Protect Me (20 page)

She
opened her mouth to say no, and then shut it again. She waited a moment and
reminded herself that sharing information wasn’t always bad.

“Unless
he’s changed his number, I could still call the kgosi I worked for,” Hope said
carefully. “But I don’t think - I can’t do anything for him now. I don’t see
why he would help.”

Rick
threw himself into one of the plush armchairs and steepled his hands under his
chin. Probably it should have looked ridiculous. Maybe it would have been, if
Hope didn’t know he had the money and intellect to command a thousand people.

“Information,
my dear,” he said. Then he smiled. “And I think you’re underestimating
yourself. Powerful men are people too. If he can do you a good turn, I suspect
he will.”

Hope
gave him a skeptical look; Rick stared back undaunted. He nodded at her. “Go on
then. What’s the worst that could happen? He hangs up the phone?”

There
was a logic to that she couldn’t ignore, so Hope settled for glaring while she
took her phone out of her pocket and fumbled through the contacts list.

Her
finger hovered over the call button. She looked at Rick, who was watching her
with a steady gaze. Hope bit down on the inside of her cheek. He was sure. That
would have to be enough.

The
sound of the dial was like another trigger being pulled. When a cool voice
answered in heavily accented English, Hope remembered enough to greet Thabo in
his own language.

“Ah,
Ms. Lasser! What can I do for you?” The voice on the other end of the line was
casually cautious, much as she remembered it. She swallowed.

“You
have a good memory, sir. I was… I was wondering if there were any changes over
there - if you’d heard anything, er, strange? It’s just, I’ve run into some
Afrikaners recently when I wasn’t expecting to. Not here.”

She
immediately sensed the interest on the other end of the line. “Ah, is it so?
There have been certain… rumors, yes. Ones that we were not told, but meant to
hear all the same, if you follow?”

Hope
pinched the bridge of her nose and screwed up her eyes. She wasn’t made for
talking in riddles. “I… I think so, sir. What did those rumors say?”

Thabo
hummed, his accent thick on his tongue. For a moment Hope was reminded viscerally
of dusty, fenceless plains. Of what freedom actually felt like. “They claim of
a powerful weapon. Something that we country folk cannot understand, that will
make us flee our own land.” The man’s voice took on a dark tone. “We have heard
of such things before, for fright is a very useful tool. But there seems to be
something more than simple fear behind this claim. So I find this call very
interesting. Do you know something I do not, Ms. Lasser?”

Shit.
“Well, I - that is. I think… It’s possible that Gouws is after something he…
believes my current client has access to.” There, that should be close enough
to be useful. Hope hated talking like this, where the truth was only available
in halves and quarters.

“Ah. I
would not put it past him. Willem Gouws has the honor of a drunken goat,” Thabo
said sourly.

Hope
bit back a laugh. “As you say, sir. Thank you very much for your help. I
appreciate it.”

“Of
course, Ms. Lasser. I would ask that you give me another call if you hear
something else. Yes?”

“Yes, sir.
I will do that.” She stifled a sigh. There was always a price.

She
hung up, slid the phone back in her pocket, and surveyed the room again for any
possible threats or eavesdroppers with an efficiency she barely thought. Her
mind was swirling around the idea of the dark rumor.

“Do I
get to hear what’s going on?” Rick asked, and Hope glanced up. He was smiling
patiently at her. Being jarred out of her thoughts by him didn’t irritate her,
oddly enough. In fact, she actually wanted to hear what he had to say.

She
nodded and moved closer without really thinking about it, until she could feel
the edge of his body heat, almost close enough to touch.

“There’s
this rumor going around about a weapon. Something really powerful, something
the natives can’t even imagine. Something technical, or biological maybe? It
can’t be hardware, God knows they’ve seen enough of that.”

Hope
hated being involved in these things. But Thabo’s request that she report back
with news was more than fair - after all, Thabo hadn’t needed to speak to her
in the first place.

When
she said as much to Rick, he surprised her with a short laugh before getting up
and standing close. He took her hand and tangled their fingers together.

“You
hate this stuff because you take those promises seriously.” Rick raised her
hand to his lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles, keeping eye contact
with her. “Most people don’t, darling.”

Hope
raised a skeptical eyebrow but didn’t move away; the tingling warmth of his
mouth felt too good on her skin. “If that’s so, why did he bother to ask?”

“What
do you think leaders do? Their job is to read people.” Rick squeezed her hand
and let it go. “I’m sure he’s well aware of what he can expect from you.”

This
time Hope didn’t bother to suppress her sigh. “I really hate this stuff. When
all this is over, I’m never taking on another weird case. It’s going to be all
Presidents and shoot-em-ups for me.”

Rick
hesitated and then reached out for her. “I was sort of hoping when all this was
over… you’d stay with me.”

Hope
stared at the brown-eyed, well-dressed man standing in front of his shelves and
shelves of books she’d never read. “What?”

“Look,
you’re obviously used to handling yourself, it’s not even that I think the
whole bodyguard thing is unsafe,” Rick spread his hands wide, “but if you keep
doing this, then when are we gonna see each other, exactly? You’re guarding me
now and that’s great, but after…”

“After,”
Hope repeated, staring at him blankly. This place didn’t look like her home
anymore. Rick didn’t look like - well, he’d never been hers, not really.

She’d
never belonged here, not really.

Hope
took two deliberate steps back toward the door. Her hand slipped behind her
back and her fingertips touched the doorknob. She could pull it open smoothly
like this, if she needed to.

“Not to
be rude, but you’re looking a little crazy-eyed,” Rick commented. “Are you
thinking something stupid?”

