Defender

“And…?” Paul was remembering with cold chills what Darwin had said about his wife selling him out to someone.

“And he was called out of town to consult in a case with a former patient,” she continued. “While he was gone, Mr. Darwin called in a favor and had the autopsy rushed through. Accidental death was what they put on the death certificate. By the time Dr. Coltrain got back, she was buried, and Mr. Darwin threatened legal action if the doctor tried to interfere further.” She shook her head. “Dr. Coltrain has a really nasty temper, but Mr. Darwin is so rich that he could…well, there were strange things that started happening around Dr. Coltrain’s house, around his little boy. He realized what could happen, and he stepped back.” She looked up at Paul. “Mr. Darwin has done some things that I’d rather die than tell you about. He holds my brother over me like a sword. He’ll find something to hold over you, too, Mr. Paul, if he can. He likes having people who work for him over a barrel.”

Paul smiled ruefully. “If there was anything in my past that could be used against me, it would have come out years ago, when I was…when I worked in another field.”

Her old face softened. “You’re wasted here,” she said gently. “I mean it. You’re smart. You could be anything you wanted to be. Hired private security is, well, it’s…”

“I keep you and the girls safe,” he interrupted with a grin. “Not to mention the racehorses. Imagine how the jockeys would mourn if one of the horses got an infected foot or something!”

She laughed, as she was meant to.

“He wanted cameras set up,” he added. “But he had me take out the one he’d put in the dining room, along with the bug he had in his office. I’ll tell the girls. I was afraid I’d have to watch every word I said. And the girls have been worried.” He sighed. “Merrie’s really afraid of him. Sari…not so much, but she doesn’t go against him.” He turned to her. “Why are they so afraid of him?”

Mandy wanted to tell him, but she was too afraid for her brother. “He got physical with them when they were younger,” she compromised. “He believed in that ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ thing.”

He scowled. “He didn’t abuse them?”

“Not the way you’re thinking,” she said easily.

He let out a breath. “Thank God.”

“It would have been like living in jail, having cameras all over the house,” Mandy said quietly. “I didn’t even know where they were until you told me he’d only put one in the dining room and had his office bugged. We’d have had to watch every word we said.” She hesitated. “And you’d never have been able to let Sari come into your room anymore,” she added with an amused smile.

He chuckled. “Don’t tell her, but I’d have missed that. I enjoy our chats. She’s a sweet child.”

“It’s such a shame,” Mandy said. “Sari and Merrie are two of the sweetest kids I’ve ever known. I was hoping they’d meet someone, get married, have families. I should have realized that Mr. Darwin would fight against that to his last breath.”

“Surely he wants an heir from them, to carry on the line, to inherit what he has.”

She bit her lower lip, hard. “I asked him that, once. He said that he wasn’t sharing his fortune with anybody, and no men were going to trick his daughters into marriage so they could live like kings.”

Paul felt his face tauten. “What if they fell in love?”

“Fat chance,” she replied. “They aren’t allowed to go anywhere that they could meet men. Sari wasn’t even allowed to go to a graduation party. Neither was Merrie. He keeps them under lock and key. They’re only let out to go to school for the most part, although Sari has a little more freedom now. But whether you know it or not, they’re watched every second they’re away from here, even at school.”

“What?”

“I didn’t think you knew that,” she said, walking back toward the house. “He has a couple of men trail behind them when they’re not here. Supposedly it’s to make sure nobody tries to abduct them for ransom. But it’s really to make sure they don’t get involved with boys. Merrie tried to go on a date once…” She let that thought trail away. “It’s getting chilly out here!”

“Wait.” He moved between her and the door. “Merrie tried to go on a date…?”

She looked up at him with real fear. “I can’t say. You can’t ask. Please! You’ll cause problems that you can’t imagine. He’s not…normal.”

“Why do you stay?” he asked.

“Because I’m all they’ve got. It isn’t much, but sometimes I can head off trouble.”

He drew in a long breath. “I thought it was a peach of a job when I first got it. More and more, I think I made a huge mistake.”

“The girls don’t think so. They’re both very fond of you. So am I, but you know that.” She chuckled.

