Duty to Defend

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

  “What sort of mess did you run into up there?” She pointed over their heads.

  “Come and see.” Resurrecting his lost grin, Jax stood up and helped her to her feet for the second time that day.

  They trooped upstairs into the long-neglected, apartment-style dwelling, arriving in what was once a sitting room and was now stuffed with several stacks of boxes full of who-knew-what and articles of ancient furniture. Noah and Jax had opened a few windows, so much of the musty smell had blown away, but a trace lingered, tickling Daci’s nostrils.

  Jax motioned at the conglomeration. “This is stuff Nate deemed best suited for the auction. We have a number of pieces of antique furniture that should clean up nicely, and the boxes hold a variety of silver services that need polishing, seventeenth-and eighteenth-century china tableware and figurines, and odd collectible items, as well as some original artwork your brother didn’t think your family would care to keep.”

  Daci nodded. “I trust his judgment. Besides, if we haven’t missed any of this stuff all of our lives, we certainly don’t need it now. The Uniquely Made Foundation needs the proceeds more.”

  “You don’t care to go through the stuff?”

  “Why bother? I’ll see it tomorrow when the appraiser comes in to evaluate it. I’m more interested in what Nate wants to us keep. In our family, he’s the most inclined to pack-rat-itis.”

  Jax laughed. “Okay. That kind of thing is in what used to be the main bedroom. We didn’t touch the items in the back bedroom.”

  “Why not?”

  “Nate said it was your parents’ personal things. He seemed a little skittish about digging through those boxes.”

  Daci’s mouth went dry. The day after her parents’ funeral, she and her grandmother had gone through the house to root out and destroy any alcohol, drugs or paraphernalia. Then, exhausted physically and emotionally, Grandma had hired a couple of temporary workers to put her daughter and son-in-law’s personal belongings into boxes and store the things away up here. At the time, Daci promised herself to go through things someday. What better “someday” than right now when they were in the swing of sorting and throwing?

  “I want to start there,” Daci announced.

  “Are you sure you’re up to it?”

  Daci snorted. “I’ve been sitting around like a wallflower for two weeks. A little activity isn’t going to hurt me. I promise not to lift anything. Why don’t you bring me one of those burgers Nate’s making, and I’ll get started.”

  “I can see you’re not going to be talked out of this, but behave yourself while I’m gone.” He shook a finger at her. “I’ll be back as quickly as I can to do any grunt work.”

  “Yes, Papa.” Daci laughed and headed toward the back of the apartment.

  The musty smell grew decidedly stronger, and she decided to get professional housecleaners up here to give the place a full scrub as soon as all the stored items were removed. Even if they didn’t really use this space, they still had an obligation to maintain it properly.

  At the closed door of the room that held the personal belongings of parents she’d loved but had never been able to respect, she paused with her hand on the antique glass knob.

  “Here goes,” she whispered to herself. “You can do this.”

  Twenty minutes after she’d entered the room, she perched on the edge of a cedar chest, hugging herself and trying to stop shaking. Her world had come crashing in on itself once again.

  * * *

  Pleased that he’d remembered before Nate had to remind him that Daci liked a few pickled jalapeños on her burger, Jax trotted up the steps in the carriage house. A large serving tray held two high-end paper plates—if such things could be dubbed high-end—that sported fat, juicy burgers, deli potato salad, carrot sticks and a couple of bottles of water. If Daci was going to attempt physical labor, he’d make sure she was hydrated.

  At the top of the stairs, he stopped to listen. The place was suspiciously quiet. Then a soft sob broke the silence. Had she fallen and hurt herself? Heart rate rocketing, Jax plopped the tray onto the nearest box top and took off for the back room. He found Daci slumped atop a wooden chest, rocking back and forth and hugging something tight against her torso.

  Jax hit his knees. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head, sniffling deeply. “Not physically. There are...worse ways of being hurt.” The words came out waterlogged and ragged.

