FRIEND, LOVER, PROTECTOR

by Sharon Mignerey

  "Hell, Dahlia. It's not you. That's what I'm trying to tell you." He tapped his head. "I've got all this garbage right here." He reached across the console between the seats to touch her arm. "Honestly, it's not you."

  Her hand stilled on the door handle. "What garbage?"

  "My mom was a stripper when I was a kid." He looked away again. "Those things you said a while ago … about a woman who looks like you … well, that would have been my mom. Hell, it was just like that with the girls—women—that I knew then." Once again he met her gaze. "I'm trying hard to see you, Dahlia."

  "Even though?"

  A lopsided grin lit his face as his glance raked down her body. "Even though you're a stacked, tall, beautiful blonde."

  "I wasn't fishing for compliments," she said, delicious warmth seeping through her when she really wanted to be annoyed with him.

  "That wasn't a compliment." He got out of the car. While she contemplated that, he walked around the vehicle and opened her door, his expression once again serious.

  "You stay right with me," he said. "I don't want you more than five feet away from me, okay? No wandering to another part of the store. We're together, side by side, got it?"

  "Okay. But I'm paying for my own alarm system."

  "You can settle up with me later."

  "Today. Now. Or we don't do it."

  "Today. Now," he repeated. "And we get exactly what I think is required to do the job."

  "Are you some kind of electronics expert or something?"

  "Or something," he said. "Every guy on the team has a primary job and a couple of backup jobs. You've got the closest thing to an expert at your service."

  "Good," Dahlia returned, glad to have a less personal topic at hand to focus on. "And you'll have a trade that could be useful when you get out of the army."

  "If it was the trade I wanted, you'd be right."

  "What do you want?"

  "When I was in college—"

  "How long ago?"

  "Years—ten or so, I guess. Anyway, I studied architecture. Maybe someday…" He shook his head as though he didn't like what he was thinking and held open the door for her.

  She was still thinking about his latest revelation when he touched her arm to get her attention.

  "How many people are in the store, do you think?"

  Dahlia saw only a couple of other customers, a woman and a kid who were looking at remote-controlled vehicles. All of the sales staff wore bright-yellow shirts with the company logo. Despite the store's large size, the aisles, arranged in a fan, were all clearly visible from the checkout counter.

  "It looks like a slow day," she said.

  "Lucky us. We'll be able to spot anyone else who comes into the store." He grabbed a cart and headed in the direction of a sign that read Home Security. He didn't have a list on him, but clearly had one in his head that matched the doors and windows in her house. He rapidly filled the basket with magnetic contacts, terminals, motion detectors, alarms, wired components, wireless components and numerous other items that she couldn't name.

  "Tell me if anyone comes walking by the front of the store," Jack said without looking up. "And if he looks anything like either of our guys yesterday, speak up."

  Looking toward the window, Dahlia watched, her heart pounding in spite of herself. She wondered how in the world she was going to manage this. Her mom had thought Lily would be testifying sometime during the next two weeks. This kind of tension for two weeks? She already hated it.

  A man walked by the front of the store, looking as though he was in a hurry and without so much as glancing inside.

  Finally she asked Jack, "Did you see somebody?"

  "Thought I did," he said, adding more items to the basket. "Do you have a cell phone?"

  "No."

  "Then that's one more purchase."

  "I don't want one," she said, remembering the huge bill that Richard, her ex-fiancé, had run up. "I don't need one. I have a HAM radio."

  "Can you be sure that you'll raise somebody 24/7?"

  "Usually."

  "Usually isn't good enough," he said. "And what if they cut the phone lines next time? You need a cell phone."

  Another hated shiver slid down her spine. "Okay. You want me to have a cell phone, I'll get one. That doesn't mean I'm keeping it after this is all over."

  "Fine. But in the meantime, the first number we're going to program in is my cell phone number and the second one is 911."

  "If we're going to be together, that seems a bit excessive." She pulled on his arm. "And if you already have one, why do I need one?"

  "Redundancy. Backup."

  "Ah. The Be Prepared thing again."

  After Dahlia had paid for the purchases, including the cell phone, Jack stopped her once again before they went outside. Together they stood at the door and surveyed the parking lot and the sidewalk.

  A row away from Jack's SUV, a man leaned against a car, his arms folded across his T-shirt-covered chest and his gaze focused in their direction.

  "Is he the guy?" Jack asked.

  Dahlia shook her head. Movement closer to Jack's vehicle caught her eye. A guy wearing a baseball cap backward was sauntering toward the convenience store a couple of doors away. "That guy sort of has the right build, but I'm not sure."

  Jack nodded toward another man who stood smoking in front of a store a couple of doors away in the other direction. "I'd bet money that's the guy I chased last night." He handed Dahlia the sacks. "I'll say one thing for them, they're not subtle." He took off his plaid shirt, revealing a shoulder holster over his gray T-shirt that made his chest look huge.

  Dahlia hadn't realized he was armed, though she supposed she should have known. Her heart rose in her chest. She realized now why he kept her to his left—so he would have easy access to his gun with his right hand.