“I know that.” He smiled gently.

“Video cameras in the house,” she said, shaking her head. “I’d have been afraid to open my mouth.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t have been so bad,” he said facetiously. “There’s a community college with a theatrical department,” he teased. “We could have asked somebody to write us a script, and we’d have performed it at every meal. He’d have gotten bored watching it all the time.”

She burst out laughing. “Now, there’s a thought!”

“Send Isabel out, could you? I need to talk to her.” He grimaced. “Just in case he put a bug in that I didn’t find, it’s safer out here. I’ll sweep the house again later.”

“I’ll do it. Want Merrie, too?”

“Just Isabel,” he said, smiling.

“Okay.”

* * *

He paced between the light from the house and the distant fence and ranch gate that led to the stables. He was uneasy. He didn’t like being under surveillance, and he didn’t buy Darwin Grayling’s explanation of why it was necessary. He wondered if Darwin had learned about Sari’s visits to Paul’s room. He knew Mandy hadn’t sold him out, but what if there were other cameras and bugs that Paul didn’t know about? He was going to make a thorough search later.

The back door opened. Sari came out, wearing a long blue-checked dress with a white blouse under it. The garment covered her from neck to ankles, but it fit in just the right places to give Paul an uncomfortable ache. She had pert little breasts and a narrow waist that led down to softly curving full hips and long legs. Her reddish-gold hair was piled on top of her head, curling wildly down from a ponytail clip, and her blue, blue eyes twinkled at him in the pale light from the house.

“Mandy said you wanted to talk to me. Are we going to get bulletproof vests issued? Maybe a gun?” she teased.

He shrugged. “Beats me. I feel like some of those guys used to on a show called Candid Camera. That’s before your time, tidbit,” he added with a grin.

“It is not. I watch it on YouTube.”

He shook his head.

“Don’t knock it,” she chided. “All the best programming is on YouTube. I can watch shows from fifty years ago. I can travel all over the world in somebody’s backpack,” she added with a chuckle. “I was just touring the Incan ruins in Peru.”

“I’d love to see that,” he mused. “I never miss an archaeological special on TV.”

“Me, neither,” she agreed. “I used to think I’d get to see the sites in person one day, but Daddy says it’s too dangerous to let us travel outside the country.”

“It probably is,” he said noncommittally.

“So, what do you want to talk to me about?” she asked. She cocked her head. “Are you going to ask me to run away with you and live in sin somewhere in Kansas?”

He was disconcerted. “Why Kansas?”

“Well, it’s probably the last place on earth Daddy would think to look for us,” she sighed. She tilted her face up to his. “Sure you don’t want to run away with me? We could get jobs working in a convenience store and live on doughnuts and Slurpees.”

He burst out laughing. “Honest to God, Isabel…!”

“I like it when you laugh,” she observed, smiling. “You almost never do.”

He sobered. “It doesn’t really go with the job description,” he said. He studied her quietly. “Your father has had me update all the security systems. He had the dining room bugged and you were on camera wherever you went that was in sight of the doors, except to the head.”

“The who?”

He scowled. “The head. Sorry. The bathroom.”

“You said it was wired?” she asked worriedly.

He nodded. “I wiped the recordings.”

Sari was catching her breath. She’d been sitting on Paul’s bed…

“I wiped everything,” he repeated. “Just in case there were bugs in other places besides in the dining room. I couldn’t be sure.”

“Why was everything wired?” she wondered.

“I’m not sure. He gave me some pretty wild reasons. But the only security cameras left are the two at the front and back doors and the ones on the outside. So you can still come bouncing into my room and sit on my bed in your pajamas.” He grinned. “As long as I make doubly sure he hasn’t put any hidden cameras or bugs up there.”

“Oh, dear.” She glanced at him. “Imagine if Daddy saw that on YouTube,” she mused.

“Then imagine me lying in a dark alley with parts missing,” he returned.

“He wouldn’t dare,” she said simply. “I’d avenge you.”

“Your allowance is a little over a hundred dollars a month. I think guys in ninja suits cost a bit more than that,” he mused, his dark eyes twinkling.

