Protector With A Past

by Harper Allen

  What the hell had he meant?

  They'd never had children together—never would, now. She turned the cold tap on, holding her hand beneath the icy water and watching the crimson sluice away down the drain. When the bleeding slowed, she one-handedly reached for a clean dish towel and wrapped it around her thumb before bending again to pick up the dustpan.

  "Let me finish that." He came into the kitchen, King at his heels. His movements were deft and economical, and within a minute all traces of the glass had been disposed of and the floor was almost dry. He stood at the sink, wringing out the rag he'd mopped the liquor up with, and Julia stood by silently, feeling the tension build inside her.

  Whatever his reasons for coming here and whoever the little girl was, they couldn't stay. She had to make him see that. She had no idea why he'd said what he had about the child belonging to the two of them and she didn't even want to know. That part of her life was over.

  Everything she'd once been had burned away in a single searing moment two years ago. Only through the grace of God had her self-destruction narrowly missed destroying an innocent victim.

  She couldn't let him know that, but she wouldn't let them stay.

  For a split second Julia saw again the heart-shaped little face with the blue, doll-like gaze. She thrust the image away from her.

  "Whatever you want from me, the answer is no. I'm not responsible for that child, Cord, no matter what cryptic comments you choose to make. You'll have to go when she's had some rest."

  She felt the shaking start and she turned away from him, willing her body not to betray her. The muscles in her arms tensed as she hugged herself tightly, the dish towel still wrapped around her hand. Slowly the tremors subsided.

  "But she is your responsibility. She's our responsibility." The husky voice behind her held a thread of incredulity. "Dammit, Julia—don't you realize who she is?"

  When she'd been a child she'd had a kaleidoscope. It had been the old-fashioned kind, with bits of colored glass that tumbled noisily every time she twisted the metal cylinder, and there had always been a slight delay between the sound of the glass rattling into place and the jewel-like pattern bursting into existence in the dark tube in front of her eyes.

  It was as if she heard Cord's words clicking into place inside her brain, but for a moment she couldn't see what they meant. Then everything suddenly made a terrible kind of sense. Julia whirled around to face him, her unhurt hand flying to her mouth as if to hold back the words that spilled from her lips.

  "Dear God—she's Lizbet, isn't she?" She searched his expression apprehensively, and the pain she saw on his features sent a chill through her. "Paul and Sheila—are they all right? What happened, Cord? Were they in an accident?"

  Her voice had risen steadily on each unanswered question, and with two strides he was in front of her, pulling her to his chest and holding her tightly. He smelled of the whiskey she'd spilled, she thought incongruously. Her mind skittered away from the terror it already sensed was about to envelop it and frantically tried to busy itself with irrelevancies.

  He was wearing a blue chambray shirt that she was almost sure she remembered from before. Blue had always looked good against the coppery tan of his skin and the blue-black sheen of his hair. His jeans still rode low on his lean hips, and her head still came to the exact place on his chest where she could hear his heart beating. She felt his hand on her hair.

  "It's as bad as it can be, Julia. Get ready for it." His breath was warm against her temple, and his voice shook slightly. She felt the icy dread coalesce into a stomach-clenching certainty, and she cut him off before he could continue.

  "I didn't recognize her at first. She's grown so fast, Cord! She must be four—no, five now. Remember when we went to her third birthday party, and the clown tried to give her a balloon and she started crying? And you'd just gotten King for me, and she gave him cake under the table and Sheila and I put a party hat on him and took pictures of him and Lizbet, both with their hats on and both of them with icing smeared all over their faces?"

  She was babbling into his chest, her words tumbling over one another. Her throat felt as if it was constricting, and she raced on, refusing to meet his eyes.

