Page 29 of Her Bossy Bodyguards

President.

Barca wanted Peter to be the next president of the United States.

Which meant that what Barca really wanted was tocontrolthe next president of the United States, playing Peter like a puppet on a string. Although I still couldn’t figure out how the hell Barca had managed to have so much pull over Peter in the first place, the link between them still up in the air.

When I had the chance, I shot off a quick text to Zeke, explaining what I knew about the situation so far. I then went back to my surveillance routine, checking for entryways and exits, wondering where Barca may have been hiding Natalie. There was always the possibility that we’d been wrong about his M.O. and that he was keeping Natalie somewhere off-site.

But I couldn’t imagine that he would’ve kept her anywhere but here, not if his plan was to use her as leverage. Because if he left Natalie alone with the animals that he’d hired to work for him, there was no telling what they would try to do to her while he was hosting his party. And if Barca wanted Peter to trade his political future for the safety of his daughter, he needed to make sure he returned her without a scratch.

Or at least without anyone else’s scratches except for his own.

And as I pretended to sip on yet another glass of wine, fuming at the thought of Barca forcing himself on Natalie, I started to notice a peculiar pattern. A few of Barca’s guards headed toward the back of his front room, disappearing for several minutes at a time, as if they’d vanished into thin air. A few seconds later, they emerged again, but they were never the same set of guards. Another few minutes would pass and the exchange would happen again, guards leaving, with different guards coming in.

It was almost like they were each on various shifts, a randomness that felt like it’d be impossible to keep track of. The more I thought about it, the more the cycle of guards reminded me of the way precious jewels were so often guarded, too, keeping an unpredictable schedule in case someone tried to steal…

Natalie.

The realization hit me like a brick to the fucking face.

The guards must’ve been in charge of Natalie tonight. It explained why they seemed to come and go at random intervals, ever changing. Because if someone had been trying to rescue Natalie from Barca’s grasp, while it would’ve been easy enough to try and track her down by following one of his guards, they’d lose the guard as soon as his shift required him to disappear. And if that person tried to follow the same guard yet again, it would be impossible, since he wouldn’t have reappeared until it was time for his unknowable shift to end.

In fact, the only reason that I’d noticed the pattern at all was specifically because I’d already been looking for it. I also knew that if I made the mistake of tipping my hat a little too early, the guards were probably going to change their shifts around for a second time, my small window of opportunity closing with every passing second.

Damn.

I needed to get through that door.

Again, I shot a fast text off to Zeke, letting him know the plan, that I was basically about to try a hail Mary. Zeke quickly replied to the message, implying that I’d be committing suicide if I went after Barca without any backup, but I just couldn’t risk the chance of things going wrong and Natalie ending up another one of Barca’spretty things.

I slipped my phone back inside of my pocket and took a deep breath. I didn’t have a weapon on me, figuring it’d be better to be safe than sorry by trying to sneak a gun onto the premises. Although a gun wasn’t always the most necessary thing, especially if Barca’s men hadn’t been trained in hand-to-hand combat.

I turned my attention back to the pattern by the door, the guards every so often cycling in and out. And as a new set of guards walked into the front room of the mansion, I swiftly made my way across the marble floor, ready to make my next move.

Chapter 15

Zeke

“What the fuck? What happened to sticking to the plan?” I muttered as I stared down at my phone, completely thrown off by Kingston’s sudden cowboy behavior. For a man who’d spent the better part of our friendship complaining about me being the one to throw a wrench in a well-made plan, I could hardly believe that he was about to get himself killed in the middle of a party.

Especially one where we were supposed to be inconspicuous. The entire point of us infiltrating Barca’s home was that we’d be able to case the place, coming back when it was more deserted so that we’d be able to grab Natalie and make a run for it. But trying to rescue her when there were hundreds of bystanders around?

That just wasn’t going to happen while remaining incognito.

“You know what? Fuck this,” I said under my breath as I searched around the room. It took me a few moments before I was able to locate a passing guard, quietly following him up a staircase, guests laughing and smiling all around us. And when the guests seemed distracted enough by their own conversation, when the guard momentarily looked the other way, I discreetly slipped his gun right out of its holster, undetected.What a chump.

I started to head toward that disappearing changing-of-the-guard that King had been talking about in his text message. It didn’t take me long to spot the pattern of guards coming and going, either, my mind trained for that sort of thing courtesy of the U.S. military. Although unlike King, I chose not to spend my time trying to plan the perfect entry, instead deciding to closely follow the next guard that I spotted heading toward the back of the front room.

The guard seemed to notice that I was close on his heels when he was a few feet away from a dark brown door. But before he was able to turn back toward me and start up a conversation, I placed the front of my gun at the base of his spine, its shape covered by the fabric of my tuxedo pocket.

“Keep walking,” I directed, my voice low.

“Do you have any idea what the fuck you’re doing?” he whispered. “Do you have any idea who you’re even dealing with?”

“Yeah. I know who I’m dealing with,” I replied. “I’m dealing with a man so low that he steals women off the fucking street.”

And the guard seemed amused by my response. “So, what? You think you’re going to save one of these bitches tonight? Barca’s going to chop off your fucking head before you ever get that far.”

“I really don’t have time for this, man.” I cocked the gun against his back. “Are you going to keep walking? Or am I going to have to make a scene?”

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