Page 23 of The Bodyguard

As Mitch reached for his gear to follow up on the lead from the photos, Cerberus HQ sent him a flagged update:

Unusual surveillance signature detected. Traced to one of Donato’s staff IPs. Possible mole confirmed.

5

ANDI

She was back there again. In the decadent living room of Rick Wexler’s penthouse, the one with floor-to-ceiling windows and the glass coffee table always smudged with fingerprints and something else she didn’t want to name. The music was too loud—some synth-heavy club track echoing off steel and marble. Her voice broke against it. She remembered yelling, her throat burning, demanding he put the bag down. That the cameras outside had seen him come in. That she’d covered for him twice already.

Rick laughed—laughed, like she was the punchline to a joke… a joke that ended in handcuffs and mugshots. He reached for the coke, anyway. Andi lunged for it.

That’s when the door burst open. Blue uniforms, guns drawn. Shouting.

Hands were on her. Someone yanked her back, another shouting her name like she was the one committing a crime. She remembered her hands shaking as they forced them behind her back. The sound of the cuffs ratcheting closed.

She wasn’t high. She wasn’t even drinking. But that didn’t matter.

Wrong place. Wrong time. Wrong man.

Andi shot upright in bed, her heart thundering in her chest like she’d run the full length of Michigan Avenue. Her sheets were damp. Her breathing was jagged. For a second, she didn’t know where she was.

Then she heard it—the low click of a mug settling on wood. Her gaze snapped to the doorway of her bedroom.

Mitch stood just outside it, framed by the loft’s muted morning light. He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Just watched her.

He wore black again—jeans and a long-sleeved tee that clung to his frame as if someone had sewn it there. He folded his arms across his chest. His posture relaxed. But the alertness in his eyes was anything but.

“You were dreaming,” he said, voice calm.

“Dreaming? No. Nightmare? Reliving a memory? Absolutely,” she muttered, dragging a hand through her hair.

She didn’t need a mirror to see that she’d probably smudged her makeup under her eyes from the night before. She looked wrecked. She felt worse.

He crossed to the low shelf outside her room and picked up the coffee he’d set there. Without a word, he brought it in.

She wrapped the sheet tighter around her body, more from instinct than modesty. He didn’t care about modesty. He cared about vulnerability. And she hated he saw hers far too clearly.

He handed her the mug.

She took it without meeting his gaze. “Do you always watch women sleep?”

“Only the ones who get death threats.”

“You hear me?”

“You cried out.”

Her throat tightened. She took a long sip of coffee to avoid answering.

“I ran into the room the second I heard you,” he added.

That made her look up. “And?”

“You were fighting in your sleep,” he said. “Whatever it was, you weren’t just dreaming. You were defending yourself.”

She stared down into her coffee.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked, softer now.

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