Duty To Defend

“And the baby?” She arched a fine, dark brow.

“Chase will remain in foster care until his mother is nine months sober, and because of his special needs, the foster parents found a day care that offers therapy for challenged newborns. By arranging for Serena to work there, her job will teach her the skills to care for him and also provide daily supervised interaction between mother and son. She seems passionate about gaining the opportunity to raise him.”

Sometime during his speech, Daci’s stare had gone flat. She had the richest brown eyes he’d ever seen, unusual and a bit exotic with the light hair, but something about this conversation unearthed an ancient pain that lurked in their depths. “Why are you putting him at risk by letting her have him again? I thought you were the child’s advocate, not the mother’s.”

“I am, which is why she didn’t get Chase back as soon as she graduated from the halfway house.” He offered a smile that wasn’t returned. The old Williams charm must be experiencing an off day—or else an extra-challenging subject. “Ultimately, it’s the judge’s decision, but I fought hard to keep Chase in a guaranteed stable environment until the mother has a chance to get her feet under her in the real world. Thankfully, the judge saw the wisdom in that idea. On the other hand, I believe in giving families a chance to heal and reunite. Continued sobriety is possible.”

Daci’s upper lip curled. “But not probable, especially when the scrutiny comes off and the stakes of losing the kid goes away.”

“You speak from experience, I take it?”

Rather than answering, she turned back toward her computer screen, revealing a fine-boned profile enhanced by a delicately upturned nose and a firm, rounded chin. If she’d tried to charm him with a smile, he had no doubt it would have worked. Just as well for him that she hadn’t tried.

“Can you see well enough to read along with me?”

The tone of her question left no doubt that she wouldn’t allow him to direct the conversation back to his question about her past experience. Let no one say he couldn’t take a hint, but the legal bloodhound in him was on the hunt. Would it be out of line for him to request her file from Rey? Probably. He’d have to satisfy his curiosity the lawman-turned-lawyer way—evidence collection and finessing information from witnesses.

Marlowe wasn’t a terribly unusual surname, but it did ring a bell from some type of years-ago media hoopla about tragedy and scandal in a filthy rich founding father–type family from Boston. Surely, this down-to-earth Marlowe wouldn’t turn out to be from that bunch, but he wouldn’t rest easy until he’d tracked down the reason for his hazy recollection. Online homework for tonight.

Two hours later, he and Daci had exhausted the information in the files on Serena Farnam and Liggett Naylor, uncovering and discussing some extremely disturbing facts about the latter. A career criminal from a single-parent household—father unknown—he’d been involved in everything from home burglaries and drug dealing to bank holdups and freight-cargo heists, most of these involving the murder of any possible witnesses.

By the time law enforcement brought him down, he was a kingpin in various criminal enterprises ranging from stolen-vehicle chop shops to hot-property fencing rings and racketeering. Anyone who got in his way was annihilated. Homicidal maniac would be a mild description of the charismatic and remorseless criminal with a trail of dead bodies and destroyed lives in his wake.

“How does society breed these animals?” Jax shook his head.

“You’re blaming society as a psycho-mill now?” She gazed at him coolly.

He almost responded with a quick defense of his comment, then noted the slight curve at the corners of her mouth. She was teasing him—and a goofy heart-thump startled him into openmouthed silence.

Her grin broadened. “With your years in the Marshals Service, I’d think you would have run into plenty of this type along the way. What soured you into litigator over lawman?”

“Soured?” The sudden taste on his tongue matched the word.

The churning in his gut was a toxic cocktail of grief, guilt and regret. A timely reminder of why he could not allow himself to respond to his attraction to this woman.

He sat back in his chair and looked away from those deep brown eyes. “It was either get out of law enforcement or have my own humanity eroded into oblivion. God opened the door for me to do something that daily allows me a different way to protect the most innocent from the most depraved.”

“God opened the door, or did you make a choice that required drastic action?” Again, that fine eyebrow went up, but then she waved a dismissive hand. “Never mind. I guess I used to have more of that faith stuff than I do now. Bottom line, I admire you for admitting when you needed a change and then making it happen.”

