Knight in Blue Jeans (14 page)

“You aren’t making a lot of noise,” responded Quinn Peters, pacing as best he could in the confined space. Arden had wondered what had happened to the fourth member of Smith’s security company once Mitch and Trace showed up, but no time had seemed appropriate for asking.

Now she had her answer. Quinn hadn’t left the Comitatus.

“What if I do make noise?”

He glanced toward her, a sad smile twisting his angular, strained face. Quinn always had seemed overly bookish and solemn, as if he should be wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a pocket protector…not that anybody in his social class would resort to either. Now he seemed bookish, solemn and conflicted.

“You won’t,” he assured her softly. “You’ve far too much dignity. Look at you.” He gestured with his toothy knife. “You’ve got more dignity sitting there, tied and waiting your execution, than any one of the inner circle beyond that door.”

“Then why are you on their side instead of mine?”

He paused in his pacing. “Do you know, you’re the first person to ask me that?”

Arden waited, trying to be the picture of dignity he apparently saw.

Realizing that she expected an answer, Quinn shrugged one slim shoulder and started pacing again. “Let’s just say I have student loans.”

Arden sincerely hoped that wasn’t his whole story. More important, though…“Daddy won’t
execute
me.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that.”

“Obviously,” noted Arden, “I would.”

“Don’t underestimate our ability to compartmentalize. He lured you here in the first place, didn’t he? You’d be smarter to club me over the head and take off out that attic crawl space up there. Speaking of which…” Leaning momentarily against the door to listen, Quinn frowned in concentration. “That’s my cue. Promise me something?”

“You’re hardly in a position to be asking favors!”

“Exactly. I didn’t help you. I mean, neither did I abuse you like Lowell might have, what with him being psychotic. But I didn’t help. This—” To her amazement, he tossed something toward her, something small and hard and heavy that she fumbled with her tied hands, dropped, then retrieved,
“—didn’t come from me. Swear you won’t tell
anyone.
Please.”

It was a Swiss Army knife.

“Why didn’t you give this to me sooner?” she demanded, opening it to start slicing at the ties across her ankles, but he cleared his throat and shook his head.

For a moment, he looked terrified.

Arden, the hostage, felt like the calm, controlled one here. But she hid the knife, and just in time.

The door cracked open, and Will Donnell leaned in. “Stuart’s leaving.”

Arden gave Smith’s father her best shame-on-you glare. Damn right, she was dignified. But she could see he was doing a visual check on her ties, and in her head thanked Quinn for his quiet warning.

“Look, Mr. Donnell.” Quinn glanced from the apparent elder to Arden and back. “I used to know Arden Leigh. We had mutual friends. She’s a sweet lady. I’m sure if the elders reason with her—”

“Stuart,” repeated Smith’s father, “
is leaving.
”

Quinn shrugged. “And I’m with Stuart. Arden?” Then, apparently at a loss for the proper sentiment to give someone facing execution at the hands of his own society—Good luck? Have a nice day?—he just shrugged and escaped.

“It won’t be long now,” Donnell assured her with the same kind of false courtesy her father had shown her as they tied her hands and feet. Then he shut the door again, leaving her alone.

Arden started sawing at the ties with everything she had. The attic crawl space, Quinn had said. Beyond that would likely be a large vent, and freedom.

Freedom to do what? Reality as she’d known it remained in shambles.

But she could worry about that once she was safe.

Once she’d gotten back to Smith.

Free! Closing the knife and tucking it into her bra, Arden used the closet shelves to climb to the attic trapdoor and pushed it upward. Thank goodness she’d borrowed a pair of Val’s slacks—cuffed and belted—and one of Val’s plain T-shirts. The heels from yesterday’s sundress ensemble were bad enough. She’d never been in a crawl space before, and would hate to do it in a skirt, especially with all the loose, cottony insulation.

She tried not to breathe deeply, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

An attachment on the knife came in handy to unscrew the bolts on the triangular gable vent—she owed Quinn Peters one hell of a thank-you basket, if she could send it anonymously. She had to stand on a storage box and broke a nail, but otherwise managed to lift the awkward metal plate into the attic with her, then to peek out across the manicured, afternoon yard that had been her lifelong home.

Her sanctuary.

Her base. Even now, just from habit, it felt safe. But she knew better.

Appearances could most certainly be deceiving.

