Dark Defender (17 page)

“See, that’s what I’ve been saying. But because it’s Jarvis and that cold-eyed bastard Trahern, everybody’s been turning a blind eye to her being here.”

The last thing he wanted was an irate guard sending ripples of discontent up the chain of command.

“Oh, you must be referring to Ms. Nichols, the judge’s daughter.” He leaned toward his window and lowered his voice, forcing the guard to step closer to the car to hear. “We okayed her to be brought in. Until we know who murdered her father, it’s imperative that she be protected. We’d do no less for any member of our extended family who was in danger through no fault of their own.” That drivel ought to appeal to a loyal member of the Guard.

The man was smart enough to look doubtful, which was all right. If he were too easily fooled, they would have fired him years ago. “If you say so, sir.”

“I appreciate your caution, Sergeant. Once I’m inside, I’ll double check with Jarvis to make sure that Ms. Nichols is not being allowed full access to the facility.” He put his car back in gear and drove inside the fence, rearranging his plans.

The battle was just a small skirmish, enough to get everyone stirred up but not enough to work off the rush of battle fever. Unlike the others, Blake had a warm and hopefully willing woman waiting back in his room to help take off the edge.

“If she sees you smiling like that, she’ll bar the door.” Jarvis fell into step beside him. “After that display earlier, you’ll be lucky if she doesn’t use that sword on you while you’re asleep.”

Blake smiled wolfishly. “It was worth the risk.”

“Man, you’ve got it bad.” Jarvis shook his head in disgust. “So are you moving back here, or is she going to Seattle with you?”

Blake stumbled to a stop. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Unless you’ve been sleeping on the floor these past few nights, I have to think you two have been sharing more than body heat. She’s not the kind of woman to take that sort of thing lightly, which means she wants you. Personally, I can’t imagine it—but I’ve never understood women very well.”

Trahern’s sword clattered to the floor as he pinned Jarvis against the rough rock wall in a chokehold.

“You know what your problem is, Jarvis? You never know when to shut the fuck up! What we’ve been doing or not doing is none of your damn business!” He landed a solid punch to Jarvis’s gut.

His friend came back fighting, kicking Blake in the knee and following up with a quick jab to his kidneys. Blake cursed Jarvis’s entire family as he blocked another punch and used his opponent’s momentum to send him crashing to the floor. Jarvis rolled up to his feet and came charging right back. Blake took great pleasure in throwing him a second time, but then Jarvis managed to send him flying back against the tunnel wall, knocking the air out of him.

The door down the hall flew open. “Blake Trahern! Jarvis! What do you two think you’re doing? Isn’t fighting the Others enough, without you turning on each other?”

Blake held up his hands, signaling his withdrawal from the fight.

Jarvis got in one last cheap shot before he, too, ceased fire. He wiped a trickle of blood off the corner of his mouth. “I’m sorry, Brenna, but he started it.”

“Like hell!” Trahern roared.

She rolled her eyes in pure disgust. “You both sound like a pair of eight-year-olds.”

“Aw, gee, Mom. We’re sorry.”

Jarvis’s wisecrack didn’t amuse Brenna, but it cracked up Blake big-time. He couldn’t remember when he’d spent as much time laughing as he had over the past few days. It didn’t exactly feel natural for him, but it did feel good.

Maybe some of that got through to Brenna, because the lines of disapproval framing her luscious mouth softened enough for him to risk grabbing her up for a hot kiss. She made a token effort of pushing him away, but then sighed and gave in. When he set her back down on her feet, she stayed right beside him, her arm around his waist.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, take it inside, will you?” Jarvis pretended to look ill. “I was going to ask you two to come with me to talk to Mr. Doe about his findings, but now obviously isn’t the right time.”

Brenna frowned. “Can we get something to eat first? We missed lunch, and I know Blake must be hungry.”

Jarvis, bastard that he was, started laughing. “Honey, what he’s hungry for has nothing to do with food. But I could use a break myself.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll meet you in an hour.”

Then he walked away, still laughing.

Brenna waited until she thought he was out of hearing before saying, “Well, that was embarrassing. He thinks we just wanted time to have sex.”

