Stolen Lives Read Online Free Page B

Stolen Lives
Book: Stolen Lives Read Online Free
Author: Jassy Mackenzie
Pages:
Go to
nodded for a third and final time.
    Given the nature of their business, she could now understand why Pamela might feel more comfortable hiring a female bodyguard to look after herself and her daughter.
    “I operate on my own,” Jade told her. “So if you’re looking for full-time, round-the-clock protection for yourself and Tamsin, I can’t help. You’ll need to contact one of the big firms and get a team of guards.”
    “No, no, I don’t think I’ll need that. Just somebody to be with us when we’re out and about, and to check on security wherever we stay.”
    “Will that be in Jo’burg, or are you planning on travelling?”
    “In Jo’burg, I should imagine.”
    “And have you or your daughter had any other problems with security recently? Any reason for you to feel in personal danger?”
    Pamela gazed out of the window for a few moments, then shook her head. “I don’t think there’s been anything,” she said.
    Jade nodded. This sounded like a low-to medium-risk job. She’d worked a few of those in the past, one-on-one with an employer who could not afford, or did not think it was necessary, to hire a team. Sometimes Jade had been stood down during her employer’s working hours, but more commonly she had guarded the client during the day and gone home at night, leaving her employer’s safety in the hands of the local police or home security company until the next morning.
    In a job like this, it was common for the bodyguard to be asked to do other, unrelated tasks. Jade knew one close protection officer who had survived a two-year stint in Iraq, but had quit after a week when the spoilt Beverly Hills heiress who had hired him on his return assigned him “gardening” duties—walking the dog, scooping poo, mowing the lawn.
    Although she’d spent innumerable hours waiting outside fitting rooms in clothing boutiques, Jade had never been asked to mow the lawn, but she had walked quite a few dogs in her time.
    “I usually agree on a set period of time with the client in advance,” she said. “Given the circumstances, though, I think it would be better if we take it day by day, and wait to see whether there’s any news on your husband.”
    “Thank you.”
    In spite of her reassurances that there had been no problems with her own security, Pamela still looked tense—she was perched on the edge of the squishy sofa as if poised for flight. Her body language puzzled Jade. In her experience, disappearing spouses were usually a cause for anxiety rather than fear.
    As if making a concerted effort to relax, Pamela let out a loud sigh, rifled through her white Gucci handbag and produced an orange emery board. She stared distractedly at the brightly painted nails on her left hand, then started filing the nail on her index finger.
    There was silence, apart from the erratic scrape of the emery board. Then Pamela turned her head towards the door and asked, “What’s that? I can hear something.”
    Jade listened too. She heard a low, drumming noise. It was the sound of a car approaching fast, its tyres hammering over the deeply rutted road. She got up, hurried over to the kitchen window and looked out. The car shot past the cottage without slowing. She thought she recognised her landlady’s white Isuzu, but the clouds of dust made it difficult to tell.
    “Just a local resident,” she said. “Nothing to worry about.”
    “Oh.” Pamela didn’t stop watching the door.
    “You’d like me to start right away, I take it?” Jade told Pamela her rate for full-time close protection and the blonde woman nodded in a distracted way, as if money was so completely irrelevant she didn’t want to be bothered by it.
    “I’d like us to go past my house first, so that I can check that everything’s secure there,” Pamela said. “Then we must go straight to my daughter’s flat and pick her up. I’ve already left her a message to say I’ll be coming.”
    She brushed distractedly at an invisible speck of dust on the

Readers choose