Page 103 of The Bodyguard

“I don’t think there’s a stray hair or fingerprint for the Feds to find—I wonder what my mom thinks of all this.”

“Do you think she knows?”

Angela scoffed. “What doesn’t she know?”

Had her mom foreseen Sawyer before Angela had? Was that why she’d sent John Patterson? Did everyone have suspicions? Angela prayed Amanda wouldn’t return to the possibility of her and Sawyer because they both saw how relationships could work in their world. If anything, they thrived. Hagan and Amanda. Chance and Jane. Liam and Chelsea. They were the gold standard of couples.

Amanda would never know that Sawyer had been a married father whose world was stolen. Angela would never press him to risk unfathomable pain againbecauseof how much she lovedhim. That kind of selfishness wasn’t fair. She swallowed hard. “They might have killed Mylene.”

The line remained silent. Amanda certainly heard the rawness in Angela’s voice. Finally, Amanda said, “I don’t know. Mylene seems too valuable at this point to get rid of her.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe they would have a few years ago, but given what we know now…”

Parker had updated Angela and Sawyer on the way back to the hotel: Mylene had been working for Pham. The cyber component of modern warfare was focused on civilians. Information wars. Deepfake videos. Bots and trolls that instigated fear. Angela was shocked and couldn’t wrap her head around how a former army intelligence and communication specialist could go from serving her country to assisting enemy organizations.

She stared out her window. Pine trees surrounded the parking lot. Most of the parking spaces had been taken. People went about their everyday lives while so much ugliness existed. “You know that I first met Chelsea when Pham had her taken.”

“I know.”

“I remember telling her that everything would be all right. The food was great. I was never bored. No one bothered me, and when Pham came to visit, he was more like a sad grandpa than a scary terrorist. I even called him Gramps in my head sometimes.”

“The mind can bend backward to make sense of the senseless.”

She bit her lip. “Maybe that’s what happened to Mylene. Maybe that’s why she does what she does. Like a Patty Hearst situation.”

“Maybe,” Amanda said neutrally. “The questions will keep coming until someone finds her.”

A knock sounded on her door. A muffled voice called, “Housekeeping.”

Angela turned from the window. “No, thank you.”

Housekeeping knocked again. Sawyer had said not to open the door. Had he also said not to say anything? Probably.

“What’s going on?” Amanda asked.

“Housekeeping knocked.” Angela peeked out the peephole. On the other side, an older woman was reading a clipboard beside a housekeeping cart. “I thought we’d hung the Do Not Disturb door hanger on my door.”

“What time is it there? Angela, wait—”

She peeked through the hole again. The old lady looked harmless, but Angela’s intuition issued a warning. She backed away from the door. “Maybe I should call Sawyer—”

Pain exploded in her chest. She lay on her back, unable to take a breath, and tried to sit up. Bullets splintered through the door as though the woman on the other side was aiming for the floor. Angela kicked herself back, still not catching her breath.

The locking mechanism clicked. One at a time, the lock tumblers fell into place. The door cracked open—and caught. The metal door latch caught. The metallic clang echoed in Angela’s head. The woman tried the door one more time. It wouldn’t move beyond the slight opening.

A thin string threaded onto the latch bar and looped around the bar’s backside against the door jamb. Angela tried to sit up again. Pain rocketed through her ribs.

The string tightened around the base of the latch. The door shut.

She scooted back.

The string tightened. The latch jerked. The string tightened again.

The latch lifted and smacked free of the catch.

Angela dragged herself into the bathroom and locked the door. Her earbuds had fallen out. She had no phone and no weapon. She had nothing to save her except for the makeshift vest that Sawyer insisted she wear. But that wouldn’t matter in a moment. She was a fish in a bucket.

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