  "Remember when she was baptized and she wore the same antique lace gown that Sheila had worn, and her mother and grandmother before her? And you said that you wanted to be around when it was brought out for Lizbet's firstborn, and Paul said he wasn't planning on letting her start dating until she was thirty? And we all started laughing, and then when the priest called us forward to make our vows as her godparents I started—I started crying and I couldn't—I couldn't—"

  Her throat had closed up completely, and the torrent of words came to an enforced stop. Inside her an intolerable pressure was building. desperately seeking release, but at the same time it felt as if her rib cage was being squeezed tighter and tighter by some cruel, gigantic hand.

  She raised her head from his chest, unaware of the tears streaming down her face. Her eyes slowly met his. Her pupils were enormously wide, as if they were attempting to find and collect a glimmer of light where there was none.

  "They're dead, aren't they?" With the harshness of ripping silk, her hoarse whisper sliced through the silence.

  She'd never seen him cry before but now his skin was wet, and even as she watched, the shimmer at the outer corners of his eyes spilled over into slow silvery tracks that gleamed against his tan. He held her gaze and didn't attempt to hide his tears or brush them away.

  "I like your version better," he said. "I like thinking about them the way they were when we were all together. But yes. They're dead." His voice cracked and his grasp on her tightened painfully. "They were killed, Julia. Somebody killed them."

  "No!" The cry burst from her before he'd finished speaking.

  "All the way up here I was trying to think of a way to break it gently. There isn't any." His eyes were shadowed and the faint lines around his mouth that hadn't been there two years ago deepened, but she was beyond noticing. She shook her head in refusal and tried to push herself away from him. He didn't release his hold on her.

  "Cord, you—you're crazy! You show up here with some insane story about our best friends being killed and expect me to believe it? What the hell are you trying to do?"

  In the corner by the door King looked up worriedly, aroused by her tone. "I won't accept it. It's all some crazy lie or you've got your information wrong or—or something! Paul and Sheila murdered? Things like that just don't happen!"

  "Things like that do happen. Before you left the force you used to see it every working day of your life, Julia." His words were low and intense. "They're not supposed to but they do. I saw them myself, just minutes—" He stopped, and a muscle worked in his jaw. "Just minutes after," he continued bleakly. "I was just a few minutes too late."

  She'd known from the first that it was true, but denying it was a way of keeping Paul and Sheila Durant alive for the space of another heartbeat or two. She hadn't seen them for years, Julia thought wrenchingly. She hadn't been able to see anyone. But in the back of her mind she'd always known that they were there—Sheila, with her glorious mass of red hair and her wicked sense of humor, and Paul, as far from the conventional conception of a cop as possible with his glasses continually slipping down his beaky nose, his gangling frame giving the impression of clumsiness and his wryly self-deprecating attitude never completely concealing the overwhelming pride he felt in his beautiful wife and the daughter he adored.

  It had been enough to know that they were still a part of her universe, even if the probability of her picking up the thread of their old relationship was about as remote as the stars she stared at, sitting on the dock during those long nights when she was afraid to fall asleep.

  And now they were gone—all Sheila's fire, all Paul's steady warmth, extinguished. Her world had suddenly become a colder, darker place.

  This time when she drew away from his embrace Cord didn't attempt to stop her
. She unwound the bulky dish towel from her hand and stared at the cut on her thumb as if she had nothing more important to occupy her mind and saw with dull surprise that it had stopped bleeding—which was strange, she thought hazily, since somewhere deep inside her she felt as if she was hemorrhaging.

  As Cord walked over to the window and looked out into the night, his shoulders sagging with weariness and pain, she got a bandage out of the small first-aid kit she kept under the sink for emergencies and covered up the small wound. It was a clean cut. It would heal without a scar.

  "Tell me what happened." She pressed the edges of the bandage down neatly, smoothing them carefully and methodically and keeping her attention focused on the trivial task. Her hand was trembling.

