Bodyguard (16 page)

“It was good, but Jesus, who taught you penmanship?”

“I have awful handwriting,” she admitted. “I was never very good at school.” She looked down at her notebook. “I don’t know why I even bother.”

“Do you like to write?” he asked.

She looked up at him, and he could see from her eyes that she was aware he was distracting her, trying to keep her from biting her nails to the quick until Nicole Fenster called back with news about Jane. “I don’t know,” she said. “Yeah. I guess. I mean … I’ve almost filled this entire notebook.”

“Do you write stories?” he asked. “Or is it more stream of consciousness?”

“Harry, I can’t stop thinking about how it might just be more merciful for Jane if she—” She couldn’t say it. “I mean, what’s her life going to be like? If they were considering me, that means they couldn’t even find a foster
home for her.” Her eyes filled with tears. “But I don’t want her to die. You should see her smile. She’s got this great smile. But I can’t stop thinking that maybe my wanting her to live is just being selfish and—”

“Shhh,” he said, sitting next to her on the couch and pulling her into his arms. He knew it was trouble to touch her, but how could he not? “It’s not being selfish, Al. Because as long as she’s alive, there’s a chance that someone will want her. Who knows? As long as she’s alive, there’s hope, you know?”

Alessandra nodded. She knew.

She was far too perfect to kiss. Harry didn’t want to mess up her lipstick, yet he couldn’t keep his gaze from dropping to her mouth.

She was looking at his mouth, too. Oh, Christ, she wanted him to kiss her.

Where the hell was George or Christine or Ed when Harry needed them? But the house was dead silent. Nothing moved. If any of the other agents were here, they were sound asleep.

Alessandra nervously moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue and …

The phone rang, and Harry let go of Alessandra as he nearly went through the roof.

On his way back down, he scooped up the phone. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. Sweet God, that had been close. He moved farther away from Alessandra, who was still on the couch. She was watching him intently, her focus on the phone call, the fact that she’d nearly kissed him again was completely forgotten.

“O’Dell?” It was Nicole. “The patient Jane Doe is in recovery, doing fine.”

He repeated her words to Alessandra, who burst into tears. “Thank God,” she whispered and ran from the room.

“Thanks, Nic,” he said, watching Alessandra head up the stairs toward the privacy of her bedroom.

There was no way in hell he was following her.

No way.

“T
HIS DOESN’T MAKE
me happy.” Harry stood by the front door with George, waiting for Alessandra to do God knows what in the bathroom. She’d come downstairs after lunch with her makeup perfectly applied, her hair already gorgeous.

“It’s a good setup,” George reminded him. “The yard’s completely clear. We know none of Trotta’s men have gotten past us. If they’re going to shoot, it’s going to be from back beyond the tree line.”

“They could be set up anywhere from here all the way into town.” Harry adjusted his jacket over the heavy weight of his body armor. As if wearing a bullet-proof vest was going to do any good. If he were a mob hitman, he’d be perched in some church tower with a high-powered rifle and a scope. He’d wait until Alessandra’s car approached, and he’d take ’em all out, aiming for their heads, right through the car roof.

“I’m hating this,” Harry murmured to George as Alessandra finally emerged. “I want her in a vest, too.”

“Believe me, it wouldn’t work under that shirt.”

Alessandra was wearing tight-fitting black jeans and a snug black T-shirt that showed off her perfect body. Her hair was pulled back from her face in some kind of fancy braid thing. Her made-up face was as flawless as fine
porcelain, her lips were the color of wine, and her eyelashes were darkly, artistically enhanced.

He liked her better in baggy pajamas, with a faint smattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose.

She stopped directly in front of him. Her high heels made her exactly his height and put her eyes exactly on his level. They were cool, distant, detached. She was in Princess Alessandra mode.

Harry wanted to shake her, to bring her back to life. But on the other hand, he couldn’t blame her. He was the one who’d spent the past few days avoiding her. Ever since she’d tripped over him in the hallway and he’d touched her arm, ever since she’d looked at him as if she wanted him to kiss her, he’d kept at least a room length between them. Ever since they’d sat in the living room and she’d told him about baby Jane, he’d only given yes/no responses to her questions. He didn’t want her to tell him her secrets, didn’t want to tell her his. He didn’t want to see the heat from his touch reflected in her eyes.

But, Christ, he hated the way she was looking at him now. “Are we going to Hartford so I can call Michael Trotta today?” It was a yes/no question. She’d obviously been paying attention.

“No. I still haven’t gotten approval for that.” It wasn’t a lie. He hadn’t gotten approval. However, he knew he wasn’t going to get approval. Nicole didn’t want to give Trotta any false clues, and she’d nixed the idea completely, at least for the short term.

As for the long term …

Hopefully there wasn’t going to be a long term. After four days, Harry was bouncing off the walls. He’d finally reached Marge, but she was uncommunicative and cool when he’d asked where the hell they’d been. She’d told him she’d taken Shaun and Emily to the beach, to California,
the way she did every spring vacation. They’d had a lovely time, thank you very much.

She’d refused to talk about the letter from the lawyers requesting custody, only telling him that he needed to come out there. This could not be discussed over the phone. It had to be dealt with face to face. She’d gotten even more stiff on him then, telling him she’d thought he would at least have come for Shaun’s performance.

Harry’s kid had had a lead role in the school musical, and nobody had bothered to tell him about it. Of course, with his schedule, it would’ve been near impossible to fit in a trip west. Even now, with this personal crisis nearing an eruption point, best case scenario didn’t have him catching a flight to Colorado for another few weeks.

George held the front door shut, keeping Alessandra from going out into the yard. “No trips to Hartford today. You’ll have to be happy going only as far as the local library and the grocery store. Think you can handle the thrill?”

