Page 68 of The Bodyguard

“No. You don’t get to fob me off with that shit, not anymore, I’ve had enough.” I get up off the bed and walk over to the window, but what am I expecting to see, exactly? Am I expecting to see – who? The man who’s been by my side for the past few weeks…

…lying to me…?

I don’t know who he is anymore, but that still doesn’t stop a brief glimmer of hope, that he’s going to come back for me… What the hell am I thinking? This isn’t some kind of edgy, dark romance movie where the hero fights to the end to get his girl. “I want to know what’s going on, Dad.”

“Nobody has lied to you, Lena.”

They have. And he’s still doing it now. I can tell by the sound of his voice, he’s lying to me now, even down the phone it’s obvious. And all of a sudden I feel like I have nowhere to run, nobody to turn to, I can’t trust a single soul.

I hang up before my father has a chance to say anything else. I throw a few things into a small carry-on case and I call an Uber, praying it gets here before Ollie does. What I’ve just done there, hanging up on my father like that, it’s tantamount to waving a red rag in front of a bull. He’ll know things aren’t right. Bodie – Jonah – was right. Right to be suspicious.

But he's a liar too, remember?

I hear the Uber pull up outside and I run downstairs, so fast I can barely catch my breath by the time I reach the car. But as we pull away from the house and drive down the winding path that leads to the coast road, I sit back, and I take a moment to breathe. I just need to get away. I need space to think. I need to believe that everything’s going to be okay…

Fifteen

Jonah

Taking my coffee outside, onto the small, paved terrace, I sit down at the round, wrought-iron patio table, lean back in my chair, and stare up at the sky. It’s a clear day, a warm day, there’s barely a cloud up there. And the unbearable humidity that’s been kicking around these past few days has finally subsided, thanks to a huge thunderstorm last night. The air feels a lot fresher today.

“You okay?”

I sit up and turn around as Flick sits down on the back step of the open kitchen doorway of this unremarkable, understated mid-terrace house.

“I’m bored.”

She smiles. “I’ve just popped round to drop off some groceries. You were running low on coffee and bread, and a few other things.” She lights up a cigarette, and I frown.

“I thought you’d given up?”

“That’s what I tell Mike.” She shrugs. “He knows I’m lying.”

“So why do it?”

She looks at me, and I know she’s about to make a swift subject change. “We’re doing everything we can to keep you safe, Jonah.”

“I know.” I pick up my coffee and take a sip. “Has anything happened? Between Novak and Nielsen? Anything we need to be concerned about?”

“All quiet. There’ve been no more meetings between them, no correspondence at all, from what we can gather.”

“Should that not make us all the more nervous?”

Flick shrugs and takes a drag on her cigarette. “We still have eyes on both families, and we’ll continue to do that for the time being, but, you know, I really do think this was all a domestic dispute, just one that’s being played out by some very dangerous people.” She takes another drag and blows a stream of smoke up into the air. “It’s personal, for both of them. The Nielsen family kept a huge secret from Novak, and men like him – secrets like that…” She shakes her head, drops it, and lets out a long, low whistle, “… not our remit. Shit like that, it doesn’t concern us, unless it spills over into something that threatens our security, and I’m not sure that’s going to happen. But…” She stands up and stubs her cigarette out on the wall before tossing it into a nearby trash can, “… we’ll continue to monitor the situation, just in case. Better to be safe than sorry.”

“What about Lena? What if Novak…?”

“Like I said, we’re not really interested in all that family shit,” Flick interrupts, something she does a lot, when I start talking about Lena. “You need to forget her, Jonah. Seriously, put her behind you. Put the whole operation behind you.”

“How can I do that, when they’re still looking for me.”

“We don’t know that they are, not for sure.”

“Come on. You think a man like Nielsen is going to forgive what I did?”

“You were doing your job.”

Maybe not well enough. Maybe I let something slip, let my behaviour change for the smallest amount of time, just long enough for him to sense something wasn’t right. I don’t know. I just can’t shake this feeling that I handled all of this really badly.

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