Her Bodyguard Page 11

  She tried to walk on her left tiptoe to keep the piece of glass in her heel from digging in deeper.

  Even though the crowd parted for the EMTs, they immediately closed in behind the gurney again, jostling her. She stepped down on her heel more than once and nearly fell, only to be pushed and pawed and set upright by anonymous hands in the crowd.

  After they made sure Lucas was okay, one of the EMTs removed the shard of glass from her heel. As he was applying the bandage, Ethan climbed in through the back doors.

  “Get me out of here,” Lucas demanded as soon as he saw him.

  “No way in hell,” Ethan responded evenly.

  Angela could tell Ethan was shaken by the sight of his older brother. She understood perfectly. Even though she knew from the EMTs that Lucas’s injuries were superficial, he was covered with blood and dirt.

  He had a cut at his hairline that was going to leave a scar and nasty scrapes on his cheek and both elbows, where he’d slid across the floor. But the worst of it was the hundreds of small nicks and cuts that marred his beautiful body. They were all over his neck and face and torso. The EMTs had cleaned all the wounds, but they hadn’t even tried to bandage them. Most were shallow, but the totality of them was a horrific picture.

  Lucas uttered a colorful curse. “Kid, you’re just trying to bully me. I don’t have time to go to the hospital just so they can tell me I’m fine. Get me out of here.”

  “Tell me what happened,” Ethan said, ignoring his brother’s plea.

  “Damn it, kid!”

  “Luke, I can actually take you in and hold you as a material witness. You know I can. So if you don’t want to be buried in a load of paperwork you’ll never be able to climb out of, you’d better start talking.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Lucas said grudgingly, “so I was staring out the window when I saw a guy trying to break into my car.”

  “A guy—” Ethan echoed in a strangled voice. “There was someone in the car?”

  “Oh, God!” Lucas sat up. “Did you find a body?”

  “No.” Ethan’s face grew pale and he thumbed the radio attached to his right shoulder.

  “Bill, who’s there from the fire department? Tell him there may be a body in the vehicle.” He paused to listen to the squawking voice coming through the mike.

  “Repeat please,” the voice crackled. “Did you say body?”

  “Body. Casualty. Affirmative. May have been trying to hot-wire the vehicle. Out.”

  Angela had been listening to the two of them and feeling as if she were two steps behind them, just like she’d felt as a child following Brad and Lucas around. But with Lucas’s words, her brain had suddenly raced forward.

  Hot-wiring the car.

  “It was a bomb,” she whispered, stunned.

  Lucas glanced over at her. “Yeah,” he said, then turned his gaze to Ethan. “It could have been set by the hit man.”

  “The hit man. All right Luke. That does it. I think we need to take steps to keep Angela safe.”

  “No!” Lucas snapped. “Absolutely not. Brad doesn’t want anything formal. That’s why he called me. He knew I’d guard her with my life.”

  Angela stared at Lucas—at the cuts and bruises and scrapes. It was shocking and humbling to realize he really was willing to risk his life to protect her.

  At that instant, the back door opened and the EMTs reached in to slide the stretcher out.

  Lucas rolled off onto his feet. “I’ll walk in,” he said.

  Angela shook her head in frustration and sent a glance Ethan’s way. Ethan just shrugged.

  Angela watched Lucas’s straight proud back as he walked into the Emergency Room.

  Even though Lucas was a bloody mess, not to mention a bully and an altogether annoyingly arrogant man, she felt safer with him than with the entire police force of New Orleans.

  It made no sense.

  TONY PICONE WAS BREATHING so hard he was afraid his lungs might collapse as he let the dispersing crowd carry him back across the street to the sidewalk café. He looked at his watch, but he didn’t have to wonder if they were open yet. The heavyset waiter who always worked the early shift was ogling the crowd and exchanging theories of what had happened with two people standing in the doorway of the café.

  When the waiter spotted him, the excitement in his eyes turned to resignation. Tony was still too out of breath to speak. The waiter opened his mouth, then closed it and went inside.

