The Protector

by HelenKay Dimon

  After a few seconds of quiet, she strained to sit up, to call out. All she could manage was to prop her body against what felt like the rung of a ladder. She tried to think but her breathing came too fast now and she started gulping in air. Panic overwhelmed her and her heart rate kicked up even higher.

  She would not die this way.

  “Hey!”

  A voice broke through the darkness. She couldn’t identify it through the waves of anxiety washing through her. Then the cloth came off and the light blinded her. She blinked, trying to make out the figure standing in front of her with a face obscured by the sun.

  “Cate.” A hand swept over her hair and across her cheek. It was a gentle touch performed with a shaking hand.

  She knew him. She could feel his concern and the shock pulsing off him as he crouched down in front of her.

  Roger.

  He looked around the area and then back to her. “What happened?”

  She could only put a few bits and pieces together. The crap in her system still clouded her brain. The surprise hit and the cloth. Being blindfolded in a way and dragged around like a forgotten doll. The aches and pains hit her all at once and she nearly cried out.

  “Cate, can you talk?”

  This close she could see his hair was damp and his eyes wide and concerned. She inhaled, forcing her mind to focus as her body teetered on the edge of panic. She thought about the sound of his running footsteps. A new scent hit her, this one mint, like from gum. She hadn’t picked that up before, which meant one thing. Not the same person.

  Roger was a pretty big guy. He would have been able to drag her without trouble. That didn’t mean he wasn’t there and in on it, but she tucked that possibility away because thinking about it would lead to kicking and screaming and she wasn’t sure she had the strength for either right now.

  “Someone attacked me.” She rushed out the words, not wanting to give away every detail in case they mattered later. Not wanting to be here on this grass, under the shadow of this tower.

  “Damn it.” Roger jumped to his feet but stayed low, almost face-to-face with her. “We should get you up.”

  “There was a cloth and . . .”

  “Okay, we need to get you help.” He put his hand under her arm and then moved it back again, as if he wasn’t sure if and where he could touch her. “Cate, work with me here.”

  “I need Damon.” A fact had never been so clear to her. His presence calmed her.

  She wanted to tell him, to walk through every detail with him. Then she wanted to forget it all. Wrap her arms around him and drift off to sleep.

  Roger stood up and tried to take her with him. “Let me lift you—”

  “I can’t.” Her legs would never hold her. She could barely feel her feet and exhaustion still weighed down her muscles.

  She forced her hand to move. Tried to reach into her front pants pocket but her fingers refused to cooperate.

  “Here, let me.” He must have understood because he grabbed for her phone and held it.

  She put her hand over his. “Please find Damon.”

  Chapter 17

  Damon would have sworn his heart stopped three times in his rush to get to her. He blew out of the restaurant parking lot, ignoring the concerned yells and looks from Wren and Garrett. They could get the details from Trevor, because he needed to get to Cate.

  Now, a good twenty minutes and a harrowing drive filled with honking horns and lots of swearing later, he kneeled in front of her. She sat in an overstuffed leather chair in an office he didn’t recognize. This was one of the new buildings, but none of that mattered. He didn’t have time to analyze it or even look on the walls. His entire focus stayed on her.

  He took her hands in his and nearly jumped from the icy cold of her touch. “What happened?”

  He heard a version from Roger. Some of it made sense. Most of it didn’t.

  “I don’t . . .” She shook her head as her teeth clicked together.

  Aftermath. Damon had seen it before, experienced it several times. It could hit like the flu and sweep through your entire body. The adrenaline burn-off had begun and whatever had been in her system—Roger mentioned a cloth and a drug when he called Damon with details during the drive—wasn’t making it easier for her body to regain control.

  Damon reached up and wrapped the blanket tighter over her shoulders. It was a warm day and the room had a musty, unused smell but the coolness radiated off her. She needed a warm shower and some of that tea she liked to drink that smelled like tree bark.

  After a few attempts, she finally opened her mouth and started talking. “It’s okay. I didn’t fall.”

  “Is that the point?” Anger flooded him. Not fury at her. At himself and everyone else who failed today.

  He left her alone. Trevor failed to watch her. His father, once again, provided a place where violence was the norm. There was so much hate to go around.

  “She slipped on the ladder, though why she was on it or in a restricted area is unclear.” His father made the comment from where he stood by the fireplace at the far end of the room.

  She shook her head. “Not the ladder.”

  Of course not. She never would have ventured up there, not after Shauna. And Roger had made that clear. That’s not where he found her. Damon knew because he questioned Roger, making him repeat his story three times.

  But Damon picked up on something else. A subtle shift in the way she held her body and an almost pleading look in her eyes. It was as if she wanted to keep the details spare in front of his father. Damon didn’t blame her. He didn’t trust anyone at Sullivan, including the man who raised him, and she shouldn’t trust them either.

  At least Roger had been there. Why was a little fuzzy for Damon. Roger swore the talk about the water tower with Cate the day before tickled a memory. He went there, hoping something might come to him that would help her. Then he saw the open gate and opened lock abandoned on the ground. He thought he spied a pile of something by the base of one of the legs of the tower.

