LITMIR.BIZ

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Leslie—an endlessly unpleasant man who he’d briefly called his brother-in-law a very long time ago.

      Then Brian walked into the garage, three masked men surged from the shadows and the world erupted in fire.

      A car bomb. A weapon fired. A bullet through Brian’s chest.

      It was like Baghdad, Manila and Damascus all over again.

      Here. In Toronto.

      Just moments ago he’d seen a woman running toward Brian. Now her screams echoed through the flames.

      Instinctively, Daniel yanked open the glove compartment to feel for his bullets and gun. It might be too late for Brian. But he could still save the beautiful stranger from the line of fire.

      His hand came up empty. There were no bullets. He had no gun.

      Reality hit—Daniel wasn’t a bodyguard anymore. His handgun was long gone.

      He was just a regular guy back home in Canada, a place where it was incredibly difficult for a personal bodyguard to even get a license to carry a handgun. This wasn’t his first firefight. But this time he was unarmed and unprotected, without even an armored vehicle to shield him.

      His hand gripped the door handle. His eyes rose in a split second of prayer.

       Lord? What do You want me doing right now? Can I still save her?

      More gunfire now. Sounded as though only one of the masked men was firing. But he couldn’t see either the shooter or the target, just a series of bangs and flashes in the billowing smoke.

      The woman’s screams fell silent.

      He’d never once run from danger. But like it or not, his hero days were over. Daniel had given up being a bodyguard four years ago, because his former stepdaughter had no one else to turn to. I made a commitment to be Sarah’s legal guardian. With her uncle Brian’s death, the teenager was now the last remaining member of the Leslie clan. For all he knew, whoever had killed Brian would now be coming after her, too. He needed to be there for her. He needed to protect her.

       How can I risk my life to save a stranger? The woman might not even still be alive.

      Reluctantly, Daniel turned the engine over. He grabbed the gearshift, ready to drive. Then, through the smoke, he saw a flash of red hair. She was running toward him, beautiful and terrified, like a phoenix rising. Dark lashes fringed eyes wide with fear. Auburn hair tumbled loose around her face.

      He couldn’t just leave her to die.

      Daniel threw the door open. “Here! This way! Run to me—”

      A second explosion shook the air and tossed her onto the ground. Daniel leaped from the truck. He pelted across the parking garage—toward the flames, the chaos and the woman now lying still on the concrete. In moments, Daniel had reached her side. Her eyes were closed. But when he clasped her wrist, he felt that her pulse was strong. He scooped her up into his arms—bag, camera and all—and cradled her up against his chest. He ran for the truck. A huge, faceless brute of a man loomed out of the smoke and yelled at Daniel to stop. He kept running. Bullets ricocheted in the darkness behind him. Prayers poured from his heart over his lips, “Please, God, guide me now!”

      He climbed into the driver’s seat, not letting his strong arms loosen their grip on the woman’s body for an instant. As he slid her off his lap and into the passenger seat, her press pass caught his eye—Olivia Brant, Torchlight News. He reached across to buckle her seat belt. Her cheek brushed his shoulder. Luminous green eyes fluttered open, inches away from his own.

      “Olivia? Hey, my name’s Daniel. Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. You’re safe here with me.” He glanced up and counted three masked, black-clad figures in the haze. The brutish one now had a gun in each hand. A short man was fiddling with a small box. An extremely thin one barked orders at them both. The big one raised both guns toward the truck. “And we’re getting out of here.” Daniel slammed his door. “Right now.”

      He hit the gas and swerved a hard left, narrowly steering the truck between the thin man and a concrete support pillar.

      “Daniel?” Her voice beside him was faint. “Who are you? What are you?”

      Thank You, God! She was both conscious and able to talk, which hopefully meant no serious injuries, even though her mind was probably reeling and her ears would be ringing. No doubt she wanted to know what kind of man had just scooped her into his truck. But now was no time for long answers. The short version would have to do.

      “I used to be a bodyguard.” He focused his eyes on finding an exit. “Spent a decade overseas. War zones and danger spots mostly. Getting someone safely from point A to point B like this was kind of my specialty. Now I’m just a carpenter.” One who apparently could still swerve around an obstacle course of parked cars and concrete at full speed.

      “Carpenter?”

      He couldn’t tell if that was really a question or if she was just repeating back the only word she’d managed to catch. Depending on how hard she’d hit her head, she might not even remember any of this. “How are you feeling? There’s a hospital only a few blocks from here. That’s where I’m taking you. If you’ve a phone handy, please call 9-1-1. We’ve got to let the police know what happened here.”

      He couldn’t begin to guess how much of the garage was actually covered by security cameras or how security would respond to whatever they saw. Sometimes surveillance only covered the stairwells and exits. For all he knew, they’d just seen smoke and were treating it like a car fire. Instead of...what exactly? A terrorist attack? Some kind of organized crime hit on my former brother-in-law?

      There was no answer from Olivia. Daniel risked a sideways glance. Her eyes had closed again. There was a cell phone in his jacket, but that was in the backseat and he wasn’t in any position to reach it. Could he afford to stop, grab his phone and call the police before he reached the hospital? No. He had one task right now and one task only—saving the life of the person in his care.

      “Thank You, God, that we’re both still alive,” he prayed aloud. “Please have mercy on everyone else who might be in danger. Please prompt someone else to alert the authorities. Any help and guidance You want to give me right now would be awesome.”

      An engine roared behind him. The sound echoed off the concrete walls. There was the crack of a gun being fired and the clang of a bullet hitting his tailgate.

      He raced up the final ramp. Another shot was fired.

      His truck’s rear window exploded in a spray of glass.

TWO

      Glass hit the back of Daniel’s seat and fell down around them like rain. He clenched his jaw, pressed the gas pedal to the floor and forced his mind to block out everything but the growing space of sunlight ahead. The ticket barrier was unmanned, and he wasn’t about to stop at the machines to pay for parking. He just had to hope some security guard somewhere had seen this all go down on a monitor and called the police.

      He swerved around the barrier and clipped the edge of the wood. Then he was outside, blinking in the bright summer sun. Smoke poured through the tunnel behind him. A few passersby were stopping to film it on their phones. A couple more took pictures of his broken back window as he merged into heavy downtown traffic. Hopefully someone had the sense to call 9-1-1. Another murmur slipped through Olivia’s lips. Delicate color had returned to her cheeks. Sunlight filtered through the window, setting her hair alight in a cascade of red and gold.

      Tires screeched behind him. His gaze shot back to the rearview mirror. A black van with tinted windows shot out of the parking garage and forced its way into traffic. It was five car lengths back. No one was firing now, but the van whipped back and forth between lanes as the driver fought his way closer.

      The gunmen were following.

      Emergency

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