Guarded Heart

by Anya Breton

  Brook’s intention hadn’t been to piss him off with the news she’d be sleeping on his bedroom floor. It was standard procedure with a client who had been involved in a home-based attack. But his reaction stuck in her craw.

  What was so awful about her being in the same room with him? Hadn’t she demonstrated she could protect him on many occasions? Neptune knew she’d earned a scar for him when he’d fallen in with an aggressive group of vacationing Air witches. She should have given up on that fourteen-year-old boy instead of assuming he’d mature in time. So little had changed.

  How many wounds will I leave with this time?

  He spoke before she could come up with a response. “I showed you to a guest room beside mine. You’ll sleep there.”

  “Men stood at your door a few hours ago with guns pointed in your girlfriend’s face.” Brook extended her arm toward the front of his house for emphasis. “Those guns were meant for you, Priest Seaton. Your enemy knows where you live and thus per Ranger Code 2.89.B, ‘if an alternate residence is unavailable, the Ranger is obliged to sleep within the client’s bedchamber’.” After a beat she said, “I didn’t write the codes. I just follow them.”

  She left the room before he could argue again. Time to finish fortifying the bedroom during the short span she had left.

  * * * * *

  Morgan halted in the bedroom door at a quarter to twelve.

  She’d moved his furniture. Every piece.

  His chest of drawers was now in front of the boarded-up window. The heavy oak armoire that had come with the house held the spot beside it. And his bed was against the interior wall with the high headboard facing the exterior. In short it looked as though a miniature earthquake had hit.

  Morgan’s eyes sought out the source of the unnatural disaster. He found her knelt in a pose of meditation atop a thin mat on the floor just beyond his headboard. She didn’t appear to have stirred despite his entrance. He had to assume she was aware of his presence, otherwise she wouldn’t be terribly good at her job.

  Brook was intentionally ignoring him. It angered him that she’d blown into his home, torn apart his bedroom and then had the nerve to kneel in the middle of his floor pretending he didn’t exist.

  “What did you do?” he asked, snapping like the petulant child he’d thought he’d never be again.

  Her response was calm. “I fortified your exterior wall with the available materials. If a bullet is shot at the house it will have to pass through layers of wood before, hopefully, impacting nothing.”

  Though he was ordinarily a patient man, her presence was driving him to madness. “The only thing on this side of the house is the lake. Are the fish going to shoot me?”

  “Maybe you’ve heard of these things called boats?”

  Morgan dug his fingers into his palms. Her sarcasm was no help. And though she could no doubt sense his ire courtesy of the empathic link he’d allowed her since the men had appeared at his door, she continued with her snide delivery.

  “They let people travel over the water. And those people can bring things with them—things like sniper rifles.” Brook adopted a reasonable tone. “A sniper shot would be the easiest way to get rid of you. And thus the heavy furniture between you and the window.”

  She was also between him and the window. His ire promptly fizzled into nothing. She was putting her life on the line for him. She’d already stopped one attempt. So until she did something typically Brook-like, he owed her more respect than his rough words.

  Morgan grabbed the pants he’d worn to bed last night from their spot in the dirty basket inside the door. He’d rather have a fresh pair but that would involve walking past Brook. Pants in hand, he headed to the bathroom down the hall.

  There he got a look at his face in the brightly lit mirror. His eyes were tight, his lips thin and his expression harassed.

  The first twenty-four hours had yet to pass.

  Morgan said a silent prayer to Neptune to make this ordeal quick before he walked back to the bedroom.

  * * * * *

  How was Morgan supposed to sleep with the female in his bedroom? Though she was silent and unmoving, he sensed her there even without an empathic link. It had been the first thing he’d cast off when he’d slid beneath the sheets of his queen-sized sleigh bed. He’d known he wouldn’t get a moment’s rest if he didn’t. Not that it had helped.

