Protector With A Past

“Dear God—she’s Lizbet, isn’t she?” She searched his expression apprehensively, and the pain she saw on his features sent a chill through her. “Paul and Sheila—are they all right? What happened, Cord? Were they in an accident?”

Her voice had risen steadily on each unanswered question, and with two strides he was in front of her, pulling her to his chest and holding her tightly. He smelled of the whiskey she’d spilled, she thought incongruously. Her mind skittered away from the terror it already sensed was about to envelop it and frantically tried to busy itself with irrelevancies.

He was wearing a blue chambray shirt that she was almost sure she remembered from before. Blue had always looked good against the coppery tan of his skin and the blue-black sheen of his hair. His jeans still rode low on his lean hips, and her head still came to the exact place on his chest where she could hear his heart beating. She felt his hand on her hair.

“It’s as bad as it can be, Julia. Get ready for it.” His breath was warm against her temple, and his voice shook slightly. She felt the icy dread coalesce into a stomach-clenching certainty, and she cut him off before he could continue.

“I didn’t recognize her at first. She’s grown so fast, Cord! She must be four—no, five now. Remember when we went to her third birthday party, and the clown tried to give her a balloon and she started crying? And you’d just gotten King for me, and she gave him cake under the table and Sheila and I put a party hat on him and took pictures of him and Lizbet, both with their hats on and both of them with icing smeared all over their faces?”

She was babbling into his chest, her words tumbling over one another. Her throat felt as if it was constricting, and she raced on, refusing to meet his eyes.

“Remember when she was baptised and she wore the same antique lace gown that Sheila had worn, and her mother and grandmother before her? And you said that you wanted to be around when it was brought out for Lizbet’s firstborn, and Paul said he wasn’t planning on letting her start dating until she was thirty? And we all started laughing, and then when the priest called us forward to make our vows as her godparents I started—I started crying and I couldn’t—I couldn’t—”

Her throat had closed up completely, and the torrent of words came to an enforced stop. Inside her an intolerable pressure was building, desperately seeking release, but at the same time it felt as if her rib cage was being squeezed tighter and tighter by some cruel, gigantic hand.

She raised her head from his chest, unaware of the tears streaming down her face. Her eyes slowly met his. Her pupils were enormously wide, as if they were attempting to find and collect a glimmer of light where there was none.

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” With the harshness of ripping silk, her hoarse whisper sliced through the silence.

She’d never seen him cry before but now his skin was wet, and even as she watched, the shimmer at the outer corners of his eyes spilled over into slow silvery tracks that gleamed against his tan. He held her gaze and didn’t attempt to hide his tears or brush them away.

“I like your version better,” he said. “I like thinking about them the way they were when we were all together. But yes. They’re dead.” His voice cracked and his grasp on her tightened painfully. “They were killed, Julia. Somebody killed them.”

“No!” The cry burst from her before he’d finished speaking.

“All the way up here I was trying to think of a way to break it gently. There isn’t any.” His eyes were shadowed and the faint lines around his mouth that hadn’t been there two years ago deepened, but she was beyond noticing. She shook her head in refusal and tried to push herself away from him. He didn’t release his hold on her.

“Cord, you—you’re crazy! You show up here with some insane story about our best friends being killed and expect me to believe it? What the hell are you trying to do?”

In the corner by the door King looked up worriedly, aroused by her tone. “I won’t accept it. It’s all some crazy lie or you’ve got your information wrong or—or something! Paul and Sheila murdered? Things like that just don’t happen!”

“Things like that do happen. Before you left the force you used to see it every working day of your life, Julia.” His words were low and intense. “They’re not supposed to but they do. I saw them myself, just minutes—” He stopped, and a muscle worked in his jaw. “Just minutes after,” he continued bleakly. “I was just a few minutes too late.”

