Bodyguard Daddy Read Free Page B

changed—finally—so she pressed hard on the accelerator. What if someone had followed her from the house to the school? What if someone was following her now?
    The photos proved she’d been under surveillance. Someone had been watching her—them. She doubted he’d stopped now. So she kept glancing into the rearview mirror.
    But she didn’t know how to detect and lose a tail—like FBI Agent Rus—like Milek and Garek. Their father was a jewel thief; he’d taught his sons not only how to steal but how to elude arrest. Eventually he’d been caught, though, and imprisoned. Milek and Garek had done time, as well.
    She almost understood now what they’d gone through and what she had put many criminals through. For the past year she had felt imprisoned—trapped in a life and even in a body where she hadn’t wanted to be.
    “We’re leaving town,” she told her son.
    He clapped his hands together. “We’re going home!”
    “No...” That was the last place they could go.
    “But I wanna go home.” She glanced back and confirmed his bottom lip was jutted out in a pout. “I wanna see Aunt Stacy...”
    So did Amber. She had never needed her best friend more. But Stacy was related to Agent Rus now. Would she believe he had betrayed her? Would she forgive Amber for not coming to her a year ago?
    She couldn’t risk going back to River City. That was where the attempt had been made on their lives—where Gregory had been murdered. She and Michael would be in more danger there. Not that they weren’t in danger now.
    I know who you really are...
    And all those photos. Somebody had been watching them—for weeks. She glanced in the rearview mirror again. Was he watching her right this minute?
    She shuddered.
    “We can’t go see Aunt Stacy yet,” she said.
    “You always say that...” The disappointment and irritation in his little voice broke her heart.
    She had turned his world upside down a year ago. And now she had to do it again.
    “We have to leave now,” she said. “I packed up all our stuff.” At least, everything she’d thought they would need and had been able to pack in less than an hour.
    “Where are we going?” he asked.
    She had no idea.
    He turned in his seat and peered into the cargo area behind him. “Where’s Jewel?”
    Stacy had lovingly made the bear for her nephew. She probably thought it had burned up in the crash with them—since Amber hadn’t been able to leave it behind in their house.
    She was sure she’d packed it; it had been on top of the last box she’d brought out to the van. “It’s back there—in the open box.”
    She’d been in such a hurry she hadn’t had time to tape any of them shut. But the last one she hadn’t even bothered to fold in the flaps.
    Michael leaned around his seat to face the back. She heard a sob slip out. “Jewel’s not here!”
    She had been juggling that last box as she tried to pull the door shut behind her. But the wind had caught the door and pulled it from her grasp, and she’d nearly dropped the box, as well. She might have lost the bear then.
    Michael had already given up so much. His family. His friends. She couldn’t ask him to give up his favorite toy—his one connection to his past.
    When she pulled over to check inside and around all the boxes in the back, she didn’t find the bear. With Michael sobbing brokenheartedly now, she had no choice. She had to return to the house where those pictures had been sent. Where one of them had been taken...
    Where the killer might be waiting for them...
    * * *
    “This is a mistake,” Agent Rus remarked, holding tightly to the armrest as Milek steered around a sharp curve. “We could be leading the shooter right to her.”
    Milek glanced in the rearview mirror and shook his head. “Nobody’s following me.” Nobody could. Garek had trained him too well in how to tail someone—so well that he hadn’t even noticed Milek tailing him a few times. But he’d taught him even better in how to