The Protector

by HelenKay Dimon

  “But you’re here to prove that wrong.” Roger began to swing his leg back and forth. “We heard about how you two met when discussing this case.”

  Damon made an odd sound. “Sounds like my dad has been chatty.”

  She had a bigger response ready. One based on the truth. It was the other reason she wanted in those gates. “I just needed to feel close to her, walk where she walked.”

  Vincent nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “We should let you get back to your practice.” Damon slipped around the table and hooked an arm around her shoulders.

  “Dinner tonight?” Roger asked. “The four of us.”

  She spit out the first answer that came to her even though she absolutely didn’t mean it. She’d need time to decompress after this. Maybe some wine. “Sure.”

  Damon guided them away from the tower and the gun range. They walked in silence, nodding to the few people who passed them. It wasn’t until they were back on the main path and headed for the living quarters that Damon glanced at her and smiled. “Walk where she walked?”

  “It’s no less absurd than the idea of her hanging out at the water tower by herself.” The more the scenario played in her head the less compelling she found it.

  “Was she a loner?”

  That was an easy question. “Never.”

  Damon gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Then I think we know how realistic the story is.”

  She sure did. “Not at all.” She made a mental reminder to tell him one more thing and did that now. “No scent this time.”

  “Wait, you didn’t smell the aftershave or whatever on Vincent?”

  “Not even a hint.” And she’d strained and hung close, thinking she’d find a concrete piece of evidence.

  He shook his head. “I wonder what that means.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Chapter 16

  Damon and Cate made it through a quick dinner, begging off after about thirty minutes claiming to be tired. The first night in the cabin had been just about as rocky. The inside of the log structure was an open and airy space. The ceiling soared above the studio layout.

  After everything that happened and all the tension he’d held inside all day, they’d spent the night actually sleeping. Between being back and the very real sense that someone might be watching, he’d taken sex off the table. And she didn’t offer. That left cuddling and after two times he thought he was getting kind of good at it.

  But this was a new day and he’d been summoned. Not to his father or the diner. This rendezvous spot, a restaurant, took him out of town and through the woods to a structure that looked like an abandoned railway car. The sign said it served food, and that was good enough for Damon.

  Cate decided to stay back, preferring to spend time looking into some of those classes Liza described. She said something about trying to get on Liza’s good side to make up for his appalling behavior. What he did and said seemed to sound worse every new time she described the situation. He remembered being a little rude. Cate insisted he rolled his eyes every time Liza spoke. Though he’d been tempted, he knew that wasn’t true. Cate was trying to make a point—that they were there to make friends and get people talking—and she made it.

  But Damon was pretty sure whatever Cate used to woo Liza wouldn’t work. Liza had a job, maybe self-imposed, but she acted as the marketing team for Sullivan. None of the real stories about the place would interest her, but Damon applauded Cate for trying.

  Since Trevor was there, watching over her from a safe distance, Damon had felt relatively secure making the drive. That was before he sat down across from Garrett, who he expected, and Wren, who he did not. No one ever expected Wren to show up anywhere.

  “Both of you? This seems bad.” Damon balanced the menu against the salt and pepper shakers on the end of the table. He sensed Wren wasn’t there for more than the coffee anyway.

  “It’s always nice to see you.”

  Uh-huh. As if he would have bought that even if Garrett weren’t the one saying it. “What are you doing in Pennsylvania?”

  Wren shrugged. “Sightseeing.”

  “I hear the pie is good here,” Garrett added.

  It was as if they practiced this routine. Maybe they did. Who knew what they did behind those desks all day. “You’re both hysterical.”

  Garrett raised two fingers. “I’m funnier.”

  Wren snorted. “Not really.”

  “Guys, business.” Because he knew they were setting him up for the delivery of bad news. That’s what they did. They double-teamed and used humor to lighten the mood. Damon didn’t find any of it calming right now. “Here’s a list of people I need you to run in-depth traces on. There’s intel in the file, but not what we need. Find the serious background, skeleton-in-the-closets stuff.”

  Garrett grabbed the folded piece of paper and shoved it in his shirt pocket without looking at it. “Oh, good. I was looking for more work this week.”

  “Take it up with your boss.” Damon was doing his part. The rest was up to them.

  “The main reason we’re here.” Wren leaned back in the booth and stretched his legs out, knocking his foot against the side of Damon’s before moving it again. “We’re thinking you taking on this assignment was the wrong call.”

  “That’s convenient since you’re the one who sent me here.” Damon shook his head. “I specifically remember refusing you and you ignoring me.”

  “To talk with people in town, get into Sullivan and look around. Reconnect and get people talking.” Wren flipped a spoon end over end as he talked. “I never thought you’d move in.”

  Damon loved the guy but no fucking way was he letting Wren wiggle out of this. “The point was to get close. Now we’ll all be living together. It’s as close as I can get without moving specifically into my dad’s house, which I refuse to do.”

  “Call it a miscalculation but I assumed you’d keep a bit of distance. I also didn’t think an attacker would take a run at you the first night you stepped into the county. The speed with which your father, or someone at Sullivan, figured out your location makes me want to get a look at Sullivan’s communication infrastructure.”

