Guardian Groom

by Shelley Cooper

  Tears streamed down her hollow cheeks. “But...this is your own money, Mr. Gallagher. I can’t take it. I...I’ll never be able to repay you.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said gently. “You don’t owe me anything. I’m the one who’s repaying a debt.”

  “But it’s so much money.”

  He nodded toward the frail five-year-old girl playing quietly with Liza, his receptionist, at the far end of the room. Beside the little girl sat a worn suitcase that was almost as battered as the woman herself.

  “It doesn’t come close to compensating either one of you for what you’ve been through,” he said. “For her sake, I’m asking you to take the money. When you’re in the position to do so, you can repay me by helping someone else in need.”

  She smiled wanly and nodded. “All right. I’ll do that. Thank you again, Mr. Gallagher.”

  When the elevator doors closed on the woman and her child, Steve’s smile faded. He felt drained and in need of a long nap. It was always like this after one of these encounters. That was when the enormity of the task he’d undertaken would hit him anew. There were so many women, so many children. Would it never end?

  “Do you think she’ll be okay?” Liza asked, breaking into his thoughts.

  Wearily he turned away from the elevator. “If she uses those tickets and goes to Cleveland. If she doesn’t stop at home for one forgotten thing, and then change her mind.”

  “Have I told you lately how proud I am to be working for you? I think it’s a wonderful thing you’re doing.”

  Steve centered his attention on the younger woman. “I’m nobody’s hero, Liza,” he said roughly.

  The denial of his words was clear in her eyes. “I don’t see anybody else around here going out on a limb to help these poor women.”

  He did it in honor of his mother, and for no other reason. He wanted no praise and no glory. His sole goal was to prevent another woman from losing her life at the hands of her abuser, the way his mother had.

  In a brusque, businesslike tone he asked, “When’s my next appointment?”

  Ever efficient, Liza took the hint. “Fifteen minutes. A Mr. Chung is coming to discuss a long-term security contract. He owns a convenience store in the Hill District that’s a popular hold-up target. After that, a Miss Bishop is scheduled. She manages a rock group called The Sour Grapes. They’ll be playing at the Civic Arena in a couple of weeks, and she wants to arrange for personal protection during the performance.”

  Steve nodded. “Send Mr. Chung back the minute he arrives.”

  When his office door closed behind him, he stared at nothing for a long moment. His hands balled into fists at his sides as the rage he felt for what that poor woman and her child had endured engulfed him. If he could have just two minutes alone with that miserable coward, two minutes to show him how it felt....

  Steve bit back the rage, ruthlessly stemming the emotion the way he’d done for years. Within seconds, he was back in control.

  His glance fell on the engraved plaque proclaiming his company’s motto: The Violence Stops Here. It was more than just a business maxim. It was his philosophy for living, the only way he’d be able to escape the genetic curse that haunted him. He never, for one minute, let himself forget that only a thin line, and his self-will, separated him from the SOB who had battered that poor woman almost beyond recognition.

  After taking a seat, he reached for the newspaper. As he did every morning, he checked to see if the ad was there. Only once had it been missing, and he’d worried that someone who’d needed to see it had been lost. This morning, the ad was where it belonged. Though he knew the words by heart, he read it anyway.

  Caught in an abusive relationship?

  There is a way out. Confidentiality

  guaranteed. We can help. No fee charged.

  After checking that the phone number and address were printed correctly, he turned to the editorial section. To her column. For some reason he didn’t understand, he’d been thinking about Kate all morning.

  A chuckle left his throat when he read that day’s offering. It was typical Kate: brash, idealistic and opinionated. She’d win no friends with this one. But then, he knew she wasn’t trying to. He’d never met anyone who loved a good debate the way Kate did.

  And he avoided them at all costs.

  After cutting out the column and placing it in a file in his desk, Steve picked up a pen, intent on concentrating on his paperwork. But instead of seeing the words printed on the papers spread out before him, images rolled through his brain. Images of the past, in color and in vivid detail. Images of when he and Kate had been together.

  For not the first time, he cursed his photographic memory. When he was a kid, it had been a source of embarrassment, something that had set him apart from his peers. Now it only served to remind him, in graphic detail, of the many times he and Kate had made love.

  He remembered the little things. How she’d adored having her back rubbed after a long day spent hunched over the computer. How her brow had furrowed in concentration and she’d chewed on her lip while writing. The silky softness of her skin. The way her breath had escaped in soft little gasps whenever he’d touched her. How she’d curled contentedly to his side when she slept.

  It wasn’t the little things that had eroded their marriage. The big things had brought them down. Like the death of their daughter, who had lived for just a day and a half. And Kate’s overwhelming need to be self sufficient. God, she’d made him feel so useless. And then she’d walked out on him. Funny how, after the passage of eighteen months, that still hurt.

  A nerve tightened in his stomach. Heartburn flared like a fiery ball in his chest. Steve reached for the antacid bottle he kept perched on the edge of his desk. Something told him it was going to be a long day.

  The note was taped to her front door. Hands shaking, Kate ripped it down and read the words that were formed by letters that had been clipped from newspapers and magazines.

