On that last blow, the lower curve of a black… something… had crashed through the middle of Dolf’s front door. Now, it was poking into the apartment, an intrusion where there should be none.
All three of them stared at the breached door. For herself, Helena was horrified.
“They have a battering ram? I honestly didn’t see this coming,” said Dolf, almost conversationally.
Helena was glad that he was so calm. She was so frightened – and at the same time, so flooded with adrenaline – that her skin was tingling. Sparks crackled between the ends of her hair.
Past the door, a man shouted and the end of the battering ram shuddered in its hole before being wrenched out of it.
Dolf reached out to grab Helena’s wrist, and a thin zigzag of blue-white lightning leaped between them. Hissing, Dolf drew back his hand.
“Sorry,” said Helena, tucking her arm against her side. She took a deep, steadying breath and tried to push the lightning down, beneath her skin. “I think I’ve got it under control now.”
Declan poked her shoulder and, when lightning failed to crack between her torso and his fingers, pressed something – his cell phone, Helena saw at a glance – into her hand, closing Helena’s fingers around it.
“My password is Libby G,” said Declan. “Call the police and then the office, okay?”
Mutely, Helena nodded.
Reaching out, Dolf bravely closed his hand around her wrist. This time, Helena didn’t accidentally shock him.
Pulling Helena to him, Dolf gave her a quick, hard kiss on the mouth, one that made her head spin. Then he pushed her behind him, saying “Go on. Lock the bedroom door. There’s a fire ladder under my side of the bed. Go out the window and get away, and then make the calls, if you can.”
“But –”
“Go on!” snapped Dolf, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the next crash of the battering ram against the front door. “Moments like this are what you’re paying us for!”
His words cut Helena to the quick. Blinking back tears, Helena did as he said. Turning, she blindly stumbled down to the short hall to his bedroom. Slamming the door behind herself sounded so final, but Helena locked the door anyway.
Through the door, Helena heard another crash and then a lot of shouting. Stuffing her cousin’s cell phone into her waistband, Helena crouched down, groping for – and the easily finding – the fire ladder. It was right where Dolf had said that it would be.
It was only two steps or so from the bed to the window, where Helena struggled with the window. Somehow, she got it up, though. Hooking the hooked ends of the ladder over the windowsill, Helena threw the length of the ladder out the window, watching anxiously as it fell into place.
No tangles, Helena noted with relief.
By then the bedroom door was rattling on its hinges. It wasn’t as sturdy as the apartment’s front door, something that Helena was trying very hard not to think about as she gingerly swung a leg over the windowsill.
She was already out the window when the bedroom door gave up the ghost, and seconds later, there was the sense that someone was leaning over her. Hard hands grabbed at her shoulders, and Helena reacted without thinking.
Charge leaped between her and them, and a man’s voice cried out. The hands fell away, the man that they were attached to falling backwards into the room.
Helena continued her mad scramble for the ground.
She had just found the ground, the concrete hot against her bare feet, when a voice shouted “FBI! Freeze!” and Helena obediently froze.
“Turn around slowly!”
Slowly, so achingly slowly, Helena turned around. She really didn’t want to be shot.
Standing behind her were a pair of people, one man and one woman, dressed all in black. They were definitely pointing guns at her. From her new perspective, Helena could see that their bulky flak vests had F.B.I. printed on them in neon yellow.
Helena hoped to anyone listening that whoever had grabbed at her as she escaped the apartment wasn’t also with the feds. That would be bad – for her. They generally seemed to take a dim view of – everything, really, but especially people who seemed to be resisting them.
“Am I under arrest?”
“Are you Helena Tarleton?”
Chapter 22 – Helena
It turned out that she was not under arrest, at least for the time being, although the man that she had shocked had certainly made noises about it. Apparently, the F.B.I. had come to rescue her – whether she wanted to be rescued or not. And no matter what she thought about it, although Helena certainly tried to tell them, several times over, no less.
Dolf and Declan, however, weren’t so lucky.
Bewildered, Helena allowed the officers – Or maybe they were agents? Helena was uncertain on that point. She wished that she had bothered to watch more police procedurals before this. But who really imagined themselves needing that sort of information? She certainly hadn’t – to usher her into the elevator.
Her cousin and her – Dolf had both already been ferried downstairs by an elevator; both men had been stone-faced, handcuffed, and under guard.
Turning to the officer closest to her, Helena tried to explain, saying earnestly “But why are they under arrest? They really didn’t kidnap me! They saved me from being kidnapped!”
“Why don’t you come down to the office and explain it to all there?”
Sucking in a sharp breath, Helena drew away from him.
“So you’re arresting me too?”
“No, of course not,” said the officer (or possibly agent). “We just want to ask you a few questions. You’re… a person of interest to us.”
“That sounds scary. I think I’d like to speak to my attorney first.”
The man’s face tightened.
“You don’t need an attorney, because you’re not under arrest.”
“Still,” Helena persisted, just to see what would happen. In truth, she didn’t even have an attorney. Previously, she had always used the family’s lawyers when she needed legal counsel.