  This was no phantom danger that haunted in the middle of the night. This wasn't humiliating like her ex-husband's infidelity or financially devastating like her ex-fiancé's drug habit. This was deadly.

  He intended to let the guys outside know that he was armed, she thought. Jack was ready to put his body and his gun between her and the danger. How could she have not put all this together before? The enormity of it crashed around her, filling her with fear for herself, fear for him. Then she realized he was talking to her.

  "What?"

  His attention shifted from outside to her, his brilliant eyes intent. "Are you okay?"

  She wasn't, but she nodded anyway.

  "I'm going to get the car and bring it to the door. You stay put until I signal you to come out. Got it?"

  "What if they come after you?" she asked.

  "They won't," he said. "It's not me that they want."

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  The instant Jack went through the door, Dahlia had the nearly irresistible urge to run after him despite her promise to stay put. His saunter toward his car was deceptively slow, and it seemed to her that long minutes passed during those few seconds.

  "Miss?" someone said to her.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw a man—one of the store employees, she thought—a scant three feet away from her, holding out a sack.

  "You forgot one of your bags."

  Her first impulse was to reach for it, but some instinct made her glance down at the sacks in her hands. They were all there. She looked back up, intending to tell the man the one he held wasn't hers.

  Something about him nudged her memory. His shirt—it was the same color as those worn by the store clerks but without the store logo over the pocket. She met his gaze and realized she'd seen those pale eyes before.

  Over the leaves of the huge plant he'd delivered to her house the day before.

  She bolted for the door.

  Behind her he called, "Stop!"

  She hit the glass with her shoulder and burst onto the sidewalk. "Jack!"

  He was opening the door of his vehicle. His head snapped
up when she called to him.

  She stepped off the curb and ran across the parking lot toward him, the sacks jostling in her arms.

  The man from in the store came through the door behind her. From the corner of her eye she saw the guy from in front of the convenience store head toward her at a sprint.

  She ran faster.

  Her heart in her throat and her attention on Jack, she ran toward him.

  He unsheathed his big gun and aimed it. Compared to her own panicked frenzy, his motions didn't seem hurried at all as he came around the vehicle and opened the passenger door. The look in his eyes was deadly. If she had seen it yesterday when she first met him, she would have never let him in her car. Today that expression was an anchor.

  He pointed the gun toward one of the men behind her, then the other. He made a complete arc, including the guy leaning against his car and the last man, who was somehow no more than ten feet away from her.

  She heard their footfalls stop. In fact, all she could hear was her own labored breathing and the pounding of her own footsteps.

  The last yards to the car took forever. She dove into the back seat, throwing the packages in ahead of her. At once Jack was in the car with her. Still holding the gun, he started the vehicle and pulled out of the parking lot. As they drove past the men who had been chasing her, she was surprised to see them facing one another in anger instead of coming after her and Jack.

  Two blocks later she let out a shaky breath, surprised that she hadn't been breathing. She glanced at Jack. He had holstered the gun. As if sensing she watched him, he looked over at her, then away.

  "It's real," she whispered, afraid her voice would shake if she tried to speak normally. She pressed a hand against her chest to still the furious pounding of her heart. "Oh, my God, it's real."

  "Damn straight." His expression didn't ease a bit.

  "You were right. There are four of them." She sucked in another breath, and the shakes dissipated under a wave of anger. "I am not going to be pushed around."

  "You think I'm pushing you?"

  "Not you," she snapped. "Them. We can go to the police." She closed her eyes, the scene replaying through her head. A man offered her a bag he thought was hers. The police would see that as not at all sinister. She ran out of the store, and men chased her … and only Jack had a gun. "Damn. We can't, can we? They'll think this is just one more stupid thing from a crazy woman."

  "Leaving you in the store was stupid," he said, his voice clipped. He hit the steering wheel with his fist. "I never saw the guy until he followed you out of the store."

  "I know." She hadn't seen or heard the man until he was right there next to her. And she had been watching to see if anyone else had come into the store. "I'm not blaming you."

  He clenched his jaw. "You should."

  "Like that will help."

  "It could have gone all to hell, like that." He snapped his fingers.

  "But it didn't, thanks to you and your big Dirty Harry gun." She began putting the bags around her feet in the back seat.

  His expression relaxed, if only a bit. "I think I'm insulted. That's a Magnum." He patted the holster. "This is a Glock, a weapon with considerably more finesse."

  "If you say so. Personally, I wouldn't know the difference." She had an awful feeling that before this was over, she would know more than she'd ever wanted to.

  When they arrived back at the house, her neighbor, Emmet, was working in the yard, much as he had been the previous day. He waved and commented about the weather as they got out of the SUV.

  "Another delivery came for you while you were gone," Emmet said. "Give me just a minute and I'll fetch the box from the house."

  As he disappeared inside his house, Dahlia sighed, her gaze searching the quiet street for enemies she had never imagined before. "I'm hating this more and more. Emmet always takes my deliveries when I'm not here, but today—"

  "You're thinking the worst."

  She met his gaze. "Yeah."

  "Why don't you just have things delivered to the university."

  She shrugged. "I'd have more to explain to Doreen."

  "She doesn't strike me as the scientific type," Jack said.