  He’d lain awake all night listening to the noises of the lake around him. Each unexplained sound could have been a sniper on a boat. Yet when Brook’s steady, quiet breaths continued and no bullet sliced through his walls, he’d assumed he was wrong.

  Never in his life had he been so paranoid and worked up. He wished he could blame it all on Brook. But she hadn’t created this situation. She was here to help him resolve it. And so he wouldn’t snap and snarl at her. At least he would try not to, valiantly.

  * * * * *

  Brook had slept as much as she ever did—as much as a witch could while monitoring an empathy net stretched wide around the house. The net had told her she’d probably gotten more rest than her client had. He’d tossed within his bed for hours before giving up five minutes earlier. He was now barricaded behind the bathroom door—a room she hadn’t fortified beyond nailing plywood over the window. Brook hoped he didn’t plan to make the room his haven.

  While he was beyond the reach of her protection, she decided to get in a quick shower in the bathroom down the hall. Brook lifted her bag from the floor and moved in the opposite direction. She’d feel better in fresh clothing.

  Though the shower was short, standing beneath her element for several minutes recharged her spirit. She ran her fingers through her towel-dried hair and then quickly dressed.

  When she went downstairs, Brook found Morgan in the renovated kitchen toward the back of the house. He made quick gestures over a coffeemaker. The room was awash with bright morning light—a note Brook didn’t enjoy. If the light could get in, so could other things.

  “There are four giant windows in here,” she said. “You should have waited for me.”

  He grunted his first response. Actual words emitted from between thin lips moments later. “Lovely morning to you too, Ranger Calder.”

  Brook shook away her frustration with him as she settled near the table. “Do you have any plans to leave the house today?”

  “No. I have a morning conference call and then I will be doing paperwork.”

  “You need to go about your business as usual,” she said, even though he hadn’t specifically stated he’d changed his weekly routine. Water witch intuition told her he had.

  Sure enough, Morgan’s response was strained. “I’m not putting my covens into danger by visiting them as I ordinarily do.”

  “Holing up in your lakeside cottage will prompt your enemy to escalate his or her campaign against you.”

  Morgan whirled on his heel, giving her the full measure of his frustration. “How much more escalated can they get? They sent armed men to my door to kill me for thirty thousand dollars!”

  The meditation in the shower had helped but it wouldn’t last long if Morgan continued behaving foolishly. She took a beat to maintain her calm. “They can go after those you care for to draw you out.”

  Morgan’s honey-colored skin paled.

  “You aren’t keeping anyone safe by hiding,” she said.

  Even he wasn’t safe hiding in this house. Apart from a sniper shot through one of the countless windows, determined assassins could use explosives. They could ram a speedboat into Morgan’s office. They could have a neighbor lure him out and then bash him over the head with a two-by-four. There were any number of ways to kill a man. Only luck and vigilance would keep him alive.

  Morgan exhaled visibly as he faced his coffeepot. “The Chicago coven is holding a fund-raising event Friday. Tonight is the final organizational meeting. I should attend because it was my idea to hold the event.”

  “Then we attend as expected.”

  “The event i
s black-tie.”

  She barely covered her groan before she escaped to his office and began cloaking the windows with thick blankets.

  * * * * *

  Brook half listened to Morgan’s baritone voice rising and falling during his conference call while she scanned the emotional signatures of a pair of fishermen on the lake. They were content with their catches and conversation. She couldn’t say the same for Morgan. His irritation grew with each passing minute of his priestesses’ bickering.

  She wasn’t completely sure what the women wanted from him, only that they each believed someone else was at fault for the situation they found themselves in.

  Morgan soon cut into their conversation with an oddly patient tone given the mood she sensed from him. “Priestess Markem, you are concerned about overfishing in Wayne County while Priestess Parker is lamenting the lack of tourism in Luzerne causing an imbalance among the larger fish species. Ladies, I shouldn’t have to point out the obvious in this situation.” He gave them a few moments to come up with the obvious on their own. When they didn’t he said, “You should combine tithe money to run advertisements that the smaller crowds and ample fish in Luzerne County make it the perfect location for outings.”

