Knight in Blue Jeans (10 page)

Arden still didn’t like it, but what worked…worked.

“Don’t worry, dear.” Greta stood, wiped her hands on her apron. “You’re welcome to stay as long as it takes for the boys to rid us of that annoyance. Again.”

Sibyl nodded and murmured, “Safety in numbers. Enemy of my enemy…”

Arden, relieved of that concern, went to Smith’s side. She liked being at Smith’s side. It felt…right. Right, after far too much wrong. “Let’s just call the police and report him for harassment.”

Smith eyed her, as if torn about disagreeing—which wasn’t like him—but it was Sibyl, behind them, who said, “Comitatus own the police. And the courts.”

The sheer powerlessness the girl felt against this secret society was too much for Arden. “My father still has some clout in this town, as well.”

“Can’t disagree,” muttered the girl.

Arden looked at the others, who were acting as if this man in his car was some kind of monster. He wasn’t. Comitatus
or not, he was just a man. That society of his couldn’t remain secret if enough people asked questions. They couldn’t treat people the way they had Greta’s father—or, Arden truly suspected, Smith and Mitch—if enough people protested their pretense of omnipotence. She had no intention of giving up her personal power today, damn the consequences.

“Fine,” she said—and left the house before even Smith, with a gasped
“Arden!”
could follow her.

The early evening heat of August surrounded Arden like a hot blanket as she strode, quite alone, to the car parked down the street. It was running—likely to keep the air-conditioning on—but so well-designed that its idling engine was nearly silent.

She tapped on the window, folded her arms and waited.

Nothing happened. Down the street, a knot of boys continued to play basketball on a cracked driveway. Some blocks away, a police siren sounded—not an unusual event, and nothing for concern. Despite the setting sun, which turned the western horizon a mixture of pinks, blues and oranges, the heat hadn’t lessened.

Arden knocked with more force. “Prescott Lowell?”

Finally, with a waft of cold air, the driver’s side window slid soundlessly down to reveal his expensive haircut, expensive smirk and gaze of absolute disdain. Only for a moment did a rush of upset, a memory from the other night, tighten her throat at his thuggish face.

Then he spoke, and the moment passed. “I figured you’d come back here. Like a rat going back to its nest.”

“I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced,” she said, her drawl thickening around the words of common courtesy. “I’m Arden Leigh, daughter of Donaldson Leigh? You crashed my daddy’s party and threatened me with a knife last week. How do you do?”

“I didn’t crash. I was invited.”

“Not by me, and it was my party.”

“At your ‘daddy’s’ house.”

“You’re saying my daddy invited you?” For a moment, in the stillness between them, possibilities threatened like a looming tsunami—but he blinked first, looked down, shook his head.

As if her father made a habit of inviting his employees to expensive fundraising evenings. She should have known this man would lie. It made asking the next question feel somewhat futile, but she had to. “Why are you stalking me?”

That’s when she noticed, in her periphery, a subtle movement. Even before she placed it, she felt herself relaxing in a very real way.

Smith crouched behind the car, hidden but waiting to spring to her defense if she needed it. The sense of safety in his nearness warmed her, relaxed her—and at last, maybe for the first time since he’d reappeared in her life, she didn’t fight her pleasure at his nearness.

In the meantime, Lowell made self-important noises about having no interest in her beyond her involvement “in matters that don’t concern you.”

“Comitatus matters,” she clarified, just to watch his face turn red.

“I told you,” he warned through gritted teeth, “never to mention that again. Do you have a death wish?”

At least he hadn’t grabbed his knife, which she saw lying ready on his passenger seat, as deadly as ever. “No, I have an information wish. Who else is in this secret society of yours? Why are they interested in me or the state comptroller? What do you think to accomplish by stalking and threatening me? Just a few questions like that.”

“Why are
you
fraternizing with the likes of Smith Donnell and his crew? What do
you
hope to accomplish?”

“Why do you care? Because they aren’t under your control?” Only with effort did Arden bite back the word
anymore?

If Smith
were
a former Comitatus member, he’d taken a blood vow of secrecy. She didn’t want to imply that he’d broken it, even if she wished he had.

For her.

“You just keep asking questions, sugar,” Lowell sneered. “And talk loudly for the microphone, okay?”

And he held up his cell phone—which apparently had a record feature.

Arden showed her dimples and started to ask, “Is that supposed to worry me?”

