Guardian of Her Heart

by Linda O. Johnston

  Shuddering as she thought of Brad and how he’d died, she took a sip of her wine. “When did you start juggling?” she asked. Surely that wasn’t too personal a question, but she wanted to know more about him. He’d told her very little about himself, except for that poor woman Cassi, whom he’d cared about, and who’d died.

  “When I was a kid,” he said. “A little younger than Julie.”

  “Really? Magic tricks, too?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you go to juggling school, or—”

  He laughed aloud. There was an edge to it that she didn’t understand. “Nope. I’m self-taught.”

  “Where did you grow up? Were you—”

  “You’re full of questions.” And he didn’t sound inclined to give the answers. She looked into his eyes. There was a remoteness there suddenly that made her feel chilled.

  But that neither assuaged her curiosity nor convinced her to give up. “Tell me about your childhood, Travis.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long minute, just studied her with a faraway expression that suggested he wasn’t going to say anything. But then he did talk. Casually. As if what he described was normal, pleasant, the childhood every kid wanted.

  But it had been hell.

  “Not much to say,” he began. “I was born here in L.A. My dad was in sales. We were all in a car one day when I was about eight—my dad, mom, older brother and me. A drunk broadsided us. Killed everyone but me, and I was pretty mangled.”

  Dianna drew in her breath. “Oh, Travis. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to dredge up—”

  He kept going. “I didn’t have any other relatives, so after all the surgeries, when I could walk again—more or less—my guardian, the government, threw me into a series of foster homes. Like Julie, I hated it when the kids made fun of me, the way I limped and all. Couldn’t beat ’em all up—not then, not till I’d taught myself to fight, though I joined after-school boxing, wrestling and football to get myself into shape whenever I could. Even lost the limp—most of the time. Meantime, I figured I’d entertain them and myself. I learned juggling, card tricks, whatever. Eventually, I joined the Army, and when I got out I went to school, joined the LAPD. That’s it—more than you asked for.” His grin was so brittle that Dianna wanted to wipe it away before his face shattered into a thousand pieces.

  She ached for him and the hurt child he once was. She yearned to hold him, to give what small comfort she could. Before she knew what she was doing, she’d crossed the room and sat on his lap. She pulled his head toward her, placed her lips on his. He didn’t respond at first, but when she licked his mouth, it opened.

  His kiss was hungry, desperate, demanding. Desire surged through her everywhere. One of his hands began to undo her buttons, and all she could do was lean back a little, giving him access. “Travis,” she murmured against him.

  She didn’t recall moving from the chair to the sofa, but she lay there with him on top of her, touching her, kissing her. Her own hands stroked, too, inside his shirt, down the back of his tight jeans, and forward—

  As the phone rang.

  Dianna froze. Farley. It had to be Farley. Only Farley called her.

  Travis was suddenly standing beside her.

  “Don’t answer,” she demanded.

  “If it’s Farley, we may be able to trace it.” That was why he’d insisted that she leave the ringer on. His breathing was fast, his T-shirt partly raised, exposing the flat belly she had been touching a moment earlier.

  But the continued ringing was like a shower of cold water to Dianna.

  Travis lifted the receiver and handed it to her, though he kept his head pressed against hers so he could hear, too.

  “Hello?” she said, her voice quivering, her body braced in anticipation of that horrible laugh, that mocking voice…

  “Dianna, it’s Wally.”

  “Oh. Hi.” She pulled back to glance her puzzlement at Travis. Though she spoke often to Jeremy because of Julie, his partner Wally never called her at home.

  “Dianna, you have to understand.” Something that sounded like desperation pealed from his voice. “I didn’t want…” He tapered off.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Only… Well, nothing I can talk about over the phone. We’ll talk tomorrow. First thing in the morning, okay?”

  “All right. But, Wally, if you want—”

  She realized she was speaking into nothingness, for he had hung up.

  “I don’t understand,” she told Travis. “That didn’t sound like him.”

