The Bodyguard

She winced again. Ross knew. Not everything, but he suspected something heavy lurked beneath the surface. “Penny knows my reasons. We settled all this months ago.”

“Apparently not.” He topped off his coffee mug and offered her the carafe. “Maybe you kept her on too short a leash, Cuz.”

“Not short enough.” She waved away the offer of more coffee. “Apparently.”

“You’re a lot like the Colonel, Frankie.”

She knew Ross didn’t mean the comparison as a compliment. She scowled into the steam rising from the mug. “Contrary to what that brat says, I am not trying to ruin her life. Or run it for that matter. But she has no business getting married at her age.”

Elise Duke’s high heels clicked softly on the polished wood floor. “How are you, dear?”

Frankie shot a glare at Ross to let him know she didn’t appreciate his insinuation that she was a control freak like his father. “Where’s Penny?” She pushed away from the table, starting to rise.

Elise placed a gentle hand on Frankie’s shoulder. “It might be best if you kept your distance. She’ll speak to you tomorrow.”

Somehow, Frankie felt no surprise. Her entire chest ached as if she’d been walked on by an elephant. She slumped on the chair and sipped from the coffee mug.

“Penny and Julius are spending the week in the Honeymoon Hideaway.” Elise settled on the chair next to Frankie. Despite four grown children she looked youthful, slim and beautiful. Her serene demeanor had a calming influence. Her soft hand touching Frankie’s arm chased some of the cold from Frankie’s soul. “Stay the night with us, dear. We can have a nice visit. I haven’t seen you in far too long. Tomorrow, you and Penny can talk.”

She didn’t want to stay. She wanted to go home to her nasty old cat and sulk in peace. “Is she really pregnant, Aunt Elise?”

Elise shrugged delicately and flashed a wan smile at her son. “The child shall have two parents.”

Frankie groaned. “You don’t get it. None of you gets it. If she’s really pregnant then she’s in big trouble.”

“Now, Francine, aren’t you being a wee bit melodramatic?”

“What do you know about Julius? Did Penny tell you he’s been married before?”

“Well, no. But divorce isn’t exactly shameful—”

“It is in his case. He’s been married several times and he has kids. He doesn’t have anything to do with any of them. It’s all because of his mother. She won’t let anybody get between her and her baby boy.”

Ross cleared his throat. His eyebrows raised in a skeptical quirk. “Julius is old enough to make his own decisions.”

“He’s weak. His mother isn’t. She’s rich, spoiled and selfish. Julius always does exactly what she says. If she can’t buy off his wives, she scares them off.”

“Come on.” Ross rolled a hand as if urging her to get to the punch line. “She can’t be that bad.”

“She’s worse,” Frankie insisted. “Julius is weak, but Belinda is twisted. She’ll eat Penny alive.”

“CHUCKIE?” Paul’s voice strained in the darkness. “I can’t see nothing.”

Chuck paused with his shoulder pressed against the rough bark of a tree. He panted like a racehorse and his lungs ached. The trail where they’d parked the car was less than twenty feet away, but he felt as if he’d run a marathon. The lights of Elk River Lodge were visible through the trees. Still, on this moonless winter night, a blank world seemed to stretch away into eternity. The darkness squeezed him. An unconscious shudder rippled down his spine. What the hell was he doing?

He focused a flashlight in Paul’s direction. The thin beam flashed over tree trunks and made the snow glitter like diamond dust. He found Paul’s face. Eyes bulging like boiled eggs, mouth wide-open, nostrils flared, the kid looked as scared as he sounded.

“Easiest ten grand you’ll ever make,” Bo Moran had assured him.

The job sounded easy the way Bo explained it. That was before, in the warmth of the bar while he ate big, greasy cheeseburgers and the jukebox played old Eagles songs. Now here he was in the middle of nowhere, tromping through snow, five minutes away from possibly making the biggest mistake of his life. And he’d dragged Paul into it. He was supposed to take care of Paul, not set him up for a fall that could land him in prison for the rest of his life.

“Quit acting like a baby,” he whispered.

“It’s dark, Chuckie.”

“Of course it’s dark, you geek. We’re in the mountains.”

