The Last White Knight

by Tami Hoag

  “It’s Regan,” he whispered. “I’d know those combat boots anywhere.”

  Lynn slipped farther down on the seat of the Fairlane until she was kneeling on the floor and peering over the dash. Regan had climbed out of the second-floor bathroom window and was making her way carefully down the sloping roof of the bay window directly below it. For an instant she was caught in a wedge of streetlight that illuminated her pale skin and dark clothing. Then she was in shadow again as she dropped down onto the lawn.

  She came straight toward them, and for one terrible moment Lynn thought the girl might have been using the tumbledown old garage as a hiding place, that she would walk right in and find them there waiting for her like hunters lying in wait for some unsuspecting doe. But she ducked away at the last second, skimming her fingernails down the side of the building as she made her way past it to the alley.

  Lynn let out a breath and an expletive. “I never would have made it as a spy.”

  “Too late now, Mata Hari,” Erik said, easing open the driver’s door.

  They skulked down the alley like a pair of thieves, keeping to the cover of a row of overgrown lilac bushes that grew behind St. Stephen’s rectory. Erik led the way, towing Lynn along behind him like a recalcitrant child. Lynn lagged back, terrified of having Regan hear them.

  If the girl caught her at this game of hide-and-seek, that would be the end of Lynn’s chances with her. Lynn knew the one thing that would absolutely destroy all hope would be a breach of trust, and Regan would definitely see being followed as that. If wouldn’t matter that Regan didn’t deserve to be trusted. Therein lay the challenge. Lynn remembered it well—anyone wanting to reach her would have to want to do it in spite of all the rotten things she did. Regan wouldn’t see this for what it was—Lynn trying to prove the girl’s innocence. She would see it as just the opposite—Lynn trying to prove her guilt, trying to catch her at something.

  They crossed the street, ducking behind parked cars as Regan hurried on ahead, almost breaking into a jog at points. Wherever she was going, she was eager to get there. She stepped around the corner of a house, disappearing just as a police cruiser turned the corner onto a side street. Erik pulled Lynn behind a privet hedge and they crouched down holding their breath as the car slowed, then moved on by. That was all they needed, she thought, to get caught sneaking through people’s lawns in the dead of night. The headlines flashed before her eyes.

  “Which way did she go?” Erik whispered.

  Lynn snapped back to the present. “I’m not sure. Listen, Erik, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. If someone catches us, your reputation—”

  “Will you let me worry about my reputation?”

  “But—”

  “Come on. I see her.”

  He didn’t give Lynn the chance to refuse. He turned and moved, dragging her along in his wake like a rag doll. Her sneakers scuffed on the cement of the driveway as Erik led her after their quarry. They crossed another street and doubled back to the north, hurrying to keep Regan in sight, struggling to keep quiet and keep hidden. Lynn’s lungs burned as she tried to keep from panting aloud for breath. She got a stitch in her side from running bent over. And all the while, an awful sense of foreboding was building in her gut. She didn’t want to know the outcome of this journey, because instinctively she knew it was going to be bad. It wasn’t the knowledge of guilt—it was intuition, a sense of déjà vu, a heaviness in the air. She wanted to turn around and run, but there was nowhere to run to and no time, because just as she was gathering the strength to stop and turn, Erik dropped to his knees behind a Dumpster and jerked her down with him.

  Lynn glanced around her, taking a reading on their location. They’d gone maybe five or six blocks toward downtown, reaching the outer fringe of the business district, where low-rent houses intermingled with fix-it shops and auto-parts stores. The Dumpster they were crouched behind sat in back of one of the cinder-block buildings, at the back of a weedy patch of dirt that had been cleared away for employee parking. The security light above the back door of the business was broken, but enough light drifted from the streetlamp on the corner to make visibility relatively good.