  “Well, we’ll find out what’s up in the morning.” Travis stood, looming above her. “I’m going to turn in.”

  The mood between them had obviously been destroyed. Though his handsome, angular face was calm, Dianna sensed a world of whirling emotions behind his cool blue eyes. Was he embarrassed about revealing so much about himself?

  She hoped not.

  But this night, it wasn’t so much lusting after the man who slept one room down from her that kept Dianna awake. No, it was sorrow for the crippled, sad, lonely little boy he had been.

  And worrying about what was wrong with Wally.

  THEY GOT AN EARLY START in the morning. Dianna glanced in her rearview mirror often on the way to the office, making certain that Travis followed close behind. He accompanied her into the building from the parking lot.

  “Let’s meet down here at Legal Eats for breakfast in an hour,” she told him in the lobby. “You go help Manny set up his cart, and I’ll check to see if Wally came in early.”

  He seldom came in this early. But after that cryptic phone call, Dianna figured he was acting out of character anyway.

  “No,” Travis said. “We’ll go up to your offices together.”

  “But…” No use arguing with him. She turned her back and entered the next elevator car going up.

  The office door wasn’t locked, and the reception area’s lights were on. “Maybe he did come in early,” Dianna told Travis.

  Noticing that Beth’s computer was humming, a green light signifying it was on despite the blank screen, she preceded Travis down the hall.

  Wally’s office door was shut, so Dianna knocked before pushing it open. “Wally, are you here?” she asked as she strode in. And stopped with a gasp.

  He was there, his head down on his desk.

  “Wally, are you asleep? Did you stay here all night?”

  He didn’t answer. But he moved, ever so slightly.

  And moaned.

  “Stay here, Dianna,” Travis ordered. She ignored him, approaching her boss and friend.

  She saw the knife protruding from his back, then. The blood that had flowed from the wound and all over the chair, the floor.

  “Wally!” she shrilled.

  He shifted, ever so slightly. She saw his lips move.

  She bent so she could hear him.

  “Up…set,” he said. “Up…set.”

  “Yes,” she said as soothingly as she could, though her heart slapped irregularly within her chest. “Of course you’re upset. Just hold on. Please, Wally. We’ll get you help.”

  Another kind of sound emanated from his lips—a gurgle. An expelling of breath.

  And Wally said no more.

  Chapter Eleven

  Travis started making calls the moment he took in the scene at Wally’s office. The emergency medical technicians arrived within minutes.

  He held Dianna tight while the EMTs worked on Wally, for, stubborn lady that she was, she refused to leave the room.

  “He kept saying ‘upset, upset.’” She spoke brokenly against Travis’s chest. “I couldn’t calm him.” She swallowed a sob. “I couldn’t help him.”

  “You did what you could,” he soothed.

  Upset. What had Wally meant by that?

  Ignoring the paramedics’ exclamations and activity as they continued their frantic ministrations, he glanced around. A wastebasket near Wally’s desk was “upset.” Papers spilled
onto the floor. He wanted to look at them but couldn’t let Dianna go. Not now. Not the way she was trembling.

  He did, however, pull his cell phone from his pocket and, using his free hand, punched in Snail’s cell phone number. “Get over here.” He quickly explained the situation. “You need to look for our suspect. Get some patrol officers here to secure the area, and send the SID investigation team on the way, too.” He left unsaid that the Robbery-Homicide Division detectives might be needed as well.

  “Right.”

  The EMTs had lifted Wally onto a gurney. IV tubes dangled from a bottle one medic held as they hurried toward the door.

  Dianna pulled away from Travis and touched the nearest EMT’s arm. “Is he going to be all right?” she asked anxiously.

  “Too soon to tell.” But the guy met Travis’s eye over Dianna’s head. That look told Travis everything. There wasn’t much hope for Wally. Which made Travis’s gut compress as if he’d gotten it caught in a juice squeezer on Manny’s cart.

