She thought of her own close bond with her father, tried to imagine being banished from him, and couldn’t bear the thought. Guilt and discomfort closely followed her wash of relief. She didn’t want to think about her father.
“In any case,” she continued, “you decided to leave, accepting exile rather than…than something. I can’t imagine you giving up so much, your inheritance, your status, for anything of mere surface importance. I think—I
know
that you must have left for honorable reasons. And you broke up with me to protect me from the fallout of your decision.”
In a moment’s thought, that part of her summary turned sour, and she punched him softly in the naked shoulder.
“Ow,” protested Smith, though she doubted she’d hurt him. “Some lady
you
are.”
“You broke up with me to
protect
me? That’s not chivalry, Smith, that’s chauvinism. How dare you presume to know what’s best for someone else?”
Smith opened his mouth as if to respond and then, just as firmly, closed it.
Vows of secrecy, decided Arden, were just plain tacky. “In any case,” she decided, drawing fingers in a soft apology over the area she’d just hit, “you’re back. And I know you might not be able to stay. I accept that. But until you have to go—don’t lie to me again. Please?”
Her name broke from him. “Ard. I don’t want to hurt you, but…”
“Of course you’ll have to omit things. I understand that. But at the very least—come to me and let me know you’re leaving. You don’t have to say why. But don’t pretend you don’t love me. Knowing that you love—”
He silenced the rest of her plea with a kiss, wrapping his freshly bandaged arms tightly behind her. “I promise,” he assured her, his voice rough with truth. “I promise, Arden. I promise.”
And that—that had to be enough.
For now.
S
mith had never felt so content, so right, so damned lucky in his life.
By his estimate, that meant something would
definitely
be going wrong very soon.
Leaving Arden even for a while felt like a sacrifice, like a tie between them was being pulled tighter and tighter as he caught a city bus back to Greta’s neighborhood. But he had duties. Sort of. Arden had been adamant about changing the bedclothes and, while she was at it, doing an extra load of laundry for their hostess. And people like Lowell were less likely to find her at Val’s than at Greta’s, which was rapidly becoming some kind of Home for the Formerly Comitatus.
Today it was Val Diaz who blocked Smith’s entrance into the old Victorian, her tawny arms folded, her legs set and her expression no-nonsense. “How’s Arden?”
Arden was brilliant. Arden was perfect. Arden was everything Smith had ever wanted in life, even before he’d known
he wanted it. The way she’d looked at him after their goodbye kiss at the door, before he forced himself away to take care of those pesky little details about everyone’s safety, betraying cabals and stopping the campaign against Molly Johannes…Well, he’d almost left everyone, from gubernatorial candidates to blind old ladies, to their own devices. Except…
Well, part of how she’d looked at him made him feel strangely, sappily heroic.
She
thought he was honorable, and her belief that he was a good guy did more to bolster his own faith in that possibility than any number of Comitatus-styled power plays could. He didn’t want to shatter her faith in him. So…here he was. Back within that humming awareness of the hidden Comitatus sword.
And he wasn’t about to say any of that to Val. “I let her sleep in. She’s safer at your place.”
Val grunted, her meaning somehow both dark and inscrutable, but let him by. At least little Dido was happy to see him, to judge by her wiggles.
Smith immediately dismissed the crazy thought that the Sword of Aeneas was happy to see him, too. He hadn’t liked his dreams of fighting and founding empires—not when they included the loss of his truest love. He’d preferred waking up to Arden.
The other strays that Greta had been collecting clustered around the kitchen table—yes, the one near the secret compartment that held the sword, dammit—and another big breakfast. Smith didn’t want to think about duty yet. Not if he might have to choose it over Arden. But life couldn’t just stop, either. Young Sibyl still hadn’t left, which vaguely worried him about possible kidnapping charges on their part. But she looked especially wary and hands-off this morning, so Smith said nothing. Trace grunted noncommittally through the food he was eating. And Mitch had gotten back at some point, hopefully with everything Smith had requested.
“Hey, Mitch, can I borrow a shirt?” Smith grabbed a couple of sausages off the platter before they vanished like yesterday’s sticky buns.
“You didn’t even
change clothes?
” demanded Val with full scorn, entering the kitchen behind him.
“I showered,” Smith defended. “These are new bandages. But it would’ve taken too long to get to our hotel room and back just for a shirt.”
“Yes, you may borrow a shirt,” Mitch interjected. “I have many, many clean clothes, for I am an admirably clean person.”
Val rolled her eyes.
“But not in an obsessive/compulsive way,” Mitch added.
Smith waited. Dido cocked her head and lifted one foot in pretty entreaty, her chocolate spaniel eyes on the sausage in Smith’s fingers.