  "The killer was after Lizbet, too." Fatigue made his voice grainy, but if he was surprised that her initial denial of what he'd told her had been replaced by an unwilling acceptance, he didn't show it. "Paul had been doing some renovating in the basement, and at the first shot from upstairs he put her in the crawl space behind the newly installed drywall and told her not to make a sound. Then he went upstairs and was killed himself. After that second shot Lizbet apparently heard the shooter going through the house room by room, calling her name, but she did what her father had told her and stayed silent. I'm not even sure if she knows exactly what happened to her parents, but she's one terrified little girl."

  "Whoever did this knew them?"

  She'd thought there was no new horror to come. It seemed she'd been wrong. Julia choked back the bile that rose in her throat and as Cord turned from the window to face her she saw that the same conclusion had already crossed his mind.

  "Well enough to know they had a daughter and what her name was." He met her stunned gaze. "Paul phoned me yesterday and told me that he'd had the feeling someone had been following him the last few days. Added to that, Sheila had been getting weird calls on her cell phone and one of the teachers at the summer day camp Lizbet was going to in the mornings had told them that all her artwork had been slashed—none of the other kids' work was touched. He was worried enough to ask me to fly out and stay with them for a while."

  "But why not just alert the local authorities? For God's sake, Cord, when a police officer's family is threatened that's priority one with his co-workers! Why was his first impulse to call you in all the way from California?"

  His eyes darkened. They glittered like black diamonds in the tan of his face, and all of a sudden she saw the hard-edged, implacably committed detective he'd been when they'd both worked together so long ago—the detective he still was.

  "He knew he could trust me. He couldn't be sure about anyone else, since whoever was phoning Sheila had to have gotten her cell phone number from the precinct. You know why she carried that damn phone. Only his work had the number, and it was only ever to be used for one reason.

  "I pray it never rings, Julia. But if anything happened to Paul and they couldn't get in touch with me I wouldn't be able to forgive myself for not being with him. I carry it all the time—just in case…"

  It had been the only time Sheila had confessed the fear that lurked beneath her wholehearted support of her husband's career choice. She'd been haunted by the worst-case scenario that every cop's spouse tried not to dwell on—that one day the man she loved would go to work and never come home alive.

  Instead, Paul had been killed in his own home. And Sheila had been taken down first. The thought that one of his fellow officers might have had something to do with it seemed the most monstrous betrayal of all.

  "I caught the first flight available." His words came out with an effort. "As soon as I got to their house I knew something was wrong—the front door was open wide. I ran in with my gun drawn and the first thing I saw was Sheila's body in the hall. She'd been killed instantly."

  "Thank God she didn't suffer, at least," Julia whispered brokenly. She held back the tears that were threatening again and bit her lip to keep the sobs from rising to her throat.

  "Paul had been shot at the top of the basement stairs. I found him half in and half out of the doorway, but he'd been rolled over onto his back." Cord's mouth tightened grimly. "He'd been stabbed in the chest, as well."

  And the hits just keep on coming. Julia swayed and felt behind her for the familiar solidity of the countertop.

  "I don't want to know any more." Her voice was barely audible. A sliver of panicky urgency ran through it. "They're dead isn't that enough? I hope whoever did this to them is caught and brought to justice, but even justice won't bring Paul and Sheila back. There's nothing we can do to make it right again Cord—absolutely nothing—so what's the use of going over every terrible detail?"

  He looked at her as if she was speaking a foreign language. "Those details, as you call them, are clues. How the hell are we supposed to track down the killer if you refuse to examine the details?"

  His voice had a raw edge to it, and with a quick glance at the hallway where the bedrooms were he went on more quietly. "I know you were planning on quitting when I left—when you told me to get out of your life. You wanted to come back to the kind of life and the kind of people you'd grown up with people who knew a Monet from a Manet, whose carefully rustic summer properties cost more than the homes of the ordinary working stiffs that you'd been forced to rub shoulders with for too long, people who hired men like my father to work for them. I accepted that, finally."

