Page 71 of The Bodyguard

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The morning sunlight bounced off the bleached roads. Sawyer squinted behind his sunglasses and checked his blind spot, merging into traffic. Parker had given him and Angela a list of people who had known Mark and Tabby. Fortunately, the list didn’t include family. Sawyer wasn’t sure if he could stomach a conversation with a parent who had lost their child. He and Angela were starting with Dwayne Chavez, Mark’s closest known friend and drinking buddy.

“Have you interrogated people before?” Angela pulled the paper farther down on her breakfast sandwich and took a bite.

“We’re not interrogating anyone.”

She swallowed quickly. “I know. Just wondering what those tense conversations are like.”

“I haven’t in the sense you’re thinking.”

She grinned. “More like in an action movie, huh?”

He snorted and laughed. “Maybe so.”

“After Titan rescued me, the Feds let me read my case file from when I was first abducted.”

“Oh, yeah? Interesting?”

She shrugged. “I read the conversation transcripts and summaries between law enforcement and my friends from the initial investigators. From when no one knew why I disappeared into thin air.” She fidgeted with the paper wrapped around her breakfast. “Sort of strange. People are so worried that they don’t hold back details. It showed who really knew me.” She considered, tilting her head. “And who didn’t.”

Sawyer had a good guess as to who didn’t have the faintest idea about Angela, but he didn’t want to hear Paul’s name. Possessively, Sawyer’s thoughts replayed the previous night. Her orgasms were seared into his thoughts. If she hadn’t climaxed to the point of exhaustion, he might never have stopped.

But he had, and that had been almost as much fun. Sawyer made her dinner and tucked her close on the couch. She fell asleep under his arm, and in the morning, stiff from sleeping on the couch, they worked through the load of information Parker had provided overnight.

Sawyer refocused on the highway and squeezed the steering wheel, checking his mirrors. Habit had him monitoring the vehicles behind them for tails. Interstate 95 had him vigilant for idiots driving while using their cell phones. He didn’t see either right now but wouldn’t drop his guard.

“Most everyone thought my abduction was related to politics.” She chuckled. “Though I had a college girlfriend who swore on her grandmother’s grave that I had skipped town and assumed a fake identity to avoid living in my mom’s shadow.” She snorted and took another bite of her breakfast. “When I first read that, I was offended.”

“How come?”

Angela shrugged. “I wasn’t unhappy. I didn’t think some overpowering force loomed heavily in my life. Certainly not one that I had to run away and hide from.” She polished off the last of her breakfast. “But now? Moving to Abu Dhabi, where no one knows where I am? I might have been hiding from Pham, but I reaped the benefits of living far away and on my own—even if everyone knew I wasthe Senator’sdaughter.”

He glanced over at her. “No one looks at you like that.”

“Sure they do. How could they not? ACES literally pulled me out of captivity before Jared gave me a job. I’m the traumatized girl with the screwed up past and bossy mother.”

“Trauma isn’t who you are. It’s what you’ve been through.” He rechecked his mirrors then studied Angela and cracked a grin. “And you’re pretty awesome.” He watched her sun-pinked cheeks instead of the road. “Everyone sees that.”

She crumbled the breakfast wrapper and shoved it into the fast-food bag. “Do you have a good opening question for Dwayne Chavez?”

He shrugged. “How about we open with ‘we’re not cops’?”

“And what then?”

For a second time, he shrugged. “‘Got anything more you want to say than what you’ve told the cops?’”

She gave him a funny look. “That’s a little generic.”

“Mark’s drinking buddy deserves a bullshit-free conversation. That’s the only way these interviews will work. If we separate ourselves from the other investigators and let him say whatever he might still have to say after all these years.”

“Dwayne will want to know who we are and why we’re asking.”

“True.” Sawyer raised a shoulder. “But that doesn’t mean you have to say. You only need to give him enough so much.”

“What if he says nothing?”

“Then maybe there’s nothing left to say,” Sawyer replied. “We can’t make him talk if there’s nothing he hasn’t said.”

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