She’d known from the first that it was true, but denying it was a way of keeping Paul and Sheila Durant alive for the space of another heartbeat or two. She hadn’t seen them for years, Julia thought wrenchingly. She hadn’t been able to see anyone. But in the back of her mind she’d always known that they were there—Sheila, with her glorious mass of red hair and her wicked sense of humor, and Paul, as far from the conventional conception of a cop as possible with his glasses continually slipping down his beaky nose, his gangling frame giving the impression of clumsiness and his wryly self-deprecating attitude never completely concealing the overwhelming pride he felt in his beautiful wife and the daughter he adored.

It had been enough to know that they were still a part of her universe, even if the probability of her picking up the thread of their old relationship was about as remote as the stars she stared at, sitting on the dock during those long nights when she was afraid to fall asleep.

And now they were gone—all Sheila’s fire, all Paul’s steady warmth, extinguished. Her world had suddenly become a colder, darker place.

This time when she drew away from his embrace Cord didn’t attempt to stop her. She unwound the bulky dish towel from her hand and stared at the cut on her thumb as if she had nothing more important to occupy her mind and saw with dull surprise that it had stopped bleeding—which was strange, she thought hazily, since somewhere deep inside her she felt as if she was hemorrhaging.

As Cord walked over to the window and looked out into the night, his shoulders sagging with weariness and pain, she got a bandage out of the small first-aid kit she kept under the sink for emergencies and covered up the small wound. It was a clean cut. It would heal without a scar.

“Tell me what happened.” She pressed the edges of the bandage down neatly, smoothing them carefully and methodically and keeping her attention focused on the trivial task. Her hand was trembling.

“The killer was after Lizbet, too.” Fatigue made his voice grainy, but if he was surprised that her initial denial of what he’d told her had been replaced by an unwilling acceptance, he didn’t show it. “Paul had been doing some renovating in the basement, and at the first shot from upstairs he put her in the crawl space behind the newly installed drywall and told her not to make a sound. Then he went upstairs and was killed himself. After that second shot Lizbet apparently heard the shooter going through the house room by room, calling her name, but she did what her father had told her and stayed silent. I’m not even sure if she knows exactly what happened to her parents, but she’s one terrified little girl.”

“Whoever did this knew them?”

She’d thought there was no new horror to come. It seemed she’d been wrong. Julia choked back the bile that rose in her throat and as Cord turned from the window to face her she saw that the same conclusion had already crossed his mind.

“Well enough to know they had a daughter and what her name was.” He met her stunned gaze. “Paul phoned me yesterday and told me that he’d had the feeling someone had been following him the last few days. Added to that, Sheila had been getting weird calls on her cell phone and one of the teachers at the summer day camp Lizbet was going to in the mornings had told them that all her artwork had been slashed—none of the other kids’ work was touched. He was worried enough to ask me to fly out and stay with them for a while.”

“But why not just alert the local authorities? For God’s sake, Cord, when a police officer’s family is threatened that’s priority one with his co-workers! Why was his first impulse to call you in all the way from California?”

His eyes darkened. They glittered like black diamonds in the tan of his face, and all of a sudden she saw the hard-edged, implacably committed detective he’d been when they’d both worked together so long ago—the detective he still was.

“He knew he could trust me. He couldn’t be sure about anyone else, since whoever was phoning Sheila had to have gotten her cell phone number from the precinct. You know why she carried that damn phone. Only his work had the number, and it was only ever to be used for one reason.”

“I pray it never rings, Julia. But if anything happened to Paul and they couldn’t get in touch with me I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for not being with him. I carry it all the time—just in case…”

It had been the only time Sheila had confessed the fear that lurked beneath her wholehearted support of her husband’s career choice. She’d been haunted by the worst-case scenario that every cop’s spouse tried not to dwell on—that one day the man she loved would go to work and never come home alive.

Instead, Paul had been killed in his own home. And Sheila had been taken down first. The thought that one of his fellow officers might have had something to do with it seemed the most monstrous betrayal of all.

“I caught the first flight available.” His words came out with an effort. “As soon as I got to their house I knew something was wrong—the front door was open wide. I ran in with my gun drawn and the first thing I saw was Sheila’s body in the hall. She’d been killed instantly.”

