Bodyguard With A Badge

She’d let her guard down, created a new life for herself. It hadn’t been a full life, but it had been hers. And now it was over.

Glancing at Andre as he helped her down the trail, carefully avoiding any sharp sticks or rocks on the trail because of her bare feet, tears blurred her vision. Not out of fear, but because someone cared enough to bother helping her. She blinked them away.

Now wasn’t the time to get emotional because some guy was doing his job, because apparently some members of law enforcement really were on the side of the victims. And now really wasn’t the time to fixate on the feel of his strong hand grasping the top of her hip as he led her to all those blinking red and blue lights in front of her office building. But she couldn’t help but be hyperaware of the pure masculine scent of him beside her, the ridiculously hard bicep pressing into her back.

She dragged her feet as they hit the concrete, glancing up at the third floor where all her colleagues were, terrified because of her. And she realized Andre had carefully led her to a vehicle on a path that kept her completely out of view of the windows up on the third floor.

“Hop in here,” he told her, holding open the back of an SUV with tinted windows. When she hesitated, he added, “It’s my boss’s vehicle. You’ll be okay. It’s surrounded by my team, and there’s no way anyone’s getting past them. When this is over, we’ll get you home safely.”

She hesitated once more, because she could never go home again. Not to any of the places she’d ever called home over the years.

Then, the tat, tat, tat of a semiautomatic boomed, followed by two more shots in quick succession, and someone let out a piercing scream.

Juliette spun toward the sound, dreading what she was going to see—who had gotten hurt because of her. But she never found out, because Andre shoved her into the SUV and dove on top of her.

The weight of him flattened all the air from her lungs, and the awareness she’d felt earlier when he’d simply had his hand on her waist multiplied, making her skin seem to buzz wherever it touched his. Even though he was simply protecting her, she was suddenly keenly aware of how long it had been since someone had held her.

She tried not to squirm and prayed she wasn’t flushed deep red as he spoke into some kind of communications device she realized went from his ear to a microphone at his neck. Then just as quickly, he was helping her up.

She felt dazed, still trying to catch her breath as he told her, “It’s over. All of your colleagues are okay.”

“What?” The word came out breathy and filled with disbelief. How could it possibly be over that fast? And how could everyone be unharmed?

He gave her a grin that made a dimple pop on one side and said, “We’re good at what we do.”

She stared back at him, taking in all the details she hadn’t noticed before: his cleanly shaved head, the cleft in his chin, the complete focus in his eyes. Beneath that, genuine warmth, as if he really cared what happened to her and it wasn’t just his job to keep her safe for the next few minutes.

Don’t fall for him, she chanted in her head. She’d just met him. She knew nothing about him, other than that he was willing to put his life on the line for others.

She’d fallen for Dylan that way: instantly. A sudden, ridiculous attraction that she’d mistakenly thought was love. She’d fallen for all the things she thought she’d seen in him that had turned out not to be true. And she was seeing all those qualities in Andre’s eyes right now: the goodness, the honesty, the protectiveness. Except she suspected with Andre, they were actually real.

His gaze seemed to bore into her and then she saw something else: a reciprocal glint of attraction. It made her want to lean closer and tell him the truth about what had happened today. To go through the process she knew they’d want: hours of questioning at some police station or maybe an FBI office, to learn why hired gunmen were after her. To trust that maybe this time someone would believe her story. That maybe this time things could really change. But she couldn’t take the chance.

He smiled at her and gave her a hand out of the vehicle.

One of the other agents, dressed as if he was going to war, slapped him on the back and said, “Why don’t you give her a ride back to Quantico? The locals are asking us to take the lead, since these gunmen might be professionals. We’re going to need a debrief.”

She could tell from Andre’s dimpled smile that when the questioning was over, he was going to ask her out. In another life, she would have said yes.

Too bad she’d never see him again after today.

* * *

“AREN’T YOU GOING to stick around and see if you can drive this woman home?” Scott teased, just as Andre thought he’d made a clean getaway.

Andre spun around in the Quantico parking lot, where they’d driven after the situation was contained. The gunman who’d fired in that office had been shot by one of HRT’s operators, but the other two had been brought in wearing handcuffs. They had both gone silent as soon as they were arrested, demanding lawyers, but the FBI had been able to ID them quickly anyway, because they had criminal records. Strangely, the woman Scott was talking about had gone just as silent as the gunmen. She claimed she didn’t know why they were after her, when clearly she did.

“Which woman?” Andre parried, even though he knew Scott wasn’t about to let him off the hook that easily.

“Juliette. Or was it Mya?”