  Garrett frowned at Wren. “Who talks like that?”

  “Professional people,” Wren shot back.

  “With a stick up their ass. Give me this.” Damon reached over and grabbed the spoon before Wren banged it on the table one more time. “But, and I want to be clear here, you’re admitting you made a mistake.”

  “I never said that.” Wren shot him a never-going-to-happen look. “The point is someone at Sullivan, possibly your own father, has the ability to mobilize a trained attacker, and that guy got by you.”

  Damon didn’t like that comment one bit. “He didn’t.”

  “You were stabbed,” Wren shot back.

  Damon lifted his shirt to show the small cut that was already healing. “It’s nothing.”

  “Is Cate okay?” Garrett asked.

  “She’s tougher than I am.” And Damon meant that. He’d watched her walk right by the water tower and not shake. He knew it had to scramble her insides, but she held it together, which was just about the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. “Back to the money.”

  “We traced it.” Garrett snuck a peek at Wren before continuing. “Found every thread and spent days tracking it all.”

  “Gun sales.” Damon couldn’t think of another explanation. It wouldn’t be a stretch for the place either but as a result of some of the restrictions placed on the property after the second shooting, selling weapons was supposed to be a restricted activity.

  “No.” Wren took out his phone and after pushing a few buttons, flipped it around for Damon to see the screen. “When your mother died the government paid your dad a settlement.”

  “What?” The words blurred in front of Damon. He glanced up at Wren, waiting for an explanation.

  “Private, quiet but big. It’s why your father never sued over the FBI mess.” Wren loo
ked at the phone but didn’t take it back. “That and the fact he needed to hide the truth your Uncle Dan really was trying to build a private army to destroy the legitimate one just as the FBI suspected.”

  Garrett lowered his coffee cup. “Bet he was fun at Thanksgiving.”

  “Your father lives off that money. It’s in a trust and he draws from it. It’s steady. The financial planning was pretty impressive, actually. One of his professors helped him set it up.” Wren being Wren, he walked through the information in a clear and concise way.

  A payoff made sense but the fact his father managed to hide it . . . Damon should have seen that coming. “There are new buildings and fancy security equipment. Lots of weapons.”

  “The school, even with significantly fewer people there and less money coming in, is self-sustaining. For now. There appear to be plans to blow it bigger, and I’m not sure the income it produces, alone, can support that.” Wren reached over and swiped his finger across the cell screen and the pages of whatever document he was referencing flipped. “But for now they grow what they need. Sell all sorts of items. They no longer pay full-time educators and your dad doesn’t take a salary.”

  “He’s managed to go legitimate.” Damon would never have said it was possible. Not when his father never admitted that his grand experiment had gone deadly wrong in the first place.

  “He would argue he always was. But, honestly, you should get out of there. You can find closure another way.” Wren genuinely sounded concerned.

  Damon wasn’t sure how to react to that. Jokes he could handle. Some weird guy talk in a railway car was way out of his comfort zone. “I have closure.”

  Garrett shook his head. “Maybe you don’t know what the word means.”

  They were concerned. Damon got that. He didn’t like it because the idea of friends worrying about him made him squirm, but there was a bigger problem here. “Look, even if I wanted to go, Cate won’t leave. She thinks this is her last chance, and I don’t think she’s wrong. For the first time, she will have front row access to Sullivan. My dad insists everything is open for her to review. She won’t leave until that happens or he breaks his promise.”

  Wren sat up straight again. “And if your dad was involved with what happened to Shauna, at least in a cover-up of her death, what do you do then?”

  “Have him arrested.”

  “Easy to say.” Wren grabbed his phone and turned it off before slipping it off the table. “I’ve been through this. When Emery found out about her dad . . . let’s just say she’s still trying to deal with the emotional fallout. She will always wrestle with it.”

  Emery, the love of Wren’s life and the daughter of a man sitting in prison. A man Wren and Emery put there. Damon saw the parallels. “But you’re handling it. So, it can be handled.”

  “We’re together. She has full support from me and her friends. We’re going to get married, if I can ever get her to say yes.”

  “Amateur.” Garrett pointed at his shiny new wedding band. “I can give you some tips to get it done.”

  Wren kept his focus on Damon. “Are you offering to be there for Cate, to go through the fallout with her? She’s your fake girlfriend, Damon, not your real one.”

  Damn, he didn’t want to think about any of that. It all sounded so . . . big. “I have to see this investigative part through.”

  “Fine, but lean on Trevor,” Wren said. “But know he has orders to pull you out if this goes sideways.”

  “How exactly will he do that?” But Damon could imagine Trevor trying. His friend would enjoy every minute of that struggle.

  Garrett got the waitress’s attention and held up his now empty mug. “My money is on Trevor.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” The phone in Damon’s pocket buzzed. At this point he welcomed the interruption. Or he did until he saw the screen. “Shit.”

  Garrett frowned. “What is it?”

  But Damon was already sliding out of the booth. Every instinct told him to rush. “Cate.”

