Dark Defender (8 page)

“I’ve waited a lot of years for you to kiss me right. Even allowing for yesterday’s attempt, I suspect you can do better.”

With a groan, he settled his lips over hers. Her arms went around his neck as she tilted her head to one side to allow them a better fit. He nipped at her lower lip and his tongue met hers.

Brenna surprised him with her boldness. Her fingers tangled in his hair as she murmured her approval when he tried to pull her across the console into his lap. He banged his elbow on the steering wheel in the process, reminding him where they were and what was at stake.

As much as he wanted to finish what they had started, Brenna deserved better than being groped in the front seat of a car. When—and if—he ever bedded her, it wouldn’t be a quickie where anybody walking by could see.

He broke off the kiss and reached for the door handle. “I’ll be back.”

Ignoring her look of frustration, he stepped out of the car into the bright summer sun. He wished he’d thought to grab his sunglasses, but he wasn’t about to set foot in the car until he got his testosterone back down to a manageable level.

The neighborhood was a quiet one, the kind where little old ladies spent their days sitting by the windows, making note of who mowed their lawns on Sunday and of anyone who didn’t belong. If he spent too much time looking around, someone would likely report him to the police. But that meant it was just as difficult for the enemy to do much prowling around.

He cut through a narrow side street to the alley bordering the judge’s backyard. The high hedges that offered him protection would do the same for anyone waiting to catch Brenna returning to her home. He checked his gun, making sure he could reach it in a hurry.

The old gate had been replaced but there was no lock on it. A chain with a lock wouldn’t keep out determined intruders, but it would have slowed them down. Even a dog would have provided some protection, raising hell when someone tried messing with the car.

But that was all water under the bridge. When the house was once again safe, he’d make sure Brenna had a top of the line security system installed.

The latch on the gate screeched softly as he eased it open. He left the gate propped open in case he had to leave fast and loped across the grass, up the charred porch to the back door.

After a careful look around the perimeter of the yard, he used the key he’d lifted from Brenna’s purse. Had it even crossed her mind to wonder how he was going to get into the house? Probably not—another sign of her innocence. Well, that was about to go the way of the dodo. She’d never be safe unless she learned and accepted that there was more to her father than sitting on the bench and pronouncing judgment.

Inside, the whisper of the air conditioner filled the silence. The house had the empty feel of abandonment about it. Cereal bowls sat on the kitchen counter where Brenna and her father had left them. The small pool of milk at the bottom smelled sour and the few flakes of cereal had hardened along the edges.

The police had left chaos in their wake. Brenna would hate knowing that someone had gone through every drawer and cabinet, perhaps even her dresser upstairs. Just the thought of some ham-handed cop groping through her underwear made Blake want to punch someone.

Flexing his hands and wishing he had a handy throat to choke, he took a quick walk through the house, noting the disorder in each room. What had they been looking for? And who were they? The police would have looked through the house, checking for clues to the bomber’s identity, but it was doubtful they would have been quite this thorough since the attack had taken place outside.

No, someone was searching for the judge’s files—but not the court cases he’d handled. A chill ran down his spine. He hoped that Nichols had managed to stash the papers or disk where no one else would think to look.

Trahern left the house. The longer he was away, the more likely Brenna would decide to come check on him, despite his orders. He rounded the corner just in time to see her climbing out of the car. Muttering, he jogged the last distance, ready to tear into her.

Before he could launch into his tirade, she held out his cell phone. “Jarvis wants you to call him ASAP. He said it was important.”

He growled and punched in Jarvis’s number. It rang half a dozen times and then cut over to voice mail. If Jarvis was in such an all-fired hurry to talk, why wasn’t he answering? He must be underground, which played hell with reception. He snarled “Call me” into the receiver and then disconnected.

“Let’s go.” Grabbing Brenna by the arm, he set off toward the house.

Brenna jerked her arm free from his grasp and stopped. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing, unless you count trying to keep you out of the line of fire while you fight me every inch of the way.” If he was being unreasonable, too bad. No one had ever offered him any prizes for charm.

