Protect Me

CHAPTER ONE

"If
the man doesn't want a female protection detail, he can kiss my lily-white
butt," the man behind the desk swore. When Steve Winters got irate, his
face went red and he puffed up like an angry goose. It would have been
hilarious on someone that wasn’t 300 pounds of pure muscle. “When I started
this business, I did it so I wouldn’t have to answer to all those lackwits that
are more trouble guarding than they’re worth. If the man doesn’t want the best
in the biz, he can go somewhere else. I’ve only got you for a limited time, so
you better believe I’m gonna use you while you’re here. I can tell you right
now…”

Hope
Lasser bit back a grin and raised her hands in surrender. "Alright,
alright, cool your jets. I was just asking.”

She
leaned back in her chair and checked the view behind her using the reflective
glass of a picture frame. It was good luck that there was any decoration in the
office at all; the few employees of Winters Protection Agency tended toward
spartan tastes. It made sense for Winters to set himself up to see the door,
but having her back to it made her feel uneasy, even in the safety of a nice
California town.

She’d
adjust, Hope thought, and then immediately wondered if she wanted to.

Winters
fixed her with a squinty-eyed glare from across his desk. Hope took that as her
cue to pack up. She grabbed a slim manila folder off his desk and headed for
the door, resisting the urge to open the folder and flick through its contents
on the way out.

“Call
if you need backup. And Hope?” Winters said. She paused in the doorway and
looked back over her shoulder.

He
stared at her, his normally stoic expression somehow even more serious than
usual. “Do good work. There’s a reason I assigned you to this. Things might get
dicey.”

Hope
blinked.

“You
got it, boss,” she said, controlling her surprise. Her eyebrows wanted to fly
all the way up her forehead. This would be her fifth job for Winters, and this
was the first time he’d made any comments. It gave her pause - if Winters knew
the kind of gigs that would be cakewalks, he probably had a pretty good idea of
which ones would be combat zones.

Winters
nodded, his face still grave. He drew a hand over his chin and rubbed at his
five o’clock shadow. His eyes grew distant, looking somewhere past her.

“I want
to be frank with you, this might be a rough one,” he said. His hand dropped
down to fiddle with the plain watch that was always buckled around his wrist.
More reliable than a cell phone, he insisted, and very little was more
important to a bodyguard than timing. “I don’t like to send any of us out into
situations where all the backsides that need kicking haven’t already been
kicked, you know that, but the guy needs protection. He says it’s important,
and he swears he’ll listen. So do your best.”

“Will
do.” Hope nodded and lingered for another second, but Winters looked back down
at his desk and grabbed a bunch of paperwork, apparently done with the odd
little conversation.

She
strode down the hall, the thick soles of her boots making almost no noise
against the tile floor. The fluorescent bulbs overhead flickered and cast odd
shadows against the plastic barriers that divided up the open floor plan. It
was all a bit bare, admittedly, but Hope didn’t mind that. None of the people
that worked for Winters did. Most of them had seen worse.

Hope
rounded a shoulder-high corner and headed for her desk. A dark-skinned man with
dancing black eyes and thick hair threw himself back in his chair and waved her
over before she could sit down.

“Don’t
just pass me by, Lasser! What’s the word from the bossman?”

She
smiled in spite of herself and paused for just a moment. Javier was the
youngest and least experienced of anyone who worked for Winters, and Hope
privately thought he might have been hugged too much as a child. It was
difficult not to like the young man; equally difficult not to dread the day
that reality blunted the edge of his enthusiasm.

Mentally
she weighed her options and decided that a tiny bit of office gossip couldn’t
hurt. It wasn’t Hope’s usual procedure, but Javier was part of the team. Hope
was still getting used to trusting a team with her thoughts, and not just her
life - nobody in all her previous experience had had much use for her opinion.
But she wasn’t in either a war zone or military training anymore.

“Remember
the Rick Stone case that Winters bid on?” Javier’s widened eyes were answer
enough. Hope’s own interest was much fainter and more self-centered, but then,
she didn’t watch as much TV as Javier seemed to. “Right, well, he - er, we got
it.”

The kid
almost bounced in his seat, his big brown eyes open as wide as they’d go.
“Awesome!” he enthused. Hope watched him with amusement and he visibly tried to
rein himself in a little. “Uh, any idea who’s going to get the…”

He
trailed off. Hope stared at him. Javier made a face.

