Page 73 of The Bodyguard

He ran the scan through Cerberus’s image tracker. The result came back fast.

NAME:Victor Ames

KNOWN ASSOCIATION:Paragon Equity

TITLE:Director of Field Acquisitions

CURRENT EMPLOYER:Private Real Estate Holdings (major contributor to Wexler’s campaign)

PAST AFFILIATION:Blackwell Security (disbanded)

Specialty:Surveillance and asset removal

Asset removal—a nice term for making someone disappear—from a scenario, a place or this life.

Mitch stared at the screen and didn’t move for a long beat. His pulse didn’t spike. His breathing didn’t change. But something settled in his gut like a weight made of gunmetal and violence.

This wasn’t just about discrediting Andi. Wasn’t just about squeezing her out of the campaign. They’d begun trying to make her disappear before the race even began. That crash hadn’t been bad luck. It had been a rehearsal.

He clicked over to the Cerberus command channel. “Coop. I need confirmation—has Ames been sighted recently?”

“Negative,” came the reply. “Last tagged in New York. Three weeks ago. But that could be a smokescreen. The guy’s good.”

“Not good enough,” Mitch muttered. “Flag him. Track every property connected to Paragon within a 50-mile radius. I want motion detectors hot. GPS sweeps every six hours. If he so much as blinks near Andi again…”

“You want me to call it in?” Coop asked.

Mitch’s voice dropped an octave, low and lethal. “No. Not yet. I need you to get someone over here to Andi’s loft. I need to go out; I have a message to deliver.”

He shut down the feed, encrypted the files, and grabbed his jacket. The weight of his Glock at the small of his back was familiar now—like slipping into a second skin.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Nick had shown up, and Mitch had left him to watch over Andi. Wexler’s security detail ran light. Predictable. Arrogant. Two plainclothes PIs, one overpaid tech specialist, and a rotating shift of off-duty cops. Mitch didn’t need more than twenty minutes to find one of them lingering outside the Wexler Foundation’s downtown address.

He approached slowly. Didn’t draw. Didn’t posture. Just stood three feet from the man—mid-forties, heavyset, probably ex-vice squad, still wearing his badge chain under a department windbreaker—and spoke in a voice too calm for the streetlights to feel safe.

“You tell your client this for me,” Mitch said, eyes unreadable. “If she dies—he does too.”

The man blinked. Shifted his weight. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Mitch leaned in slightly. “I don’t care how many lawyers Wexler pays or how long his donor list is. If one more drop of blood is spilled with his name within six degrees of separation, I will make sure he feels every inch of it. I’ll rip his reputation out at the roots and salt the earth behind it. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll put him in the ground myself.”

Mitch stepped back.

“Make sure your boy gets the message.”

The security guy said nothing. Didn’t move. Just stood there frozen, like maybe the words hadn’t landed yet.

But Mitch knew they had.

They always did when you said them slow. Quiet. With no theatrics. The most dangerous threats were the ones you didn’t have to yell.

He adjusted his jacket, the weight of the Glock tucked neatly back into the holster at his spine, and turned without another word. There were no sirens, no witnesses. Just a chill wind trailing him down the sidewalk and the slow, certain sound of war shifting into high gear.

Because the threats weren’t shadows anymore. They had names. And now? Mitch had targets.

Across the street, just past the flickering neon of the late-night taco stand and the shadow line cast by a delivery truck, Andi stood.

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