Defender

by Diana Palmer

  “Peter Stone,” Cash said. “He’s still with Micah Steele’s old group. He knows the territory and he’s got contacts of his own. I’ll give you his phone number. And I’ll call him myself and ask him to talk to you.”

  “Thanks,” Paul said.

  “We’re both on the same side,” Cash reminded him. “The bottom line is to get criminals off the street before they commit crimes. I’d hate like hell to have either of the Grayling women hurt any more than they’ve already been hurt.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  * * *

  Sari and Glory were leaning over a table, studying a map that was involved in a criminal case Blake Kemp’s office was trying in the next session of superior court, when Paul walked in the door.

  Glory saw him first and smiled. “Mr. Kemp’s out…” she began.

  “That’s okay, I can come back,” he said.

  “He won’t be back till tomorrow,” she told him.

  He shrugged. “I’ll catch him later in the week, then. I should have called first, but I had to talk to the police chief. Miss Grayling,” he added formally, when Sari glanced at him, “could I have a word with you?”

  “Only if you promise not to carry me out the door again,” she said haughtily.

  He pursed his lips. “Spoilsport,” he said.

  She flushed. Glory coughed.

  Sari walked over to where he was standing, and folded her arms over her breasts defensively. “Yes?”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets. He was somber. “We’re tracking the Leeds woman’s son,” he said under his breath. “He’s gone to Brooklyn to bury his mother. We think he’s going to look for a cleaner.”

  “A cleaner.” She wasn’t getting it.

  “A contract killer,” he said.

  Her breath caught. “For Daddy?” she asked.

  “We’re not sure.”

  “Oh.” She wasn’t sure what he was saying.

  “You’ve got bodyguards. Make sure they know what I’ve told you. They’ll understand what they need to do. That guy, Morris, he still work for your dad?”

  “Yes.” She said it with pure ice in her voice.

  “Is he with your dad, or at the house?”

  She swallowed. “He’s still driving for me.”

  His teeth clenched.

  “I can’t fire him,” she said. “I’d like to. He’s strictly my father’s man. But I don’t pay his salary.”

  “I’ll talk to Eb Scott,” he said.

  She looked up into his drawn face. She felt a cold chill go up her spine. “It isn’t just Daddy you think he’s after, is it?”

  He didn’t answer the question, except indirectly. “Nobody’s hurting you or Merrie, or Mandy,” he said tightly. “No matter what it takes, we’ll protect you.”

  The emotion he couldn’t hide was adding new lines to his face. His dark eyes were glittery with it.

  “All right,” Sari said. She searched his eyes. “Thanks.”

  He averted his gaze. “Tell your bodyguards I said to keep an eye on Morris, just in case.” He didn’t add that he was going to talk to Eb Scott and repeat what he’d told Cash.

  “I will.”

  He turned to go.

  “Why, Paul?”

  He hesitated. Then turned back to her. “Why, what?” he asked curtly.

  “Why do you care what happens to us now?” she asked tautly. “You just walked off and left us years ago, and never looked back.”

  His heart ached, just looking at her. “I like my life, just as it is,” he said. “No entanglements. No emotional ties. I do the job and go home.”

  “Is the job really enough?”

  He smiled sadly. “It’s all I have.”

  He walked away while she was struggling to find a reply.

  * * *

  Paul called Eb Scott the moment he got back to San Antonio.

  “Morris is one of those guys who’ll do damned near anything he’s told if he’s paid enough,” he said. “He’s driving Isabel and, I assume, Merrie. But he needs to be watched. There’s another complication.”

  “What?” Eb asked.

  “The woman who was helping Grayling launder mob money had a son. He’s gone to Brooklyn to arrange her funeral, but we think he may be arranging a contract killer for Grayling and his daughters, as well. He’s mentally unstable and apparently drunk most of the time trying to deal with the loss.”

  “Damn,” Eb muttered.

  “I can’t get on the house or grounds without an invitation, and the girls can’t give me that. Grayling would love having me hauled up in court for trespassing on his property. But if professionals are brought in, the surveillance I assume Grayling still has won’t be adequate. There’s nothing to stop a killer from calling one of the women and saying another one has been hurt, or needs help, to lure her out of a safe zone.”

  “That was done not too long ago. Jake Blair’s daughter Carlie was kidnapped by just such a ploy,” Eb said.

  “Blair. The minister?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn!”

  “She was rescued in time. The boss was actually after Jake, not her. But if they aren’t warned, it could work. How certain are you that the woman’s son has the daughters and not the father in his sights?”

  “We’re not certain of anything right now. I just want them safe.” He hesitated. “Look, I don’t have family. Well, I’ve got a cousin in the mob in Jersey, but he doesn’t really count. Isabel and Merrie and Mandy, they’re my family. Things were done to the girls because I left. I didn’t know about it. But even if all three of them hate me, I have to do everything I can to keep them safe.”

  “They won’t be harmed. You have my word. The men I’ve got watching them are the best I have.”

  “Grayling always had other people watching them, even when I was head of security for him,” Paul cautioned. “I don’t know if that’s still the case, but I imagine it is. And the men he’d hire won’t be like yours. They’ll come from the backstreets.”

