Homefront Defenders. Lisa Phillips

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      “Because we have to ask her what her intentions are, and she has to tell us that she plans to stay far away from the president.”

      Locke nodded, once. “She’ll have cookies still warm from the oven. And lemonade she made fresh this morning.”

      Alana blinked and then smiled. “Seriously?”

      He knocked on the door. “We develop a rapport with these people on each presidential visit. It’s procedure, but it doesn’t have to be boring.”

      Every time he knocked on a door, Locke held his breath. At this point it was habit, but after an anarchist had shot at him and his partner through the door his first year as an agent, he felt that same hitch with every visit. The echo of that shot so many years ago, a boom that had him diving to the ground. It had never left him. He still had scars on the outside of his arm to remind him that being careless never turned out well.

      Barking erupted from inside the house. There was a crash, and a woman screamed.

      Locke tried the door handle, and it opened. He drew his weapon and glanced back at Alana. “Right behind me.”

      She had her Sig out also and gave him a short nod. The times he saw her business face instead of the easygoing, relaxed Alana who hung out with the team were few and far between. He should have been pleased to see it now, but instead he missed that spark in her eyes.

      The hall was the same yellow paint and linoleum floor as it had been the last time Locke was here. The door was open, as were all the windows in the place, letting in the morning breeze. He cleared each room from front to back, where the bedroom was. Dogs raced in circles around his feet and barked. Locke nudged his way through. “Beatrice?”

      He reached the bedroom doorway. Beatrice Colburn was on the floor. Her shirt matched the hall paint, which leached the color from her skin, now a gray pallor. Locke slid to a halt in something sticky that covered the floor and saw the man in the window, sitting on the frame—half in, half out. The same man Locke had chased at the beach that morning.

      The assailant’s gaze hit Alana, and he started. Surprised by something.

      Locke and Alana held their weapons on him. The guy had an intricate tattoo on the inside of his left forearm and a bloody knife clasped in that hand. His right hand was holding a roll of paper big enough to be a poster. Or a painting.

      “Free—”

      The man dived out the window.

      “Stay with Beatrice,” Locke said over his shoulder. “Call for backup and an ambulance.”

      Locke raced to the window and climbed out. He didn’t want Alana anywhere near the man who had tried to kill her this morning. The window frame snagged a thread on the pants of his new suit. He grimaced but cleared the window to land in a bush and then raced across the backyard through the open gate.

      Thunk.

      The sound reverberated in his skull. He’d been hit from behind, blinded for a second as pain set off like fireworks in his head.

      Locke landed on one knee on the concrete. The perp shoved him down so that he fell prone and ran past. Locke reached out for the man but grasped nothing. He aimed his gun from his position, then blinked as his vision split the man into three and back to one. Locke got up and ran after the guy. A sidewalk rimmed the house, and his shoes clipped the concrete with every step. Locke held his weapon up and traced the wall of the house with the other hand.

      The man raced to a mustard-colored Cadillac parked two doors down and jumped in, still holding the rolled-up yellowed paper. No license plate on the back of this vehicle, either. The engine turned over, and the guy peeled out. Locke pulled out his phone and snapped a photo of the car before it turned the corner.

      Hearing sirens in the distance, he went back inside. The dogs weren’t any calmer, so he herded them into the kitchen and shut the door before he strode to the bedroom. “Is she...”

      Beatrice Colburn lay on the floor, two bloody fingerprints where someone had touched her neck to check for a pulse.

      “Alana?”

      She emerged from the bathroom, a tissue balled up and pressed against her mouth. She lifted it away, her face pale and clammy. “Beatrice is dead.”

      “And you’ve never seen a dead body before.”

      It was a guess more than a question, but she didn’t want to talk about it. “I’m okay.”

      She didn’t look it. Locke put his hand on her back and led her to the living room. “Sit for a minute. If you can handle the dogs, get yourself some water. I’ll show the cops in.”

      She’d gone through selection and training, and now the sheen was wearing off. Long days, round-the-clock protection, stress and physical strain. Sure, they were in most people’s ideal vacation spot, but this was so far from a fun trip it was almost sad. After two years working together Locke was still wondering if she was going to last as an agent.

      She lifted her chin, but her lip trembled. “I’m fine, Locke. I just needed a minute.”

      No one called him James. His mom and his friends from back home called him Jay. He wondered what it would sound like coming from her lips. He knew she didn’t like the rookie moniker, but everyone had been a beginner at one point, even him.

      What he said next would be a big test. “That was the same man who tried to kill you this morning.”

      Police sirens sounded right before two black-and-whites pulled up. She didn’t answer him; instead Alana rushed to the window. “Oh, no.”

      * * *

      Alana sucked in a breath to get that smell out of her nose and shook out her head, her shoulders, her arms...all the way down to her hands. It was a technique she’d learned to combat the fear that surfing—especially competitively—brought. Shake the feeling off and then get on with it anyway. But a dead body? Not something she wanted to see again any time soon.

      A black glove. He grabbed her foot.

      And now her brother was here. There wasn’t even time to catch her breath. Locke had already gone outside to greet the officers, one of whom was Ray, but she needed a second before she faced him. Alana unclipped her phone from her belt. That attack was not going to slow her down. She’d seen the tattoo. Beatrice’s killer, the man who had tried to kill Alana, too, was Japanese mafia. Pulling up old numbers, decades old in some cases, she sent a text to a guy she’d gone to high school with. Everyone knew Mikio Adachi’s father was the yakuza boss on the Big Island, the head of the Japanese mafia. And even if things had changed since she left, Mikio would likely still know something about a yakuza soldier and why he might’ve tried to kill her.

      The text sent, so she stowed her phone away. A long shot, but if it paid off she’d tell Locke about it. She knew this island, these people, but that didn’t mean she needed to rub it in everyone’s faces. Coming home wasn’t exactly turning into a pleasant experience.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