4. Bodyguard Blues
Bodyguard Blues
CONNOR
I'm going to sleep on the sofa in Rachel's suite, and there is no version of tonight where that changes.
Someone got into her room. Someone walked past hotel security, past a locked door, and left a message on her wall in red paint like a promise.
That is not a warning shot. That is someone who wants her to know they can reach her whenever they choose.
I am ten feet from her bedroom door with my laptop open and every alarm I own running, and that is where I will be until the sun rises.
That is the only reason I am here.
I keep telling myself that, standing at the darkened window while the city sprawls below, and I almost believe it. Almost.
I pull up the hotel's internal CCTV system on my secondary laptop.
Not through official channels. Through Eddie, who knows a contact at the security desk, who accepted an envelope and asked exactly zero questions.
Two of my own micro-surveillance units are already planted in the east stairwell, the one the intruder most likely used. I map the feeds live, every entrance,
Every elevator bank, every sightline, and identify the blind spot near the service corridor that needs to close before morning.
"That's not strictly legal." Webb's voice arrives through my earpiece from London, dry as a contract dispute.
"Neither is spray-painting threats on a woman's wall."
A pause. The sound of him typing. "Fair point. I'll pretend I didn't see the access log."
"You always do."
I tab back to Moreau's financials and start pulling threads. Shell corporations, offshore routing, the ghost of a money trail someone very skilled tried to bury. I should stay here. Work the problem. The sun rises in six hours.
Instead I am already moving toward the door.
The suite they've moved Rachel to sits three doors down, better sightlines, single point of entry, a floor I now control in every way that matters.
It is also, I note when chapter 16 St. John helps us relocate her, a junior suite with a living room.
Sofa. A closed bedroom door that creates a perfectly reasonable separation of space.
I tell myself that has nothing to do with why I volunteered to stay.
Nate reads my face, says nothing, and takes up his post outside. Smart man.
She opens the bedroom door at my knock.
Hotel-provided pajamas, silk, because Le Bristol maintains standards even in a crisis.
Her hair loose around her shoulders, still slightly damp at the ends.
Makeup scrubbed clean, and this version of her face, open and unguarded and stripped of every layer of armor she wore backstage and in every press photo I have studied, is more distracting than any of them.
I catalog it the way I catalog threats, the way I would note an exit route or a pressure point: observed, filed, managed.
The problem refuses to stay filed.
"I thought you'd left," she says.
"Next door." I step inside without waiting for an invitation, because standing in the corridor is a courtesy I cannot afford tonight.
My eyes sweep the room. Windows, curtains, the single lamp throwing warm amber light across cream-and-gold walls.
The bed registers in my peripheral vision and I keep my attention on the windows.
"Keep those curtains closed. Nate has men on the street, but I don't want you visible from outside. "
"Okay."
"Don't open the door for anyone except me or Nate. Hotel staff included."
"I understand."
"Rachel." I turn, and that is a tactical error, because she is backlit by that single lamp and the light catches the green flecks in her eyes and the curve of her shoulder through thin silk, and I have sutured knife wounds in field conditions with more composure than whatever is currently happening to my nervous system.
"The person who got into your room tonight knew your exact location and bypassed hotel security to deliver that message. That is not an opportunist. That is someone with resources and a very specific objective."
Her chin lifts. The fear is still there behind her eyes, but something ignites alongside it, that particular fire I am already learning to recognize. "I know it's serious. I was standing in front of the wall when they wrote it."
"Then act like it."
"I am acting like it. I changed suites, I have armed men outside my door, I haven't breathed a word to the press.
" She crosses her arms, and the movement shifts the silk across her hip and I make myself look at her face and nowhere else.
"What I won't do is stand here while you talk to me like I'm a problem you've been contracted to contain. "
"You're not a problem."
"Then stop solving me."
The words land somewhere below my sternum. She studies me with those hazel eyes, patient and searching, and I have spent fifteen years making certain that no one finds what they're looking for when they look at me that way.
"Why do you actually care?" she asks. Quieter this time, and the quiet makes it harder to deflect. "Don't give me the reputation answer. I've heard it twice now and it doesn't hold."