  Regan stood leaning against the building, smoking a cigarette, nervously tapping the toe of her boot. She choked a little on the smoke, swore under her breath, and tossed the cigarette away as she pushed herself from the wall and started pacing. She was obviously waiting for someone. Possibilities ran through Lynn’s mind at a frantic pace. It was the kind of spot a kid might meet a pusher. Regan had gotten into trouble with drugs before. Lynn hadn’t seen any signs of abuse in the girl since she’d come to Horizon, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t ready to start again. Maybe she’d been biding her time. Maybe she’d had trouble making a connection with the right person.

  Maybe she was here for a different reason altogether.

  The terrible sense of foreboding, the foreshadowing of coming doom swelled up inside Lynn and crystallized into a cold, hard, jagged rock in her chest as a second person dressed in dark clothing skipped around the side of the building and Regan went immediately into his arms.

  Elliot Graham Junior.

  Sluts.

  The word sliced through Lynn like a knife as she watched E. J. Graham groping Regan. There was something more than youthful urgency in his movements as he kissed her and ran his hands up and down her body. Anger came to Lynn, and she recalled with a shiver the venom in his voice that first night on the lawn of the house as he’d filled in the blank of his father’s statement about “their kind.” Sluts.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered.

  Tears rose up to blur the scene before her and Lynn lifted her hands to press them against her mouth. This was no young lovers’ tryst. This wasn’t E. J. Graham rebelling against his father’s right-wing rule. It was no modern-day version of Romeo and Juliet. This was cruelty. Cruelty of one of the worst kinds. E. J. Graham was taking gross advantage of a lost, vulnerable girl. He was using her and cloaking that use in the guise of the one thing Regan Mitchell needed and craved above all else—love.

  Erik must have sensed the malevolence, too, because his hand tightened on Lynn’s and he growled the word “bastard” under his breath. He crouched beside her, his big body tense, his gaze riveted on the tableau being played out before them in the parking lot of Schultz Plumbing and Heating.

  The physical activity had begun to take on a more frantic edge. Graham backed Regan up against the side of the building, his hands fumbling to tug out the hem of the black tank top she wore tucked in her jeans, his movements rough and insistent. Regan squirmed and shoved at him. When she spoke her voice was missing the sharpness, the toughness that had characterized every conversation she’d ever had with Lynn. She sounded exactly like what she was: young and confused and a little bit afraid, not nearly as hardened as she liked to pretend she was.

  “E.J., stop it! You’re going too fast.”

  “You said tonight, Regan,” he snapped impatiently. “Come on.”

  “But not here—”

  “What difference does it make?”

  A little sob caught in the girl’s throat as she shoved him again. “It matters. Don’t say it doesn’t. I want it to be nice. I thought you did too. E.J., please—”

  Graham gave her a shake as he spat out a virulent curse. “You said you’d come across tonight and you’d damn well better, you little whore.”

  Regan cried out and tried to jerk away from him. He grabbed her arm with one hand and hauled back the other as if he had every intention of striking her.

  Lynn bolted away from the Dumpster, a shout of outrage tearing from her throat, but Erik was a step ahead of her. Fury surging through him, he was across the parking lot in four long, loping strides. He grabbed E. J. Graham by the scruff of the neck, jerked the boy away from Regan, then gave him a rough shove that sent him sprawling on his hands and knees in the dirt and gravel.

  There were a dozen things Erik wanted to say as he stood glaring dow
n at Elliot Graham Jr., but his usual eloquence deserted him as his anger rose up and formed a logjam in his chest and throat. He looked down at the “good” young citizen, the son of the man who was so vocally, so piously preaching for safe, morally upstanding neighborhoods, and shook his head in disgust.

  “You make me sick,” he growled. “You and your father both. Get out of here.” Graham cowered at his feet, cringing like a whipped dog, whimpering and sniveling. Erik lunged at him, his voice booming like thunder in the night. “Get out of here!”

  The boy scrambled away, slipping and stumbling as he gained his feet and ran from the lot. Somewhere down the block a dog let loose a short cannonade of barks, then the only sound was a soft, miserable crying. Erik turned to see Regan standing with her arms banded across her stomach as if she were in physical pain. Even in the dim light he could make out the expression of torment on the girl’s face, and for the first time since he’d met her Erik’s heart went out to her. She was Lynn, young and alone, caught up in the snare of her own mistakes and abandoned by the one person she had allowed herself to trust. Compassion swelled inside Erik in an aching tide.

