Veil of Justice, Shadows of Justice Book 3 (2 page)

"I felt that," Petra said, turning from the
monitor and rubbing her eyes.

Jaden tried to shrug it off. "Whoops. Guess
I’d better tone down my judgmental vibes."

Petra smiled, but it was weak and her face
was pasty. Jaden wasn’t sure if stress or pregnancy was the real
cause, so she asked, "Morning sickness again?"

"No, that’s fading," Petra admitted with a
happy pat on her gently rounded stomach. "Honestly, it’s Nathan
more than Kelly. His office has lost all contact with him. The
tracer went silent when he was moved."

Jaden cringed again, but this time managed to
hide it from Petra. "Moved where?"

Petra’s big eyes swam with tears and she
blinked furiously, refusing to let them fall. "That’s just it. No
one knows."

Jaden restored the map image before kneeling
by her sister. Slowly, she reached up to stroke the shock of gray
hair at Petra’s temple, making every effort to keep the contact
light. "Nathan’s strong, you know that."

Petra nodded.

"You have to let him handle it his way."
Jaden knew Petra and Nathan had been close, and even without any
empathic gifts of her own, she could see how this separation tore
at Petra’s heart.

Petra released her breath in a series of
short, frustrated puffs. "I believe Nathan and Kelly were
communicating more than she admitted."

Jaden agreed, but didn’t dare interrupt.

"I can only think of one reason Kelly has no
personal history," Petra grumbled. "But no one will confirm any
connection between Kelly and any special ops offices."

Considering a variety of other, darker
possibilities, Jaden withheld comment.

* * *

Kelly wished for death as she watched the sun
sinking behind the western ridge. She soaked up this last view of
the place she'd called home. Nothing could comfort her now. Nothing
could ever be the same in this place.

In the blink of an eye, her entire world was
destroyed. Not just by the horrible, heavy grief of the murder of
her father and six brothers. That hadn’t quite become reality for
her yet. At the moment, the worst thing was the utter devastation
of a way of life she’d valued and loved. No matter that she’d left
it to travel, explore, and find her own place.

She’d been shoved out of the nest when her
father insisted she had no place in the family legacy. It wasn’t a
woman’s work to guard and protect, he’d said time and again,
regardless of how hard she trained to prove herself equal to the
boys.

He’d said it so often she would have withered
away if she hadn’t run off.

The distant landscape of Monument Valley
gleamed gold and rose and copper while the temperature fell in time
with the sun. She’d loved it here, planned on a life full of
service and then she'd been tossed aside.

"All things work for the good."

The voice belonged to her eldest
sister-in-law, Serena, but the phrase was her father’s.

Kelly shook her head in denial. "What good
can come from this slaughter?"

"You," Serena replied with her trademark
patience. "You came home, Calisto. All will be well."

Kelly shivered against hearing her real name
spoken for the first time in five years. What girl worth her grit
aspired to personify a chalice? Naming herself had been the first
joy she'd claimed when she made her new life. At the moment, there
was no joy. She wanted to lash out and indulge her rage and her
loss, but Serena wasn't the right target.

"He thought they were invincible," Kelly said
at last, referring to her father. "He forced me out, pushed me away
because I wasn’t needed."

"Another good thing, it turns out."

Kelly gritted her teeth. Why couldn’t Serena
get it? Why did she have to keep spouting calm and hope when the
entire world had just lost a significant measure of both?

"If you’d been here, you’d only be dead too
and then all would be lost."

Oh, she’d be damned if she’d accept her
father’s summary rejection as wisdom at this point. He’d discounted
her abilities and was probably even now arguing with God, worried
she couldn’t handle the demands and honor entrusted to the men of
the family for countless generations. "This isn’t woman’s work,"
she said, perfectly mocking her father’s hard line.

Serena had the audacity to laugh. The sound
startled a giggle out of Kelly too. It grew into hilarity and
momentarily eased the awful, tight fist strangling her heart.

"Calisto, your place has always been wherever
you’ve made it. What can we do to help you?"