“I’m saving up,” she promised.

He chuckled and started walking back toward the house, hands in his pockets. “He says there’s a threat. Something external, and to do with someone he knows.”

“That woman he sees,” Sari said. She looked up at Paul’s surprised expression. “Merrie and I know about her,” she added. “Her name is Betty Leeds. She came here once, driving a new Mercedes, all decked out in expensive clothes with a purse that cost more than my leather coat. She looked down her nose at me and Merrie, went into Daddy’s study with him and closed the door.”

He frowned. “She can afford all that on a government salary?”

She scowled. “I didn’t think about that. I don’t think the government pays salaried workers that much, and I overheard Daddy tell somebody that she worked in an office as an analyst or something.”

He let out a breath. “Best not advertise that news, tidbit.”

“I wouldn’t. Daddy has an unpredictable temper.” Her whole body went taut. “Neither of us wants to make him mad, ever.”

He turned to her in the shadow of the porch, out of range of the security cameras. “Why are you afraid of him, honey?” he asked softly, his voice unconsciously tender.

Sari’s heart jumped. She wasn’t used to endearments from anyone except Mandy. Paul never used them. She looked up at him with quiet, soft eyes, searching over his hard face. “He’s just volatile,” she hedged. “We never know how he’s going to react to anything we say. It’s almost like he’s two different people, especially when he has those dizzy spells.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Merrie and I learned early not to make him mad.”

“He wouldn’t really hurt you, would he?”

“Oh, of course not,” she lied, managing a smile. “It’s not like that. He just yells and stuff.”

“I see.”

“Where are the cameras?” she asked suddenly.

He pointed to one at the corner of the house that had the security light, and to another camera just over their heads, pointing away from the house.

“Do they have microphones?” she worried.

“They do.” He pulled a little device out of his pocket. “But that one—” he indicated the one overhead “—has had a slight malfunction.” He showed her the device and grinned.

She grinned back. “Devious.”

“Very. I’m going to turn it back on. Watch what you say.”

She nodded. He pointed the device at the camera and clicked it.

“I wonder what Mandy’s got in mind for supper?” he asked conversationally. “I’m starved.”

“Me, too. Thanks for showing me the new foal, Mr. Fiore,” she lied. She’d seen it much earlier, but it was for the sake of the recording, in case her father saw it.

“My pleasure, Miss Grayling,” he replied, and went to hold the door open for her.

* * *

Later, Paul was reading Herodotus when Isabel came through the door and jumped onto the bed with him. She was wearing a gown this time, a pink silk one with a matching peignoir. She was nicely covered, but the silk slithered over her firm, pretty little breasts and it dipped down so that just the tops of them showed. It was a modest gown. The problem was that little sliver of pretty, pale, freckled flesh. Paul had to drag his eyes away from it, especially when he saw quite suddenly two little peaks on either side of the bodice. She liked his eyes on her, and it was visible in a way she didn’t even seem to know.

The girls didn’t date. They had no knowledge of men, or even their own bodies. Isabel was very likely a virgin. It made him react unexpectedly, in a very masculine way. He leaned forward carefully so that his reaction was less noticeable in the folds of his black silk pajama bottoms.

“You’re reading that man again,” she noted, looking at the book in front of him on the bed. “Wouldn’t it be easier to read him in English?”

“You lose something in the translation,” he said easily, smiling.

“How did you learn Greek?”

He smiled. “From my grandmother. She was a firecracker. I never saw anything or anyone she was afraid of.” He shook his head. “She went after a mob boss once with a length of salami. Damn, she had spunk!”

“A mob boss? A real one?” Isabel asked, fascinated.

He nodded. “Most of our family worked for, shall we say, underworld elements. One of them was a mob boss with a real attitude problem. He came to a family gathering and insulted one of her grandsons. She took after him with a salami and damned near unmanned him with it. He actually apologized to her.” His eyes were far away and thoughtful. “After that, he sent her a present every Christmas. Shocked us all. He wasn’t the type, you see.”

