Read Bodyguard's Baby Surprise for Free Online

arrived in time. Annalise worried that he and the security guard would be too late to help.
    Nick couldn’t be gone.
    She pressed her hands over her belly again. And the baby shifted within her womb. Her child couldn’t lose his father before she was even born.
    * * *
    As Cooper Payne shouldered open the door to the parking garage stairwell, shots reverberated inside the concrete structure. He kept the security guard behind him, shielding him as he would have a Payne Protection Agency client or a fellow serviceman. Fortunately he’d the foresight to leave his weapon with security, so he’d retrieved it before they’d left. He clasped the Glock in both hands, swinging the barrel in each direction he looked.
    Where the hell were they? The noise faded to a faint echo as the shots stopped.
    His heart stopped, too—for just a second. From his years in combat, he knew why the firing ceased. Because everyone was dead...
    His blood chilled, and the hair lifted on his nape. He still kept his hair short, as he had when he’d been enlisted. His brothers wore theirs longer—except for Nick, who had also been a Marine. Nick looked the most like him, and they were nearly the same age.
    His half brother was too young to die. Cooper bit the inside of his cheek, resisting the urge to call out to him. To Nikki...
    Had she gone down to the parking garage? She hadn’t said goodbye. She had simply disappeared from the hospital. Nikki always did that when Nick was around, though. She couldn’t handle being near the evidence of their father’s betrayal—couldn’t stop blaming Nick for what their father had done.
    He hoped she had left before Nick had come down for his SUV, and she was safe.
    Cooper slowly moved forward, keeping low so he could duck for cover if the firing started again. Because he was staying down, he saw the blood—the droplets of it sprayed across the concrete. Someone had been hit.
    How badly? And who?
    Then he saw the SUV. Like the Payne Protection company vehicles, it was black, but this one had all the windows shot out, the glass scattered across the concrete like the blood. The government plate on the back confirmed his fears. It was Nick’s.
    But where the hell was Nick?
    He lowered one knee to the ground as he leaned down farther, looking for bodies on the other side of the vehicle. He found more blood—small pools of it. Maybe more than one person had been hit since there was blood on both sides of the SUV.
    As he looked around, he noticed a Payne Protection vehicle parked nearby—not one of the black SUVs but Nikki’s small coupe. He recognized it from the furry pink dice hanging from the rearview mirror.
    The former cops—Logan and Parker—gave her so much crap about those dice. They had warned she might get a ticket for obstructed vision. Nikki probably didn’t even like them, but she was too stubborn to remove them now. She was too stubborn to give in.
    Even if she’d had the chance to drive off, she would have stood her ground. She would have fought to prove herself. That was why Cooper had hired her for his team. He wanted to convince her to believe in herself.
    â€œWhat the hell happened here?” the security guard wondered aloud, his voice unsteady with fear.
    Cooper shook his head. He hadn’t holstered his weapon. He gripped it tightly as he moved around the coupe to the passenger side. The door hung open, and so did the glove box. A box of ammo lay on the concrete next to some spent shells. And some more broken glass. The rear window was broken, and bullets had dented the trunk.
    He looked again at the ground—looked for the blood he’d found around the SUV. The search must have distracted him, because he heard a gun cock—a gun too close to him. How the hell had someone gotten the jump on him?
    He swung around, pointing his gun barrel behind him—into the pale face of his little sister. His breath