Bulletproof (Unknown Identities #1) (7 page)

The hair prickled on the back of her neck. For a bodyguard offering protection, he gave considerable voice to her imminent demise. There was no arguing with the statement or with him, based on the implacable expression he was sporting.

Frustrated on more levels than she cared to analyze, she turned back toward the street. “That’s my meeting place.” She tilted her head toward the Revolutionary Cemetery shrouded in rain, the old grave markers splashed with red and blue from the emergency lights. “Do you see anyone?”

She started to work her way closer, but before she’d managed a few paces, she felt his hand on her shoulder again. “Wait here.”

“No.” Her source had surely run from all this commotion, but she needed to see for herself. She understood people and though they’d never met, she knew she could recognize her source by the body language if given half a chance. Around her, people in the crowd murmured but no one wept or mentioned names. In a community the size of Sudbury that meant the problem in the street involved strangers, but this seemed like a big crowd for a distracted tourist induced accident.

Please, don’t let it be my contact
. It couldn’t be, she decided. A thought like that was simply a paranoid side effect having a bodyguard. She and her source had been too careful in light of the careers and lives on the line with this story.

“Let me do my job,” he growled at her ear.

“You’re here to enable me to do mine.” She studied his features, noticed the wariness in his eyes as he studied the cemetery across the street. Had he noticed a threat she’d missed? “What happened to keeping me in sight?”

The glare he leveled on her made her think twice. She couldn’t let him intimidate her or having him around would derail her story anyway. Holding her ground, she folded her arms across her chest and glared right back.

“It’s crowded here.” She leaned closer, ignored the teasing spice of his scent. Whatever aftershave he wore, it was one she’d never smelled before. “Anything could happen to me.”

His lips thinned. “Keep up.”

She followed as he moved down the block, away from the center of the commotion. Retreat wasn’t in her nature any more than blind trust, but she had the feeling bucking his instruction at this point would make matters worse.

With everyone distracted, he crossed the street and came up on the cemetery from the opposite direction. On this side, there were more official personnel and fewer bystanders blocking her view.

A grim view.

The body in the street was tangled in a morbid embrace with a bicycle. She took in the details in short bursts. The bike was a basic ten speed and the victim, male, wasn’t wearing the rain gear a serious cyclist would have in this weather. He’d been slim, but based on the hands, she put him closer to thirty than twenty. The rain washed the blood toward the storm drain in trickles of red-tinged water. First responders were doing what they could to assess the scene as police officers and EMTs dealt with the one witness seated on the bumper of an ambulance.

Ah, the witness was the local, Amelia realized, listening to the questions and answers. Through tears, the witness repeated how the bicyclist had just cut in front of her. No time to stop. No, she’d never seen him before. No, she wasn’t speeding.

Because of the high tourism in the small town, the speed limit along this roadway was low. Too low for an incidental impact to kill a cyclist that way.

“Something’s off,” she said to John.

“I know.”

Raising a hand to keep the rain out of her eyes, she followed his gaze, narrowed once more, as he studied the shadows at the edge of the cemetery. Turning, Amelia did the opposite, studying the people across the street. If that was her contact, dead, someone made him that way.

Why and how were foremost in her mind as a chill that had nothing to do with the rain turned her skin clammy under her coat.

“Hey! You can’t be over here,” a patrolman said, striding toward them. “Officials only.”

She was about to give the standard reporter’s response when John stepped forward, extending his wallet and a badge of some sort. “Can we help at all?”

“Not unless you can get the medical examiner here faster.”

The patrolman’s entire demeanor relaxed and Amelia made a mental note to take a closer look at the badge John had offered.

“Sorry,” he replied. “Any ID on the victim?”

“No.” The patrolman shook his head and turned toward the witness. “Mrs. B is gonna have a tough time getting past this. Why are the two of you in town? Something going on I don’t know about?”

“We had a new interview on a cold case out of Boston,” John said with one of those shrugs understood by overworked law enforcement men and women everywhere. “Saw the commotion and stopped. We’ll get out of your way.”

