Chained to My Bodyguard Until the Trial novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Chain
Ray Scanlon meets the witness he is hired to guard, and Nico Stavros holds out a pair of steel handcuffs and asks to be chained to him every night. At 3 a.m. a keycard turns the lock.
The witness opened the door of room 1412 holding a pair of handcuffs.
Ray Scanlon looked at the steel, then at the man holding it, and kept his face still.
"Mr. Stavros," he said. "I'm Ray Scanlon, from Cushing Shield."
"I know who you are." Nico Stavros stepped back to let him in. "Check the room first. Then I'll explain the handcuffs."
Ray checked the room.
He did it the way he did every room, from the door inward, closets and bathroom and the gap behind the curtains.
Nico watched him do it from the end of the bed, with the cuffs hanging from one finger.
He was slim and not tall, with dark curls that touched his jaw and round gold glasses that were slightly crooked.
His cream sweater had been washed so often it had gone soft at the cuffs.
He looked like a man who lived in ledgers, and he did.
Ray had read the file in the elevator.
Twenty-nine years old, a forensic accountant at Kroll Maritime, and the only person alive who had copied the company's real books.
Eighty million dollars had been washed through invoices for ship repairs that never happened.
The federal trial of the company's CEO started in forty-eight days, and Nico was the case.
"Three months ago I had a guard in Milwaukee," Nico said.
"I read the report."
"Then you read that he was asleep in the next room when two men walked in with a key."
"I did."
"They put a bag over my head." Nico said it flatly, like a figure on a spreadsheet.
"I got out of the van at a red light. My hands were taped, and I still got the door open."
Ray felt something in his chest go quiet and attentive.
"That's why you're here," Nico said. "Not him. You."
"Why me?"
"Because your name is on the incident report from four years ago, and it says you went back for your client."
Ray said nothing.
That report was a closed file, and Nico should not have been able to read it.
"I'll sleep in this room," Nico said. "You sleep in this room. And at night, you're chained to me."
"No."
"One wrist each. Short chain. Nobody can lift either of us without waking the other."
"Mr. Stavros, I'm trained to stay awake."
"You're trained to stay awake for a night." Nico's mouth twisted. "I've got forty-eight days."
Ray crossed his arms.
He was six foot four and built like a doorway, and most clients sat down when he did that.
Nico did not sit down.
He stood up instead, and he was close enough that Ray could smell the hotel soap on him.
"I'm not asking you to like it," Nico said. "I bought these myself. They're real police cuffs and the key is here."
He pulled a bootlace out from under his sweater.
A small flat key hung on it, warm from his skin.
"I keep it on me. I let myself out whenever I want. If I want it off, it's off."
"That's the only thing that stops me from throwing up at three in the morning."
Ray studied him for a long moment.
The man's hands weren't shaking.
His jaw was set so hard that a muscle moved in it.
"Where's the second key?" Ray asked.
"In my bag."
"Give it to me."
"No."
"Mr. Stavros."
"Nico," Nico said. "If you're going to be on the other end of this chain, you can use my name."
Ray held out his left wrist.
He did not know why.
His training said no, and his judgment said no, and his hand went out anyway, palm up.
Nico hesitated for the first time.
Then he laid the steel across Ray's wrist and closed it, and the ratchet clicked, tooth by tooth.
His fingers rested on the inside of Ray's wrist while he did it.
They were warm, and he must have felt Ray's pulse jump.
He didn't say so.
He closed the other cuff around his own wrist, pale and narrow beside Ray's dark one, and the chain between them drew taut and swung.
"There," Nico said softly. "Tell me that's not better."
It was better.
That was the problem.
Ray stood very still while a knot he had carried in his shoulders for four years loosened by a single notch.
He had not expected to feel safe.
He had been hired to be the one who made other people feel that way.
"We stay in the room," he said. "Curtains closed, door chained, I make the calls. If I say get down, you get down."
"Understood."
"If I say we go, we go. Chain and all."
"I've read the fire map." Nico's eyes crinkled behind the glasses. "Stairwell B, then the kitchen, then the loading dock."
Ray huffed through his nose.
It was almost a laugh.
They lay on top of the covers with the lamp off and their wrists a foot apart.
Neither of them could face the idea of getting under the blankets yet.
Ray stared at the ceiling.
Nico's breathing slowed, and then slowed again, and then it went even and deep.
He had fallen asleep in under ten minutes, with his hand curled loose around the chain.
Ray did not sleep.
He lay awake and listened to the building, the elevator, the ice machine down the hall, the air in the vents.
At ten past three, he heard a small electronic chirp from the door.
He turned his head.
The lock light on the handle blinked from red to green.
The chain was on.
Somebody on the other side had a keycard, and the card had just worked.
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