Knight in Blue Jeans (13 page)

Smith glanced wearily toward Greta, the main holdout against that argument. But she, kneeling beside her dog, looked up with sadness in her vague eyes and nodded at seeming nothingness.

“They could have killed me, all of you, even Dido.” Her old voice shook in regret. “Whatever was worth saving has surely changed since Papa’s time. You need to stop them.”

“Then we stop them.” Smith’s voice croaked oddly as he spoke. “Just…”

“Do not tell me you’re gonna wuss out,” warned Trace, standing to his impressive height. And breadth.

Like Smith would scare that easily.

“No, I am not going to wuss out. I just—I should warn Arden first. She—”

Which is when the back of his mind did the math, and something inside him froze.

“Warn Arden about what?” demanded Val, while Smith dug his prepaid cell phone from his pocket.

“That Arden’s father is the head of the local Comitatus,” answered Sibyl, strangely certain about even more details.

Smith stared at the display on his phone, at the
3 Missed Calls
message.

He hadn’t heard his phone ring, what with all the excitement.

Arden…

“Who else is in this secret society of yours?” asked Arden’s sweet voice from the minirecorder in Donaldson Leigh’s hand. “Why are they interested in me or the state comptroller?”

He snapped it off before the part about Smith Donnell—but they’d already heard that. Several times. Too often.

Leigh had seen tragedy in his life. Wealth and greatness hardly protected a man from losing parents, losing wives. But never, until now, had he felt true heartbreak.

Arden…

How had he raised a daughter who would so flagrantly disobey him, so willfully pursue matters that were none of her business?

“You don’t have to do this.” His friend Will Donnell stood very still in the corner of Leigh’s otherwise-empty study.

“You’re one to talk,” growled Leigh, not looking up. “This is your traitor’s fault.”

Will did not deny that his only son had betrayed them. They’d known that for over a year—and now they had Smith on tape, too. Will’s voice stayed carefully neutral. “He left my protection when he left the brotherhood. Arden…”

Leigh finally raised his eyes, hoping he could hide his pain as thoroughly as his friend. “Some would argue that she left my protection when she left home, certainly when she pursued this foolish quest and took up with…well. Now she’s endangering us all. It must be stopped.”

Leigh pressed the speed-dial button for his baby girl. Only the nobility born in him from generations of purebred Leighs,
from a lifetime in the grand society of the Comitatus, gave him the strength to ignore the ache of loss, the bitter taste of this double betrayal.

“Thank you for calling,” drawled his daughter’s musical voice—also a recording. “I’m so sorry I can’t pick up, but if you’ll be so kind as to leave a message, I’ll get back to you quick as a jackrabbit. ’Bye now!”

At the beep, he said, “Darling? It’s Daddy. Jeff’s hurt himself—nothing life-threatening, but his arm may be broken, and he’s refusing to go to the doctor. If you get this, we surely could use your presence at home.”

Then he hung up, somehow exhausted.

After a few long breaths, he met Will Donnell’s stoic gaze, sharing more than most strong men could.

They waited.

Will turned suddenly toward the window, brow furrowed as if he’d seen something—but that’s when the phone rang.

Arden,
announced the caller-ID screen.

Leigh answered on speakerphone—because she was now a Comitatus problem, not his baby. Never again his baby. “This is Leigh.”

Still, the concern in her honeyed voce wrenched his heart as she said, “Daddy?”

“C
ome again?” demanded Val, her voice as dangerous as her expression.

Smith hardly listened to Sibyl’s reiteration—that Arden’s father was head of the local Comitatus—as he dialed into his voice mail.

“
Madre de Dios,
” swore Arden’s friend, while a soot-darkened Mitch cocked his head to ask the teen, “Is there
nothing
you don’t know?”

“Shut up,” snapped Smith, at all of them.

He felt himself beginning to unravel. Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God. He’d left Arden almost four hours ago. Val didn’t
own
that much laundry.