  That was Cate.

  With no one else around, he ran to help her. He was the one who texted Damon. He was the one who later called Damon to let him know Cate was shaken but okay. That she was asking for him, because that didn’t grip his heart and shatter it into a million pieces.

  But by the time Damon got there, his father had taken charge. The man who liked to sit back and act like he didn’t know what was happening around him had no trouble rallying in time to send Roger away. Damon wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  “I thought there was a fence and all this security. What happened to those protections?” Damon asked without looking in his father’s direction. He was not the concern right now. She was.

  “That was my fault.” She dug her fingers into the edges of the blanket as her expression changed. Sadness moved into her eyes. “I went there alone.”

  “You what?” He wanted to yell at her. Shake her then hold her. He hated that she’d taken a risk, though he had to admit he would have done the same thing in her place.

  She reached out to him then. Her fingers brushed down the front of his shirt and he grabbed for her hand, desperate to touch her. Even now the steady thrum of panic moved through him. Seeing her, smoothing a hand over her face, was not enough to convince the racing in his brain to slow down again.

  “I wanted to see where she died.”

  Damon closed his eyes when he heard the pain in her whisper. Of course she did. She was here on a mission. It was no wonder she tried to complete it with or without him by her side.

  He glanced over at his father. Saw the usual pressed dress pants and button-down shirt. He looked every inch the professor today. The only sign of worry came in the lines around his mouth and the way he stood so stiff with his hand fisted against his mouth.

  Seeing him touched off a new wave of anger in Damon. “Where were you? Where were your people? You have security cameras here, right?”

  “They were on the pro
perty, doing their work.”

  What a nonsense answer. His father ignored half of what he said. “And the cameras?”

  “I reviewed the feed. There’s nothing on them.”

  He reviewed them. Him. He didn’t even blink when he gave that response. Damon felt his control falter. “How could that be?”

  Steven shrugged. “They didn’t record. It happens. It’s not a big deal. We’ve had the company out twice to look into the issue.”

  All too convenient. All a load of shit. “It was a big deal for her. Look at her.”

  “Are you suggesting someone who lives here did this to Cate?” Steven’s eyes narrowed as he talked.

  The campus had a locked gate but his father wanted to blame an outsider. Typical.

  “Maybe what was good for one sister is good for the other.”

  His father stepped away from the fireplace and came closer to where she sat. “Cate, you can’t believe that—”

  “Someone hit me . . . or something.” She winced. “I don’t remember.”

  The newest attack started another alarm ringing in his head. He thought no one would come after her at Sullivan. Not since his father was the one who insisted they stay and made that clear to everyone. Now Damon didn’t know what to think.

  He would figure that part out later and the best way to keep her safe. For now, he had a message of his own to deliver—to his dad. Because this bullshit was over. “This happened on your watch by one of your people.”

  Steven kept looking at Cate, as if trying to convince her the truth she knew had to be wrong. “I figured you were climbing, like your sister.”

  More lying. Roger had to have explained what he saw and knew, yet his father latched on to some random piece of information and decided this was an accident. Another accident.

  Not this time.

  Damon stood up and faced the man who once meant everything to him. “That never happened.”

  Steven frowned. “What?”

  “Shauna was afraid of heights, Dad. She wouldn’t have been on that water tower. It wasn’t an accident. Her death deserves more than a damn plaque. It should be solved.”

  Steven shook his head as the blood drained from his face. “There was an investigation and . . . and the police. We were all questioned. Forensics.”

  The old man put on a good show. Either that or he really believed what he said. Damon wasn’t sure which was the right answer but neither absolved him. His father had been running from the truth for years. He took the easy way out, regardless of who else paid the price. “All your friends. They covered for you to keep this sham of a place running.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Damon never wanted to have this conversation. He knew once they did he could never call it back. With the words left unspoken he could let a tiny spark of hope stay alive inside him. Not that he intended to act on it, but he could fool himself, now and then when he needed to believe his gene pool didn’t suck, that his father honestly was as clueless as he pretended to be despite being as smart as he was.

  “You were in charge.” The words tumbled out of Damon. “You either knew what happened or you purposely stayed ignorant then allowed people to lie about it.”

  Shock moved over his father’s face and showed in every line of his stiff body. “What kind of man do you think I am?”

  Not a good one, and it killed Damon to even think that. This was more than a stained gene pool. This was about having the first man he ever believed in destroy his trust. “I don’t know. That’s the point. I really don’t know you at all.”

  Steven lifted his hands as if he was going to launch into one of his usual lectures, complete with gestures. Then his arms fell motionless to his sides. “I built a school. Your uncle was the one who lost control.”

  He sounded so fucking sincere. “You don’t get to sit back and take in the money but avoid all of the responsibility.”

  Damon felt a tug on his pants and looked down to see Cate reaching out to him. He slipped his fingers through hers, trying to warm her up. She nodded, as if giving her approval for the road he was about to take. He didn’t know he needed it until she offered it. Her supporting him, not just his usual friends. It was a new sensation. A welcome one.

