Read Bodyguard of Lies for Free Online Page A

Daniel Boone would have done, but she was too cold to worry about style. She threw in a kitchen match. Neeley quickly retreated as the fireplace exploded in flame. While she waited, she pulled the locker key, which hung on a chain around her neck, out. She stared at it, knowing that she would have to be back on the road soon. There was much to do in the next several days.
    The cabin was warmer and she finally took off her gloves and sat at her laptop computer. She hooked the modem to her cellular phone. They were the only modern conveniences on the hilltop. When they needed recharging, she plugged a special adapter into the truck's lighter outlet.
    Gant had been impressed with the technology but shown no inclination to spend time hooked into the machine. As much as Neeley had been willing to learn everything and anything from Gant, he had not been so inclined with her. Besides, as he'd put it, he trusted her to do those things that she knew how to do. Neeley had done work like this before, moving money and managing deals for Jean-Philippe in the gray world beyond national boundaries.
    Neeley shook away those memories and settled to the work. For the next several hours Neeley immersed herself in the world of electronic banking and legalese.
    When she was done, Gant's half of the money was ready to be dispersed to the various accounts that she held for him under different names once she deposited it. The people who depended on Gant would continue to get their monthly stipends: his mother, his ex-wife and the son that Neeley had seen but never met.
    Gant had so removed himself that beyond the checks, there was little connection between Gant and the people he left in his past. Neeley knew it had been his only fear at the end other than leaving her alone. That he was shirking a responsibility. As though his death were his fault.
    Late one night, half-asleep since the pain injections she was giving him were getting larger and larger, Gant had talked about his son with her, more than he had ever talked about it in all the years she'd known him. She had listened, then told him she would continue his financial responsibilities for the boy—now a young man-- and that she would covertly look in on him every once in a while as she and Gant had done over the years. He had said nothing further, but before she fell asleep with his thin, tortured body pulled close to her, she felt a single tear slide onto her breast.
    The fire had died down and Neeley knew it was time to go. She packed her few things, and then went through the cabin one last time. Gant's personal effects she had burned in the fireplace right after he died. It was what he had wanted.
    His professional equipment was a different matter. That was his legacy to her. The rifle she had used, night vision goggles and the other gear that had been so useful in the Bronx were just part of it. A dozen weapon's cases were lined up near the wall and Neeley carried them out, carefully tying them down in the bed of the pickup. A footlocker and two duffel bags full of more gear she also hauled out and lashed down. She covered the whole thing with a tarp, and then locked the door to the camper shell.
    Neeley closed the door of the cabin that had been her home for so many years and knew she'd never return. She surveyed the familiar landscape and felt the sharp catch in her throat as her sight lingered on the patch of raw earth. She had sanitized the cabin, thereby obliterating all traces of her life with Gant.
    Whoever came looking, and she knew from what Gant had told her that someone would come, would find nothing. Neeley piled her bags in the passenger seat and climbed in. She slowly made her way down the cutbacks on the hill, her thoughts on what she knew, and, more importantly, wondering what she didn’t know.
    Shivering from more than the cold, Neeley turned to the southeast, toward Boston where she would deposit Gant's half of the money. And from there-- the small weight of the locker