Page 8 of The Bodyguard and His Bunny

I no longer trust my boss, but I trust my gut. Sara’s coming with me.

I sprint up to her apartment, taking note of the crappy security system, the busted windows in the hallway, the peeling paint, the filthy overflowing recycling bins, and is that a dead rat?

I wouldn’t let my dog live here, let alone someone in my charge.

While I feel like busting down the door, I don’t do that. I knock like a normal person, and I wait.

After several minutes, I hear shuffling on the other side of the door.

Sara opens it a crack, peeking through the gap. The security chain leaves just enough room to see her searching blue eyes. I scan her face and what I can see of her body and notice something squirming in her arms. A small, light brown rabbit is twitching its nose at me.

“Sara Peters?” Why am I asking? Of course, she’s Sara.

She looks me up and down and sighs. “You the Boy Scout?”

This throws me, but I reply literally. “Eagle Scout, North Carolina Council Troop 103, 2003.”

“What? No, sorry. The question is, are you my uncle’s henchman?”

I stammer. “Well, uh, henchman is a-a violent sort of word. I’m Gunther, and I’m not here to drill you.”

“Whoa. Didn’t ask if you wanted to drill me, big boy.”

I realize now how that sounded, and scrub a hand over my face, trying to regain some composure. “Interrogate! I’m not here to interrogate you. Or torture you.”

She sighs. “That’s a matter of opinion, Gunther. How long do you plan on shadowing me everywhere?”

She noticed. I’m not as good at being anonymous as I’d thought. “I was told you would be skittish, so I kept my distance.”

Those big blue eyes roll upward. “He calls me skittish because he can’t control me.”

My weight shifts from one foot to the other.

“Your uncle hired me to look after you. Not to control you. That’s all.”

Sara smirks. “You mean to make sure I don’t break any laws in any way that connects me to him. Got it.”

When she puts it like that…she seems to be on to her uncle more than her uncle realizes.

“May I come inside, so we can talk?”

She looks me up and down. “I guess I don’t have a choice.”

She slides off the security chain and moves aside to let me in.

I pause on the threshold momentarily and look her dead in the eye. “You always have a choice, Sara.”

Sara gives me a slight smile that chips away at my heart.

“Come on in,” she says, a soft look in her eyes.

I can’t hover here basking in her beauty. I have a job to do, and she’s not going to like it.

I step inside an apartment the size of a modest dorm room at a military school. But even my boarding school had a modicum of safety.

“What are you doing?” Sara asks, following me as I walk the perimeter.

“Assessing your security,” I tell her. To my right should be a kitchen, but there’s only a rolling cart with a hot plate and a microwave, with a mini fridge underneath. The outlets these things plug into are outdated and not up to code. No sink and no storage. Following along the long side of the room, there’s a bank of arched windows painted shut, with lead paint, no doubt, chipping and falling all over the floor. I peer out the window, horrified to realize that even if she could crack a window, there’s no fire escape. She has a mattress but no real bed. At the other end of the room is the worst excuse for a bathroom I’ve ever seen: a toilet, cracked pedestal sink, and a stained clawfoot tub—no walls, mind you, just separated from the main room by a curtain. The only piece of decent furniture here is an L-shaped desk with a chair that doubles as clothing storage. Her laptop that sits on top is newer than mine. Interesting.

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