Page 20 of The Bodyguard Undone

Her sobs are like brutal torture in my soul but I steel myself against her.

“Yes,” I say again. In another part of my brain, I’ve started to count from twenty down. “But the only way you’re going to kill me is at point-blank range. Or are you too fucking scared of me, Thompson?”

“Scared of you in my own house? Scared of you when I’m the one waving the gun around? Scared of you when with the push of a button I can turn your brain to toast? Untie him.” Two of his guards unhook the chains from the ceiling. They seem hesitant. One even tries to talk Roger out of it. They know.

“Untie him,” he shouts like a child not getting his way. “I’m the man with a gun at his head. He is at my mercy.”

Thompson closes some of the distance between us, breaking his own rule. The one he told his guards never to do. Never to come too close to me while I was unrestrained and by unrestrained he means without having the thick chains containing my arms at my sides.

“I’m not afraid of you. You know why? Because you’re going to be the one begging for mercy.” He waves his gun around. “Still think I’m afraid of him?” Thompson directs the question at Sophia. I don’t want him saying another fucking word to her. I don’t want him breathing the same air she breathes.

He has no idea the hell he unleashed on himself when he touched her. When her hurt her. When he drew her blood.

He puffs his chest out and thinks he’s won.

Fifteen.

“You still think I’m the one afraid of him, Sophia when I’m the one holding a gun to your boyfriend’s head, ready to blow his head off? But I might aim for his dick first.”

Ten.

He closes the distance between us. He points the gun directly at my forehead between my eyes. Point blank range because that’s the sign of a man who is unafraid.

“Roger, please, I’m begging you. I’ll stay here with you. I’ll do whatever you want. Please just don’t…”

After coming up fruitless with ways to escape, not with the kind of tech Thompson has strapped on me, I concentrated instead on the tech itself.

I counted the murmurs, the beats, and when the rhythm changed. I analyzed the microscopic clasps along the sides of the cuffs.

His tech was overloaded all because he wanted to control everything with his watch which meant the system needed to be recharged twice a day.

I know this because every time it recharges, there’s a lag of about two seconds when the whole of one system shuts down before the secondary system takes over. That’s when one of the nano-clasps on the cuff releases for a second or two while the other nano-clasp keeps it running immediately.

There are two nano-clasps. It takes twelve hours for the system to run through each clasp before it starts again at the beginning.

It took me three tries before I found a tiny grain of sand small enough to keep the clasp open when the system changes. If it was picked up that there was a malfunction with the cuff, I would have had a new one installed.

I have maybe ten seconds before an alarm goes off when the first nano-clasp doesn’t lock into place while the second is being recharged. My window is when the first nano-clasp tries to click into place and can’t because of the grain of sand embedded into it. For those few seconds, the chain attached to the clasps and keeping me restrained will be rendered useless.

But I don’t have the time to overpower his tech. Not now. He brought his execution forward by a few days the moment he laid his hand on her.

He positions his gun inches from my forehead.

“On your knees, Langley. Say your final goodbye.”

That’s the second rule he made. Don’t come at me with a weapon of any kind.No guard ever did because they know even while restrained, a perfectly timed head butt could send them into a coma.

Thompson realizes he’s broken both his rules a moment too late.

This is all I need. This one opportunity which hadn’t been presented to me before… until now.

Me unchained with a man close enough to point a gun at my head.

My mind blanks.

I slow my breathing, expending the least amount of energy on physiological events that maintain my body.

I only have a few seconds and I need speed during those seconds. If I fail or even falter and Roger has the time to activate the electric charge from his watch, she dies.

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