Page 74 of The Bodyguard

She was half in profile, framed by the red-orange blur of a traffic light that had been stuck on cycle for five minutes. She wore one of his jackets—black canvas, the kind meant to take a hit—and her arms were crossed. She wasn’t hiding. Wasn’t even pretending to be invisible. She was watching.

Mitch stopped on the far corner and didn’t speak. Didn’t move closer. He didn’t need to. Her gaze was already locked on his, and whatever she saw on his face, she didn’t flinch.

He didn’t know how long she’d been there. Long enough, apparently.

“You followed me,” he said.

Andi gave a small shrug. “I waited two minutes after you left and managed to slip past Nick. Once I was outside the loft, I followed you.”

He almost smiled. She’d been able to tail him because he hadn’t been expecting one. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Fishing it out, he answered with, “She’s here with me. Don’t worry about it Nick, she can be sneaky when she tries.”

Andi grinned—of course she did—he could tell she was proud of herself; she should be. Nick was no rookie, and getting past him had taken some doing.

He inclined his head back toward Wexler’s man. “You weren’t supposed to see that,” he said.

“Too bad,” she replied. “I did. What did you tell him?”

“That if anything happened to you, I’d end him.”

She stepped forward, boots echoing soft against the sidewalk. Her face wasn’t angry. Not afraid. Not even surprised. But there was something else there: awareness.

She reached him, stopped barely a foot away. Tipped her head up. “You meant it.”

He didn’t lie. “Yeah. I did.”

“If I die—Wexler dies.”

“Not just Wexler. Wexler, whoever actually did the deed, and the puppet master behind all of them. That’s the deal.”

A long breath passed between them, heavy with more than just threat and consequence.

Mitch didn’t touch her. He wanted to. But he knew better than to force something into comfort when the air still crackled with the echo of violence. Andi searched his face like she was trying to find something beneath the surface—something she hadn’t let herself name before.

“I’ve seen you angry,” she said. “I’ve seen you controlled. But tonight? That was different.”

“It had to be.”

“No,” she said, softer now. “It didn’t. You chose it.”

Mitch held her gaze. “If they take you out, Andi, they win. Not just politically. They win because they silence someone who won’t be bought. And I don’t let people like that win.”

She looked down. Then up. This time, her voice cracked just a little. “You’d kill for me.”

He didn’t blink. “Yeah. I would.”

The silence stretched again—but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was raw. Honest. Andi wasn’t naïve. She knew what that meant, and now she knew what he meant.

She stepped in, close enough that the front of his jacket brushed her chest. Her fingers closed lightly around the fabric near his collarbone. She didn’t pull him in. She didn’t need to.

“You scare me,” she said. “Not because of what you’d do to them. But because you’d do it for me. Without hesitation. That’s a big responsibility you’ve laid on my shoulders.”

Mitch exhaled slowly. “You can handle it.”

He’d heard fear before. In a hundred languages. From hostages. From targets. From soldiers on their knees. But not like this. This wasn’t fear of him. This was fear of what it meant to be seen. To be protected with no limits. To be chosen in a way that burned the playbook.

And she needed to say it. So he let her.

“I don’t want you to lose yourself to this,” she added, her voice low. “Not because of me.”

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