She is sharper than I keep accounting for. I keep revising my estimate upward and she keeps clearing the bar.
"That's a very clean answer," she says, before I can offer it again, "for a man who's been watching me like I'm a problem he can't solve."
I say nothing. The silence opens between us and does the work I won't do myself.
She sees it. I watch her see it, the small recognition moving across her face before she chooses to let it go. That restraint costs her something. I can see it in the deliberate breath, the slight lift of her chin. Somehow it costs me something too.
"There's a cut on your arm."
She glances down, surprised, at the thin line of red above her elbow. "I must have caught it when I backed away from the wall."
The spray-painted threat. Her alone in that suite, backing away in the dark.
"Let me see."
"It's nothing."
"Rachel."
She exhales the way she does when she has decided arguing is inefficient, and extends her arm.
The first aid kit is in the bathroom, Le Bristol stocks everything, and I am back in under a minute.
I kneel in front of her because the bed height makes it the practical option and for absolutely no other reason I am prepared to examine right now.
She watches me work. I clean the cut, apply the antiseptic, smooth the bandage flat.
I have sutured wounds with steadier hands in worse lighting in worse places.
I tell myself that and my thumb still lingers at the edge of the tape a half-second longer than the job requires, and I feel the shift in her breathing before I hear it.
"You're good at this," she says.
"Practice."
"Saving people?"
"Fixing problems." I press the bandage's edge down and make myself let go. "There's a difference."
"Is there?"
I look up. She has not moved. The question sits between us doing double work, and we both understand it stopped being about the cut two exchanges ago.
I stand. Put the length of the room between us. It helps marginally.
"Are you okay?" I hear myself ask, which is not a question I ask clients. Not ever. And yet.
She considers it with the kind of honesty that people in crisis usually spend days avoiding. "I keep thinking about how they knew where I was. How they got past the door." Her voice drops just slightly. "Whether they're watching right now. Whether they'll try again."
"They won't."
"You can't promise that."
"I just did." I move toward the door, needing the exit in a way I rarely need anything. "No one gets to you while I'm here. That is not a reassurance. That is a fact."
She nods. The shadows have not left her eyes, but something steadier has moved in alongside them. Not quite trust. Something more careful than trust and more honest than comfort.
"Connor." I stop with my hand on the door frame. "Thank you. I know I make this harder than it has to be."
"You make it exactly as hard as it should be." I do not turn around. If I turn around and she is still looking at me like that, I will not leave. "Get some sleep."
I let myself out of her bedroom and pull the door quietly closed behind me.
Then I pick up the room service phone and keep my voice low.
Warm milk, a pot of chamomile, and whatever the hotel keeps for guests who cannot shut their minds off at two in the morning.
The woman on the line does not hesitate.
Le Bristol has seen worse nights than this.
I set the tray outside the bedroom door when it arrives, knock once, soft enough that if she is already asleep it will not reach her. A pause. Then the quiet sound of her crossing the room, the door opening an inch, and silence while she takes it in.
"Connor." Her voice is low, a little undone.
"Drink the milk while it's warm." I do not look at her. "The rest will help."
She says nothing for a moment. Then the door closes again, and I hear the small sounds of her settling, and something in my chest loosens by a fraction.
The living room sofa is firm and too short for my legs and I do not care even slightly. I am not leaving her alone in a suite someone already walked into once tonight. That is the only reason I am here. That is the complete and entire reason.
I tell myself that until it almost sounds true, then give up and open my laptop.
The shower in my — her — suite's second bathroom runs cold. I leave it that way.
I stand under it and try to run threat assessments and my mind keeps returning to a single image: the small deliberate act of her extending her arm. Trusting me with something that hurt. One image should not have this kind of grip on a trained operative. And yet here we are.
I cut the water off and pick up my phone. I am back on the sofa with the laptop open when it buzzes.
Nate: You need to see this. Now.
I check the bedroom door. Closed, quiet. Then I cross to the suite's entrance and slip out into the corridor, pulling it shut behind me. Nate's expression stops me before I reach him.