But it must have worried Smith, because she only got out “Is that—” before he’d sprung from behind the car and pushed between her and Lowell. Arden stumbled against the curb, barely keeping her balance, while Smith tried to launch himself through the open window with a snarled, “Give me that!”

“Like hell, traitor!”

With a screech of tires, the sedan tore away from the curb—with Smith still hanging on. It zigzagged wildly as its driver struggled to retain possession of the phone. For a moment, Arden thought Smith would triumph. He
should
triumph. He was her hero.

And a reckless idiot. But perhaps he could be both.

As the sedan picked up speed, all she cared about was him surviving the battle. His feet were still on the pavement, unable to run fast enough to keep up. In a moment he was hanging on to the door even as the car straightened, even as the window began to slide shut.

Arden began to run after them.

“You son of a—!” She could hear his furious insult—the whole block could—before Smith lost his hold on the speeding sedan and hit the street. Bounced. Rolled.

And lay horribly still.

“S
mith!” It seemed to take forever for her to even reach him, to drop to her knees on the burning black asphalt. She drew his head into her skirted lap, then feared that he might have hurt his back, then accepted that it was too late to
not
move him and could only pray. She petted hair away from his face and saw a spatter of blood, more than road burn could explain. Quickly she began to run her hands over him and found a glaze of blood spilling from a hash of cuts on both forearms.

Didn’t television cop shows call those defensive wounds?

Lowell had had his knife with him, after all.

She pressed a lace-trimmed handkerchief against the worst of his arms, hated feeling so helpless. Should she move him further? Should she call an ambulance? To her relief, Smith’s brown eyes opened on his own accord, and he even had the gall to grin at her, even if his grin was part wince.

“You should see the other guy,” he assured her, and groaned.

Her hero, all right. She gently slapped his shoulder with her free hand. “You son of a bitch!”

Smith’s eyes widened. “Ard?”

“How could you do something so stupid? And over a
cell-phone recording?
”

“Well, I had to try.”

She rose up on her knees, so that he slid off her lap and back onto the concrete with a murmured, “Ow.”

“No, you did not have to try. You did not have to risk your life or your anonymity. Lowell can’t be that dangerous.”

“Actually…” Levering himself up into a sitting position with one bloodied arm, Smith glanced meaningfully at the stained lace on the other.

“Daddy can protect me,” Arden insisted. “Val can protect me. I can protect myself and, clearly,
you
can protect me, but not if he kills you!”

“I wouldn’t let him kill—” But then Smith threw himself against her, a hand grabbing the back of her head, pulling her face into his shirt, protecting her as he rolled once, twice, again. Hot pebbles dug into her bare arms. Unable to see, Arden flinched from the sound of a racing motor, a crash of glass, a squeal of tires.

Only as Smith’s death grip on her lessened, in the shelter of a wheel-less pickup truck sitting against the curb, did Arden realize what had happened. Prescott Lowell had come back around the corner and tried to run them down as Smith lay in the street.

Smith’s friend Trace had intercepted him, man against machine, with a crowbar to the windshield.

Now Trace stalked behind the black car and, in one swing, took out its rear windshield, as well. He was moving toward the driver’s side when Lowell wisely sped away. Not a minute later, a familiar, primer-gray sedan slowed as it cruised by, long enough for Mitch to call, “
I
lose
him.
He doesn’t lose me.”

Then both cars vanished down the streets of Oak Cliff, and Smith and Arden remained seated, forgotten arms loose around each other, legs entangled, against the curb.

“I think I see why they’re your friends,” Arden said—or tried to. Her words came out more of a breathless murmur.

Instead of answering, Smith dropped his head onto her shoulder and breathed her in, muttering something over and over. When Arden tipped her ear against his thick, warm hair, she could make it out. “Dammit. Dammit.
Dammit.
”

She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “We survived, didn’t we? I call this a win. Except for your poor arms….”

She could feel dampness against her back where his cut arms must be bleeding through her dress. It wasn’t an expensive dress—for her. For someone in a different income bracket, it would be. She didn’t care.

When Smith drew back, his expression was as fierce as the voice that tore from his throat. “Lowell has you on tape, Ard.”

She waited for further explanation.