She underestimated the highly developed hearing of a Paladin, but Blake figured she probably missed the slight falter in Jarvis’s step as he turned the corner. “No, he knows that we both need to eat. He just figures we’ll have sex first.”

Brenna’s face flushed bright pink, but she didn’t deny it. Rather than give her time to think of reasons why they shouldn’t, he swept her up in his arms and carried her inside, kicking the door closed.

This time, when he tossed her down on the bed, he joined her. Neither of them gave much thought to food for some time.

M
r. Doe had made a major breakthrough in tracing the names and numbers that her father had left behind. His fingers clicked over the keyboard as he tapped into the world of cyberspace, the same rapt expression on his face that most computer geeks had. But most gamers didn’t keep a sword propped against the corner of the desk in case its owner needed to charge into a battle.

“Okay, see here?” He pointed to the screen. “These numbers don’t make sense, unless someone has had their hand in the till.”

“How much money are we talking about?” Trahern leaned over the man’s shoulder to study the spreadsheet, and his lips moved as he added some figures in his head. “Holy shit! No wonder people are dying.”

When the phone on the desk rang, Jarvis snatched it up. “What? Oh, hell. Where is he now?”

Blake moved away from the desk, putting himself between Brenna and the unknown threat. Several of the others adjusted their positions at the same time. She wondered if any of them realized what they had just done. Probably not, their need to protect was so second nature to them.

Jarvis hung up. “One of the Regents is on his way down. Evidently one of the guards up top snitched about Brenna being here.”

“Is it too late to hide her?” Trahern’s eyes had turned glacial.

“Probably. The bastard was already inside the gate and on his way to the elevators before anyone thought to warn me.” Jarvis muttered something obscene under his breath. “Guys, pretend to be doing something useful. If he walks in and we’re all brandishing swords and glaring at him, he just might suspect that something’s wrong.”

Blake waited until several of the others had moved away before asking, “Do you think he’s involved?”

Jarvis frowned. “I hate to point fingers until we know more, but I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s been poking around here more in the past week than he has in years. He’s also shown a lot of interest in your whereabouts, all in the guise of heartfelt concern over his late friend’s daughter. I’ve never had much use for the smarmy bastard—but that doesn’t mean he’s guilty.”

“Can we prove anything?”

“Not yet,” Mr. Doe said. He hit a few keys, and the spreadsheet disappeared into a swirl of bright colors that settled into a fantasy game. A dragon glided down from a skyscraper to sweep the streets with bursts of green flame. Doe laughed with malicious glee as he manipulated the dragon to chase one unlucky person after another.

“I’ve never seen this game before,” Brenna said, moving in closer to look over his shoulder. Playing fantasy video games was one of her secret vices.

“That’s because I haven’t finished writing the software for it. I’m still not happy with how the dragon looks when he and the hero duke it out.” There was no mistaking the pride of ownership in his voice.

She leaned closer to the screen. “It’s so good now, I can’t imagine how you can improve on it. I’d love to give the finished product a try.”

Clearly pleased, Mr. Doe nodded. “I’ll send you a copy. I’m always glad to get some expert feedback before I take my stuff to market.”

She grinned at him. “I’ll hold you to that promise. Of course, I might have trouble tracking down one Mr. Doe among so many.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll find you.”

The
ping
of the elevator erased the group’s good humor. Jarvis and Trahern must have decided to go on the offensive, for they reached the elevators just as the doors were sliding open.

The Regent who had them all in such an uproar looked vaguely familiar, but before she could put a name to his face, the klaxons went off again. Blake and Jarvis shoved the man back into the elevator—none too gently, she noticed—and sent it back up out of danger.

The Paladins all seemed oddly unconcerned about the alarm. John Doe had already closed down his dragon game and was back to studying the spreadsheet. Wait. The barrier wasn’t down at all. In fact, it hadn’t even flickered.

Jarvis caught the eye of one of the other Paladins and made a slashing motion across his neck. The man hit a series of keys on a computer and blessed silence reigned. Once her head quit pounding, Brenna realized that they’d triggered the alarm to keep the Regent from invading their territory.