  "That's right," she said through stiff lips. "So now I leave the detective work to the professionals—like you, Cord. It's not what I do anymore."

  "I'm beginning to realize that." His glance took in the shabby robe she was wearing, the battered scuffs on her feet and the dark circles under her eyes. It rested finally on her bandaged hand. "But what I haven't figured out is what you have been doing for the past couple of years—aside from getting up in the middle of the night to reach for the bottle, that is."

  "I haven't had a drink for nineteen months." Even as she snapped out the automatic reply she realized her mistake. Before she could gloss it over, he'd picked up on her slip. His eyes narrowed appraisingly on her.

  "The only people who know exactly how long it's been since their last drink are the ones who found it damned hard to quit," he said slowly. "Just what in hell's been happening to you since you threw me out of your life? You're living here year-round, aren't you? You never returned to your old life at all—you just retreated from everything. For God's sake, Julia, have you been here by yourself for two whole years?"

  For one dangerous moment she felt like pouring out everything. Then common sense reasserted itself. No matter how tempting it might be to reveal her demons to Cord, to respond to the note of wary compassion in his voice and finally tell him the truth that she'd successfully hidden from him so long, to do so would be fatal. He might tell himself that he understood her fears, Julia thought dully. He might even make an attempt to rebuild the relationship that had once existed between them—and at that thought, an irrational spark of hope flared within her. She quenched it immediately. In the end she'd have to send him away again, but this time it would be harder because he'd know why she was doing it. He'd insist on staying—out of pity, out of compassion, out of a sense of duty. But eventually the love would die.

  He's the marrying kind. He wants a family of his own.

  "My life isn't your concern anymore, Cord. Stop grilling me." She could feel her fragile self-control slipping away and she prayed she could hold onto it long enough to convince him. "Paul and Sheila were my best friends, too—but if you're determined to look into their deaths you're going to have to find someone else to work with. Investigation never was my field of expertise, anyway."

  "No. You were a Child Protection Specialist—one of the best." He ground the words out, stepping in front of her and blocking her path. His eyes were as cold and as threatening as black ice. "And now you're willing to put a little girl in jeopardy just because you don't want to get involved? What about that vow you took with me, promising to take
the place of her parents if the day ever came that she needed us? Didn't that mean anything to you? For God's sake, she's so petrified that she hasn't said a word since she told me what happened—and you're the only person who has the faintest chance of getting through to her before she retreats into herself for good!"

  "I'll get her killed!" The words spilled from her like acid tinged with the corrosive terror of a hundred sleepless nights and the soul-destroying guilt of memory-laden days. Her face was colorless except for the pale fire behind her hazel eyes, a fire that seemed to be consuming her. "God help me, Cord—I'm no good at keeping them safe anymore! I'm a liability! She's in jeopardy just by being here in my home!"

  She felt a pressure on her knee, and at her feet King whined loudly. He nudged her again with his muzzle, but she ignored him.

  "You have to take her away." Her voice had sunk to a whisper, sibilant with fear. She clutched his arm. "I'll do something or say something that'll put her in more danger than she's in already, Cord. Get her out of here before another child pays for my mistakes!"

  The remoteness had vanished from his features, to be replaced with baffled concern. Impatiently he shoved the whining dog away from them and searched her tortured expression. "What the hell are you talking about? You brought more children back than anyone else ever had. You were a damned legend! Lost children, children held hostage, abused children—you were the avenging angel that came in and scooped them up to safety! How many kids out there owe their lives to you, Julia? A liability? For more kids than I can remember, you were their last hope—and you came through for them!"

  "You don't get it, do you?" Her arms were crossed tightly just below her breasts, her fists clenched, and her slim frame was hunched slightly forward at the waist, as if she was trying to protect herself from a blow. Her voice was despairingly ragged, and her eyes were blind with tears. "I'm not a damned legend, Cord—I'm a ghost story! The person you thought you knew is dead, and this is all that's left!"