The Nasty Business of a Bodyguard by Elijah Douresseau (top 10 ebook reader txt) 📗

“But why me?”

There was the quickest look of something in Coco the cook could not recall seeing before. It was a softness the boss was sure never to let betray her. Ever. But for Alvin, the certain compassion was used to communicate Coco’s minor regret of all of this.

“We needed someone who had a clean record. You get put away for this, you’ll get manslaughter charges. You were just a severely unlucky. You shouldn’t go away for long.”

“Go away? I’m not…going with you?”

“Do you want to go with me?”

Alvin did not know the answer to that. Was he still undercover? Was he Alvin, just the cook? Everything had happened not ten minutes ago, but his mind still went to the more than generous paychecks he received every week, from Coco.

“I’m giving you the opportunity to go. You don’t want this.”

“You aren’t giving me the greatest choices here. Stay with you, and live, or stay behind and be locked up for the rest of my life. I’m not trying to make prison gumbo for a cellblock.”

“I will miss your food. Dearly.”

Sirens sounded off in the distance. Matts.

“Coco, we need to go,” Hendrix warned.

“You’ll make it out of this, won’t you?”

The prolonged stare was all the confirmation Coco needed. She knew.

What twisted game were they in?

Whatever they were playing, it was not fair. Coco knew all the rules and told Alvin only what she wanted him to know – interrupting his advance with a new condition if he were to ever get out ahead.

It was terrifying. She toyed with him the entire time. Him. But why play so much with the lowly cook? Even if he was an informant.

Coco turned to leave with her bodyguards, turning their backs on the perfect crime committed.

“How come?”

The new, supreme boss of one of the most dangerous and invisible crime organizations in the world turned to look at her former employee. And entities such as Coco’s likely did not have former, living personnel. She was never going to be a reference.

But there Alvin stood, not a few feet from her. Still alive.

With the discouraged spirit of someone who just found out their favorite menu item was no longer available to order – “Because I love your food. It made me happy.”

Gone.

Chapter 7

“You aren’t in trouble. This is mostly a formality to make sure you’re okay. Al, we just need the A to Z of the whole thing.”

Every time people thought they were being nice, they shortened Alvin’s name. It only revealed their intentions. They did not care what the cook thought, or how he felt. They just needed him to get to the next thing.

Alvin, Matts, and another agent were in some borrowed police precinct’s interrogation room. Matts and his informant sat at a table. The other agent brooded in a corner, staring at Alvin. He kept his distance for some reason.

It was very different from the usual rendezvous points. Quite different from the bloody banquet hall Alvin stood in just three hours ago.

If he was not in trouble, they had a funny way of demonstrating it. As far as the chef could tell, the undercover stint was over. He was a person in an unfortunate jam, getting squeezed by the federal government. If he so much as blinked in the wrong direction, he was going to prison for trumped up charges that would make him culpable in Coco’s crimes. Not to mention the time tacked on for obstructing the division’s operation. Diarrhea in one direction. Food poisoning in the other.

“I don’t know that I have more to tell. She killed everyone in the room who wasn’t already at the mansion, and she took off with her security detail and a bunch of villainous weapons.”

“What about the guard she killed? Did you know he was one of us?”

The other Fed in the room asked the question with a fire hazard quietness. He was ready to erupt, but Alvin was not sure why. If he was a fellow agent, a comrade, that much was understandable. But what did that have to do with Alvin?

“I didn’t know until it was too late. He warned me about something a day or two before. Said to keep watching. Staying vigilant. I guess he knew I would be talking to you guys soon after.”

The other agent did not like that. He leapt off the wall and nearly hopped across the table to get at Alvin. Matts stepped in right before he made contact. He was not subtle about acting a second before it would have been too late. Was the cook in some good cop, bad cop segment of a crime drama?

In the struggle to get at Alvin, the other agent growled, “I find that very hard to believe! He was in there for two years. TWO years without so much as a stutter, and he suddenly gets killed after you show up. What deal did you cut with Coco?”

“I didn’t—”

“Nelson! Cool it. I told you Alvin wouldn’t compromise this thing.”

“You are gonna take his word over Casey’s?”

Matts did his intense-calm thing with colleagues as well. He was back to looking like his mind was preoccupied with at least a hundred different matters of the greater universe, but his face was able to remain in the present.

“You know this was Casey’s doing. He knew not to fraternize with the other operative in the field.”

“Don’t you call this grease cook that! Don’t you dare put him in with us. Casey was our brother. And he died protecting this American public from God knows what kind of monster of a woman.”

Matts could not disagree with that.

“He isn’t telling us something,” Agent Nelson concluded.

Things got quiet once more. It was apparent Matts thought the same thing. But he still had to play peacekeeper.

“Get out of here, Matts told Agent Nelson firmly. Go get something