Bodyguard: Target (4 page)

Charley nervously settled herself in the
seat opposite the stranger. Deputy Sheriff Valdez remained at the coffee bar, a
discreet distance away but within earshot. His continued presence reassured
Charley,
but her heart still raced. What did this scarred man want?

‘What I’m about to discuss
with you is highly classified,’ said the stranger, his hands folded over a
mysterious brown folder on the table. ‘In the interests of national security,
you’re not to discuss this with
anyone
. Understood?’

Charley swallowed uneasily and a shiver
ran down her spine. Whatever
this man wanted with her, it was serious. She gave a
hesitant nod.

‘My name is Colonel Black. I head
up a close-protection organization known as Buddyguard – a covert independent
agency with ties to the British government’s security and intelligence service
–’

‘Am I in danger?’ Charley
interrupted, her chest tightening.

‘Far from it,’ he replied
with a steely
smile. ‘In fact,
you’re the sort of
person we’re looking for to protect others from danger.’

Charley frowned, her anxiety now
replaced by confusion. ‘
Me?
What are you talking about?’

‘I’m here to recruit you as
a bodyguard.’

Charley burst into laughter. She
half-expected a cameraman to pop up, with a zany presenter announcing she was on a
prank TV show. ‘You can’t
be serious!’

‘Deadly serious,’ he
replied, his gaze unwavering.

From the severe expression on his face,
Charley got the sense this colonel wasn’t the sort of man who made jokes
often, if at all. She glanced over at Valdez for confirmation. The deputy sheriff
nodded; evidently he’d been convinced by the man’s credentials.

‘You do realize I’m only
fourteen,’ she told
the colonel.

‘The best bodyguard is the one
nobody notices,’ he replied. ‘That’s why young people like
yourself make exceptional bodyguards.’

‘But I thought all bodyguards were
muscle-bound guys. I’m a girl, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘That gives you a distinct
advantage,’ stated the colonel. ‘A female bodyguard can blend into any
crowd and is often mistaken for
a girlfriend or an assistant of the Principal
– the person you’ve been assigned to protect. But she can drop you with
an elbow or a roundhouse punch faster than you could shake somebody’s hand. As
I said, the best bodyguard is one nobody notices – which makes girls among the
very best.’

Charley’s head was spinning. This
was beyond anything
she’d expected. If not a potential
stalker, she’d assumed the stranger might be a truancy officer or an official
from child-welfare services. But the head of a secret bodyguard agency!

‘Why
me
?’ she
eventually asked.

‘You’ve proved you have the
skills and talent.’

Charley blinked. ‘I
have?’

‘Rescuing that boy from the shark
was evidence of your courage,’ he explained. ‘Willingness to risk
your
own life for another is a crucial factor in being a bodyguard.’

‘But that was stupid of me …
I wasn’t even thinking.’

‘No, you were acting on your
natural instinct.’

‘But I’m
not
bodyguard material,’ insisted Charley.

‘Really?’ challenged the
colonel, his flint-grey eyes narrowing. ‘What’s the registration of the
white SUV?’

‘Ermm … 6GDG468,’
Charley answered, thrown by the sudden switch in topic.

‘When did you first notice the
vehicle?’

‘On my foster-parents’
street.’

‘And when did you realize it was
following you?’

‘At the traffic lights.’

‘What did the driver look
like?’

‘Bald, slightly fat with a goatee.
Why all these questions?’

‘That follow was set up to test
your observation
skills. And it’s clear you’ve passed with flying
colours –’

‘You’re saying that was a
test
?’ Charley cut in, her earlier panic now turning to
anger.

‘Yes, the man who tailed you is
called Bugsy,’ the colonel revealed, pointing through the window to her
‘stalker’
leaning against the bonnet of the
re-parked SUV. He gave Charley a little wave. ‘Bugsy is the surveillance
tutor
for our recruits. But don’t ever tell him he’s fat. He won’t
forgive you for that.’

