The Trouble With Bodyguards: Part 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Dad lost it. Blamed Mom's death on Jake. He screamed at him until his voice went hoarse, berating him, throwing things around the house, blind with rage. I thought that he might kill Jake, or me, or himself. But he didn't. Once he ran out of steam, sobbing uncontrollably, he just went into his room and shut the door.”
                  “Rick,” she said, wiping the tears from her own cheeks, the pain in his story too much to listen to without reacting emotionally.
                  “He wasn't there in the morning,” he said, his voice broken, distant, and the memories overtook him. “He had just left.
                  “Here I was, not even twenty, left to look after my crazy brother. I was supposed to go to college, but now that was out. Somebody needed to bring in money, so that we had food to eat, a roof over our heads. I needed to be able to afford to buy Jake his meds, so that he had some sort of chance. I got a job working at the tire factory outside of town. Bought an old car with my first paycheck, enough to get me back and forth to work, and to take Jake to his appointments. He couldn't work, but he took care of things around the house, the cooking and cleaning.
                  “He never talked about our parents, about what had happened, none of it. He didn't talk much at all really, not to me, though I could hear him, talking softly to himself in his room, late at night, just like before. I started getting up, out of the house, and sitting in the grass beneath his window, listening to him. He confessed everything, all his feelings, his fear and guilt, his suspicions, to whoever it is that he talks to when he's alone. I don't understand it, but I started to tell the doctors all the things that I've heard. Delusions, that's what they call it, the thoughts that he has. The meds that they give him help to control the violence in him, but he will always suffer the delusions.
                  “And so,” he said, blowing out a breath, “I have kept an eye on him. I listen to him, when he thinks I'm not, and most of the time it's nothing.”
                  “Most of the time?” she asked. “What happens when it's something?”
                  “That's when I start to worry,” he said. “That's when he disappears.”
                  “Disappears?” she asked, startled. “You don't know where your brother is?”
                  “No,” he said, “not now. I found you, and he somehow slipped away again.”
                  “Rick,” she said, sitting up, “how did you find me?”
                  “Let me tell you the whole story,” he said, pulling her hand toward him, stroking her fingers with the pad of his thumb.

Chapter Four
                  “About a year ago,” Rick said, cradling Alex's hand in his lap, “we were sitting in the living room, TV dinners in our laps, and a news story about a local photographer who had made it big with some modeling contract came on.”
                  Alex remembered the piece. She had been reluctant to be a part of it, wanting her work to be appreciated on its own merit, but knowing that with her background the media were going to paint a picture of a little rich girl who had actually done something worthwhile, which they had.
                  “Jake was really focused on the screen. I thought that he was just enjoying all of the half-naked models walking around in the sunshine. I wrote it off like it was nothing,” he said.
                  “He started to collect fashion magazines,” he continued, “buying a couple of them a week, cutting the pictures from them and taping them to his walls. Weird, but again nothing to be worried about. Every teenage boy goes through that phase where they have women on their bedroom walls, if you know what I