  Daci loosened her grip on the object she held and let it flop onto her lap. It was a small sketch pad.

  “One of your parents was a doodler, too?” Jax struggled to comprehend what might be going on.

  “My mother.” Daci sat up straight. “But not a doodler. A real artist, especially in drawing people. She never used her talent except to amuse herself, which was truly the world’s loss. I found this pad and quite a few others in this chest. The date on the cover made it the last one she’d been working in before she and my dad were murdered. Naturally, I was curious and—” Her voice broke.

  Without another word, she handed Jax the pad. Gut hollow, he opened to the first page and found a sketch of a man’s face. Every stroke of the pencil contributed to forming such a detailed likeness it could almost have been a black-and-white photograph. The man was handsome and laughing, but lines of dissipation around his eyes, nose and mouth and an infinite emptiness in the eyes, created a wrenching impact of sadness rather than joy.

  “My father,” Daci said. “Go on until you reach the last sketch.”

  Slowly Jax paged through more drawings, mostly of people at parties or dining or shopping. Probably the stuff of the artist’s everyday life. There were a few of the Marlowe children, including Daci as a teenager. Those he would have liked to linger over—so vivid, so revealing of character—but she urged him onward.

  At last, he reached an up-close facial sketch that stopped him cold. He looked up and met Daci’s stricken gaze.

  “What is a drawing of a young Liggett Naylor doing in your mother’s sketch pad?”

  “Read the notation on the bottom.”

  Jax returned his gaze to the drawing. Most of the renderings in the book hadn’t included a caption or even a signature, but sure enough, in the right-hand corner, where an artist’s signature might go, plain block letters read, “Niall’s father.”

  Jax gulped against a tightness in his throat. “Niall? Your youngest brother who was born with FAS?”

  “A quirky thing about my mother. When pregnant the first four times, she managed to lay off the sauce, allowing us to enter the world healthy. Not so with her last pregnancy. It was as if she didn’t care.”

  Daci continued to tremble, and Jax laid a comforting hand on her knee.

  “I was only ten years old when he was born,” she continued. “I got to hold him once at the hospital. Grandmother brought me to visit. From the moment I cuddled him, I loved Niall with all of my heart. I could see he wasn’t quite normal, and my brain was spinning with plans about how to take care of him and protect him, but I never got the chance. My dad brought my mom home, but not Niall. In response to my nagging, my parents told me he was dead and buried and wouldn’t discuss the matter further. Wouldn’t even tell me where to find the grave. Lack of closure has haunted me all my life, but I never could have guessed this horrible secret.”

  She wrung her hands together. “Where did my mother meet Liggett Naylor? He’s not the sort she would run into at a high-society bash. Did my mom have an affair? Was she raped? Did my dad know? Possibly not. If he knew my mom had been unfaithful to him, the subject would have come up—loudly—in one of their arguments. Our tender ears were never considered in the content of verbal battles.”

  In Jax’s breast, deep anger warred with great sorrow. “You know we have to show this to Rey. This is going to open up a whole other line of investigation.”

  “I know.�
�� She sighed. “I have a ton of questions that need answering. Having law-enforcement help to find those answers is probably for the best.”

  “Especially if this family connection to Naylor is behind the attempts on your life. It seems too coincidental that his escape from custody was followed by a hit contract on you.”

  “But why now—over two decades after his involvement with my mother? And why only come after me and not the rest of my family? Though I’m thankful for that little detail. I’d be going out of my skull if my siblings were being targeted.”

  “Hopefully, we’ll find that out when we track Naylor down.”

  Within the hour, the revelation of Daci’s family connection to Liggett Naylor had created a flurry of activity within both the PD and the Marshals Service. The old case file on her parents’ murders was reopened. No one put it past Naylor to have been involved in their deaths. Perhaps that mass shooting wasn’t so random after all. Had the man in prison for the crime been framed? Even though the party guest been found passed out from booze and drugs with the gun in his hand—open-and-shut case—maybe he hadn’t pulled the trigger.

