Protector With A Past. Harper Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ never completely concealing the overwhelming pride he felt in his beautiful wife and the daughter he adored.

      It had been enough to know that they were still a part of her universe, even if the probability of her picking up the thread of their old relationship was about as remote as the stars she stared at, sitting on the dock during those long nights when she was afraid to fall asleep.

      And now they were gone—all Sheila’s fire, all Paul’s steady warmth, extinguished. Her world had suddenly become a colder, darker place.

      This time when she drew away from his embrace Cord didn’t attempt to stop her. She unwound the bulky dish towel from her hand and stared at the cut on her thumb as if she had nothing more important to occupy her mind and saw with dull surprise that it had stopped bleeding—which was strange, she thought hazily, since somewhere deep inside her she felt as if she was hemorrhaging.

      As Cord walked over to the window and looked out into the night, his shoulders sagging with weariness and pain, she got a bandage out of the small first-aid kit she kept under the sink for emergencies and covered up the small wound. It was a clean cut. It would heal without a scar.

      “Tell me what happened.” She pressed the edges of the bandage down neatly, smoothing them carefully and methodically and keeping her attention focused on the trivial task. Her hand was trembling.

      “The killer was after Lizbet, too.” Fatigue made his voice grainy, but if he was surprised that her initial denial of what he’d told her had been replaced by an unwilling acceptance, he didn’t show it. “Paul had been doing some renovating in the basement, and at the first shot from upstairs he put her in the crawl space behind the newly installed drywall and told her not to make a sound. Then he went upstairs and was killed himself. After that second shot Lizbet apparently heard the shooter going through the house room by room, calling her name, but she did what her father had told her and stayed silent. I’m not even sure if she knows exactly what happened to her parents, but she’s one terrified little girl.”

      “Whoever did this knew them?”

      She’d thought there was no new horror to come. It seemed she’d been wrong. Julia choked back the bile that rose in her throat and as Cord turned from the window to face her she saw that the same conclusion had already crossed his mind.

      “Well enough to know they had a daughter and what her name was.” He met her stunned gaze. “Paul phoned me yesterday and told me that he’d had the feeling someone had been following him the last few days. Added to that, Sheila had been getting weird calls on her cell phone and one of the teachers at the summer day camp Lizbet was going to in the mornings had told them that all her artwork had been slashed—none of the other kids’ work was touched. He was worried enough to ask me to fly out and stay with them for a while.”

      “But why not just alert the local authorities? For God’s sake, Cord, when a police officer’s family is threatened that’s priority one with his co-workers! Why was his first impulse to call you in all the way from California?”

      His eyes darkened. They glittered like black diamonds in the tan of his face, and all of a sudden she saw the hard-edged, implacably committed detective he’d been when they’d both worked together so long ago—the detective he still was.

      “He knew he could trust me. He couldn’t be sure about anyone else, since whoever was phoning Sheila had to have gotten her cell phone number from the precinct. You know why she carried that damn phone. Only his work had the number, and it was only ever to be used for one reason.”

      “I pray it never rings, Julia. But if anything happened to Paul and they couldn’t get in touch with me I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for not being with him. I carry it all the time—just in case…”

      It had been the only time Sheila had confessed the fear that lurked beneath her wholehearted support of her husband’s career choice. She’d been haunted by the worst-case scenario that every cop’s spouse tried not to dwell on—that one day the man she loved would go to work and never come home alive.

      Instead, Paul had been killed in his own home. And Sheila had been taken down first. The thought that one of his fellow officers might have had something to do with it seemed the most monstrous betrayal of all.

      “I caught the first flight available.” His words came out with an effort. “As soon as I got to their house I knew something was wrong—the front door was open wide. I ran in with my gun drawn and the first thing I saw was Sheila’s body in the hall. She’d been killed instantly.”

      “Thank God she didn’t suffer, at least,” Julia whispered brokenly. She held back the tears that were threatening again and bit her lip to keep the sobs from rising to her throat.

      “Paul had been shot at the top of the basement stairs. I found him half in and half out of the doorway, but he’d been rolled over onto his back.” Cord’s mouth tightened grimly. “He’d been stabbed in the chest, as well.”

      And the hits just keep on coming. Julia swayed and felt behind her for the familiar solidity of the countertop.

      “I don’t want to know any more.” Her voice was barely audible. A sliver of panicky urgency ran through it. “They’re dead—isn’t that enough? I hope whoever did this to them is caught and brought to justice, but even justice won’t bring Paul and Sheila back. There’s nothing we can do to make it right again, Cord—absolutely nothing—so what’s the use of going over every terrible detail?”

      He looked at her as if she was speaking a foreign language. “Those details, as you call them, are clues. How the hell are we supposed to track down the killer if you refuse to examine the details?”

      His voice had a raw edge to it, and with a quick glance at the hallway where the bedrooms were he went on more quietly. “I know you were planning on quitting when I left—when you told me to get out of your life. You wanted to come back to the kind of life and the kind of people you’d grown up with—people who knew a Monet from a Manet, whose carefully rustic summer properties cost more than the homes of the ordinary working stiffs that you’d been forced to rub shoulders with for too long, people who hired men like my father to work for them. I accepted that, finally.”

      “That’s right,” she said through stiff lips. “So now I leave the detective work to the professionals—like you, Cord. It’s not what I do anymore.”

      “I’m beginning to realize that.” His glance took in the shabby robe she was wearing, the battered scuffs on her feet and the dark circles under her eyes. It rested finally on her bandaged hand. “But what I haven’t figured out is what you have been doing for the past couple of years—aside from getting up in the middle of the night to reach for the bottle, that is.”

      “I haven’t had a drink for nineteen months.” Even as she snapped out the automatic reply she realized her mistake. Before she could gloss it over, he’d picked up on her slip. His eyes narrowed appraisingly on her.

      “The only people who know exactly how long it’s been since their last drink are the ones who found it damned hard to quit,” he said slowly. “Just what in hell’s been happening to you since you threw me out of your life? You’re living here year-round, aren’t you? You never returned to your old life at all—you just retreated from everything. For God’s sake, Julia, have you been here by yourself for two whole years?”

      For one dangerous moment she felt like pouring out everything. Then common sense reasserted itself. No matter how tempting it might be to reveal her demons to Cord, to respond to СКАЧАТЬ