Page 41 of The Bodyguard

The reply came within minutes—much faster than he would have liked:

Confirmed trace found. Signal masking protocol matched to campaign device ID. Embedded access route in scheduling software—ceremonial clearance level. Tier 3 access required.

Mitch clenched his jaw. Tier 3 clearance meant someone in Andi’s top five. Someone with authority… someone who had been invited in.

He stepped away from the window, checked the feed to confirm Andi was still asleep—she was, her arm draped across the pillow he’d used—and pulled on a shirt before crossing to the gear bag he’d locked up near the kitchen.

He extracted a small padded case, opened it, and removed a proximity sensor set: two flat disks, no larger than buttons, low-power emitters that ran off encrypted Bluetooth. Not standard issue. Cerberus didn’t do babysitting tech. This was something he used when clients didn’t follow orders—when they walked into kill boxes or thought ‘backup’ was optional.

He pulled out a pair of her jackets from the coat rack, both ones she wore often—one leather, one sleek and cropped—and sewed the sensors into the interior seams with surgical precision. Her phone already pinged off his Cerberus route tracker, but now, if she moved outside of the designated zone, he’d know before she opened a door.

He was securing the last stitch when he heard soft footsteps behind him.

“I thought you weren’t a morning person,” Andi murmured, her voice still husky with sleep.

He turned slowly. She stood barefoot in the T-shirt he’d had on last night, hair mussed, legs bare. Her eyes were watchful but not guarded—not yet.

“I’m not,” he said. “But you have a mole, and I don’t sleep well when people are trying to kill my clients.”

She padded toward him, arms folded across her chest. “You think it’s someone close to me?”

“It’s not a theory anymore. It’s confirmed.” He tossed the phone onto the counter, where the screen still displayed the Cerberus diagnostic summary. “Tier 3 clearance.”

She sucked in a breath. “That’s…”

“Maya. Frank. Maybe a press secretary, depending on how you’ve set up campaign privileges. Only a few people have that level.”

“Jesus.”

He didn’t respond. She stepped closer, slow but unafraid, eyes searching his face like she was looking for something that could steady her.

“And now what?” she asked.

“Now I narrow the list. I lock down the access points. I issue personal comms replacements for every single one of your senior team, and I do it without warning. Whoever’s feeding intel is doing it through backdoor surveillance. Which means they’re sloppy. And scared.”

Andi rubbed her forehead, frustration breaking through her posture. “They’re risking federal prison for what? A payout? A threat?”

He stepped in, fingers brushing her chin to tip her face up. “We’ll find out. But until we do, you don’t go anywhere without a secure route and eyes on you.”

“I already agreed to that.”

“You agreed to me.”

Her lips parted.

He didn’t give her time to argue. “Come here,” he said.

He took the small velvet box from the counter and opened it. Inside sat a silver ring—simple, brushed metal, elegant. Nothing flashy.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Panic signal,” he said. “Disguised as jewelry. Tap it twice, and it sends a silent ping to my phone; three times and it sends a ping to Cerberus senior operatives. Both two and three will be GPS-locked. Four taps, and it escalates to an emergency override that disables nearby communications and locks out unsecured devices.”

She took it from the box with careful fingers. “You’re giving me a Bat-Signal?”

“I’m giving you a fighting chance if something goes sideways.”

Andi held it up to the light, studying it. “Looks like a wedding band.”

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