Page 5 of Accidental Bodyguard Summer

“One asset,” he says instead. “Low profile. She counts turtles, you keep her breathing, task force rolls up the network, everybody’s home by Labor Day.” He pushes the second folder over. “Protocols, comms plan, threat assessment. Backup rotates on the perimeter, but you’re inside.”

“Inside where?”

“Her rental cottage.” A pause I’d call theatrical from anyone else. “It’s cozy.”

“Define cozy.”

“One bedroom.” He’s enjoying this. Twenty years running protection details and the man still lights up like a groom’s uncle when the assignment’s ridiculous. “There’s a pullout couch. Delgado measured it off the rental listing photos. He says, and I quote, ’tell Vance to stretch first.’”

I take the folders. I don’t dignify the couch.

I do the workup before I roll. Standard: threat file, area map, principal profile. The threat file is thin and ugly—organized enough to run charters as cover, disorganized enough to let a civilian film them, which is the bad combination. Professionals you can predict. These people are improvising with money on the line.

The principal profile is a different problem. Her research blog is public, which from a security standpoint is a catastrophe—dive schedules, site coordinates, a photo of her cottage porch tagged with enough background to geolocate in ninety seconds. I scroll it with my coffee going cold. Reef surveys. Nest counts. A video titled “loggerhead sneeze (WAIT FOR IT)” with two hundred thousand views, filmed, the caption notes, “at my north site,” with the GPS helpfully embedded.

She has, as far as I can tell, never once had a thought she didn’t publish, feed, or announce to a bird.

I write the first protocol line of the detail in my notebook:blog goes dark.Under it, after a minute, I write the second:expect resistance.

The cottage sits at the end of a sand lane off Harbor Road, and I hate it before I’m out of the truck.

Sight lines, terrible. Dune grass to the east high enough to hide a platoon, tree line to the west, a neighboring cottage with a fence a strong sneeze would clear. One road in, which is good, and no road out, which is not. The structure itself is maybe eight hundred square feet of blue clapboard with a porch, and the porch has wind chimes, and the wind chimes are shaped like manatees.

I do a slow lap of the truck’s mirrors, log the yellow cottage next door—elderly female resident, currently watching me through her kitchen window with open suspicion, which I respect—and walk up the shell path.

The door opens before I knock.

The woman from the file photo is smaller than I expected and louder than I expected, and I don’t mean volume, because she hasn’t said a word yet. I mean everything else. Hair escaping a knot pencil-stabbed on top of her head. Bare feet. And a t-shirt, faded teal, that reads, in enormous letters: I’M KIND OF A BIG DEAL IN THE MARINE BIOLOGY COMMUNITY.

“You’re the bodyguard,” she says. “Rafi called ahead. Do you want a muffin?”

There’s a beat where my training and I regroup.

“Ma’am. I’m Noah Vance, Sunbreak Harbor Security. I’d like to do a walkthrough of the residence before?—”

“Because they’re blueberry, and they’re still warm, and I baked them for my neighbor but the batch made a dozen and if they sit out they lose the crumb.” She holds the screen door wider. A smell comes out of the cottage that a man could make bad decisions about. “You can walk through anything you want. Fair warning, most of it is turtle stuff.”

She’s not wrong. The living room is a research station with a sofa in it. Waterproof cases stacked three high, a drying rack of wetsuits, dive fins in the umbrella stand, a laptop rig on the kitchen table cabled to two external drives, and a whiteboardcovering half a wall, gridded in four colors of marker: nest numbers, dates, GPS coordinates, and one box in the corner that says CARL??? underlined twice.

Two exits, front and back. Windows original, single-lock, a joke. Bedroom hers; bathroom smaller than a boat head; the sofa’s a pullout that faces the front door, which is the only thing this cottage has going for it tactically.

“So how does this work?” She’s followed me the whole circuit, narrating. She narrates. Everything. That’s a data point. “Do you, like, check in on me at night? Drive by? I told Rafi this whole thing feels like a lot. I already sent everything to the Coast Guard, so threatening me is honestly pointless, it’s like threatening the mailman after the letter’s delivered?—”

“I stay here.”

She stops. Blinks. “Here here?”

“Full-time close protection.” I nod at the pullout. “I sleep there. Where you go, I go. Groceries, work sites, everything. Until the task force clears the threat.”

“Huh.” She considers me the way I’d consider weather. Then she shrugs and holds out the plate. “Then you should definitely have a muffin. If we’re going to live together, you need to know what I’m capable of.”

“Questions,” she says, trailing me while I test the back door’s deadbolt, which is a deadbolt the way the fence next door is a fence. “One. Do you have a first name, or is it just Vance, like Madonna?”

“Noah.”

“Noah. Good flood energy, very on brand for maritime security. Two. What do you eat? Because I do a big pot of something on Sundays and I need to know if you’re one of those protein-and-sadness guys.”

I check the window latch over the sink. Painted shut, which for once works in my favor.