Kelly considered the sparse facts she’d
learned in the days since she’d been home. The deadly strike had
come in the middle of the day. Those on duty, her father and the
eldest two of her six brothers, had been cut down while stationed
near the caves. Three more were slain as they'd arrived to
investigate the first distress call. All of them slaughtered like
so many sheep.

The memory of the body of her youngest
brother, Darius, plagued her. He'd earned defensive wounds before
he'd been carefully eviscerated and left for the scavengers.

Her mother and sisters had done what they
could to preserve any evidence around the caves, but nothing truly
helpful remained by the time Kelly arrived.

Everything indicated the assailant was known,
for the men of her family were too protective, too picky, to let a
stranger so close to the treasure they guarded. Regardless of the
scenarios she ran through her mind, nothing explained the lack of
struggle. While the men of her family were faithful to a fault and
gentle, compassionate men at the core, all of them were fully
trained to kill with both common and unique methods. They were men
who’d rarely had to prove their skills. And now they were all dead,
their skills rendered useless at the most crucial time.

Who managed to breach their security? And
how?

This wasn’t the first time in recent months
Kelly missed her former boss, Petra Neiman, but it was certainly
the most important. The woman could pick up vibes from a crime
scene and put authorities on the right track within minutes. She’d
be invaluable about now, if only Kelly could risk making the
contact.

"You’ll need to help Mama get everyone
resettled in a safer place."

"What about the –"

"That’s my worry now," Kelly cut her off. It
wasn't safe to even whisper of the treasure entrusted to the family
generations ago. "I’ll breathe easier once you’re all clear."

"What of Daniel?"

"He goes with you. He’s too young for what’s
in store for me."

Serena straightened her gaze hard on Kelly.
"His grandfather would say otherwise."

"His
dead
grandfather is blessed that
his eldest grandson is still
alive
." Kelly tipped her face
up to the painted sky. "Daniel will have to take his place soon
enough. Let him grieve. Let him grow. Let him test his leadership
by helping the family recover."

"Until he walked through the door with you, I
was sure they’d found him too," Serena admitted on a choking
sob.

Kelly had been just as certain of Daniel’s
grim fate. It was why her return trip took an extra day and a
detour past his boarding school in Scotland.

She slid an arm around Serena and hugged her
close. "Go back to the house. Help Mama get to the new place. Tell
the school Daniel will be back next August."

"But that's nearly a year, Cali."

"I’m afraid it might take that long to settle
things down. Whoever wants our secrets has tremendous resources,
you do realize that?"

Serena nodded.

Kelly hated to voice her worst fears, but she
needed someone to understand. Her strong, wonderful mother was
grieving too hard, the wounds to her heart too raw to bear any more
bad news.

"This family has to move, has to hide. When
they discover they’ve stolen a useless reproduction, they’ll be
back."

Serena’s breath caught. Her mouth dropped
open, then snapped closed. Her fingers twisted together.
"Re-reproduction?" she squeaked. "I didn’t know."

Kelly smiled gently, drawing back from her
sister-in-law. "You weren’t supposed to know. In fact, I'm not sure
anyone is supposed to know." She sighed. "With Dad gone, I’ll never
be sure if I made the discovery on my own, or if he let me find
out."

Why it mattered, she wasn't sure. Maybe
clinging to the notion that he'd trusted her enough to let her see
an edge of the truth was the balm she needed. Her father was dead.
Did it matter if she'd outsmarted him? He could no longer
contradict whatever she chose to believe, so why not choose to put
all of it in a positive light?

She could still recall the day perfectly.
She'd followed her father to the caves, getting her first look into
the central chamber, her first glimpse of the sacred map box on the
altar. It pulled her, called her so that her name felt like a
whisper under her skin and she eagerly relinquished her hiding
place to answer.

"Get back! Calisto, no!" Her father hooked
her at the waist and dragged her back while her arms and eyes
strained to reach the goal. The disappointment stamped on his face
was as shocking as the hard rock at her back and the brutal
sunlight in her eyes when he'd dumped her outside.

