Read Online Bulletproof (Unknown Identities #1) by Regan Black - Free Book Online Page A

vision wavered, like rain on glass, but he could just make out Amelia’s red head as she struggled against a man in a darker jacket.
    Damn it all to hell. He’d been so consumed with her and her mysterious contact he’d missed the real threat sneaking up behind him.
    It was a rookie mistake that proved how he’d let himself and his skills go. He might as well sit here and wait for Gabriel’s cleanup crew. He didn’t know the reporter well, but he admired her fighting spirit. Keep fighting, he thought, hauling himself upright. He couldn’t fail here... couldn’t go back to the nothingness existence that had been his for too long.
    She had to live. If she died, so did he.
    The clock was ticking in his head as John stumbled after Amelia and her captor. Thirty seconds out of sight... he refused to allow them any more of a lead. Failure had been beaten out of him in his extensive training and he wasn’t about to give in now.
    Someone had been watching her – or him – and knew how he’d handle the scene. How any hired bodyguard worth his fee would react to the potential threat in the unexpected crisis. He’d sensed a trap, but couldn’t pinpoint it. He was that fucking rusty.
    The emergency personnel had been muttering about heart attacks or aneurisms but John’s money was on something far less benign. As he’d assessed the scene, none of the conversational snippets he’d overheard would help anyone. He couldn’t even be sure an autopsy would prove what John already suspected. The man who’d dropped dead in front of Mrs. B’s car had been murdered for a reason.
    He reached the corner of the building and peered cautiously up and down the street. The man who had Amelia was built like a linebacker, sporting a scruffy red beard and heading for a dark sedan parked up the street. He couldn’t see the driver, but the exhaust puffing in the cool, wet air, proved the engine was running.
    A trap. The words echoed in his mind as he developed a plan.
    What were the odds her apartment had been attacked, he’d been tasked with protecting her, and some poor sap on a bike would die at the same place where she was to meet her source? Long. Very, very long.
    Whatever her story, someone obviously didn’t want it told.
    Based on his assessment of her apartment this morning, someone wanted her dead and keeping her alive meant finally getting clear of the muddy abyss he’d been wallowing in for the past several years.
    Prior to getting tangled in Gabriel’s web, John held a skeptical view of coincidental events. Now, he didn’t believe in such a thing at all. None of this was adding up. If he didn’t know better, he’d blame the odd weather on Gabriel and his puppet masters too.
    He zigged and zagged, mostly on purpose, as he tried to catch up with Amelia and get her captor. Of all the people and all the situations, Gabriel might assign, it made a sick kind of sense that John would be saddled with a hard-nosed reporter.
    Really, he should have expected worse.
    Evaluation complete, he took a quick inventory. He had one hundred fifteen dollars in his wallet, along with credit cards in two different names. The twenty-two caliber revolver at his ankle and a knife at the small of his back could do the talking if cash or plastic failed. With a little luck, he could get her back and transport her to a safe place where she would, whether she wanted to or not, fill him in on this big story she was hunting. He had a feeling they wouldn’t make it long if he didn’t know who she was up against.
    As he’d assumed, this job was not as simple as Gabriel had led him to believe.
    Feeling more confident, his head clearing, he moved closer. Ten short yards separated him from Amelia and the big man leading her toward the sedan.
    Too many onlookers for guns and too many emergency officials nearby for a drawn out offense. Quick and dirty was the best option. He saw it play out in his head even as he moved in.
    “Christ. You want her to