One Summer’s Knight

by Kathleen Creighton

  He backed soundlessly out of the room and pulled the door closed before turning to Agent Redfield and remarking in an acid tone, “You couldn’t have taken them to a hotel?” He felt indefinably shaken; somehow he’d forgotten about the children. Lord, of course there were children; she’d mentioned them several times. It wasn’t like him to forget a detail like that.

  Redfield said dolefully, “Yeah, well…it seems there’s just one…slight…complication.”

  Riley frowned. “Complication?”

  A grimace gave Agent Redfield’s lips an upward tilt, almost like a smile; he rubbed at the back of his neck. “Seems she has some…other baggage.”

  “Baggage?”

  “Pets.”

  “Pets.” Riley said the word as if it were a foreign language.

  “Yeah. Lucky for them, they were at a friend’s house-I guess they’d been out of town over the weekend, some family thing-so they weren’t involved in the fire. Anyway, she-well, the kids, actually-they insisted we had to go and get them before we did anything else.”

  “They insisted?” Riley repeated in an incredulous tone.

  “You have no idea,” Redfield said dryly, “how persuasive they can be. Believe me. It was a whole lot easier to go than not” He looked, Riley thought, like a man who’d recently survived an unnerving experience.

  “Humph,” he said without sympathy. “These… friends couldn’t have kept the, uh, pets for another few days? What kind of pets are we talking about? Cat? Dog? Goldfish?”

  Redfield straightened with a laconic gesture for Riley to follow him. “I guess the best way is to show you… Oh, I think they would have, if they’d been asked,” he said, answering Riley’s first question as they walked. “I kinda got the feeling they weren’t on very good terms-some sort of altercation among the kids, apparently. Anyway, she-Mrs. Robey-she didn’t feel like she could impose.”

  No, thought Riley, she wouldn’t That damned pride. He couldn’t decide whether he admired it or not, at least not in a client, but he did understand it He understood it very well.

  “Anyway,” Redfield continued, “I figure no hotel in the world’s gonna want to take this bunch. Here-see for yourself.” He halted in front of one of the rest room doors but didn’t open it-took a step backward, in fact, as if he expected a bomb might go off any minute.

  Riley gave him a look of annoyance and the door a push.

  “Get out!” a woman’s voice shrieked as a dog began to bark ferociously. “Get out, get out, get out!”

  What the hell? At the first words, Riley had jumped back as if he’d bounced off a rubber wall. He threw the FBI man a cold and murderous glance. “Your idea of a joke?”

  Redfield wasn’t smiling. He shrugged. “No joke. Go ahead-just go on in.”

  Riley gave him a long, considering stare; he was not in the habit of being made the fool. Beyond the door all seemed quiet now, almost eerily so-no human voices or barking dog, no hurried flushing sounds or running water. He pushed on the door…then pushed it wider.

  A woman’s voice-a different one, he’d have sworn-muttered evilly, “Go to hell.” That was followed by a jubilant “No wa-a-ay!” as the high-pitched barking began with renewed frenzy.

  “Oh, good Lord,” Riley said under his breath.

  In the middle of the tile floor sat three pet carrying cases, the kind made of plastic with a steel-mesh door at one end. In one, the ugliest cat Riley had ever seen in his life sat and stared at the world with pure, unadulterated malevolence; from another, a very tiny Chihuahua with huge, bulging eyes was voicing a strong desire to tear anything that came within range of its minute jaws limb from limb-or at least, toe from foot. The third carrier was covered with a blue cloth, and apparently it was from here that the voices had issued. Because one was at that very moment muttering, “Stupid…dog,” employing an adjective Riley would never have used, at least not around children.

  He backed out of the room, bringing the door gently to a close, then stood and stared at it for a moment. “Well,” he said. And after a moment, “You people don’t have a safe house of some kind?”

  Redfield shook his head. “Nothing appropriate for the…you know.” His head jerked toward the room they’d just left.