He
sounded genuinely concerned and before she could stop herself, Hope burst out
into a short laugh. She clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide with shock,
but it was too late, Rick was already laughing back without even bothering to
know what the joke was.

“I…”
Hope dropped her hand and shook her head wryly. “You’re very bad for me.”

To her
surprise, Rick rolled his eyes and for a second something tired broke through
his expression. He looked older than his age for just a moment, and Hope chased
the look, wondering if she’d imagined it, but it vanished.

He
arced an arm up over his head to rub at the back of his neck. “Bad for what?
Look, it’s okay to laugh - shit, it’s okay to
smile
. Sometimes it seems
like you think you’re a gun with an unfortunate penchant for speech.”

She
barked out a laugh and stared at him incredulously, this rich boy with all the
answers who thought he could tell her she wasn’t a weapon.

“You
have no idea,” she said. It was hard to pull in enough breath to back up the
words. “No idea who I am; do you really think for one second that you can even
imagine…” She hadn’t realized until right this second that she thought of
herself as separate from Rick, from everybody. But it was true, wasn’t it?
Trinity didn’t know how to pick danger out of a room like a puzzle. Iseul
didn’t know what it felt like to dodge a knife so it dragged down her skin
rather than stabbed. Rick didn’t know what it felt like to have someone fire a
gun at your head and have to pick up your weapon, have to keep moving even as
your mind seized up in shock.

Rick’s
face wasn’t exactly angry, but the lines around his eyes were tight and drawn.
He looked tired again.

“You’re
right,” he said quietly. “I don’t know about a lot of things. But do I have to?
Do I have to have pulled a trigger to be able to talk to you?”

Hope
suppressed a soft noise at the back of her throat at those words. No, she
didn’t want that. Even if she didn’t know anything else, she knew that.

“Look,
if you want me to follow you; if you want me to give up all this, we can… we
can figure it out. I can be happy anywhere." Rick spread his hands and
looked into her eyes, painfully earnest. "But I don't think I can be happy
without you anymore. And I'm not willing to try."

"Rick,"
she said weakly, "you can't just... follow me places. That's not how the
real world works." And he wouldn’t be happy in cramped bedsits with only a
cancelled magazine subscription for company, she knew.

His
face was set in rare stubborn lines that she recognized immediately. He raised
an eyebrow.

"I
don't accept that," he said simply.

And it
was just as simple as that for him. Rick had enough money that he could
wallpaper his mansion with it and never know the difference. He had the weight
of a family name behind him. His mind could race circles around everyone.

Anger
twisted in her belly and Hope turned away from him.

"What
is it?" Rick asked, for once quiet and subdued. He could adjust so easily
to any situation. If he wanted to, he could charm anyone just by watching to
see what they wanted him to do. He could charm Hope like that too - he was
doing it now. She wasn't sure if it was manipulation, but she wasn't sure it
felt good either.

"Everything
is so easy for you," she burst out, turned just far enough away that she
didn't have to look at his face, but could still watch his back. "You can
just say, oh, this will happen, and it does. That's not - it's not right."
Her hands fell to her sides, palm up. She felt like the inside of a hurricane,
every pent-up emotion swirling, desperate to get out and wreak havoc. She had
never felt this way before Rick. She hated him for that, too.

She
shook her head helplessly. Maybe if she'd been an Ivy League kid she would have
the words now to express all the frustration she felt. But she was just Hope
Lasser, who worked with her hands and her eyes, and she didn't have anything.

Rick
took a few steps forward and then stopped a foot or so away. Probably the
distance was calculated for maximum efficiency, Hope thought bitterly.

There
was an oddly long silence before Rick cleared his throat. When she looked out
of the corner of her eye, she saw his hands were open by his sides as well.

"I
can't change who I am, Hope," he said in a low pitch that rumbled through
her body so that she felt the words more than heard them. "I can't change
it and I won't apologize for it. It's not fair that I can do things - have
things - that most people can't. I know. But you don't seem like the kind of
person who expects life to be fair."

"I'm
not," Hope said quietly. She caught the ghost of a nod behind her.

"Then
I guess you have to decide if you can live with it. You aren't the first person
to have this reaction, you know," Rick said, sounding gently rueful, like
he was remembering something that had stung a long time ago. "I'll be a
constant reminder that the world isn't fair; of every little injustice that's
ever come your way."

Hope
started to say, "That's not..." and then stopped herself. Rick was
right. That was the problem. 

"I'm
rich, and smart, and happy," Rick continued, and she wished he'd shut up.
"But I'm happiest with you."

The
world shuddered to a halt under Hope's feet and then started right back up
again before she could panic.

She
jerked around and stared at Rick. He looked back at her with that open
expression, wide green eyes with curiosity he'd never learned to hide. Life had
been gentle with him.

She
wanted it to stay that way, Hope realized. Even if it made her rage in some
deep, unhappy part of her soul, that was alright. She cared enough for Rick
that she just wanted him to be happy in a simple, uncomplicated way that had
nothing to do with how he was raised and everything to do with who he was.

At
seventeen Hope had learned on the front porch of her mother's house that some
things had to be forgotten if you wanted to go on living. Hope had never really
acknowledged it to herself, but the truth was that she'd had a choice at that
moment. She could have curled up on the porch and sobbed and waited to see if
her mother would let her back inside.

Instead,
she'd lifted her backpack onto her shoulders and walked away, quivering chin
held high.

"I
don't want to go in circles," Hope found herself saying out loud, somewhat
to her horror. Rick had a terrible effect on her. But he was listening eagerly,
all of his considerable attention trained only on her. And Hope couldn't deny
that she wanted that.