t regret it, but it really was time for plan B.

NASH LOOKED around the show area on the first floor of the hotel, checking out the various stations, the seating section for the audience and the ring. Special lighting, microphones, the judges’ table—the setup was fancy enough for a Miss America pageant. Except this show was for dogs.

A waste of pageantry as far as he was concerned. Who would want to look at furry canines when they could be looking at hot women in bikinis?

He finished recon and walked back toward the handful of smaller meeting rooms that were set up as storage areas for the dog show. Tom, the handler, had put some hair product for Tsini in his carry-on by accident, and since it was over the allowed ounces, airport security had confiscated the bottle. Tsini needed the special coat-shine spray or whatever for tomorrow so everyone was scrambling around. Tom and Dave were scouring the city’s specialty pet shops while Mike and Kayla went to the storage rooms that contained extra supplies for cases just like this.

Nash headed to the back to find them and met Mike halfway there.

“Got it?”

Mike shook his head. “Kayla sent me off to find one of the organizers. Maybe they could tell us if there’s any and where exactly it’s at. Everything’s a mess back there.”

“I’ll help her.” He quickened his pace. Mike shouldn’t have left her alone, not even for a few minutes.

Kayla had specifically forbidden him to put the fear of God in her staff. She didn’t want everyone nervous, didn’t want Greg nervous, didn’t want anyone on her staff offended. They were supposed to protect her, but from where he was standing it looked as though so far she was doing all the protecting.