  “Did he hurt you?” he asked, knowing what a stupid question it was. Of course she was hurt. She was hurt in a way no doctor could heal. Hurt and humiliated. He cursed E. J. Graham, and he cursed his inability to exact justice. If the law had allowed it, he would have kicked young Graham’s butt to St. Paul and back. As it stood, he had prevented the crime. The court would find the boy guilty of nothing more than a case of raging hormones and poor judgment. Breaking a fragile young heart wasn’t against the law.

  Regan didn’t answer. She looked down at the ground, hiccuping and choking on the tears she was trying so hard to hold back.

  “Come on, honey,” Lynn said softly. “Let’s go home.”

  She reached out to take the girl by the arm, but Regan jerked away from her. The rejection cut Lynn like a knife. She wanted to comfort, to mother, to soothe her own remembered pain by trying to soothe Regan’s, but Regan wasn’t going to allow it. Forcing her chin up to a proud angle, the girl walked away, leaving Lynn with nothing to do but fall in step behind her.

  It was a long walk home. Lynn felt as if she were trooping along on one of history’s infamous death marches—the Trail of Tears, Bataan. She wanted to reach out to help the girl in front of her, but she couldn’t, and she had to face the fact that she might never get the chance. Regan might never forgive her for following her or for witnessing her humiliation at the hands of E. J. Graham. She tried to content herself with the knowledge that she and Erik might well have prevented a rape. She doubted Regan would have come forward had no one been there to stop Graham. Regan would have kept her own counsel, never trusting anyone to believe her story. Why would anyone believe her? She was one of “those girls” from Horizon House and E. J. Graham was the son of a man running for city council on a morality platform.

  All the pain Lynn felt on Regan’s behalf concentrated itself into a burning knot just above her right eye. She lifted a hand to rub it wearily, barely finding the strength to plant one foot in front of the other. She wanted nothing more than to lie down, curl into a ball, and shut the world out. Then Erik slipped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze, and she amended her wish. She wanted nothing more than to lie down with Erik and shut the world out, to lose herself in the comfort of those strong arms, to cleanse herself in his goodness.

  They turned in at the alley that ran behind St. Stephen’s, following the same path they’d taken out. Regan trudged ahead, like a queen going to her execution, head held high, shoulders rigid. She turned to duck through a gap in the lilac hedge and came up short so quickly, Lynn almost plowed into her.

  “Regan, what—” The rest of the question vaporized as Lynn followed the girl’s shocked gaze.

  A dark figure crouched in the shadows along the towering limestone wall of St. Stephen’s. An ominous hissing sound cut through the quiet of the night. The sound of a snake poised to strike—or a can of spray paint at work.

  “Wait here,” Erik ordered. He gave Lynn’s shoulder a squeeze and was gone, running silently back along the hedgerow and disappearing around the corner.

  Lynn squinted into the darkness, trying to make out features, gender, anything that might give a clue to the identity of the person defacing the side of the church, but it was too dark, the perpetrator too far away and too well disguised, clad in black virtually from head to toe. It might have been a man or a woman, a teenager or someone older. There was simply no way to tell. Whoever it was, he or she gave the paint can one last shake, then tossed it aside.

  Lynn grabbed Regan’s wrist in a death grip and leaned close to the girl, never taking her eyes off the dark figure that turned and moved silently to the side door of the church and slipped inside.

  “Regan, take my keys. Go into the house and call nine-one-one. Tell them someone is breaking into St. Stephen’s. Hurry!”

  Regan broke for the house at a run. Lynn made a beeline for the church and the door the vandal had gone through with such ease of familiarity. Heart pounding, pulse roaring in her ears, the sickeningly sweet scent of spray paint filling her nostrils, she dashed into the shadows along the side of the building and pulled up at the door. Her hand stilled on the knob as she tried to form some kind of a plan.

