Page 90 of The Bodyguard

“But you’re always in charge when the door closes.”

Mitch grinned. “Damn right.”

CHAPTER 21

FITZ

Fitz hadn’t even finished his espresso when the room shifted.

It was always like this with JJ—one second, the sun was streaming through the expansive kitchen windows, casting its light around their London residence, and the next? A storm cloud rolled in behind her eyes, all dark calculation and razor-sharp focus.

She was on the phone, voice low, clipped. No emotion—just information being extracted with surgical precision. Fitz knew that tone. He dreaded that tone. It meant some woman, somewhere, had reached out to JJ for help.

“It’s Cherise Pardo,” she said. “You remember her. If she wanted to be safe in Paris in the 20th Arrondissement, what would she need to do?”

Fitz furrowed his brow and pulled up a report he’d just received on his laptop. “Damn. Hector’s already got people looking for her.”

He began writing notes, handing them to JJ, giving her instructions. He had a nasty suspicion that things were about to get dicey. She spoke to Cherise for a little while longer and then ended the call. When she did, she looked at him across the room, and his stomach pulled tight.

“What’s the problem?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

Jordan didn’t speak. Just crossed to the table and set her phone down like it might bite. Her jaw was tight, expression unreadable. Fitz could tell she was working hard to keep it that way.

Fitz frowned, racking his memory. “The nurse? Married that Interpol drone?”

“Hector,” she confirmed. “He’s not just an administrator anymore. According to Cherise, he’s dirty, really, really dirty—and not the good kind of dirty.”

Fitz blinked. “You’re saying Hector Pardo—the guy with the medal from the UN and the spotless record—is a criminal?”

“Cherise says he’s involved with René Vallois…”

“René Vallois, the notorious arms dealer?”

“Do you know any others?” JJ quipped.

“Careful lass,” Fitz said, dropping his voice into Dom mode. “It’s not too early to put you over my knee.”

JJ took a breath and composed herself. “Cherise says Hector is laundering money and Vallois is using Hector’s connections to move arms through protected shipments under Interpol cover. Cherise found out.” Jordan’s voice lowered. “Now she’s running for her life.”

He let that sink in. Slowly. Carefully. Then: “That’s not our problem.”

Jordan arched a brow. “You want to say that again?”

Fitz set the cup down, jaw flexing. “We’re not in the business of tracking down dirty divorces. JJ. Cerberus isn’t a PI agency for women with messy husbands. That’s not what we do.”

“No,” Jordan said. “What wedois neutralize threats that destabilize the balance of power. If Hector is even half as dirty as Cherise says, he’s compromised Interpol, the Europol intelligence exchange, and three major federal joint task forces.”

Fitz didn’t blink. “Still not our case.”

She crossed her arms. “So what? You want to wait until Cherise ends up in a canal in Bruges before you move?”

“That’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair is that I asked her to call me if she ever got into trouble—and she did. And I’m telling you, Fitz, if you won’t help her, I’ll go myself.”

There it was.

That stubborn, relentless part of her—the side that got her banned from entering any number of countries legally, and made her the only person alive who could tell Fitz to go to hellandhave him consider it.

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