Her Bodyguard

“Okay, well, let me tell you why not. For starters, Mahler’s not a bodyguard.” And that was only for starters.

Lara tipped her head in a tiny gesture that meant, “So what?” She reached for his wrist and turned it, making a comic face at the time on his watch, then nudged him ahead of her out the door—as if he were the one who’d been delaying them. “Does it ever occur to you,” she said lightly, following him into the bedroom, “that four months have passed since anyone tried to...hurt me?”

“I haven’t exactly given anyone a chance,” he reminded her. And if she hadn’t snuck out onto Cliff Walk without him that morning in May, no one would have laid a hand on her then. “But aren’t you forgetting your pen pal?” She’d received two letters since her fall, five before, for a total of seven.

Those disturbing letters, with their effusive admiration, their seething frustration, ominously mounting expectations, coy allusions to death and violence, had been sent by a fan who signed herself Sarah XXX, and had persuaded Lara to consult him in the first place.

Lara looked stubborn. “I’m not so sure they’re connected to...Cliff Walk.”

This was an old, old argument between them. “I’m not sure they’re not. And even if we do have two separate problems—two crazies—that only strengthens my point. You need another bodyguard, not a ditzy aerobics instructor.”

“If I’m to stay cooped up indefinitely at Woodwind, I’m more in danger of losing my girlish figure than my life! Gillian would be a big help there.”

“Any competent BG can train with you, if that’s what you—”

“I don’t want a drill sergeant, Trace. I want a—” She paused, tears gathering suddenly in her wonderful eyes, then blew out a big gusty breath and gave him a wavering smile. “I want a friend, okay? All my real friends are back on the set in New York, you know. Nowadays I only have you, and you’re useless for the girl stuff.”

“Thanks, I think.” He ushered her to the door of the suite, stepped out first and glanced both ways. She made her usual face at him. More and more she was considering him a worrywart, his precautions a nuisance. They walked down the hall to the tiny elevator installed in a dumbwaiter shaft and he waited till the elevator door had closed behind them. “Look, Lara, you hired me to protect you. Well, it’s my considered professional advice that you still need protection.”

She mulled that over while they walked through the house, out through the kitchen door to the carriage house that served as a garage. She waited obediently at a safe distance while he inspected, then started the car—he didn’t expect bombs with this kind of situation but why take the chance?—then she settled onto the front seat beside him. “You know, it...wouldn’t have happened if anyone else had been there to witness it or to scream. I mean, that was the act of a coward, wouldn’t you say—jumping out from behind me like that and...?” Her voice trailed away.

He nearly took her hand where it lay fisted on the seat between them, then suppressed the impulse. Brave girl, he applauded her silently. This was the first time she’d broached the fall of her own accord. Every other time, he’d had to lead her through it, word by halting word.

He didn’t agree with her assessment, though. Someone had jumped out of the bushes behind her as she jogged or had overtaken her silently. Had—in broad daylight!—gripped Lara’s hair with one hand, close to her nape so she couldn’t look back. Had grasped the waist cord of her sweatpants with the other hand, then forced her, step by struggling step, over the cliff edge. To his mind, the act took nerve, determination—and terrible hatred. It wasn’t the act of a coward, however it might comfort her to think so. It was the act of a risk taker.

Worse yet, a well-organized, premeditated risk taker, who’d chosen his or her place of ambush with intelligence and care—a gap in the bushes, a spot where the path skirted the drop-off, where twists in the trail blocked the view at both ends.

“Gillian’s a big girl,” Lara went on when he didn’t speak. “If she’d been there with me, no one would ever have dared...”

Yes, Gillian was a big girl—five-nine or -ten. And despite her slenderness, if she taught aerobics, tai chi, she’d be strong for her size... Strong enough to shove a smaller woman off a cliff? Definitely.

“How about a compromise?” he said, instead. “It may take me a week or two to find a female BG you can live with. In the meantime, why don’t you hire one of the other applicants—”

“No. I want to hire Gillian.”

As the gates swung ponderously inward, he studied her exquisite profile. Her chin was tipped in defiance, her arms crossed tightly across her chest. He swore to himself, then pulled out onto the avenue and stepped on the gas. For weeks he’d been silently rooting for her, hoping her spirit would mend along with her bones. But why did she have to regain her spunk today of all days? “Is there something you’re not telling me about Mahler?” he asked as they passed the Newport Casino, which had the oldest grass tennis courts in America. “You’re sure you’ve never met her before?”

“I...” Lara shook her head finally. “It’s f-funny, because that’s what it feels like, but no...I’m sure not.”

Under stress, she had a charming hint of a stutter. The question was what was he missing here? “Then why her, Lara? You didn’t even ask her how fast she types, whether she’s computer savvy, if she can—”

“I think she’d be good for me.”

