Assignment: Bodyguard

Shane pushed her back down. “Not now. Stay down.”

“How many shooters?” she asked again, her hand now gripping his arm.

He actually appeared shocked. He blinked, looked back at her. “Only one, so far. And if you’ll let go of my arm, he won’t be around much longer.”

“Are you going to kill him right here?”

He watched the still room for movement. “Would you prefer I take him out back and throw him to the hogs?”

“There are no hogs in downtown Austin,” she replied, her words growing stronger. “But I know where a mean, old bull lives.”

He shot her a worried smile. “You’re in shock. It’ll pass.”

“I am not in shock. I’m mad,” she said on a hiss of breath. “And I’ve got a cramp in my foot.”

“Well, I wish that’s all you had to worry about, Katherine. Now let go of me and stay down and we’ll talk about the mean bull later.”

She finally released his arm. “What’s the plan?”

“I’m not quite sure,” he whispered back. “I’m making it up as I go.”

“Some bodyguard you are.”

“Yes, right on that.” He flipped the table onto its side so fast she didn’t even see it fall. A few people down around them gasped but Shane held up a hand to silence them. “Get behind this and stay here. Do not move.” And then, in a flash of black, he was rolling away from her and gone.

“Shane?”

He didn’t answer. She heard people whispering in fear all around her then glanced up for the first time to find Trudy huddled with a man behind the buffet table—the head of catering of all people. Motioning, Kit held up a thumb toward her friend.

Trudy returned the thumbs-up and shot her a wan smile. Then Kit heard a loud thud, followed by a deep groan. She closed her eyes, praying that Shane wasn’t dead. She willed him not to die, not tonight while he was trying to save her. She couldn’t bear that kind of guilt, especially after she’d tried so hard to ignore him and discourage him. But Shane was a good man. She could see that now. He had such a nice smile and he had this air of self-assurance that she’d never witnessed in another man. Not even Jacob.

“Jacob,” she whispered, her heart breaking with longing, her head down and her hand over her mouth. “Jacob, I need you here. Why did you go away?” She didn’t voice her prayer, but heard it clearly in her head. Dear Lord, I need You to help all of us. Don’t let anyone die tonight.

She saw a masculine hand set against a crisp white cuff reaching toward her. The cuff link winked bright and bold and looked like some sort of ancient coat-of-arms. Katherine blinked, thinking this must all be a dream. But the hand reached down toward her with an impatient shake so she had no choice but to take hold of it. She reached up and felt the man’s fingers wrapping around hers, a stirring warmth penetrating the numbness that had frozen her entire system. She gazed up and into Shane’s crystal blue eyes.

“Come with me,” he said, his tone curt and no-nonsense.

Katherine got up but stumbled, her knees refusing to hold her. Then she was swept clear of the floor and into his arms. Wrapping her hands around his neck, she turned away from the few people still hiding in the room and trained her eyes on him. Only him. She heard Shane barking orders, heard her father speaking loudly to the hotel security.

Shane’s voice carried through the ballroom. “One shooter, secured. He went down on the right side of the stage, still alive. I’ll give a full statement later. I’m getting her out of here.”

The room sounded with cries and feet rustling and people running across the marble floor. They were all asking rapid-fire questions, men angry and women crying. The music would not start back up now, of course. It had been put silent by a killer’s intent.

Katherine heard all of it through the muffled protection of Shane’s rock-solid shoulder bearing the weight of her head, but she couldn’t face the people and the questions and…she didn’t dare ask what had happened to the other man.

“He’s still unconscious. But I reckon he won’t talk when he does wake up.”

Shane looked from Gerald Barton to the two other men sitting in the darkly paneled study. They were back at the CHAIM fortress called Eagle Rock, in the secluded hill country just on the outskirts of Austin.

“He will soon enough,” Alfred Anderson said. “The Austin police will see to that.”

John Simpson grunted then took a long swig of coffee. “But he might rather be charged, tried and put away for a long time. Because if he speaks, he knows he could die inside prison or out. Smells like a deliberate hit to me.”

Gerald got up to stomp around the massive conference room. “At least she’s safe here.” Then he glanced at Shane. “She is safe here, isn’t she, Warwick?”

