Defender

“Of course.” She paused to hug the older woman. “And you’re not getting old!”

After Mandy mopped up the spill, the girls went to change out of their finery into casual clothes.

“Saved my bacon. Again. Thanks,” Paul said to Mandy when they were alone.

She sat down beside him. “Whatever it is, you haven’t really faced it, have you, dear?” she asked gently, laying a hand over his big one.

His lips compressed. “I came south,” he said. “I couldn’t stay where I was, doing the job I was doing. I wanted to get away, do something different, be around people I didn’t know.” He shrugged. “It seemed the best thing at the time, but I’m not sure it was. You don’t face problems by running away from them.”

“No,” she said softly. “You never do. They just come along for the ride.” She patted his hand again and got up. “But, that being said, there’s no need to go rushing back to deal with them, either,” she added with a smile. “We’ve gotten used to having you around.”

“I like it here,” he confessed, leaning back in his chair. “I didn’t expect to. I mean, a south Texas ranch, cowboys all over the place, people with thick accents who wouldn’t know a dissertation from a dessert.” He glanced at her. “I got a surprise.”

She laughed. “A lot of those drawling people with accents have degrees, in all sorts of surprising subjects,” she translated. “And a slow voice doesn’t equate to a slow mind.”

He nodded. “The Grier boys changed my mind about a lot of things. You don’t expect to find somebody like Cash Grier working as a small-town police chief. Or a guy who worked with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, like his brother Garon, heading up a local FBI office.”

“Cash has been a constant surprise,” Mandy said. “None of us really expected him to settle down here. He was going around with Christabel Gaines before she married his friend Judd Dunn. Then, all of a sudden, he’s married to a former supermodel and he’s got two kids.”

He laughed. “I know what you mean.” He leaned over his coffee cup. “But the big surprise was finding Eb Scott here with a counterterrorism school. I knew him years ago. He worked as an independent contractor when I was overseas, in the Middle East.”

“In the military?”

He nodded. “Spec ops. Green Berets,” he added with twinkling eyes. “Eb saved my life. He went on to bigger and better things.”

“So did you.”

“Me? No, I’m just private security,” he said, pausing to sip coffee.

“Not what you were before, though,” Mandy said.

He glanced at her, frowning.

“My brother.” She averted her eyes. “He…pretty much stays in trouble. He lived in New Jersey for a long time, working for some…well, some people you probably knew in the old days. I mentioned your name. Not deliberately, just in passing.” She swallowed. “He knew about you.”

His face went hard. Very hard. He looked up at her with cold dark eyes.

“I never tell anything I know to anybody, Mr. Paul,” she said quietly. “And shame on you for thinking I would.”

He grimaced. “Sorry.”

“You don’t know me. Not really.” She sat back down beside him. “Our parents died when we were young. Grady took care of me. He worked odd jobs, did some questionable things, but he kept us together and put food on the table. When I graduated high school, I got a job working for Mr. Darwin, here. Grady figured I could take care of myself, so he went north, looking for better pay. He found it.” She drew in a breath. “I keep thinking I’ll hear one day that he’s been found in an oil drum,” she added with a wan smile. “I can’t stop him from doing what he pleases. The best I can hope for is to make sure Mr. Darwin doesn’t ever have a reason to turn him in to the authorities.”

He scowled. “Would he?”

“You know he would,” she replied quietly. Her eyes met his levelly. “It’s why I never tell anything I know. And you’d better make sure you do the same. You may not have people he can blackmail you with, but Mr. Darwin could plant evidence and have you put away. It wouldn’t be the first time,” she added in a whisper, her eyes looking all around.

“There’s no surveillance equipment in here,” he whispered back.

“Would you care to bet on it?” she returned.

He hesitated. Then he pulled out a small electronic device and turned it on. His eyes, when they met Mandy’s, were furious.

THREE (#ulink_18b53230-9a31-52d9-87c4-9d2c54541d0d)

Paul followed the small device’s signature to a hidden microphone in a potted plant. He traced the signal into Darwin’s study, to a small recording device in a drawer. Holding his finger to his lips, he cautioned Mandy not to say anything. He pulled out the recorder, made an adjustment and put it back, careful to wipe his prints first.

He led her outside. “I wiped it,” he said quietly. “But make sure you don’t say anything in the dining room that you wouldn’t like to share with the world. And tell the girls.”

“Maybe you should sweep their bedrooms, too, just in case,” she said worriedly.

“Good God, it’s like living in a camp of some sort!” he exclaimed. “What the hell is he so afraid of?” he added. “What does he think you might say?”

Mandy’s green eyes were old and wise. “I can’t tell you. But I don’t want to see my brother go to federal prison, and I’d rather not see you there, either. Just pretend you know nothing and do your job.”

He grimaced. “Those poor girls,” he sighed. “They have no life at all. No social life. How long does he think he can keep them prisoner like this?”

“As long as he wants to,” she said. “He does have a point, in one respect. He’s one of the richest men in the world, and there have been kidnapping attempts before. You foiled one yourself. The girls don’t have any street sense, especially Merrie. They’d be sheep among wolves, literally, if they had the kind of freedom you’re advocating.”

“They’re young and pretty. Surely they’ll want families one day,” he said, and his eyes darkened as he said it.

“Sari wants a career right now,” she said evasively. “And Merrie’s just graduated high school. She doesn’t know what she wants to do just yet.”

“It’s not a normal life,” he replied.

“It wouldn’t be, under the best of circumstances. They’re worth millions. Mr. Darwin would have problems if they ever wanted to marry, depending on who they wanted to marry. He’d be wary of men who wanted the money instead of the girls.”

He knew that. But he wouldn’t permit himself to think about it. Isabel wanted a career. She wouldn’t be interested in a future with anyone just yet, anyway. Not yet. It was…a relief, although he wouldn’t let himself wonder why.

He found the other two surveillance cameras. One was at the back door, one at the front door and the only bug had been the one in the dining room. Paul took note of where they were.

* * *

Darwin flew home a few days later. He called Paul into his office and closed the door.

“I want to know who’s been in this office since I was away,” he said at once.

Paul raised both eyebrows. “Just me and the girls, when they had to use the encyclopedia—” he indicated volumes on a bookshelf “—or the computer.” He nodded toward the desktop computer. “Nobody else.”

Darwin glared at him. “Somebody wiped part of a surveillance log I was keeping.”

Paul frowned and managed to look completely innocent. “A surveillance log?”

Darwin realized his mistake at once and backtracked. Paul was head of security. He should have known about the cameras.

“I meant to tell you that I’d installed a new set of cameras,” he said, averting his eyes. “I’ve had a threat just recently, one I didn’t tell you about. I ordered the cameras installed and forgot to tell you. Sorry.”

“No harm done, sir, it’s your house and your equipment. But it helps if I know what you’re doing, so that I don’t duplicate efforts and cost you money.”