Jax bit back further remarks on faith. Who was he to talk when he sometimes wrestled with his own?

He leaned closer to Daci. “My bottom line? If this guy does try to reenter Serena’s life, we need to nab him before he can inflict any damage—either by hurting Serena or grabbing his son. Serena and Chase are so close to becoming a healthy family.”

Her mouth tightened. “If that’s going to happen, she needs to do more than stay alive and off the sauce. She’s going to have to perform an extreme makeover on her taste in men. That’s rare. I rate their chances a long shot, but I’m all for offering them the full protection of the law.”

A low rumble originating from her belly punctuated her last sentence, and a blush crept up her neck.

“Hungry?” Jax grinned.

She managed an answering smile and rubbed her middle. “Time got away from us, and my tummy noticed.”

Jax rose. “I know a place a few blocks away that serves the best clam chowder in a fresh-baked bread bowl I’ve ever tasted.”

“Sam’s Clams?”

“You’ve eaten there?”

“The day I came in for orientation. My new coworkers recommended it. Apparently, the charm of the place is an open secret around here.”

“I remember that from my marshal days.” His grin faded.

Why was he inviting Daci Marlowe to have lunch with him? It would have been just as easy to wave and walk out to each seek their own meals.

“Okay, partner, you talked me into it.” Her lighthearted words jerked him back into the moment. “A working lunch it is.”

A tight coil unwound in Jax’s belly. A working lunch. That’s all this was. He could do that.

They left the office and walked out the building’s glass doors into the warmth of a New England spring day. The sky was blue and nearly cloudless, and a breeze carried the scents of flowering landscape bushes.

Crossing the small courtyard to the sidewalk, Jax stuffed his hands into his pockets and fell into step with his companion. “Have you always lived in Springfield?”

“Moved here from Boston when I got the posting. This is my first duty day.”

“That’s why you didn’t eat breakfast this morning.”

She sent him a sharp look as they entered the crosswalk of a busy street, along with a straggling line of pedestrians. “How do you know I didn’t?”

He smirked. “First day. First assignment. Oh, yeah, I remember what that was like. Hunger was gnawing a hole in my stomach by noon, but if I had eaten breakfast before I reported for duty, I would have puked on my boss’s shoes.”

A full-throated laugh burst from Daci, and Jax’s heart tripped over itself at the husky, happy sound.

The roar of an engine and screech of tires yanked his head around. A small SUV jetted around the corner through a red light and roared straight at them.

Two

Icy-hot sparks shot through Daci’s middle as she and Jax leaped forward. The SUV whipped past them so close the air current shoved her into a silver-haired woman ahead of her. With a shriek that blended with the startled cries of others in the crosswalk, the woman sprawled to the pavement. Heaving in long breaths, Daci squatted beside her. The silver-haired woman lay on her side, her complexion bleached, her eyes and mouth as round as eggs.

“Are you alright?”

The woman blinked up at Daci. “That car nearly ran you over. What is wrong with people today?”

Daci shook her head. “I can’t answer that, ma’am. Are you able to stand?”

“I—I don’t know.” She rubbed her elbow and attempted to sit up but subsided with a groan. “My arm hurts...and my hip.”

“Stay still.” Daci put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “We’ll get paramedics here.”

“I’ll call for an ambulance,” a deep voice said from behind her.

Daci looked up to find Jax gazing down at them. A strange buoyancy filled her chest at seeing him standing there, safe and sound, tapping on his phone to call for assistance. She glanced around to see if anyone else had been hurt. People milled in the street in various stages of wide-eyed shock. On the sidewalk, a few gawkers excitedly chattered on their cell phones. Traffic was at a standstill, though a few impatient souls were starting to honk.

Sirens began to wail in the distance as DC Reynolds and the desk clerk, Randy Lathrop, hurried out to them in the street. Daci remained beside the injured woman as her coworkers took charge and rerouted traffic until the local authorities could arrive and assume command.

Daci rose as her boss strode up to her.

“Glad to see you’re okay,” he said.

“Just a little shaken, sir.”