‘I won’t forgive him for
scaring the hell out of me!’ Charley muttered, her anger replaced by relief
that she didn’t have a crazed bald man pursuing her after all.

‘You also employed some excellent
anti-surveillance techniques, especially the use of reflections in the shop window.
That’s another core set of skills a bodyguard needs,’ the colonel
explained. ‘And it’s evident you know martial arts from the damage you
inflicted on my shin!’

Charley offered a wry smile. The shin
kick was her one small victory in the whole set-up. ‘Sorry about that,’
she said with blatant lack of sympathy.

‘No need to apologize,’ he
replied drily. ‘Your reaction
was reassuringly quick and effective. Are you
still training?’

Charley shook her head. ‘No, I
quit the self-defence classes when I moved here.’

The colonel frowned. ‘Why
didn’t you join another martial arts club? There’s a jujitsu dojo just
down the street.’

‘My foster-parents aren’t
keen on girls fighting,’ she explained with a sigh. ‘In fact
they’re not keen
on
anything
I like doing. They’re quite
… traditional in their ways.’

‘Would you like to start training
again?’

Charley shrugged. ‘Sure. My dad
always hoped I’d become a black belt.’

‘Well, you can wear any colour
belt you like,’ replied the
colonel. ‘The style of
martial arts you’d be taught isn’t based on grades in the dojo;
it’s based on its effectiveness
in the street.’

He flipped open the brown folder on the
table and Charley saw a ream of papers with her name on, along with a pile of
photographs. Several were recent, including some long-distance shots of her rescuing
the boy from the great white. The colonel flicked through to a section headed
‘
EDUCATION
’.

‘I see from your school reports
that you were an A-grade
student until recently,’ he said. ‘Why the
sudden drop-off?’

‘I couldn’t see the
point,’ Charley replied with sharp honesty, shocked that the colonel had so
much information on her.

Colonel Black considered this.
‘Loss of focus? That’s understandable considering what you’ve been
through in your life.’ He flipped past police reports on Kerry’s
abduction, news clippings
of her parents’ hijacked flight and confidential
files regarding her fostering. ‘But the way you’re –’

Charley slammed her hand down on the
file. ‘How did you get all this personal stuff on me?’ she demanded.

‘Online research and a few
connections,’ he replied. ‘But, as I was saying, the way you’re
going you’re headed on a self-destructive course. Charley, you need to
–’

‘Listen, General
–’

‘Colonel,’ he corrected her
sharply.

‘Sorry,
Colonel
. I really
think you’ve got the wrong person. I’m no bodyguard. When my best friend
was
kidnapped, I …’ Charley suddenly felt herself
choking up. ‘I did nothing. I froze. I … failed Kerry.’

‘You were ten years old,
Charley,’ said the colonel matter-of-factly. ‘You can’t blame
yourself for what happened. But you
can
stop those things happening to
others.’

Fighting back tears at the painful
memory of her friend’s abduction, Charley quietly asked,
‘How?’

‘By becoming a bodyguard for other
young at-risk individuals.’

Charley stared through the window at the
passing traffic, her mind a whirl of conflicting thoughts and emotions. She felt
both thrilled and deeply uneasy at the proposal, flattered but puzzled that
he’d selected her. How had this so-called colonel found her in the first
place? Was he taking advantage of her vulnerable background? Was the whole thing a
set-up or a real opportunity?

The colonel closed the file and laid a
black business card on the table. Charley glanced at the silver embossed
logo of a
shield with guardian wings.

‘What’s this?’ she
asked.

‘Your future.’

Charley eyed the single phone number
running along the bottom edge.

‘It’s entirely up to you
whether you call,’ said the colonel, rising to his feet. ‘But ask
yourself this: do you want to run scared all your life? Or do you want to take a
stand and fight back?’