She smiled. “I never knew my grandparents, on either side,” she recalled sadly. “Mama’s people originally came from Georgia. Her parents were pretty old when I was born and they died when I was a baby. Mama was worth millions. Her people were a founding family in Jacobs County. My father never talked about his people much. His father was very wealthy—that’s where Daddy’s money came from. He inherited after he married my mother. His mother died when he was a baby. He didn’t have brothers or sisters.”

“That’s sad, not to have family.”

“Do you have any?” she asked softly.

He averted his eyes. The question hurt, but she didn’t realize it. “No. Not anymore,” he said tautly. “Except for a cousin.”

He didn’t like remembering it. His grandmother had died years ago. He’d had a brother, but when he was in his teens, his sibling had died in a particularly horrible way, and not one he felt comfortable telling an innocent girl about. The others, well, he had a lot of guilt about the way they went, and the memories tore at his heart like talons.

“I’m sorry,” she said gently, touching his muscular arm.

He looked up, surprised at her empathy.

She shrugged. “You never talk about your past. I guess you have some memories that are pretty bad, huh?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Pretty bad.”

She drew her hand back. “I’ve never had the opportunity to make any real memories,” she said on a sigh. “I go to school and come home, do class work, eat, sleep, get up and do it all again, except in the summer.”

“I get up, work, eat, sleep, go to bed.” He chuckled. “I suppose there’s some sort of comfort in the routine. No great shocks. No big surprises.”

“It’s tedious, isn’t it?” she asked suddenly, surprising an odd look in his large brown eyes. “We don’t do much except go through the motions of living.”

He cocked his head. “You’re pretty clued in, for a sheltered little chick.”

“I listen,” she said simply. “I don’t have much experience of my own, but women talk. I overhear things I don’t really understand, but once in a while, a woman is nice enough to explain it to me without making it sound vulgar.”

Both thick eyebrows went up. “Now I’m intrigued.”

She cleared her throat. “It’s nothing I could talk about in mixed company,” she said, lowering her eyes.

“I see. It’s that sort of conversation, is it?” he teased.

She flushed. “Well, books and movies and television sort of hint at things, but you don’t really know, do you? It’s just secondhand.”

“So is hearsay evidence,” he mused.

“Now you sound like a policeman,” she accused.

His eyes narrowed. “And you’d know that how?”

“There’s this nice policeman who works for Chief Grier,” she said. “I have lunch in Barbara’s Cafe every Friday with Blake Kemp’s assistant. The policeman is usually having lunch there, too, with a couple of his friends. They sit next to us and we talk.” She laughed. “He’s really funny. I like him.”

He felt an unreasonable surge of jealousy. He fought it down and even managed a convincing smile. “Your age?”

“Oh, no, he’s closer to your age. At least, to what I think is your age,” she added, because Paul had never told her how old he was.

“Is he new here?”

She nodded. She leaned toward him. “There’s some gossip about him,” she said in a stealthy, mischievous tone.

“Is there? What is it?” he asked.

“You remember Kilraven, who was supposed to be working for the chief, but was really an undercover Fed?”

“I remember. He married Winnie Sinclair.”

She nodded. “Well, our policeman is apparently an undercover Fed, too, working on some mob-related criminal activity.”

Paul’s heart jumped. He had an inkling of what that might be, but he didn’t dare tell Isabel. He still had contacts inside—well, actually, on both sides of that issue—and he didn’t want to have to admit to them. He was still raw from the past, despite the years of distance.

“Know what it is?” he asked.

“No,” she returned. “He isn’t telling anybody about that. I heard all about it from Mr. Kemp’s paralegal, who’s friends with the chief’s secretary, Carlie Farwalker.”

He let out a breath. “Isabel, is there anybody you don’t know?”

“Well, Jacobsville is a very small town. And Comanche Wells, where we live, is even smaller. I’ve lived here all my life. I know everybody. Is it like that, where you come from?” she asked, curious. “I mean, did you come from a small town?”

He burst out laughing. “I came from Jersey,” he said. “Nothing small about New Jersey, kid.”

“But don’t you have neighborhoods there, where people live for a long time together?”

