Bodyguard (41 page)

There was no hope. They were dead. Still, he pulled out his gun and fired a warning shot down the narrow path that led to their ledge.

“I guess we can’t go back,” Allie said, almost matter-of-factly. “So we’ll have to go forward.”

Forward? There was no forward.

She must’ve seen the skepticism in his eyes because she kissed him. “We can jump into the river.”

“Into that river? No sane human being would jump into that river.” He fired again.

“That’s the point. They won’t follow us. Certainly not by jumping from up where they are.”

“We’ll drown.”

“No, we won’t,” she countered. “Not necessarily. I’m a good enough swimmer. I’ll stay with you.”

“No,” Harry said. “Nuh-uh, no way.”

“At least we’ll have a chance. If we stay here, we will be shot.” She kissed him again. “I know it scares you, and you’re right, we might die. But I’ll take might die over will die, any day. At least if we jump, there’s hope.”

Hope.

At least there was hope.

True, it was completely insane hope. An impossible long-shot hope.

They jump off this cliff into that river, and maybe, just maybe, they’d survive.

As Harry gazed down into Allie’s eyes, he could see that crazy hope. And as long as he was going to buy into it, he might as well go big. “Marry me.”

She looked at him as if he’d spoken in Chinese.

“I’ll jump with you,” he told her, “if you’ll marry me.”

Allie laughed, covering her mouth with one hand, as if
they weren’t standing at the edge of an impossible situation, as if she truly thought there was a chance of them someday standing in a church and exchanging vows.

Ivo had stopped shooting at them, probably saving his ammunition. Harry knew it was only a matter of time now before he sent one of his men across the river. And then there’d be no way for him to shield Allie, nowhere for them to hide. No hope.

“You really want that?” she asked.

“Yes,” he told her, and damned if that hope didn’t lodge in his chest and make him feel like it truly were possible.

She nodded. “I’d love to marry you.” There were tears in her eyes as she smiled at him.

Harry kissed her hard. They could do this. They could do this. He holstered his gun, and breathing hard, he took her hand.

She smiled.

He nodded.

And together they jumped.

A
LLIE WRAPPED THE
blanket more tightly around her as she sat in the interview room in the Farthing FBI headquarters and stared at the wanted posters on the walls.

One of the faces looked familiar, but she couldn’t remember where she’d seen the man before. He had short dark hair, dark eyes, and cheekbones to die for. Definitely of Hispanic heritage. Was he one of the men she’d seen with Ivo in Hardy?

Lord, that was just what she needed—the guilt and responsibility for bringing public enemy number four into a sleepy little town like Hardy, Colorado.

She shivered. She was cold, she was tired, she was hungry—and the flat eyes of America’s Most Wanted gave her the creeps—but as Harry came back into the room and smiled at her, she was happier than she could ever remember being.

He looked about as bad as she felt. Completely bedraggled and half drowned. His clothes were wet and his sneakers squooshed when he walked.

He looked beautiful.

Another man intercepted him, pulling him aside and speaking quietly into his ear. Harry’s smile faded.

Allie couldn’t hear what Harry said, but she could read his lips. Shit.

Oh, Lord, what now?

“Ivo and his boys got away,” Harry told her point-blank as he sat down beside her at the table. “A fuc—Excuse me. A frigging statewide manhunt, and we don’t even turn up the car Ivo was driving.” He took her hand. “This means it’s not over. We don’t have Trotta, and he’s still after you.”

He looked down at their intertwined fingers, and when he looked back up, his dark eyes were serious. “I need to ask you something,” he said. “But before I ask you, I want you to know that no matter what your answer is, it doesn’t have anything to do with you and me, and it’s not going to change the way I feel about you. I just need you to answer it honestly, okay?”

Allie nodded.

“There’s a lot of speculation about why Trotta hasn’t given up on whacking you,” he said, obviously choosing his words carefully. “We just got word from a New York informant that the price on your head is up to five million.”