Where the hell was she?

Maybe the others heard something in his voice, because they shut up in time for him to hear her message.

“Hi, Smith.” Her voice sounded innocent and affectionate, momentarily surrounding him with the memory of this incred
ible morning. “Jeff’s been in a skateboarding accident—I think he’ll be all right, but I’m heading out to make sure, and I don’t want to waste time coming by for you if you’re off somewhere else. Call me
quickly
if you want to come along. I…Well, ’bye then.”

“She’s going to her father’s,” he told the others, barely able to listen to the second message. But it could be something important.

Venom dripped from Val’s words. “Good job protecting her.”

And then the second message, cooler in comparison.

“I’m almost to Highland Park, so—no carpooling today after all. I know you’re worried about the Comitatus sitting in wait for me, but Daddy’s place is very safe—I’ll turn around the moment I see anything suspicious, cross my heart.”

She’d left no third message.

Smith held his breath and dialed her number. The rings lasted an eternity.

And then: “Thank you for calling. I’m so sorry I can’t pick up, but if you’ll be so kind as to leave a message—”

He disconnected, his heart beating like drums at an execution. This time, the tightness in his throat had nothing to do with smoke inhalation.

“They have Arden.”

The third time she got Smith’s voice mail, Arden didn’t bother leaving a message. How needy was she?

Instead, she put down her cell phone and focused on driving Val’s old Jeep. She tried not to feel disappointed about Smith’s continued silence, but, since her alternative was to worry about Jeff, her mind kept wandering back. Just because Smith wasn’t returning her calls, even in an emergency, didn’t mean he’d abandoned her.

Again.

After…

No. She knew such worries were an overreaction. So…why couldn’t she shake her unease?

Likely he was involved in some kind of supersecret save-the-Comitatus mission for Greta. Surely he would call her as soon as he could. He wouldn’t make love to her the way he had last night, wouldn’t kiss her the way he had this morning, and then just…
leave.

Some men, perhaps.

Not Smith.

Even if, living off the grid as he did, he
could
leave far more easily than most.

She didn’t have her remote control for the outside gates—that was still in her own car, at her condominium near the light-rail station. But of course she knew the security code by heart. She breathed a sigh of relief as her family’s gates slid closed behind her—Smith might be overprotective, but she
had
promised to be careful. She pulled to a stop just outside the four-car garage, surprised by the number of cars. Perhaps when Jeff refused to see a doctor, Daddy had brought the doctor to Jeff.

Leaving Val’s Jeep in the driveway, Arden hurried through the side entrance—only to find the kitchen unusually still and empty. “Esperanza?”

She got no answer. Odd.

This wasn’t Esperanza’s day off.

“Jeff!” she called. “Dadd—” But a large, male palm suddenly pressed over her mouth.

Arden’s cry of surprise didn’t make it past the fleshy gag. Her attacker’s forearm caught her, hard, across her throat, cutting off more breath.

Caught!
Right there in the safety of her family kitchen.

She turned her head into the crook of her captor’s elbow without even thinking—thank goodness for the bits of self-defense Smith had taught her, months ago. There, she could
almost inhale past his soft, smothering fingers and the rich scent of Armani Black.

Prescott Lowell.

In her family’s home!

Jeff,
she thought, panicked even more for her loved ones than herself.
Daddy!

If anything had happened to them because of her, because she’d drawn this secret-society melodrama to their front door, she would never forgive herself!

“It’s no use struggling—” Lowell began.

He didn’t finish. Finding her captor’s foot with her own, Arden stomped with all her weight, scraping her heel down his shin before cracking down on his toes. At the same time, she clawed at the hand blocking her mouth and nose, finding and yanking viciously on the man’s pinky finger.

She couldn’t hear the snap over his howl of pain, over a surreal bit of music from the floor, but she felt it.