Last time they’d met, the Comitatus had posted a guard. She’d figured out enough to realize that Lowell’s job had been just that the first time he’d pulled a knife on her.

This time, she saw nobody. Just the security gates closing behind, she assumed, the departure of Quinn and this “Stuart” person. Hadn’t Sibyl said something about Stuarts being big-wigs in the society?

Forcing herself to act without guarantees, she boosted herself up and out of the opening, turning midway to go feet first, then dropped awkwardly to the ground. She turned her ankle as she landed, but that wasn’t enough to stop her.

Crouching low, Arden circled the old guest house that now served as her father’s office—and nearly tripped over the unconscious guard.
What…?

“Arden!” Male arms closed around her from the side, not in attack but in relief. But Arden didn’t feel at all relieved as she returned the enthusiastic hug.

The last person she’d wanted to find here was her baby brother, Jeff.

T
his wasn’t at all what Jeff had expected.

When the older guys at camp whispered rumors about initiation, powerful connections, inner circles, he’d loved the idea. An ancient secret society of heroes? He’d always suspected they were special. How cool was it that they really
were?

He couldn’t wait to turn fifteen and join, too.

The only reason he hadn’t mentioned anything to his dad was, he didn’t want to narc on his secret-spilling friends. He didn’t want anyone thinking he couldn’t keep secrets, either. So when a couple of Dad’s most important colleagues from out of town had arrived to stay over last night, and more big names from the best Dallas/Fort Worth families showed up today, Jeff pretended not to know that something wonderfully huge must be going down.

Secret-societywise, that is.

He hadn’t offered to leave for the day—just in case they
meant to initiate him early, which would completely rock. But when Dad made noises about his plans for the afternoon, Jeff invented some. He even had Esperanza drop him off at the Galleria before she headed out for her unexpected day off.

But then he caught a cab right back. Back to their Highland Park neighborhood, that is. He was smarter than to show up right in front of the house.

See? He could be secretive, too. And seriously. What almost-fifteen-year-old couldn’t sneak around his own house without getting caught?

Then Jeff’s day took a terrible turn. His sister, Arden, had always said eavesdroppers seldom heard good of themselves. But Jeff had thought he’d hear good of
someone.
Instead, listening at the window, he heard Dad playing a recording of Arden’s voice. “Who else is in this secret society of yours? Why are they interested in me or the state comptroller?”

Cool,
thought Jeff. He didn’t know exactly what a state comptroller did, but it sounded important. He also felt kind of proud of Arden for figuring whatever it was out.

Sure, women weren’t supposed to know about the society. But seriously. Arden rocked.

Then Mr. Donnell said, “You don’t have to do this.”

Jeff shook off a shiver of unease and wondered,
Do what?

Whatever it was, Dad didn’t sound happy. “You’re one to talk. This is your traitor’s fault.”

“He left my protection when he left the brotherhood,” said Mr. Donnell, which made Jeff wonder if they were talking about his son, Arden’s boyfriend, Smith. But why would Smith leave the brotherhood?

Jeff didn’t hate Smith. Other than that whole kissing-Arden business. Arden seemed okay with it, and Smith had been cool to teach him how to fence.

Dad said that Arden had left his protection when she left home. “Now she’s endangering us. It must be stopped.”
Stopped?

Jeff didn’t like the sound of that at all. He seriously disliked hearing his own father lie to leave a message telling Arden that he—Jeff—had hurt himself. Dad was using
Jeff
to get to
Arden?
That didn’t sound real heroic.

Jeff knew Arden would come right away. She loved him. Jeff loved her. Their dad loved both of them…didn’t he?

But over the next hour, Jeff learned that, no. Apparently Dad didn’t.

He also learned that he—Jeff—wasn’t a hero at all. He was just a stupid, scared kid. Stupid, because he kept thinking that if he just watched long enough, instead of interfering, his worst fears would be disproved. The society would turn out to have such noble goals that everything would explain itself. That’s why he didn’t call Arden back and tell her not to come. That’s why he didn’t warn her away when she arrived. He had to be mistaken, right? Their dad would only give her a stern talking-to, not anything worse.

Right?

Scared, because nobody could be that stupid. And once he knew that for sure—once Dad and Mr. Donnell and that other guy dragged Arden from the kitchen entrance and across the lawn to Dad’s office—he had no excuse but fear. Arden’s hair had fallen loose, all messy like from when she used to wrestle him into submission so he’d let her kiss on him…He’d always let her win, but still. Her shirt had pulled half out of her oversized pants, and Arden never let her clothes get messy. Blood darkened her swelling lip. She’d looked dazed.