“Yeah,
of course, you’re gonna get it,” he grumbled half-heartedly, slumping back down
in his chair. “Stupid combat experience. Not my fault I haven’t been in any
firefights.”

“Of
course I’m gonna get it,” Hope agreed with a small smile. "So - you, uh,
you know anything about Mr. Stone?" She gave Javier a light shoulder
punch and the kid perked right back up at the show of camaraderie.

"Yeah,
well, you probably know most of the stuff I know. Rich, pretty, stupid..."
Something seemed to occur to Javier and he frowned before shooting her a
nervous look. "Uh, and don't google him with the safety filters off."

Hope
sort of regretted bringing this up.

"Oooookay,"
she said. "I'm just going to leave that alone and go over to my desk to do
some research. Non-google research."

Javier valiantly fought
off a blush and rolled his eyes. "Where else are you going to look?
Entertainment
Weekly
? Even Rick Stone probably doesn’t do everything they write about in
there."

"I'm
sure there's something," Hope said firmly. She started to walk away 

Behind
her Javier said, "When the guy gets drunk and grabs you at a party, I want
your invitation. You know, once you're done punching him."

Hope
looked skyward and prayed to the ugly tile ceiling for patience.

"For
God's sake, I'm not going to punch a client," she told him. “Believe me,
Rick Stone won’t be anything I haven’t seen a hundred times before.” Then she
escaped to her desk.

“Is
this right?” Hope leaned into Winters office several hours later and waited for
him to look up from his reams of paper. She wondered if Winters missed
fieldwork. His huge hands and shoulders looked odd signing and checking off
endless forms.

Winters
tipped up his balding head and gave her a rare half-smile. “I thought you’d be
in here.” He settled back in his chair and rolled his shoulders, wincing at the
pull on his neck.

“Well,
this assignment is a little irregular, sir,” Hope said, trying not to sound
critical, but unsure how else to sound. “He won’t give us a schedule, he won’t
tell us the details of this invention that apparently ‘terrorists’ of some kind
are after, and… I’m going to be the only guard on the detail.”

She
hoped desperately that Winters wouldn’t take this the wrong way; wouldn’t think
she was complaining, or worse,
scared
. But doing a good job - protecting
this stranger - was more important than her pride. And none of the details of
the case were at all usual. By now Hope had been in this business long enough
to know what normal looked like, and this wasn’t even in the same zip code.

It was
strange - Hope hadn’t unthinkingly trusted anyone since she was fourteen. And
she didn’t trust Winters without reservation, of course not. That would be
beyond stupid and possibly suicidal besides.

But
when Hope’s contract in South Africa had ended, she’d been a little lost. She’d
flown back to the States, close enough to her hometown to feel uncomfortable
but far enough away to be able to pretend it didn’t exist. Her entire life Hope
had fallen into one thing after another: the military, Secret Service, a
bodyguard detail, and then another. She knew how to take care of business, but
she wasn’t entirely sure what to do when business didn’t come to her.

She’d
been sitting at a bar nursing a beer and keeping an eye on a drunk in the
corner whose volume kept increasing when Winters walked in.

In a
Hollywood movie, the drunk would have gotten violent, and Hope would have had
to spontaneously cooperate with Winters to subdue him. In reality, the two of
them had looked each other over and noticed all the subtle signs of the trade:
a neat black suit, relaxed and ready posture, eyes that never quite stopped
scanning the room.

He’d
offered her a job and Hope had been pleased to accept, though she was a little
doubtful the work could keep her interest. Winters seemed to be of the same
opinion, because he’d given her a wry grin and said, “Well, I’ll keep you busy
while you’re figuring things out, anyway.”

So
maybe that was why Hope couldn’t suppress a quiet confidence within herself
that there was a good reason Winters would want to send her on a mission with
this many irregular aspects.

“I
mean, according to Javier,” Hope felt a little weird using Javier as a credible
source, but that was teamwork in action, or something, “the guy barely knows
how to tie his own shoes. Are you sure this isn’t just paranoia, or…”

She
trailed off, feeling foolish. After all, the agency had to make money and
paranoia would cash checks as well as a team of ninja assassins. But paranoia
would be a waste of her skills and they both knew it.