The Bodyguard (9 page)

The man grunted with pain and staggered back, knocking over a delicate decorative table. A vase on the table fell to the marble floor and crashed, sending shards of glass flying across the room, pinging against the walls.

Luke lunged forward, but before he could throw a punch, his prey scrambled out of the way and took off in a dead run for the double doors. Luke ran after him, drawing his gun as he dashed through the open doorway onto the gallery.

“Hold it. Freeze or I’ll shoot,” Luke yelled.

The man skidded to a stop and slowly raised his hands. As he turned around, the door to Carol’s room opened. She faced Luke, not seeing the intruder. She stepped into the hallway.

“Get back in your room,” he shouted as he raced toward her. He couldn’t shoot with her between him and the intruder.

The seconds seemed to drag by as everything happened at once.

Carol turned around.

The intruder grabbed her and yanked her in front of him. The glint of a knife winked in the light from one of the hall sconces. He held it to her throat.

Luke skidded to a stop just a few feet away.

The man had one hand manacled around Carol’s waist, the other holding the knife at her throat. He crouched down behind her so Luke couldn’t get a clear shot at him. His face was covered with a ski mask. He slowly backed toward the stairs, pulling Carol with him.

“Let her go,” Luke demanded.

Carol whimpered and clutched the arm at her throat.

“There’s no way I’m letting you out of this house with her,” Luke said. “And there’s no way you can get down the stairs without me getting a clear shot at you at some point. Your only hope is to let her go.”

The man stopped. “If I let her go,” he rasped, his voice sounding oddly forced, strained, “you’ll just shoot me.”

In a heartbeat.
The man had signed his death warrant the second he held a knife to Carol’s throat.

“Not if you don’t hurt her,” Luke lied.

The man backed a few more steps down the hall.

Luke followed relentlessly, his gun out in front of him.

Suddenly the man backed up against the baluster. “Drop the gun or I toss her over.”

The blood drained from Luke’s face. He hesitated.

The man lifted Carol a few inches off the floor.

She gasped, her eyes rolling white with fear.

“All right, all right. Don’t hurt her.” Luke knelt down and placed his gun on the floor.

“Kick the gun away from you,” the man ordered.

Luke kicked it behind him, away from the intruder.

“Now back up.”

He weighed his options.

The intruder lifted Carol higher.

Luke swore and backed up several feet.

The man lowered the knife from Carol’s throat and peered at Luke over her shoulder. The face-off by the baluster seemed to stretch out forever, but only a few seconds had really gone by when the intruder heaved Carol up over the banister.

She screamed as he slapped her hands around the top of the railing and let go, leaving her hanging on all by herself, her feet dangling over the two-story drop, as he raced for the stairs.

Chapter Eight

Luke charged forward as the intruder raced away from him. The man had been smart, forcing Luke to make a choice between catching him and helping Carol.

There
was
no choice.

Luke lunged for the railing and leaned over, grabbing Carol beneath the arms and hauling her up and over. He fell back with her to the gallery floor, holding her in his arms. She buried her face against his chest, shaking uncontrollably, tears hot and wet against his skin.

Below them, the assailant raced across the foyer and out the front door, disappearing into the night.

* * *

L
UKE
CROUCHED
DOWN
in front of the couch where Carol was sitting, wrapped in a heavy terry-cloth robe, her face almost as white as the wall behind her.

“Are you sure I can’t get you something? Aspirin? A drink?”

She shook her head but didn’t say anything.

He sighed heavily and sat beside her. “I can call a doctor. Maybe you’d like something stronger, to take off the edge. Something to help you sleep.”

She shook her head more forcefully this time. “No. No drugs. I don’t want to go to sleep. Not here.” Her eyes turned pleading. “Please,” she whispered, “take me somewhere else. Anywhere. Somewhere safe.”

His heart felt as if it was breaking as he looked at her mournful face. “I will. In a few minutes, okay?”

“Okay.” She sank back against the cushions.

The house blazed with light now and was full of security guards and police officers, as well as the cook and two of the maids. They were the only live-in servants and had been roused from their rooms on the other side of the mansion by Cornell and his men. But they hadn’t seen or heard anything that might help with the investigation. So, now they were busily laying out an assortment of refreshments for their unexpected visitors.

Cornell spoke in the corner of the family room to the guards’ supervisor, who looked angry enough to kill someone. He’d already lambasted the entire staff for allowing the intruder inside, but now that they knew how the intruder had gotten in, Luke almost felt sorry for the guards. Almost.

The intruder had ambushed the guard at the front door and left him bound and gagged in the bushes, hog-tied with no hope of getting himself freed. He’d done the same thing to two other guards, leaving the front totally clear for him to sneak on in. Which just proved Luke’s original theory, that the mansion required a security alarm, a high-tech one that was tamper-proof, or as close as possible to one.