It shouldn’t have surprised her that her bodyguard knew the same lesson she’d learned early in her career: act like you belong and people treated you as if you belonged.

Of course, the opposite was also true. The thought flitted through her mind as she spied a dark umbrella moving quickly away from the crisis area. In the muted sea of trench coats and umbrellas in dark and neutral colors, she couldn’t be sure that was the person she’d come to meet. She caught the only distinguishing feature, a flash of blond hair, between the umbrella and the upturned coat collar. Even as she watched, whoever was under that umbrella picked up speed and people were cursing as they were forced off the sidewalk and into puddles.

Her instincts prickled, it could simply be an annoyed bystander. Maybe it was someone who saw too much and felt ill. Or it could be her panicked contact making a hasty exit.

Stay put or follow? Adrenaline rushed through her veins.

The debate was over before it began. She moved to pursue. If she hurried, she could use the cover of the emergency vehicles and cut off the person before they turned off this street.

She was several paces away when John’s voice reached her. “Hold up!”

“Catch up,” she muttered, keeping her eyes on that blond hair. This person might only be a coincidence, but with the story slipping out of her grasp, Amelia refused to leave any stone unturned.

She darted between two grave stones and cut across the mushy grass, taking shelter under an outstretched branch. Her target paused, looking back at the accident scene, and Amelia’s instincts surged into high gear. This had to be her contact.

Confirming her thought, the person looked straight at her and gave a nearly imperceptible nod toward the white clapboard church.

Amelia strode forward, head high, a confident smile in place.

“What are you doing?”

“Back off,” she hissed at John. “You’ll scare away my last source.”

He caught her elbow. “We have to get out of here.”

“In a minute.”

“You’re too exposed.”

She tried to shake his hold, but it backfired. Anything more would cause a scene which would only make matters worse. “I need that information.”

John swore and she echoed him, but for different reasons. Her target had disappeared around the corner of the church.

Dragging her bodyguard with her, she pressed forward, determination infusing every step. Her hair was plastered to her scalp and her shoes soaked through, the story was the only thing on her mind when she caught up to her target.

“Thanks for waiting.” Amelia sighed with relief. The man in the street was only coincidence. Thank God.

“You were late,” the blonde said without turning to face her.

That voice, even in person it held a smoky quality that could be male or female. The hand holding the umbrella was covered in a glove and the trench coat, slacks, and shoes offered no decisive proof of gender.

Amelia didn’t apologize or make excuses. “Do you have what I need?” she asked her source’s back. The fear was obvious, radiating off of her source in tense waves. She could practically smell it.

All she needed was a name. The name her contact had finally promised to give her this morning. The name that connected Senator Larimore with the security breach that would prove he was mining private data for his personal gain. This piece of the puzzle would break her story wide open and make all of the threats and vandalism – even the bodyguard – worth it.

“It’s too late.”

It couldn’t be!
“No one will know about you,” she said with as much calm as she could muster as her pulse leaped like a frightened gazelle. “I promise.”

The head bowed slightly. “You’re not alone.”

“That couldn’t be helped. It’s –”

“Smart.” The shoulders slumped. “I took precautions.”

What the hell did that mean? Amelia wished for a window, for a glimpse of that face to get a better read on her contact, but by design or chance, her contact made sure that wasn’t an option.

“Locker thirty-one. John will know the rest.”

John?
She resisted the urge to demand answers from her bodyguard. “What does he have to do with it?”

Suddenly she thought of the man in the trench coat watching her apartment, thought of the nearly new business card in the bottom of her purse and wondered at the elaborate set up. John Noble had infiltrated her life so smoothly and now insinuated himself in her story. Alarms clanged in her head.

“You promised me a name,” she demanded, trailing after when her source moved toward the next block.

Suddenly her contact collapsed. Walking one moment, crumpled in the wet grass the next, the umbrella caught at a useless angle between the body and the white clapboard siding.

