Guardian For Hire: A For Hire Novel Read Free Page B

it before it started, if she’d only paid closer attention. Guilt by way of negligence. Was this the price?
    “It’s not your fault.” Gavin’s low voice disrupted her dark thoughts. How had he known?
    “You weren’t there. How would you know?” She was so tired all of a sudden, so damned tired.
    “I know how it is to blame yourself for something you didn’t do. I’ve played that game before. The ‘what if’ game. It’s an illusion because even if you did everything right, other actions would have affected the outcome. There’s no way to know what would’ve happened.” His strong hands gripped the wheel as he took a corner far faster than she would have. “Suppose you did notice something weird. And suppose you did say something to Nico. What’s to say he wouldn’t have made you disappear right then and carried out his plan anyway?”
    She made a noncommittal noise. There was no point in trying to talk about this right now. Her brain was like a colander. Things had gone so topsy-turvy that nothing seemed to make sense.
    “I’m going to get us some distance, and then we’ll stop for the night and make some decisions,” Gavin said firmly. “I had planned on you coming with me, but I thought we’d have more time to prepare. This changes things, and we’re going to have to think on the fly. Did you have your cell phone on you when we left?”
    She sat back in her seat and shook her head. “No, I always keep it in my purse, and I left that in the kitchen. In fact, I have no money, no credit cards. I don’t even have my driver’s license.”
    “That’s good. You won’t need any of those things. You’ve got to disappear for a while. Lay low, and I’m going to help you do that. It will give us time to figure out what’s going on here, but it will also give the police some time to work.”
    “How long is a while? I have my business to see to.”
    “You haven’t had any clients for over a month.”
    He wasn’t trying to be cruel, she could tell by his tone, but damn that hurt. “And I will continue to not have them if I don’t put the time in to drum up business, make calls, offer workshops, and so on,” she reasoned. “Are we talking days? Weeks?”
    “I can’t answer that. There are too many unknowns right now. They could catch the perp tomorrow for all I know. I say plan for the worst, hope for the best.”
    “Well, I need to contact my grandparents. Let them know I’m all right at least.” In spite of her tense relationship with them, they’d put a very distinguished roof over her head when her mother had abandoned her at the age of three, and they had been her caregivers her whole life. She owed them a phone call, no matter how dreadful it would be. She winced, just thinking of her grandfather’s reaction to the scandal.
    “Fine, but not right yet,” Gavin said. “Once we get settled and I have a chance to set up a secure network, we’ll contact them. We can’t be sure they’re not being watched right now, and we can’t take the risk of them leading the killers to you.”
    She nodded but didn’t say anything. She didn’t trust herself to speak without falling apart.
    He must have sensed that she was on the cusp of breaking because he reached out and patted her gently on the hand. “I’m going to take care of you. You have my word on that. But I need you clearheaded and ready to do what I tell you, so whatever it takes to get you there mentally—sleep, meditation, fucking long division– you go ahead and do that for the next few hours while I drive, all right Doc?”
    …
    Good thing he hadn’t taken his Lincoln. Gavin gave himself a mental pat on the back for that choice. Even if one of the neighbors had seen them leave, hopefully the fact that he’d used a rental car would buy them some time before anyone figured out who she was with and even more time to figure out where they’d gone. One thing was for sure. Whoever was behind this would find her eventually. This