  A stunned silence lasted until Morgan addressed the next issue the priestesses had brought up. “Work with local law enforcement agencies to place signs lakeside about littering. And then use witches to patrol for the worst offenders. Be sure to get physical evidence that can be shown to the vanilla humans. You will need photographs of the offenders in action and their license plate numbers so they can be tracked. Don’t simply rely on intuition and water quality to prove your points. Human authorities don’t care for these things.”

  It sounded as if he were speaking to children. Any witch with common sense would understand these issues. And yet one of the women argued with him that photographs weren’t needed if they had the debris in hand.

  “You may discard my wisdom and do as you will. That is your prerogative,” Morgan said dryly. “But you may not discard my wisdom and then bring this issue to this table again in the future. Is that understood?”

  Morgan had taken a hard stance on something? The man had always soothed ruffled feathers and stroked egos at the cost of his own honor. Was this a hint he’d changed?

  “Thank you for your indulgence and patience, priestesses.”

  A fluke, it must have been a one-time fluke, because those were the flowery parting words of a spineless man.

  Chapter Four

  The older gentleman’s eyes focused on Brook repeatedly. Though Irvin wasn’t the only witch in the room aware of her presence, he was the only one who gave her that knowing smile. So it came as no surprise when he sidled up beside her moments after Morgan began mingling.

  “He looks like shit,” Irvin said in quiet amusement. “Did he sleep last night?”

  “You’d have to ask him.”

  She was focused on her client. Brook didn’t appreciate the distraction Irvin presented. It was difficult enough to filter through all of the constantly changing emotional signatures. Four kinds of envy were felt from different corners of the room. Two kinds of anger, a dash of happiness and a healthy coating of misery joined them. As usual she measured the threat levels but deemed the situation safe for now. No one in the room wanted to kill anyone else—at least not seriously.

  Irvin ignored her obvious cues. “Will you be going to Friday’s fund-raising dinner?”

  She didn’t bother glancing at him. “Wherever Priest Seaton goes, I go until the situation is resolved.”

  “Then I look forward to a dance with the best Ranger in the country.”

  Brook’s attention snapped to the older male’s face. His expression skirted smirk territory while maintaining gravity. But she was too caught on what he’d said to contemplate his mood.

  There would be dancing at this dinner. And he expected her to join in.

  She opened her mouth to argue only to have the mayor’s vanilla human wife interrupt. Brook would have to hold her arguments about Ranger duty and witch safety for another time.

  Irvin redeemed himself by parading a half-dozen witches past Brook while she discreetly guarded the regional priest. He introduced her not as the Water Ranger intent on ferretting out the bad element but rather as an old friend of Morgan’s who was interested in perhaps moving to the area. The reactions she got from the locals were what she’d come to expect of clients—her mannish attire and masculine mannerisms didn’t trip anyone’s sense of competitiveness.

  Irvin, however, wasn’t the only one to flirt. Two men a few years older openly leered even as they pretended to be interested in her story. Brook filed Norman Foster and Gerald Maxwell’s names away as people to avoid at the fund-raising dinner.

  An hour of careful observation passed before the regional priest extracted himself from the chatty organization members. He murmured it was time to go home. They easily passed by several humans and witches on their way to the car without incident.

  Morgan drove while she concentrated on the threats around them. Vehicular manslaughter wasn’t out of the realm of possibility in this situation, a fact of which she was quite aware.

  She could use their proximity to her advantage. “Tell me about your uncle.”

  Morgan glanced at her. “Irvin?”

  Brook didn’t ask if he had other uncles. He ought to understand why she brought up the subject. Nevertheless, she gave him a brusque nod.

  “I’ve gone to him for advice for years,” he said. “I trust him implicitly.”

  The only response she gave him was a slight lift of her eyebrows.

