DRAGON SECURITY: The Complete 6 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  The living room was filled with pictures. Sydney as a baby, Sydney learning to walk, Sydney on her first day of school. So many pictures that it was almost overwhelming. A scene from a nightmare. It had always been this way though. The only difference was that there used to be pictures of me, too, standing beside Sydney before the prom, laughing at the beach, holding her the morning of her graduation.

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  I turned and found myself face to face with an older version of Sydney. Her mother, Paulina. She’d aged twenty years in the last five. Her hair was gray now, her eyes haunted. She’d stopped wearing makeup, stopped bothering with dressing for the day. She was in a thin bathrobe that hid little of her sadly emaciated body.

  “I got your letter,” I said, pulling it out of my back pocket. “I’ve gotten all your letters.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ve read them all. And I kept them in a drawer in my footlocker.”

  “Good.”

  “But this last one…it’s different.”

  She shook her head. “They’re all the same. You killed my daughter. I don’t want you to forget that.”

  “Do you think I could? I loved her, Paulina.”

  “But everyone saw you fighting. They heard her tell you about that boy at Harvard.”

  “She told me she kissed another boy. But then she told me that she loved me and she’d never love anyone else. She told me that it didn’t matter.”

  “But you were angry.”

  “No, I wasn’t. I was hurt. But that wasn’t what we were fighting about that night.”

  She shook her head, turning away from me to pick up a framed picture of Sydney taken the summer before she went off to college.

  “We were fighting because she wanted to drop out of school. She didn’t want to be so far away from me anymore.”

  Paulina shook her head again.

  “We fought because I told her that she should stay. That it was what she was destined to do.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “She was angry that I didn’t agree with her the way she thought I would. She told me that I didn’t love her enough, that if I did, I would beg her to stay. And I told her that the opposite was true.”

  Paulina turned, tears streaming down her cheeks. “She’s dead.”

  “It was an accident. She was drinking. She missed the curve and I overcorrected trying to keep us from going over into the embankment.”

  She shook her head, her thin shoulders shaking with her sobs. I should have gone to her; I should have consoled her. But she’d given something away in her letter that kept me rooted to the floor.

  “You should have let her stay home,” she’d said in her letter. “You should have welcomed her desire to stay here in San Diego with you, with us. You should have supported anything she wanted to do.”

  She knew. Sydney must have told her what she wanted to do, and she must have known about the other boy. She must have known it all. Yet, she let me take it all on my shoulders all these years. She let me take the blame for something we all shared the blame for. Equally. Even Syd.

  “I loved her,” I said. “I loved her more than anything in the world. She was a part of my life for so long I couldn’t remember me without her. I would have done anything to make her happy. But I didn’t kill her. I’d rather die myself than hurt her.” I brushed a single tear from my cheek. “It was an accident. And now…it’s time for me to move on. And it’s time for you to stop blaming everyone but her.”

  I walked away without waiting for a response. I really didn’t expect one. I’d come to say what I needed to say and that was all that mattered.

  But I never got another letter.

  ***

  Los Angeles was not everything people say it is. It was hot and crowded and dirty. I drove to Van Nuys, where my father worked in his brother’s bodega, and cruised the streets, trying to remember the excitement I felt as a kid when we would come here for visits. It just wasn’t there. I found myself thinking of another place, another child, another woman. There was somewhere else I’d rather be. But I hadn’t seen my family in too long.

  I pulled to the curb in front of a short, squat Spanish cottage and cut the engine to the rental. The car immediately began to heat up with the air conditioning gone. For early fall, it was still very warm.

  Faces appeared in the windows and doorway of the house as I unfolded myself from the sedan. I understood now why Megan preferred SUVs.

  “Vincent?”

  My mother, a lovely, petite woman who’d somehow managed to deliver four children without permanent damage, ran out to the sidewalk to greet me. Then my brother and my sister, Callie. I had to admit, it felt good to welcome the embrace of my family.

  “I called you, you big lug,” Callie said, slapping her hand against my arm. “You need to learn to return phone calls.”

  “I did. I left a voice mail, but I guess you were preoccupied.”

  She blushed, then held up her hand. A small, perfectly round, diamond solitaire rested on her left ring finger.

  “Congrats!”

  “The wedding’s in December. You’ll have to come.”

  “I will.”

  “And bring whatever woman put that big grin on your face.”

  It was good to be home.

  Chapter 20

  Quinn

  I sat near the front beside other parents, most of whom were bored and staring at their phones during most of the performances. But I was paying attention, clapping for each class even though my Olivia wasn’t going to be on stage until the end of the performance. She’d been so nervous on the drive over here, asking over and over again if I thought she would do well. She must have asked twenty times. And when she wasn’t asking that, she was asking about Vincent.

  “Will he be there?”

  I didn’t know.

