The Protector Read Online Free PDF Page A

area, he jumped behind the wheel and sped them away from Silver Spring with efficiency that had her groping for her seatbelt. Within minutes, they were leaving the city’s limits, headed toward the rolling hills of the Maryland countryside.
     
    Seated behind tinted glass, Eryn took comfort from the fact that she couldn’t be seen by anyone else on the road. Only Ike and maybe her father knew where she was right now. The knowledge helped to soothe her frayed nerves. With relief, she felt her medication taking effect. Her trembling had subsided. Her muscles relaxed and her breathing deepened.
     
    I’m not going to die today. The realization slowed her heart to an acceptable tempo.
     
    Studying her savior from the back seat, she wondered if she should thank him now or later. He sat rigidly at the wheel, his jaw still jumping. Every now and then, his vigilant gaze trekked toward the rearview mirror to skewer her, making her pulse leap.
     
    Ike Calhoun. Up to about a year ago, her father used to speak of the Navy SEAL by that name regularly and with affection. He’d even emailed her digital photos of a smiling, bearded warrior with commentaries like “The son I never had” or “You’d like this one, Eryn .”
     
    She had liked the looks of him. But the clean-shaven, grimfaced man at the wheel scarcely resembled the Ike Calhoun her father knew. If not for the green-as-grass eyes or the familiar angles of his nose and cheekbones, she’d have thought him a different man.
     
    A memory worked its way loose. Something had happened to disappoint her father. There’d been a wartime tragedy, a toll of casualties. Her father had been vague on the details since they revolved around Special Ops, but one thing had come across very clearly: He had opposed Ike’s decision to quit the military.
     
    As Eryn watched, Ike tugged off his gloves and set them aside, revealing hands that had been exposed to the elements. Long, powerful-looking fingers lightly and expertly gripped the steering wheel.  
     
    Why had her father sent him, of all people? And where was he taking her? The questions vied for articulation, but her tongue felt suddenly immobile. Her thoughts were growing foggier by the moment. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken that pill.
     
    She assured herself that wherever they were headed, it was bound to be safer than the FBI’s so-called safe house. She was in good hands now. Her father, who’d probably been fed-up with the FBI’s insistence on no communication, had intervened again on her behalf.
     
    Tipping her head against the headrest, Eryn let her weighty eyelids close. Her body relaxed into the cloth seat as she heaved a great sigh of relief. Winston’s hot breath fanned her cheek. I could be dead read right now, but I’m not. She could feel her heart beating slowly and steadily in her chest, proof that she was still alive.  
     
     
     
    **
     
     
     
    “Who the hell are we looking at?” SSA Caine demanded, as he, Jackson, and Ringo hovered over a screenshot of the man who’d taken their client.
     
    Unable to find their client’s body in the rubble, they had hastened to the Mobile Command Center to review their surveillance tapes. It was then that they realized camera three by the back door had been sabotaged, having failed to capture Eryn’s panicked departure, which camera four had picked up—only they hadn’t seen that, having been riveted to cameras two and three showing the UPS man on their front stoop.  
     
    No one had been more dismayed than Jackson to see the suspicious neighbor drawing Eryn into his condominium.
     
    Of course, she was no longer there. No one was. A quick search of the building and several well-placed phone calls revealed that Sergeant Hal Houston was drilling with the National Guard that weekend, which made the identity of the man occupying his condo a complete unknown.
     
    All the agents could make out under the bill of the man’s cap was a straight nose, tightly-held