She couldn’t believe it. “Five million? Dollars?”

Harry nodded. “This doesn’t read as your everyday, average punishment kind of hit. There’s something else happening here, and people are thinking that there must be some kind of personal connection between you and Michael Trotta. Some kind of intimate connection.”

“No, Harry,” Allie said, understanding what he was asking. “There’s not. There wasn’t. I didn’t have any kind of personal relationship with him. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. He was married. I was married.”

He squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry I had to ask you that.”

“It’s a valid question. Why would he spend five million dollars to see me dead?”

Harry shook his head. “Is it possible Griffin had some information that he somehow passed on to you? But no,
that wouldn’t stand up in court, it’d be hearsay. Was there something you saw or heard, or some documents or tapes Griffin might’ve had—”

It hit her in a flash, and Allie stood up. “Enrique. Enrique something.”

“Who?”

She pointed to the wanted posters, to the face of the Hispanic man. “That’s where I’ve seen him before.” Add a pencil-thin mustache, grow his hair to chin length. Yes. Yes, definitely. “In Michael Trotta’s office. As I was leaving, he was trying to get away. He was handcuffed and bleeding. I think he’d been shot as well as beaten. His face was …” She shook her head. “He got blood on my blouse and pants. He told me his name was Enrique something. Montone? Montoy?”

Harry crossed to the wall, to the posters that overlapped each other there. “Enrique Montoya?” He took the flyer from the wall and handed it to Allie. “Are you telling me that Enrique Montoya was in Michael Trotta’s office while you were there?”

Allie nodded, quickly skimming the printing on the flyer. One-hundred-thousand-dollar reward leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the death of FBI Agent Enrique Montoya. Montoya disappeared mid-March in Florida and turned up dead several weeks later in New York. Autopsy reports place his date of death on …

She looked up at Harry. “He died the same day I was in Michael’s office.”

He was already on the phone. “I need Christine McFall. Yeah, hi, Chris. It’s Harry O’Dell. Yeah, I’m still kicking.” He paused. “No, please don’t call me sir. Okay, fine, call me sir, but just answer this question for me, all right?” Another pause. “I need to know about Alessandra Lamont’s
personal possessions. Was anything left in the Farmingdale house after the fire? Any clothes in the closets that might’ve retained pieces of explosive material and been saved for evidence?” He nodded. “I’m looking for a pair of pants and a blouse that have bloodstains and …” He looked at Allie. “What color?”

“No,” she said, suddenly understanding why he was asking. “They weren’t in the house. I had so few clothes I couldn’t just throw them out, so I took them to the dry cleaners. Although the woman there told me she wouldn’t be able to get the stains completely out. It’s been weeks, but they’re probably still there.”

“Which dry cleaners?”

“Huff’s. On Main Street, near the old movie theater?”

“Chris,” Harry said into the phone. “Go to Huff’s on Main Street in Farmingdale, and pick up Alessandra Lamont’s dry cleaning order—a blouse and a pair of ladies’ pants. Bag it as evidence and take it to the lab. Have them run DNA tests on whatever bloodstains you can find. We’re pretty sure the blood’s Enrique Montoya’s. Yeah, you heard me. Montoya’s. Let me know what you find.” He hung up the phone and turned to Allie. “With that evidence and your testimony, we’ve finally got Trotta.”

George threw the file down on Nicole’s desk. “Kim Monahan. Drop the conspiracy charges against her. Now.”

She looked up at him coolly. “Give me one good reason why I should.”

“Because I’m asking you to.”

“Well, well. This girl actually matters to you.”

“Just do it, Nicki. If you don’t, I’ll never let you live down the Alessandra Lamont snafu.”

Nicole only managed to look bored. “It wasn’t my fault. Andrew Bell in the Washington office thought we’d
benefit from the publicity of getting Trotta on a murder charge. Of course, he claims he made the decision to withhold protection based on the fact that Lamont had refused protection in the past.”