  He turned back to his father. “You weren’t an academic sitting in a room, never talking to people. You are a brilliant man. You lobbied politicians. You made friends with powerful people. You worked the PR. The only thing—the only damn thing—you didn’t do was control Dan.”

  Color flushed Steven’s face again. “You were the one who was with him all the time.”

  Damon heard the anger ring in his father’s voice. His whole body vibrated with it. The calm, unflustered man who built a school then helped knock it down by his inaction, fought to hold on to his control.

  Screw him.

  To come out firing by blaming a sixteen-year-old boy? No fucking way. “Because those were the rules. Your rules, Dad. You turned me over to him for classes and training, ignoring how Dan was getting more secretive and holding private instruction. Mom begged you to talk with Dan and not send me to him, but you did it anyway. You said Dan could teach me skills you couldn’t. Those were your words.”

  Cate stood up. The move was shaky, but she rose and leaned against him. Kept her hand linked with his and stared his father down.

  “But you didn’t stop him.”

  For a second Damon questioned what he heard. When confronted, his father doubled down, casting more blame. Putting it all on him. A kid who got sucked under Dan’s skewed influence. Scared and barely out of his teens, confused as he tried to protect his family.

  “I pay for that every fucking day.” He felt Cate’s hand squeeze his as he spoke. She barely had the strength to sit up when he arrived and now she helped him form a wall of fury in front of his father. Her support was exactly the kick he needed to keep going. “That’s the difference. You disassociate yourself from Dan and what happened back then. You play the victim and move on. I live with it.”

  Steven’s gaze switched to her and his shoulders fell. “You’re upset about Cate and lashing out at me. I get it. That’s how you operate.”

  Her being hurt made Damon sick and this was the second time. On his watch, someone grabbed her. And who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t gotten to the attacker at the motel first. But that’s not what this confrontation was about.

  A part of him knew his father’s concern for her was real. He wasn’t an animal. That was the point. He would never physically hurt someone himself. But that was a pretty low bar. “You don’t get it.”

  His dad pointed at Cate. “She should rest.”

  “I’m fine.” Her voice sounded stronger now.

  Still, Damon knew his father wasn’t wrong on this one topic. Damon was desperate to hold her and apologize for everything that happened to her since they met. That meant cutting this short, which he was fine to do. Standing there sucked the life out of him.

  He spared his father one more second of his time. “More denial. That’s all you do.”

  When his father started to respond, Cate jumped in. She tugged on Damon’s arm until he looked at her. “We should go.”

  Steven held up a hand, as if trying to stop them from moving. “Are you afraid he’ll say something he’ll regret? I doubt he truly regrets any of the choices he’s made with regard to leaving this family. The only question is why it took him this long to unload on me.”

  The answer was so easy. Even thinking the words started an ache in Damon’s chest that he feared would never subside. “Because I knew what you’d say.”

  “Then I guess for once I didn’t let you down.”

  This man he loved for so long but never really understood. The disappointment and frustration. After everything that happened, he still didn’t get it.

  Damon looked his father straight in the eye, just as he’d always done. “You’re exactly wrong.”

  Chapter 18

  “Plea
se don’t make me repeat the story again.” Cate sat curled up on the couch in their assigned cabin. Damon had tucked a blanket around her and made her a steaming cup of tea. She held it now but hadn’t sipped from it yet, preferring to let the warmth soak into her skin.

  “The fifth time was probably overkill. I can see that now.” He sat next to her on the couch, facing her with his arm stretched over the top of the cushions behind her head.

  The lightness she loved so much had moved back into his voice. The shoulders that were bunched with tension back when he argued with his father had fallen back down to a normal level. His hand lay open on his lap. No clenched fist or tightening across his jaw.

  This Damon seemed healthier, calmer. But she wasn’t fully convinced what she saw was real. She guessed he put on a show to ease the anxiety still flowing through her. She appreciated the effort but she wanted him. The actual him, anger and all.

  She held the mug against her chest, letting the heat wind up around her face. “I kept hoping I would remember something new. It’s just all so hazy.”

  “The last two times you added a fact you hadn’t before.” He slipped his fingers into her hair and played with the strands resting on her shoulder. “Nothing big, but new pieces.”

  She slowly lowered the mug. “I did?”

  “The part about the attacker breathing heavy. The way the footsteps sounded light and under strain.”

  “But that’s nonsense stuff.”

  “Maybe not.” He shifted until his leg touched hers. “Remember how you knew the attacker at the motel couldn’t be Vincent because of his scent? Then later he did smell like the person who broke into your house? Now we know Vincent is not what he seems.” He waited until she nodded to continue. “It’s like that. Tiny details that can add up to a picture. You’re good with picking up on those things others miss and that nose of yours could win an award.”

  His voice was so much softer than usual, his tone much more patient than before. The change mirrored his concern, which made the shift pretty sweet. It also freaked her out. She depended on him to be him. After a week of knowing each other, counted on it. Sarcastic, ready to eat and wanting to be anywhere but at Sullivan. He talked big but unlike a lot of people she knew, he backed it up with action. That’s the Damon she’d come to expect. The one she now thought about all the time, even when they were only separated for a few minutes. Because that wasn’t pathetic at all.