"You mustn't ever go in uninvited again."

"But, Daddy –"

"Never!"

His temper, so rarely seen, made her
speechless. She gave up the fight, running instead. Years later,
when he'd invited her back inside, she'd known the box to be false.
There'd been no pull, no claim, and no desire.

"All things work for the good," Serena
repeated, bringing Kelly back to the present. "You're here. Daniel
is here. The Guardians are not lost."

Kelly struggled, wanting to agree if only to
soothe Serena's worry. "When you put it that way, I guess so." If
her father had only told her where the genuine map box was now
hidden. "Take care of them, Serena. I’ll be in touch when it's
safe."

Kelly didn’t waste any more time with
good-byes or backward glances. She moved forward, letting the dusty
clay slide beneath her feet as she shuffled down and around the
slope to the nearest cave entrance. With darkness falling, her eyes
quickly adjusted to the deeper shadows inside. She moved across the
open space and into an alcove to exchange her more colorful western
clothing for the matte black pants and over tunic her father had
required for those on duty.

She knelt in prayer, seeking comfort and
guidance one last time before taking the leap she knew was
necessary. She closed away the sorrow and loss, and thought of the
map box when it had been in its place of honor. Stepping to the
empty altar, she placed her hands where the map box had been and
filled her mind with memories of that day as a child. Remembering
the call, she shut out everything else, listening only for the
ancient relic. A whisper skimmed up her fingertips. It was only a
sense, a nudge to go in one direction, but it was a start.

She eased back, but instead of the soft
silence of the cave, Kelly’s peace was shattered by Nathan’s
frantic cry for help.

* * *

Nathan reached out again, desperate for any
relief. She’d been his lifeline through it all – until now, when he
needed her most. If he couldn’t find her soon, if he couldn’t
escape this torment, his mind would snap from the pressure of
solitary confinement.

No windows. No sounds. Just the unrelenting,
unending, God-forsaken dark. He’d learned the cell’s dimensions the
hard way and the resulting aches from head to toe kept him in
place.

The damp stone cell was too short for him to
stand erect, too narrow for him to sit with legs outstretched. He'd
found a drain, smaller than his hand-span situated just off-center
in the floor. There was a narrow slit at the top of the door they'd
pushed him through. And a nozzle in the ceiling shot out a cold,
hard spray of some sort of antiseptic cleanser in random
intervals.

They couldn’t have personalized hell any
better for him.

“My name is Nathan Burkhardt,” he muttered to
whatever just scampered over his toe. “I am a man. I am human.”

To prove it, he envisioned his life before
this assignment. He revisited in graphic detail the desk in his
office. He pictured the faces of his family. He reviewed past field
ops and the men who’d had his back during some sketchy
operations.

Instead of helping, the memories only made
his current hell worse. He felt the scream build in his throat and
fought to keep it down. Kelly had been his only reprieve and she’d
shut him out. He still didn’t understand how or why she’d done
it.

Hell, he didn’t understand how he’d landed in
here. Aside from the fit he’d thrown at the gate, he hadn’t stepped
out of line. They hadn’t added to his charges or his sentence –
he’d poked around the clerk’s head to learn that much. But with
every day in here, his madness grew and his control weakened and
even short jaunts into small minds had become impossible.

The slit opened, interrupting his thoughts
with the joy of the only light in his stark world. He could almost
hate the food packet that blocked that precious light as they
pushed it through.

With his mind, he pushed the curious rat away
from his food, letting the thing squeak as it hovered in mid-air in
the corner.

"I’m Nathan Burkhardt," he said again,
opening the packet. He’d barely put the first handful of cold rice
into his mouth when the ceiling sprayer erupted and doused
everything with antiseptic.

Nathan had tried. Tried to hold on to his
humanity, to remember what sane felt like. Wet, cold, and hungry he
struggled to count the slashes he’d made on the wall. One for every
increment he thought was a day.

But he couldn’t know for sure.