by Lexy Timms
“I wouldn’t worry about them at this point.” William laughed, not even looking up as he shuffled through his stack, nearly dropping several and only just saving them. “They’re safe. We can always return once our business has concluded, and have a true family outing if you so desire.”
“Great,” Luke muttered. “I haven’t seen your personal assistant for a long time. I assume he’ll be there in your place again?” It was impossible to miss that eye roll. Or the sarcasm. William seemed to be ignoring both.
Finding it hard to enjoy romance when one’s pretend fiancé was acting the ass, Dani looked out the passenger window in the back of the car. They were too crowded, the three of them in the back, despite it being a luxury car. They might as well have been facing each other, the way they had been in the limo. This was an old argument, a face-off between estranged father and son, and the air in the car was charged with the tension.
“Look,” Dani said, not sure where she was going, but feeling the need to defuse things.
“Again?” William asked Luke, ignoring her, looking up finally, rolling his own eyes in exact imitation of his son a moment ago though he hadn’t seen it. “You do realize that I was there in every capacity I could be.”
“Good. Well, you’re here now, so let’s start over, shall we?”
“If you think it would help, certainly. We seem to have some time to kill.” William gestured at the parking lot in front of them, a back-up of vehicles that stretched to the horizon and likely beyond. At this point they could have walked faster.
Luke snorted. “You didn’t insist that the city empty out for you? You know, leave a table for six and some sycophants to serve you?”
“What are you on about?” William snapped. “You have no idea what...” He stopped and looked from his son to Dani and back. “You have no idea...” he said, and faltered, unable to finish the words. The blood drained from his face, leaving him looking old and grey, his shoulders slumping as if he’d suddenly become a very old man.
It was a startling transformation, from the vivacious energetic dynamo that he’d been since he came into their lives. Dani touched Luke’s arm, warning him to back off. To let this go.
“Your mother,” William said quietly, turning his head to look out the window as though afraid to see what he might discover in his son’s eyes. “Did she ever talk about me?”
“Only when she was swearing,” Luke said, looking past Dani, out the other window.
It was ridiculous. This battle of wills. This absolute denial of the father/son bond.
But, then, she hadn’t exactly been batting a thousand with her own father, so who was she to judge. Dani stared at the floor, focusing on her shoes, wishing she were anywhere but in the back of this car right now. They needed to talk this out, but not with her present.
Not that either of them seemed to remember that she was there.
William turned and sat forward again, staring through the windshield without seeing the traffic. He checked his watch and looked pointedly at the driver in the rearview mirror, who only shrugged. There was little else he could do. Nothing was moving. The driver in the car next to them was just sitting there, reading a book.
“When you graduated high school, you decided to join the Marines,” William said suddenly, to the back of the front seat.
“Was that in my file? I stand corrected; you really do know all the intimate parts of my soul.”
Dani had never heard Luke sound so bitter. She actually cringed a little.
“Your mother was opposed to it; she wanted you to pursue medicine or sports or skydiving. Something safe. But you joined up. And washed out.”
Luke’s eyes had gone cold. It was like he wasn’t even in his own head anymore. “I didn’t wash out.”
“That sucker-punch you landed on the lieutenant would have gotten you kicked out before you even finished boot camp.”
“You know about that?”
Dani looked between the men, listening. She knew how serious that charge would be. If it were true, Luke would have ended up in the brig, dishonorable discharge, everything the government could throw at a young man that would bury him.
“Doesn’t matter,” Luke grumbled, sticking his chin out and crossing his arms. “The little prick had it coming.”
“No doubt,” William said, still not looking at his son. “And yet, you finished boot camp.”
Luke sat in silence for a moment. It stretched into two. “There was a paperwork problem,” he said quietly, but he didn’t sound too convinced. “It was dropped.”
William nodded. “Dropped. In fact, you were offered a post in Special Forces. Operations so black even I don’t know what they were. Quite a coup for a disciplinary case.”
Luke’s face froze. Dani stopped breathing.
“You?” Luke asked in a voice that cracked under a dry mouth and closed throat.
William nodded.
“And after?”
Apparently, William knew what he meant. He shrugged. “You were looking bored. Even considered re-enlisting, even mercenary work.” William glanced over at Dani. “With apologies, of course,” he said to her and looked back at his son. “I couldn’t have that.”
“YOU couldn’t...” Luke choked. If the car hadn’t started moving again, Dani wondered if he would have climbed over her to get out. She still wouldn’t put it past him. They were only going about 25 mph.
“How many people are actively recruited by the FBI?” William asked, giving his son a hard look. “None. They don’t go looking for new people, they don’t have to. You skipped over a lot of more experienced men when you ended up working for Ray.”
“Why?”
“Why? Really? You would ask that?”
“I’ll stand by it,” Luke said, sticking out his chin. “Why?”
“Because,” William sighed, “you’re my son.”
“And you were suspicious of Ray,” Luke guessed after a moment. “You needed a man on the inside to watch him.”
“And who better than my son?”