“If you’d give me explanations rather than orders, maybe I’d cooperate a bit more.”

Her chin came up. Cute, but not particularly intimidating. On the other hand, it did take some of the heat out of his anger even as it tempted him to kiss her again.

“Look, let’s just get inside. Standing out here leaves us too exposed.” He took a couple of steps and was relieved she did the same.

When they reached the backyard, he quickly hustled her past the damaged porch and scorched bushes. She was all but running for the door and, unless he was mistaken, crying, as well. Inside the house she froze, her gaze riveted on the two bowls sitting by the sink. He wished he’d thought to stick them in the dishwasher, but it was too late for that.

“I wouldn’t cook eggs for him because his doctor wanted him to watch his cholesterol. Instead, he ate cold cereal for his last meal.” A lone tear streaked down her face and fell onto her shirt.

His hand settled on her shoulder in awkward comfort. “You fussed at your father because you loved him. He knew that.”

She sniffed and used the hem of her shirt to wipe her face.

“Come on, Brenna. I’ll look around down here while you pack a few things.” He gently shoved her toward the door into the dining room. From there, she could head upstairs while he stood watch.

“Why can’t I stay here?” There was no real energy in her question, as if she had already accepted the need to keep moving.

“We’ll get you back here as soon as it’s safe.” Which might be never, but he wasn’t going to say that. Not yet, anyway.

She trudged up the stairs. As soon as she was out of sight, he started through the lower floor to see how thorough the police’s search had been. It didn’t take long for him to realize they had checked every crack and crevice in the house. What did they know or suspect that had them digging so deep?

He decided to wait until Brenna came downstairs before checking her father’s secret hiding places. When she learned that her father had led a double life, she was going to feel betrayed on so many levels. The only way she was going to believe him was if she saw the evidence herself.

He could hear her footsteps echoing overhead in the silent house. He’d always thought of this house as warm and inviting. Generations of people had lived and died within its solid brick walls, leaving their mark on the worn woodwork and the hodgepodge of remodeling jobs done over the years.

Now the stain of violence had changed that, making the house feel old and sad. He ran his hand over the marble fireplace, liking the feel of the smooth, cool tile. There was a row of family photos in a variety of sizes scattered along the mantel, and it shocked him to realize that he was in one of the pictures.

He couldn’t resist picking it up. The judge stood smiling with one arm around Brenna’s shoulders and his other hand on Blake’s shoulder. Brenna had grinned at something her father had said just as Maisy snapped the picture. At that age Brenna had usually tried to keep her lips together when she smiled, but this time she’d grinned with her braces glinting in the afternoon sun.

Had he ever been that innocent? Not that he could remember, and certainly not past age five or six. Life had a way of stripping away the rose-colored glasses early for a boy living with a mother who was little better than a whore, and who had no idea which of her customers had knocked her up. He’d been accused of being a cold-hearted bastard; it was the truth.

He closed his eyes and thought back to the night when Brenna’s father had welcomed him into their home to live. To this day, he had no idea how the judge had seen past the bitter anger of a sullen, abused teenager and seen someone worth redeeming. In those days he’d had been more of a feral animal than a human, barely surviving life on the streets. But between the judge’s stern but fair discipline and his housekeeper, Maisy, spoiling Blake with cookies, they’d gradually tamed his need to strike out at anyone who came too close. He ran his fingers over the picture, missing both the judge and Maisy.

“My father loved that picture. He always meant for you to have it.”

Brenna’s quiet words almost startled him into dropping the picture. He carefully set it back on the mantel. How had she managed to walk up behind him without him hearing her?

“When you disappeared I was so angry, but my father never was. He was proud of how much you changed while you lived with us.” She touched her father’s face in the picture. “He was a great believer in second chances.”

“And third and fourth.” There’d been more than one night that her father had talked him into giving school another chance. If he’d learned one thing from the judge, it was that a man couldn’t change his past, but he could choose his future.

