Page 114 of Guarded Knight

Everyone starts talking about exits and surveillance at the event. Anton reassures Freya he won’t let anything happen. But I can barely follow the words.

The logistics of how to keep me and Freya safe and how to observe Kevin are a blur. Anton’s going tonight to scope the venue beforehand and pretend to work there as security tomorrow; Gabriel will pretend to be the event manager so he can tail me attentively, as if making sure the event is unfolding well. I walk them through the schedule, email over the guest list… I participate.

The meeting breaks into details I can barely track, my pen moving without my brain. All I can think is that soon, I’ll have to stand in a room with a man who’s watched me sleep and pretend I don’t know about him.

And when my chest tightens, Gabriel’s hand presses harder against my thigh. A silent promise.

But promises don’t stop bullets, or lies, or the truth waiting to rip us apart.

29

I stalk down a hallway,gun pulled. It smells like gunpowder. Acrid and dirty. It clings to my skin, seeps into my pores, coats my teeth with the taste of metal.

“Gabriel…”

Her voice calls again, and I break into a run. Boots slam tile. Doors bang shut behind me. My name echoes all around, but when I hit the last door, she’s already on the floor, coughing.

Lara.

She’s reaching for me. I try to get to her, but my legs won’t move.

“Help me,” she gasps.

But it’s not her voice. It’s synthetic. Robotic. My blood runs cold. I reach for her… and miss.

I wake with a sharp inhale, cold sweat soaking the back of my neck. My lungs drag as if I’ve run a four-minute mile. For a second, I don’t know where I am. Then the shape of her beside me steadies the room.

My Firefly.

She’s peaceful and curled into herself beneath the blanket. Her hand rests on my pillow like it is reaching for me in her sleep.

I want to reach out for her, too. Thank God she’s safe… it was just a dream.

I scrub my hand down my face. I’m glad I didn’t wake her. I don’t want her to see me like this.

Not now, when she needs me to be a rock.

Xander’s words take space in my mind.I don’t want to be seen as vulnerable.

But why not? Isn’t that what I’ve had to do in therapy to get this far? Isn’t that what I’ll have to do, here, in real life, not a shrink’s couch, to get what I want?

Even if that’s true, there’s no denying it’s the worst possible time for me to show Lara I don’t have it all together. I can’t trust Kevin around her on Thursday. I can’t believe he won’t try something when they’re actually in the same space.

He must have more planned. I didn’t say it in the meeting because I didn’t want to scare her, but there’s an inescapable dread in my gut that he wants her gone. She knows too much. She’s smart, and I’m sure Kevin knows it.

Cameron was a plan. Kevin and this gala? The territory is unfamiliar. We don’t have any more security than Anton and me in a room full of hundreds of guests. I know what it’s like from my celebrity bodyguard days. Danger strikes fast, and Kevin has had a hell of a lot more time to plan than we have.

I should have expected a dream to visit. My head is a tornado of good and bad. Lara is a light in my life again, but there are monsters out there who want to snuff her out. If I came to Echo Valley to settle, I feel a million miles away from that right now.

Shit. I could have woken her. Or smashed into her like I once did to a bedside table lamp in the middle of a nightmare. I can’t go back to sleep now.

I shift quietly, untangling from the sheet. My feet hit the floor with barely a sound.

I’ll do what I’ve done many times before and let insomnia drag me like a heavy tide toward the kitchen, where caffeine will keep me from sliding back under.

I glance at Lara beside me, all softness and tiny snores, and I don’t want to leave. I hover there, just watching her.

Is this the spiral again? That switch in my brain that flips when something good lands in my hands, where joy mutates into risk and I brace for the fall before it ever comes?