That was the other problem. The woman he’d rescued on that hill had identified herself as Juliette Lawson. So had her colleagues. But the name scrawled next to her picture that the gunmen had all been carrying was Mya.

When they’d mentioned it to Juliette, she’d gone pale and made a beeline for the women’s bathroom, where she’d been for the past hour, either sick or just hiding out.

The fact was, Andre had planned to ask her out. From the second their eyes had met inside his boss’s SUV, he’d known he was in trouble. Sure, she was gorgeous, with those wide hazel eyes framed with insanely dark lashes, and all that long, golden-tinted brown hair that had come loose from her messy bun when he’d tackled her. The soft, womanly curves that had cushioned his fall were pretty tempting, too. But what had really done him in was the way she’d stared back at him, the look in her eyes equal parts vulnerable and strong.

He’d driven her back to Quantico, making small talk on the ride, trying to get to know her a little better. She’d seemed shy, shell-shocked, but definitely interested. He’d intended to wait around until the regular agents had finished questioning her, then ask if he could make a detour to dinner on the way back to her car. But that was when he’d thought she was a simple victim.

He should have known from the beginning there was more to it, because the crime itself was so strange. Why send three heavily armed men after one small woman in a third-floor office building?

In fact, why do it in such a high-profile way at all? Why not have one man grab her on the way to her car before she made it into the office?

She was involved in something. The fact was, she was probably guilty of something. And while a woman with a little mystery had always been a draw for him, a woman who would break the law he worked to uphold was of no interest.

Andre shrugged at his partner, who’d been his friend too long not to see exactly what Andre wasn’t saying. “I’m not sure I need that kind of drama.”

“There’s always Nadia,” Scott said.

Nadia Petrova was a fellow agent, who worked as a weapons training specialist at the FBI Academy, which was located at Quantico with HRT. She’d made no secret of her interest in Andre, and it was getting more and more difficult to sidestep her hints without hurting her feelings.

“I think I want to be the one in the relationship with the bigger guns,” Andre joked. The truth was, Nadia was nice enough, but there just wasn’t any spark.

Scott snorted and slapped him on the arm. “All right. Well, after these last couple of calls back-to-back, I’m heading home. Froggy says you can do the same if you want. The other team is up now.”

The HRT teams swapped off, so one was always on call if any emergencies came in from across the country while the other teams trained. After the week they’d had, with seemingly one crisis after the next, Andre was ready for some low-key exercises. Like rappelling out of helicopters and practicing with his MP5 for mock hostage situations inside one of the old 747-airplane hulls they kept on hand.

“See you tomorrow,” Andre said, digging around in his duffel for wherever he’d stuck his keys as Scott hopped in his SUV and sped away, leaving Andre alone in a lot full of cars but empty of people.

When he’d pulled into the lot a few hours ago, there had been nowhere left to park except at the very back, so he meandered that way now, still digging for his keys. It wasn’t until he was a few feet away from his sedan that his agent instincts went on high alert, warning him someone was close. Too close.

He lifted his hands into a defensive position even as his brain reminded him he was in a heavily guarded Marine base and FBI training area. Then he let out a breath and dropped his hands to his sides as he spotted Juliette—or Mya—coming around from the front of his car.

“What are you doing here?” Had she been waiting for him, crouched between the grill of his car and the big tree he’d parked underneath for a little shade? He frowned. Had she been hiding?

“Get in the car,” she said, her voice wobbly.

A smile threatened. “That’s what I was planning,” he said, starting to rethink his plan to ask her out to dinner. Except... “Shouldn’t you still be inside, talking to the case agents?”

The hand that had been wedged between her side and his car came out, pointing a Glock pistol at him. “Get in.” This time, her tone was apologetic.

He stared, dumbfounded. “Where’d you get that?” She certainly hadn’t come into Quantico with a weapon. Had she taken it off someone inside? If so, that meant she was a much bigger threat than she seemed.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she actually looked it, with her big, teary eyes and her full, trembling lips. “But we need to go. I have to get out of here, which means you’re going to drive me off the base.”

He leaned against his car, eyeing the distance between them, gauging whether he could disarm her without the gun going off. “Why don’t you tell me what this is about? Let me help you.” He kept his voice calm. It was the same tone he’d used last night with the traumatized kid who’d come out of that fire clutching his mother, after watching a bullet come through the window and take out his father.

“No. Please.” Desperation entered her tone as she shifted her awkward, double-handed hold on the gun. “Just get in, okay, and I promise I’ll let you go as soon as you drop me off where I tell you.”