Chapter Two
FORD TOOK A sip of the lukewarm coffee that tasted like scorched metal and managed not to make a face. Natalie stared at him for several seconds, her pretty blue eyes wide with disbelief and betrayal.
“What do you mean they think I’m dead?” She looked so small and vulnerable in the oversized hospital bed, her voice a bewildered rasp.
He ran his knuckles across his chin, delaying the inevitable. “When I arrived and it became clear just how motivated those men were to find you, I made a tough decision in order to protect you—”
“What men?”
Shit. He was getting ahead of himself. “I don’t know exactly. Two white guys who sounded like they were speaking Russian. A redhead with a bandage on his hand, and one with dark hair. They were trying to get information about you, and they weren’t being very subtle about it.”
Her mouth formed an O as her gaze trailed to the floor. “The redhead could be the guy Jason fought in the elevator.”
Ford had no idea who Jason was—or why he wasn’t here with her—but that could wait.
“Maybe. Either way, they knew you were still alive, and I had to assume they wanted to finish the job. So, I had you declared dead, and they seemed to buy it. They left soon after.” They had, in fact, followed Ford to his car as he played the grieving fiancé and tailed him to a hotel.
Natalie’s lips parted as if to speak, but she just stared at the wall. Not quite the chatterbox he remembered. Then again, she was coming out of anesthesia.
When he’d entered her room—a feat made possible by the whole fiancé ruse—her skin had looked almost gray as she lay engulfed in white bedding, flanked by a lazily beeping heart rate monitor and an IV pole.
It had felt wrong for her to be so still and silent, so unlike the woman who was always laughing, teasing him, trying to crack his guard, break his focus.
Unfortunately, the one time she’d succeeded, it had nearly gotten them both killed.
Guilt lanced his chest. Protecting Natalie had been his job then, and he’d come far too close to failing. Now someone had attacked her again, and he would do whatever it took to ensure her safety. Even fake her death, dammit.
She finally met his gaze. “The only way you could think of to protect me was to make the world think I’m dead? Even my parents?” The pure anguish in her voice lodged in his ribs like a dart.
But there was no point second-guessing himself.
He’d made his choice, and now they both had to deal with it.
“Under better circumstances, I might have handled things differently. But I don’t have an entire team at my disposal, and I don’t know the full nature of the threat.
I also wasn’t sure if the police were there to question you or arrest you. ”
Her frown deepened at his mention of the cops, and she rubbed her forehead. “And Gretchen agreed?”
Gretchen Hawthorne? The older woman who’d referred Natalie’s father to Beaumont & Associates four years ago was exceedingly protective of her little flock, but he didn’t understand why he would need her approval. “She doesn’t know either.”
Natalie blanched. “So, no one else knows?”
He inhaled deeply, filling his nostrils with the scents of ammonia and bleach. “Just the person who made it happen, and the few medical staff who signed off.”
“You didn’t arrange it yourself?” she asked, probably rightfully concerned about the number of people who knew her secret. Each one they added to the scheme made it more likely to unravel.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have the contacts for that—especially in Lucerne—but I know someone who does, and she made it happen fast.” Lehmann was a shady but invaluable woman to know. Luckily, she’d been willing to take on Natalie’s case at the last minute. For a hefty fee, of course.
“And you trust all of these people not to give me away,” she said.
The knot in his chest tightened. “Not forever, but we paid them well and told them you were on the run from a dangerous mob.” Which appeared to be true. “The bullet wound went a long way toward selling that story. It just needs to work until we remove the threat.” Or until they got her into hiding.
She yawned and blinked a few times, the fresh dose of pain meds Dr. Amadi had administered probably kicking in. “Do you know if my friend Emma is safe? She and Jason escaped right before the police arrived.”
Ford couldn’t hide his shock. “They left you alone with a gunshot wound?” His hands curled into fists and the room was suddenly stuffy. So far, the police didn’t realize anyone else had been at the scene besides Natalie and the dead guy. Something they’d need to discuss eventually.