  Good damn thing he did, too. If he’d have waited for Tony to get his breath so he could order the exact same black coffee he’d ordered every time he sat down, or if he’d tried to sell him a “cafay o lay” again, Tony would have to shoot him.

  If he could. His trembling fingers touched the handle of the Glock in the pocket of his hoodie. He hadn’t known how hard it would be. His fingers spasmed involuntarily as he relived that awful moment. He’d pushed through the crowd, congratulating himself on his ingenuity. The bomb had failed, but the huge crowd it had attracted offered an excellent cover.

  He’d held the gun, hidden in his pocket, against Angela Grayson’s side, but he hadn’t been able to pull the trigger.

  By the time the waiter got back with his coffee, Tony’s breathing had almost returned to normal. But the panic squeezing his chest hadn’t.

  He’d risen early and headed down to Chartres Street to be there when Angela and her bodyguard got into the car. When he’d leaned around the corner of the building and spotted the two-bit carjacker breaking into the passenger door of the Cobra, he’d reached for his Glock, but it was already too late.

  Tony had watched in dread fascination as the thief climbed into the car and ducked his head below window level. He’d put a hell of a lot of explosives under the chassis, more than enough to kill whoever was inside it. He couldn’t stop the guy—couldn’t get any closer, for fear of being caught in the blast that was inevitable, as soon as the two live wires touched.

  He’d cringed, unable to avert his eyes—unable to so much as blink. All he could do was wait. Then it happened.

  The car exploded.

  He’d ducked back, holding his breath until the blast of heat and the crackling roar of the flames finally subsided.

  Tony’s lungs spasmed again as that terrifying instant replayed in his head. Then nausea twisted his gut and he broke out in a cold sweat. He’d killed someone, and not even the right someone.

  Don’t let Papa hear about this, he prayed. His papa considered it a disgrace to kill an innocent bystander. Not that the car thief was exactly innocent, but that wouldn’t matter to Papa.

  He wrapped a hand around the hot mug of coffee and slurped it. After a few more swallows, his chest loosened up a little, his gut unclenched and he could finally concentrate on what was going on in front of the abandoned building at this very moment.

  The police and fire crews were standing by as a wrecker lifted the car onto a low trailer. He wondered if they knew they had a body—or at least what was left of a body—inside. Tony wiped his forehead with a paper napkin.

  Whether they did yet, they would. Their forensics people would quickly put together what had happened. The thief had hot-wired the car, triggering the spark that set off the bomb. He also knew they would quickly figure out how the bomb was built.

  They’d be impressed with the workmanship. He was good at bomb-making. It was his favorite hobby.

  He smiled to himself. They’d quickly reconstruct it, but they wouldn’t be able to trace it. He’d driven all the way down to the Ninth Ward to buy the supplies he’d needed. He’d gone to five different stores, and he’d paid cash at each one. He’d also changed his shirt prior to each purchase. And kept his face away from the surveillance cameras.

  Wait until Paulo heard how he’d planned and built a perfect, untraceable car bomb. It was brilliant.

  The police probably already knew who the car belonged to, but even if they didn’t, they could run the license plate. It was black with soot, but still readable.
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br />   However, one thing the forensics people wouldn’t find among the burned wreckage was the vehicle registration, because Tony had taken it.

  Now he knew who the big guy was who’d latched onto Angela. His name was Lucas Delancey. Address somewhere in Dallas, Texas.

  Tony didn’t know what Delancey was doing here in New Orleans, but he didn’t need to. He gulped the last of his coffee, pleased with himself now that the gut-wrenching fear had subsided. He might not have been able to shoot Angela Grayson at point blank range, but he had managed to institute his back-up plan. He’d made sure he could find the ADA’s sister, no matter where she and her convenient protector went.

  As he sipped on a second cup of coffee, Tony watched a young uniformed cop walking toward him. He set the cup down. He was calm now. Ready. He understood that the cop had to question everybody. And he’d hung around on purpose, so he could find out as much as he could about what the cops had discovered. He smiled to himself. Once again, he’d proven that brains were better than brawn.

