Page 75 of The Bodyguard

“I have lost nothing,” Mitch said. “Not yet. But if they keep coming for you, I won’t hesitate. I never will. That’s not a threat, Andi. That’s a promise.”

She nodded once. A sharp, tight movement. Then she stepped back and wiped at her face, even though he hadn’t seen a tear fall.

“You’ll brief me in the morning?” she asked, voice steadier now.

“First thing,” he said.

Andi turned to go, then paused and looked over her shoulder. “You weren’t wrong, by the way. He felt it.”

“Who?”

“The guy you warned. I saw it. I saw it hit him like a bullet he couldn’t dodge.”

Mitch nodded once. “Good. That’s the point.”

Andi looked at him for one beat longer, then disappeared into the shadowed edge of the block, her steps silent. He turned his face up to the cold and let the wind cut through the fire still burning in his veins and followed her.

They returned to the loft; Nick, having apologized excessively, had left, and Andi was asleep. By the time the Cerberus ping hit his phone, Mitch was in the chair by the window—barefoot, shirtless, a cup of cold coffee sitting untouched on the table beside him. The loft was quiet. Just the hum of the security system and the faint sound of traffic five stories below.

He'd sent her to bed. No pretense. No argument. He’d left her sleeping, curled on her side, wearing his shirt and nothing else, her breathing slow and even. Mitch hadn’t joined her. He hadn’t wanted to risk pulling her closer and waking her up when she’d finally let go.

She’d needed the rest. And he needed the edge.

He stared out the window, watched the ripple of headlights across the steel and glass of the city.

His phone buzzed again. He tapped it open, scanning the secured feed from Cerberus. Three red flags. One yellow. No delay stamp.

Nick’s voice came in low over the encrypted channel. “Langdon. We’ve got chatter about the Lincoln Square rally.”

“When?” Mitch asked.

“Thirty-two hours from now. Nothing definitive yet, but a burner tied to Wexler’s network just lit up. Message threads reference crowd exposure, venue angle, and a ‘phase two escalation.’”

Mitch’s blood chilled. “Explosive or ballistic?”

“Unknown,” Nick said. “But the phrasing’s aggressive. Too precise to be a bluff.”

Mitch stood, his spine straightening with a practiced economy. He moved to the desk, switched to the encrypted terminal, and pulled the feed local.

Another Cerberus op chimed in. Coop’s voice this time. Calm. Unshakable. “We crosschecked the device metadata. IP pings match a burner previously connected to a dummy real estate consultancy. Shell company. Owned by a Paragon subsidiary.”

“Wexler’s pipeline.”

“Confirmed,” Coop said.

Mitch didn’t hesitate. Didn’t ask permission. Didn’t need to.

“We go dark,” he said, his voice flat and final. “Total blackout. Pull all schedule feeds off the grid. Wipe rally data from the internal calendar. Pull the plug on the campaign cloud.”

“Roger that,” Coop replied. “Contingency Alpha?”

“Alpha and Bravo. I want fallback routes, a decoy motorcade, and thermal drone coverage. And inform Maya quietly. I’ll take care of telling Andi.”

There was a pause—half a second—but Coop didn’t argue. “Understood. We’re on it.”

The line went dead. Mitch stood still, the air in the loft suddenly too quiet. Too fragile.

He turned toward the bedroom, toward the curve of her shoulder under the blanket.

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