The Protector

by HelenKay Dimon

  He used to run through the yard flying kites or kicking a soccer ball. When he thought his parents weren’t looking, he’d slide down the solid bannister, trying to go from the top of the staircase to the very bottom in one swoosh without falling off.

  He strained, trying to remember the sounds of laughter in the history of the house. He had no trouble hearing the crying. His parents when they lost his brother. His father the night of Mom’s memorial service. His own in the ten minutes he was given to say goodbye before the police led him away.

  He’d lived here, ate here. Had his first kiss in the backyard.

  Today, despite the sun shining in from the floor-to-ceiling windows, the air felt dank and stale. The damp smell likely came from the room. It sat right off the dining room. A locked office with a solid wooden door that survived from the house’s original building in 1896. The locks and electronic panel were new. This being the one room he was never allowed to enter hadn’t changed since he could remember . . . until right now.

  He heard the thud of boxes as Trevor moved everything that wasn’t furniture out of the room, stacking the items on the dining room table and floor around it. He didn’t complain, which surprised Damon at first. Then he realized Trevor knew this was the one place on the earth Damon did not want to be. This house held more than ghosts. It sheltered demons.

  Trevor wiped his arm across his forehead as he dumped off the last arm full of files. “Here we go.”

  Cate’s hand slid over Damon’s as she looked to Trevor. “You manipulated this, right? You being the one to help us is just too convenient.”

  Trevor smiled at her. “I made sure I hung around. Dropped a hint or two.”

  The comment had Damon looking up, searching the usual place. “Maybe we should—”

  “I did a sweep. There aren’t any devices in here.” Trevor groaned as he dropped into the nearest chair and started sorting items into piles. “One of us worked all night.”

  Cate reached for the tea a woman Trevor called Tina had set down in the middle of the table before leaving the house. “You think your father sleeps with cameras aimed at him?”

  “I think if he were involved in what happened to your sister that it would make sense for him to allow access then listen in to see what intel you have. To know how close we were getting.”

  Trevor snorted. “That’s not pessimistic at all.”

  “Interesting coming from you.” Damon slid into the seat across from Trevor.

  “Are you usually a negative Nancy?” Cate asked, looking amused by the idea.

  Trevor put his phone on the table and pointed at it, as if to issue some sort of challenge. “Would I have ninety photos of my boyfriend in my phone if I were?”

  Her eyes lit up as she reached for the cell. “Let me see.”

  For a second, Damon watched them. Their heads hovered close together as Trevor flipped screens. Every now and then he would point to something or talk about where he and Aaron were when the photos were taken. London. New York City. Chicago. Tokyo. The list turned out to be long, which made Damon smile. Trevor deserved a happy ending after having such a shitty start to life. He’d found it somehow, against all odds, with a guy who got him.

  The thought made Damon look at her. She had her long dark hair pulled over her shoulder so it fell across her chest. She smiled and laughed, and when she did some of the tightness in Damon’s chest eased.

  He hated to break up the moment, to pull them back toward the darkness, but his throat had started to close. The longer he stayed in this house, the more the memories assaulted him. If they didn’t focus on something else, he’d have to bolt. Run outside and gulp in air that wasn’t tainted with all the wrong that had happened here. “We could work?”

  She continued to look at the photos. “Some things are more important.”

  “Wait, really?” He would have bet money he’d never hear those words come out of her. “Than digging through the Sullivan private papers?”

  “He’s really cute.” She smiled at Trevor before looking back at Damon. “And yes.”

  “I’ve tried to tell your pretend boyfriend that his priorities are messed up.” Trevor pocketed his phone. “But he prefers to be an island.”

  She shook her head. “Right? It’s annoying.”

  “I’m right here.” But they were off again. Bonding and getting each other, so comfortable. Damon was starting to think she was a people collector. She read them and reeled them in, including two men who thrived on danger and secrecy. That was quite a skill.

  “This time I’ll be the negative one, but I’m guessing we have access to all of this because he knows there’s nothing to find.” Cate looked at Trevor’s carefully crafted stacks as she talked.

  “You give him too much credit,” Damon said.

  Trevor nodded. “And us too little.”

  “Meaning?”

  When Cate frowned at them, Damon rushed to explain, “Usually what happens is people don’t realize they’ve dropped a clue. More than likely there is one kernel, one tiny thing in here. We have to find it.”

  Cate let out a little hum. “You two are turning out to be more helpful than I anticipated.”

  “Now can we talk about the condoms? Maybe discuss how many you have left.” Trevor mumbled the question without looking up.

  Her frown slipped to a glare. “Only if you want to die.”

  Since that was the perfect response, Damon didn’t try to add to it. He dug in. They all did. A comfortable silence fell over the room as they reviewed files and made notes. A few times someone would ask a question and then they’d all go back to work again.

  They’d agreed each file—every single piece of paper and computer note—would get a review by all three of them. It took longer, but this might be their only chance and they weren’t going to miss something big due to fatigue or confusion. Especially since Damon knew to his bones this offer would never happen again. From the look of some of the files, including the few with water damage, he wasn’t sure anyone, including law enforcement, had seen the contents of these.