  We hadn’t seen Vincent since the night Beth broke into my house. When I called Dragon Security, they told me he’d taken personal time. I didn’t know what that meant, but I was pretty sure it meant that the temporary part of our relationship had finally come into play.

  I ached deep inside. I missed him. I’d never missed anyone like this, not even my father when he disappeared sometime between making me dinner and preparing breakfast.

  I pulled my camera out of the heavy case and set it up for video. Olivia was about to come on stage.

  We’d done her hair in simple ringlets and pulled it all back with a ribbon. She was wearing a pink dress that didn’t make her look washed out—which was unusual. She was radiant, this huge smile on her face as she crossed the stage to take her place in the front. The music began, and I held my breath as I watched her through the camera, hoping that she wouldn’t forget the words as she had a few times at home. But she sang like an angel, the words just flowing from her lips.

  I’ll be your candle on the water.

  My love for you will always burn.

  I know you’re lost and drifting,

  But the clouds are lifting.

  Don’t give up. You have somewhere to turn.

  It was a beautiful song. And there was something about the lyrics that just seemed appropriate. As stupid as it might sound, tears began to burn in my throat as I watched my daughter perform this incredible song.

  It was over before it began. All the fuss and preparation and she was only up there for three minutes. I sat back and watched part of it on the small monitor on the back of the camera, smiling at the way she stared into the audience, this huge, slightly apprehensive, expression on her face.

  We were going to be okay, Olivia and me.

  I’d decided that I was done with the porn industry.

  Susie bought the studio and all its equipment off of me, surprising me with her ability and interest. But she was excited, convinced that she could make some good movies with it. I was thrilled that the production staff would have someone still paying the bills.

  The company I’d contracted with for
three movies wasn’t thrilled that we’d welshed on the final movie in the series. But they accepted compensation that ate up a nice chunk of my savings. But with Susie buying the business, I was able to put some of that back.

  I thought I might go back to school while I decided what to do with my life. We sold the house—apparently, living next door to a crazy person and being shot at in the upstairs hallway made a house quite sought after—and bought a condo in an exclusive community about five miles away. It was actually closer to Olivia’s school, so that worked out well.

  And then, last week, I got an offer from a book publisher. They wanted me to write a book about what I’d gone through with Beth. They’d even offered me a huge advance. The press had a field day with the whole thing. I think they were disappointed when she took a plea deal from the prosecutor. She would be incarcerated in a mental health facility until a doctor deemed her well enough to be placed in a federal penitentiary where she would serve out what remained of her fifteen-year sentence. The publishers wanted my view of the whole thing.

  I was seriously considering it.

  Life was pretty good. Olivia and I had been on our own again. We’d be fine, doing it again.

  The principal came out and congratulated the students on their first concert of the year. She dismissed the students, and they suddenly flooded the auditorium, laughter and chatter drowning out all other sounds.

  I stepped out into the aisle and watched for my child. She finally appeared at the corner of the stage, rising up on her tiptoes to look out over the audience. My stomach knotted. She was looking for Vincent.

  He’s not here.

  But then she smiled widely and jumped down off of the stage, racing up the center aisle. I turned and…

  It wasn’t right that he should look so good. He was smiling, and he seemed darker, like he’d been hanging out at the beach. It’d only been a couple of weeks, but he looked so amazing that it physically hurt to look at him.

  I wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear.

  There were slowly healing cuts on my face that I’d tried to cover with makeup, but they somehow still managed to reveal themselves. And my body was stiff, my back still healing from the small pellets that had peppered my skin there. I was wearing my hair down and I had on a tasteful black dress with a sweetheart bodice and cap sleeves. Yet, I felt like I could have done better if I’d known he was going to be here.

  I watched Vincent scoop Olivia up into his arms, laughing as she threw her arms around her neck. He spoke to her for a minute, then his eyes moved around the auditorium, eventually coming to rest on me. I smoothed my hands over my skirt, feeling like a fool for standing there like that.

  I took a deep breath and made my way up the aisle to where they were standing.

  “Hey,” he said softly, a cocky smile on his full lips.

  I inclined my head slightly.

  “I told you he would come,” Olivia announced.

  “You did.”

  “We’re here, too!”

  Cole came around Vincent and tickled Olivia’s ribs. She laughed, throwing herself at him so that he nearly fell over as he caught her. And then Amber came up behind me, PJ in her arms.

  “Hi, Quinn,” she said. “How are you?”

  “Good.”

  But I didn’t feel good. I felt confused. What was he doing here?

  “You were brilliant,” Cole said to Olivia. “Just perfect.”

  “I was?”

  “You were. And beautiful!”

  “We were late,” Amber said. “Or else we would have come sit with you.”

  “It’s okay. I understand.”

  “So where does the star want to eat? We promised you dinner, didn’t we?”

  Olivia laughed, and somehow I found myself being pushed out of the auditorium and promising to have dinner with Cole and Amber and PJ and Vincent.