Alessandra granted him a small smile. “Actually, you can’t imagine how excited I am at the thought of going to the library.”

Every day for the past four days, Harry had sent either Chris McFall or Ed Bach to the library to pick up books for Alessandra to read. She wasn’t a fan of daytime TV. In fact, she wasn’t a fan of TV at all. But books … She was a voracious reader. She read constantly—when she wasn’t scribbling in her notebook. She read or wrote during breakfast, lunch, and dinner. All day and quite possibly most of the night, too. She read anything and everything. Cover to cover. If it had words on a page, Alessandra read it.

George looked over at Harry. “Are we ready to go?”

No. He wasn’t ready. And Alessandra wasn’t ready either. She had absolutely no clue that bad guys might start
shooting at her, hoping to kill her, the moment she stepped out into the yard.

“Do me a favor,” he said to her, “and stay close to me at all times. If I tell you to get down or to run like hell, you do it. No questions, you just do it, you got that?”

A small furrow creased her perfect brow. “I thought I was safe in this town.”

“You are.” George shot Harry a what-are-you-doing look behind Alessandra’s back.

Harry ignored him. “Humor me,” he told her. “Please? I know you don’t believe this, but Trotta’s a son of a bitch, and he’s known for his persistence.”

George opened the door. “Harry just wants an excuse to put his arm around you.”

Alessandra glanced quickly at Harry, surprise lighting her eyes. Surprise and something else. Something as hot and electric as lightning. It brought her to life so completely and made her exquisitely beautiful despite the heavy makeup.

But as instantly as it appeared, it was gone. Quaffed and shoved back inside. Somewhere down the line she’d learned to hide any excitement, any life, any passion. Someone hadn’t wanted her to be anything more than a pretty bauble. A decorative but unobtrusive piece of art.

George closed the door. “If you want, I’ll turn around and you two can kiss.”

Harry eviscerated George with his eyes. “George imagines there’s some kind of weird attraction thing between us, Al. But George is wrong. George is dead wrong.” He muttered under his breath, “In fact, George is dead.” He looked at Alessandra. “I’m sorry if he offended you.”

“He didn’t. I’m aware that you’re not … that we’re not … I’m aware.”

“Still, that was completely inappropriate.” Harry
looked at George again, who was totally amused. “Stupendously, asshole-ishly inappropriate.”

“I think we’re all a little punchy.” The icy princess had been replaced by someone softer, someone less certain. Someone he had far more trouble resisting. Someone he did want to kiss.

And George knew it, too. The son of a bitch was grinning at him, damn him.

Harry would’ve turned away, but Allie stopped him with a hand on his arm.

Her perfectly manicured fingernails had been bitten and torn, some down all the way to the quick. She’d been playing it cool for the past few days, but in truth she was a seething bundle of anxiety. As he looked down at her, she quickly pulled her hand back, hiding it behind her.

“I didn’t call Michael,” she told him.

Her eyes were very, very blue. Michael. It took him a few extra seconds to realize she was talking about Trotta. “I know,” he said. “Thank you.”

He hated the perfume she was wearing. Whatever she wore to bed at night—he wasn’t sure what it was exactly, she had so many different lotions and potions all lined up on a shelf in the bathroom—but whatever it was smelled so delicately sweet, it seemed a crime for her to cover it up with this other, fancier, stronger scent. He turned to George. “Let’s get moving. Asshole.”

George laughed and keyed his radio. “Okay, team, we’re finally coming out.”

The food market was a Super Stop and Shop. It seemed oddly out of place in the quaint little town that was filled with antique shops and farm stands. Standing inside of the mega-store, with its well-lit, wide aisles, its attached Blockbuster Video, bank, bookstore, flower shop, and goodness knows what all else, Alessandra might as well
have been back on suburban Long Island instead of out here on the edge of nowhere.

It was something of a disappointment. If she was going to live in Cow’s Bowels, New York, she wanted the complete small town package. She wanted a Fourth of July parade, a country fair with an oxen pull and a pie-eating contest, and she wanted a little, homey mom-and-pop supermarket, run by Mr. Whipple himself.

Instead, she had the isolation of living a million miles from her nearest neighbor, combined with the isolation of an efficient but completely impersonal supermarket chain. It was, without a doubt, the complete worst of both worlds.

It felt odd to be out here, under the bright fluorescent lights after spending so many days all but locked in her room. It was odd, too, doing her shopping while trailed by both George and Harry.

Harry was still on edge. Alessandra suspected he wouldn’t begin to relax until they were back inside the little house. Her little house. Her ugly little house. It wouldn’t be long until Harry and the other agents left, and she’d be on her own in her ugly little house, pretending to be Barbara Conway for the rest of her pathetic little life.

Of course, after the agents left, she could call Michael and get this mess straightened out. No one would be there to stop her. Not George, not Harry. Harry would have moved on to the next case. He would be focusing all his seething passion and intensity on some other mob boss, in his never-ending quest to find unattainable absolution.

He was standing at the end of the international foods aisle, his suit as rumpled as ever, his hair in dire need of a cut.

The odd attraction that she’d thought simmered between
them wasn’t real. It was completely her own, totally one-sided. Harry had made that more than clear.

She smiled at the irony. She was used to men falling around her, smitten, littering her path, as far as she could see. But the one man who was completely unaffected by her beauty was the one man she couldn’t stop thinking about.

George held up a package of gourmet pasta. “Have you tried this?” he asked. “Lemon pepper linguine. It’s wonderful.”

She shook her head.

He began loading the cart with enough to feed a small army. “I’ll make it tonight and—oh, shit!”

He grabbed her, pushing her down to the linoleum-tiled floor with one hand as he pulled over a display rack in front of them with the other.

There was a sound, sharp and deafeningly loud, and George swore again, falling hard against her.