The Bodyguard's Return. Carla Cassidy

      She would have been offended by his words if she hadn’t been so busy trying to process the fact that apparently somebody had just tried to kill them.

      As he started to get off her, she had the crazy need to wrap her arms around his neck and keep him in place so close to her.

      Don’t go, she wanted to say. But, she didn’t. She held her breath as he slowly eased up into a crouch and quickly made his way to the office door.

      She tensed, waiting for another gun report, praying another bullet didn’t come careening out of the night toward him. She released a sigh of relief as he reached the door, unlocked it and shoved it open.

      “Keep low,” he said.

      Keep low? She’d crawl on her belly like a worm if it kept her alive. And that’s exactly what she did. As she moved, she was aware of the grit of the sidewalk beneath her, the shards of glass that littered the way.

      Tension made her feel like throwing up. Somebody had shot at her. Somebody had pointed a gun and pulled the trigger. Her head pounded with the horrifying knowledge. Apparently somebody wanted her dead.

      She made it to the doorway and slid inside. Joshua sat on the floor next to Raymond Buchannan’s desk, the phone to his ear. As she crawled up next to him he hung up. “The sheriff is on his way. Are you okay?”

      “My head hurts and my clothes are ruined, but other than being positively terrified, I think I’m fine.” But, she wasn’t fine. A trembling shuddered through her as she thought of the window exploding and the bullet that had caused it.

      He nodded, then rising to a crouch once again he moved away from the desk and to the edge of the broken window where he peered outside. “I don’t think our shooter is out there now.”

      “How do you know that?” Even though she wasn’t at all sure she liked Joshua West that much, what she wanted to do more than anything at the moment was curl up in his arms. There was no doubt in her mind that the bullet had been meant for her.

      He turned from the window and glanced back at her, his eyes glittering darkly. “If the shooter was still out there, there’s no way we would have been able to make it back inside to call the sheriff. He would have fired again to try to prevent us getting help.”

      “What more proof do you need that something is going on? Somebody just tried to kill me and it can only be because I’m digging into things somebody doesn’t want uncovered.”

      “Don’t jump to conclusions,” he replied tersely. “And when the sheriff gets here let me do the talking. If you come off like a half-hysterical female, he won’t listen to either one of us.”