  Morgan’s jaw slackened. “You think Irvin is trying to have me killed? Why? Why would he do that?”

  “Perhaps he resents your power. Maybe he thinks it should be his.”

  “No. Irvin is my kin and godfather. He would never try to hurt me.”

  “You can’t instantly discount him as a threat simply because you share blood.”

  “And you can’t instantly demonize someone simply because you think everyone is evil.”

  Morgan truly believed she’d failed to learn anything over the years. Strangely it didn’t annoy her. It amused her.

  “I don’t think everyone is evil,” she said without a trace of ire in her voice. “I think everyone has the capacity to do evil things.”

  “My uncle isn’t the bad guy.” Morgan’s pitch lifted emphatically. “I’d have known. I’d have picked up on ill will at some point over the years.”

  “Statistics show the culprit is generally someone close to the client. Rangers are trained to consider everyone a threat, even the clients themselves. It’s part of why we’re sought. We ask the hard questions our clients are unwilling to consider. Your uncle is a suspect. Your girlfriend is a suspect. Your entire region is suspect. And any other living family members…you can consider them on that list as well. Do you have any other living family members, Priest Seaton?”

  “Not that I’m going to share with you—”

  “That’s not part of the deal you signed.”

  Morgan sighed. “I have four cousins in California. I haven’t seen my mother since I was very young. The last I heard, she was living in Florida. She has living sisters scattered around the northwest.”

  “Are there any in this area?”

  “No. Only Irvin.”

  Brook nodded. The thinning of Morgan’s lips implied he’d perceived the motion as more than it was. While she thought Irvin needed to be watched, she hadn’t moved up his threat level.

  “It’s not Irvin.” Morgan’s agitation increased, echoing his insistence. “He’s the one who insisted I get a Ranger for protection. If he wanted me dead would he do that?”

  “Yes.”

  His gaze whipped toward her. “That doesn’t make sense!”

  “It makes perfect sense to a killer.” Brook was in her element discussing motivations. “Who would suspect the man who insists his victim have the best
protection?”

  The best protection…without her weapons. Someone had intercepted Brook’s package.

  “But it would make killing me that much harder.”

  She gestured for him to focus on the road again so they weren’t flattened against a semi. “Yes, it would but killing is relatively easy. Covering it up is the difficult part. Irvin’s hiring of the Rangers is documented. No one within your covens will question his innocence.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Who gets the position if you were to die?”

  “The covens would nominate several and then a vote would be called,” Morgan said.

  “The trusted uncle of the dead priest—the uncle who did everything in his power to protect his nephew apart from take the bullet for him—he would be nominated, wouldn’t he?” Morgan didn’t disagree when she paused, giving him the chance. “And he’d have a good chance of winning. He’s the brother of the former high priest for the Pacific Northwest, the uncle of the high priest for the Great Lakes Region. He’d have a damn good chance of winning.”

  “It’s not Irvin,” Morgan said in a low voice.

  And then he went quiet.

  They rode in silence nearly half the distance to Gary before he gave into the irritation Brook had sensed steadily growing within him.

  “Why do you hate people so much?”

  Brook didn’t immediately snap that people had rarely done anything good for her. That wasn’t strictly true. More often than not, people were selfish creatures she couldn’t abide for any length of time. Morgan already had bad opinions of her. She didn’t need to play into his hands. But gone was her earlier amusement.

  “Questioning a person’s motives in a volatile situation does not mean that I hate people,” she said.

  “You’ve always thought the worst of everyone,” he said as if she hadn’t answered. His delivery was impassioned, frustration lacing each word. “And now you’ve found an organization, a job that enables—no encourages—your bad attitude.”

  Blood rushed to her face. Why was she beginning to feel shame for her beliefs? No one had ever taken her to task for them. No one but Morgan Seaton. He’d been doing it since they were children. And while she prided herself on heeding no one’s opinions, the warmth of embarrassment still coated her neck.