Gulping fresh air, Arden drove her elbow toward his throat—

He shoved her, hard, against the kitchen island before her blow connected. The marble countertop knocked precious breath from her. Somehow, through that, she recognized the ringtone on her phone.
Smith.

Memory of Smith gave her the strength to kick out at the blur of movement that came at her.

Lowell’s hands caught one of her ankles before she did damage. With a yank, he pulled her back from her brace on the countertop and into nothingness. Her jaw clipped marble as she fell to the tile floor, twisting a wrist. She rolled, catching the barest glimpse of Lowell and his fury. His face red, his eyes near white, he stomped viciously downward toward her face—

And, strangely, flew forward, right over her, into the glass-fronted cabinets.

Then—oh, thank heavens—Arden’s daddy was there, big
and strong and perfectly safe. He stepped over her, loomed over her attacker.

“You dishonorable son of a whore!”

Lowell crabbed backward, sliding across the cabinet fronts, trapped. “She fought back!”

“Of course she fought back—she’s a Leigh!” Her father hauled Arden’s attacker up with one hand, backhanded him right back down with the other. “She’s also of the blood! No common threat, to be
kicked
—” He kicked Lowell, hard, in the gut “—or
beaten
or even
shot.
Are we civilized—” another kick “—or are we not?”

Pulling herself to a kneeling position, Arden first blamed her confusion on the throbbing in her head. Nothing her father said made any sense!

Or—

No. She couldn’t
let
it make sense.

“Don!” Another man appeared to pull her father off of her attacker, taking an offhand blow for his troubles. “Donaldson—listen to yourself!”

Her father stopped, panting. His wild eyes went from Lowell, still lying by the cabinets, to Arden, still kneeling beside the kitchen island. She realized that her phone had stopped ringing.

“Blood lets blood,” he rasped, sounding oddly defeated for someone who’d just saved her and beaten down her attacker.

“Yes,” agreed his companion. “But doesn’t that count for Lowell blood, too? We’ll have to justify our actions with his father, as well as with Stuart. Stop being so…Irish.”

The way he forced a crooked smile at that, through the weight in the room—the way his eyebrows tilted in his effort to communicate—helped Arden place his identity even through her growing horror. Will Donnell.

Smith’s father. Comitatus.

That frightened her in a way that made her want to shut her
eyes, shake her head—stop time. She tried to pull herself up, and then her father was there, like the southern gentleman he was, assisting her to her feet. When she threw herself into his familiar arms, he stiffened.

So did she. Too much evidence. Too much proof.
No!

Lowell protested. “I haven’t betrayed anybody! She did.”

“It’s not betrayal if she doesn’t know better!” Her father shot back over her head, his arms closing around her at last. See? Her suspicions were wrong. They had to be….

“We need to call the police,” Arden managed, her voice raspy from the pressure Lowell had forced against it. Her mouth felt swollen where he’d tried to gag her. Her head, back and wrist throbbed from the marble island. “He broke in. He attacked me.” But—“Where’s Jeff? Daddy, where’s Jeffie?”

“Hush, bunny. Jeff’s at the Galleria.”

So…he
wasn’t
hurt?
No, no, no.
If Daddy had lied, that meant—“But his arm…”

“His arm is fine.”

“It’s your decision,” said Donnell, quietly.

“She’s got to be—” began Lowell, but now Donnell was the one who slapped him into silence.

“We
know!
” Smith’s father agreed.

Finally, despite the pain, Arden stopped fighting the truth. Her father’s call had been to lure her here. Lowell couldn’t have infiltrated the Leigh estate without any of Daddy’s top security catching him. Someone had sent the housekeeper away.

And then there were the words—
of the blood. Doesn’t know any better.

The dying sensation deep in her gut told her that she
did
understand, even if she didn’t want to; should have understood long ago. Would have, if her family didn’t matter so much. Her family had been everything. Maybe part of her
would
rather die than understand. But the rest of her…

Jeff was safe—for now. Smith loved her. The girls in Oak Cliff needed her.

