Dark Defender (4 page)

Two pairs of eyes swung toward her, one neutral, the other glaring at her with their usual intensity. She might not be up to full speed yet, but she wasn’t about to have her future dictated by these two.

“Well?” She crossed her arms over her chest and prepared to wait them out.

Jarvis broke first, not a particular surprise. “Good morning, Ms. Nichols.” He offered her a broad smile. “I hope you had a good night’s sleep, unlike some people I could mention.”

“Shut the hell up, Jarvis.”

The dark gray T-shirt Blake had worn the night before looked slept in, and the shirt he wore over it had definitely seen better days. The fact that he hadn’t shaved in at least twenty-four hours only added to the intense masculinity he radiated. A woman would have to be dead not to respond to him, and the ache she felt when she looked at him had nothing to do with her injuries.

She quickly steered the conversation in a safer direction than how his prickly beard would feel against her skin. “How I slept is not important. Now would one of you please answer my questions?”

The two men went back to glaring at each other, neither of them willing to be the first one to speak. Before she could muster up the energy to insist, a nurse came bustling into the room with a bright smile.

“Ms. Nichols, glad to see we’re wide awake. How are we feeling this morning?” The woman headed right for the closed curtains and threw them back to let the morning sunshine flood the room.

“Shut those curtains right now!” Trahern’s bellow dimmed the nurse’s practiced smile.

“Now that Ms. Nichols is awake there’s no reason to keep the room dark, and…”

He reached past her to jerk the curtains closed with so much force that he tore the fabric loose from a couple of the rings. The savagery of his action startled Brenna and made the nurse gasp.

“Trahern, stop acting like a crazy person! She didn’t do anything wrong.” What had set him off? She looked to Jarvis for help, but the expression on his face was every bit as harsh as Trahern’s.

Blake froze, only a tight muscle in his cheek revealing how angry he was. Slowly, ever so slowly, he stepped back, then he stared a hole through the hapless nurse. “Someone has already tried to kill Ms. Nichols once. I would appreciate your keeping these closed to avoid giving a sniper a clear shot at her while she’s a patient here. She survived the first attack. She might not survive the next.”

Then he walked out of the room.

The nurse’s face was ashen. “Ms. Nichols, I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

“I’m sure Mr. Trahern is being overprotective. Please think nothing of it.”

She threw back her covers to climb out of bed. While she might not like his heavy-handed tactics, she didn’t want Blake to leave. Jarvis reached out to steady her as she stood up. When he was sure she wasn’t going to keel over, he brought her a robe.

“Where will he have gone?” she asked as they took the first shuffling steps toward the door.

“Not far. No matter what mood he’s in, he won’t leave you alone. His conscience won’t allow it.” Jarvis stuck his head out the door and looked both ways. “He’s at the far end, away from the nurses’ station, staring out the window. Make sure he hears you walk up behind him. He never did like surprises.”

Jarvis’s remarks raised even more questions. For now, though, she concentrated on keeping her balance as she made her way down the hall. What was she going to say to him? The situation seemed to call for an apology, but she wasn’t sure what she’d said that had upset him. She’d only asked him to stop scaring the nurse. No, wait. Her exact words were for him to quit acting like a crazy person. Surely he knew that was just an expression, that she didn’t really think he was mentally unstable.

She stopped a short distance away and waited for him to acknowledge her.

He glanced back over his shoulder at her, his expression shuttered and cold. “What’s the matter? Afraid to get too close to a crazy person?”

Somehow she doubted a sincere apology would work with this man. Temper, though, was something he understood. “Don’t be so thin-skinned, Trahern. It was just a figure of speech. You’re the least crazy person I know, but you can’t go around scaring innocent nurses like that. If I didn’t know you so well, I might have been scared myself.”

He turned back to the window. “You don’t know me at all, little girl. You never did.”

“I may not know what you’ve done or where you’ve been for the past twelve years, but some things never change about a person. You would never hurt me. Ever.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You’re trying too hard to protect me from the person who killed my father—not that I believe I’m in any real danger.”

“Until we know why your father was killed, we can’t assume anything.” The temper was back in his voice, but not the bitterness. “I’ll feel better when we get to the bottom of this.”

“I’m sure the police are doing their best.”

Trahern snorted in derision. “They couldn’t find their backsides with two hands, especially when they have no idea what or who they are dealing with.”

“And you do? If you know why my father was killed, Blake, you need to tell me and the police right now.” She grabbed his arm, trying to make him look at her. It was like trying to move a granite cliff.

“No.”

“You can’t mean that, Blake. If you have any respect at all for my father’s work, you have to trust the legal system. Let the police catch his killer and bring him to trial. My father hated vigilante justice.”

“Which work are you talking about, Brenna?” He shook his head and looked away again. “You always were a wide-eyed innocent. Obviously that hasn’t changed.”

“Trahern, that’s enough.”

Neither of them had heard Jarvis’s approach.

“Stay out of this.” Blake said the words at the same time Brenna did. Under other circumstances she might have found that amusing. At the moment, it only made her mad.

“No, you both stay out of it! The police are handling the investigation, not the two of you.”

Both men stood well over six feet tall, at least ten inches over her own average stature. Right now they used their height advantage to communicate by eye contact alone. Craning her neck was only giving her a headache, so she gave up in disgust.

“Fine. The two of you have a fine time all by yourselves. But until you decide to let the police do their job—”

The sound of shattering glass brought her up short. Blake grabbed her by the arm and shoved her into a nearby treatment room. She started to protest, but he effectively silenced her by wrapping his arm around her and covering her mouth with his hand. The temperature seemed to plummet, but that may have been the sudden rush of fear. In the blink of an eye, both Jarvis and Blake produced handguns, looking all too comfortable with the way they fit their hands.

