Page 79 of The Bodyguard's Fall

I listened and watched as the Walker family moved into a frantic tizzy to accommodate and fix and protect until I couldn’t stomach the way I had flipped their entire world upside down.

All this just five days before Jaxon’s wedding. Poor Ann. She didn’t need anything else to stress about.

It was then, while listening to Tate and Will debate the merits of moving me somewhere or keeping me here (Will wanted to move me, and Tate wanted me to stay, shockingly enough), that my phone dinged with a text from Elaine.

Elaine: Check your email. Urgent.

A feeling of dread settled over me. But since I didn’t think anything else thrown at me today could top what had already occurred, I opened my email with a feeling of hostile indifference.

“Knock, knock.”

My door opened, and I smiled when Reese’s head popped in. Tate had only just left my side when his dad needed his help installing a camera.

“Hey,” I said, sliding my partially packed duffel bag underneath the desk. “What are you doing here?”

She entered the room in jeans and a wrinkly t-shirt, like she’d just thrown on whatever she had lying around, before she closed the door. She hugged me before flopping down on my bed. She immediately grabbed a carrot from the vegetable tray and was eyeing the cheese and crackers Ann had brought me.

“I came with Dominic,” she said, giving the vegetable a generous dip in ranch dressing. “He’s changing the locks and installing a bunch of security cameras all over. This place will be tighter than Fort Knox when those boys are done.”

My eyes closed. “I told them not to do that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to tell Will to get me out of here.”

She sat up. “I heard him tell Dom you were staying.”

I swore softly, my entire body feeling achy at the thought of all the trouble happening to this sweet family for my benefit.

“What’s wrong?” she pressed again, pulling her brown hair up in a ponytail. “Besides having a deranged madman creep obsessed with you.”

“We could have died. Tate’s entire family, and me, could have been murdered in our beds. And Will’s probably pushing them to make me stay. I can’t do it. I can’t do that to this family.”

She held up her hands. “I wasn’t part of the conversation for long, but Will was most definitely not pushing them. Tate was the one demanding that you don’t go. Tom and Ann were agreeing. They want you to stay. They want to get him.”

“That’s because they’re too nice. They can’t really want this. A guy was hiding out in their basement while we were all sleeping.”

We both chewed on that and a couple carrots for a minute before Reese added, “Tate seems like he’s barely holding it together. Have you talked to him?”

“No. He mostly just grunts and throws things around when he comes inside. He only just barely left me alone in here. He only wants me to stay because he has some weird allegiance to Will.”

As I said the words, it felt wrong. The words felt wrong, disloyal to Tate and all his efforts in some way, but there was no other explanation that I was willing to entertain.

“Allegiance to Will?” Reese said incredulously before she began to laugh. “I don’t think it’s worry for Will that has him yelling and bossing Dom and all his brothers around and installing security cameras all over this farm.”

I flushed slightly and began to rise. “I need to stop all that. I⁠—”

Reese shot a hand out and grasped my arm, pulling me back. “Just think about it for a second. Settle yourself back down on this fluffy bed where Tate probably sleeps in the nude and think.”

Despite myself, a laugh bubbled out of me.

“Not a bad picture in your head, right?”

I scowled lightly at her, but I didn’t mean it. I felt lighter with her here. Like it was all just a bad dream. A dream I didn’t want to think about anymore.

“Wait. Did you say you came with Dominic?” I asked.

Her cheeks darkened slightly with color as she opened a sleeve of crackers. “Yeah.”