“Thank God she didn’t suffer, at least,” Julia whispered brokenly. She held back the tears that were threatening again and bit her lip to keep the sobs from rising to her throat.

“Paul had been shot at the top of the basement stairs. I found him half in and half out of the doorway, but he’d been rolled over onto his back.” Cord’s mouth tightened grimly. “He’d been stabbed in the chest, as well.”

And the hits just keep on coming. Julia swayed and felt behind her for the familiar solidity of the countertop.

“I don’t want to know any more.” Her voice was barely audible. A sliver of panicky urgency ran through it. “They’re dead—isn’t that enough? I hope whoever did this to them is caught and brought to justice, but even justice won’t bring Paul and Sheila back. There’s nothing we can do to make it right again, Cord—absolutely nothing—so what’s the use of going over every terrible detail?”

He looked at her as if she was speaking a foreign language. “Those details, as you call them, are clues. How the hell are we supposed to track down the killer if you refuse to examine the details?”

His voice had a raw edge to it, and with a quick glance at the hallway where the bedrooms were he went on more quietly. “I know you were planning on quitting when I left—when you told me to get out of your life. You wanted to come back to the kind of life and the kind of people you’d grown up with—people who knew a Monet from a Manet, whose carefully rustic summer properties cost more than the homes of the ordinary working stiffs that you’d been forced to rub shoulders with for too long, people who hired men like my father to work for them. I accepted that, finally.”

“That’s right,” she said through stiff lips. “So now I leave the detective work to the professionals—like you, Cord. It’s not what I do anymore.”

“I’m beginning to realize that.” His glance took in the shabby robe she was wearing, the battered scuffs on her feet and the dark circles under her eyes. It rested finally on her bandaged hand. “But what I haven’t figured out is what you have been doing for the past couple of years—aside from getting up in the middle of the night to reach for the bottle, that is.”

“I haven’t had a drink for nineteen months.” Even as she snapped out the automatic reply she realized her mistake. Before she could gloss it over, he’d picked up on her slip. His eyes narrowed appraisingly on her.

“The only people who know exactly how long it’s been since their last drink are the ones who found it damned hard to quit,” he said slowly. “Just what in hell’s been happening to you since you threw me out of your life? You’re living here year-round, aren’t you? You never returned to your old life at all—you just retreated from everything. For God’s sake, Julia, have you been here by yourself for two whole years?”

For one dangerous moment she felt like pouring out everything. Then common sense reasserted itself. No matter how tempting it might be to reveal her demons to Cord, to respond to the note of wary compassion in his voice and finally tell him the truth that she’d successfully hidden from him so long, to do so would be fatal. He might tell himself that he understood her fears, Julia thought dully. He might even make an attempt to rebuild the relationship that had once existed between them—and at that thought, an irrational spark of hope flared within her. She quenched it immediately. In the end she’d have to send him away again, but this time it would be harder because he’d know why she was doing it. He’d insist on staying—out of pity, out of compassion, out of a sense of duty. But eventually the love would die.

He’s the marrying kind. He wants a family of his own.

“My life isn’t your concern anymore, Cord. Stop grilling me.” She could feel her fragile self-control slipping away and she prayed she could hold onto it long enough to convince him. “Paul and Sheila were my best friends, too—but if you’re determined to look into their deaths you’re going to have to find someone else to work with. Investigation never was my field of expertise, anyway.”

“No. You were a Child Protection Specialist—one of the best.” He ground the words out, stepping in front of her and blocking her path. His eyes were as cold and as threatening as black ice. “And now you’re willing to put a little girl in jeopardy just because you don’t want to get involved? What about that vow you took with me, promising to take the place of her parents if the day ever came that she needed us? Didn’t that mean anything to you? For God’s sake, she’s so petrified that she hasn’t said a word since she told me what happened—and you’re the only person who has the faintest chance of getting through to her before she retreats into herself for good!”