Southern women had strength. Grit. So she faced the truth, and the cold that swept through her like death.

Her father was also Comitatus. He’d hidden that from her.
Smith
had hidden that from her. Her life had always been made of lies.

“I’m okay, Daddy.” Her soft words rang in her ears like someone else’s, like she was hearing them from a television or radio. Patting his shoulder, she stepped back.

He let her, refused to meet her gaze.

“But we need to do something about this intruder,” she insisted, as if she hadn’t figured any of it out yet.

And when her father and Mr. Donnell glanced back to the panting, bloody excuse for a human still on the floor?

Arden dove for the exit. It took all her good sense not to detour for her purse—the need to call Smith felt that strong. She yanked the door inward, veered around it—

Too slow. Hands caught her back, horribly familiar hands. “Stop it,” her father commanded as he’d once chided her about fidgeting in church or crying over a lost pageant. She struggled against his grip, but not hard enough. Even now, she couldn’t summon up the desperation to stomp his foot or gouge at his eyes or try any other violent self-defense techniques.

Instinct had deserted her, because after nearly a quarter century of training, her instinct still said to trust her father. So he was Comitatus? So was Smith. That didn’t make them bad, just…

Liars. All of them, liars.

“Arden, stop it!” her father demanded.

So she obeyed, defeated in far more ways than one.

All Smith wanted in the world was to get to Arden.

But when Greta stepped in his path before he could reach the door, he recognized the velvet-wrapped bundle in her hands by more than sight. He
felt
it.

He immediately knew, with the instincts of his fathers’ fathers’ fathers, that he
needed
it.

So why did he stop and wait for this, her third offer?

“Will you take the Sword of Aeneas with you?” asked the old woman, daughter of an exiled Comitatus member, descendent of heroes.

Smith swallowed around the oddest sense of destiny. “Yes.”

What it lacked in poetry, it made up for in efficiency. And as she handed the antique to him, its weight in his hand, even through the velvet, felt—

Complete.

Smith reached under the wrapping, his palm drawn to the sword’s grip as if through years of practice. At long last, he curled his fingers firmly around the grip.

And some power, some energy—
glimpses of firelight and molten metal, the shock of hammer on anvil, the absolute focus of duty
—curled around him.

“Trace will watch after you until we get back,” he promised, hurrying out the front door as Mitch started his old car. For once, Trace didn’t argue with him.

“Val’s coming along,” Mitch explained quickly out the window as Smith strode around to the passenger side. “Because Arden took her car, and because I’m too scared to tell her—
Holy crap!
” That last because Smith had let the velvet fall away from the sword as he took his place riding shotgun. “Okay, now I’m scared of you, too.”

“Just drive,” warned Smith, ignoring Mitch’s double take and Val’s doubtful grunt from the backseat.

Mitch drove.

“Guns are more practical,” noted Val, supremely unimpressed.

Smith felt somehow blasphemous as he said, “What exactly makes you think I don’t have my gun?”

But seriously. She was right.

Wasn’t she?

When the old guesthouse was converted to her father’s detached study, its walk-in closet became a storage and file room. That’s where Arden found herself stowed, hands and feet tied, guarded by a particularly unlikely armed Comitatus member. Armed with a knife, that was.

What was it with these guys and knives?

Meanwhile her father, Smith’s father and at least five other men had gathered in the larger room beyond to decide her fate.

At least, that’s what she’d first thought they were talking about. But she overheard enough through the thin walls to realize that, in fact, they were meeting about Molly Johannes.

She felt oddly insulted. Heaven forbid the secret society let something as minor as the capture of a prodigal daughter get in the way of their he-man-woman-hater schemes!

It sounded as bad as Sibyl had predicted—a total smear campaign aimed to undermine the public’s faith in female politicians. Ugly enough that she realized she had no desire to hear more—especially not her once-beloved father’s role in all this. Instead, she tried to engage her guard in conversation. “You didn’t gag me.”