  Riley said nothing. Turning on his heel, he strode down the hallway to the big room with all the desks in it. He chose one that wasn’t buried in computers and paperwork, leaned his backside against it, folded his arms and waited for the FBI man, who was right behind him.

  “Agent Redfield,” he said in a soft, even tone, “before I let my client know I’m here, I do have one or two questions for you, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll do my best to answer ’em for you,” Jake Redfield said in a voice just as calm, just as quiet, as he leaned his rear against the desk across the aisle from Riley and folded his arms on his chest in an exact duplicate of his posture.

  And then for a few moments there was silence while the two men took each other’s measure, like a couple of dogs meeting in an alley, Riley thought, figuring out which one was going to be top dog.

  Funny thing was, he had an idea they weren’t really all that much different, he and this man from the FBI. Sure, the guy was obviously at the end of a long day that promised to get longer yet, and looked it-baggy-eyed and unshaven and as if he’d slept in his clothes-while Riley appeared calm, cool and immaculate in a dinner jacket and black tie. Appeared being the key word-and he just hoped the facade was going to be thick enough to stand up to the fact that at the moment he felt as off balance and ill-equipped as a man trying to tiptoe through a cow pasture in patent-leather shoes. But under their two very different skins, he’d be willing to bet, there lay the same junkyard-dog toughness, a few of the same ideals and principles, and maybe even something else, something Riley would never put a name to or let anybody see. He was pretty sure Jake Redfield didn’t, either.

  “You mind telling me,” Riley said, “just exactly what is the FBI’s interest in my client?”

  “We consider her an important witness in an ongoing investigation,” Redfield answered promptly. “I thought we made that clear to her.” His eyebrows lifted. “You mind telling me what it was that would make her feel like she had to call in her lawyer?”

  Riley let his lip curl with just a touch of sarcasm. “Maybe you scared her? Maybe your methods were a touch heavyhanded, considering who you were dealing with? That is a nice lady in there. Seems to me, if you want cooperation from nice people, it generally works best to ask nicely.”

  Redfield snorted. He rubbed at the back of his neck and muttered, “We’re not who she needs to be scared of.”

  “Ah, yes. My client mentioned you think this involves a gambling syndicate?”

  “Gambling, among other things-yes. One of the biggest left in the country. I’ve-we’ve been trying to nail the lid shut on these people for a long time.” The FBI agent’s face had a dark and tense look, as if his jaw were clenched and his blood pressure rising. After a moment Riley saw him take a deep breath and give his head a quick shake, as if it were a selfcontrol regimen he practiced frequently. “Never quite been able to manage it. Can’t quite get anything-or anybody-that’ll stick through the whole system of due process, if you know what I mean.” He threw Riley a resentful look. Plainly, the agent thought that lawyers should have been required to wear a special security pass stamped Enemy.

  “I can certainly sympathize,” said Riley evenly, not bothenng to point out that he wasn’t a criminal defense attorney and therefore had little if not nothing to do with the government’s failure in their quest to stamp out organized crime. “But what does this have to do with my client?”

  “We want her husband,” Redfield said softly, his eyes like long, dark thoughts. “Hal Robey. We think she can help us.”

  Riley made a disgusted noise. “My client has no idea where her ex-husband is. When he disappeared he left her and the kids flat broke, did you know that? If she knew where he was, don’t you suppose s
he’d be after him herself?”

  Redfield shrugged. “Maybe…maybe not. All I know is, the syndicate we’re interested in wants Hal Robey, and they have come after his wife in a very serious way. To me, that says they must have some good reason to think she can give them what they want. Since we also want Hal Robey, and would very much like to find him before the bad guys do, we have to pay attention to that. You follow me? We have no choice but to look very hard at Mrs. Robey. The difference between us and them is that we don’t burn down people’s houses and threaten to hurt their children to get what we want.”

  There was a hard, unhappy silence. Then Riley straightened and said quietly, “I believe I will see my client now.”