  He was calm and confident as the cop showed him his badge. “Been here awhile?” he asked.

  Tony nodded pleasantly. “I saw the explosion. Terrifying.”

  “What were you doing up and about that early?”

  “I have coffee here every morning,” Tony answered. “Pretty days like today, if I wake up early, I come down here and sit until they open.”

  “So what did you do when the car exploded?”

  Tony gave a small laugh. Better to stick as close to the truth as possible. “Nearly jumped out of my skin. It was awful to watch, you know? But I couldn’t look away.”

  “You didn’t run over there?”

  “Sure. I tried, but I couldn’t get close. The fire was too hot, and then I heard the sirens. I figured it was best to stay out of the way.”

  “Mind if I ask you a few questions about what you saw?” the cop asked. “I’m Officer Ethan Delancey.”

  BY NOON, ANGELA FOUND herself sitting beside Lucas in Ethan’s car, headed for the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. She looked across at Lucas. His face was marred by at least a dozen tiny nicks from the exploding glass. The backs of his hands were similarly pocked with small cuts. The sight of them sent cold shivers across her skin. Any one of those small pieces of glass could have been a giant shard. Any one of them could have killed him.

  He glanced at her sidelong. “Are you all right?”

  She swallowed. “I’m fine.” He’d made it clear how tired he was of hearing her tell him how he could have been killed, so she changed the subject.

  “What kind of car is this?” she asked. “It looks even older than yours.”

  Lucas grinned. “It’s a ’64 Corvette. Nice, isn’t it?”

  “What is it with you Delanceys and your ancient cars?”

  “Vintage, sugar. Ethan will kill me if I let anything happen to it.”

  “When you said you’d abandoned Ethan and Harte, what did you mean?”

  Lucas’s jaw muscle flexed. “Family stuff,” he said shortly.

  “Your dad?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I remember you coming to school with black eyes and cut lips. You don’t think it was a secret, do you?

  Chef Voleur’s a small town.” Angela saw the pain in his expression.

  After driving in the silence for a few moments, Lucas spoke. “When Robbie left for the service, he told me to take care of them. I shouldn’t have gone to Dallas.”

  And that was it. The essence of Lucas Delancey. His sense of responsibility, of honor. His need to protect those around him from harm. It was the reason she trusted him. The reason she loved him.

  “Why not?” she countered. “Robbie went into the service.”

  Lucas shot her a glare. “That was different.”

  “No it wasn’t. Besides, by the time you went to Dallas Ethan and Harte were old enough to take care of themselves. “

  “You don’t know anything about it.”

  Angela heard the cold warning in his voice, so she stopped talking. After a few miles, the muscle in his jaw stopped flexing.

  “Where are we going? she asked.

  “The fishing cabin.”

  Angela had been to the Delanceys’ fishing cabin lots of times, years ago when they were kids. It had always been fun to stay there.

  The Delancey family’s definition of fishing cabin was a gigantic log house built back in the forties, with a fireplace that stretched across one entire wall of the main room, a fully stocked kitchen and enough rooms to support a never-ending water pistol war.

  “What if someone’s there?”

  Lucas shook his head. “Nobody has time these days. I just hope Marie-Jean is still taking care of the place.”

  “Marie-Jean?”

  “Claude’s wife. You remember them, don’t you? He runs the bait shop about two miles from the cabin. As long as I can remember, she’s cleaned the place once a month, checked for leaks, restocking supplies and tested the generator.”

  “Oh. I never even thought about where the electricity and food came from. Kids are so oblivious.”

  “Me neither, until I got out on my own and realized all that stuff costs money.”

  “So who pays her?”

  “My granddad provided for it in his will.” Lucas maneuvered the car along the winding dirt road and took a sharp right turn.

  “Here we are.” He pulled the car up close to the back door. As he unfolded his tall frame to climb out, he groaned quietly.

  She got out on the passenger side and eyed him over the roof. “Are you okay? Are you dizzy? The doctor said to take it easy.”

