Bodyguard
Authors: Suzanne Brockmann
PRAISE FOR
SUZANNE BROCKMANN
Gone Too Far
“Sizzling with military intrigue and sexual tension, with characters so vivid they leap right off the page,
Gone Too Far
is a bold, brassy read with a momentum that just doesn’t quit.”
—T
ESS
G
ERRITSEN
The Defiant Hero
C
HOSEN BY
R
OMANCE
W
RITERS OF
A
MERICA AS THE
#2 R
OMANCE OF
2001
“A smart, thrilling keeper … While heating tension and passion to the boiling point, Brockmann firmly squashes the cliché of military men with hearts of stone and imbues her SEALs with honest emotional courage.”
—Publishers Weekly
The Unsung Hero
C
HOSEN BY
R
OMANCE
W
RITERS OF
A
MERICA AS THE
#1 R
OMANCE OF
2000
W
INNER OF THE
R
OMANCE
W
RITERS
G
OLDEN
L
EAF
A
WARD
“A novel that is richly textured, tenderly touching, and utterly exciting. This is one book you will be unable to put down or forget!”
—Romantic Times
Bodyguard
W
INNER OF A
R
ITA
A
WARD
“Count on Ms. Brockmann to deliver a thoughtful and tightly woven plot with plenty of action.”
—The Romance Journal
Over the Edge
C
HOSEN BY
R
OMANCE
W
RITERS OF
A
MERICA AS THE
#1 R
OMANCE OF
2001
“A taut, edgy thriller.”
—L
INDA
H
OWARD
Out of Control
“Brockmann consistently turns out first-rate novels that tug on the reader’s heartstrings, and her latest is no exception.”
—Publishers Weekly
Into the Night
“Exciting, poignant, and all-too-believable. In
Into the Night
, Brockmann really delivers.…”
—L
INDA
H
OWARD
Other titles by Suzanne Brockmann
HEARTTHROB
THE UNSUNG HERO
THE DEFIANT HERO
OVER THE EDGE
OUT OF CONTROL
INTO THE NIGHT
GONE TOO FAR
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1999 by Suzanne Brockmann
Excerpt from
Flashpoint
copyright © 2004 by Suzanne Brockmann
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book
Flashpoint
by Suzanne Brockmann. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eISBN: 978-0-345-47213-7
v3.1
For Ed, Eric, Bill, and Scott, the survivors of the “Small or Large” incident, and brave Kathy who stayed in orbit with V’ger Snacktray. Thanks for Katonah.
One
“O
KAY,”
G
EORGE
F
AULKNER
said, quieting the group of men around the VCR in the coffee room, “any second now he’ll see what’s going on through the window and come in.”
The video they were watching wasn’t a typical blurry security tape. It was from a state-of-the-art surveillance setup, complete with audio track—designed to stop the sale of drugs among the broccoli and cantaloupes—paid for by the owner of a chain of New York City markets.
Just hours ago, the camera hadn’t caught an illegal drug transaction on video but rather a robbery attempt that easily could have escalated into a multiple homicide.
Three perps, strung out beyond belief, had just shot the young store clerk. A very young teenage girl cowered by the front counter, weeping silently. One of the robbers—a short Hispanic kid with a bandanna around his head—had gone back behind the counter and was trying to open the cash register.
The second perp, the man who’d shot the clerk, was so high he couldn’t stand still. He danced around nervously near the door, a .38 clutched in his hand. The third was a tall, painfully gaunt man who stood threateningly close to the girl, watching intently as Bandanna wrestled with the cash register.
“Here he comes,” George murmured.
The door opened.
All three men looked up.
Harry O’Dell, George’s partner in the Bureau for the past eight months, walked into the market as if their guns didn’t exist. In fact, he was moving a lot like the dancer, as if he, too, had just shot something toxic into his veins. It wasn’t until he was all the way up to the checkout counter that the overhead light glinted off the gun he held in his own hand.
The bandanna-wearer and the skinny man saw it at the exact same second, but it was already too late. Harry had aimed it directly between Bandanna’s eyes at close to point-blank range. “Empty the cash register!” he shouted. “Nobody moves fast, nobody gets hurt!”
