Unexpected (The Protectors 10)

Well, I’d spoken, he’d pretended to listen.

Vincent had helped me replace my tire with the spare, so I’d been ready to leave when Shaw had exited the house. I’d expected for him to try and rake me over the coals again, but he’d barely made eye contact with me.

A fact that should have been okay with me.

But it hadn’t been.

Just like it wasn’t sitting well with me now as I watched him stare off in the distance, a pair of gardening shears forgotten in his hand. It was early in the morning and the sun was just starting to rise, but he’d been at work in his garden for more than an hour. It wasn’t overly cold, but I still fought the urge to insist he come inside with me. At fifty-eight, Everett Shaw was in good shape, but there was just something about him when he got like this.

He always looked so… frail.

Yeah, I didn’t like it.

I’d rather have him in my face acting like the confident leader I’d seen so many times on television when I’d been dreaming of the day when I’d protect his successor. I refused to acknowledge the other reason that I couldn’t get that moment when he’d been standing so close to me as he’d berated me for breaking Vincent’s rule out of my head.

The early morning silence was broken by the muffled ringing of a phone. I watched as it took Shaw several beats to even seem to acknowledge the sound. His moves were slow as he searched the phone out and put it to his ear. I couldn’t hear him talking, but it didn’t matter because a moment later, he was climbing to his feet. When he turned, he actually seemed surprised to see me, though I had to wonder why, since I was practically glued to the man’s ass all day. The only time we ever managed to get away from one another was at night and on my days off when another agent took over, though the lucky bastard rarely had to spend any time in Shaw’s company, since the older man was usually asleep by eleven each night.

Shaw studied me for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then he was walking my way, his hands in his pockets. The former president lived on a small estate just east of the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia. The closest town was a good twenty minutes away and didn’t have much more than half a dozen shops and a single gas station. Additionally, the surrounding land was sparsely populated, so when it came to threats against a man like Shaw, they were few and far between. Yeah, there were always fanatics out there, but unlike many of his predecessors, Everett Shaw had kept a low profile since leaving office and that had served him well when it came to things like privacy.

Too well, it sometimes seemed.

Because besides Vincent and the married couple who served as his only staff and lived in a guest cottage on the property, there seemed to be no one in Shaw’s life. No dog to greet him when he came home or a cat to curl up against at night. It was just him and his roses and the television shows that kept him company night after night.

“I need to go to Vincent’s house,” Shaw murmured as he neared me.

“Of course, Mr. President,” I said as he passed me. He paused briefly when I addressed him by his title, and I swore I saw him flinch, but then he was moving again. It took him just a few minutes to get cleaned up and changed, and when we headed outside, he didn’t even argue about driving himself. He simply walked to my agency-issued sedan and climbed into the back seat.

It was all so very perfectly routine.

And it irritated the fuck out of me.

God, what the hell was wrong with me? The man was behaving exactly as he should, especially considering the bullshit he’d put me through the day before.

Neither of us spoke as we made the forty-five-minute drive to Vincent’s house, which was deep within the same forest Shaw lived near, but on the West Virginia side. Vincent was waiting for us in the driveway and unlike the day before, the two gates were already open, so I drove straight through. Vincent definitely looked on edge. I scanned the property for the second man I’d seen him with the day before, but I didn’t see him. I’d heard him referred to as Nathan, and although there was something familiar about him, we hadn’t been introduced, so I hadn’t had the chance to do any research on him.

I stayed near the car as Shaw got out to talk to Vincent. He finally began to show some animation when he began arguing with the other man.