Defender

“That’s your graduation, sandwiched in between breakfast and a board meeting,” Merrie teased under her breath. “At least he came home for your graduation,” she added a little bitterly.

Sari kissed her sister’s cheek. “I was there at yours. So were Mandy and Paul. Now shut up or I’ll never graduate,” came the whispered reply. “Let’s go!” She smoothed down her very discreet black dress, regardless of her own wishes, and started toward the door. She noticed Paul’s faint wince as he saw how she was dressed, like someone out of a very old Bette Davis movie instead of a young woman ready to start graduate school.

She didn’t answer that look. It might have been fatal to his employment if she had.

Graduation was boisterous and fun, despite her father, who sat through the entire ceremony texting on his phone and then conducting a business call the minute the graduates filed out into the spring sunshine.

“Maybe it’s glued to him,” Merrie teased as she and Sari were briefly alone.

“Attached by invisible cords,” Sari replied. “Hi, Grace, happy graduation!” Sari called to a fellow graduate.

“Thanks, Sari! You off to law school in the fall?” she asked.

“Yes. You?”

“I’m moving in with my boyfriend,” Grace sighed, indicating a tall, gangly boy talking to another boy. “We’re both going to the University of Tennessee.”

“Oh, I see,” Sari said, still not comfortable with modern ideas and choices.

Grace made a face. “Honestly, Sari, you need to buy normal clothes and go out with boys,” Grace said, loud enough for Sari’s father to hear.

He hung up his phone and moved to join them, looking expensive and coldly angry. “Are you ready to go, Isabel?” he asked curtly. His eyes never left Grace. He looked at her as if she were some disease he was afraid his daughters might catch.

“Uh, congrats, Sari. See you around,” Grace said, red-faced, and went back to her boyfriend.

“Slut,” Darwin said, just loud enough for his voice to carry and Grace to look both ruffled and insulted. “Let’s go.” He took Sari by the arm and almost dragged her to the waiting limousine, with a flustered Merrie running to catch up.

“I’ll have Paul watching,” Darwin said as Paul put the girls into the back of the limo and stood aside, holding the door, so that Darwin could slide into the seat facing them. The door closed. “I’ll expect you to associate with decent girls. Do you understand? That goes for you, too, Meredith!”

“Yes, Daddy,” Sari said.

“I understand,” Merrie added with a sigh.

The sisters didn’t dare look at each other. It would have been fatal.

* * *

The dinner Darwin had referred to was obviously going to be prepared by Mandy and just for the two women. Darwin had Paul drive him to the airport, where his corporate jet was waiting. Sari and Merrie sat down to a lovely chicken casserole with homemade rolls and even a chocolate cake.

“It’s delicious, Mandy,” Sari said halfway through the meal. “Thanks!”

“Yes, it’s wonderful!” Merrie enthused.

“Some graduation,” Mandy muttered. “Should have gone out with your classmates and had fun, not be stuck here with me and an empty house.”

“You know how Daddy is,” Sari said quietly. “He doesn’t think…”

“He doesn’t care,” Merrie interrupted coolly. “It’s the truth, Sari, you just don’t want to admit it. He doesn’t want us going out with men because we might get involved and tell somebody something he doesn’t want known. He doesn’t want us getting married because we’d be out from under his thumb! Besides, some of that money might go outside the family!”

“I suppose you’re right,” Sari said, tasting her cake. “It’s just, you get used to a routine. You don’t even realize that it really is a routine.” Her eyes twinkled. “Honestly, I thought Daddy was going to have a coronary when Grace talked about moving in with her boyfriend!”

Merrie chuckled. “I know! At least four of my classmates live with boys. They say it’s very exciting…”

“Don’t you even think about it,” Mandy told them, waving a spoon in their direction. “There’s enough wild-eyed girls out there already. You two are going to get married and live happily ever after.”

“You make it sound like a fairy tale,” Sari accused.

“Maybe, but I want more for you than being some man’s temporary bed partner while he climbs the ladder to success,” Mandy murmured. “Your mother wanted that, too. She went to church every Sunday. She believed that people have a purpose, that life has a purpose. She was an idealist.”

“Yes, well, she waited to get married and she found Daddy,” Sari said quietly. “So there goes your fairy-tale ending. I remember her more than Merrie does. She was unhappy. She tried not to let it show, but it did. Sometimes I found her crying when she thought nobody was looking. And she had bruises…”

“Don’t ever speak of that where Mr. Darwin or even Mr. Paul could hear you,” Mandy cautioned, looking frightened.

“I never would,” Sari assured her. She grimaced. “But it’s like living in prison,” she muttered.

“A prison with silk hangings and Persian carpets,” Mandy said mischievously.

“You know what she means, Mandy,” Merrie piped in as she finished the last of her cake. “We aren’t even allowed to date. One of my friends thinks our father is nuts.”

“Merrie!”