“Lowell has you on tape, clearly aware of the Comitatus, asking
questions
about them. About their interest in the comptroller. About who else is involved. Once the society elders hear it…Do you have any idea how much danger you’re in? How much—”

He was interrupted by his friend Trace, towering over them, offering a hand to help them up. Between Trace’s big hand around hers, drawing her easily to her feet, and Smith’s hands on her hips, pushing from below, their helpfulness nearly tossed Arden into the air.

“You’re bleeding!” Smith scrambled to his feet before Trace could help him, using the pickup truck to brace himself, wincing from some inner pain. “Arden, God!”

Arden looked down at herself. Her elbows were barely scraped from their roll across the asphalt. She was not bleeding. “That’s
your
blood, Smith. Let’s get you inside. Come on.”

Smith may or may not have been ready to protest that he could walk on his own, but when she lifted his arm over her shoulder and snuggled him close to her side, her own arm tight around him, he seemed to rethink that. In fact, he leaned a little into her bosom as they walked back to the house.

She suspected that was on purpose.

She didn’t mind. In fact, she thoroughly enjoyed the close warmth and press of their bodies. Despite the insult to her independence, Smith’s determination to protect her was hardly a negative. He’d claimed, back in her bedroom, that he hadn’t wanted to break up with her. He’d said it was the biggest regret of his life.

The fact that he was beaten and bleeding from trying to protect her added an amazing truth to those statements. And remembering him in her room, and how they’d kissed…remembering how he’d kissed her to shut her up in the restaurant just today…remembering how easily Mitch had assumed they were back together…

Arden began to understand why she had not corrected Mitch.

She’d begun to assume the same thing. Worse, she
wanted
to assume it. She desperately, desperately wanted this man whom she held so close to be the hero she had once imagined he could be.

He was the one who’d broken her heart.

Maybe he was the only one who could mend it.

But as much as she wanted to luxuriate in the weight of him, the feel of his body against hers—as much as she wanted to coo over his injuries while she helped tend to them—something else niggled at the edge of Arden’s concern.

It wasn’t the danger to herself. “Why
are
the Comitatus interested in the state comptroller?”

Smith had been so blissfully distracted by Arden’s softness, and concern and magnolia scent—distractions so powerful,
he almost forgot the sword still waiting, humming, downstairs—that it took a moment for her question to break the fog.

Long enough for Trace to try answering it instead. “
What
state comptroller?”

Yeah. Trace wasn’t exactly their mastermind.

Not that Smith did much better when he simply lifted one of his bleeding arms, tried to look especially injured, and said, “Ow.” But at least that distracted Arden—and Greta, as soon as they got inside—long enough to figure out a better response. After all, there had been a good reason he and the others were at Arden’s party for gubernatorial candidate Molly Johannes not a full week earlier.

The information they’d stolen that night had yielded some fascinating insight into the plans of the central southwest inner circle of the Comitatus.

As Smith had half suspected, they were only pretending to support the state comptroller for the governor’s race. That way, they’d look particularly innocent when her campaign was ambushed by the ugliest smear tactics Smith and his friends had ever seen. If they could just gather a bit more evidence, that evidence could easily prove the society’s
un
doing, as well. But obtaining that evidence…

Distractions didn’t get much better, on Smith’s end, than Arden tending to his wounds, even if he had to sit on a closed toilet to receive them. Her matter-of-fact manner about his blood, and the mess of her pretty pink dress, impressed him as much as her beauty ever had. She cleaned and disinfected the wounds that Lowell’s ceremonial knife had left, suggested he get stitches. When Smith refused—medical facilities being firmly
on
the grid—she quietly secured them with butterfly bandages and a wound adhesive that Trace dug from his duffel bag. She waited until she was wrapping the second forearm with gauze bandage, giving Smith the appearance of wearing
white gauntlets, before she again asked, “Why are the Comitatus interested in the state comptroller?”

And dammit, Smith had been so distracted by her firm, gentle touch and his fantasies about her kissing him to make him well that he didn’t have any better answer than he had last time. Not without giving away stupid secrets which he had stupidly sworn to stupidly keep silent.

But this time, Sibyl was there. The teenager had watched the entire first-aid process from a quiet perch on the bathroom counter with an almost morbid fascination, her knees pulled up under her chin. Now she piped in to say, “The Comitatus are taking her down.”

Smith blinked at Trace, who’d filled the doorway with a more casual interest in Smith’s blood. Arden was so busy turning to stare at the teenager that she didn’t seem to notice. “They
what?
”

Apparently, neither Trace nor Smith had to divulge any Comitatus secrets. Apparently, this Sibyl informant was the real thing.