  Eb chuckled.

  “Okay, what’s that about?” Paul wanted to know.

  “Rogers and Barton spotted them the first day,” Eb replied. “We got intel. The first move they make toward the women, they’ll be sitting over at the detention center with Hayes Carson. They’re both on parole. One false step…”

  “God, I like the way you roll.” Paul chuckled.

  “Come work for me,” Eb said. “I’ll make you a legend in your own time.”

  “Thanks, but I like where I’m at,” Paul said lazily. “If I ever get old enough to retire, the benefits will be nice.”

  “Well, to each his own, I guess. Don’t worry about Isabel and Merrie and Mandy. I’ve got it covered.”

  “Thanks. I feel better.”

  “If you need help, you know where I am.”

  “I appreciate it. Grier gave me the name of a merc he knows in Brooklyn. That’s going to be my starting point.”

  “Good luck.”

  “I’m going to need a little of that,” Paul replied.

  * * *

  He got on a plane to Newark the next day. Betty Leeds’s son had shown up in the bar Cash told Paul about. Peter Stone had staked it out and had a photo of the man on his cell phone to compare. He pegged him talking to a known mob figure.

  With that information, Paul went to the US Marshals office and sat down with old friend Bryan Moss.

  “What can I help you with?” Moss asked warmly.

  “This guy.” He pushed his cell phone across to the man, who grimaced when he saw the photo that Peter Stone had texted him from the bar.

  “Anthony Cross,” Moss replied. He shook his head. “If Justice could just get one conviction on
this guy… I guess we live on hope.” He pushed the cell phone back across to Paul. “He’s only been arrested once in connection with a hit. He doesn’t do them himself. Too dirty for his little hands. He subcontracts. There’s one main guy he uses. Tony Barca. He’s got half a dozen arrests, but there’s always a witness who disappears or a technicality he gets off on. He belongs to the East Riders. They’ve got great lawyers.”

  “East Riders?” Paul asked.

  “Local gang. They harbored a fugitive we had to take down a few months ago. Get this, the turkeys actually targeted one of my squad leaders!”

  Paul smiled. “I’ll bet that didn’t go the way they planned.”

  “Are you kidding?” Moss scoffed. “Justice got two of them on attempted murder, and they didn’t walk. We got one hell of a US attorney here. He nailed them to the wall, and the witnesses were our own guys—incorruptible.”

  “At least somebody’s sweeping up the trash.”

  Moss gave him a warm smile. “You did a great job yourself. You were, and are, one hell of a lawman. Incorruptible, like us.”

  “Lot of good it did me, personally,” he said. “I still feel the guilt, all these years down the road. I was so hotheaded in those days.”

  “You didn’t know, Paul,” he replied quietly. “Nobody could have guessed what would happen. LaCarta was a minor mob boss. He didn’t even have much of a rep in Trenton.”

  “Yes, but he was the kid brother of the guy I sent up,” Paul reminded him. “And he got even.”

  “Not without cost,” Moss said. “He paid the price.”

  “Ten years, with good behavior,” Paul said coldly. “Ten years! He’ll be eligible for parole in… Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Moss’s eyebrows arched. “You didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “I know somebody from the local DA’s office was supposed to contact you about that. Listen, LaCarta got a shiv in the heart last month.”

  Paul’s eyes widened. “He live?”

  “No, he didn’t live.” Moss lowered his voice. “Rumor is that your cousin had a pal do him. I don’t know if it’s true. Mikey never got over what happened, either.”

  “Me and Mikey are all that’s left of my whole family,” Paul said. “Yeah, he was tight with… Well, I won’t pretend to mourn LaCarta. God’s mill grinds slowly but relentlessly, they say.”

  “They’re right. What’s Mikey doing these days?”

  “Still working for Leo, I guess,” Paul told him. “I talk to him occasionally. We got together in Newark a couple of months ago. I was on my way back to Texas.” He hesitated then he looked up. “We talked about the past.”

  “I guess he talked about the past to someone else,” Moss mused. “Just as well. LaCarta is one less piece of trash to sweep off the street.”

  “So he is.”

  “You were crazy about that guy’s daughter in Texas,” the older man said. “Why didn’t you stay?”

  Paul’s face closed up. “Money.”

  “Money?”

  “She had two hundred million and I work for the government,” Paul replied. Pride almost choked him.

  “You take things too seriously, pal,” Moss sighed. “If she wanted you, she could have given it up, you know? Put it in a trust, donated it to charity. She could have found a way.”

  “She’s had money her whole life, Moss,” Paul replied. “How could I ask her to sacrifice her way of life, to live in a tiny apartment and do her own cooking?”

  “If she loved you, it wouldn’t be a sacrifice.”

  Paul lowered his eyes. “Yeah, well, I made a stupid decision and now I’m stuck with the consequences. It’s a lot more than money now.” He thought of the scars she must be carrying, both she and Merrie, from what he’d said to her father. It wounded him. “I can’t ever have her. She hates my guts. But I’ll protect her, any way I can.”

  “Tell Mikey to have a talk with the Leeds woman’s son,” Moss chided.