He thought back to his childhood, to the place he grew up. “I suppose we did. My grandmother had lived in the same house since she was married. She knew everybody in the neighborhood, and I mean everybody.”

“So it was like here?”

“Only if everybody here was Greek or Italian,” he said with a grin. “On my mother’s side, mostly Italian. My grandmother and her father were the only Greek blood in the family.”

“I guess you speak Italian, too,” she said softly.

“Italian, Greek and an odd little dialect of Farsi.”

“Farsi?” She frowned. “Our police chief speaks that. So does Wolf Patterson’s wife, Sara. In fact, he speaks it, too. They had some extraordinary arguments in Farsi before they married.” She grinned. “I heard about it from Bonnie, who works in the pharmacy in Jacobsville.”

“I’ll have to watch my back, so people don’t tell you girls anything about me,” he chided with twinkling brown eyes. But he wasn’t mentioning his time in Afghanistan in Special Forces.

“Nobody knows anything about you, Paul. You’re a mystery,” she said with a sigh.

The way she said his name made something inside him wake up. He didn’t want that.

“I don’t talk about my past. Ever,” he said absently.

“Oh? Were you, like, a hit man for the mob?” she teased with twinkling blue eyes.

His face tautened to steel. His eyes blazed for an instant, and he seemed made of stone.

“I was kidding!” she said at once, shocked at the reaction she’d provoked. “I’m sorry, really I am…!”

He forced the anguish out of his face. It wasn’t her fault. It was nothing to do with her. She’d simply made a joke, hitting a tender spot without even knowing it.

“No sweat,” he said, and forced a smile. “Hey, I’m Italian. We get too many mob jokes,” he added.

“Sorry,” she said again, her voice softening. “It was a dumb remark.”

“It’s okay.” He reached out and tweaked a long, curly strand of red-gold hair. It was the first time he’d really touched her. “I guess you get Irish jokes all the time, huh?”

“Irish?”

“You’re redheaded, kid,” he teased.

His hand in her hair was provoking some very unusual stirrings in her untried body, and she was trying to pretend she felt nothing. She wasn’t successful. Paul, with his greater experience, could see everything she felt. It flattered him, that she could find him attractive.

“Oh. Redheaded. Irish. I get it.” She laughed nervously. “No, it isn’t Irish. My father’s people were from Wales.”

“Wales!” He laughed. “I never knew a single person from Wales.”

“Me, neither,” she confessed. “I did try to learn a word or two of the language, but I think I sprained my tongue, so I never tried again.”

“Sprained your tongue.” He smiled and let his attention drift down her softly rounded face, over her lightly freckled straight nose, to the pretty bow-shaped mouth under it. His gaze lingered there for a long time. So long, in fact, that he heard her breathing change.

His eyes narrowed. His chest rose and fell quickly. It had been a long time since he’d felt this way; years, in fact, and he felt the stirring of his body with fascination and regret. But she was off-limits. Period. He didn’t dare touch her. Her father would string him up.

He let go of her hair with a grin. “Better get some sleep, kid. I’ve got an early appointment.”

“Okay.” She jumped up from the bed, and then hesitated beside it, frowning. “Paul, you’re sure about the cameras? That there aren’t any around here?” She looked around worriedly.

“I swept the whole house myself twice,” he assured her. “No cameras. No bugs. Nothing.”

“All right, then.” She hesitated. “I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble with my father. We’re just friends, but if he saw us together like this… I mean, he might get ideas.”

“No cameras, no bugs,” he repeated gently. “On my honor.”

She smiled at him. “Okay.”

“Go to bed.”

She sighed and turned toward the door. She paused at the doorway. “And I’m sorry again.”

“For what?”

She made a face. “Bringing back bad memories for you. Good night.”

She was gone before he could protest, in a whirl of pink froth.

He lay awake in the dark, memories haunting him. Memories of blood. So much blood. Blond hair, darkened with it, spread on the bare floor, and a smaller form…

He rolled over and buried his face in the pillow. Don’t think, don’t remember, it’s gone, it’s over. He closed his eyes. Eventually, he slept.

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