  Before they were gone, he got the names of the EMTs so their identities could be entered on the crime-scene log. The investigators would need to keep track of exactly who had been there and when. And taking a few steps from Dianna, he quietly placed a call to Robbery-Homicide.

  Wally wasn’t Travis’s mission, yet he was involved in the assignment. Travis was to protect Dianna while keeping an eye on Englander Center and the people entering and exiting.

  He was to find Farley and stop the bastard, before he hurt Dianna or anyone else.

  It was another damn mission on which he’d lost someone.

  Travis didn’t just want to juggle his knives right then. He wanted to use them as weapons.

  Maybe on himself.

  “BUT WHY?” Julie cried as Dianna knelt and took her into her arms. “Uncle Wally never hurt anybody.”

  Dianna wasn’t certain how she had gotten through the day. Now, it was after school, and Jeremy had brought his daughter back to the A-S offices. Because of the continued investigation, Jeremy had to hang around a while longer.

  So did Dianna.

  “No, sweetheart,” Dianna said, murmuring against the child’s hair. They were in her office, since it was farthest down the hall and therefore not the center of official activity. “Uncle Wally was a very nice man.” Was. Past tense.

  Though he had been alive when the EMTs had taken him out—barely—he had died on the way to the hospital.

  Upset. He had been upset. And now it was his survivors’ turn to be upset. No, devastated.

  For Julie was right. Wally had been a nice man, and he would be missed.

  “Why does everyone die?” Julie asked, her broken voice barely a whisper.

  Poor kid. She had lost her mother only about a year earlier, and now her mother’s brother. It wasn’t fair.

  “It’s difficult, isn’t it, honey? That’s why we have to live the best we can. And remember the people we lose, and love them always.”

  “I will.” Julie choked and trembled in Dianna’s arms.

  “Hey, ladies.”

  Dianna hadn’t even noticed her office door opening. She glanced up to find Travis standing there. His face was gaunt, his expression as fierce as she had ever seen it.

  But when his dismal blue eyes met hers, they brightened, as if he had forced on a light inside.

  “What are you doing here,” he asked, “when all the fun is downstairs?”

  “Have more performers arrived?” Dianna asked, thanking him with her gaze. Though she did not want to minimize Julie’s grief, a distraction would be welcome.

  “Yep. There are a lot better jugglers and magicians than me, and—”

  Julie pulled away and put her hands on her hips. “No one’s better than you, Travis,” she contradicted.

  “Well, you’ve got to go see and make up your own mind.”

  Julie looked at Dianna, who stood beside the child. “Can we, Dianna?” Though tears still glistened in her eyes, hope filled her expression.

  Dianna marveled at the resiliency of childhood. “Of course,” she said. “And then we can tell Travis which guys he should go take lessons from.”

  She enjoyed Julie’s laugh. And as they passed Travis on the way out of the room, she grasped his large, warm hand in gratitude.

  His answering squeeze, along with the way he looked at her, shot a pang of desire ricocheting through her. Wrong, she thought. Sex wasn’t an answer to grief.

  And if she gave in to her urges, she might have a lot more to be sorry about.

  BECAUSE TRAVIS HAD told her to wait for Snail to accompany them, Dianna stopped with Julie right outside Englander Center at Manny’s pushcart—and within eyesight of Cal Flynn, who had been primed, too, to have his security staff watch over them.

  Manny had apparently seen all the emergency activity. “Is everything all right?” the friendly vendor asked, a worried frown creasing his already pleated face even more.

  Dianna gave a small, warning shake of her head, and he changed the subject.

  “I just got a new kind of ice cream bar,” he told Julie. “I need someone to taste it and say if it is good or not.” He handed one to the child, who took his question seriously, sampling chocolate and ice cream carefully before expressing her opinion: that it was tasty indeed.

  Before Julie finished eating, Travis joined them, along with Flynn. “Looks as if you get Mr. Flynn, here, for company,” he said. “There’s a call coming in that I have to take, and I can’t spare Snail.”