And now he was going to have to change Brenna’s view of her father. She was going to hate knowing that he’d had secrets he hadn’t shared with her. Even more, she’d hate finding out that he’d shared that secret life with Blake. Unfortunately, he couldn’t explain the reality of her father’s death in such a way that she could understand and even forgive. But this wasn’t the time for pussy-footing around the truth, anyway.

He took a deep breath and looked her straight in the eyes. “Brenna, you’re not going to like this—but the police are right. Your father wasn’t killed because he was a judge. He died because of me.”

She backed away as if he’d slapped her, and all the color drained from her face.

B
renna sank down on a chair. What was he trying to tell her? Her father was killed just because he knew Trahern? What had Blake gotten her father involved in?

She clenched her fists as white-hot anger burned through her.

“Explain yourself. And if you implicated my father in something illegal, I’ll turn you into the police myself, Trahern.”

He shook his head in disgust. “That’s it, Brenna, think the worst of me on every occasion.”

His reaction to her threat was infuriating. “What am I supposed to think, considering that little bomb you just dropped?”

He squatted down to eye level. She didn’t want him to be considerate, only truthful.

“Start at the beginning.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“All right, but promise me you’ll listen to everything I tell you before you start asking questions, or we’ll never get through this.”

“Fine.”

“I met your father when I was accused of attacking a police officer. I was living on the streets back then, and the cop hassled me every chance he got. When he got rough with me I fought back, but I wasn’t the one who damn near killed him. Unfortunately, his friends in the department didn’t care that the bastard made a habit of picking on anyone weaker than him. When I was arrested, a few of them got carried away with their interrogation techniques.”

“I saw the bruises,” she whispered.

“Yeah, well, I heal fast so don’t sweat it. And your father sure gave them hell for it.”

“And that’s when he invited you to live with us.”

Trahern’s stern mouth softened and his icy gray eyes warmed up a few degrees. “No, that’s when he ordered me to either move in with him, or let the juvenile authorities take control of my life until I turned eighteen. The wily bastard gave me no choice at all.”

It sounded like something her father would do. On the other hand, he’d faced hundreds of juvenile offenders over the years without bringing them home. What had made Blake Trahern different?

“It took your father some time to convince me that I could trust him enough to feel comfortable living in a place like this.” He looked around the room, his gaze so serious, making her wonder how it looked through his eyes. “Getting enough to eat every day played a big part in making me stick around.”

“Maisy’s snickerdoodles.”

He nodded. “He kept me on a short leash until he was reasonably sure I wasn’t going to bolt. I don’t know which of us was more surprised when I brought home good grades. I made up for all the time I’d been out of school in less than a year.”

The story was going to take longer than she expected. She gave Blake a soft shove, causing him to lose his balance. “Sit down, Blake—you’re making my legs hurt, seeing you stay in that position so long. It can’t be comfortable.”

Her action clearly surprised him, but he obligingly leaned back against a handy chair before resuming his narrative. “One night he called me to the library to meet a couple of men.” He stared into her eyes as if daring her to doubt what came next. “That was the night I found out what I really am.”

“And that would be?” she prompted.

“A Paladin, just like the two men he introduced me to. Jarvis was one of them.”

A Paladin? Wasn’t that some kind of knight? “Jarvis would have been little more than a boy, twelve years ago.”

Blake’s eyes narrowed. “How old do you think he is?”

“Late twenties, maybe thirty.”

“He turned forty-five on his last birthday.”

“That’s not possible. Not unless he’s had a lot of plastic surgery or something,” she said.

“It’s the ‘or something’ that accounts for his youthful appearance. Most of us mature to the physical appearance of an adult human male in his prime—roughly the early thirties. After that, the physical aging process slows to a crawl. It’s only each time we die that we change at all, and that’s only for the worse.”

Blake was talking as if he and Jarvis were some other kind of species and that death meant something different for them. If he weren’t so completely serious, she would laugh.

“Blake, you’re not making any sense.” Maybe she could steer him back to the matter at hand. “You were saying something about my father introducing you to Jarvis.”

He nodded. “I told you this was going to be hard to believe, Brenna, but I’m telling you the truth: a truth that I’ve taken an oath to keep secret, just as your father did.”

