Chapter 213: Guardians, Part 15

James

Charlotte swallows hard, and again, then, her voice steadier “And this isn’t small trouble. They probably don’t want to kill her.… me…. otherwise it would just have been a bullet in the head in a parking lot…. It’s more likely they want to learn what she.… I…. know and then sell her on.… me on….”

You have got to be kidding me….

Gaping at the slender girl, so like my own Elizabeth, stating what are simple facts but which all we men have avoided saying, I lose my words.

James, Michael and Will are also staring slack-jawed at her performance…

“Jeez, Charlotte,” says Michael, his grim belligerence vanished. “You sound cold-blooded when you talk like that.”

Head high, she stares him down. “It’s about survival isn’t it.” She nods towards me. “Richard was right when he said that you’re no good to anyone if you panic. Some things have to be done in cold blood.”

James, towering over her, says in a cool voice, “Like selling yourself to the highest bidder? Done in cold blood?”