Shane used to be sure about such things, but tonight, he wasn’t so sure. He’d given a detailed statement to the locals and he’d gone over everything with his CHAIM supervisors. But something didn’t seem right. His ulcer was shouting a warning with quick spasms of heat. Pulling out a roll of antacid tablets, he chewed one then said, “I have some concerns, sir.”

Gerald looked affronted. “C’mon, Knight, you helped rebuild the security system in this place. Kissie and you both said no one can get in here.”

“What if someone is already in here?” Shane said. “It’s happened before.”

Gerald nodded. “He’s right. Devon Malone almost lost Lydia Cantrell because one of the servants wasn’t just here to fold napkins and plan meals. Tried to smother the poor girl with a pillow.”

“We’ve tightened things since then,” Alfred said. “My wife made sure of that. She was not happy that we’d let an assassin serve us dinner, let me tell you.”

In spite of the image of tiny, spry Lulu Anderson being peeved about a renegade butler, Shane still had his doubts. Something about this whole night didn’t make sense.

They’d made sure the hotel ballroom was secure, which meant someone on the inside had set this up. That was the only clear explanation. Or maybe he wasn’t thinking very clearly since he couldn’t stop thinking about Katherine Atkins. Think about the assignment, not the client, he reminded himself. He should have learned from past experiences to stay focused.

And yet, he couldn’t get the image out of his mind of Katherine’s hand reaching up to take his. Or the feel of her soft skin brushing against his.

“I just want to be sure we’re doing the right thing, sir. Another location might be more advisable at this point since we could have been followed. We need to get her away from Austin.”

Eagle Rock was Fort Knox—impenetrable and tightly secure, with everything from fingerprint and facial scanners to keypads with state-of-the-art biometric security. Which is why Shane had brought Katherine straight here, rather than take her to her home in Austin. This sprawling ranch-style mansion held eight bedrooms and as many adjoining baths, an industrial size kitchen and a long dining room, a huge den and several smaller offices, not to mention several outbuildings and a private airstrip. Each of those areas could be sealed off from the rest with a flip of a switch. Not exactly a great way to live, but necessary in their line of work.

And usually, CHAIM agents only came here for conferences and training sessions, or to be interrogated when an operation had gone wrong. Which it almost had tonight.

“I didn’t do my job tonight,” he said, whirling to stare at the three men who, although retired, were still listed as his immediate superiors in a crisis such as this. “I should have been more vigilant.”

“Warwick, we’ve gone over this,” Gerald said. “I was there in the room, too, son, and I never saw this coming.” His shrug said it all. “We checked everyone who entered that place, especially the hired help. I can’t figure how that man got past security with that gun.”

“That’s just it,” Shane said, logic coloring his words. “He didn’t. Someone had to give him the gun or put it where he could find it. Someone from the inside.”

“Well, thankfully we got the man alive. And you saved my daughter’s life,” Gerald replied.

“But I was assigned to watch her,” Shane said, looking down at his discarded, black bow tie, his mind whirling with images of people running and screaming and a lone gunman standing near an exit door, his sleek gun held with one hand just underneath the shield of his other raised arm. And aimed right toward Katherine Atkins.

“If that camera flash hadn’t gone off, she would have died right there beside me.”

“But that’s the fact, Warwick,” John said. “You were right there beside her and your quick actions saved her. And a lot more people, too.”

Gerald nodded, his fingers thumping on the table. “And that fancy stun gun you carry around put the shooter out cold. Fancy little gadget, that thing. Left a bullet hole in that man’s shoulder but kept him alive for questioning.”

Well, a Glock .357 with a suppressor wasn’t exactly a stun gun, but this was Texas after all. These men were better suited to rifles and shotguns, or maybe six-shooters.

Shane went back over the details. “It was chaos at first, but a lot of the guests did manage to get out of the room. The few who were left stayed behind tables and doors. Thank goodness we only had two wounded and no one dead.”

Yet he couldn’t get the memories of shattering glass and frightened screams out of his mind. Nor the image of Kit reaching up a hand to take his after he’d felled the crouching shooter, her eyes locking with his when he’d lifted her into his arms and carried her out of the room. He could still smell the scent of lilies on his clothes.