The police officer wavered, and, seeing that, Helena pressed her advantage.
Crushing down her frightened, fluttery nerves, Helena straightened and, drawing on all her years as a Tarleton, she snapped “If I’m under arrest, then I demand to invoke my right to an attorney. If I’m not under arrest, then I have a perfect right to call anyone that I’d like, and I’d like to call my attorney now. Either way: I will be speaking with my attorney.”
“You have it all figured out, don’t you?” snapped the officer (or agent) on her other side.
“Unfortunately,” said the first officer (or agent) that she had spoken with, “we don’t have the authority to make those sorts of decisions.”
“Then I’d like to speak with your supervisor,” retorted Helena.
Declan had said that one of his brothers was an attorney. Maybe she should start there?
I do still have his cell phone and his password, thought Helena, more aware than ever of the cell phone wedged into her waistband.
They had confiscated her and Dolf’s cell phone, presumably under the assumption that they were Dolf and Declan’s cell phones. Helena hadn’t bothered to correct them.
In the end, they did let her call her attorney. They even gave her a bit of privacy in which to do it.
Her belly fluttering, Helena scrolled through Declan’s contact list. There only seemed to be one Elliot in it, but there was no surname attached to him, much less a note identifying him as Declan’s brother.
Mustering her nerve, Helena called him, using the face-time function.
“Dec – Who… are you?” wheezed the man who answered.
He looked like hell. Even then, though, Helena thought she could see a resemblance in him both to herself and to Declan.
“I’m your cousin, Helena Tarleton,” said Helena. “And Declan is in trouble. He and his coworker, Rudolf Shaw, have been arrested.”
The man on the othe
r end of the phone call visibly straightened. “Why?”
“Are you his brother the attorney?” demanded Helena. “I told them that I was calling his attorney.”
A faint smile flickered across the man’s face.
“I am,” he said. “It’s just… dragon pox.”
Helena winced. Getting dragon pox was said to be the absolute worst.
“I’m sorry. That must be awful,” said Helena, sincerely, and her cousin inclined his head, accepting it.
“Declan?” he wheezed. “And… Rudolf?”
Obediently, Helena began to explain the circumstances to him, starting with her flight from her graduation ceremony and ending with their arrest as her kidnappers.
Afterwards, Elliot said “Well… they’re never… going to get… their deposits… back.”
It startled a burst of laughter out of her. Soon enough, though, her previous concerns returned.
“Can you work with that?” asked Helena anxiously. “And are you well enough? You still seem…” There, Helena hesitated for a moment, thinking, before she settled on “very unwell.”
Elliot laughed breathlessly.
“I’m better… than I was,” he said. “I can… do this.”
“Thank you.”
Leaving it in his hands, Helena settled in to wait.
Helena had been involved in enough legal actions to know that, while attorneys got results, they were rarely quick about it. The wheels of the legal system seemed specifically designed to turn slowly, and the fact that most private attorneys were paid by the hour probably didn’t encourage anyone to move any faster.
And so, Helena waited.
It turned out that there were a lot of places in the police station where she was not welcome, sometimes emphatically so, but the ladies’ room and the vending machines were not two of those places. Even better, the vending machines took bills.
Helena was buying dinner snacks – and mourning the pizza that could have been – when a man in a four thousand dollar suit sidled up next to her. He was impeccably groomed with product in his hair, a pair of handmade shoes, and practiced smile.
Helena distrusted him immediately.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” said Helena sharply. “Tell Grandfather that the answer is still no, thank you.”
The man blinked.
“I think we may be laboring under a misunderstanding,” he said, almost conciliatorily. “I don’t represent your grandfather, but rather Pamela Pommard. And you are…?”
“Uninterested,” said Helena, rather than furnishing her name, as he so clearly wanted her to do.
“Helen, aren’t you?” The attorney smiled at her. “Or perhaps Helena? I’m sorry, but the source of my information wasn’t certain.”
“I’m surprised that you found out that much on me,” said Helena. The one time that they had met face to face, Pamela Pommard hadn’t even asked her name.
“You’ve made quite an impression on your new neighbors.”
There, Helena nearly winced. Given the events of the last few days, it could hardly have been a good one. Fortunately, her family had taught her better than to show weakness to this type of person.
“One likes to be appreciated,” said Helena coolly.
“I’d appreciate a surname for you,” said the attorney, flashing her another perfectly winsome smile. It must have taken him hours to perfect it.
“I don’t see why that’s any of your business.”
Annoyance flickered across the man’s face.
“You have some documents that legally belong to my client. A court can force you to surrender them.”
“Save your threats for someone who might be impressed by them,” advised Helena. Her grandfather did it better.
“Those wills are very important to my client and the whole Rothschild family,” pressed the lawyer. “On evidence that you have them, probate proceedings for Caroline Rothschild’s estate have been halted to give me a chance to find and produce them.”
“Well, I don’t have them anymore. I handed them in to the police.”
“Oh really?” purred the lawyer. “Would you say the same thing under subpoena?”
“This conversation is boring me,” said Helena. “And I find that I no longer wish to speak with you. If you have anything else to say to me, you can communicate it through my attorney.”
