The Alpha Bodyguards Books #4-6

Chapter Seven

H eavy bass .

Seventy thousand bodies.

Half females.

Sweat, bikinis, electronica, pulsating lights, thirty-three minutes past sunset, there was pussy everywhere.

The Ultimate Music Festival.

Shirtless, a baseball cap pulled low over my face, I crossed my arms.

“Hi.” Fake tits, yellow bikini top, a woman grabbed my right bicep as she swayed to the music.

I glanced at her.

Eyes dilated, she smiled.

“Eleven,” I stated, loud enough for her to hear.

She laughed. “What?”

I stared over her head. “You’re the eleventh woman who’s hit on me.” Twelve was the perfect number. An even dozen.

Her smile went from flirtatious to seductive. She stroked my arm. “I’m hitting on you?”

Every inch of my exposed torso inked, I knew what I looked like. Women either came on to me or crossed the street to avoid me. Neither of which was relevant right now. “I don’t like odd numbers.” Bad shit happened in odd numbers.

High, she smiled and swayed to the music as her eyes closed. “Mm-hmm.”

I shook her off and moved deeper into the crowd.

My gaze landed on twins. Identical. An even pair. They both looked at me at the same time.

Blonde, curvy, both in bikinis, one black, one pink, I could easily have one on her knees and the other on my mouth.

Except thirteen was after twelve.

I kept moving.

A sea of bodies dancing, swaying, singing, yelling, drinking, fucking with their clothes on. They were here for all of it.

I wasn’t.

Disorder, chaos, mayhem, a surging tide with no control—it was all drowning in details. Numbers, colors, distances, bodies, backpacks, staff, security, I memorized everything like a junkie. Except I wasn’t addicted.

I scanned the crowd again.

Everyone facing the stage, arms swaying in time to the music, bodies moving to the beat—from chaos came patterns. Back, forth, up, down, all in unison.

An unusual movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention.

It wasn’t a pattern.

My cell vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out. Glancing at the display, I swept my thumb across the screen and took the call.

“How’s it looking?” André Luna, my current boss, asked. “Any way to secure an area?”

“No.” None. The movement was two men.

Luna swore in Spanish. “VIP section?”

I’d already walked through and dismissed the cordoned-off area a half hour ago. “Five egresses that can be breached, only two patrolled, unsecure roped-off barricade, one hundred to one attendees to security ratio in that section.” Far more outside it.

“I need an option for the client.”

“There is no safe option.” Luna ran the best personal security firm in the business for a reason. He was thorough. He didn’t take any jobs he wasn’t one hundred percent sure he could handle, and he did his homework. I respected him for it. But there was no way to secure this event. It was controlled chaos. “The client should skip the event.”

Luna exhaled. “Noted.”

Without turning, without direct visual contact, I catalogued the two men in my peripheral vision. “Need anything else?”

Wearing dark, loose shirts untucked and pants, they moved erratically against the sea of bodies as they scanned everyone.

“No, gracias,” Luna thanked me. “Appreciate the recon and the favor. Anything changes, let me know. Otherwise, see you at the office tomorrow.”

“Copy that.” I hung up and looked back at the stage and flashing lights. My gaze fell on the two men’s target.

Bent at the waist in a crouch, pushing through the crowd in nothing but a bikini, she pulled a shirt off an unsuspecting guy’s waist and fed her arms through it. The red-and-black flannel was out of place. Her glances over her shoulder were out of place. The too-big shoes tripping her up were out of place.

At a music festival with everyone faced toward the stage, the panic on her face was out of place.

Reminding myself I wasn’t here to get involved, I catalogued the group in front of me. Three men, two brown-haired, one black-haired. Two blonde women. One backpack, one purse. The black-haired man fed the shorter woman a gummy.

I looked back at the woman, still crouched, still pushing her way through the crowd.

I didn’t have to look at what she was running from. I already knew it was the two men in loose shirts concealing weapons. And I knew the second they spotted her.

They separated and drew down.

Trained—by the Marines, by years of practice, by circumstances—I could calculate distances, percentages and details in rapid-fire sequence.

One gunman reached to his back waistband for a Glock 19. The other circled, holding a Sig P226. Both moving low and fast, they’d intercept their target in twelve seconds.

Then the woman in the stolen flannel shirt stumbled, cutting those precious seconds in half.

The man with the Glock didn’t hesitate.

He aimed.

Festivalgoers screamed, the crowd parted, then surged, and bedlam broke out.

The flannel woman lurched forward.

It took me one point five seconds to make my decision.

Another second for the gunman with the Sig P226 to fire.

It was the flannel woman’s lucky day.

I stepped in her path.