Blake joined her at the desk. “In case anyone asks, Jarvis just completed the monthly test of the alarms.”

“Really? And did that Regent that the two of you shuffled back into elevator know that it was a drill?”

“No,” Jarvis said, shaking his head. “If everyone knew it was a drill rather than the real thing, they wouldn’t take it seriously.” His eyes twinkled with glee. “Besides, it’s our job to make sure the Regents are safe from attack by the Others. If we’d let him stay because of the drill, next time he might not take my order for him to leave as seriously.”

“And how long will he stay gone?”

“I programmed the computer to freeze the elevators for thirty minutes.”

Mr. Doe broke in. “See these deposits? The individual amounts are different, but the total withdrawal is the same.” He ran a finger down the screen. “Here, here, and here.”

“Can you tell where the money is coming from?” Blake slipped his arm around Brenna’s waist as he leaned closer to the screen.

“I should be able to trace it. Looks like Judge Nichols was on to something.”

“But what was the money for?” Brenna asked. And what could possibly be worth her father’s life?

“I’d guess it was for these.” Jarvis tossed a blue stone onto the desk. It caught the light from the fluorescent lights overhead, casting an intense blue glow across the desk. “Does that look like that blue dust you and Bane found back in Seattle?”

Trahern nodded. “Yeah, except we never found a piece nearly that size. Where’d you get it?”

“In one of these tunnels. It’s the only one we’ve found, but that doesn’t mean much. With the swarms of small earthquakes all over the area, the barrier is down as much as it’s up. We’ve been running on little sleep and food, so I can’t swear nothing got by us.”

“We didn’t get enough dust to analyze. Do you have someone in the labs you can trust to keep his mouth shut?”

“I already had it looked at.” Jarvis picked up the stone and polished it on his shirt. “According to the report, this stone doesn’t exist. Not in this world, anyway.”

“What did the lab guy think it was?”

“Some kind of aberrant garnet was his best guess, and even that was iffy. They occur naturally in several colors here, but blue isn’t one of them. He wanted to keep it longer to determine what properties would make it so valuable to someone on our side—but while I trust him, I can’t say the same about his coworkers. If one of them noticed what he was doing, there’d be no keeping the lid on this.”

Trahern frowned. “I know someone in Seattle who might have some answers.”

“Who? Devlin Bane? What would he know about it?” Jarvis put the stone into his pocket.

“No, not him.” Trahern looked around the cavern, silently reminding Jarvis that they weren’t alone. “I don’t want to say more about it until I check.”

“Which will be when?” asked Mr. Doe.

Jarvis gave him a slight shake of the head. “The rock can wait. Right now, we need to decide what to do about Ritter before he figures out how to override my commands on the elevator, and starts poking his nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

Brenna reached out to touch Jarvis on the arm. “How much trouble will you and Blake be in, now that he knows that you two let me in here?”

He responded with a gesture that reminded her of Trahern—another big tough guy who could take care of himself against all comers. That didn’t mean that they should have to go it alone all the time, though. All the Paladins deserved better than that.

“I’ll go pack.” She started to walk away, but Trahern stopped her. “What?”

“Where are you planning on going?”

A good question.

“It makes sense to stay long enough to pick up the trail your father left. That will tell us some where to go next.”

The klaxons went off again and he yelled to Jarvis, standing three feet away from him, “Tell them to quit playing with that damn alarm! We already got rid of the asshole.”

But Jarvis’s attention was riveted on the barrier at the far side of the cavern. What had been swirls of stunning bright colors was now tainted with streaks of sickly green and black.

“Son of a bitch!”

Mr. Doe shut down the computer before snatching up his sword to join the rest of the Paladins already forming up in battle stance. Jarvis wasn’t far behind him. The need to join them was riding Trahern hard, but he clearly didn’t want to leave her alone, either.

She shoved him toward his friends. “Go! I can get back to the room myself.”

Before he could respond, the barrier flared brightly and then disappeared. To her horror, a mob of Others came across in a huge, disorganized surge. The clang of steel on steel froze her on the spot as they tried to overwhelm the Paladins with sheer brute force and numbers.