“See what you can do to get witnesses to stick around until they can be interviewed. Folks are trying to slip off and get on with their day.”

“Will do, but if nothing else, the traffic cam might give us a lead on the perp.”

Reynolds grimaced. “If it was working. Road construction in the vicinity has been interrupting coverage. I know because Randy has been running automated searches of footage for any of Naylor’s known vehicles suddenly appearing on the road.”

Soon, law enforcement and emergency personnel had cleared the scene, and Jax and Daci stood together near a squad car giving their statements to Detective Herriman, who was in charge of the investigation. By the familiarity of the greeting between the two men, Herriman apparently knew Jax either from his deputy marshal days or from his current gig as a lawyer.

“I doubt I can contribute much to the information pool.” Jax scrubbed his fingertips through the hair above one ear. “It was a bright red compact SUV. I have no clear recollection about the license plate, except that it was Massachusetts. Make and model escaped me as I scrambled out of the way.”

“Understandable.” Herriman made notes on his electronic tablet. “At least your account tallies with the majority of witnesses. A few descriptions we got ranged from monster truck to souped-up sports car.”

Jax chuckled. “If only the general public had a clue about the unreliability of eye-witness accounts. But I guess I can’t claim superiority in that area.”

The detective grinned as he turned toward Daci. “Do you have anything to add, ma’am?”

“Daci Marlowe, new with the Marshals Service.” She stuck out her hand, and Herriman shook it. “I may have a little to contribute. The vehicle was a late-model Toyota RAV4. Definitely Massachusetts license plate. I only remember two digits and a letter. Not necessarily in this order—three, eight and E. The driver was a male Caucasian, mid-to-late thirties. I didn’t see anyone else in the vehicle, and in the blur of leaping out of the way, I didn’t catch any facial details.”

Jax and Herriman stared at her like she’d grown a second head.

She stifled a smile. “You might want to write that down.”

“Uh, yes, absolutely.” The detective pecked at his tablet.

A short time later, she and Jax were cleared to leave the scene, and they headed up the block toward the restaurant.

“Do you have any idea how unusual that was?” Jax leaned his head down and spoke close to her ear.

The sensation of his breath against her cheek was pleasant, but she made herself ignore it and put a few extra inches of distance between them.

“I agree,” she said, keeping her voice neutral and professional. “Absolutely nuts if he was attempting a hit-and-run in the middle of the day on a busy street. I suppose the perp might have been substance-impaired, but if not, he sure couldn’t claim distracted driving as cause for running a red light. He had to turn a corner. That smacks of deliberation. But why us? Or were we random targets?”

“Good questions, but no, I meant the details you remembered from a split-second, crisis experience. That’s not normal.”

Daci stopped and faced him. He must be about six feet three inches to her five feet seven inches, which meant she looked up a significant distance to meet his gaze. Those blue eyes were clear and cloudless. Hers? Well, he was probably glimpsing the fringes of the storm that brooded inside her.

“You’re right. I’m not normal.” If she couldn’t manage utter calm, at least the tone emerged quiet and fiercely controlled. “With the way my life has gone since my earliest memory, I’ve had to develop certain skills so that my loved ones and I could survive. I don’t have a clue what it means to live in normal. I wish I did. So many times, I’ve prayed to God, begging for normal to somehow find me. It never has.” She broke eye contact. “Thanks for the lunch offer, but I’ve changed my mind. If you’ll excuse me, I don’t think I can eat anything. I’d better get back to my desk. See you tomorrow at the day care.”

She chewed out those last two words as she hurried away. If this first day of the rest of her life diverged any more radically from all she had confidently expected, she might simply implode into a splat on the sidewalk.

An hour later, she sat at her desk, staring at her computer screen, a half-eaten candy bar and a mug of cold coffee at her elbow. That incident in the street today puzzled her. Had the driver been impaired by drugs or alcohol to the point where he had been unaware of pedestrians? But his driving had seemed anything but erratic as he shot toward Jax and her like an arrow off a bowstring.

