Accidental Bodyguard Read Online Free Page A

exercise. She just couldn’t show her face beyond the wall.
    Inside the cabana, she repeated her patrol, checking each window, door and every possible entrance into the structure. When done, she armed the security system and stared at the blinking red light. If someone breached or she pushed the nearby bright yellow panic button, who would respond? The island security director? She hoped not. She was a woman who learned from her mistakes, and history had taught her she needed to avoid Jackson Richards as much as she avoided contact with Carlos or infectious bacteria.
    What was similar about two such different-looking men that caused her to become tongue-tied with desire? Had to be some trait hidden underneath their physical appearance, something she sensed intuitively and her treacherous body reacted to. Carlos was much smaller than Richards, but slick and sneaky as a fox. Richards was built more like a gladiator with his powerful shoulders and arms. While he worked with her car, she’d had the odd sensation he controlled a capacity for extreme violence.
    Just like Carlos.
    So she liked aggressive males? Dear God, what was wrong with her? She couldn’t be trusted around men. For some sicko reason, she was attracted to dangerous types, the ones your mother warns you to stay away from.
    Her stomach cramped at the thought of her mom. It’d been three days since she’d contacted any member of her family, and she knew they were sick wondering where she’d vanished to. She’d sent a text to her dad that first night—with hands shaking so badly she couldn’t control the tiny keyboard—telling him she was okay but had to disappear until Carlos’s trial. Then she’d smashed that phone under the tires of her demon car and purchased a prepaid throwaway the next day.
    A noise from the kitchen made her whirl and raise the Glock—but she relaxed her stance, realizing it was just the motor of the huge Thermidor refrigerator switching on in the eerie silence. She’d hadn’t yet learned the rhythms and sounds of her new home. She’d probably lie awake all night listening, wondering if anyone lurked outside her protective wall.
    Claudia wandered into the living room and collapsed on the plush sofa, placing the gun on a table beside her.
    No one could know where she was. She loved her family, but they were all a bunch of gossips—especially her two sisters—and she might as well put an ad announcing her location in the Miami Herald . For sure there’d be a flurry of traceable emails and texts, and hints of Collins Island would probably even leak to Facebook. Everyone dreamed of living on this ritzy isle. Julie, her eldest sister, would insist on a visit.
    Of course that could never happen. Carlos’s very own domestic terrorist group—at least that was what the US Attorney called them—the Warriors for Self Rule, might even be watching her family in hopes they’d lead them to her. She prayed that wasn’t true, but she wouldn’t put it past Carlos. His terrorist friends had killed Moochie to warn her. She wouldn’t underestimate them again.
    The next month would be the most difficult in her life, but it was her own fault for allowing lust to overcome common sense and the advice of the people who loved her. No, she had to go through this alone. She’d find a way to make contact eventually, but the less her family knew, the safer it was for everyone.
    And she couldn’t get sick. She didn’t dare go to a doctor, hospital or even a clinic and use her insurance.
    Carlos’s Warriors had expert hackers among the faithful.
    * * *
    T HREE DAYS LATER , Jack still wondered about the enigmatic Louise Clark who’d disappeared behind the walls of Villa Alma and hadn’t emerged once. He knew that for a fact because he’d reviewed the surveillance camera on the front gate. Not even a solitary walk on the beach.
    What was she doing in