“Which would be who?” I ask, since he’s yet to tell me Alvarez is alive.
“To you, that’s me. You get all your instruction from me and through me.”
“And this person I’m protecting is important to you or your boss?”
“Whatever, and whoever, is important to my boss, is important to me. Enough for me to bleed.”
“No one bleeds when I’m around, unless I want them to,” I assure him, but of course, I want him to, and a perk of no longer being with the FBI is that there’s no longer any paperwork and reviews to follow when he does bleed.
His eyes narrow on me, as if he’s reading my mind, the intelligence in his stare declaring him a dangerous and worthy adversary, poorly placed between me and the powers that be. The elevator stops moving and he steps forward, expecting that I’ll follow, and it’s then I decide he’s not all that smart after all. You don’t put a man you’ve indicated you don’t trust at your back. I damn sure wouldn’t.
But he has, and I follow, falling into pace with him as we find our way to a double-door entrance into a suite. “You have fifteen minutes to decide if you want the job.” He slides his card and opens the door, making it clear that I’m to enter alone.
“That should be plenty of time,” I say, stepping into a long hallway that seems to walk a path through a massive suite, which must be bigger than many houses. The kind I’ve stayed in as a protective guard for a few elected officials and a movie star, compliments of Walker Security.
I shut the door behind me and flip the bolt shut, ensuring my fifteen minutes is alone, and extended, should I wish to stay longer. Instinct has me sliding a hand under my jacket, just below my gun, and the one at my ankle is more cool comfort. I start down the hallway, cautiously inspecting an empty office, several bedrooms and bathrooms, before finally reaching the end of the path, opening to a living room wrapped in windows. It’s there in the archway that I pause, sucking in air, at the sight of a woman with her back to me, staring out of the window, her petite body silhouetted in a fitted black pant suit. Adrenaline surges through me at the realization that, even without her ever turning, I know her identity. A year of searching and I’ve found Myla, but I don’t shout for joy, nor will I grab her and just get her out of here, because nothing too good to be true, is ever true. For all I know, she’s one of the Alvarez clan now and that could make her lethal to everyone in the Walker family circle, including me.
Chapter Two
Kyle
I step behind a lounge-style chair that frames the living area while Myla seems to sense me, or hear me, turning to face my direction. Her eyes, that I know to be a pale green, land on me, and the realization that this really is Myla, who had become real to me in ways I can’t begin to understand or explain, downright punches me in the chest. She’s in the room with me, alive, rather than the one place I couldn’t have saved her from, which was death. And beautiful. So fucking beautiful, and while I knew this, she is far more striking in person than in her photos, or even on the security feeds I’ve replayed of her, over and over again. But she is thinner than she was, her cheekbones more defined, and oddly, somehow softer and yet stronger than I expect in the same moment. It’s a contradiction I do not completely understand, nor do I try. Not yet, but I will, when I have time and space to process this moment and this event.
She grabs the back of one of the sofas, and the entire living room of furniture divides us. A square table. Another couch to the left. Two chairs to the right. She is uneasy, seeming to welcome the separation while I do not.
“I guess you’re my new bodyguard,” she says, as if this isn’t her first rodeo.
“If I decide to take the job.”
“Why wouldn’t you take the job?”
“Surely you know protecting you and failing is equivalent to a death wish?”
“Why would you fail?”
“Why would I fail?” I ask. “Not why is this job a death wish?”
“Isn’t that obvious?” she asks, laughing, the sound a nervous but somehow musical note. “If you die, I died first.”
My lips quirk. “That is a good point.”
“I’d prefer neither of us die at this moment in time,” she says, “but of course, I don’t know you and you don’t know me.”
“In other words, you might prefer me dead tomorrow?”
“Or you me.”
There is a rebellious lift to her chin with those words, the action not quite echoing the far more uncertain look in her eyes. “I won’t want you dead, unless of course you’re actually trying to kill me.”