  He glared at her. “I’m fine. I guess my muscles took more of a beating than I thought.”

  “Right. Your muscles. Not to mention the huge bump on your head, and the bullet wound down your back and the ten thousand cuts from all that glass.” She gave an ironic laugh. “I doubt I could find a place on your body that’s not sore.”

  Lucas muttered something Angela didn’t catch. She replayed it in her head as she grabbed her purse and slammed the car door. Had he really said, You could try?

  Surely not. Throwaway lines like that were used by guys who were flirting. Lucas didn’t flirt—not with her. He never had.

  That wasn’t to say he didn’t know how. All through middle school and high school she’d watched him teasing girls, making them giggle and blush like nobody else could. At school dances, he danced with them all, paying particular attention to the wallflowers. That alone was enough to make Angela love him.

  But he’d never danced with her. She’d always been the Brat. Brad’s kid sister.

  He opened the trunk and retrieved the bags of groceries and supplies he’d bought, then headed up the steps to the cabin door. She followed him.

  Shifting all the plastic bags to one hand, Lucas dug inside the base of the porch light and pulled out a key.

  “Really?” she said as he unlocked the door. “Among you and all your cousins you have, what, five cops in the family, and that’s where y’all keep the key?”

  “Four cops, and yes. That’s where we keep it.”

  “How many times has this place been cleaned out by burglars?”

  “Let’s see,” he answered as he replaced the key, then led the way through the dark hallway past the big front room and the bedrooms on to the kitchen. “I’m thinking—never.”

  “Hard to believe. Shouldn’t you let Marie-Jean know we’re here?”

  He set the bags on an enormous pine table that was scarred with the initials, names and rude comments of dozens of kids.

  “No. I don’t want anyone to know we’re here. Better for them and better for us.”

  He took the top off a ceramic cookie jar and reached inside, pulling out another key.

  He tossed and caught the key, then unlocked the kitchen door. “I’ll be right back.” He said. “I’m going to fire up the generator. I hope there’s plenty of diesel.”

  The kitchen
and dining room took up the entire back of the cabin and had windows on three walls, so it was bright and sunny even without electricity. It was also hot.

  Within a minute, Angela heard a humming sound and felt cool air on her face. It was the air conditioner. Lucas had gotten the generator going. Behind her a second different hum started. The refrigerator.

  She dug in the plastic bags for the cream and butter and a carton of orange juice. When she opened the refrigerator, half grimacing at the expected smell, she was pleasantly surprised. It was fresh and sparkling clean, with baking soda on each shelf.

  “Must be nice to afford a housekeeper for your fishing cabin,” she muttered. She could already feel the cool air flowing through the wire shelves.

  Behind her, Lucas opened the kitchen door. He put the key back in the cookie jar. “See,” he said. “Even if burglars did find the front door key and get inside, they wouldn’t have any electricity. They’d never find the key to the generator.”

  She looked up to see his lips spread in that slow Delancey grin that could knock all sense out of her head.

  She smiled back and returned to putting away the groceries. “Right. First of all, they obviously couldn’t steal anything in the dark. And second, of course they’d never think to look in the cookie jar.”

  “Burglars like things easy. Where’s that orange juice?”

  “Right here.” She picked it up and turned just as he peered around her into the fridge.

  They collided. Her breasts flattened against his chest, and the carton of juice slipped from her hands to plop onto the floor.

  For an instant neither of them moved. She gasped, inflating her lungs and pressing her breasts even more tightly against his chest. A thrill slid through her.

  He stared down at her, his chest rising and falling in strong steady rhythm against her increasingly sensitive breasts.

  “The orange juice—” she murmured, unable to tear her gaze away from his.

  “It didn’t break,” he responded softly. His gaze flickered downward, toward her mouth, and suddenly for Angela, breathing was totally out of the question. Her throat tightened. So did her nipples. Tightened and ached as the memory of his warm, firm lips against hers washed over her, along with the memory of how exciting, how disturbing, the feel of him so close to her had been when she was sixteen.