When Cornell finished with the supervisor, he hurried to Luke. He glanced uncertainly at Carol, before motioning for Luke to step away with him.

As soon as Luke started to get up from the couch, Carol started to get up to follow him. He glanced at Cornell, shook his head, then sat back down.

“You might as well say whatever you need to say in front of her,” Luke said.

Cornell dragged the coffee table closer and sat on it facing them. “Okay, here’s where we stand. Other than your basic description of a white man, at least six feet tall, a hundred ninety pounds, wearing dark clothes, I’ve got nothing to go on. And since the grass out front is so thick, I don’t even have a shoe print. I need another angle to figure out who this guy is. What I need to know is why he was here.” He looked at Carol. “Mrs. Ashton, it seems likely the intruder was after you, since he went to the master bedroom. But if he was going to kill you, he could have just tossed you over the banister instead of making sure you were clutching the top rail before he took off.”

“Or he knew if he hurt her I’d kill him,” Luke said. “He may have been trying to kill her but had to change his plan to make sure he survived the night.”

“If that’s the case, then perhaps he went into the master bedroom looking for something besides Mrs. Ashton. Can we go up there together? See if something is missing?”

“All right,” she said, her voice soft but steady.

She moved like a wraith through the living room, but this time she didn’t cling to Luke’s hand. She walked with dignity, somehow having pulled herself together for the task at hand. Cornell and Luke followed her up the staircase and down the long hall to the bedroom. Everything was quiet, like a church, until she pulled the doors open. Then the steady buzz of crime-scene investigators talking as they dusted for prints and searched for forensic evidence assaulted them.

Luke exchanged a startled look with Cornell.

Carol must have noticed the look, because she half turned. “The room is soundproof,” she said. Her mouth twisted bitterly. “So no one would hear my screams.”

She went inside, leaving Luke and Cornell shaken and staring after her.

“I wish that bastard was still alive so I could kill him,” Luke said.

Cornell’s mouth lifted in a half smile. “Honestly, I’d probably be right there with you. The guy really was a class-A bastard.”

They entered the suite and stood back, watching Carol slowly make her way around the room, weaving among the investigators as they collected evidence.

She seemed to wander in no particular pattern, stopping to open a drawer, or a jewelry box, or one of the three closet doors. Luke watched her closely, a suspicion growing inside him. If anything, her search was almost too random, as if she was trying to make sure no one paid her any particular attention or realized she was looking for something specific.

“I’m going to chat with the team lead and see if they’ve found anything,” Cornell said.

Luke nodded but didn’t take his gaze off Carol.

When she turned toward him, he looked off to the side, pretending interest in the tech nearest to him, dusting the top of a chest of drawers. A few seconds later, Luke looked back toward her. She opened a drawer in another chest and reached her hand all the way in. She felt around, then her eyes widened, and she felt around again. Whatever she was searching for obviously wasn’t there.

She briefly shut her eyes as if in pain, then closed the drawer.

Luke averted his gaze.

Carol crossed the room and stood beside him.

“Anything missing?” he asked.

She wrapped her arms around her waist and shook her head. “No. I’m going back to the guest room to lie down for a few minutes.”

Disappointment flashed through him that she didn’t feel she could confide in him. “Hang on a second.” He waved one of the security guards positioned at the doorway over to him. He read the tag on his shirt and addressed him by name. “Mrs. Ashton is going to lie down. Go with her and stand guard outside the door.”

“Yes, sir.”

Carol glanced uncertainly at Luke, obviously confused that he wasn’t the one who was going to watch over her.

“I’ll be there in a couple of minutes,” he said. “I need to ask Cornell a few questions.”

Some of the worry went out of her, but she still didn’t look happy about trusting her care to one of the security guards.

Luke’s supposed questions for Cornell were just a ruse to get Carol to leave. He waited until she was out of the room and he heard the guest-bedroom door close down the hall before hurrying to the chest of drawers she’d been so interested in. He pulled the same drawer open that she had opened earlier and reached inside. The drawer was empty, which struck him as odd since the rest of the chest contained clothes. But what would have been at the back of the drawer that she’d been searching for?

He felt all four corners, then pressed against the back of it. Still nothing. Then he turned his hand palm up and felt along the top. His fingers brushed against cold metal and a tiny cord. What the heck?

He straightened, pulled the entire drawer out of the chest and set it on top of the bed. The drawer was empty, but he’d expected that. The metallic object was attached to the chest itself, above the drawer.

Cornell crossed the room, his brow furrowed. “You find something?”

“Maybe. Give me a hand?”

Together, they lifted the chest and moved it about a foot away from the wall.

“That’s enough,” Luke said.

They set it down and bent to examine the back of the dresser. The little cord Luke had seen came out a hole in the back and went into the wall.

Cornell raised a brow. “What is that?”