Now
that
was too much. “My father was not a Paladin, or whatever you’re calling yourself. He was a judge—and that’s all.”

“I didn’t say he was a Paladin. I said we had sworn the same oath of silence. He was a Regent.” He held his hand parallel to the floor. “On top, you have the Regents. They’re the administrators and watchdogs who control the whole organization.”

He dropped his hand slightly. “Then there’s Research and Ordnance. Think of Research as a high-tech medical facility. The top dogs there are called Handlers, doctors who take care of the Paladins who are wounded or killed in battle. Ordnance is more like the military branch. They dispatch the human guards for security and back up and send Paladins where they are needed.”

Then he dropped his hand again. “Then there are the Paladins themselves. We’re more like commandos than soldiers—or maybe warrior is a better description. Your father was a Regent. Through him, I joined the other Paladins.”

His pride in that was unmistakable. Too bad she didn’t believe a word he said. She couldn’t get her mind around such a far-fetched idea. “Tell me more.”

He obliged her. “Paladins are born with a unusual set of genes that enable us to fight a battle that’s been going on as far back as we can remember. There’s an energy barrier that runs between our world and another one, a sort of shared border along two dimensions. Most of the time it keeps the two worlds separate, nice and neat. But there are weaknesses, especially along the fault lines like the New Madrid line here and the San Andreas, and the volcanoes along the Pacific Rim. Anytime there’s a small earthquake or a volcano starts throwing its weight around, that barrier can be damaged.”

“Really, Blake, you should have told me that you wrote science fiction for a living.”

His eyebrows snapped together. “You wanted the truth, Brenna. I’m giving it to you.”

“No, you’re telling me wild tales and expecting me to believe them. There’s no way anyone could have kept a group like you’re talking about secret all this time. Besides, none of these crazy claims have anything to do with why my father died.” She started to get up.

Faster than she thought a man could move, Blake rose from the floor and blocked her way, putting one hand on each arm of her chair and forcing her to sit back and listen. “When those barriers go down, Brenna, the people from that world spill over into ours. They come armed with swords and knives and fight to the death. It’s our job to send them back or kill the ones who won’t return home.”

“That sounds like one of the fantasy games that have been all the rage the past few years.” She didn’t try to keep her angry disbelief from showing.

“Believe me, Brenna, it’s no fantasy when one of those bastards shoves a sword in your gut and twists.” He yanked up his shirt, revealing several scars. “It hurts like hell each and every time. But because that’s what I was born to do, I pick up my sword again and head right back down to protect the barrier. Without men like me and Jarvis, this world you live in would be choking with the evil filth those crazy Others bring with them.”

He remained silent, no doubt waiting for her to cave in and accept his bizarre story. Well, he was in for a long wait.

After a prolonged silence, he started in again. “I serve in the Pacific Northwest, in the Seattle area. Recently, a friend of mine there was killed once and almost a second time before we caught the guy who was after him. The traitor was a local guard, but he died before we could find out who was paying him. It was obvious he had help from someone higher up in the organization.”

She rolled her eyes. “So why didn’t you wait for him to revive and ask him then?”

“Because the guard was human, not a Paladin. Our genetic makeup allows us to return from what would be permanent death for humans. Once he was dead, he stayed that way.”

“But you wouldn’t have. How nice for you and your friend.” She pushed at his arm, trying to get up. This time he let her.

“Nice doesn’t enter into it, Brenna.” He crossed the room to stare out the window toward the street. Though he looked calm, she could feel the frustration coming off of him in waves. “It’s up to you whether to believe me or not, but you asked for the truth. I called your father with our suspicions that someone was making illegal deals with the enemy, because he’s the only Regent I trusted completely and without question. Within days, he was dead.”

There was no mistaking the very real grief in his words.

“Your father would have hidden any notes or files he had, in a place where he knew one of us would find them. Once we do, we can stash you someplace safe while I hunt down the bastards responsible for his death.”

She wasn’t about to let him shuffle her off to the side while he carried on some bizarre vendetta. Even though she’d like to lash out at her father’s killers, she trusted the legal system to work.