Fat chance, dog.
Mitch stopped gazing at Val. “Oh! You’d probably like me to get said shirt. Let me show you your many, many clean options.”
He headed up the back stairs, which he and Trace had apparently cleared at some point over their visit, and laughed when Smith smacked him on the back of the head for being a babbling idiot. Val wasn’t
that
attractive.
At least, Smith didn’t think so. Anyway, she was more Trace’s type, not that Trace seemed to be saying anything to her in the silent kitchen behind them.
In any case, what he really wanted to see was the satchel of supplies Mitch had promised, during their phone call the previous night, to bring with him.
The same ones they’d taken to Arden’s father’s estate not a week earlier.
They’d been at Donaldson Leigh’s study, infiltrating the local Comitatus, for a reason after all. In the last few days Smith, Mitch and Trace had already gone over most of what they’d found out—the stolen keystroke data, the voice recordings. That’s how they’d learned about the plan against the
gubernatorial candidate. To judge by all the luxury rental cars Mitch had noted gathering outside Leigh’s six-car garage, the Comitatus would make their move sometime today. That meant Smith and his band of exiles had to move sooner, get film and audio of them in the act and…
And do what?
Exposing the lot of them for what they were held its own lure. While it wouldn’t bring down the entire organization, from the high-and-mighty Stuarts on down, it would effectively cripple the inner circle for the central southwest. But that meant breaking their own vows of secrecy, once and for all, which would bring down far worse retribution from the society than ruined credit or social exile. They’d have a price on their heads, by people who could pay very dearly.
And it meant exposing Smith’s own father.
And it meant exposing
Arden’s
father—and, before leaving her for her own safety, facing her horror when she realized that the biggest secret Smith had been keeping from her wasn’t about himself at all, but about her beloved father’s corruption.
It also meant destroying any chance the exiles might have of doing what Greta had wanted, somehow returning the organization to its former heroic glory.
All bad things. But their other option…
Could
the Comitatus somehow be blackmailed into cleaning up their act?
“These are good cameras,” said Mitch, laying three of them across the bed in his small Victorian guestroom while Smith stripped off yesterday’s T-shirt.
Smith was careful of his bandaged forearms as he shrugged his arms into one of Mitch’s white guayabera button-downs with brown embroidery running in two stripes down the front. It was that or pastel—yellow, or pink or blue—and those had embroidery, as well. Mitch already wore the mossy green.
No accounting for taste.
“If we can just set them up before the meeting, we’ve got a shot at some excellent footage,” Mitch continued. “But to get the best stuff…”
“We’d need to be on the inside.” Smith paused in buttoning. “And that’s not happening unless you’ve got some great hide-in-the-closet scheme that doesn’t turn out like a bad sitcom.”
Mitch grinned. “I say we have Trace take out the guard, then film through the window.”
Smith raised both eyebrows.
“Seriously! It’s not like they won’t find out we were there damned soon afterward anyway. Trace would love the chance to practice being violent, and we already saw that they only post one guard—”
“Last time. But they know we’re here now.”
“Then
you
take out the hypothetical second guard while I film. Cleverly disguised as a shrub. Like in
Macbeth.
”
“I think we should try getting the cameras in ahead of time.” Which meant leaving, oh…about fifteen minutes ago. If not last night.
No way would Smith have missed last night.
“Love’s making you cowardly, Donnell.”
Smith glared.
“And anyway, how would we get the equipment back in? They aren’t having a big party like last time. Hey!” Mitch perked up. “Maybe Arden could get us in!”
Now Smith really glared.
“Or maybe not. Maybe—”
Dido began to bark furiously downstairs, a shrill note in the dog’s alarm that Smith hadn’t heard when someone merely arrived at the door. Then—
“Fire!” yelled Trace from the front of the house.
“More than one,” called Val from the kitchen. “We’ve got one back here, too!”
Smith broke for the stairs, Mitch close behind.
The scene that met them in the front foyer, even more than the sudden scorching smell of smoke, slowed Smith’s step. Greta knelt on the wood floor, fumbling to fasten a leash to her beloved pet’s collar while Dido spun in frantic circles. And Trace loomed as if made of stone, a throw off the sofa in his hands, glaring at the front doorway.
Where young Sibyl deliberately blocked his way out, her back against the door, her mouth opening and closing without sound, a fireplace poker in hand.
“Don’t think I won’t break you in half,” Trace warned.
Sibyl shook her head determinedly, her dark eyes narrow behind her long, loose hair—the traitor in their midst. Her mouth opened, then closed, but she said nothing.
“I could use some help back here!” called Val from somewhere behind them.
With a quick, “I’m on it,” Mitch headed that way.
