The Heiress and Her Bodyguard novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Dead Quiet
Linnea hears the shot, kneels in her father's blood, and takes a brass key from his dying hand. She accuses his new bodyguard in front of everyone.
The shot came through the floor of my sitting room at 11:40 on a Thursday night.
I know the time because the clock on my desk speaks when I press it, and my hand was already on it.
Then I was on my feet.
I have been blind for seven years, and I know my father's house the way other people know their own hands.
Eleven steps to the door.
Fourteen along the hall to the stairs.
Nineteen stairs, and the third one creaks.
I took them in the dark, because dark is all I have, and I did not use my cane.
"Dad?"
The study door at the bottom of the stairs was open.
It was never open.
The room smelled wrong, like a struck match and something copper underneath.
"Dad."
I took four steps in and my shoe slid on something wet.
I went down on my knees, and the wet soaked through my trousers.
My hands found his cardigan first.
Then his chest, and the warm sticky place in it that kept getting bigger under my palm.
"Linnea."
His voice was thin and close to my face.
"I'm here. I'm here, Dad, hold on."
"Listen."
His hand found mine and pushed something small and hard into my palm.
It was a key, cold and brass, with a short stem.
"Don't let her," he said, and stopped to breathe, and it was a terrible sound.
"Don't let who? Dad, who?"
"Jonas," he said.
That was all.
His hand opened and the weight went out of it.
I kept saying his name, and nothing answered me.
Running feet came down the hall behind me, heavy ones, and I heard the door bang against the wall.
A man stopped in the doorway, breathing hard.
He smelled like gun oil and burnt powder.
I had smelled that exact smell at the shooting range my father took me to once, when I could still see the targets.
"Ms. Haugland."
His voice was low and rough.
It belonged to Jonas Tallgren, the bodyguard my father had hired three weeks ago.
I had spoken to him maybe ten times.
He had never once said more than he had to.
"Don't touch her," said another voice behind him, high and sharp.
It was Britta, my stepmother, and her slippers were slapping on the hall floor.
Then came Dorrit's gasp, and a heavier tread I knew too well, my uncle Leif, with his smoker's cough.
"Oh my God," Britta said. "Oh, Anders."
Lights came on.
I know because the room went from nothing to a grey blur on the far side of my eyes.
I stayed on my knees, holding my father's hand in both of mine.
Somebody was already shouting into a phone.
Dorrit knelt beside me and put her arm around my shoulders.
She hummed under her breath.
I turned my face toward the doorway.
"He smells like a gun," I said.
My voice came out steady, and I was proud of that later.
"What?" Leif said.
"Jonas."
"He smells like he just fired one."
The room went quiet except for Britta's breathing.
"Linnea, honey, you're in shock," Britta said.
"My father said his name."
"His last word was Jonas."
I heard Leif shift his weight.
I heard Dorrit stop humming.
The sirens were already turning into the street, getting louder.
Two officers came in.
I heard their boots and their radios, and the squeak of leather.
One of them asked everyone to step back.
"The bodyguard fired his weapon," Britta said quickly.
"Ask him."
"Ask him why my husband is dead."
"Sir?" the officer said.
Jonas's voice did not shake.
"I fired once."
"A man was in this room with a gun on Mr. Haugland, and he ran out through the garden door, and I fired at him as he ran."
"That's convenient," Leif said, and coughed.
"There's a window open in the garden room," a second officer called from across the hall.
"Cold air in here."
"He's lying," I said, loud enough for every one of them to hear.
"My father said his name."
"I want him searched, and I want his gun taken."
"Ma'am," the first officer said, and I felt him crouch near me, "we'll handle that."
"Then handle it now."
Hands lifted me, gentle and firm.
A woman officer walked me to the hall and sat me on the bench by the coat closet.
I kept my right fist shut the whole way.
I did not know why.
Then someone sat on the bench beside me, close, so that his knee almost touched mine.
I knew the smell of him.
His mouth was right at my ear, and his voice was so low that nobody else on earth could have heard it.
"Close your hand," Jonas said.
"Don't show them the key."
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