“Any evidence we find will be turned over to the detectives to process, Blake. My father would have wanted it that way.”

“Your father wasn’t murdered by common criminals, Brenna. If he had been, I’d have come to make sure you were okay and then disappeared again. But too many things point at this being a major conspiracy arising from within the Regents.”

“So you’re telling me that my father has known all along where you were, and didn’t tell me?”

Blake nodded.

“And that he lived a double life that he kept hidden from me?”

His hard gaze softened. “For your protection, Brenna. He loved you too much to want you to get caught up in the world he and I lived in.”

She hated what he was telling her, every single word. Even more, she was afraid he was speaking the truth, at least as he knew it. Her father was an honorable man who had believed in old-fashioned values like honor, truth, and protecting the weak and innocent. He would be just the man to join a secret organization to save the world if he believed the threat was real.

Her heart hurt. Because she’d lost her mother at such an early age, her father had worked hard to be both parents to her. They’d been as close as any father and child could be, able to talk about anything and everything. The man she had known would not have hidden secrets from her.

Not unless he’d taken an oath, one he held as dear as the one that had changed him from a prosecuting attorney into a judge. As much as she wanted to deny it, that small voice in her head was insisting she trust Trahern, despite his saying that she’d never really known her own father.

Ignoring the stab of pain, she made her decision. “What are we looking for?”

“Something small—a computer disk, maybe. Or notes.” He glanced back over his shoulder toward her. “I assume he still trusted pencil and paper over a PDA or computers.”

The reminder of her father’s small foible brought a fleeting smile to her face. “He did switch to mechanical pencils. We both thought that was real progress.”

Trahern’s slight smile lightened the tension. “If he was worried or felt threatened, he would have put the information in a place that one of us might know about but that the police would most likely overlook.”

Brenna gave the matter some thought. “That would eliminate his home office. I’d have to say no to his bedroom, too. We both considered our bedrooms to be private.”

He nodded. “That makes sense. So do you want the kitchen or this room?”

“I’ll take the kitchen. I think I’d recognize something that didn’t belong in there more easily than you would.”

“We can only stay an hour, two at the most. When the daylight starts fading, we need to be gone. Turning lights on could attract unwanted attention.”

“Fine.” She hated—HATED—feeling like an intruder in her own home. “Yell if you need me.”

Once out of sight of those gray eyes that saw too much, she allowed herself to sag. She wanted more than anything to press the rewind button on her life and make this all go away, but that wasn’t going to happen. It was time to get busy.

She started in the nearest corner of the kitchen and slowly made her way through every cabinet and drawer, checking under every dish in the stacks. She could tell that someone, most likely the police, had already been through the room. Damn them! How dare they act as if her father had had something to hide!

But then…according to Trahern, he did.

She checked the refrigerator, throwing out any food that had outlived its usefulness. After bagging it up, she headed out to the trash can. Before she’d gone two steps out the door, Trahern was right there dragging her back into the house.

“Damn it, Brenna! Haven’t you been listening to me? You just made a hell of a target for anyone watching the house.” He jerked the bag of trash from her hand. “And if that weren’t bad enough, cleaning out the fridge ices the cake. Why not just take out an ad in the paper announcing where you are?”

She didn’t like being bossed around, but he was right. Mumbling an apology, she returned to the kitchen, leaving him to deal with the trash.

He joined her a minute later. “Any luck?”

“No.” She made herself keep rooting through the drawer of cooking implements. Maisy would have hated the disorganized mess. Lord, she missed that woman with her fussy ways and warm heart.

“Me, either. If he left anything in the living room, it’s either already gone or his choice of spots isn’t obvious enough.”

“There’s nothing here that shouldn’t be, unless it’s on top of the refrigerator. I haven’t gotten to that yet.”

Trahern looked. “Nothing up here.” He ran his finger over the top and held it up for her to see. “I’d guess no one has touched it in a while. Maisy would have ripped into the cleaning service for that.”

“She was something, wasn’t she?” It was nice to share her memories of Maisy with someone who understood. “I never met a tougher woman or one with a bigger heart.”