  A couple of days later, Jax located Daci in the kitchen, sitting on a bar stool at the quartz-topped island. Her fork hovered over a plate of lasagna, but she was staring off into space. He didn’t blame her for being preoccupied, not only with her shocking revelation, but with auction preparations. He’d been trying to talk her into postponing the charity function. What was the need for it right now if they’d identified who was after her?

  He settled on the stool beside her, and she spared him a sober glance.

  “Smells good.” He gestured at her plate.

  “There’s lots left over from last night.” She waved her fork at the refrigerator. “Never mind. You can have this.” She slid her plate toward him. “I thought I was hungry, but I guess I’m not.”

  He slid the plate back to her. “Hungry or not, you need to eat. You’ve been picking at your food like a bird the past couple of days. That’s no way to regain your strength.”

  “I appreciate your consideration, but physically, I’ve been feeling much improved. Mentally, I’m just boggled, and emotionally—well, you don’t want to go there.”

  “Have you spoken to your siblings about your discovery?”

  She wrinkled her nose in that adorable way of hers. “Yes, and they weren’t pretty conversations. Blown away would be putting their reactions mildly. Nate didn’t want to leave me to return to his practice, and the others wanted to rush back here. I’ve banned them from the premises. With Naylor in the picture, any place around me is too dangerous. He’s got goons galore on his direct payroll. He doesn’t have to waste time trying to locate a new hit broker.”

  Jax frowned. She had a point. “Then why did he go the hire-a-hit route in the first place?”

  “I’m not sure he did. Maybe the person after me isn’t Naylor after all. What if someone is trying to protect Naylor from whatever threat he or she thinks I pose? That’s why we need to move ahead with the auction. Someone within my parents’ set of acquaintances introduced Naylor into my mother’s life. I’ve got a certainty in my gut that whoever it is will try for me then. Once we catch them, that could be the break we need to find out where Naylor is.”

  Jax had a certainty in his gut, too—whatever it took to ensure this threat to Daci was forever ended, he would do it. Yet a stray doubt niggled at him. What if he failed Daci like he’d failed Regan?

  Eleven

  All that glitters is most definitely not gold. The cliché wandered through Daci’s mind as she surveyed the vast third-floor ballroom of the Marlowe estate house. The thought had not come because of the costly items on display that would soon be auctioned off, but because of the people garbed in their glitzy best. Hardly anyone on the guest list had failed to put in an appearance, leaving the field wide open for who among them wanted her dead.

  Dozens of Boston’s upper crust, as well as many others who aspired to be accepted as such, flowed from item to item. The buzz of comments and conversation nearly drowned out the string quartet that provided background music for the gala event. The servers bearing hors d’oeuvres and designer non-alcoholic beverages on trays glided silently and nearly unnoticed through the crowd. The anonymity was a good thing, since every one of them was either a deputy marshal or a member of the police force.

  Even Jax hadn’t been able to say the law-enforcement coverage was inadequate. But she still had the impression he’d prefer her to be locked up in a tower until her hair grew long enough to reach the ground or her deadly enemy was exposed, whichever came first.

  And there came Mr. Protective now, striding toward her in a tux and bow tie. A pleasant shiver swirled down Daci’s spine. The man did clean up grand. Not that he’d been shabby in his lawyer suit, but she’d started to get used to him in jeans and a polo shirt covered in dust. To explain why a Springfield resident was attending this strictly Boston do, he had been introduced to guests as her boyfriend. His idea, not hers, but a stupid bit of her kept wishing the status was not a cover but the real thing. A lot of good wishing had ever done her.

  Sorry, Lord. I promised to pray, not whine. I’ll get back on that plan.

  “Have I told you yet that you look stunning?” Jax took her hands in his and grinned down at her.

  Her stomach did a flip, but she commanded the ornery organ into place and responded with a cool smile.

  “Thank you, kind sir, but I could say, ‘This old thing?’ and mean it.”