  “Oh, sure, that’ll work. Hell, the guy loved his mother. Maybe he’s just nuts from grief and he’s talking through his hat.”

  “If you believed that, you wouldn’t be sitting in my office.”

  Paul grimaced. “Well, no, I guess I wouldn’t. So, where can I find this go-between guy?” he added, and pulled up the notes app on his cell phone.

  * * *

  Isabel felt sick at what Paul had told her. She pulled her bodyguards to the side before they got into the limousine that Morris was driving.

  “Paul said that Morris would do anything for money, and he works for my father,” she began.

  The tall one held up a hand. “Eb’s already talked to us,” he reassured her. “We also know about the other bodyguards your father assigned to follow you.”

  “Yes, we do,” the broader one said with a cold smile. “They have priors and they’re on parole. One little slip and the sheriff’s going to have some new boarders in his detention center.”

  Isabel smiled. “Thanks, guys. I feel much better.”

  “We’re not letting anything happen to you,” the tall one told her.

  “We wouldn’t dare,” his companion agreed. “Eb would skin us alive!”

  “He seems like a very nice man,” Isabel said, having seen him and his wife at community get-togethers.

  “That’s exactly how he seems until you see him at the other end of an automatic weapon,” the tall one replied.

  “I’m just grateful for the help,” she told them. “My father is scary.”

  “Not to us,” the broad one said gently. “So just relax.”

  Which seemed like good advice. Except that when they got to the mansion, Darwin Grayling was standing in the hall, waiting for them.

  “Isabel,” Darwin said coldly. He looked from one of her bodyguards to the other. “I’d like to speak to you in private for a moment, please,” he said, his voice soft and nonthreatening. “It’s about the house and the furnishings. I’ve made a decision about them.”

  “The house?” Sari asked.

  “Yes. Your mother left some papers in the safety-deposit box for you. I’d like to discuss them with you. I have a meeting with my attorneys, so it won’t take long.”

  Isabel glanced at the bodyguards, who were unusually tense. But her father seemed all right. Surely he wouldn’t hit her in front of witnesses. And she could always scream if she had to.

  “All right,” she said. She smiled at her companions. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  The taller one stared pointedly at Darwin Grayling, who simply ignored him. He opened the study door. Isabel walked through it. He reached behind him, unseen, and locked it quietly.

  “Did you know that Timothy Leeds wants me dead?” her father asked conversationally. “He’s got it in his head that I killed his mother.”

  She turned toward him. “Did you?” she asked boldly.

  He smiled coldly. “I’d hardly admit it to an assistant district attorney, even if I had.”

  “Hardly. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “I want you to get on a plane to Saudi Arabia tonight,” he said, still smiling. “I have the private jet waiting at the San Antonio airport. Morris is going to drive you.”

  “Wh…what?” she exclaimed.

  “The government is about to confiscate all my bank accounts,” he said. “I have to have money to pay my attorney. The prince I spoke to you about is willing to marry you right away. He’ll advance me several million…”

  “I am not marrying some man I’ve never met!” Sari exclaimed.

  “You’ll do it,” he said. “You won’t refuse.”

  “The devil I won’t…!”

  While she was protesting, he jerked his belt out of his trousers and folded
it, snapping it loudly.

  The sound paralyzed her for several seconds, bringing back memories of intolerable pain, physical anguish, fear.

  She backed away from him, white in the face, too startled to open her mouth.

  “You’ll go, or you’ll die, damn you!”

  He raised his hand and brought the belt down on her shoulders. She screamed at the top of her lungs and ran behind the desk, holding her arm, which was bleeding from contact with the belt buckle.

  Two things happened at once. The door behind Darwin Grayling burst open, and Grayling grabbed his head, screamed once and fell down dead.

  TWELVE

  Paul met Peter Stone in a Japanese restaurant near the bar where the younger man had photographed the go-between criminal.

  “I love sushi,” Paul commented as he dug into his own platter of it. “I found a little Korean place that makes Japanese-style sushi in San Antonio.”

  “It’s one of my favorites, too,” Peter said. He looked up. “Cash Grier sounds like a man who’s got the world lately,” he added on a chuckle.

  “A little girl and a new son, and a wife who makes models look ugly by comparison. What’s not to be happy about?” the older man said with a smile.

  “He’s still got an edge over most men, but in his day, he was unique,” Peter said. “They tell stories about him even now. He’s done things most of us only dream about. You know, he went through the British SAS’s Fan Dance on the first attempt.”

  “That, I had heard,” Paul replied. He smiled. “The assassin thing. True or false?”

  “True,” Peter said. “He rarely even worked with a spotter. Did black ops jobs all over the world.”

  “Hard to imagine a man like that settling down to be a police chief in a small town.”

  “Even harder to see a man like Jake Blair do it.” Peter chuckled.

  “The minister?” Paul exclaimed.

  “Yes. He was black ops, too. They called him ‘Snake.’ He’s pretty legendary himself, although he has a different mindset these days.”

  “Quite a change from what he did, all right.”

  Peter nodded. “I have a few free days. I’ll shadow your go-between and see what I can find out. He doesn’t know me and he’ll have no idea I’m connected in any way to his new project.”