There was another long pause. Dani held her breath, and watched Luke clench and unclench the hand nearest her. When it balled into a fist she placed her fingers over him, letting him know it was okay. In fact, right about now, she was not so pleased with William either.
What if my father had done that to me? How would I be feeling right now?
“Tell me something,” Luke said, his hand refusing to relax under hers. “Did I ever make my own decisions?”
William turned in his seat to look at him. He glanced at Dani. “The good ones were all you,” he said, giving her a rather pointed look. Dani blushed.
William turned and faced the front again, keeping his eyes fixed on the heavy traffic.
It took a long time before Luke’s hand relaxed against his thigh.
It took nearly two hours to get from the airport to the home of Mrs. Pinal’s daughter. No one spoke until they left the highway, when Luke suddenly grumbled. “Am I supposed to thank you?”
William sighed, and shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it.”
This time it was Dani’s turn to raise their entwined fingers and kiss his knuckles. He looked at her, and somehow managed to smile, even if he looked a little pale and wan.
Dani’s heart broke, and when she leaned forward to kiss him again it was his lips she captured with her own, having gone long beyond being embarrassed to give a PDA in front of Luke’s father.
“Sir,” the driver said as they pulled into a tree-lined neighborhood. “Apparently, there’s someone else who has entered the house. There’s the sound of things breaking. Do I order them to move in?”
William jerked around to face forward, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “No,” William said after a moment. “We’ll find out ourselves. How much longer?”
“Five minutes at most, sir.”
“Better make it three.”
Chapter Ten
The car careened around a corner, and the three of
them bailed out onto the sidewalk before it had even come to a full stop.
“Sir!” the driver called, and waved a cell phone in the air. William ran back to the car while Luke and Dani exchanged glances and waited to see what he would do. This had become his show.
But William only shoved the phone back at the driver and yelled, “Whoever’s in there, they have reinforcements on the way.”
Luke grabbed his father’s arm and pointed at the house behind him. It was a split level, built of red brick with white trim. A long porch ran along the front of the house, though much of it was concealed by heavy pine trees. “What about us?”
“Our reinforcements are right behind theirs!” William argued, turning his back on his son, on the house, on everything, apparently to focus on waiting until help arrived.
“They’ll get it before we do!” Luke argued, then realized he was speaking to his father’s back and turned, throwing his hands up in the air in a look of absolute disgust intermingled with frustration, not helped by his father’s stolid refusal to be moved.
“You will hold position!” William said, shooting them both a look over his shoulder. “Until the police arrive.”
Luke and Dani both turned at the sound of a crash from somewhere inside the house. He took a step forward but William called him to heel again, this time swearing and ordering him to stay put, or he’d call the FBI himself to make sure he stayed where he was put.
Of course, Luke took the bait and started in on a diatribe that sounded all too familiar after the argument in the car. Dani looked at Luke and William, and realized that with the two of them so damn distracted absolutely anything could happen, and broke every bit of intelligence training she’d ever had. She bolted to the door. It took the men almost a full minute before they figured out what she was up to, and by then she’d reached the porch. She ignored the shouts of her name and burst through the door of the house, reaching for a weapon that, in the excitement, she’d forgotten she no longer carried.
Well, shit. If that didn’t must make things lovely.
What’s more, she found the intruder immediately.
Someone in a black shirt and pants was searching frantically in the dining room, tearing apart the china cabinet, the cupboards, and everything else in the place. Linens were strewn across the floor, and two statues that might have once been birds were lying on the floor, broken.
The fact that the intruder was still searching meant neither of the two statues was the correct one.
Dani couldn’t see if the rest of the house was similarly vandalized, but she crouched down and silently slid closer to the figure, stopping behind a lounge chair with an ottoman in the living room. From there she had a clear view into the dining room, thanking her lucky stars that the house was open concept and there weren’t really walls between the various rooms so much as suggestions of walls, three pillars on each side of an opening about six feet wide in this case. Unfortunately, while it gave her that clear view, it also didn’t give her much in the way of choices for cover.
And she had no weapon. As she should have remembered before throwing herself into the room. It was a wonder she hadn’t been heard coming through the door.
On the other hand, the sudden cascade of fine china to the floor, adding to previous debris, might have explained some of why she’d gone unnoticed. She flinched as shards of china scattered like buckshot, some of it hitting the cushions of the chair in front of her.
I’m glad I ditched the shorts, she thought as she crawled to a better position, careful of where she put her hands, and wary of the debris on the floor. Behind the couch offered a little more cover, but not as good a view.
She shifted in the nick of time. A car screeched to a stop outside the window behind the shadowy figure, and Dani saw that the intruder was a woman with short blond hair and a severe expression. She also wore shoes with high heels, the most useless thing a person could wear in a moment like this. That put Dani in a better position to fight, though, as she didn’t have to balance while she fought. Which, of course, she was going to have to do. There was no way she was going to be able to look for that dratted bird so long as this insane woman was in the way. She watched as the woman turned inside the house and shifted over to the window. Careful. Her movements fluid. Practiced. She lifted the corner of the curtain only enough to see clearer, keeping well to the side, out of the range of weapons.