“I’ll get her killed!” The words spilled from her like acid, tinged with the corrosive terror of a hundred sleepless nights and the soul-destroying guilt of memory-laden days. Her face was colorless except for the pale fire behind her hazel eyes, a fire that seemed to be consuming her. “God help me, Cord— I’m no good at keeping them safe anymore! I’m a liability! She’s in jeopardy just by being here in my home!”

She felt a pressure on her knee, and at her feet King whined loudly. He nudged her again with his muzzle, but she ignored him.

“You have to take her away.” Her voice had sunk to a whisper, sibilant with fear. She clutched his arm. “I’ll do something or say something that’ll put her in more danger than she’s in already, Cord. Get her out of here before another child pays for my mistakes!”

The remoteness had vanished from his features, to be replaced with baffled concern. Impatiently he shoved the whining dog away from them and searched her tortured expression. “What the hell are you talking about? You brought more children back than anyone else ever had. You were a damned legend! Lost children, children held hostage, abused children—you were the avenging angel that came in and scooped them up to safety! How many kids out there owe their lives to you, Julia? A liability? For more kids than I can remember, you were their last hope—and you came through for them!”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Her arms were crossed tightly just below her breasts, her fists clenched, and her slim frame was hunched slightly forward at the waist, as if she was trying to protect herself from a blow. Her voice was despairingly ragged, and her eyes were blind with tears. “I’m not a damned legend, Cord—I’m a ghost story! The person you thought you knew is dead, and this is all that’s left!”

She dragged in a shallow, shuddering breath, her lashes dipping briefly to her cheekbones. “I can’t help you,” she said dully. “I just can’t help you.”

He put a hand out to support her as she swayed. “What happened?” he asked harshly. His glance narrowed, searching her face intently. “What the hell happened during your last month at work? Sheila wrote and told me you’d resigned like you’d said you would, but she didn’t go into any details. What in God’s name went wrong, Julia?”

She’d never been able to tell him everything, not even when the bond between them had seemed unbreakable. She’d always held back, and now was no different.

“I don’t want the responsibility anymore, that’s all.” It was almost too tempting to let herself lean against him, to let him take the full weight of her. She was so weary, Julia thought bleakly. She was so damned tired of being alone and fighting the demons single-handed. But it was her fight—hers and no one else’s. She stood straighter, and his hand fell away.

“You should get some sleep yourself, Cord. You’re going to need—”

Just then there was a sharp pain at her ankle, and she gave a startled little cry. Looking down in shock, she saw King, his tail tucked between his legs in abject apology but his stance defiant and stubborn. He barked once as he met her eyes, and then trotted a few steps in the direction of the hallway.

“He nipped me!” Everything else was temporarily forgotten in her shock at the shepherd’s unprecedented behavior. “He’s never done anything like that before!”

“Did he break the skin?” Cord bent down swiftly, and she felt his hand circle her ankle to inspect it. His touch should have felt impersonal, but instead it sent a shiver of sensation up her leg, as if instead of merely examining her ankle he’d taken it much farther…as if he’d stroked her calf, the back of her knee, her inner thigh, with those strong capable fingers that had once known every inch of her.

Hastily she put her foot down, her face faintly flushed. “He didn’t hurt me. But that’s not like him. He’s usually the most gentle—”

King barked again, a sharp, urgent sound. Once again he trotted to the hallway and looked back at them, and suddenly Julia felt a terrible foreboding.

“Lizbet! My God—he’s trying to tell us something’s wrong with Lizbet!”

Her appalled gaze met Cord’s, and the next moment she was running behind him down the hallway after King. The dog bounded ahead of them into the spare bedroom and then stood in the middle of the dark room, barking wildly. As they reached the doorway Cord felt for the light switch on the wall and snapped it on. Looking past him Julia realized that her worst nightmare had finally come true.

The bed was empty. The cushioned pad on the window seat that Davey had sat on for hours so long ago, enthralled with the collie stories of Albert Payson Terhune, had slipped onto the floor.

Lizbet was gone.

The corner of the screen at the low window had been pushed outward. It was small comfort, she thought numbly, but it was proof that the child hadn’t been abducted by someone breaking into the room.