She’d tried running through the system the scrap of license-plate identification she’d remembered. However, following up on the number of RAV4s that popped up was beyond her ability, even factoring in the color of the vehicle. Red was highly popular. If she wanted to identify the driver, she’d have to approach this from a different angle. She came back to the same question: Who had been the driver’s target?

Jax may have made enemies during his days in the Marshals Service, maybe even more enemies during his dealings with volatile family court situations. Or could the target be her? She wanted to believe that the idea was ridiculous. Unless the attempted hit-and-run was connected to that stupid prank with the basket of rotten baby paraphernalia. What if the disgusting housewarming gift was not a brotherly prank, but a taunt with evil intent? The advice in the note to “enjoy” her life suddenly took on sinister overtones.

No use indulging needless paranoia. Chomping a bite out of her candy bar, she picked up her cell phone from the desk. A quick text to Nate, thanking him for his “thoughtfulness,” would settle the matter one way or another. He’d either acknowledge his twisted gift or have no idea what she was talking about. If she scored zero with Nate, she’d check with her other siblings. One of them had to be the culprit. The alternative was too creepy, if not downright scary.

Daci shot off a tongue-in-cheek thank-you, then turned her attention back to the research she was conducting on therapy for fetal alcohol syndrome babies. Virtually raising her siblings almost from her earliest memory had prepared her well for normal day care duties. Her boss was right about her mad skills in that area, but she’d never cared for a FAS infant.

That opportunity, which many would have considered a burden, had been denied her. Daci’s parents claimed her newborn baby brother Niall died at the hospital, but with no funeral being held for him, she’d never fully had closure. Where was he buried? Her parents wouldn’t tell, and to this day, she didn’t know and likely never would. As yet, she hadn’t found a way to make peace with that blank spot in her history.

At least tomorrow she’d have an opportunity to make peace with Jax for her abrupt abandonment of their lunch plans. He hadn’t meant anything insulting in his remark that she wasn’t normal, but the whole overload of the day had gotten to her in that moment.

She’d have to step up her game if she didn’t want him to write her off as a flake, which would be so unfair, since she’d never flaked on anything in her life. This case was extremely important on a society-impacting scale, even though parts of the assignment were a disappointment to her personally. Like Reynolds had told her: Suck it up, Marlowe.

While they were studying the files on Farnam and Naylor this morning, Jax had explained that he visited the day care frequently because many of the children were his clients. When he walked in tomorrow, she’d be ready for him with a friendly smile and, if they had a private moment, an apology.

By the time her shift ended, Daci was more than ready to leave the office. But even though she was done with her work for the day, another matter needed to be resolved before she could really relax. She had some thinking and research to do on her basket mystery.

During the drive to her apartment, her tired brain sorted through the results so far. Nate, who was swamped with starting a dentistry practice in Worcester, Massachusetts, and planning a wedding with his fiancé, had responded to her “thank you” text with a question mark and puzzlement emoji. She received a similar response during her afternoon break when she texted Noah, who was on a journalism assignment in London. She could cross them both off her list. If either brother had been behind the prank in person or by arrangement, he would have been proud to take credit and laugh at her scolding.

She pulled into the carport of a large Victorian home converted to side-by-side apartments in the quiet Pine Point neighborhood. A chorus of greetings from the porch of the Victorian house next door met her ears as she exited her little VW. Daci waved at three mixed-age women, members of a group home for mentally challenged adults, who resided there.

She’d been intrigued by the place when she’d moved in a week ago, and had gone over to meet the residents. In addition to rotating shifts of house mothers, there were six residents—two with Down syndrome, two with autism, one with fragile X syndrome and one with FASD. Their intellectual capacities varied from gifted in areas to slow across the board, but poor emotional and social skills guaranteed their need for a supervised environment for the rest of their lives. Once her life settled down a little, she might find time to go over and volunteer, but not today.

“Have a good evening,” she called to her welcoming committee and trod up the three steps onto the porch. At least there were no more weird gifts awaiting her.