  Two hours in, Damon found it. The tiny piece of information that might mean nothing but could mean everything. He reread the memo a second time. “Your sense of smell was right all along.”

  Her head popped up from the inside of a file she’d been studying for ten minutes. “What?”

  “What if I told you Vincent had a thing for your sister?” That was an inference, but Damon didn’t see how what he was reading could mean anything else.

  Trevor took the file and started reading. It only took a second for him to see. It. “There’s a note here, in his school file. A professor’s note about him being distracted.”

  He passed the file to Cate who took her time. “My sister’s name is in Vincent’s file. No comment or bigger statement. Just her name in some guy’s handwriting.”

  But it didn’t take a huge leap of logic to know the cause and effect of her name being right there next to the professor’s concern. “This is before she died. Five weeks before.”

  “What about after?” Trevor asked.

  Cate went back to scanning. She seemed to read a section then do it again. “He wasn’t . . .”

  That’s where she left it. Just a phrase hanging in the air.

  Trevor leaned forward in his chair. “Now is not the time to cut off a sentence.”

  “Vincent took a leave of absence. Worked but didn’t go to class.” She slid the file back to Damon.

  “Would that have been so weird?” Trevor’s gaze traveled between them. “Really though. Someone he knew died. You said that thing he told you about dancing. If he had a crush and she died he’d naturally be upset.”

  “But he didn’t mention a crush, or dating or anything like that.” Damon appreciated Trevor was choosing his words carefully and not jumping to conclusions. But they worked half based on instinct and him shutting his down would not help her. Cate was strong and prepared to hear bad news. She didn’t need to be
shielded, so Damon didn’t try. “Imagine how upset he’d be if he watched her—or helped her—fall off a water tower.”

  “Maybe upset enough to get into my condo and look around, leaving the scent of his aftershave or cologne or whatever that was behind,” Cate said.

  “Roger, too.” Trevor dumped another file on top of the one they were already reading. “It looks as if all the students were given time off to mourn. Counselors were brought in. The police came.”

  “Sounds like my dad managed to handle something sort of right.”

  “Roger was offered time off, too. He’s described as despondent.” Trevor turned the file to show Damon.

  Damon flipped through a few pages. He knew he should feel dirty peeking into something as private as kids’ education records but he didn’t have a choice. He also didn’t have a warrant, so his options were limited.

  “You’re right. The school called in mental health professionals, which is pretty routine these days, but some students needed one-on-one time. Here’s the list of students and professors sent to the counselor for ongoing treatment.” There, folded and hidden in the back of an unrelated file. “No counseling files are in here that I can see.”

  Cate shifted until she sat on her knees on the hard chair. “Anything from your uncle?”

  “No he’s . . .” Damon worked his way back to the files dealing with Dan. There weren’t many, which made him think the FBI or the prosecutor or someone took those. It’s possible his father turned those over in an effort to save the school . . . and himself. Then Damon remembered the odd paragraphs that didn’t seem related to anything else. “Wait a second.”

  “What do you have?”

  There in blue ink. A ramble with words scratched out. “A few pages in draft. Maybe for her memorial service. Did they have one?”

  “Two—one by my mom back home and one here,” Cate said without having to look at anything.

  “Her death hit people hard.” Damon reached for her hand and enfolded it in his. “Does any of this help?”

  “Why would it?” Trevor asked.

  “Shauna didn’t die alone and unloved.” She squeezed Damon’s hand. “It looks like people cared about her. She’d built a life here before whatever happened happened.”

  Those words, so softly delivered might have sent him to his knees if he’d been standing.

  “That matters.” Damon got it. He glanced at Trevor and watched the understanding dawn on his face. Yeah, he got it, too.

  After nearly a minute of quiet, Trevor stood up. He collected his notes and took the files they’d been talking about. “I’m going to take all of this. I’ll give the list of potential witnesses, including the separate one I’ve made, to Wren. Let him and Garrett start working on contacting the people who aren’t here anymore. Maybe one will remember something.”

  Damon put his free arm behind the back of Cate’s chair. “All we need is that one.”

  “Thank you. This is dangerous.” Her voice was soft as her gaze moved back and forth between them. Then it landed on Damon. “For you it’s emotionally difficult, even though you won’t admit it.”

  She expected Trevor to joke, but he didn’t. “We’re here for you.”

  They were. All of them. This group that started off as supposed lost boys. And because of them, she was ready. “For the first in a long time, I feel like I really can be here for Shauna.”

  Chapter 21

  Trevor left the investigation hours ago to get something to eat and report in with Garrett who was skulking around the county. Damon debated tagging along. He thought maybe it would do them all some good to get off the property and have a solid meal, by which he was thinking steak.

  It might have happened if Cate hadn’t gone down a rabbit hole of reading. She told him to go ahead without her and since that wasn’t happening, he skipped the nicer dinner in favor of a quick trip to the main dining room for a takeout container. With that polished off, he was ready to end for the night. Work anyway.