  She glanced down at the art deco beaded sheath gown in silver-blue that she’d pulled out of her closet from a years-ago engagement party for a school friend. The current situation hadn’t allowed her to go shopping for new clothes. She’d even done her hair herself in a partial updo that swept all but a few strands of strawberry blond curls away from her face and into a twisted gather high on the back of her head, leaving a generous waterfall flowing down her back.

  “Here are the lovebirds,” a female voice cooed.

  Daci’s heart jumped. She knew that voice. Felicity Horner, one of her best friends from high school—the one for whose party she’d worn this dress. If Daci was worried about keeping up social appearances, she might have been embarrassed about re-wearing the dress, but sadness was all she really felt. Maybe a little guilt, too. She hadn’t stayed close with any of her high school friends—mostly because the majority had gone off to college while she stayed home to look after her siblings.

  “Fliss!” Daci turned to find her old friend gazing at her with speculative hazel eyes. “It’s good to see you.” She hugged the other woman and received an air kiss in return. “I must have been AWOL from my greeting post when you arrived.”

  “No problem. Your hunk of a boyfriend made me feel welcome.” Felicity sent Jax a coy smile.

  He offered a small bow. “Glad you could attend tonight. I’ll leave you two to catch up while I do some more mingling.”

  Daci’s gaze followed Jax’s easy stride until he melted into the swelling crowd. Of course, Felicity’s gaze did the same. The woman’s expression could only be described as predatory. Daci resisted the impulse to form claws with her fingers. What did it say about her that she reacted so strongly to someone’s interest in a man who was only posing as her boyfriend?

  Daci commanded herself to stand down. She wasn’t entirely clueless about the events in her old friend’s life since they’d last been in touch. Over the past weeks, the Marshals Service had conducted deep background checks into all of Daci’s proposed guests. It had felt a little uncomfortable reading details about the lives of old friends and acquaintances—including facts that weren’t publicly known and that the guests had, in fact, taken great pains to hide—but she had to study the reports to see if anything jumped out at her as to who might want to kill her. Nothing had, but she came to the party armed with a lot of catch-up information on her
former friends, as well as friends of her parents.

  Felicity’s first marriage had fallen apart within a few years. Now the woman was in the midst of divorcing her third husband and taking him to the cleaners like she’d done the others. If the jaded expression in Felicity’s eyes said anything, she hadn’t found happiness or fulfillment in her wealth or her multiple attempts at love, only bitterness.

  The woman swiveled and faced Daci. “You look surprisingly good, Dace. I mean, I heard about you getting shot. Why on earth have you gone into such a dangerous profession? Why go into any profession at all when you have this?” She followed the questions with a brief laugh and a wave around the room.

  Daci smiled and shook her head. “You were always direct. Glad to see that hasn’t changed. To tell you the truth, by the time my sibs hopped off my plate and into the wide world, I was a challenge junkie. I had to get busy with something that keeps me on my toes.”

  “And you’ve always been one driven to right the wrongs of this world.” Felicity’s tone was a bit condescending and her smile brittle, as if she considered it naive of Daci to think good might triumph over evil.

  Daci’s heart broke for her old friend. Hoping to lighten the tone, she redirected the conversation. “Is your dad here, too?”

  Griffin Horner was one of the suspects high on her list. The Horner family had been frequent guests at the Marlowe estate for generations. Griffin had become her parents’ best party buddy, and should have been at the bash where they’d been massacred, but a case of the flu—or so he’d claimed at the time—had kept him home that evening. The current background check revealed he’d lost his taste for the high life after that shocking event, and displaying a knack for arbitrage, entered the family banking business.

  “No, Daddy is out of the country attending a bunch of dry financial meetings.” Felicity tossed a lock of her chocolate-brown hair over her shoulder. “I rarely see him anymore, but Grandfather is here.” She waved manicured fingernails toward a small group chatting near the display of a century-old silver service.