Already, enough blood had been drawn to scent the air with its coppery flavor. She’d be the most help by leaving Trahern free to concentrate on stemming the tide, so she made a beeline for their room.

Blake waited until she was almost into the hallway before turning to face his foes. She thought she heard him bellow out a challenge, but that might have just been her imagination. His voice was one among many, all full of fury and some with pain. Tears burned her eyes as she tried to shut out the horrific sounds. She paused to take one last look back just in time to see Trahern swing his sword in a huge arc, sending his opponent’s head bouncing across the cavern floor in a spray of blood.

Her stomach heaved, and she retched up her lunch. Wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, she stumbled down the hall to their room. But once again, the door barely muted the death and dying that was going on such a short distance away. How could Trahern and the others face each day of their lives, knowing this was all that awaited them? No wonder they developed such a hard view of the world.

How could he be so gentle with her and yet deal out brutal death with such relish? A woman would have to be a saint or a fool to fall in love with a Paladin and share that life with him. Since she’d never considered herself to be either one, maybe it was time to start figuring out exactly where that left the two of them.

When fall came, she planned on being back at the university. Blake would resume his life in Seattle, fighting his war as long as he could. She only hoped that after this powerful lust for each other burned out they could part as friends. However, now that he was back in her life again, she wanted to keep him there.

Ritter paced the floor, pausing often to glare at the clock on the wall. The bitch was here; so close he could almost smell her perfume. And when she was almost within his grasp; with whatever information her nosy father had left with her, the damn Others had to attack. The guards had been called down to lend support and wouldn’t let him near the cavern while all hell was breaking loose.

They tried to tell him that it was for his own protection, but he knew they figured he’d just be in the way. He tried to convince them that he wanted nothing to do with the fighting, that his concern was for the safety of Miss Nichols, but that had gotten him nowhere. So now he was stuck prowling the upper floors, while everything he needed to finish this mess hovered just out of his reach.

The elevators would only respond to those with battle codes, so he might as well leave and send for his two detectives. It was past time for them to earn their keep.

There was only one road in and out of the compound. He’d direct them to wait for Trahern and his woman to leave; then it would be a simple matter to ambush them. How sad that the innocent Ms. Nichols would be killed in a shootout between her kidnapper and the police. And what a tragedy that the police would die, as well.

Feeling energized, he left the building and headed for his car. The sullen heat of a Missouri afternoon hit him like a sauna, but he didn’t care. In seconds he’d be enjoying the comfort of leather seats and air conditioning, while those sons of bitches down in the cavern were fighting for their lives.

Yes, some days things just went right according to plan.

Swan shifted in his seat, stretching his arms overhead and hitting the ceiling of the car. “How long do we have to wait?”

“As long as it takes.” Montgomery was getting annoyed with his partner’s constant questions. It was like working with a five-year-old.

“Did he say when Trahern and the woman would be coming this way?” Swan looked around at the desolate scenery. “Or even why they’d be coming this way? Hell, there’s nothing out here for miles and miles.”

Montgomery agreed, but bitching about it every ten minutes didn’t help. He needed to take a piss and stretch his legs. “You stay with the car. I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

As if he couldn’t figure that out for himself. They’d been swigging coffee and bottled water for the past five hours. The only reason Swan wasn’t answering nature’s call was that he was fifteen years younger. In a few more years, his prostate would have him pissing in the bushes, too.

Unless they ended up in jail for this little escapade, but that didn’t bear thinking about. They’d hired on to do a job, and they had to see it through. This whole mess stunk to high heaven, but there wasn’t much they could do about it now. Even if he hadn’t already spent most of the money he’d been paid up front, Mr. Knight wasn’t the kind to accept refunds from an employee who’d developed a distaste for the work.

Although it felt good to walk around outside, the day was hot and getting hotter. At least they’d found a spot along the dirt road wide enough to back the car into the shade of some trees. That was something else that had him puzzled. How had Mr. Knight managed to track Trahern to such a remote spot, anyway?

The road didn’t appear on any map Montgomery had looked at. It made sense that Trahern would have looked for a safe hiding place, especially if he needed to hole up until his bullet wound healed, but out here? Sure, it would be easy to guard with only one way in, but that also meant there was only one way out.