Said with ominous finality. You could give a client advice, but you couldn’t make her take it, Trace reminded himself. The cardinal rule of his profession and the most frustrating. He could push no further. He could give Lara an ultimatum: insist on Gillian, and you’ll have to get yourself a new bodyguard. But he wasn’t ready to do that. For one thing, hiring Gillian Mahler might be no more than Lara’s harmless whim.

Or it might, just might, prove suicidal.

Either way, he’d stayed too long on this assignment to quit now. He meant to see it through till Lara was freed from danger. Unlike most security firms, the Brickhouse credo was that they solved the client’s problem; they didn’t just make their money off it.

And if Gillian was the problem?

Well, he’d meant to investigate her anyway. He just hadn’t expected his prime suspect to be dropped in his lap. Trace smiled at the image—couldn’t help himself—then glanced at Lara.

“All right. You’re the boss, boss.”

The smile she gave him was a fair trade—more than fair—for all the headaches this whim was bound to cost him in the end. They didn’t speak again until he turned into the parking lot across from the Newport Hospital.

“You asked me to tell you if I ever remembered anything else about that morning,” Lara murmured. “And something did come back to me a little while ago while I was brushing my hair. The runner I saw that morning out on Cliff Walk?”

The unidentified runner, sex unknown, wearing a hooded orange sweatshirt, who’d passed Lara only minutes before her attack. Trace’s best bet for her assailant. It would have been easy to spin around and follow Lara back through the fog, catch her just as she passed the fatal gap... “Yes,” he said without inflection. Come on, Lara. Give me the goods and I’ll nail the creep.

“I told you I thought it was a college sweatshirt, with University of something with an M—Michigan, Minnesota, Montana?—printed on the chest.”

“You did.”

“It was University of Miami.”

“You’re sure of that?” he said quietly. Her recall of the last few minutes before the accident was piecemeal and fuzzy, a result of either head trauma or sheer terror.

“Absolutely.”

He parked the car and turned to look at her. “So what brought it back to mind?” Sometimes the association that sparked the memory was more telling than the clue itself.

“D-don’t know. It just came to me.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Dearest Lara-Mommy,

Something told me that today I’d be SURE to get a letter from you!! I went to my mailbox four times—one. two, three, FOUR—but it never came. At least, the man behind the counter said it didn’t come. I’m starting to wonder about that guy. Could he be stealing my mail?!! He stares at me every time I come in now. But maybe that’s just because he thinks I look EXACTLY like the famous TV star Lara Leigh? People are always, I mean ALWAYS, staring at me on the street and thinking that. I stopped and gave one woman who was staring my autograph the other day. She thought that was so NICE of me to give it to her without her even asking.

But then, I’m not conceited like some people we know. And all I want to know is, WHY do I have to keep asking you for a letter? Asking and asking and asking and ASKING for one...CRUMMY...LETTER—what kind of mother makes her daughter beg for just the scraps—any old scrap—of her love? Just a crumb of attention? I guess the same kind of mom who sells her baby to finance her way through med school, huh?

Well, I’m getting very, very tired of asking. Tired of walking to my mailbox, then home again, then back again, then—I know every line in the sidewalk on the way to my mailbox. I play Step on a Crack and You’ll Break Your Mother’s BACK. Do you remember that game? It’s a children’s game. If you’d been there for me, Lara-Mommy, instead of devoting all your selfish life to your lousy CAREER, we could have played it together. And maybe then, if you’d been there to guide me I’d have amounted to something. Is that it? Is that why you won’t answer my letters anymore? Because you’re ashamed of me?

I promise you won’t be when we meet. Soon. It’s time for a mother and daughter reunion, don’t you think?

But till then,

WRITE ME, YOU BITCH! (HA-HA—Just kidding!!!) your loving Sarah XXX

WITH A SHUDDER of disgust, Trace dropped the letter on his desk. He stood, switched off the lamp, then moved to the window and leaned out, greedily breathing in the sweet night air, as if the letter’s cloying brew of need and hatred had contaminated his lungs as well as his mind.

His office looked out on the front grounds of Woodwind. Even with his thoughts elsewhere, his eyes roved automatically over the darkened lawn below, seeking movement, any shape that departed from the normal outlines of the lush landscaping. Nearly midnight and not even a skunk waddled across the lawn in search of grubs.

He glanced back to his desk. He’d been combing through Sarah XXX’s letters for the past hour, searching for any clue he might have overlooked. That letter was number four of the collection—rather, a copy of number four, since the original was filed with the Newport police. The stalking case against Sarah XXX had to be meticulously documented so that if—when, he corrected himself—Trace finally tracked her down, they could prosecute.

Like all the other notes, number four was a textbook example of the kind of mash note celebrity stalkers sent the objects of their twisted affections. Whatever the words, the underlying theme was the same: terrible, unappeasable neediness. The echoing emptiness of a person who has no identity in the normal sense of the word. Because for whatever pathetic reason—neglect, abuse, psychological dysfunction?—the typical stalker possesses no self.