  Yay. Vincent hadn’t said two words to me.

  ***

  I found myself watching his hands, watching the way he kept nervously playing with the stem of his water glass. And then he’d pick up his fork, but put it right back down—as if he couldn’t stand the idea of eating. And then he’d be playing with the water glass again, acting like a fidgety little boy who didn’t know what to do with his hands.

  Whenever I dared to look at his face, he would be watching me already, as if he knew when I was going to look up. There was something about the expression in his eyes, but I couldn’t…I wouldn’t.

  “Vincent just got back from California,” Cole announced.

  “Really?” Olivia asked, bouncing on her chair. “Why?”

  “My family lives in Los Angeles.”

  “The place where they make the real movies?”

  “The one and only.”

  “Cool.” Olivia glanced at me. “Mommy doesn’t make movies anymore.”

  The table fell silent, Cole and Amber exchanging a glance. But Vincent’s eyes never left mine.

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “It was time to retire.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know. Go back to school, maybe.”

  His eyes moved slowly over my face, dipping down over my throat before coming back to my face again.

  “Good.”

  It hurt. Sitting there, pretending to have a normal conversation…it hurt.

  I got up and walked to the bathroom, just barely keeping myself from running. I needed a second. I ran cold water over my hands, then splashed my face, remembering too late the makeup I’d so carefully applied hours ago.

  I couldn’t believe he was here. I couldn’t believe that he was looking at me like that and I couldn’t pretend that it didn’t mean anything. I couldn’t believe that he’d just walked out of my life and never bothered to come to the hospital to make sure I was all right.

  I grabbed some paper towels and patted my face. As I turned to toss the towels, I found myself staring into his familiar eyes.

  “What are you doing? This is the ladies’ room!”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Now? It’s been weeks!”

  “I know. I went to California to put my past to rest. I thought I owed you that much.”

  “Me?”

  “And myself. I needed to do it for myself, too.”

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But it’s done.”

  “Good.”

  I started to move around him, but he grabbed my arm and pushed me back, trapping me against the sink.

  “I miss you.”

  My eyebrows rose. “You could have fooled me. I didn’t get a visit, a phone call. Not even a letter.”

  “I know. Megan wanted me to stay away from you. But you’re not our client anymore.”

  “No.”

  “So…can I take you to dinner sometime?”

  I laughed. “You want to take me on a date?”

  “I want to do so many things with you,” he said, running his hand slowly over my face. “But we can start with a date.”

  “Yeah? What makes you think I want to do that?”

  “I think you do. I think you kind of like me.”

  “Do I?”

  He touched my face again, his thumb brushing my bottom lip. “You were worried about me. Beth was there to do awful things and all you could think about was me. You had debris and gun pellets in your back—and you were searching me for injuries.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “You love me, don’t you?”

  I looked up sharply, surprised at the use of the “L” word.

  He smiled, his thumb brushing over my bottom lip again. “We’ll take it slow, but we’re going to take this thing as far as it will go.”

  “And if it dies out a month or two from now?”

  “At least we tried. But I don’t think that’ll happen.”

  I pressed my forehead to his chest for a long minute.

  “I’m n
ot really much of a catch. I’m broken.”

  “So am I.”

  “Cole doesn’t approve of me. He’s afraid I’ll break your heart.”

  “It’s my heart.”

  I looked up at him. “And there’s Olivia.”

  “She loves me, too. Like mother, like daughter.”

  I groaned. “You throw that word around a lot.”

  “Get used to it. You’ll hear it a lot from now on.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He brushed his lips over my forehead. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t know me. It’s been, what, a month? That’s not long enough to know something like that.”

  “Maybe. But I think it is.”

  He lifted my chin and kissed me roughly. And I…I melted into him, so relieved to have him back that I couldn’t begin to express the pleasure that danced though my body at his touch. He was so familiar already. Was it possible? Could I trust what he said to me? Could I trust him?

  Something told me I could. He did, after all, save my life.

  Temporary. That was one word I was ready to remove from my vocabulary.

  ~~~

  DOMINIC

  Prologue

  Amy

  “Don’t forget your homework! I want everyone to turn in a paper on Monday morning!”

  The students weren’t listening. They were walking in clumps, three or four to a group, laughing and talking about the trouble they planned to get into over the weekend. I remembered Friday afternoons like this when I was in high school. I often went running off with my friends, going to parties and hanging out at the mall, having too much fun to worry about homework until Sunday night. It wasn’t until college that I took school seriously. But when you could coast through, why bother?

  I just shook my head as I settled back in my chair. I’d always told myself that when I became a teacher I would never give large amounts of homework on a Friday night. But that was before I fully appreciated the weight of standardized testing on a teacher. There was only so much time to get done everything that had to be done before testing in March. I wasn’t sixteen anymore. I couldn’t look at things through the eyes of a child—no matter how much I wanted to.