Keeper of the Peace (Graveyard Guardians #2)

by Jennifer Malone Wright

  “Where the hell have you been?” Dan demanded.

  Hannah rounded the van. “Lucy got car sick, we had to stop.”

  “Well why didn’t one of you call and let us know. We were getting ready to come back and look for you.”

  She ignored him and opened the back doors of the van. He got like that when he was irritated, but her brother was one of the most caring people she’d ever met in her life. He was one of those ‘bark is worse than their bite,’ kind of people.

  Inside the back of the van, was a bag full of weapons. Mostly knives, since a Reaper’s weakness was silver. Keepers, in this day and age, rarely used guns. It was too messy and could kill too easily. Because of issues like what Hannah herself was dealing with, they tried to avoid killing if at all possible.

  She reached in and plucked her daggers out of the bag. They had made a quick stop by her house so that she could get them, plus change out of the sundress she’d worn to dinner at the Davis house. It would have made a pretty silly sight, Hannah running around in a summer dress and sandals with knives strapped to her calves. So, yeah, she was grateful for the jeans and strapped the daggers to their proper place on each leg.

  After the weapons were in place, she reached in and grabbed a black hoodie off the pile beside the bag. With the night having fallen around them, they were going to need as much cover as they could get to hide their glittering, silver auras. If the abductors were indeed Reapers, they would be able to see the auras glowing in the darkness.

  She pulled the hood down as far as she could around her face and then slid a pair of thin gloves over her hands. These particular gloves had a rubber grip on the inside over the palm and fingers so that her knives wouldn’t slip out of her hand.

  Finally, she slid the zipper of her hoodie upward until it was completely zipped. “I’m ready,” she announced.

  “Well, now you have to wait for us,” Dan told her, bending over the bag.

  Instead of responding with a smartass comment, which would have been what she normally did, she shut her mouth and walked around the side of the van where she found Aiden leaning against the vehicle.

  Instantly she turned, intending to go the other way, when he spoke. “You can trust me, you know.”

  She shook her head. “Actually I don’t know that. What I do know is that you kidnapped my sister and took her to the Empress. That’s what I know.”

  “Well, you can. I don’t know how to make you believe it.”

  Hannah backed up a few paces, “Prove it.” She jerked her head toward Jack. “That’s what he did, so it’s possible that you can too.” With that, she spun around. “Come on, guys,” she urged her family. “You all are slow as molasses.”

  “Okay.” Dan finished with the bag and closed the rear doors of the van. “I’m ready now.” He had opted to leave his trench coat on, only he had on a light hooded tee shirt underneath it, which had been pulled over his dark red hair. He also wore a pair of thin gloves, as did the rest of the Keepers.

  Greg stepped forward. “Hannah, you lead, since you know the trails best.”

  She nodded in agreement. She did know these trails well. Although she hadn’t used them in twelve years, she still knew the way and could find it just as easily as she could then, even in the dark.

  I’m coming David.

  With a final nod, she headed up the hill and into the trees where the first path began. After a stumbling over the trail at an excruciatingly slow pace, the path forked and she veered to the right. It was another few minutes of walking beside the creek until they found the small foot bridge and carefully crossed over it.

  It seemed like forever, but in reality it was only a few minutes until they finally found themselves crouched in the woods surrounding David’s childhood home.

  “Yeah,” Dan whispered. “There are people in there, for sure.”

  The place was completely lit up. Yellow lamp light spilled out of the windows, illuminating the brush near the outside of the trailer. Hannah scanned the area. She couldn’t see any movement coming from inside … not yet.

  “We have to move around the side, over to where the sliding glass door is,” she whispered. “We will be able to see inside from there.” Silently, she led the group around the trailer, sticking to the woods for cover. Eventually, they ended up on the far end of the trailer, where there was, indeed, a sliding glass door.

  “Dude, these guys are dumb asses.” Jack shook his head. “They didn’t even close the curtains. What kind of bad guys don’t close the curtains?” He shook his head in disbelief.

  Hannah ignored Jacks observance, because what she saw inside caused her breath to catch in her throat. There, handcuffed to a chair near the couch in the living room, was David.