Smith joined Trace in facing down Sibyl. “I knew we couldn’t trust you, you crazy little—”
“Hey!” snapped Trace—at Smith!—at the same time Sibyl brandished the poker at him.
Smith took a quick step back. Okay. So calling the weird girl names wasn’t the best way to fix this. Somehow, he managed to find his calm place. “Greta? Maybe you and Dido should go out the back way. And make sure someone’s called nine-one-one, ’kay?”
Finally, Sibyl found her voice. “No!”
“Sorry then.” But Trace wouldn’t apologize unless he really was going to take her. Smith caught his friend back by the very big arm.
“This is the way you treat people who try to help you?” he challenged the girl instead. “You let them burn alive?”
“No—look! A trap!”
Smith looked. Flames, licked up the half-dead oak tree that
fronted Greta’s house, seeming surreal in the August sunlight, like a special effect. But the smoke that churned off them…
Sibyl shook her head, tried again. With her free hand, she slapped the decorative window just beside the door.
“Look!”
Trace had guts—Smith had to give him that. He stepped into poker range and looked.
And cursed. “Dark car. She’s right. It’s a trap to flush us out.”
At that, the teenager dropped her weapon and slid down the door to kneel at their feet, relief etched across her half-hidden face. She simply nodded.
“A trap,” Smith repeated. And Sibyl had figured that out. “Swell.”
Trace tossed the poker well out of the young girl’s reach, just in case, as he hauled her up by one arm. “Hello. Fire?”
Smith glanced out at the burning tree, searched his memory for the location of the front faucet, and happily remembered that when he’d arrived, it was already attached to a hose and sprinkler. He unholstered his revolver and handed it over. “I go out, you cover me.”
“’Kay.” After moving Sibyl even farther from the front door, Trace flung it open and stepped out onto the porch—gun first. Courage had never been his problem. Smith followed, praying that the sight of a large man with a Saturday Night Special aimed directly at them would keep any watching Comitatus from taking advantage of his vulnerability.
He could feel an imaginary target on his back as he hurried to the outdoor faucet, turned it on full force, unscrewed the sprinkler and began spraying the flaming oak tree. He pressed his thumb across the nozzle to create a more pressurized spray of water, focusing on the branches closest to the house.
His whole world became smoke.
Smoke stung his eyes, near blinding him. Smoke scorched his throat, his lungs. Smoke streaked his hands and arms as he sprayed, sprayed, sprayed.
Burning leaves fluttered down, curled and charred, on top of him, and he tried to brush them off.
Was Dallas County under another burn ban? Probably.
He spared time to douse the shingles of the porch. A burning branch crashed onto the front walk, and he turned back to the tree.
What the hell were Mitch and Val doing? Had Greta gotten out?
And through everything, through every choking, streaming glance Smith managed toward the dark sedan, one single thought overrode all else:
Burning out an old, blind woman?
And now they sat, just watching.
Suddenly Val Diaz was there, slapping a wet dish towel over Smith’s shoulder and wrenching the hose from his stiff hands. She already wore a wet cloth over her face, like an Old West bandito. Mitch, similarly disguised, dodged past him with a wet blanket, beating at burning grass.
“Wait. What—”
“The other fire’s out,” Val said, muffled. “They’re gone.”
Smith pulled his own wet towel up over his face, dragging cool, blessed air into his scorched lungs, and looked toward the street. The sedan had left. Why—
But he knew why. A faint, distant buzz was resolving itself into sirens.
Fire trucks.
The cavalry had arrived.
Two hours later, Greta’s downstairs was a mess of wet, sooty footprints, but the fires were out. The oak tree dripped wet, black drops onto the yard, charred but still remarkably alive. Mitch and Val, who looked as sooty and exhausted as Smith felt, had held back fires on Greta’s garage and back porch before coming to help Smith.
“The Comitatus owns
everything,
” Sibyl warned in a dire
hiss. Val, who knew several of the firefighters personally, made sure that the ones she
did
trust did the walk-through that cleared Greta’s main house as safe to reenter. The arson investigator had taken copious notes and asked a lot of questions—why, yes, these fires
were
suspicious—but so far Smith and his friends had managed to avoid direct accusations.
Finally alone again—if six people and a dog could be considered “alone”—the sooty, dripping lot of them gathered around Greta’s kitchen table, gulping lemonade and iced tea and tap water as fast as they could fill their glasses.
“That was a trap,” announced Trace, his usually gravelly voice all the worse from the smoke.
“Ya
think?
” demanded Smith, Mitch and Val in unison.
It was Sibyl, again standing right next to Trace, who stated the harsh truth. “They can’t be redeemed. They need to be stopped. All of them.”