"The Bodyguard" by Lee Child (fist published in First Thrills, edited by Lee Child, 2010; reprinted in Child's collection Safe Enough and Other Stories, 2024)
Lee Child is best known as a novelist. His Jack Reacher novels are perennial bestsellers and have spawned both films and a television show. His first novel was published in 1997. It then took seven years before he realized he could also write short stories, which he began to do in abundance, usually for charity ventures and for fundraisers for various writing organizations. Although all of Child's novels feature Reacher, less than half a dozen of his stories do, giving the author a chance to spread his wings, trying something different each time.
The title character in "The Bodyguard" is a professional and very good at his job. There are phony bodyguards -- ones hired for their looks, all muscle and show -- and there are those who rely on planning, intelligence, and courage -- ones who usually manage to avoid dangerous situations for their clients. This bodyguard, now in business for himself after years of working for corporate clients, has never lost a client.
He came close to losing Anna, though. She was young, twenty-two. "she was rich in her own right. she had an inheritance from a separate branch of the family. I think she was actually richer than her old man, who was plenty rich to start with. Her mother was rich, too. Separate money again. They were Brazilian. The father was a businessman and a politician. The mother was a local TV star. It was a triple whammy. Oceans of cash, connections, Brazil. I should have walked away."
For anna to have been 100% safe, she would have to stay in her apartment twenty-four seven. she didn't want that. She thought about 80% safe would suit her better. He told her, "Eighty percent means you live Monday through Thursday and die on Friday." Still, she did not want to live in a gilded cage and the money was good so he took the job.
They flew to Rio, where she had an apartment. Things went south on the very first day. Exiting a store, they were confronted with four men with guns and were captured. The bodyguard was thrown into a bare cell with his hands handcuffed behind his back and his legs shackled; Anna was taken to a separate room. They were in an abandoned warehouse surrounded by some forty gang members. A few hours later he is told that Anna was being held for political reasons to force her father into getting a government inquiry stopped. They had no reason to keep the bodyguard, so he was to be killed once the men decided on an entertaining way to eliminate him.
What the kidnappers did not count on was Anna's intelligence and bravery, even when the odds were forty to one against her.
In the end, the bodyguard still had a perfect record of not losing a client. The embarrassing thing was that it was the client herself who did the rescuing...
A slight but entertaining tale, with Anna being as undaunted in adversity as Jack Reacher would have been.
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