Guarding His Witness. Lisa Childs

was worried about his heart, too. He could easily fall for Rosie and not just into a dumpster.

       Chapter 4

      Just before the door to Parker Payne’s office closed, Rosie caught a glimpse of Clint Quarters’s handsome face. And the look on it jolted her.

      There was such an intensity in his deep green eyes. And something else, something she almost suspected was fear.

      But she doubted Clint Quarters would care that he got removed from the assignment as her bodyguard. She couldn’t imagine he would choose to protect her, not when he knew how much she hated him.

      Maybe he was afraid that his boss wouldn’t remove him and that he would be hurt even more than he’d already been. Rosie had that fear, too.

      Parker Payne closed the door, though, and broke the contact between Rosie and Clint. She wished she could put him as easily from her mind. But she thought about him entirely too much. Javier had idolized the former vice cop. His idol had gotten him killed.

      She blinked back the tears that stung her eyes at the thought of her brother’s death. That was the only reason she thought about Clint Quarters too much—because she thought about Javier so often.

      “Are you okay?” Chief Lynch asked, his deep voice warm with fatherly concern.

      Not that she knew much about fathers. She couldn’t remember hers. And Javier’s hadn’t stuck around for long, either, not that she could blame them with the mess her mother had been.

      “Were you injured at all during that attempt on your life?” the chief asked.

      “No,” she said. “I’m fine.”

      But she wasn’t. She was shaken, and not just because she’d been shot at. She was shaken because of Clint Quarters, because he’d been the one who’d saved her.

      “Clint Quarters is the one who needs to go to the ER,” she insisted.

      Parker nodded his dark head in agreement. “I’ll make sure he goes.”

      “So you’ll give me another bodyguard?” she asked. Maybe it would be easier than she’d thought it would be to get rid of Clint.

      Parker sighed. But before he could say anything, she spoke again.

      “Actually I don’t want any bodyguard,” Rosie insisted. “I have a job.” One that she loved. “I have to go to work. I can’t put my life on hold for this trial.”

      The chief uttered a weary-sounding sigh. “You have to,” he told her, “if you want your brother’s killer to be brought to justice.”

      Her eyes stung again, so she blinked harder. “Of course I want that. I have every intention of testifying against Luther Mills.”

      “You won’t be able to if you’re dead,” Parker said.

      She flinched at his brutal honesty.

      “Parker,” the chief admonished him. “You don’t need to be so blunt.”

      “It’s the truth,” Parker said. “And she needs to hear it. She cannot refuse protection.”

      “Protection, fine,” she agreed. “Just any bodyguard but Clint Quarters.”

      Parker sighed. “Clint said you wouldn’t want him as your bodyguard.”

      He must have already tried to pass off the assignment to someone else. She felt a twinge at that, but it couldn’t have been disappointment. She was relieved that he had, because it bolstered her argument against his being her bodyguard. “He knows I hate him.”

      “Why do you hate him?” the chief asked, his brow furrowed with confusion. “Clint Quarters was a highly decorated police officer with an exemplary record before Parker stole him from the force for his team.”

      She snorted. Exemplary record. She wouldn’t call it that, not when a twenty-year-old had lost his life because of him. That should have put a hell of a black mark on his exemplary record.

      “How do you even know each other?” the chief asked. “Did you have a personal relationship?”

      Did he think she was a jilted lover or something?

      “No!” she hotly denied. “He’s the one who got my brother killed.”

      The chief shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

      “Javier Mendez was Clint’s informant on Luther Mills’s organization,” Parker explained to the chief.

      “He forced him to become an informant,” Rosie said. “He arrested my brother and planted drugs on him and threatened to have him sent to prison for years if he didn’t help him get Luther Mills.”

      Parker’s brow furrowed now. “Is that what your brother told you?” he asked. “Because there’s no way in hell that Clint Quarters framed anyone for anything! He was one of the best damn officers I ever worked with.”

      “His record is exemplary.” The chief repeated his earlier praise.

      And Rosie’s face heated as her temper boiled over. “My brother was no drug dealer!” Especially not for Luther Mills. She’d worked too hard to keep Javier away from him. “So Clint had to have framed him.”

      “Did your brother tell you that?” Parker persisted.

      Rosie had to shake her head. “No. But he idolized Clint Quarters. He wouldn’t have said a bad word about him.”

      “He wouldn’t have idolized a man who framed him and forced him to do something he hadn’t wanted to do,” the chief said, and again his voice was all warm and fatherly.

      Or at least what she figured a father probably sounded like. But she understood why her and Javier’s fathers hadn’t stuck around after getting their mom pregnant. Their mother, a drug addict, had been a difficult person to love. That was why Javier wouldn’t have started selling drugs for anyone—least of all Luther.

      He wouldn’t have wanted to help anyone become what their mother had. He wouldn’t have.

      She blinked hard again, fighting against a new rush of tears.

      “You know the truth,” Parker told her, but more gently now, his voice almost sounding fatherly as well. “About your brother and about Clint. You just can’t face it.”

      “No...” she murmured.

      “And you know no one else will protect you like Clint will,” Parker continued. “He feels guilty as hell over what happened to Javier. That’s why he quit the force and finally joined my team.”

      “Is that why?” the chief asked. “I would have thought he’d want that arrest for himself.”

      Parker stared at Rosie as he replied, “If arresting Mills was all he cared about, he definitely would have.”

      Her head felt light, making her dizzy as she realized that Parker was right, maybe about everything. But that wasn’t possible.

      That could not be possible.

      * * *

      He was off the assignment. Clint knew it even before the door opened to Parker’s private office. He’d warned his boss. There was no way Rosie would let him protect her. So if she’d given them an ultimatum—no protection or another bodyguard—they would have had to choose to assign her another bodyguard.

      They had no choice, really.

      It was clear from how Jocelyn Gerber had acted that her case, and a conviction of Luther Mills, hinged on Rosie’s eyewitness testimony. Without it and her, the killer would walk to kill again.

      Clint didn’t