The Bodyguard

It didn’t take me long to realize that she was different though. There were no tantrums or impossible demands like I’d expected. She kept her head down and did as she was told without question. From what I’ve seen so far she isn’t much of a partier, or girl about town the way the write-ups had intimated, far from it.

She was usually in bed by eight at night, which made my job easier, since the crazies seemed to keep most of their physical shit for after dark. In the first few days I was holding my breath, waiting for her to start chafing at the restraints I’d placed on her, but nothing; not a peep.

Most people seem to think that once they have security in place they no longer have to be careful. They leave their lives and wellbeing to us. I’m the fucking security and I think that’s some dumb shit. You can never be too careful. She had sense it seemed, because she did everything to keep herself as inconspicuous as possible.

I’d read the letters and shit that the nut who was after her had sent, had seen the escalation from the first letter to the last. Total fucking fruitcake, but he wasn’t my first. Personally, if she was my woman I’d have hunted him down and peeled the skin off his ass with a rusty knife, but hey, that’s just me.

This skell’s whole deal was instilling fear. That’s the quickest way to take over someone’s life, have them so afraid they’d jump at their own shadow. My job wasn’t just to give her a sense of security though. They’d brought me in to take him out. That’s my specialty. Well their exact words were take him in, whatever.

If she was afraid she hid it well. In fact, the only way I knew anything was going on with her was by her manager giving me the rundown. Otherwise I might’ve thought the shit wasn’t as serious as I’d been led to believe.

She was one cool customer I’ll give her that. He on the other hand was pulling his hair out with worry. He was hyper as fuck, and she was the one usually calming him down and reassuring him that she was okay. I would’ve thought they had something going on until I saw one of these interactions.

There were no sexual undertones whatsoever. He just really liked her as a person I guess. That and she made him a fuck ton of money. I know because I ran his ass too. I never take shit for granted when going in; everyone’s a suspect until I decide otherwise.

So there I was thinking I’d lucked out this time. She was the easiest case I’d ever worked. The days were usually pretty tame, she went to the set at the ass crack of dawn and spent most of the day there doing her thing, while I sat off to the side and kept an eye out, while keeping tabs on my boys back home and the jobs they were working.

She was very polite and cordial, not at all like what I would’ve expected from someone in her position. More than that, she knew how the fuck to follow instructions without giving me a headache, or like the last one of her ilk, having to threaten to leave her ass to the wolves. Yeah, I did that shit.

I’d seen enough fuckery while hanging around the underbelly of the world to know what was out there. But this girl, this Tara Allendale, she was different. She seemed to have a head on her shoulders and gave more of a fuck about her life than where the next party was gonna be, or the next score. I haven’t seen her take so much as an aspirin.

I never had it so easy. I was actually congratulating myself for lucking out and thinking of the stories I’d have to tell my boys who were all catching their ass on their current jobs. She was so easy if I wasn’t as good as I am I would’ve taken a nap and woken up hours later to find her just where I’d left her. Fuck yeah, easy money.

And maybe that’s why I let my guard down. Why I left myself wide open. I didn’t watch my six because I didn’t think I needed to. I didn’t sense the danger or even know that shit was in the vicinity.

I had no idea who I was looking for but I knew the signs of crazy when I saw it, and so far we were in the clear. While watching over her I already had shit running in the background trying to hunt this fucker down. And since she was so easy, it freed me up to do my job well. But that’s not where the danger came from. Not even fucking close.