“Got a flashlight?”

“Always.” The detective pulled a penlight out of his suit-jacket pocket and handed it to Luke.

Luke shined the light into the cavity now exposed without the drawer covering it. He reached in and unclicked the object he’d found and pulled it out.

“Is that what I think it is?” Cornell asked.

“If you’re thinking it’s a camera, yeah. It is.” Luke examined it. “Looks like it’s motion activated.”

They both glanced at the bed, which was where the camera had been pointed. There must have been a small gap above the drawer that gave the camera a clear view to the bed.

“Sick jerk,” Luke swore.

“You won’t find an argument here.”

Luke pressed the side of the little camera and opened it. “Looks like there was a video card in here, but it’s gone.”

“I can’t imagine the intruder broke in to get his jollies watching videos of a married couple in their bed.”

“Me neither. I think he was after something else.”

“I’ll tell the techs to be on the lookout for a video card. Maybe Mr. Ashton had put it somewhere else and the camera was empty.” He shook his head. “These cases get stranger and stranger the older I get.”

“If there was one camera, there may be more,” Luke said.

“Understood.” Cornell headed to one of the techs.

Luke set the camera on top of the chest of drawers. The more he learned about Richard Ashton, the more he despised the man. He would have liked to believe the camera really was empty, that Ashton hadn’t used it to record whatever he did with Carol in this room. But Luke was willing to bet that wasn’t the case.

The real question was—who else knew about that video card? Did the intruder know? Had he removed the card after getting whatever it was he wanted from the bedroom so no one would have the video of him?

To answer that, he needed to confront Carol. And that was not a confrontation he was looking forward to.

* * *

A
LIGHT
KNOCK
sounded on the guest-room door. Carol drew the quilt up to her chest.

“Who is it?”

“Luke. Can I come in?”

She sat up and scooted against the headboard. “Come in.”

He stepped inside, shut and locked the door behind him. Normally she’d have thought he was being a little overcautious, locking the door when there were dozens of police officers and security guards right outside. But after tonight, she wasn’t sure there was any such thing as being “too careful.”

He perched on the edge of the bed, one leg on the floor, the other bent at the knee resting on top of the mattress.

“I know about the camera.”

She sucked in a breath.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have been so blunt.”

“No, no, that’s okay,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I trust you. You’re honest, straightforward. I know what to expect around you. And believe me, that means a lot.” She shoved her hair out of her face, belatedly wishing she’d taken the time to brush it or braid it. “Now you know one of my secrets. My husband liked to film everything that went on in the bedroom.”

He reached out his hand, palm up, and waited.

That was something else she liked about him. He didn’t grab for her hand or try to do anything she didn’t want to do. He was patient, calm, and let her make the choice. And he seemed to understand how much she craved human contact, no matter how small, after so many years of only being touched by a monster.

She blinked back unexpected tears and threaded her fingers with his.

“You wanted to get the video card when you went into the bedroom,” he said. “Did you find it? Did you bring it in here and hide it somewhere?”

“No. I didn’t. Yes, I looked for it. I had forgotten about it earlier. The camera has been there so long, I quit paying attention to it years ago. But when I saw everyone in the bedroom, I remembered. I didn’t want my shame to end up as fodder for the police in their squad room, or worse, to end up on some internet site for everyone to see.”

“Your shame?”

She glanced longingly toward the door.

“Carol, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. But if there’s anything at all that you can think of that might explain why someone would break into the house and go into the master bedroom, let me know.”

“The only thing I saw that was missing was the video card. So...I have to think that was the reason for the break-in. But other than showing...how Richard...hurt me, there wouldn’t be any point in taking the card. What value would that be to anyone?”

He stared at her for a long moment, his mouth tightening. “I wish I could take away the hurt, roll back time somehow and spare you from whatever he did to you.”

She lifted his hand and kissed the back of it. “Thank you. You really seem to care. I don’t know why you do, but I... It means the world to me. It’s been so long since anyone...cared.”

“I want to hold you, Carol. Will you let me hold you?”

His request startled her so much she dropped his hand.

He winced. “I guess not. Sorry. I thought—”

She put her hand on his again. “I would like that very much.”

He raked the covers down and slid underneath them, fully dressed. He put his arm around her waist and pulled her close, her back to his chest.

“I told you earlier I’d take you somewhere else tonight, but it’s only a few more hours until dawn. There’s a security guard right outside the door. And once the police leave, there will still be a dozen guards throughout the house, working in pairs this time. If you’re okay with waiting, we can both rest for a little while and figure out a new plan in the morning. Are you okay with that? Staying here until morning?”

In answer, she snuggled into the pillow, content to have his arm around her. With Richard, the arm would have felt like an anchor, pulling her under, drowning her. But with Luke, it was a protective circle, making her feel safe, cherished, as if—for once—she actually mattered.