“The local Comitatus have been encouraging Molly Johannes’s race as a warning to women politicians,” she insisted, in a complete sentence even. “Couldn’t take her down as comptroller. Nobody outside politics would notice for long. What do comptrollers even do?”

“They…comptrol?” tried Trace.

Arden rolled her eyes. “The comptroller is in charge of the state’s finances! That’s hardly a minor position.”

Sibyl leaned her cheek on her bare knees. “Yes, but we know politics. Ask the average supermarket shopper. But governor? Could become president. People notice.”

Arden rose from where she’d crouched beside Smith for his ministrations. He missed her nearness. “What about Governor Ann Richards?”

“Mistake.” Sibyl frowned in concentration. “On the Comi
tatus end. Even they couldn’t elect her opponent. Not all powerful.” She glared at Smith. “Just like to think so.”

“Who cares what the comptroller does?” he challenged back.

“Exactly,” said Sibyl.

“I mean, just now
I
don’t care.” When Arden turned a look of dismay on him, Smith tried another change of subject. “And how would you even know about Comitatus plans?”

“Hacked into their computers. Can we have chicken now?”

Apparently, as Trace had predicted, Greta had invited the girl to dinner.

For once, it was Arden not putting the requests of a guest first. “Not quite yet, honey.”

“What exactly
do
the Comitatus have planned?” Smith clarified. Did her intel match the information he and his friends had taken out of Donaldson Leigh’s office on the night of Arden’s party?

Sibyl narrowed her eyes at him, as if she
knew
he knew, which annoyed him. He
did
know, but not because he was Comitatus.

Smith glared back, wishing she would get over her suspicions, stop her silent threats to tell Arden everything and just help them.

Luckily, Arden broke into the stare-off with a soft hand on his shoulder. “We have to know, in order to warn Molly.”

“Smears about orgies,” Sibyl offered. “Stolen state funds. Molested children she babysat. Helped at the youth center to seduce more victims.” At Arden’s increasing dismay, she added, “The Comitatus pay people to be witnesses, like the government did in the Lincoln conspiracy. And the MLK assassination. Giving them scripts and payoffs. I’ve seen the accounts.”

That was much more than Smith and his band of exiles had gotten. “As in, their accounts of the supposed thefts and affairs?”

Sibyl rolled her eyes. No. She really meant the monetary accounts.

“Is it something the press will believe?” asked Arden. “Something that would hold up in court?”

“Illegal downloads off nameless computers. Comitatus owns the press.” Sibyl glanced at Trace, then looked quickly away and shrugged. “And the courts.”

“Not all of them,” Smith insisted. Then for Arden’s sake, he added, “I’d imagine.”

Concern haunted Arden’s pretty green eyes. “Then how do we warn Molly?”

“We don’t.” At her expression of betrayal, Smith stood to clarify. “Not yet. We get better proof. Irrevocable proof. Enough…” Oh God. He’d been wrestling with this decision for months.

But today, he’d seen how far the Comitatus, in the form of Prescott Lowell, was willing to go. Today, they’d set their sights on Arden.

That made the decision far easier than he’d ever expected, vows and bloodlines aside.

Proof. “Enough to take them down.”

Sibyl’s slumped posture straightened with real interest. Trace, who’d been arguing on the take-them-down side since their exile, grinned with anticipation. Arden looked up at Smith as if he really were her hero, which he seriously enjoyed.

Then his cell phone, in his jeans pocket, rang—and he couldn’t get at it without messing up his bandage-gauntlets. Making a face, he had to lean away to offer his hip to Arden, looking hopeful.

He seriously enjoyed her retrieving his cell phone for him, too.

“It’s Mitch,” she said, opening it for him.

And from the hallway, hidden behind Trace, Greta Kaiser said, “You
can’t
take down the Comitatus. You have to save them.

“We need heroes.”

Greta could not possibly have imagined, mere weeks ago, how her simple request of Arden would change her life. Not a week ago she’d been living a lonely life of long, shadowy days and longer, silent nights. Between near blindness, near poverty and advancing age, she’d had little more than her beloved dog, a few visits from friends and a lot of memories left.

Those memories, and the holes Papa’s secrecy had left in them, had meant everything. Hence her request that Arden confirm them.

But now!

Now she could barely hear over the din of her crowded kitchen table…and she loved it even more than did her happy cocker spaniel.