  There had been a year in Summer’s childhood when the winter rains came early and stayed on into May in the California deserts and mountain foothills. They hadn’t known about El Niño then; old-tuners called it the year of the Hundred-Year Flood. For a while, California was in its glory. The desert bloomed with carpets of wildflowers, some that appeared only once or twice in a lifetime, and poppies and brush grew thick and lush on the slopes. And then in June the rains ceased and the Santa Ana winds blew down the canyons, and the vegetation became tinder. And the fire season began.

  As the hills and forests and subdivisions of Southern California burned and firefighters and equipment poured in from all over the country to help wage the unwinnable war, base camps sprang up near those communities in the most desperate states of seige That year, one such tent city had been located in Summer’s hometown, because of its proximity both to an airfield large enough to accommodate the water bombers, and a reservoir that would be their source of water.

  At the height of the holocaust, Summer’s daddy, Pop Waskowitz, the town’s chief of police, had taken his children to visit the camp. While Evie had run around taking pictures and home movies for a school social studies project, and Mirabella had fussed and fumed over what she considered to be rampant inefficiency and disorganized chaos, Summer had stared in silent sorrow at the firefighters coming in from the line. Too exhausted to eat, they would fall asleep where they hit the ground, sometimes with their heads pillowed on knapsacks, hard hats or bare ground. Their smoke-blackened faces and red-rimmed eyes had haunted Summer’s nightmares for weeks afterward.

  She was dreaming of those faces again. Of young faces crusty with soot and eyes aged and hollow from staring into hell itself. But…for some reason the faces were David’s-all of them. No, some of the faces were Helen’s, too. And when she tried to touch them, the blackened faces-her children’s faces-crumpled and disintegrated and turned to ashes, each and every one. Crying, she kept trying to reach out to them, trying to touch them, one after the other, until there were none left. Yet…she could still hear their voices! She could hear them calling her…

  “Mommy! Wake up! Mom, a man’s here. Wake…up.”

  Summer opened her eyes and immediately thought she must still be dreaming. How else could she account for this surreal dissolve from the nightmare horror of her children’s burned and blackened faces to the vision of masculine beauty that stood before her now? An angel, perhaps? But…in evening dress?

  But of course it was not a dream. And if Cinderella, down on her knees in the fireplace, dressed in her tatters and rags and up to her elbows in ashes and soot, were to suddenly look up and find the Prince standing there in all his royal splendor, she could not have been more dazzled than Summer was when that fact became apparent to her. Or more humiliated.

  “Oh, gosh-I must have dozed off,” she mumbled, struggling to shift Helen off her lap with one hand so she could sit up, wiping at her cheeks with the other. Had she been crying? Snoring? Her mouth and throat were dry. She cleared her throat and at the same time tried desperately to stifle a yawn. “Mr. Grogan-thank you so much for coming. I-”

  “Why are you wearing that?” Helen asked from her battle station at Summer’s side, up on her knees with her arms folded and her chin jutting out, and the expression on her porcelain face one more of suspicion than awe.

  “Helen-”

  Riley Grogan said, with none of the adjustments to tone and manner adults usually employ when addressing small children, “I was at a party. I didn’t have time to go home and change.” He regarded his inquisitor through half-closed eyes while she considered that, her head tilted at a judicial angle.

  “I’m sony,” Summer said in a low voice.

  “Don’t be” Somehow his voice managed to be both crisp and comforting. He glanced toward the far end of the couch, where David was frowning and twitching, clinging to his troubled sleep. “If you’d like to get your things together, I’ll get you out of here now.”

  Hope and gladness carried Summer to her feet before she remembered. Her shoulders slumped as she turned one to Riley Grogan, averting her face so he wouldn’t see the defeat and worry she knew must be written there. “That’s nice of you to offer, but I don’t know where we’d go. I’m told the Red Cross will provide us with shelter-I’ll check into it tomorrow-but I don’t know if they’ll take the animals. The hotels-”

  “You just let me worry about that” He leaned down to give David’s shoulder a shake. “Come on, young man-rise and shine. Time to go.” Not yet fully awake, David rolled himself into a sitting position, still clutching the backpack to his chest and blinking slowly, like a fledgeling owl.