  He turned to tell her that but stopped before he got a word out. She sat on the oversized leather chair in the library with her feet propped up on the ottoman. With one hand she flipped pages of the file on her lap. With the other, she toyed with the end of her hair.

  So graceful and sexy. So utterly feminine. If just watching someone could provide comfort, this scene would do it.

  They’d agreed to give up at dark and get out of there for the rest of the night. That happened a half hour ago and she still sat there, turning those pages. He’d barely been able to get her to try some soup for dinner before she returned to the boxes by her feet.

  At least his nerves had calmed down. The urge to jump out of his skin had subsided. Not that it would ever be easy to walk around the creaky hardwood floors of his family home. Memories bombarded him, both good and bad. But the longer he stood there, the more those worth remembering took over.

  He chalked up any positive thoughts he still had about the place to his mom. She used to wake him up by shaking the mattress and making these funny sounds. Then there was the bread recipe she got from one of the nutrition students. She made two loaves every week, sometimes more, because he insisted on using it for a sandwich every day.

  He hadn’t thought of those times in years. Hadn’t let the images in. Now they flowed through him and he couldn’t figure out how to slam the gate shut again.

  “We don’t have to do all of this in one day.” He made the observation while standing at the window facing into the yard.

  At the sound of his voice her head popped up. It took another few seconds for her eyes to clear. “It’s weird, right? All this stuff has been sitting here, with no one paying attention to it. Now that we have the chance I feel this churning need to race through and not miss a thing.”

  “You think there are more clues in there to find?”

  “Not really.” She let her feet drop to the floor and sat up a little straighter. “It’s as if reading through this preserves it somehow.”

  “It?”

  “The school.”

  He almost groaned because he wasn’t convinced keeping that memory alive was a good thing. “There are some who believe the only answer is to banish any mention of the school.”

  “But people built lives here, learned things.” She made a face as if she were searching for the right words and not finding them. “They had this community, and for all the awful things that happened later, there was a point when the idea of it and what it could be was pure and the dreams were a possibility.”

  “Now you’re the one who sounds like the school brochure.”

  “I know and it makes me a little nervous.” She shut the file and dropped it on the stack on the floor. “But that’s not all I’m feeling.”

  “Panicked. Anxious.” A whole list of emotions ran through his head. “Do those work?”

  “More like excited.”

  His guesses weren’t even close. He never would have picked that word. “What?”

  “Like a burning need to plow forward.”

  “Maybe you hit your head harder than we thought at the water tower.” But he recognized the gleam in her eyes. He knew from experience there was nothing more intoxicating than being on the verge of breaking a case open.

  Nothing they’d found today pointed in that direction for him. He felt like he was trudging through the weeds. For whatever reason—the house, his father, his growing feelings for her—he couldn’t think straight. Thoughts kept spinning on him. Every step forward seemed to lead him right back to where he started.

  Maybe the student files would get them there. They had new intel but they were running out of energy. At least he was. She looked ready to run a mile.

  “Any chance I could beg you to leave and come back to the cabin with me.” He held up a hand. “Just until tomorrow. I promise.”

  She watched him for a second. More like studied him. Her gaze moved over his face. When she finally stopped, she stood up and stretched. Winced as sh
e started to move, but she got to him. Stopped right in front of him.

  “You are the only reason I’d leave.” She wound her arms around his neck. “That face of yours is the perfect reason for a break.”

  “Ms. Pendleton, are you making a pass?”

  “I’ve been sitting in the same position for hours.” She dropped a quick kiss on his mouth before lifting her head again. “My muscles need a good workout.”

  The words pumped life into his lower half. Having her in his arms sent his temperature spiking. That’s how it worked with her. She touched him, turned that sexy voice on him, and he lost the ability to do anything but babble.

  Only one problem . . . “Not in this house, right?”

  That struck him as a bad idea. And pretty wrong.

  She threw him a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look of horror. “God, no.”

  “Good woman.”

  He started walking her backwards, stopping long enough for her to scoop up the strap of her bag and for him to grab his car keys and wallet off his father’s oversized desk. They got as far as the door before he had to kiss her again. He shoved her up against it, careful not to jar her or her new bruises.

  Her back thudded against the wood and his palms landed on either side of her head. He brushed his mouth over hers, lifting only long enough to tease her before kissing her again. “You are so fucking sexy.”

  The way she challenged him, intrigued him, kept his brain firing and his dick hard. She broke through his defenses. That scared the shit out of him but also left him in awe. He doubted it could have happened a year ago. He hadn’t been ready or willing back then. She made him both now.

  When he pulled back, their heavy breathing mixed. Her fingers tapped against his chin and started traveling. They slid down his chest and flattened on his stomach. Didn’t stop until they reached the top of his belt.

  “Yeah, time to go.” He reached around her for the doorknob. It rattled in his hand.

  She laughed. “What exactly are you doing back there?”