  Damon had left on his errand a half hour ago. He managed to do it without lecturing her about safety, but she guessed that cost him something.

  The second he pulled out of the parking lot, Trevor started popping up. Everywhere. She appreciated the concern but she didn’t need a babysitter or a bodyguard. Well, she probably did, but she also needed just a few minutes of privacy.

  She had a demon to wrestle. A place she needed to visit, to pay homage, even if it was for a short time and the only result was for her to cry until she fell down.

  For this errand, she didn’t have to sneak to get there. She walked right across campus, in front of everyone. Said hello, even stopped when a few people introduced themselves.

  If they were going to hurt her it wouldn’t happen out in the open. Probably not in daylight. Probably not at all after Steven made a show of welcoming them to Sullivan and insisting they could look around without worry. That had to send a message to the person who tried to attack them . . . unless it was Steven, but that didn’t make sense to her. She saw the spark of hope in his eyes when Damon didn’t immediately refuse the offer to stay. It wouldn’t make sense to invite them in only to try to run them off again.

  A few more turns and she landed at the right spot, or near it. She could never bring herself to look at the photos of her sister after she fell. She’d reviewed the autopsy reports and read every horrible word. The photos were too much. She knew she’d never be able to un-see them.

  The path ended at the locked gate. It was only about six feet high and looked easy to climb, but she didn’t try. Instead, she walked around the outside, letting her fingers trail against the metal. After she completed a full circle, she stood there and stared. There was no talking and no groups of people here. This place could only be described as secluded, probably on purpose since the tower loomed over a pretty big section of land.

  Inside the fence stood a small structure no bigger than a shed. Everything looked new and shiny. There were no signs of disrepair.

  She slipped her fingers through the fence holes and rested her forehead against the metal. It felt cool on her skin. Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine Shauna walking here. There wasn’t a fence back then, but the remainder of the area looked about the same.

  When she opened her eyes again her gaze traveled up the structure, over the ladder hooked to the side of the catwalk and railing near the top. She didn’t have a problem with heights and she never would have made the climb. The idea made her dizzy.

  She pushed away from the fence, thinking there really was nothing to find here other than pain. She couldn’t hear the sounds of students partying or imagine anyone enjoying the spot. It was quiet and cold. The breeze swept over the open space and the shade of the trees didn’t reach here.

  Loneliness. That’s the sensation that hit her. Dragging loneliness, the kind that pulled a person under and held them there.

  She sighed, ready to leave and go hunt for Damon. For the first time in a long time, when the sadness swamped her, she wanted to talk to someone other than a therapist. She wanted him. Letting him in was new and not exactly comfortable, but that’s what her brain and body called out for her to do.

  She started to turn when she heard the footsteps. She shifted, expecting to be hit with another warm welcome . . . just as Steven ordered.

  Hands grabbed her. She felt the tug on the back of her shirt then her body slammed into the fence. The metal wires dug into the side of her face. She called out but her voice sounded small as it spread out over the land.

  She kicked back just as something hard slammed against her shoulder. She reached out toward the pain when her legs buckled beneath her. Something smelled off, weird. She shook her head but a cloth pressed tighter against her mouth. She inhaled and the dizziness turned to nausea.

  The world started to blank out on her as her body crashed to the hard ground. Her muscles refused to move and something dark covered her face. She called out as she tried to
steady her legs enough to get up on her hands and knees. As soon as she made it, she fell to the side again. Then the rattling started. Keys or chains—she couldn’t make it out. Couldn’t see anything.

  She called out but her voice sounded small in her ears. Then she started to slide. It took her a second to figure out she was being dragged. Caught in a desperate gnawing frenzy, her hands smacked against the ground to stop the move, but she couldn’t get her grip. Her fingers refused to curl. Every order from her brain went ignored.

  But the ground kept moving. The disorientation and the drugs, whatever covered her face, had her catching quick blinks of light but nothing more. Her back hurt and her arm felt as if it were being wretched out of its socket as the warm sun poured over her.

  The dragging seemed to go on forever. Her legs slammed against the ground. Her hand hit on something hard. She could make out shuffling and heavy breathing. Not hers. She called out, trying to get her attacker to say something but she only managed to make a croaking sound.

  Her back lifted off the grass . . . that’s what she smelled. The scent broke through the blankness. She tried to inhale, to bring fresh air into her body and clear her head, but whatever was wrapped around her head made that impossible.

  Her head clunked against something hard. She heard a thunk and thought it sounded like a shoe. None of it made sense until something cool rubbed against her shoulder.

  The water tower. Someone was trying to drag her up the ladder even though her muscles refused to work.

  She started to struggle harder then. Used every ounce of energy, knowing she’d only have a short burst or two with whatever was fogging her brain. She reached out and her fingers brushed against what felt like denim. Must be jeans. She grabbed for a handful, digging her fingernails as hard as she could with limited strength. The move earned her a kick. Then another.

  Suddenly her body dropped to the grass again. All the pressure tugging and dragging her stopped. She heard the thunder of footsteps on the grass . . . getting farther away, which didn’t make any sense.