Content Warning: This section features discussions of addiction and domestic violence.

Hannah Brooks, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, works as an Executive Protection Agent (EPA) or bodyguard and is one of the best employees at her company. At the beginning of The Bodyguard, Hannah’s mother—with whom she had a complicated relationship due to her mother’s dating of abusive men and subsequent alcoholism—has just died, and Hannah is struggling with this loss while being forced to take bereavement leave from her job. Robbed of the distraction that her job would provide, Hannah attempts to fulfill her mother’s dying wish for her daughter to take a vacation and books a cheap flight to Toledo, Ohio for herself and her boyfriend, Robby, who is also a bodyguard at her company.

When Hannah goes into work to tell Robby about her plans, she overhears him and their boss, Glenn, discussing the opening of a new branch of their company in London, and how Hannah and Robby will be expected to compete against one another for the role of the head of this new branch. However, Glenn also tells Hannah that he is removing her from an upcoming project in Madrid, which had been the only thing she had to look forward to after her mother’s funeral.