  He shared a glance with Dianna. She wasn’t certain how to interpret it but gathered that the crime-scene investigation was not going well.

  “We don’t really need—” she began.

  “Yeah, you do. Flynn, you’re in charge.”

  Dianna caught the way Travis looked at Cal Flynn, who glared back. Travis must have instructed the resentful security guard on how to do his job.

  She didn’t really want a watchdog, especially one who probably didn’t want to be with her, either. But she was too shaken over Wally’s death to argue with Travis just then. Plus, she had to do all she could to distract Julie.

  And herself.

  For now, that meant cruising the plaza area, watching the entertainment like a regular member of the crowd.

  Together, the three of them headed toward the Erwin Street Mall, the wide, outdoor promenade between the parallel courthouses and library, with the police station at the end.

  It was about the time that the courts let out, so the area was filled with people. As they wended their way through the thick crowd, Dianna noted that a couple of makeshift stages had been erected along the sides of the mall area, in preparation for the Englander Center anniversary celebration. Most festivities would commence in a few days, but to stir up interest a variety of street performers had already been hired as a noisy and tantalizing appetizer.

  At least some, Dianna was sure, were undercover cops like Travis. How had they recruited officers who so easily assumed the roles of street performers? Travis had indicated his platoon of undercover cops was special, encompassing all sorts of unusual skills. And he was right. The performers included a guy making balloon animals and passing them out to kids in the crowd, as well as male and female clowns in full makeup, doing cartwheels and pratfalls on the stages. Some used music, though not loudly in this area of government buildings.

  All of Travis’s colleagues were multitalented, Dianna thought. As he was.

  And the way he turned her on with his sensuous kisses, she suspected she had only gotten a hint of the man’s many talents.

  “Right, Dianna?” asked Julie, grabbing hold of her hand.

  “Sorry, honey,” Dianna replied, feeling her face redden as Cal Flynn, too, looked at her quizzically. “I wasn’t listening. What did you say?”

  Julie’s face assumed a long-suffering expression, and her tone held exasperation as she repeated, “I said it would be fun to be one of those guys up on stage, like Travis.”

  “I’m s
ure it is,” Dianna said. She looked to see what had captured Julie’s attention. Though the press of people still surged along the mall, a few had stopped to watch the performances. Julie, Dianna and Cal were in the middle of them, right in front of the nearest stage.

  A clown on the low platform was doing tricks with a big, floppy bouquet of artificial flowers that changed color, then turned into a walking stick. He grinned proudly and took an exaggerated bow. Of course the crowd clapped.

  “How did he do that?” Julie asked wonderingly.

  “Maybe Travis will be able to tell you,” Dianna said. “You can ask him later, though magicians don’t usually tell their secrets, or even those of their competition.”

  The clown did a few more tricks with his magical flowers. Then he flopped his huge feet over to a corner of the stage, where he bent way over a microphone and tapped it. The tempo sounded as if he had an exaggerated heartbeat. He spoke into the microphone, too close at first so a huge feedback shrill sliced at Dianna’s brain. Everyone else’s, too, judging from the agonized expressions as people covered their ears with their hands.

  “Music to my ears,” said the clown in a yuk-yuk tone. “Now, I need a volunteer to help me, right up here.” He bent and swept his arm about the stage. A few people waved their hands, including an enthusiastic Julie. But when the clown scanned them, his eyes lit on Dianna. “This lovely lady right here.” He pointed one very white finger right at Dianna.

  Dianna met Cal’s gaze.

  He shrugged. “Do it if you want. There’s too much going on here for your buddy to try anything.”

  Just in case, Dianna looked more closely at the clown. Of course the guy wore a lot of makeup, but the shape of his face was too full, his body too slight and short for him to be Farley in disguise.

  There was a large crowd around. The clown was in plain sight. What harm could it do for her to play along?

  Especially when Julie was tugging at her hand, urging her onto the stage. “Do it, Dianna. Go up there. He wants you.”