Inside, she changed into comfy jeans and T-shirt, then picked up her phone to call her sisters, Amalie and Ava. She was about to peck the speed-dial button for Amalie when her screen lit up and her ringtone began. Am had beaten her to the call. Most likely Ava was present, too, since they shared an apartment near Dartmouth University in Hanover, New Hampshire. Only two years apart in age, the sisters enjoyed a close relationship, despite or maybe because of their differing personalities. Amalie, the elder, was on the serious side, introverted and cautious, while Ava was bubbly and outgoing.

Daci answered and greeted her sister.

“How was your day, Mamasis?” Amalie lilted.

Warmth filled Daci at the familiar, affectionate nickname—though her sibs had sometimes changed it to “Nemesis” if they were at odds with her over some sort of growing pains.

“I’m here, too,” Ava chimed in.

“Can’t tell you the details,” Daci answered, “but I’ve been assigned a small role in a high-profile case.”

Feminine squeals blended.

“Awesome,” Ava said.

“Does it involve danger?” Amalie’s tone went cautious.

“No more than any law-enforcement assignment. Risk is part of the job.”

Ava chuckled. “Our mamasis, the adventurer. I suppose you couldn’t bear any sort of mundane career after the supreme challenge of raising us.”

They all laughed.

“Which of you sent me the ‘welcome to your new life’ basket I found outside my door this morning?”

For a beat, stone silence answered.

“Must have been the neighborhood welcoming committee,” Amalie said.

“Yeah, neither of us thought of doing anything that nice. Wish we had.”

“What was in it?” Amalie was ever practical.

“Small stuff. Pretty much useless for my current lifestyle.” If her sisters weren’t in on the joke, no way was she going to freak them out by detailing the basket’s contents.

“Wasn’t there a card?” Am asked.

“Nothing that identified the sender.”

“Weird,” Ava said.

The conversation veered off into other topics, like Amalie’s upcoming graduation with a major in archeology, followed by a summer internship at an ancient civilization site in New Mexico. Ava lamented the impending absence of her sister as she stayed behind at school, slaving toward her undergrad degree in Film and Media Studies. Daci alternately congratulated and commiserated. Twenty minutes passed quickly, and they ended the call.

If the gift basket was not an off-the-wall inside joke from her often-wacky nearest and dearest, then who had left it for her and why? In light of the seriousness of the attempted hit-and-run, should she report the incident to her boss? To the local police? Unfortunately, she no longer possessed the physical evidence that might yield forensic clues. She’d chucked the gross object into a Dumpster at the nearest gas station.

That night, such dilemmas, as well as flashbacks of the SUV bearing down on her and Jax, invaded her dreams. Her alarm clock’s blare rolled her out of bed, groaning and mumbling under her breath. It was a harsher joke than spoiled baby food that she had to dress civilian casual and leave her badge in her dresser drawer on just her second day of work.

Her sidearm she put into a cloth bag to be taken into the day care director’s office and kept under lock and key. Not the best scenario if Liggett Naylor showed up, because she’d have to run to retrieve it. There had been a brief discussion with DC Reynolds about her wearing a small pistol strapped to her ankle, but they’d discarded the notion. Packing a gun while she cared for small children was unacceptable.

Well before the seven o’clock opening time, Daci approached a squat brick building with a sign over the door that read Little Blessings Day Care. Judging by the name, this was a faith-based care center. Unusual choice for placement of a ward of the government, but Jax had said that, while not all pint-size clients here had special needs, this day care offered programs for those who did. Perhaps Chase’s mental and physical challenges were the deciding factor in placing him in this one.

Daci paused inside the front door. The interior was brightly lit, revealing a foyer with a currently unmanned check-in desk standing outside a wall of glass that separated the foyer from a large open play area. Child-sized tables dotted a carpeted interior that featured separate sections for reading, crafts, toys and games. Doorways at the far end of the large room were labeled by age group.

A few adult workers moved around the play area. Children wouldn’t start arriving for another twenty minutes. Daci had thought the environment would assail her with desperation to escape back into the adult world. Instead, the scents of wet wipes, spilled juice and small-child sweat drew a deep calm from her core. There was something to be said for familiarity. And nostalgia. It hadn’t always been easy caring for her siblings, but she had some great memories of them from when they were this small.