“It was a setup. We leaked information because we believed a task force would be in place to intercept the hit attempt. You should have followed up on the case, and you know it. You’re damned lucky Alessandra and Harry O’Dell weren’t killed. And you’re lucky, too, that Harry’s leaving the FBI. If he came back here, he’d have every right to kick your ass across the street and back—in front of everyone in this office.”

She finally had the decency to look embarrassed. “Yes, well, I certainly am lucky, aren’t I? I tell that to myself all the time.”

She sounded bitter. But George didn’t care. Whatever she regretted about her life—including losing him—she’d done to herself. He adjusted his crutches and turned to go.

“George.”

He turned back.

“Consider the charges against Kim dropped,” Nicki said quietly. “You can bring her out from wherever you’ve been hiding her.”

He shook his head. “No, she’s gone. I … told her to leave.” And she had. Just like Nicole, Kim had given him up and left without a fight.

“I’m sorry,” Nicki said. “I thought you and she … Well, the night that you asked me to come over—the night you told me you thought Kim was connected to Trotta … Before you told me that, I was sure you were going to say you were getting married again. You know, you and Kim. I mean, you both just seemed so happy together.”

“Trotta was paying her to be there with me. I pretty
much suspected that from the start. It was all just an act.” Yeah, and maybe if he said it enough, he’d start to believe it, too.

“But you seemed—”

“Happy?” George snorted. “Come on, Nic. I was living with a gorgeous woman who would go down on me at the drop of a hat, and someone else was footing the bill. Why shouldn’t I seem happy?”

“I think you were hoping she wouldn’t pass that information to Trotta.”

She was dead right. He’d prayed that when it came down to it, Kim wouldn’t betray him. But instead of confronting her about her connection to Trotta, he’d tested her. He’d waited until he heard her come in, and then he’d pretended to be on the phone with Nicole, letting Kim overhear information they’d wanted leaked to Trotta. And sure enough, she’d gone right out and passed on the information. They had tape recordings of her phone conversation with one of Trotta’s assistants.

He had hoped Kim would come to him. He had thought that she loved him. But he’d never admit that. Especially not to Nicole.

“I think this girl managed to hurt you,” Nicole told him. Her eyes looked so sad, as if she honestly cared. Must’ve been just a trick of the lighting. “Is it possible you have a heart after all?”

“Who, me?” George asked. He started out of the office. “Not a chance. You and me both, babe. Totally heartless.”

Harry was still on the phone when Allie got out of the shower.

It was a weird déjà vu—someone had left pajamas for her on the bed, just like the first time. She put them on and went out into the living room, drying her hair with a towel.

“No,” Harry was saying, “Shaun, it’s not your fault. You had no idea that filing that petition would—” He paused. “Yeah, I know it sucks, and I’m sorry you’ll have to leave your friends. But maybe we can all sit down together and figure out where we want to live and—” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Yeah, Marge, too. Okay. Okay, yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He hung up the phone with a sigh. “Shaun’s pissed. He doesn’t want to start over in a new town.”

“I’m having trouble with that, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said.

“That’s not your fault.”

“Yeah, I know, but I’m still sorry. George called. He’s sorry, too.”

“How is he?” she asked, glancing at herself in the mirror. Her hair was growing out. She was actually starting to look human. And that meant it was time to get another cut. Maybe a shag this time. She’d looked terrible that time she’d gotten her hair cut in a shag when she was little.

“His leg’s much better. I told him that was good because I was going to come out there and break his other one. He seemed to think that would be okay.”

She looked up at him. “You’re not really going to New York …?”

“No,” he said quickly. “No, I was just, you know, getting on his case. Letting him know that I forgave him.”

“By telling him you were going to break his leg?”

“He was really upset. I was afraid if we got too touchy-feely he might start to cry. Or maybe I might start to cry.” He just stood there, gazing at her for several long moments. He smiled crookedly. “Of course, I might start to cry anyway. I’m still amazed that we really made it.”