Bodyguard Read Free Page B

grungy raincoat. With eyes like that, a man could get away with just about anything.
    His face wasn’t particularly handsome, but then again, he wasn’t not handsome, either. His nose was a little too big and slightly rounded at the end, his lips too thin, his cheekbones a little too lost in the fullness of his face. He was pushing forty and the stubble on his much-too-stubborn chin was flecked with gray.
    “You all right?” he asked.
    For half a second, all of the grief and desperation and fear she was feeling almost escaped. But instead of bursting into tears and hurling herself into this stranger’s arms, she reminded herself that he was a cop, not a friend, and delicately cleared her throat instead. She didn’t have any friends. She had to remember that.
    One by one, she’d let her own friends slip away during the seven long years of her marriage. She’d kept her distance from the other volunteers at the hospital, and she’d socialized only with Griffin’s business associates. That was the way he’d wanted it. But when Griffin had left, most of his acquaintances had gone with him. And when he’d turned up wanted by the police and then dead, the phone had stopped ringing completely.
    “I’ll be fine,” she told the dark-eyed man. And she would be. She might not have someone to hold her, but somehow she was going to get through this. Somehow she would survive. She had to believe that. It was Jane Doe she was worried to death about.
    “I’m Harry O’Dell, Mrs. Lamont.” He held out his hand, and she took it hesitantly, afraid it would be as warm as his eyes. She managed to shake while hardly touching him, giving him a Ladies’ Club smile. Polite yet distancing.
    “I’m with the FBI,” he added. The smile he gave her in return was crooked, as if she’d somehow amused him and he was trying not to laugh. The gentle warmth in his eyes had been replaced by something much edgier. “And this is my partner, George Faulkner.”
    “FBI?” She kept her voice low and managed to sound only mildly interested, hiding the fact that her pulse had just kicked into double time, sending icy rockets of fear down to her fingers and toes.
    Where’s the money?
    Was it possible the police knew about the threatening phone call? Why else would they have sent in federal agents? She held the phone tightly with both hands, praying she wouldn’t start shaking again.
    He didn’t offer an explanation for why they were there. He just looked at her.
    She could feel him taking in the details of her face, of her hair, of the silk blouse that was neatly tucked into the waistband of her soft wool pants. Like most men, he wasn’t just looking at her clothes. He was assessing the body underneath.
    She knew what he saw, knew he liked what he saw. With her movie-star-perfect features and softly lidded blue eyes, with her thick blonde hair and perfectly proportioned body, with her elegant clothes and perfectlyapplied makeup, she was a fifteen on a scale from one to ten. She was drop-dead beautiful.
    Too beautiful to have any friends.
    “We’d like to ask you some questions, Mrs. Lamont,” Harry O’Dell finally said. There was a trace of blue-collar New York City in his voice as well as his face. Brooklyn maybe. Or the Bronx. He wasn’t from the Island, though. Alessandra herself had worked hard to eliminate that particular accent from her own speech, and she knew it well.
    “We’re sorry about the recent loss of your husband,” the other man cut in. He was definitely from Connecticut, just as Griffin had been.
    “Ex-husband,” Alessandra corrected him quickly. A little too quickly.
    They exchanged a look and she continued, “The divorce hadn’t gone through, but he moved out in January. I considered our marriage over at that time.”
    Harry nodded. “That’s fair. So I guess you weren’t too broken up when he showed up facedown in the East River?”
    “I didn’t kill him, Mr. O’Dell, if that’s what you’re