Blake whispered a warning close enough to her ear for her to feel the warmth of his breath. “Stay quiet, Brenna, and you might just live long enough to tear a strip off my hide.”

When she nodded, he loosened his hold on her. For a few seconds, the only sound she heard was the pounding of her heart, but then she heard a couple of popping noises and shouting. Blake pushed her behind him. Both he and Jarvis looked decidedly grim.

“Stay with her.” Jarvis started out the door, looking lethal with his gun gripped in two hands.

Trahern shook his head. “This isn’t the time to play hero, not when we don’t know how many of them there are. We’ve got to get her out of here. Now.”

They could hear the sound of running feet from the far end of the hallway. “The cops will be crawling all over this place soon. This confusion is our best chance to get her out of here without being seen.”

A female scream rang out down the hallway, and Brenna understood all too well how the woman felt.

“Is anybody looking this way?” Blake asked.

Jarvis poked his head out of the room long enough to scope out the hallway. “No, it’s clear for the moment.”

“I’ll lead. Bring her when I give the signal.” Trahern ducked out into the hall, turning away from the commotion at the other end. He kept his back to the opposite wall, looking from side to side as he made his way to the exit sign a short distance away. When he reached the door to the staircase, he opened it and disappeared for a few seconds. Then he stuck his head back out and waved them forward.

Jarvis shielded Brenna’s body with his as they silently slipped across to where Trahern waited. She tried to check out what was happening down at the nurses’ station, but Jarvis blocked her view. She only caught a glimpse of a guard writhing on the floor outside the door to her room, his uniform shirt soaked in blood.

“Oh, God, how bad is he hurt?”

“I don’t know, but one of his buddies will get him help. Move!” Trahern’s orders were abrupt, but his touch was gentle as he supported her with his free hand.

Jarvis shoved the door closed behind them. “Up or down?”

Trahern jerked his head up. “Up one floor, then across to the other wing and down. There’s an exit to the parking lot from the day surgery on the second floor.”

How did he know that? Brenna didn’t have enough breath to ask; it was just another in a long list of questions she’d want answers to when they reached safety. If they ever did.

“Brenna, can you keep up this pace or do I need to carry you?”

“I’ll make it.”

Jarvis waited on the landing, his gun and eyes aimed on the steps above them. When they reached the top step he slowly opened the door and peeked out. “No one seems to be aware that there’s a problem.” He slipped his pistol into his waistband and pulled his shirt down over it. “I’ll be back in a few.”

He disappeared, leaving the two of them alone again. Brenna leaned against the wall. This was far more excitement than her battered body needed; her legs trembled with near exhaustion, and it was hard to catch her breath. Trahern looked remarkably unperturbed; he and Jarvis acted as if this was second nature to them.

“Is this how you spend your time?” she whispered.

The dim light in the staircase cast his face in harsh lines. “Not now, Brenna.” The flat words didn’t invite conversation. Then Jarvis was back, motioning that the hallway was safe.

She said, “All right. But you owe me answers, and I intend to have them.”

Then she joined Jarvis out in the busy hallway, letting Blake follow as he would.

Blake wanted to throw Brenna over his shoulder and run like hell; her face was gray with exhaustion and pain. But their best disguise was to blend in with all the other patients and their families going about their business as if nothing were wrong. As long as they were inside the hospital, they were sitting ducks. Each and every person they passed could be a paid assassin on a mission to end Brenna’s life—or his or even Jarvis’s, for that matter. Whoever wanted the judge dead had to wonder who he’d talked to about his suspicions. He and Brenna were the obvious choices, but no one within the Regents was safe if the judge had left any records that could be traced back to them.

It was hard to keep to such a slow pace, but the three of them would draw less attention if they walked at a rate comfortable for Brenna. In a few more seconds, they’d reach the sky bridge that led to the other wing. For the length of the bridge, they’d be exposed to prying eyes from both inside the hospital and anyone keeping watch from the outside.

Stepping out onto the sky bridge, the two men sandwiched Brenna between them. Even that was a poor excuse for protection. If the sniper knew his business, he could take out all three of them with one shot, two at the most.

“See anything?”

He shook his head. “It’s empty. Let’s go.”

He took Brenna’s arm and motioned for Jarvis to do the same, then they lifted her up and ran across to the surgical center.

“Put me down before someone sees us!”

Once she was back on her own two feet, Brenna rubbed her arms. “Just what I needed—more bruises.”

Blake gave her a hard look. “Better a new bruise than a bullet hole. We go to the left here, then straight out toward the door.”

By the time they reached the final turn, all of Blake’s fighting instincts were running at full bore. Keeping Brenna out of sight around the corner, he studied the lobby. Two women at the desk were talking on the phone and shuffling through paperwork. An elderly gentleman held a magazine but stared worriedly at a pair of double doors, no doubt concerned about someone in surgery.

Finally, there was an orderly leaning against the wall near the water fountain, wearing a crisply pressed surgical uniform and gleaming black boots as he worked a crossword puzzle. Trahern frowned. The shoes were wrong; he couldn’t remember seeing anyone else wearing black boots. This guy wasn’t wearing a hospital employee ID badge, either.

Trahern turned his back to the supposed orderly while he pointed him out to Jarvis. “He doesn’t belong here.”

Jarvis nodded. “See any others?”

They both turned slowly, as if they were unfamiliar with the lobby and trying to get their bearings. “No, looks like he’s alone.”

“Leave him to me.” Jarvis’s smile would have frightened the dead.

He split off, heading for a table that offered coffee and cookies for those waiting for patients to get out of surgery. He filled a cup, took a sip, and then started for the door. Just as he reached the orderly he deliberately stumbled, tossing the scalding hot liquid right at the man’s crotch. The orderly bellowed in pain and shock as he backed away straight into the water fountain.