A pro.
Pro or not, she was going down.
When the woman turned back to the china cabinet, Dani was ready. She kicked a footstool squarely into the woman’s path, tripping her, sending her down onto the shards of what had been someone else’s company best. She caught herself on gloved hands, launching herself back up, on her feet instantly, alert and wary, as Dani rose to face her, wishing like crazy that she had a gun of some sort. A glass-strewn floor in a combat situation smacked a little too much of Die Hard for her tastes.
The woman seemed to be having the same thoughts, eyes flickering to the floor as she moved real slow. Sideways, hands out in a ready position, moving over to the carpeted area of the living room, moving not quite toward Dani, but further out of the range of glass.
She’d give her that. Dani wasn’t masochistic enough to want to play in the glass either.
They faced each other, assessing, analyzing while the sounds of sirens and yelling filtered through the windows. Whoever this was, she was familiar and even comfortable with fighting in heels, meaning the edge Dani was counting on wasn’t there. Also, thin heels could poke holes in people. Very uncomfortable holes. And somehow, in this slow circle, Dani was the one with her back to the sea of glass, meaning if she went down it was going to hurt, and hurt bad. Dammit.
When the fight started, it went quick. Dani almost missed the first movement, the other woman being aggressive and more willing to take changes. She raised a foot to kick, but it was feigned. When Dani went to dodge the woman’s other leg snapped out into a side kick that connected with Dani’s midriff, taking the wind out of her, though she’d been half expecting it and turned with the blow. She was slow, though, being out of shape after too many weeks at home, with very little activity. Dani could feel the point of the heel rake her stomach. Her shirt gave a little tug and a small part of Dani’s mind registered that she’d probably torn it, which pissed her off to no end, as the shirt had been brand new, and rather comfortable at that.
The woman landed on one leg as Dani fell. As she went down, Dani twisted to stay on the carpeting, knowing there were shards enough there anyway to make the landing painful. Her hand braced against the floor, finding slivers instantly as she swept her leg under her assailant’s. She contacted just behind the knee and knew she’d gotten lucky. The pain in her left hand had driven her up faster than she’d have thought possible. The woman fell backward, and Dani tried to follow with a stomp from her other foot, but her opponent was fast. By the time Dani’s boot landed it was on carpet; her foe had twisted away and flown to her feet.
They stood there for a moment, re-assessing each other. Without a word, the woman rose in the air and aimed another kick, but Dani stepped into it, letting the woman’s foot go past her. She anticipated the next kick and reached out to block it, but the woman used an elbow instead. She held it out as she descended, using the momentum of her fall to increase the amount of force in the blow. Dani took that hit full-on, having prepared for a different defense.
Dani’s shoulder took the brunt of the attack and she groaned as she hit her knees. She saw the fist rising for the final blow and hurled herself upright, catching the woman about the waist and dragging her down, Dani sitting on the woman’s legs as they fell.
The woman in black grunted as she landed. Dani’s weight prevented her from a softer landing or being able to roll with the force of it. Dani grabbed the woman’s shirt, lifted her neck into an arch and pulled back her fist, ready to finish it with a crashing blow to the woman’s temple.
“DANI!” her father screamed from the door
way. “GET OFF YOUR MOTHER THIS INSTANT!”
Dani’s blow was already in motion. She couldn’t have stopped it. She did, however, manage to alter the arc of the blow and punched the floor with a great deal of strength.
Had it not been for the thick carpet, she would have broken every finger in her hand. As it was, she howled and shook her hand. There’d been more glass hidden in the thick carpet. Of course, there had been. Three knuckles were bleeding.
“Dani?” the woman said from under her.
Dani reeled back in horror, forgetting her fingers, forgetting everything.
No. No no no no no no no.
This couldn’t be happening.
The woman—her mother—screamed in delight and sat up under her, wrapping her tightly in her arms and laughing and crying all at once. “DANI!” she sobbed. “Oh shit, I’ve missed you!”
Edwin cleared his throat from his place at the door. “Dani,” Edwin said. “Er... this is your mother.”
Dani forgot the pain in her hand. She also forgot her name, the last twenty years, and everyone she’d ever met. “Ma.... Momma?” It was an old word. One she hadn’t used in a long, long time. She looked at Edwin, too poleaxed to move. She looked to Luke, who stood behind him, and then to the woman who’d wrapped her arms around her in a hug that was suddenly too stifling. “Momma?”
The word sounded wrong on her tongue. Why was she still saying it? Why was everyone looking at her like that? Why was this woman who had FREAKING ABANDONED HER still holding her like this was the reunion of the century?
She raised her head, looking for help from the one person she could count on to put things into perspective, but Luke was staring from her to the other woman, his mouth gaping open in the most unattractive, unhelpful way in the world.
Dani shoved at the woman who, with a cry, grabbed her again, holding her close in an embrace that had a lot more muscle in it than she’d expected. And a hint of krav maga.