“It’s okay, he’s from Wyoming,” Merrie said, grinning. “He’s in private school up north somewhere, but he visits a cousin here during the summer. His name is Randall. He’s really nice.”

“Don’t you dare,” Mandy began.

“Oh, it’s not like that. We’re just friends.” She emphasized the word. “He goes through girls like some people go through candy. I’d never want somebody like that! But he’s very easy to talk to, and he listens to me. I like him a lot.”

“As long as you don’t tell him things you shouldn’t,” Mandy replied.

Merrie’s eyes fell. “I’d never do that.”

Sari put down her fork with a sigh. “Well, it was a very nice lunch, even if it didn’t come with scores of well-wishers and dancing.” She frowned. “Come to think of it, I don’t know how to dance. I’ve never been anywhere that I could learn.”

“We went to that Latin restaurant once, where they had the flamenco dancers,” Merrie said, tongue in cheek.

“Oh, sure, and I could have gotten up on a table and practiced the steps,” came the sardonic reply.

Suddenly a door slammed. Paul came into the dining room with his hands deep in his pockets. His thick, wavy black hair was damp and there were droplets on the shoulders of his suit coat. “Well, it’s raining,” he sighed. “At least it held off until after the graduation ceremony.”

“At least,” Sari replied. “There’s plenty left.” She indicated the remnants of the lovely meal. “And lots of cake.”

He chuckled. “I’m sorry.”

“About what?” Sari asked.

“You should have gone out with your friends for a real celebration,” he said, dropping into a chair. “With balloons and music and drinks…”

“Drinks?” Sari asked with raised eyebrows. “What are those?”

“I had balloons at my fifth birthday party, when Mama was still alive,” Merrie added.

“Music. Hmm,” Mandy said, thinking. “I went to a concert in the park last week. They had tubas and saxophones…”

Paul threw up his hands. “You people are hopeless!”

“We live in hopeless times,” Sari said. She stood up and adopted a pose. “But someday, people will put aside their differences and raise balloons in tribute to those who have given their all so that we can have drinks and tubas…”

The rest of them started laughing.

She chuckled and sat back down. “Well, it was a nice thought. Daddy doesn’t like us being around normal people, Paul,” she added. “He thinks we’ll be corrupted.”

“That would be a choice,” he replied. “I don’t think you get one if you live here.”

“Shh!” Sari said at once. “Don’t say that out loud or they’ll find you floating down some river in an oil drum!”

His eyes twinkled. “We found a guy like that once, back when I was a kid. Me and some other guys were goofing off near the river, in Jersey, and we saw this oil drum just floating, near the shore. One of the older boys was curious. He and a friend went and pried off the lid.” He made a horrible face. “We set new land speed records getting out of there! It was a body inside!”

“Did you get the police?” Merrie asked curiously.

He gave her a long look. “Honey, if we’d done that, we’d probably have ended up in matching oil drums ourselves! You don’t mess with the mob.”

“Mob? You mean, real mob…mobsters?” Merrie asked, her eyes as big as saucers.

“Yeah,” he replied, grinning. “I grew up in a rough neighborhood. Almost all of the kids I knew back then ended up in prison.”

“But not you,” Sari said, with more tenderness in her tone than she realized.

“Not me,” Paul agreed. He smiled. “How about a plate?” he asked Mandy. “I’ve fought traffic all the way from San Antonio and I’m starved!”

“You had the nice big breakfast that I made you this morning,” Mandy taunted.

“Yeah, but all of it got used up listening to that guy who spoke at Sari’s graduation ceremony. Who was he again?” he teased.

“That was one of the finer politicians this state has produced,” Sari informed him haughtily. “In fact, he’s your US senator.”

“In that case, may he return to Washington, DC, with best possible speed and stay there from now on!” he said. “Gosh, imagine having to listen to him drone on for hours in Congress!”

“It beats having him drone on at somebody’s graduation,” Merrie said under her breath. “Oh, sorry!” she told her sister, but she ruined her apologetic tone by grinning.

Sari laughed, too. “I think there’s some basic rule that people who speak at graduation ceremonies have to bore people to death.”

“It would seem so.”

“Who spoke at your graduation?” Sari asked Paul.

“The director of the FBI,” he replied without thinking. His fingers, on the fork he was holding, went white.

“That must have been an interesting speech,” Sari said. Not looking at Paul, she didn’t see the effect the words were having on him.

“I’ll bet he bored Paul out of his mind,” Merrie teased.

Paul snapped out of it. He glanced at her and laughed. “Well, not completely. He had a sense of humor, at least.”

“What did he…oh!”

Mandy turned over the cream pitcher as Sari was about to ask Paul something else about his graduation.

“I’m getting so clumsy in my old age! My poor fingers just won’t hold things anymore! Get us a rag, will you, darlin’?” she asked Sari.

“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

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.”