  “Time to go where?” Helen demanded as she hopped off the couch.

  “I’d be interested in the answer to that question, myself,” Jake Redfield said quietly from the doorway. “We still have some questions we need to ask Mrs. Robey.”

  “My client won’t be answering any more questions tonight,” Riley Grogan said, taking Summer’s elbow in a firm grip and ushering her toward the door. As Helen wedged herself between Riley and her mother, and David slid bonelessly off the couch to shuffle along in their wake, Summer’s eyes anxiously followed the FBI man, wondering how he would respond to her lawyer’s implacable declaration.

  For one moment it did look as if Agent Redfield might try and stop them. “I’m gonna need to know where you’re taking my witness,” he said in a belligerent tone, but his face said he already knew it was a lost cause.

  As they met in the doorway, Riley paused, and Summer saw the two men exchange a long, measuring stare. And she knew with a sudden primitive awareness that the silent struggle had much less to do with her and her current predicament than their words might suggest. More, perhaps, to do with the thunder of hoofbeats and the clang of antlers echoing on a cold autumn morning. That awareness stirred along her skin and her pulse quickened.

  “Is my client under arrest?” her lawyer softly asked, and the FBI man made a sibilant noise of disgust. “In that case, where my client goes is none of the government’s business.”

  Redfield stood his ground a moment longer, then turned his head away. “At least let me know where I can get ahold of her.”

  “You can reach her through me.” Riley drew a card from his jacket pocket and offered it to the other man in a motion both controlled and graceful. “Right now I’m taking Mrs. Robey and her children someplace where they will be safe and can rest undisturbed. Give it a couple of days and then call my office. If I think Mrs. Robey is up to it, she’ll be available to answer your questions at that time. Now-Mrs. Robey? Shall we go?”

  Still caught up in the primal spell of it herself, Summer allowed herself to be towed along for several steps before the realization kicked in that she was being treated exactly as if she were the spoils of that recent masculine power struggle. She halted, more like a balky child than a reluctant bride, and pulled her arm free of Riley Grogan’s grasp. She was obscurely pleased when he stopped and looked back at her in utter astonishment, as if an inanimate object had suddenly acquired legs and voice.

  “Excuse me,” she said, “but I would like to know. Where, exactly, are you taking us?”

  Riley stepped back and leaned down so that his face was close to hers. “Can we talk
about this later? Like…outside?”

  It was very quiet in the hallway. On the edges of her vision Summer was intensely aware of her children’s wide-eyed, listening stares, and beyond them, Jake Redfield, alert and interested, his face looking as if it might even smile. She inhaled through her nose, struggling to take in air that had suddenly become thick and warm as fur. “No,” she said, through lips that barely moved, “now…please.”

  The silence held for perhaps three suspenseful seconds more. Then Summer felt the breeze of a silent exhalation, and once more the pressure of Riley’s fingers on her elbow. He said to the three interested spectators, with mocking courtesy, “Would y’all please excuse us?” as he drew her with him into the empty rest room and closed the door.

  She felt light-headed, her ears were ringing. Afraid to give herself time to think about why that should be so, Summer launched into what she knew was a pointless protest, delivered in harsh whispers. “I’m not about to let you just haul us off without knowing where it is you’re taking us.” I will still have some control over my life I must.

  For a long, tense moment he gazed at her, his eyes dark and thoughtful. Then, as if he understood, he suddenly nodded. That astonished her so much that she felt as if the bands that were holding her together inside had just snapped, leaving everything loose and trembly.

  “Mrs Robey, you know the situation better than I do. Not only do you have children and animals with particular needs, but there’s the security aspect to be considered. Someone has tried to do you harm. They may do so again.”

  “Yes,” Summer whispered, and swallowed. “That’s why I can’t go to my family. Please understand, I can’t take this-my trouble-home to them.”

  Again he nodded as if he truly understood. “Which is why I believe I have the only solution. I’m taking you home with me.”