Close Protection

For fourteen months, Solomon Asante and Wes Kilbride have kept Tomi Haruno alive. Through stage doors and screaming arenas, through airports on four continents, the two bodyguards have walked one step behind the black-haired pop star with their hands on his back and their eyes on everyone else.Solomon is forty, enormous, and never raises his voice. Wes is quick-handed and freckled and hums Tomi's songs off-key when he thinks nobody can hear. They have one rule they never break: you do not touch the principal.Tomi has spent the whole tour lying awake in hotel suites, thinking about the two men in the room next door. And he knows something they don't think he knows.Then the world tour ends in a storm over Manhattan. A stranger is caught on the stairs one floor below the penthouse, the whole floor goes into lockdown, and Tomi's bodyguards have to spend the night inside his suite. Rain on the glass. Whiskey on the piano. A contract that runs out at noon.One question, asked once. One word that stops everything. And two men who have spent six years being very, very careful about what they want.