Be on the Lookout: Bodyguard
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Tyler Anne Snell
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24
HarlequinChapter One
He wouldn’t tell anyone this, but the fight almost ended much differently.
The punch that landed squarely against his jaw almost knocked him out. Pain, bright and bold, exploded along the bone as the blow connected. It made him stagger to the side, and for a moment he struggled with fighting the urge to cradle the pain and seek refuge.
Or pass out. Blackness fringed the edges of his vision.
But Jonathan Carmichael wasn’t that easy to take down.
He dropped low into a crouch and swung his leg around. His attacker wasn’t fast enough to move out of the way. His legs were swept out from under him and he hit the ground hard. The wheeze of someone who had lost their breath escaped from his lips.
Jonathan wasn’t where he needed to be physically—the punch really had done a number on him—but he knew the hired thug wasn’t just going to lie down and take it. Plus, he still had someone to protect.
Out of his periphery, Jonathan saw the door behind him and to the left was still closed. Fleetingly, he wondered if Martin actually locked the door like he had been told.
“You—gonna—gonna pay,” the thug started to wheeze out, but Jonathan didn’t have time for a speech. He turned on his heel and leveled the man with his own knockout punch. The muscle-clad baddie didn’t wage an internal war of whether or not he was going to slip into unconsciousness. Or, if he did, he didn’t win the battle.
His head clunked against the hardwood while the rest of his body relaxed.
“I’m gonna have a tall beer tonight,” Jonathan said, tenderly touching his chin. He winced. “That’s what I’m gonna do, all right.”
He nudged the guy’s foot with his work boot before feeling comfortable enough to walk back to the door his client was behind. Trying the doorknob, he cursed beneath his breath.
“Martin, I told you to lock this.”
His client, an older man who was five feet three inches of scatterbrain, didn’t offer an apology for not listening to his bodyguard. Instead his eyes widened at Jonathan’s appearance.
“You’re bleeding,” Martin exclaimed. He pointed to his eyebrow and then his lip.
“Don’t worry,” he hedged, temporarily forgetting he had other injuries. “It’s the jaw that hurts the worst.”
“And the bad man?” Martin didn’t try to see out into the other room. To him the hired gun was his own personal hell. An evil man who had threatened him, stalked him and attacked him. All in an attempt to exact revenge for sending his boss to prison. Jonathan remembered when the man had come into Orion Security Group’s front doors begging for protection, for a bodyguard to keep him safe. The police hadn’t believed he was being targeted, but Jonathan’s boss had.
A call Jonathan was grateful for and so was Martin.
“He won’t hurt you anymore.”
Martin’s entire body sagged in relief.
“Thank you, son. Thank you.”
Jonathan nodded, ignoring how the endearment struck a sore chord. Before he could stop it, the invisible wall that he had built for thirty-three years sprang up. He cleared his throat.
“Tell me you at least called nine-one-one,” he deadpanned. Martin’s eyes widened again, guilt written clearly across his face.
Jonathan let out a long breath.
“Call them while I go tie up our friend,” he ordered, pulling the zip ties from one of his cargo pants’ pockets. Martin nodded and for once listened.
The thug, a man around the same age as Jonathan but who had obviously had a much harder life, stayed unconscious while Jonathan tied his wrists together in front of his stomach. Just to be safe, he patted him down, revealing a wicked pocketknife and a wad of cash. There was no ID, but Jonathan didn’t need it. He felt as if he knew the man on some level. Fiercely loyal to his boss.
Hardened by life from the streets with scars that bore testament to that theory.
Determination unwavering.
Was he that different?
Would this have been Jonathan’s life had he not run into his current boss all those years ago?
Jonathan shook his head. He’d learned at a young age that what-ifs did more harm than they ever did good.
“I called them—they’re on their way and a little confused,” Martin said from the doorway, eyes staying away from the man who had tormented him for months. “But then this man called?” He held Jonathan’s phone away from him with a shrug.
The bodyguard quickly took the phone, confused, as well.
“Carmichael here.”
“Why does the client have your phone?”
Jonathan cut a grin as the voice of one of Orion’s finest—and his closest friend—filled his ear.
“Well, look who it is! Mark Tranton, back from vacation.”
A chuckle came through the airwaves.
“Well, you couldn’t expect me to pass on a free weeklong stay at a beachside bungalow, could you?” Mark exclaimed.
“The old Mark would have,” Jonathan reminded his friend. “But the new Mark is a lot more fun, so I guess it’s understandable.”
“The new Mark also has two ladies who would never let him pass on a former client’s generosity like that,” the other man added with another laugh. Jonathan had known Mark for almost a decade and was glad to see his friend happy with his girlfriend and her young daughter. “Now, why did the client answer your phone?”
Jonathan gave his fellow bodyguard a rundown of the exchange from the moment the man picked the front door lock to the knockout minutes before Mark called. He could hear the concern in Mark’s voice as he questioned Jonathan’s injuries, but Jonathan’s walls were still up. He brushed the concerns off.
“The cops should be here soon, so I need to go,” he started. “Wait, did you need something?”
“Yeah, but it can wait. Give me a call when you land in Dallas and I’ll meet you at Orion.”
Jonathan agreed to that and they ended the call.
The bodyguard slid his phone back into his pocket and took another long look at the man on the ground.
I could have been you.
* * *
TWO DAYS LATER Jonathan was cruising through Dallas, Texas, in the familiar comfort of his old, worn Range Rover. It was raining, but not enough to spoil his homecoming or Mark’s insistence that he come straight to Orion’s office. He wondered what all the fuss was about but didn’t think on it too much as he puttered his way through afternoon traffic.