Charley felt the warm night breeze caress
her as she sat on the golden sand, listening to the waves roll in. Further down the
beach a campfire flickered orange, illuminating the pack of young
surfers gathered
to party and surf the night away. Someone was playing an acoustic guitar and
singing, ‘
We all need a shelter to keep us from the rain. Without love,
we’re just laying on the tracks waiting for a train
…
’

The song’s lyrics hit home hard
for Charley. They seemed to sum up her situation. Without her parents, or her best
friend, life felt desperately empty
and without purpose. She was struggling on a
daily basis to fight off depression. Only her surfing gave her a brief respite from
the constant storm raging in her mind. No wonder her foster-parents despaired at
her! But was she now being offered a shelter from that storm – a chance to
give her life real purpose?

The other surfers joined in the chorus
and Charley recognized
the song as Ash Wild’s ‘Only Raining’.
There
was barely a radio station that wasn’t playing the
track at the moment. The teenage rock star from Britain had taken the Billboard
charts by storm.

‘
It’s only raining on
you, only raining. It’s only raining on you right now, but the sun will
soon shine through …
’

Charley prayed that it would.
She’d been caught in the
rain for so long now that she’d forgotten what
it was like for life to shine upon her. But should she take the extreme decision of
joining a secret security agency? The whole concept of young bodyguards seemed not
only insane but illegal. And could she trust the colonel? His recruitment methods
seemed wildly unorthodox. Yet Deputy Sheriff Valdez had checked the
organization’s
credentials and they’d proved to be solid.

The song came to an end and the
surfers’ applause and laughter carried to her on the breeze. It sounded
distant and faint as if from another dimension, and at that moment Charley did feel
caught between two worlds – the dead-end one she was familiar with, and a new
one that offered a whole host of possibilities. Perhaps it even offered
redemption
– a unique chance to atone for her failure to save her friend Kerry.

How she wished she had someone she could
talk to.

Charley stared up at the heavens, awash
with gleaming stars. ‘What should I do?’ she whispered in a prayer to
her parents. How she missed them – her mother’s kindness and the loving
way she used to brush Charley’s hair before bed; her father’s
strength
and the warm secure embrace of his arms. She searched the constellations, wondering
if her
parents were somewhere up there. ‘Should I become a
bodyguard?’ she asked.

A shooting star traced a line across the
sky.

Charley had her answer … but did
it mean yes or no?

‘There you are!’ said a
delighted voice as Bud materialized out of the darkness and plonked
himself down
beside her. ‘I was beginning to think you’d sneaked away again. What are
you doing over here all alone?’

Charley offered him an apologetic shrug.
‘I needed some space to think.’

‘About what?’ he asked,
shifting closer.

Charley sighed and hesitated. She hardly
knew Bud, but who else could she talk to? Besides, he seemed a genuinely nice guy
and had
proven trustworthy by not revealing her name to the press. ‘Have you
ever been faced with an impossible decision? One that could change your life
forever?’

Bud furrowed his brow thoughtfully.
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But I suppose it’d be like confronting
that epic wave, the one that promises to break
so
sweetly
.’ He pointed to the ocean, his hand rising and falling to
indicate
the immense size of the swell. ‘A legendary wave! You may never have
surfed anything so huge in your life. The chances are you’ll wipe out big
time. But – and this is the killer – you
might
conquer it and
ride all the way in.’

He turned to Charley, his eyes gleaming
with an irresistible zeal. ‘That wave might come only once in a lifetime,
Charley. So I say, go for it!’
He slipped an arm round her waist. ‘Now,
what is this impossible decision?’

Charley was
momentarily stunned by the clarity of his answer. On an impulse, she kissed Bud full
on the lips, then stood up and brushed the sand from her shorts.

‘W-where are you going?’ Bud
asked breathlessly, a baffled and forlorn expression on his face as she strode off
up the beach.

Charley called back from the darkness,
‘To catch that once-in-a-lifetime wave!’