Up ahead, Bo Moran made an impatient noise. Chuck’s shoulders tensed. Chuck had talked long and hard to convince Bo that his baby brother would be an asset not a liability. Paul had the mind of a six-year-old, but he was strong and quick, and he did anything Chuck told him to do, no questions. He wondered if it was too late to change his mind, get back in the car, return to the city and forget this mess. Maybe he’d even get a real job.

“I keep hearing things, Chuckie,” Paul whined. “Bears.”

“Ain’t no bears. Come on, kid, check it out. You can see the lodge right over there. Lots of lights. Bears don’t dig lights. Right, Bo?”

“Yeah, no bears. It’s wolves that like light.”

Chuck turned the light in Bo’s direction. The man’s deep-set eyes flared red, like an animal’s. Nearly swallowed by the army fatigues he wore, his head obscured by a fur-trimmed hood, Bo looked like a kid playing soldier in the woods.. Skinny, unkempt, with sunken cheeks and a pigeon chest, his mouth pulled perpetually in a sullen scowl, he appeared easy to dismiss. Chuck knew better than to dismiss Bo Moran. Around Bo Moran, Chuck’s skin always itched, his spine always crawled. He doubted there was much in the world Bo wouldn’t do—he doubted there was much he hadn’t done already.

Chuck shifted his attention between Bo and Paul. Now that he and Paul were in, they stayed in. Life in prison would be a sweetheart deal compared to what Bo would do if crossed. “He’s just messing with you, kid,” he said. “Ain’t no wolves. Nothing bigger than squirrels around here. We’re almost there. Let’s go.”

“I can’t see nothing. I wanna go home.”

A heavy breath deflated Chuck’s chest. Paul stood over six feet, four inches tall and had a body a pro wrestler would envy, but he acted like a little kid. Chuck wondered if maybe he babied his baby brother too much.

Chuck grabbed Paul’s arm. “Hold on to my coat. Stick with me.” He kept his voice low. “And quit your griping. You’re gonna tick off Bo.”

“I’m cold.”

Chuck fished in his pockets for the silk ski masks Bo had provided for the job. Thin, but warm, they were guaranteed not to itch. “Put this on.” He waited until Paul fumbled the black mask onto his head. He helped him get the eye holes lined up properly. “Better?”

“Yeah, but I don’t like the dark,” Paul whispered in reply.

He cast a worried glance in Bo’s direction. “There’s worse things, kid. Trust me on that.” He lowered his voice to a bare whisper. “If you’re really good, I’ll make you a milk shake, okay? Peanut butter. Your favorite.”

Paul grinned behind the mask. “Okay!”

Praying Bo hadn’t heard that idiotic exchange, Chuck focused the flashlight forward and tromped onward through the snow.

“I RESPECTFULLY TENDER my resignation...” J.T. snorted and tossed down the pen. He crumpled the sheet of paper into a ball. A hook shot dropped it neatly into the waste can. It settled atop the other crumpled papers in the can.

He shoved away from the desk. Resting his elbows on his knees, he glumly surveyed the room. On the top floor of the lodge, it was small but luxurious. Tatted doilies on the dresser and folk art on the walls gave it a homey air. The bed dominated the room, looking like a gigantic pastry beneath its European-style down comforter. A bed in which he hadn’t slept well last night.

When he hadn’t been brooding about how much he hated his job, he’d been brooding about his son. Spending the week baby-sitting a pair of honeymooners wasn’t the dumbest job he’d ever had, but it ranked right up there in the top ten. It meant he couldn’t see Jamie, and that he resented deeply.

His thoughts kept traveling back to the other day when he’d visited Jamie. Dr. Trafoya, Debbie, the head nurse, and a neurologist had triple-teamed him, seeking permission, again, to remove Jamie’s feeding tube. Sweet Jamie, so shrunken and still, only half the size of a normal six-year-old, lost in a coma’s black hole.

“Even if he awakens, Mr. McKennon,” Dr. Trafoya had said, “his brain is permanently damaged. He’ll be forever an infant. He’ll never speak or walk or recognize you.”

Maybe the good doctor believed that crap, but J.T. didn’t. They had said Jamie would never breathe on his own, either, but when they took him off the respirator he’d breathed just fine. He responded to physical therapy to keep his limbs from atrophying. Sometimes he opened his eyes, and once he’d even made a noise which to J.T. had sounded very much like “Mama.”