  My Dearest Kate:

  You have been corrupted by the soul of evil and must be purified in the blood. The time of purification is at hand. This morning was just a warning. Know that I am watching and waiting. Soon we will be together through all eternity.

  Your biggest fan

  Well, at least now she knew who was trying to kill her, Kate thought, fighting back hysteria. Her biggest fan. Whoever that was.

  After stuffing the note into her shorts pocket and scanning the empty street, she reached for the doorknob, then took a step back. What if he was inside, waiting for her? She hadn’t locked the door when she’d left, hadn’t deemed it necessary. She’d always felt safe in this bedroom community of older homes and friendly, working-class people. Besides, Martha was there. There had been no need to lock it

  Her hand flew to her mouth. Martha. Dear God, Martha was inside. Kate would never forgive herself if something had happened to her assistant.

  Without care for her own safety, she dropped the mail on the porch and threw open the door. “Martha!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, racing for the rear of the house. “Martha, where are you?”

  “Here. I’m here, Kate,” the woman called, concern lacing her voice. “What’s wrong?”

  Kate rounded the corner into the room that served as both den and office. Martha was sitting at her desk, obviously alone and unharmed.

  “Oh, thank goodness.” Kate went weak with relief.

  Martha’s eyes opened wide when she got a good took at Kate. “Merciful heavens! What on earth happened to you?”

  Suddenly it was all too much. Kate wasn’t up to answering questions right now. What she needed was time. Time alone. Time to think. Time to reason through what had happened. Time to decide what to do next. Because, heaven help her, her brain kept conveying one message over and over—that her time was running out.

  “Excuse me for a minute,” she announced in a voice that was decidedly unsteady. “I need to use the bathroom. Would you do me a favor and make sure all
the doors and windows are locked?” Turning, she limped from the room.

  Once the bathroom door was shut firmly behind her, she leaned against the hard wood and closed her eyes. Now that she felt reasonably safe, she let reaction take hold. A shudder racked her body, and her knees buckled. She slid down the door until she sat on the floor, legs splayed out in front of her. Arms hugged tightly to her chest, she shook until her teeth chattered.

  Someone was trying to kill her. A man. A man she’d never met. She had no idea whether he was tall or short, heavy or thin, blond or brunet. All she knew was that he was full of hate, and that he’d directed that emotion at her. Dear God, how did a person defend herself against that?

  Steve. I want Steve.

  This time, she understood the reason for her yearning. From the moment she’d been pushed in front of that bus, her subconscious had been telling her what she needed to do. Right now, Steve was the only one she could trust to keep her safe.

  The knocking, and the vibration of the door against her back, roused her.

  “Kate?” Martha called. “Kate? Are you okay?” There was a hint of panic in the older woman’s voice.

  Belatedly Kate realized it wasn’t the first time her assistant had called out to her. “I’m fine. Be out in a minute.” To her relief, her voice sounded almost normal.

  Legs stiff, and feeling chilled from the air-conditioning, she rose and walked to the mirror hanging above the sink. The woman who stared back at her looked as panic-stricken as she felt. Her face was unnaturally pale, her brown eyes wide, her mouth open as if preparing to scream. A magnificent purple bruise marred her right cheek. Her bottom lip was swollen.

  Kate tried to look on the bright side. She never had been a beauty, so what were a few assorted cuts and bruises? She was, essentially, in one piece. No bones were broken, no stitches required. The important thing was that she was alive.

  Now all she had to do was stay that way.

  After splashing her face and hands with cold water, she pulled a first-aid kit from the medicine cabinet. When she reentered her office, she gingerly settled her aching body onto the black leather sofa and placed the kit on her lap.

  Martha’s gaze burned into her like a laser. Kate knew it missed nothing, from her torn blouse and scraped knees and elbows, to the way her hair, normally restrained at the nape of her neck with a barrette, now fell in a tangled mass to the middle of her back.

  “Is the house locked up?”

  “Tighter than a drum.” The older woman’s eyes were narrowed and searching, her expression troubled. “By the way, I gathered the mail from the porch. Want to tell me what happened?”

  Kate unscrewed the lid from a bottle of antiseptic. After soaking a cotton ball in the clear liquid, she applied it to first one knee, then the other. “I was pushed in front of a bus. Needless to say, it managed to stop in time.”

  Martha’s hand flew to her heart. “Merciful heavens! Who pushed you?”

  “My biggest fan.”

  The worst of her injuries tended to, Kate twisted the lid onto the antiseptic bottle and placed it back in the kit. Standing, she crossed to the floor-to-ceiling sliding window that opened onto the deck in her backyard. Her knees and elbows stung, and the bruise on her cheek throbbed. Ignoring the pain, her gaze roved from the deck to the rear of the yard. Was he out there somewhere? Was he watching her right now?

  “You mean,” Martha said, “the kook who cuts out letters and pastes them onto paper?”

  Kate focused her gaze on a squirrel that was scampering up a tree. “That’d be the one.”

