Homefront Defenders

Alana looked around, then realized she was standing alone in a dead woman’s living room. She circled the beat-up coffee table, brushed the dog hair off her back that she’d picked up from sitting on the couch and walked past the tasseled lamp to reach the door. Locke had the front door open, so she went out.

Two cop cars, three officers. One was the sergeant she’d been avoiding all day. They were huddled around Locke—the Secret Service director, the team leader. Mr. Never Wrong. Suit and tie.

She knew it wasn’t all that easy being the boss in a job like theirs, but the man seriously needed to lighten up. She wanted to know what he looked like in board shorts. Alana would have a lot of fun teaching him to surf—as if that would ever happen in a million years. She caught the snort before it came out and cleared her throat. Much better than thinking about this morning, or what Beatrice looked like lying on her bedroom floor.

Locke turned. “This is my partner, Agent—”

“I guess you couldn’t avoid me all day.”

Alana stared down her brother, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was right. Thankfully he hadn’t been at the police station that morning when she’d gone there with Locke to give their statements about the attack on her.

“Can we not do this, Ray?”

She couldn’t look at Locke. Alana was supposed to be a professional, a success. He couldn’t know she was such a disappointment to her family. Her brother had been her biggest supporter, at every one of her surf competitions. He’d been crushed when she was injured so badly she had to quit. She’d kind of thought that becoming a Secret Service agent would prove to him she could still do something good, but evidently not.

Her brother didn’t back down, his dark eyes disapproving over that flat, wide nose she shared with him and their sister. “Went surfing this morning, got yourself hurt.”

Deep down, below where he could show it, her brother cared. Alana had figured that out, despite his lousy way of exhibiting any feelings whatsoever. She could have brushed off his comment, but instead she said, “I’m okay.” Alana didn’t know how to bridge a gap that spanned years. “Ray—”

Locke broke into the conversation. “The same man was here. Same knife, probably. He killed Beatrice Colburn and stole something.”

No one said anything. The tension was so thick she could have cut it with the shark tooth her father had given her. Locke probably had no idea what was going on, and she wasn’t about to explain it to him.

Ray’s jaw twitched. She could tell he didn’t like the fact she’d been close to a killer, one who’d hurt her already. “He saw you?”

Alana couldn’t answer that in a way her brother would like.

Locke said, “I caught up with him. He hit me and got away.” He touched the back of his head, and his fingers came away with a spot of blood.

“He hit you?” He hadn’t told her that. She’d probably already given herself away, with that reaction, but she couldn’t go to him. Ray would see right through it.

Locke pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it against the back of his head. “It didn’t hurt until I touched it.” He gifted her a tiny smile.

Alana stared at the curve of his lips. Ray cleared his throat, and she spun around.

One of the officers, an older man, came over. “Joe Morton. I worked the job with your father.”

Alana nodded, shook his hand. Her father had been shot one night during a drug deal gone bad. Cops had been called in, and some guy hadn’t wanted to come quietly so he’d shot her father only a few years before he was supposed to have retired.

Dad had been dead before she and her sister could meet their twenty-two-year-old rookie-cop brother at the hospital. Two weeks before her eighteenth birthday. Six months after her dream of being a champion surfer died when the doctor told her that even after her knee healed, she’d never get her edge back. Worst year of her life, and the catalyst for her seventeen-year-old sister screaming at her to get out and never come back. The upside of that being she hadn’t had to see the disappointment on her brother’s face every single time he looked at her.

Locke cut through her spiraling thoughts. “Let’s get inside and get to work. Sound good to you guys?”

The cops moved toward the house, but Locke intercepted her. “We’ll be there in a sec. Let you secure the scene first.” When the two officers and her brother had stepped in the house, he turned to her. “You okay?”

“Sure, why not?”

His black eyebrows lifted. “Because that was your first dead body. And because you were attacked this morning. And apparently that police sergeant is your brother.”

“I don’t want to talk about Ray.” She wasn’t going to explain that it wasn’t her first body, though maybe seeing her father in the morgue didn’t count. “I can help, you know.” She folded her arms, careful not to stretch the cut on her abdomen. She just didn’t want to be in her brother’s space. “I’ll search the basement.”

“Very well.”

She rolled her eyes, but he didn’t see because he’d unlocked his phone and was making swirly patterns on the screen. They walked inside and he showed the drawing on his phone to the first cop, Joe Morton, who’d worked with her father. “Any idea what this means?”

“Huh.” He scratched his chin, and his gaze drifted to her. “Looks to me like it might be yakuza.”

“Japanese mafia?”

Ray strode in. “Show me that.” He took Locke’s phone before Locke could hand it over. “It’s yakuza. But then, Alana would know that.”

She didn’t rise to it, even though he was intent on baiting her. “We went to school with a few of them.” She turned to Locke. “It is yakuza.”

“Were you planning on telling me this?” Great, now Locke disapproved.

“If it turned out to be significant, yes.”

“If...” Locke actually sputtered. It was kind of amazing to hear him at a loss for words. And why did it please her so much? Being in the same room as Ray and Locke was messing with her head.

“I’m gonna go check the basement.”

“I’ll go with you,” Joe Morton offered.

“No, I will.” Locke’s voice stalled both of them. Alana mushed her lips together to keep from objecting.

She turned to the cop. “Maybe next time, Joe.”

The basement wasn’t a big room. Workbench. File cabinet. Not a man cave or some kind of old lady knitting or crafting space or anything like that. There were schematics printed on huge sheets of white paper and framed on the wall. A lamp had been shoved over, and the shade was crumpled. The outline on one wall where a painting had hung was now just a void. The frame lay bent on the floor with broken glass.

Much better than thinking—or talking—about a dead woman. Or her brother. Or the glove, and the sting of that knife. Alana was sad for the loss of life, but she could hardly process what she’d seen in the rush of everything. Was it going to hit her later? She hoped not. She didn’t want to know what that would feel like.

However, and whenever, it happened, Locke would not be there.

Behind her, he said, “Oh, no.”

She spun to Locke, who said, “That frame, the roll of paper he was holding. It must have been this.”

“What?”

He looked up. “Schematics for a bomb.”

THREE (#u78a101ef-3db5-5610-94f2-666c8313cfa8)

Alana stepped back from him. “That was on her wall?”

Locke nodded, fully aware that things had now escalated. “She kept it as a memento. I didn’t really understand it, but she showed it to me every time I came. Wanted to talk about the old days when she could say what she really felt. But it was pretty harmless.” He sighed. “The yakuza soldier who tried to kill you came here to kill Beatrice and steal this.”

Alana looked at her phone. “No reply, not yet.” She told him about the text she’d sent—to the yakuza boss’s son, of all people.