“She can’t have gotten far. I’ll check around the house and meet you down at the dock.” His mouth was set in a grim line. “If she hasn’t turned up by then we’ll have to start searching the shoreline until sunrise, and then we’ll take the boat out. While it’s still dark we’re going to have to try to locate her by sound, and I don’t want a motor running until we can do a visual search.”

“She heard me telling you she couldn’t stay here.” Julia’s fist was knuckled against her mouth, her other hand splayed against the door frame behind her. “Why else would she have run away? I’m responsible for this, Cord.” Her teeth started to chatter, and the shaking spread to the rest of her body as her unfocused stare darted wildly around the empty room. “I told you I’d put her in danger, and I have. This is my fault. It’s my fault!” Her voice rose to a thin whimper that bordered on the edge of hysteria and then she felt strong hands on her shoulders, shaking her roughly.

“You’re the one who’s going to save her, dammit! You used to be able to get inside a child’s head with some kind of sixth sense that no one else had, Julia! Whatever you say, you still have that ability—it’s part of you. Use it, for God’s sake! Find her.”

She tried to avert her gaze from his, but those black eyes seemed to draw her in until she felt as if everything nonessential was being stripped away and only her spirit remained—battered, bleeding and worn almost past endurance.

But not completely defeated.

The trembling stopped. Slowly but powerfully, like a current changing direction far beneath the surface of a river, an almost-forgotten strength began to surge through her limbs, and Julia felt a moment’s fear as she let herself be swept into its flow. If she let it, it could take her over. There had always been that danger, and she was doubly vulnerable now. But she had no choice. Deliberately, she let the last instinctive shred of resistance fall from her, and almost immediately the night outside seemed to grow darker, the wind in the trees more threatening.

She pressed her lips together and nodded tightly, a restrained gesture totally at variance with the near hysteria she’d shown a few seconds ago.

“There’s a flashlight in the cupboard above the stove. Take King with you—I can’t let anything distract me right now.” She saw the hesitation on his face. “Go,” she said hoarsely, her posture rigid and tense. “You know how I work, Cord.”

He reached out and brushed his thumb lightly against the corner of her mouth. “I know,” he said. “I just never thought I’d see the miracle again.” He held her gaze for a single moment, and in that second their lives together raced through her mind as if she was drowning—a blur of frozen images, like a stack of photographs being shuffled swiftly before her eyes. Then he was gone, the dog a shadow behind him.

She was all alone. She was looking for a ghost to lead her to a child in danger.

Flicking the light switch off, Julia took a deep breath and closed her eyes, deliberately freeing her mind from everything around it and letting it reach out into the darkness.

The child—save the child…

Chapter 3

The lake had been bluer, the summers so much longer back then….

And Davey had been the center of her world—at nine years old, the big brother whose word was the final say on any question, the infinitely wiser and stronger being that a five-year-old little sister could only hero-worship and try to emulate.

Sometimes, if she was really lucky, she could tag along after him—like now.

Her job had been to sneak down to the boathouse after dinner the night before and hide the life jackets under the front seat of the little Sunfish so everything would be ready the next morning. She’d felt important that he’d trusted her with that. The life jackets were bright orange. Davey had told her that was so people could see you floating in the water if you had an accident and they were looking for you. He hadn’t known why they smelled like wet dog, though, but they did, Julia had thought as she put them carefully in the little compartment under the boat seat.

They smelled the way King, Davey’s old German shepherd who’d died last winter, had smelled after he’d been playing in the lake with them, before his fur had dried off in the hot sun.

Now it was the next morning and she was in the Sunfish, and pieces of fog that looked like rags were blowing off the top of the water as Davey cast off and jumped from the dock to the boat. Watching him, Julia shivered, but she was careful not to let him see. What if one day he was too late, and he didn’t make it back into the boat in time? What if he untied the ropes and pushed off and then stood there on the dock while she floated out into the lake alone? It was too scary to think about. Besides, Davey would find a way to get to her. He wouldn’t ever leave her.