  The people who wrote her letters tended to fall into one of three camps: ardent support, ardent opposition and psychiatrically challenged. Since Straight Talk had been syndicated four years earlier, Kate had received her share of mail from the latter camp. Now that the column was published in almost every major newspaper in the country, off-the-wall letters were a daily occurrence. She’d received marriage proposals, offers to sire her children, even a letter claiming the writer was her identical twin and they’d been separated at birth. Death threats were not uncommon.

  But none of the other letter writers spewed hate at her the way her biggest fan did. If, indeed, he could be called a fan. His letters had started arriving a month earlier.

  Despite the threats, until today, both she and Martha, whom she’d hired a year ago to answer her fan mail and help with research, had dismissed the writer as being a harmless crank. Kate had considered his letters a part of the price she had to pay for her success.

  “How do you know it’s him?” Martha asked.

  The squirrel disappeared into the high reaches of the tree. Squaring her shoulders, Kate faced her assistant.

  “Because of this.” She reached into her shorts pocket and pulled out the crumpled note. “It was taped to the front door. Did you hear anyone out there earlier?”

  Martha shook her head. “Not a peep.”

  “You know,” Kate said while Martha read, “before this morning I felt safe in the belief that he was mailing his little works of art to a post-office box. I was certain he had no idea where I lived.”

  Brow creased with worry, Martha looked up from the letter. “I think it’s safe to assume he now knows.”

  “And he also knows I walk to the post office in the morning to pick up the mail. He either followed me, or waited for me there. He growled, ‘You’re dead,’ into my ear before he shoved me into the strext.”

  At the memory, Kate was unable to suppress the shiver of apprehension that raced up her spine. “Lord knows what else he knows about me.” Her voice lowered. “Or what he has planned.”

  “So why,” Martha demanded, “aren’t you on the phone right now with the police?”

  A stray lock of hair fell across Kate’s eyes. She raised a not-quite-steady hand to brush it away, wincing when it grazed the bruise on her cheek. “Because I have something else to do first.”

  “What could be more important than calling the police?”

  “Hiring a bodyguard.” With a sense of purpose, Kate strode to the bookshelf located to the left of her computer work station and grabbed the Yellow Pages. “And I know just the man for the job.”

  She riffled through the pages until she found the listing she sought. Picking up the telephone receiver, she punched in the required numbers and listened to the ringing on the other end.

  “Three Rivers Security,” a bright female voice trilled into her ear.

  Kate drew a deep breath, then plunged ahead. “I’d like to speak to Steve Gallagher, please.”

  “I’m sorry, but Mr. Gallagher is in conference.”

  “Is it possible to get him out of conference? This is an emergency.”

  “Are you calling about the newspaper ad?”

  What newspaper ad? “No, this is a personal matter.”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman repeated, “but Mr. Gallagher cannot be disturbed. Can I take a message? He’ll return your call at his earliest convenience.”

  Frustrated, Kate bit her lip. The way she saw it, she had two alternatives. She could either stand here wasting precious time trying to persuade this woman to put her through to Steve, or she could go in person to his office. Once she was there, he would have to see her. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  “No,” she said. “No message.”

  “You’re hiring your ex-husband to protect you?” Martha asked, clearly disbelieving, as Kate slowly replaced the receiver.

  Never having met Steve, for Martha to recognize his name so easily meant that Kate mentioned it far too often, a tendency she would have to rectify once this matter was settled. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Kate said firmly, meeting her friend’s gaze head-on, “he’s the best in the business. And I believe in hiring the best.”

  “But won’t that dredge up all sorts of things you’d rather not dredge up?”

  Good question. Unfortunately, Kate didn’t have the time to address it at
the moment. She had other, more pressing matters to occupy her time.

  “I don’t see why it should. We’re both adults. The divorce was a year and a half ago. Whatever we felt for each other is long dead. We’ve both gone on with our lives. All I know is, if anyone can figure out who my biggest fan is and keep me safe in the process, it’s Steve. I have no other choice.”

  Chapter 2

  It took all Kate’s powers of persuasion, and a promise to call the police the minute she’d spoken to Steve, to convince Martha to leave. Once the older woman’s car disappeared down the street and Kate was satisfied her friend was safe, she raced upstairs.

  Five minutes later, she peered both ways before slipping out the side door. It was a door she rarely used, an exit leading to a narrow sidewalk kept in perpetual shade by the bulk of the two buildings that were built on either side of it. Because of its proximity to downtown Pittsburgh, property in her town was at a premium. Homes had been built so close to one another, a person could literally reach out and touch her neighbor.

  In Kate’s case, the neighbor in question was Mrs. Edmund, an elderly woman with a penchant for games. When she needed a break from her writing, Kate often spent a delightful hour or two sitting across the card table from Mrs. Edmund.

  At the moment, she prayed Mrs. Edmund didn’t see her lurking between their two homes. Much as she adored the woman and enjoyed her company, Kate wasn’t in the mood for small talk. Nor did she want to put her neighbor in danger, if danger was lying in wait.

  When she saw no one suspicious, and when Mrs. Edmund remained closeted securely behind the walls of her redbrick, three-story house, Kate heaved a sigh of relief and headed for the two-car detached garage at the rear of her property. As she walked, she stuffed her hair under a Pirates cap and settled a pair of dark sunglasses on her nose.