Before Orion he’d been an agent with Redstone Solutions, an elite and very private security agency. With more funding than they knew what to do with—and very little care for those who couldn’t afford basic safety—he’d had contracts that had taken him all over the world. Orion, operating on a smaller financial but higher moral scale, still made him travel the nation. Through all of his travels, though, he could safely come to one concrete conclusion: traffic anywhere was horribly annoying.
There were some things he missed about his hometown, but this wasn’t one of them.
The rain let up by the time he reached the one-story building with its Orion Security Group sign blaring atop the front doors. Steam rose from the parking lot asphalt as he stretched. Unlike Mark or even Oliver, another close friend and Orion employee, Jonathan had a wide wingspan and stood taller than the two at six-three. Growing up, his long limbs had made him self-conscious—catching names like “String Bean” and “Stretch”—but being a bodyguard had taught him how to use his lean body to his advantage.
Strength and speed were two traits he trained hard to keep.
Orion’s lobby had long windows tinted to keep the Texas sun at bay. It kept the lobby cool as Jonathan passed by the desk where their cyber-techy secretary, a young woman named Jillian, sat. At her absence, he felt a sort of alertness flare. Just because she wasn’t in the lobby didn’t mean he should think something ominous was going on.
Yet, as he walked through the door and down the hallway that led to the common area for employees, Jonathan couldn’t shake the growing feeling of unease. Especially since he had passed empty offices belonging to Mark and Thomas, another Orion agent.
“Hello?” he said, rounding the corner to the grazing area, as he liked to call the open-area lounge for employees between the boss’s office and the training room. Normally it was a comfortable space to relax or play a way-too-competitive game of Ping-Pong, never too much action going on. So when he found it filled with people who yelled, “Surprise,” when he was in view, while a brightly colored banner that said Congratulations hung above him, Jonathan was wholly taken aback.
His eyes roamed over the many people bunched together. Among them he found Mark, his boss, in-house Orion employees and a few people he’d never met. He was sure he looked like a jackass standing there gaping.
“I don’t understand?” he asked when the cheers had died down.
An attractive woman with short, dark red hair laughed. She was Nikki Waters, founder and main boss at Orion, as well as one of his three closest friends.
“To be honest, this—” she motioned to the banner and then to the people next to her “—isn’t really for you, but we couldn’t resist trying to surprise you. Though, I guess it could count if we said, ‘Congratulations for a supremely well-done job of handling yourself this week!’” She held up a champagne flute—something he realized the other partygoers also held—and lifted it in the air. “To Jonathan Carmichael for an excellent job well-done!”
A chorus of “hear, hear” sounded.
“Thanks,” he said, still uncertain. “But who is this all really for?”
Nikki looked at Mark, who stepped to the side. Kelli, Mark’s girlfriend, showed herself.
“Us,” she answered before holding up her left hand. A ring graced her finger, but it was the smile on Mark’s face that really sold it.
“You’re kidding me,” Jonathan exclaimed, a smile as pure as they came pulling up the corners of his lips. “You two are getting hitched?”
They laughed in unison.
“You better believe it, best man!”
Jonathan’s happiness for his best friend pushed him forward and he gave the many-muscled man a big hug. Mark, knowing Jonathan wasn’t big on shows of affection, knew not to comment. Instead he returned it before passing the second embrace on to his future wife. The rest of the party went back to their own mingling as Jonathan took a step back to congratulate the two of them again.
“I wanted to wait to tell everyone after I’d told you, but this one here got a little too chatty.” Mark looked at Kelli, who just laughed. A woman Jonathan didn’t recognize pulled Nikki’s and her attention away, leaving Mark and Jonathan alone.
“So should we talk about your face?” the bodyguard asked. Jonathan knew how it looked—a cut above his right lip, a bandage on his eyebrow and a gnarly bruise across his jawline—but he was happy that no one else had brought it up while he was in front of everyone.
“Don’t worry, it feels worse than it looks,” he joked. “So, best man, really?” Jonathan didn’t want to keep talking about his previous job when he’d just been extended an honor that could be taken as the epitome of male friendship. Mark clapped him on the shoulder.
“Who else would I pick? Now go put your stuff away and we’ll talk bachelor party ideas.” Mark wiggled his eyebrows. Once again it reminded Jonathan of how much happier his friend had become in the past year of being with Kelli and her daughter. Life, according to him, had become more enjoyable than even he had imagined.
A mixture of longing, sadness and regret exploded in Jonathan’s chest as he set his pack down behind his desk. From the open door he could see Kelli take Mark’s hand even though the two were in separate conversations.
Looking back Jonathan would realize that it was in that moment that he made his next decision, but while he was still in the moment he would think it was when Nikki walked into the room to give him a new client file.
“I don’t want to be a field agent anymore,” he responded, surprising the two of them. “I’m missing out on life, Nikki, and I don’t want to anymore.” She took a seat. Jonathan continued, “Mark’s getting married and already has a little family. Oliver has a kid on the way. I—” He struggled to find the words.
“Want to grow roots,” she supplied.
“Yes, but I can’t do that if I’m never in one spot for long.”
“So you want a desk job,” she added.
He nodded.
Nikki Waters wasn’t an easy woman to ruffle. She pursed her lips but didn’t try to sway his decision.
“Okay,” she said instead.
“Okay?” He’d half expected her to be angry. Other than Mark he was the highest-ranking field agent.
“When I started Orion, I knew it would be a lot of work, and you’ve been an integral part in helping me carry that workload. That’s included sacrificing your personal life, I’ve noticed. If you want to stay in one place, we can make that happen.”
“So...that’s it?”
Nikki held up her index finger.
“Now, I didn’t say that.”