She still hadn’t found one of her own yet, but depending on how things with Dolf and Declan proceeded, she had hopes that her cousin Elliot might take on this job for her too.
The attorney produced a card from somewhere. He offered it to Helena, but when she merely arched an eyebrow at him, he put it on a nearby counter.
“I’ll be in touch.”
How? Helena wondered. It wasn’t like he had her name, and he hadn’t even bothered to ask for her attorney’s name.
Silently, Helena watched him go. Then, turning back to the vending machine, she purchased a little bag of shortbread cookies, a little pool of red jam pressed into the center of each one.
Dinner was going to be so unhealthy. Not that pizza was exactly the healthiest. Helena just suspected that it might be healthier than vending machine food.
It would have been tastier too, Helena thought much later, as she threw out another nearly inedible bag of treats.
A few hours later, Helena was washing her hands after a trip to the restroom when her cell phone – or rather, Declan’s cell phone – rang. After a brief internal debate, she answered it, saying cautiously “Hello?”
“Hey,” said a man’s voice. “I thought this was Declan’s cell phone number.”
“It is,” said Helena. “May I ask who’s calling?”
“A friend,” said the other cagily. “And you are?”
“Also a friend,” said Helena firmly.
“Look, I think I’ve got the wrong number,” said the man’s voice.
“But you said –”
“Catch you later.”
He hung up.
Shrugging, Helena stuffed the cell phone back into her pocket and dried her hands. She fussed with her face a bit but, lacking her purse and any and all of the makeup that it contained within it, ultimately couldn’t do much about the fact that she looked tired.
It had been a long couple of days.
She was out in what seemed to pass for the waiting room again, when Declan’s phone rang a second time.
“Hello?”
“This is Giles Geissler.”
Memory stirred. “Declan and Dolf’s boss?” inquired Helena.
“Yes, the very same,” said the man’s voice. “And is this Helena Tarleton that I’m speaking with?”
Warily, Helena said “This is his latest client, yes.”
“Ah,” said the man. “Is there someone there with you then? Someone that you’d prefer not hear your name?”
“Something like that,” said Helena.
Who knew if that smarmy lawyer was still lurking around, trying to get her name? He could even be pretending to be Giles Geissler to trick her out of it. No, it was better to be safe than sorry on that front – at least until she had sorted out what kinds of law Elliot da Luz practiced and if he was any good at it.
She really needed a lawyer of her own, posthaste.
“Where are you?” asked the man’s voice.
“A police station?”
“And where are Dolf and Declan?”
“Lock up, maybe?” Helena guessed. “Although maybe Declan’s brother has gotten them out of there by now? I don’t really know, and no one is being very helpful here.”
“All right,” said the man. “You remember what I look like, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” said Helena indignantly. She was blonde, not stupid!
“So using Declan’s phone directory, I want you to send your location to Giles Geissler. Since you remember what I look like, you’ll know me when I show up.”
“And then what will happen?”
“Then you can
explain all this to me,” said Dolf and Declan’s boss. “And then we’ll figure out where to go from there. All right?”
“Okay. I’ll see you in a few then.”
And so saying, Helena hung up.
It was a sensible plan. And it wasn’t like he was asking Helena to send her location to an unknown number, after all. She’d be using a phone number that Declan had preprogrammed into his cell phone, so hopefully it was one that he knew was right.
If he was wrong, Helena was going to be very annoyed with her cousin.
Doing as the stranger on the phone had asked, Helena sent the cell phone’s current location to Giles Geissler. And then she sat back to wait and see what happened.
Anticipation was a very nice distraction from her previous worry for Declan and Dolf.
Not that she had to wait very long. Soon enough Giles Geissler – tall, lean, and crowned with a head of impossible cowlicks – came strolling through the door. In his wake flowed two other men, one of whom Helena vaguely recognized from having seem him around the apartment complex. It was the guy who always went running in red shorts.
Helena had never been so relieved to see someone in her entire life as she was just then to see Giles Geissler.
By the time that his eyes landed on her, Helena had scrambled to her feet. She was smoothing down her rumpled skirt, when he said “There you are. I’m glad to see that you, at least, are all right. Now what’s all this with Declan and Dolf being in jail?”
“It seems that Grandfather reported me missing, possibly kidnapped,” said Helena miserably. “And, since I crossed a lot of state lines to get here, that got the F.B.I. involved. Declan’s brother Elliot is an attorney, and he’s trying to straighten things out.”
“I see,” said Giles Geissler.
“So what are we going to do?”
“We’ll wait,” decided Giles. “The three of you will need a ride home, after all. Have you eaten?”
“I could eat,” said Helena, choosing not to admit to the junk food. Very little of it had tasted as good as it had looked, and none of it had filled her up.
“I’ll send Theresa out for Jimmy John’s sandwiches,” decided Giles Geissler.
Fishing out his cell phone, he passed it around to the various members of their group so that they could communicate their orders to Theresa, Dial A Defender’s secretary.
The Wyvern's Defender Dire Wolf Page 23