  The vandal was inside—vandalizing, she supposed. Probably armed. Most likely dangerous. She didn’t know where Erik was. He had presumably gone around to the front of the church with the intent of catching the culprit in a squeeze play, but if he didn’t know the vandal had slipped into the church …

  Lynn gave herself a mental shake. There wasn’t time for theories or game plans. There was only time for action. She had always been one to act first and think later, anyway. With the thought of vindicating her girls uppermost in her mind, she turned the knob on the door and pulled it toward her.

  In the next instant a dozen things seemed to happen at once. Her mind captured the flurry in quick freeze-frame shots—a black-clad figure rushing toward her, Erik coming hard behind him, a crucifix slashing down through the air at her. Erik shouted her name, yelled for her to look out, but there was no time to react.

  The crucifix hit her with a glancing blow on the side of her head and she staggered backward. Her assailant lunged at her, trying desperately to shove her aside, but she grabbed his arm and held on—out of reflex to catch herself and out of instinct to catch him. He barreled through the door, threw himself against her, then veered hard away from her, breaking her hold. He stumbled off the edge of the step and Lynn hurled herself after him, flinging herself hard against his back. They went down in a teeth-jarring tumble and she had the satisfaction of hearing him grunt as his breath left him, but he threw her off and scrambled to his feet.

  He hadn’t gone two steps when Erik came flying through the door and off the step. The pair went down with a thud and a groan.

  Lynn pushed herself to her knees, panting, and swiped a tangle of hair out of her eyes. At the same moment, Erik sat up, digging a knee into the back of the culprit to hold him in place, facedown on the turf. He shot her a look that was both fierce and triumphant, reminding her of his Viking ancestors.

  “Would you care to do the honors of unmasking this piece of dirt?” he asked.

  Lynn scrambled forward. “With pleasure.”

  Car doors banged in the distance. The back porch light at Horizon went on. Lynn could hear the sounds of people hurrying across the lawn, but her attention was riveted on the person Erik had pinned to the lawn. She reached for the edge of the ski mask, jerked it off with one motion, and her heart stopped.

  Elliot Graham glared up at her, his zealot’s eyes burning bright with fury.

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  Lynn stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind her, ignoring what Regan claimed her wishes were. It was almost 1:00 A.M. She had endured the seemingly endless questions from the police, from Father Bartholo
mew, from Martha and Lillian, and from the girls, who had all been roused out of bed by the commotion. She was tired. Her head was throbbing. A goose egg had raised up where Graham had hit her with the stolen crucifix. She wanted very much to go home and soak in a nice hot bath, to soothe the aches and pains she had accumulated during the tussle, but she wasn’t going anywhere just yet.

  Regan sat on the edge of her bed, staring out the window that overlooked the backyard. She had claimed this room for herself the first night. It was farthest away from everyone and too small for more than one bed. A quiet, safe haven she could cocoon herself in … or a cell where she could sentence herself to solitary confinement. Probably the latter, Lynn thought, glancing around at the bare white walls. Regan had done nothing to make this her home. She had brought no personal things with her, no boom box, no stuffed animals, none of the usual fripperies of the teenage girl. There were no posters of rock stars on the walls, no fashion magazines scattered on the floor. There was nothing but a cheap old white-and-gold French provincial-style bedroom set and a white hobnail glass lamp with a frilly pink shade.

  The loneliness of the room closed in on Lynn, the sense of self-exile drawing out deeply rooted memories like slivers that pricked and stung her heart again. Regan had tried to insulate herself with loneliness, but the ploy hadn’t worked. Instead, it had driven her to reach out to E. J. Graham to ease her sense of isolation.

  “He was using me,” she said, the resignation in her voice overshadowing the bitterness. “I guess I should have known he was a jerk.”

  “It’s not always that easy to tell,” Lynn murmured. She sank down on the very edge of the bed, giving Regan her space, and sat bent over with her forearms on her thighs. There were grass stains and dirt on Lynn’s jeans. She picked at one of the spots, wincing as she hit a bruise that was hidden beneath the denim. “I’m sure no one would have guessed his father was as much of a creep as he turned out to be either.”