Free Bodyguard Lockdown by Donna Young Page A

asked jokingly, but the soothing tone,the gentle movements, caught at her. She found herself wondering if he’d be a good father.
    Booker swung up behind her. “Don’t know any kids,” he answered. “I understand horses because I spent most of my childhood on Texas ranches.”
    “You don’t know—” Sandra’s jaw tightened. “Quamar and Jarek’s children?”
    “I don’t have the same kind of relationship with the royals that you do, Doc.I’m the hired help,” he said, the stern edge back in his tone, the aloofness rigid in his muscles.
    “You’re more than that to them. I know for a fact Quamar and Jarek consider you a good friend.”
    “I imagine they are rethinking their position right about now.”
    “I’d be disappointed in them if they did,” she answered softly.
    Booker’s gaze met Sandra’s, and he tried not to readtoo much into the flash of truth.
    “Tourlay is a day of travel from here by horse,” he explained, directing the conversation back to their predicament. “We can get there by midnight. About an hour beyond Tourlay is the airstrip.”
    “Why the airstrip?”
    “You’re going back to the States,” he answered. “After you give me your best guess at their location.”
    “And the cylinders? Wheredo you think they’re going?”
    “With me,” he replied.
    “Those cylinders are worthless without me,” she managed through her anger.
    “I don’t care. Your life—”
    “Is mine, alone,” Sandra snapped, cutting him off. “And I’ve been living this nightmare for five years. Now I have the opportunity to correct what mistakes I can.” She turned in the saddle. Her eyes narrowed. “And nothing,especially you, McKnight, will stop me.”
    “Is that right?”
    “Yes.” She gripped the pummel in fisted hands and resisted the impulse to punch the arrogance from his face. “That’s right.”
    She turned to the front, her spine rigid, her eyes forward. “We’re in this together or I do it alone, Booker. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
    Without warning, the horse cried out and rearedback.
    “Hold tight!” Booker yelled, but the order came too late. The horse jerked, breaking the reins free from Booker’s grip. Sandra grappled to keep her seat.
    Booker reached for her, but the animal shifted in one violent, sweeping movement.
    Sandra screamed, grabbed for the horse and caught only air. She hit the ground hard, the breath punched from her lungs.
    The horse camedown, stamping the ground with his hooves.
    Booker dived under the horse, hit the ground and rolled over Sandra, putting himself between her and the horse’s hooves.
    The horse stomped. The hoof hit the back of his head. Pain exploded through Booker’s skull.
    “Booker!” Sandra reached around, hugged his head with her arms, then struck at the horse with her heels.
    The horse howled,then took off over the dunes, the reins dragging behind him.
    “I should’ve shot the stupid—” Booker swore, blinked against the blurred vision. “Look around, Doc. Find what spooked him.”
    Sandra scanned the sand, saw the shift. A red tidal wave across the sand.
    “Fire ants. Swarm,” she gasped. “Too wide to dodge on foot.”
    Nausea swirled in Booker’s stomach, slapped at the backof his throat. He staggered to his feet. The pain cleaved his skull; blood trickled down the back of his neck.
    Sandra looked at his eyes, saw the lopsided dilation.
    “Booker.” She grabbed his chin, checked first one, then the other eye in the morning light, caught the haze of confusion in his gaze. “Hold on, damn it.”
    Quickly, she checked for other injuries. Blood pooled at the backcollar of his shirt; she probed the cut at his hairline with her fingers.
    “If you lose blood, we could be in trouble,” she murmured.
    “You have no idea.”
    She stopped, frowned. “What do you mean?”
    “I’m AB negative, Doc,” Booker retorted. “Rare blood types can mess a guy up when he’s out in the middle of