They were holding Arden prisoner.

Jeff’s Arden. Arden, who’d always taken care of him. Arden, who’d tutored him in history and English lit, and taught him how to waltz for his first academy dance. Arden, who’d held him in the night for weeks, right after Mom died, and yet let him pretend he hadn’t been crying when day came again.

No matter what Dad’s reason, or whatever stupid secrets she might have learned, Jeff knew soul-deep that treating his sister like that just wasn’t right. And he had no idea what to do about it.

The secret-society guys outnumbered him. He supposed he could try calling the cops, but his friend at camp, Connor, had bragged that the society ran the police.
Smith,
Jeff thought then. Smith Donnell cared about Arden, and he apparently wasn’t with the society anymore. Smith could help.

But Jeff didn’t know Smith’s number. And he feared that if he used his cell phone to call 411, much less the Donnell residence in Fort Worth, someone would somehow track it, and they’d know he was here, and then nobody would ever help Arden. So he didn’t do anything. Just hid.

Like a big, scared baby. Except…

Scared or not, Jeff needed to save Arden. He didn’t have a knife of his own—not like the cool, toothy weapons the older guys at camp had—and the idea of using a kitchen knife on anyone made him queasy. So he got his dad’s titanium driver out of his golf bag and took it with him. Just in case.

Hiding in the bushes outside his father’s office, Jeff had a chance to watch the blond guard they’d left patrolling the area.
Just one.
The door to the office opened and three men left, a redheaded man in the lead, with two others following him. Jeff stayed down—but noticed how the guard stopped to watch the trio drive away.

Three less,
Jeff thought hopefully. But from the sound of things inside, at least a half-dozen men remained.

Then he heard a faint noise above him, coming from a triangular air vent under the eaves.

An air vent? What would anyone be doing with—

But Jeff excelled at sneaking…and maybe at wishful thinking. He thought maybe, just maybe, he knew why someone would fiddle with the vent cover from inside.

Hearing the big blond guard coming, Jeff circled the other direction to get behind him. God, the man seemed tall.

Jeff tightened his hands around the grip of the driver. He took one careful step, then another, closer and closer.

And then—

Well, then he walloped the guard from behind, right in the head, with the golf club. The guy didn’t fall down right away. He stumbled sideways and tried to look over his shoulder at Jeff, and Jeff readied to swing again, thinking,
oh God, oh God…

But then the man fell. Funny. Like he’d lost his balance.

Jeff stared down at him, so scared he could have thrown up. The club fell from his numb fingers. Had he killed him? Had someone heard? What would he do when they came to check?

But then he saw—

“Arden!”

No, no, no, no, no. Her one solace had been that nobody else whom she loved had been in danger. Now…

“What are you
doing
here?” she demanded, even as she began to drag Jeff across the backyard, toward the house and the phone. “Daddy said you were—”

“—at the mall. I lied. Arden, I’m sorry…” He gasped between words, fighting tears he clearly believed himself too old to shed.

Such a big, brave fourteen.

“It doesn’t matter,” she assured him, and it didn’t. “What’s important is that we
go!
”

But it was already too late.

“And where would you go, bunny?” called her father with his old presence, crossing the yard toward them. Five other men, Will Donnell and a bruised Prescott Lowell among them, fanned out.

Jeff’s heavy inhalation sounded snuffly to Arden’s protective ear, but he squared his shoulders and stepped between her and their approaching father. He was holding, she realized, a golf club. Like a sword. “You go, Arden. I’ll hold them off.”

“Not without you.” She tugged on his arm. “Come on!”

“I’m your brother. It’s my job to protect you.”

“Protect me by running!” Too late. The circle of Comitatus had closed behind her.

“Don’t touch her!” Jeff’s voice cracked as he cut the air in front of him with the club, holding the other men at bay.

Their father stopped, just out of reach. “Son, you don’t understand.”

“I understand you lied. I understand you let them
tie her up!
”

“But you don’t know why, or what she’s threatening.”

“Arden would never threaten anyone!” Again, Jeff swung the club, almost throwing himself off balance in the effort. He didn’t remember Smith’s lesson, Arden thought with a sad, surreal sense of distraction. It wouldn’t do any good.