Startled, Amelia froze for one second too long. Before she could force her feet to cooperate and carry her toward her contact, she felt herself being hauled away by a rough grip at her elbow.

“Stop!” She dug in her heels, twisted against the hold, trying to wrench herself free. “We have to –” she began, certain she could convince John to do the right thing here.

But, she looked up and realized it wasn’t John who held her. A supple leather glove smothered her scream.

Chapter Four

John rubbed at the goose egg behind his ear and struggled to his knees. His vision wavered, like rain on glass, but he could just make out Amelia’s red head as she struggled against a man in a darker jacket.

Damn it all to hell. He’d been so consumed with her and her mysterious contact he’d missed the real threat sneaking up behind him.

It was a rookie mistake that proved how he’d let himself and his skills go. He might as well sit here and wait for Gabriel’s cleanup crew. He didn’t know the reporter well, but he admired her fighting spirit. Keep fighting, he thought, hauling himself upright. He couldn’t fail here... couldn’t go back to the nothingness existence that had been his for too long.

She had to live. If she died, so did he.

The clock was ticking in his head as John stumbled after Amelia and her captor. Thirty seconds out of sight... he refused to allow them any more of a lead. Failure had been beaten out of him in his extensive training and he wasn’t about to give in now.

Someone had been watching her – or him – and knew how he’d handle the scene. How any hired bodyguard worth his fee would react to the potential threat in the unexpected crisis. He’d sensed a trap, but couldn’t pinpoint it. He was that fucking rusty.

The emergency personnel had been muttering about heart attacks or aneurisms but John’s money was on something far less benign. As he’d assessed the scene, none of the conversational snippets he’d overheard would help anyone. He couldn’t even be sure an autopsy would prove what John already suspected. The man who’d dropped dead in front of Mrs. B’s car had been murdered for a reason.

He reached the corner of the building and peered cautiously up and down the street. The man who had Amelia was built like a linebacker, sporting a scruffy red beard and heading for a dark sedan parked up the street. He couldn’t see the driver, but the exhaust puffing in the cool, wet air, proved the engine was running.

A trap. The words echoed in his mind as he developed a plan.

What were the odds her apartment had been attacked, he’d been tasked with protecting her, and some poor sap on a bike would die at the same place where she was to meet her source? Long. Very, very long.

Whatever her story, someone obviously didn’t want it told.

Based on his assessment of her apartment this morning, someone wanted her dead and keeping her alive meant finally getting clear of the muddy abyss he’d been wallowing in for the past several years.

Prior to getting tangled in Gabriel’s web, John held a skeptical view of coincidental events. Now, he didn’t believe in such a thing at all. None of this was adding up. If he didn’t know better, he’d blame the odd weather on Gabriel and his puppet masters too.

He zigged and zagged, mostly on purpose, as he tried to catch up with Amelia and get her captor. Of all the people and all the situations, Gabriel might assign, it made a sick kind of sense that John would be saddled with a hard-nosed reporter.

Really, he should have expected worse.

Evaluation complete, he took a quick inventory. He had one hundred fifteen dollars in his wallet, along with credit cards in two different names. The twenty-two caliber revolver at his ankle and a knife at the small of his back could do the talking if cash or plastic failed. With a little luck, he could get her back and transport her to a safe place where she would, whether she wanted to or not, fill him in on this big story she was hunting. He had a feeling they wouldn’t make it long if he didn’t know who she was up against.

As he’d assumed, this job was not as simple as Gabriel had led him to believe.

Feeling more confident, his head clearing, he moved closer. Ten short yards separated him from Amelia and the big man leading her toward the sedan.

Too many onlookers for guns and too many emergency officials nearby for a drawn out offense. Quick and dirty was the best option. He saw it play out in his head even as he moved in.

“Christ. You want her to suffocate?” He came up on Amelia’s other side and with her caught between them, he pushed them toward the sedan’s rear door. “Relax,” he said to Amelia, “you’re causing a scene.”