Guarding His Witness. Lisa Childs

off his cell and stepped back to the table. His brow was furrowed, and it looked as though he had more lines in his face than she remembered him having.

      “Is the officer...” Dead? She couldn’t say it. Couldn’t say that word. She’d already said it too many times.

      The chief shook his head. “No. He’s alive. But he had been knocked out.”

      “Really? He wasn’t in the hall when I arrived,” Clint said. “And he never should have left her door.” He sounded suspicious. He seemed convinced that Luther had already gotten to the officer.

      But he was so young, so like Javier, that Rosie didn’t want to believe it. “Maybe he heard something and went to investigate,” she said.

      “The detective didn’t say where he’d been found,” the chief said.

      Rosie didn’t care. “Is he okay?” she asked. Concussions were serious.

      She glanced back at Clint. Had he hit his head as well as his shoulder? She wanted to reach out and run her fingers through his soft-looking golden hair. But just to look for a bump or a cut—that was the only reason. She resisted the urge despite her fingers twitching. When she requested a different bodyguard, she would insist he go to the ER.

      Realizing that the chief had hesitated a long time before answering her question, she turned back to him. “Is Officer Maynard okay?”

      She remembered his name because he’d reminded her of Javier. But she couldn’t remember the names of all the other officers who’d guarded her since Javier’s murder. There had been too many.

      Chief Lynch nodded. “He’ll be fine.”

      “Could he be the leak?” Detective Dubridge asked. He must have picked up on Clint’s suspicion.

      The chief shook his head. “He doesn’t have access to everything that Luther found out about the upcoming trial. No one in the police department does.”

      The detective and the chief turned to the assistant district attorney. Jocelyn Gerber’s pale face flushed. “You’re saying there’s a leak in my department?” She sounded deeply insulted.

      “If the leak is there, why do we need a private security company?” The crime scene tech asked the question Rosie had opened her mouth to ask as well. “Why can’t we just have officers protect us?”

      “Because the officer at Rosie’s was so effective?” Clint asked the question. “She had no protection when I arrived. She would have been killed for certain.”

      She shivered as she realized how true that was—with all those bullets flying, there was no way she would have survived. Despite all the locks on the door, they would have gotten inside her apartment—they would have gotten to her.

      Luther Mills had no intention of letting her testify against him.

      “I think the private security firm is a great idea,” Jocelyn said. “Because I don’t think the leak is in the DA’s office. A higher-ranking police officer or a detective would be able to get information about the trial.”

      Dubridge glared at her. “Are you accusing me of helping out Luther Mills?”

      “Not at all,” she assured him. “But you’re not the only detective with the River City PD.”

      “He just thinks he is,” the blonde sitting next to him murmured.

      Rosie felt like an extreme outsider in this meeting. All these people appeared to know one another much better than she knew any of them except Clint Quarters. And her animosity and resentment for him wasn’t the only animosity and resentment in the room.

      Jocelyn ignored the comments and continued, “I just think the witness is the only one we need to worry about protecting at the moment.”

      Detective Dubridge nodded in agreement of that. “She’s right. The only assassination attempt was made on the witness.”

      The witness. That was all she was to them. Suddenly very cold, she shivered.

      The chief shook his head. “You were all threatened,” he said. “You will all have a bodyguard.”

      The room erupted with protests, everyone arguing. Even the judge. He argued with his daughter, who clearly didn’t want a bodyguard either.

      Detective Dubridge’s deep voice was the loudest. “How the hell is Bodyguard Barbie going to protect me?” he asked disdainfully.

      And the blonde sitting next to him bristled with anger over his chauvinism.

      Rosie would have preferred the blonde to Clint Quarters. She would have preferred anyone to Clint Quarters. But she doubted her protests would be heard above all the others. So she stood up and turned toward the chief. “May I speak to you alone?”

      “Ms. Mendez needs a bodyguard more than anyone else,” Jocelyn Gerber said. “As the eyewitness to the murder, she needs to make it to trial.”

      That was all the prosecutor cared about, apparently—getting a conviction. Rosie cared about more than that; she wanted justice for her brother and she wanted Luther Mills to never be able to hurt anyone else. Being in jail wasn’t preventing that, though.

      Would being in prison? She hoped so.

      “She’s the only one who really needs protection,” Detective Dubridge added. “The rest of us have lives to live, work to do.”

      “And I don’t?” she asked, her temper snapping.

      He’d been so nice to her when Javier had been shot. But maybe, like Jocelyn Gerber wanted that conviction, he’d only wanted that arrest. Getting Luther was all they seemed to care about.

      But she had patients and a job she cared about as well. The hospital was short-staffed. If she didn’t show up to work, people could die. Or she could lose her job. Then how would she support herself after the trial? How would she pay her rent and her bills?

      The chief stepped forward and took her elbow. “Of course you may speak to me,” he said as he escorted her from the noisy conference room. “But Parker Payne will join us.”

      She didn’t care who joined them as long as it wasn’t Clint Quarters. But he’d stood up when she had, as if he’d needed to shield her from bullets inside the protection agency. She grabbed the chief’s arm. “Not him. I don’t want him to join us.”

      Even though he had saved her life, she didn’t want Clint Quarters anywhere near her. Maybe it was partially because he had saved her life that she didn’t want him near her. She didn’t want her feelings for him to change out of gratitude. She wanted to keep hating him. She needed to keep hating him.

      * * *

      Clint was hurting like hell. And it wasn’t just his shoulder. His entire body ached from hitting whatever the hell had been inside that dumpster. But he’d already been hurting, even before he’d jumped out that window.

      Since Javier died, he’d been aching with guilt and regret and loss. He’d really cared about that kid. He couldn’t imagine how badly Rosie hurt.

      And he didn’t want her to hurt anymore. He had to be the one to protect her.

      “I need to be in that meeting, too,” he said as he followed Parker, the chief and Rosie out into the hallway.

      “No!” she protested sharply. “I don’t want him.”

      That was no doubt what she was going to tell Parker and the chief. That would she would be okay with any other bodyguard but him.

      He’d already warned Parker that was how she would feel, that she would not want him protecting her. But even if for some reason Parker took him off the case, he wouldn’t stop guarding her.

      He intended to keep at least that promise he’d made to Javier. He would make sure nothing happened to his sister, even if protecting her caused