“I made them leave,” she said about her so-called friends.
“They’d already been key witnesses to a fatal shooting at the Dying Lion monument.
” Her voice lowered along with her gaze.
“Our informant was murdered.” She toyed with the corner of the tape holding down her IV tube.
“If they were found at another crime scene, the police would’ve been suspicious, and we have no idea of the enemy’s reach.
What if he has local cops in his pocket? ”
What the hell had she gotten into? Ford’s head whirled, and it wasn’t because of the obscenely late hour, or the fact that he’d spent most of the evening playing a distraught fiancé.
Before she’d been declared dead, her father had been more than willing to tell the hospital staff that Ford was now her betrothed.
That relationship gave him access to watch over her, but he knew nothing of why she’d been targeted.
Mr. Nygaard-Brown could only tell Ford that Natalie worked as an investigative journalist and had gone to Europe for a story.
Her question about Gretchen, though, had him wondering if there was more to it.
Five years ago, Gretchen and her wife Laura had led the charge to take down Remy Blaze and his revenge porn site after a fan had become obsessed with, and eventually killed, their oldest daughter, Parker.
Natalie was part of a group of victims Gretchen had gathered to support each other, and to help build a case against Blaze.
Along the way, Natalie had caught the interest of a stalker from the pictures her ex had posted on Blaze’s site. That’s when Ford’s team had been hired to protect her.
Blaze had eventually gone to jail after paying hefty reparations to many of the victims, and Ford had mostly stopped working in the field after recovering from his injuries, eventually moving to Geneva to run the European arm of his family’s security business.
He hadn’t heard from Gretchen or Natalie again until the phone call six hours earlier.
“Who exactly is the enemy?” he asked. “And why are they after you?”
Natalie stared at a slightly fuzzy Ford, her eyelids growing heavier by the minute. Because of him, everyone she loved and cared about thought she was dead right now, and she knew she was mad about it, but her body had started floating and she couldn’t seem to hold a thought.
Had she told him too much?
“What have you gotten into, Natalie?” he prompted, those pale blue eyes scanning her face with concern. He’d shown more emotion tonight than in the entire three months he’d been her bodyguard.
And Lord knew she’d tried to crack that stoic facade a hundred times. Anything to escape the reality of having a stalker and the limits to her freedom that her dad had pushed on her, even if out of love.
Stewing in negative emotions was wholeheartedly not her thing.
So she’d focused her attention on Ford, studying every nuance of expression and twitch of his lips until she’d become addicted to the idea of finally scaling his mile-high walls, doing everything she could to get a reaction out of him.
Anger, laughter, even a simple shake of his head would suffice.
And then, one day it had worked. She’d been fucking jubilant until her stalker Tim Marinelli took advantage of the distraction.
If Ford hadn’t shielded her, she’d probably have died. Instead, he’d taken a knife to the back.
Her stomach clenched. For a moment, she’d been able to forget that she almost got him killed. “You must hate me,” she said, hardly able to open her mouth enough to get the words out.
He stilled and frowned at her. “Why would I hate you?”
It was her turn to frown. Why wouldn’t he? “My fault you…got hurt.” Her tongue felt heavy.
A little line formed next to his brow and he shook his head.
“Nothing about that situation was your fault. I’m the one who let down my guard.
That asshole is the one who attacked.” He ran a hand along the dark stubble on his jaw.
“If I hate anyone, it’s myself. Your safety was my one job, and I almost failed. ”
Her jaw slackened. Twenty-six-year-old Ford would have never talked to her like this. He’d barely paid attention to her at all except as it pertained to keeping her safe from the predator who’d seen her half-naked photos on a revenge porn site and developed an unhealthy obsession.
Tim had started with social media DMs and text messages that she blocked, and escalated to showing up at her work with flowers and a stack of photos he’d taken without her knowledge.
After she got a restraining order, she could never prove it, but he broke into her apartment and rearranged her things, reset her thermostat, turned off her fridge. And then the threats had started.