Page 20 of Accidental Bodyguard Summer

On the way out, Delgado’s waiting by the porch steps with his hat literally in his hands, which I didn’t know people still did.

“Dr. Marlowe. The car was on my watch rotation, and I want to say?—”

“Delgado. Hector.” I take his arm before the apology can build structure. “You watch a tree line all night, every night, in bug season, for a woman you’d never met before June. The car was forty feet from the road on the far side. Noah says whoever did it timed the patrol gap to the minute, which means they’re professionals, which means the only thing you could’ve done differently is be four people.” I hold up the thermos I grabbed on the way out the door, because my hands needed a job and the job is always beverages. “Lemonade’s a different recipe today. There’s ginger in it. It’s my angry batch.”

He takes the thermos like a medal he’s not sure he’s earned. Behind me, I hear Noah exhale through his nose—his version of an eye roll, or possibly his version of a hug; the dialect is contextual—and mutter something to Delgado that sounds likedon’t fight it, it’s faster to drink the lemonade.

The angry batch is good, for the record. Rage improves citrus. That’s just science. Ask anyone on my perimeter.

We go to the game.

I don’t fully register how enormous that is until we’re standing at the field—ninety minutes after a criminal network searched my car, and Noah Vance is holding my orange slices. Both hands. Tupperware straight and level, like the slices are classified.

“You didn’t argue,” I say, watching the teams warm up, seven-year-olds orbiting the ball like electrons. “About coming here. I had a whole speech loaded and you just... got the truck.”

“You made a commitment to a left defender.” He scans the parking lot, the tree line, the concession stand, and comes back to me. “And the network doesn’t move on a crowded field full of witnesses at nine in the morning. This is the safest you’ll be all day.” A beat. “The speech would’ve been good, though.”

“It had three sections and a callback.”

“Save it. You’ll need material later.”

Kayla spots us from the huddle and waves with her entire body, then points us out to her teammates with what can only be described as pride of ownership—that’s my scientist and her bodyguard—and six tiny defenders turn and wave at Noah, specifically Noah, who is apparently famous in the under-eight community as The Guy From The Beach Who Watches Everything. He lifts one hand. Six children lose their minds.

The game is an eleven-to-two massacre. Kayla plays the second half with her cleats on the wrong feet and still takes out two forwards, legally, mostly. I scream myself hoarse. Gus works the sideline like a lobbyist, and at halftime he puts a hand on my shoulder, nods at Noah, who is distributing orange slices to the team with the solemnity of a man arming a patrol, and says, “Your young man can stand watch over my marina anytime.”

I don’t correct themy. I notice I don’t correct it. Gus notices me notice, because he’s Gus, and he squeezes my shoulder once and mercifully lets it lie.

That’s the part I keep turning over that night, lying in bed, listening to the cottage tick and hum around Noah’s footsteps. Not the broken window. The orange slices.

The town finds out by noon, because the town finds out everything by noon.

By two, my porch looks like a potluck with a security clearance. Marnie sends a tray of coffees out with her nephew, plus a bag of day-olds and a note that saysfor the officers, and the good ones are for you, you know which ones.Miguel appears with mangoes, “for stress.” Gus drives by twice, slow, in the manner of a man conducting his own independent patrol, and the second time he leaves a hand-drawn map on the windshield of Noah’s truck marked with every boat ramp within ten miles and a note that says CALL IF YOU WANT EYES, GUS.

“Your town is interfering with a federal investigation,” Noah says, reading the map at the kitchen table. He says it in his flattest voice, which I’ve learned is the voice that’s covering for something.

“My town is casserole-ing a federal investigation. It’s different.” I look over his shoulder. Gus has annotated the tricky shoals by hand. “Are you going to call him?”

He’s quiet for a second, thumb moving over the corner of the map, and when he answers he sounds like a man conceding a chess position. “Ramp four’s the one I’d use, if I were them. He’s got it starred.”

Gus gets a call that evening. He shows up at the fence line with binoculars and a thermos before dark, and he and Delgado split the water view like they’ve worked together for years, and I stand at the kitchen window watching my harbormaster and my bodyguard’s perimeter man coordinate over lemonade, and something in my chest does a thing that has no business being this warm on a day my car got burgled.

They came at me through what’s mine. They keep not understanding what that actually is.

Priya calls at nine, because Delgado’s incident report apparently travels faster than light—no, because I texted her from the precinct-formerly-known-as-my-kitchen, and she’s been pacing her house ever since, waiting for a decent hour that she then doesn’t wait for.

“Okay, first: are you okay. Second: I looked at flights.”

“I’m okay. Do not get on a flight, you have a toddler and a defense to prep.”

“The toddler travels. The defense is basically done. Abby.” Her voice drops out of triage mode into the register that’s just Priya, my Priya, thesis-crisis Priya. “Someone broke into your car. I need you to be a person about this for one minute instead of a press release.”

So I’m a person about it for one minute. Possibly three. I tell her about the SD card and the registration on the floor mat and the way my voice keeps doing the cracking thing at inconvenient moments, and she doesn’t saycome home, which is why I love her, because she knows this is home now, two months or not.

What she says is: “And the wall? How’s he handling it?”

“He gave me a permanent guarantee and then took me to a soccer game.”

A pause. I can hear her recalibrating twelve hundred miles away.