“Yes, of course.” Darwin hesitated. “I’m involved…with a woman,” he confessed, his back to Paul. “She works for the federal government. Just lately, there have been people following her.” He turned and caught the surprised expression on his security chief’s face. “The girls don’t know, and they’re not to know,” he added firmly. “It’s a long-standing relationship. I don’t want to remarry, but I’m a man. I have needs.” He shrugged, averting his eyes.

“That’s your personal business, sir,” Paul said respectfully.

Darwin cleared his throat and seemed to relax. “Yes, it is. However, I can’t rule out the possibility that we might have a threat here. I don’t want my daughters involved, but I want you to be aware of the threat.”

“What sort of threat is it, sir?”

Darwin looked briefly uncertain. He hesitated, running a hand over his balding head. “She has contact with some unsavory people, in the course of her job.”

Paul’s eyes narrowed. “Unsavory.”

“Yes. Her superiors don’t know. She’s doing some groundwork for a…regional director.”

Paul just watched him. “I still have contacts at the agency…”

“No!” Darwin lowered his voice. “No. I don’t want any federal involvement. She’s in enough danger as it is. You won’t mention this to anyone. But you’ll add on more security, especially in the house. More hidden cameras, microphones, whatever it takes.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll get on it today,” Paul promised.

Darwin drew in a breath. “More security. Yes. Many more cameras. Put them everywhere!”

Paul was hesitant.

“Not in the bathrooms, obviously,” the older man said when he read the consternation on Paul’s features. He grimaced. “And not in the girls’ bedrooms. Or yours or mine or Mandy’s. Obviously, nothing going on there that will affect them.” He hesitated. “We can leave the ones at both front and back doors, although you can remove the one in the dining room. But get those cameras installed outside the house, everywhere. Today.”

Paul relaxed. He managed a faint smile. “Yes, sir. I’ll get to work.”

“Monitor the cell phones, too,” he added curtly. “The girls’ especially.”

That would be dead space, Paul thought, because the girls had no friends to call. But he didn’t say so. He just nodded.

Darwin hesitated. He drew in a breath and put a hand to his head. He swayed a little, but caught himself. “Funny, these dizzy spells,” he murmured, drawing in a breath. “Drives me out of my mind.” He turned to Paul, and seemed oddly disoriented. He wiped at his eyes. “Forget what I said about putting more cameras in the house. I don’t know why I wanted them in the house in the first place,” he said suddenly. “Nobody needs to know what goes on in here, anyway. Get rid of the bugs and the indoor cameras. There are only three cameras, actually—one at the front and back doors and in the dining room,” he added. “I had the other two put outside at the stables. In fact, we only need them outside, to monitor who comes and goes. No need to give up my privacy for an external threat,” he added, and Paul relaxed even more.

Darwin’s eyes narrowed. “Cameras can be hacked. I don’t want men staring at my daughters. Any men.”

“Of course not, sir.”

“They’ll make good marriages eventually, when I decide on their husbands,” he continued absently. “Not for years, though. They’re just children.”

Isabel was twenty-one, Merrie was eighteen. And Darwin still thought of them as children, Paul wondered.

“They won’t have the freedom their mother did,” he said to himself. “Tried to sell me out. Damned slut, running to another man with information…” He caught himself and glanced at Paul. “You didn’t hear that.”

“I only hear what you tell me to hear, sir, and I never repeat anything,” Paul said.

Darwin nodded. “I know that. It’s why you’ve lasted here so long. Never had a security chief before who could keep his mouth shut.”

Paul just nodded.

Darwin stared at him. “You don’t mention anything about me to any of those contacts you still have. Got that?”

“Why would I, sir?” Paul asked, frowning.

“Well, of course. No reason to, after all.” He checked his watch. “Have Danny fuel up the Learjet and do the walkaround. I have to be in Denver tonight for a meeting with some…contacts.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll get right on it.”

“Good man.”

Paul went to make the arrangements, giving a silent thanks for small blessings. He’d wondered how he’d ever manage to do his job with cameras watching every move he made. He wouldn’t admit that having Isabel come in and sit on his bed at night to chat was one of his few guilty pleasures. He’d have hated sacrificing that in the name of extra security.

Meanwhile, he wondered why Darwin Grayling was such a fanatic about his privacy. The man obviously had things he was trying to hide. Paul wondered if he was involved in anything illegal. But he didn’t pursue that question, even in his own mind.

* * *

“Do you think he might be paranoid?” Paul asked Mandy outside a few days later, when Darwin had jetted off to a European conference.

“I don’t think it, I know it,” Mandy replied in a hushed tone. She wrapped her arms around her ample figure. Despite her sweater, she was chilled. “He hasn’t ever been exactly right in the head,” she said. “But after the girls’ mother died…” She bit off the rest.

“You might as well tell me,” Paul said. “You know I don’t talk about anything I know.”

She glanced up at him in the semidarkness, because it was dusk. “She fell and hit her head, he said. But Dr. Coltrain demanded an autopsy, because he didn’t believe her injuries were consistent with a fall.”