  "She's not. But she's brilliant at lining up grant money, and she knows how to shmooze. Walter Worth—he's the associate dean responsible for the department—likes what she's been able to add to the department … financially, anyway."

  "He can't know what the staff calls her."

  "He wouldn't care," Dahlia returned. "He's a man who likes results."

  "And she gets to apply the screws."

  Dahlia chuckled. "I wouldn't have put it quite like that, but, yeah."

  Emmet's door opened and he came down the steps and across the lawn holding a small box, a smile lighting his face. "It's one of those boxes from California that you so like."

  "Videotapes from my niece." Dahlia took the package from him. "Thanks, Emmet."

  "Glad to see you around, too, Jack," he said. "Dahlia was lucky to have you here. With the break-in and all. It's a strange thing. Never had one around here like that before."

  "Like how?" Jack asked.

  "Breaking in during the night when folks are sure to be home." He waved a hand toward Dahlia's house. "Hell of a shame about the door. She loved that window, did she tell you? It was the original glass, put in well before World War II."

  "Which is why we're installing an alarm system." Jack held up the sacks, then glanced at his watch. "And, if we're going to get it done, we'd better get started."

  "If you need a hand with anything—"

  "Thanks." As he had been before, Jack was reminded of his grandpa Like Emmet, his grandfather would have been offering to help. "I might. Come on by if you have time."

  "I'll finish up here and come over in a bit," Emmet said. Since the front door was barricaded, they went around to the back of the house where Boo pranced in front of the window, barking excitedly. The dog's completely normal behavior reassured Jack that no one was in the house.

  As soon as they were inside, Dahlia opened the package that Emmet had given her. As predicted, there was a videotape inside. Smiling Dahlia headed for the living room. Suspecting what would happen when she remembered the television was gone, Jack followed her.

  "Damn!" She turned around, her eyes shimmering. "I forgot. One more damn thing."

  "How old is your niece?" he asked, leaning a shoulder against the doorjamb.

  "Four. She'll be five soon." She set the tape on the shelf next to the chess set, glared a second at the open space where the television should have been, then headed for the hallway door where he stood. "We might as well get to work."

  And they did. He retrieved his toolbox from the back of his car, and came back into the house.

  "You carry tools?" Dahlia eyed the toolbox as he set it down and opened it. This was as well made as the box that had held his cooking utensils the other evening. It was packed with tools, each in its own compartment.

  "Sure." He plugged the charger for the cordless drill into one of the outlets behind the kitchen counter. "You never know when you might need them."

  "I don't know, Trahern. This is taking that Boy Scout, Be Prepared thing to a whole new level."

  He grinned at the teasing note in her voice. "A man can never be too prepared. Plus, it's part of my duty as a Ranger."

  "You're kidding, you're not required to carry tools."

  He tapped his temple. "Comes under the rules of 'Be a thinker' and 'Be self-disciplined both on and off the job."'

  "I think it's a guy thing and you just like tools," she returned. "What's first?"

  The degree with which she wanted to help him surprised her. Given enough time—and swear words—she could accomplish just about anything she wanted. She had every confidence that Jack would do the installation as well as he'd done everything else since he'd been here.

  Step by clear step he took her through the process until she asked, "Have you ever taught?"

&
nbsp; He caught her glance with a lopsided grin. "Hand-to-hand combat and patrolling."

  "Ah, more guy stuff." In actual fact, she was impressed. "So what are you, a drill sergeant or something?"

  "R.I.," he answered, deftly fastening a contact to one of the windows in the living room. "Ranger instructor."

  "And that's how you know my sister's friend, Ian."

  Jack moved to the next window. "We were assigned buddies in Ranger school." His dimple flashed as another grin lit his face. "We hated each other on sight."

  "And now?"

  Jack looked at her. "I'd do anything for him and he for me."

  "Which explains why you're here."

  He nodded.

  His very lack of words gave her some clue as to how deep the friendship was. Surprisingly, she found she envied him. Lily and Rosie were close like that, and though Lily did her best to include Dahlia, she knew that her sisters shared a special bond that didn't quite include her.

  She found that she liked watching Jack work. He knew exactly what he was doing, his fingers sure and deft. And he was good natured, whistling under his breath the theme song from the Rocky movies, and at one point teasing her when she got sleepy.

  "You're allowed to stand to stay awake," he told her.

  "I'm fine," she told him.

  He leaned closed and peered into her eyes. "I don't know. Looks sleepy to me. If one of my students falls asleep, he gets to practice staying awake by doing pushups."

  "While you're teaching?"

  He nodded. "Yep."

  "I'm not sleepy."

  He laughed. "So you don't want to go to bed."

  "No."

  "Darn," he returned with an exaggerated sigh.

  She cuffed him on the shoulder. "Be nice."

  He could have told her just how nice he wanted to be to her. Over the next several hours she was everything in an assistant that Jack could have asked for. They worked side by side, the conversation limited to the components of the alarm system and what each one did.

  Through it, he was aware of every brush of her hand against his as she handed him the tools and various parts of the system. Just as she had been back at her office, she was focused on what needed to be done to finish the job.