Especially not with several of the other suited Comitatus leaders drawing long, toothy knives from beneath their tailored suit jackets.

“You’re wrong, boy. She threatens all of us,
especially
you. She threatens your very future. Perhaps she didn’t do it on purpose, but that doesn’t make her any less dangerous.”

“I don’t care!”

But he didn’t see the pair of men—including Prescott Lowell—creeping up behind him. Arden stepped up against his back, fumbling open her too-small jackknife, facing this newest threat for him. Lowell remained unarmed, for once. Somehow, that didn’t seem to make him any less dangerous.

“But you will,” their father continued in that soothing, sensible tone that had always meant security and wisdom. “Someday you will. Don’t throw everything away for fleeting sentimentality, boy.”

In this, at least, she still agreed with her father. She couldn’t let Jeff suffer—and what she saw in Lowell’s eyes, as his met hers, was a hunger to inflict pain. “Will you keep him safe if I come willingly?” she asked.

Jeff flinched against her shoulder blades. “Arden, no!”

“Of course I will,” said her father.

“Swear. On everything you hold sacred, you swear that Jeff will be okay.”

“I swear.”

She stared at Lowell’s silent fury and knew this was the best she could manage. Besides, Jeff already knew too much. They might as well see this to the end.

Either her father really was capable of deliberately hurting her, perhaps even killing her, or he wasn’t.

Either way, there was only one way for her and Jeff to find out.

“Then I surrender,” she agreed, with all the grace she had in her. “To you, Daddy. Not—” she pointed at Lowell “—to this one.”

“Arden, no!” wailed Jeff—but he was too late. In seconds he’d been disarmed and was being steered as gently as possible, considering his struggle, toward their father’s study. Daddy followed, holding her by one wrist, as if she might still make a dash for it—without Jeff? He should know her better than that. Then again, how well had she known him?

Prescott Lowell sidled uncomfortably close, “Stupid.” He teased. “Your brother would have been safe either way. He’s your father’s heir. He’s of the blood. Why do you suppose your boyfriend is still walking arou—”

“You might learn,” her father warned, “that even those of the blood can go too far, boyo.”

Lowell’s grin did nothing to cover his hatred toward Arden or her father, but despite all the secrets he’d kept, despite his
betrayal of her, Arden knew one thing about her father. She knew that tone of voice.

No matter what happened to her, Prescott Lowell wasn’t going to get much better.

She was too much of a lady—or a pragmatist—to find that especially comforting.

Fouling up security systems was a lot easier when one had installed them. Smith and Mitch used everything in their arsenal, from hacking into the system with a WiFi laptop to physically shimmying up a telephone pole to jamb the pivot function on an outdoor surveillance camera. The former bought them time. The latter bought them a temporary blind spot from which to approach the backyard.

They knew not to go in the front door. There was honor…and then there was a real chance to find and rescue Arden.

Easy choice.

Mitch closed the laptop and slid it back into his satchel. “If she’s here, they don’t have any security feeds on her.”

“She’s in the study,” said Smith, peering over the yard’s wall and past the wishing well, past the trees. He couldn’t say how he knew that for sure. The study shades were down, but that wasn’t uncommon in August. Still, he could sense it, as surely as if Arden was calling to him.

To him, or to the Sword of Aeneas.

“We just have to take out that guard without him sounding an alarm.”

Smith knew the sentry this time—a guy named Charlie Morris, from the area, two years older than him. Had they learned their lesson about newcomers from Lowell?

Shame. Smith would have loved a chance to hurt Lowell, and he didn’t want to hurt someone he knew. Morris could have been Smith or Mitch, barely a year ago. He might not know just how corrupt a society he’d joined.

So many of them didn’t know.

No throat-slitting on this one.

“I’ll create the distraction,” announced Val, clambering over the fence. “You two make the best of it.”

“I don’t know, that might not—” But Smith found himself addressing air. “Dammit!”

Val loped across the yard, crouching behind the wishing well just before Morris came into sight again—stupid Morris, not varying his pattern. She used the cover of the stone well to strip off her shirt, leaving only a stretched white tank top, and shimmy awkwardly out of her jeans, revealing a pair of red boxers. Pulling the tie from her hair, she shook out its thick, kinky darkness. Checking to make sure that the guard had continued around the study, she sauntered toward the building more slowly, like a wrong-side-of-town vixen who didn’t mean any real trouble.

Who just happened to be hiding a Saturday Night Special behind her back.