The Bodyguard's Return by Carla Cassidy Read Free Book Online Page A

anything?” she whispered.
    “Where are your keys to the office?” His voice was like hers, just a whisper.
    She dug her hand into her pocket and withdrew the keys. He took them from her. For the first time since they’d fallen to the pavement, he looked down at her. “I’m going to open the office door and when I do, I want you to crawl inside. Whatever you do, don’t stand up.”
    His eyes gleamed more silver than green in the moonlight. Dangerous. He looked so dangerous it frightened her. “What happened, Joshua?” she asked again, her fear evident in her voice. “What’s going on?”
    “Somebody just took a shot at us.” His eyes narrowed as he once again looked across the street. “And I don’t know if the shooter is still there waiting for us to make a move or not.”
    A shot? Somebody had shot at them? Fear swelled inside her. Her head throbbed with nauseating intensity. “I told you something was rotten in this town.” Her voice rose in volume. Surely this was proof. “I must be onto something and now somebody is trying to shut me up.”
    “How about you shut up right now until we get inside and can call the sheriff.”
    She would have been offended by his words if she hadn’t been so busy trying to process the fact that apparently somebody had just tried to kill them.
    As he started to get off her, she had the crazy need to wrap her arms around his neck and keep him in place so close to her.
    Don’t go, she wanted to say. But, she didn’t. She held her breath as he slowly eased up into a crouch and quickly made his way to the office door.
    She tensed, waiting for another gun report, praying another bullet didn’t come careening out of the night toward him. She released a sigh of relief as he reached the door, unlocked it and shoved it open.
    “Keep low,” he said.
    Keep low? She’d crawl on her belly like a worm if it kept her alive. And that’s exactly what she did. As she moved, she was aware of the grit of the sidewalk beneath her, the shards of glass that littered the way.
    Tension made her feel like throwing up. Somebody had shot at her. Somebody had pointed a gun and pulled the trigger. Her head pounded with the horrifying knowledge. Apparently somebody wanted her dead.
    She made it to the doorway and slid inside. Joshua sat on the floor next to Raymond Buchannan’s desk, the phone to his ear. As she crawled up next to himhe hung up. “The sheriff is on his way. Are you okay?”
    “My head hurts and my clothes are ruined, but other than being positively terrified, I think I’m fine.” But, she wasn’t fine. A trembling shuddered through her as she thought of the window exploding and the bullet that had caused it.
    He nodded, then rising to a crouch once again he moved away from the desk and to the edge of the broken window where he peered outside. “I don’t think our shooter is out there now.”
    “How do you know that?” Even though she wasn’t at all sure she liked Joshua West that much, what she wanted to do more than anything at the moment was curl up in his arms. There was no doubt in her mind that the bullet had been meant for her.
    He turned from the window and glanced back at her, his eyes glittering darkly. “If the shooter was still out there, there’s no way we would have been able to make it back inside to call the sheriff. He would have fired again to try to prevent us getting help.”
    “What more proof do you need that something is going on? Somebody just tried to kill me and it can only be because I’m digging into things somebody doesn’t want uncovered.”
    “Don’t jump to conclusions,” he replied tersely. “And when the sheriff gets here let me do the talking. If you come off like a half-hysterical female, he won’t listen to either one of us.”
    “I’ve never been a hysterical female in my life,” she replied with more than a touch of irritation. Now that some of the fear was passing she found herself aggravated by his words. “Part of