“Holy God.” The precinct’s lieutenant was standing next to George, watching the tape. “He’s pretending to rob the store. Is he completely insane?”
George nodded. “Watch. It gets better.”
The dancer’s indignation was off the scale. “You can’t fucking hit this place, man, we’re hitting this place.”
Harry turned and looked around the room, as if taking in the other guns and the cowering teenager for the very first time. “What do you mean, I can’t hit this place? You got some kind of agreement with the owner says you’re the only ones can rip him off?”
He leaned over the counter to look down at the clerk who was out cold on the floor, bleeding. Harry’s sharp gaze quickly assessed how badly the kid was hurt. George knew Harry saw the blood staining the clerk’s pants, and that he could tell the worst of his injuries were from hitting his head when he fell.
“Damn, you shot this guy in the ass. What, were you afraid he was going to sit on you?” Harry laughed uproariously at his own joke.
“He is insane,” murmured one of the detectives watching the tape.
On the tape, the dancer wasn’t happy. “Go away, man. I’m warning you!”
Harry snorted. “You go away. I’ve been planning this job for days. Weeks.”
“Yo, we was here first!” Bandanna joined the shouting match.
“Screw you. I’m here now! What gives you the right to come in here ten minutes too early and screw up my job, anyway? Go the fuck home and leave this to a professional.”
Bandanna laughed in disbelief. “A professional? Look at you, man! Who the hell does a holdup in a freaking suit? Not just a suit—a shitty suit that you’ve been sleeping in for three weeks.”
“Oh,” Harry said quietly. “Perfect. Now you’re slamming me for getting caught in the rain.” He began to shout again. “When I planned this job, I didn’t plan for it to rain, all right? Can you give me a fucking break here—”
Skinny found his voice. “Yo, asshole, this is our territory.”
Harry turned and looked more closely at him. “Hey, Fat Jimmy, is that you?” he asked, his tone changing abruptly again, softer now, as if his sudden anger were instantly forgotten.
The skinny man looked behind him. “Fat who?”
Harry shouted with laughter. “You wily old son of a bitch, it is you! We were in Walpole, up near Boston, in ’87 and ’88, remember? How the hell are you, Fatman?”
The look on Skinny’s face was incredulous as Harry grabbed him in a bear hug. He struggled to get away. “I’m not Jimmy, and I’m not fat.”
“Christ, you lost a lot of weight since prison, didn’t you? That fattening food up there really made it tough to
keep those pounds off, huh, Jim? Hey—how the hell is Bennie Tessitada? You and the Benster were like blood brothers.”
“Is this guy completely fearless, or what?” the lieutenant asked.
“Or what,” George answered even though he knew the question was mostly rhetorical. “This is how he spends his first night off in seventeen weeks. Don’t misunderstand me, he doesn’t look for trouble. But somehow trouble always manages to find Harry.”
On the tape, the dancer looked as if he wanted to use his gun. “Get the hell outta here, man! You’re messing things up.”
“I’m messing things up?” Harry laughed. “I’m messing things up? You’re the geniuses shot the clerk in the ass before Einstein here realized he doesn’t know how to get the register drawer open. And you’re doing this in front of an audience, to boot.” He focused on the girl. “What the hell are you looking at? Get out of here. Go home!”
She was as terrified of Harry as she was of the three perps, but she tossed her blonde hair defiantly even as tears streamed down her face. “I’m not leaving Bobby.”
“What the fuck you doing, man?” The dancer was even more upset. “You can’t let her go. She’s our hostage!”
“Wait a minute,” Harry said, lifting the girl’s chin and looking at her from both sides. “Oh, man. Of all your stupid choices tonight, guys, holding her hostage’s got to win the stupid award. Don’t you know who this girl is?” He didn’t wait for them to answer. “She’s Tina Marie D’Angelo. She’s Antonio D’Angelo’s daughter. He runs most of Newark, and while Jersey might seem like very far away to you, D’Angelo has very, very long arms. If you don’t want him to reach out and touch you with a
couple of bullets in the back of the head, you might want to help me show Tina here to the door.”