  “Oh my God,” she breathed. “No.”

  David wasn’t moving. His head hung down, chin close to his chest. His face was so swollen that unless you knew it was him, you would not be able to tell. Cuts and scrapes covered his face and arms, dripping blood which stained his clothes with dark red.

  Without thinking, she began moving toward the doors, needing to get to him. “Hannah, don’t.”

  She felt Dan’s hand on her arm and jerked away. “Stop it, Dan. We need to get him out of there.”

  “No,” he countered. “We need to watch first, to see what we’re up against in there. We don’t even know how many there are.”

  “Besides, this could be a trap,” Greg added.

  Consciously, she knew they were right, but there was a part of her that wanted to charge in there and free him. So, she continued forward, but quickly paused when two men appeared in the living room, stalking in from the direction of the kitchen.

  She gasped and stepped back a couple paces, feeling Dan and Greg flanking her. One of the men was huge, Hispanic, and looked mean as hell. The other was a rather average looking blond man.

  “It looks like just the two,” Jack whispered. “And they definitely aren’t Reapers.”

  The Hispanic man leaned over in front of David and appeared to ask him a question. When David didn’t move, the man reared back and then slammed his fist into David’s cheekbone.

  “No!” Hannah charged forward again, determined to stop this violence, when she felt arms wrap around her waist, pulling her back. “Let me go!” she hissed at whoever it was that stopped her.

  She didn’t bother turning around, because the guy hit David again, this time on the other side. “He’s going to be so fucking sorry.” She bent down and pulled one of her daggers from its sheath. When the guy hit David again, she shook her head, trying to erase what she was seeing.

  And then what happened next made her want to erase it that much more. The Hispanic man reached behind him and withdrew a pistol from the waistband of his jeans. He pointed it at David’s forehead and appeared to be speaking to him.

  “That’s it, I’m going.” Hannah charged, but stopped when she heard Aiden’s voice.

  “I’ve got this.” Aiden stepped up beside her and tossed a pebble at the glass. It wasn’t much, just a tiny ping of stone on glass to cause a distraction. A reason to look away.

  The man lowered the gun and stared at the glass door for half a second before leaving his place in front of David and stalking toward the door. At the halfway point, Aiden threw another pebble.

  Both men neared the door, intending to see what was out there causing the disturbance. Aiden lifted his hand gun and waited a beat. The Hispanic man took two more paces and Aiden pulled the trigger.

  Glass exploded and glittering shards rained down onto the porch and inside the house. The bullet found its target and buried deep within the forehead of the large Hispanic man. He stumbled backward a few steps and fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

  The blond one, realizing what was happening, turned and ran. All it took was a shift and Aiden pulled the trigger again. The back of the man’s blond head burst open as the bullet lodged inside his skull. He fell mid-stride, landing on the hideous green shag c
arpet with a horribly loud thud.

  Without another thought, Hannah lunged for the house. She leapt the two steps up to the landing of the porch and then crunched over the broken glass, determined to get to David as fast as she could.

  Avoiding the bodies, she finally reached the chair and fell to her knees in front of him. Taking a moment to breath in, and then exhaling long and slow, she reached up and touched her fingertips to his cheek. “We’re here, baby. We’re here.”

  His only movement was a slight eye twitch, but it was enough to let her know that he was alive. “David, wake up.”

  She heard footsteps behind her, but really didn’t give a crap who it was. “David, please …”

  And then, finally, he pried open one of his swollen eyes, peering at Hannah as if she were a figment of his imagination. “Am I dead now?”

  Hannah smiled, and was going to answer till he frowned and shook his head slightly. “No, Heaven doesn’t have green shag carpets.”

  She laughed. “That’s right, not heaven, but it looks like you weren’t far off from that.”

  He didn’t respond, he just moved his gaze over the situation of the room. The dead bodies, Hannah’s whole family, the broken glass door.

  “How did you guys know where to find me?” he asked.

  Hannah shook her head. “We can talk about that later, right now we need to get you out of here. Where is your handcuff key?”

  His head lolled a little bit and then he snapped back, “Uh, check that big guys pocket for my car keys.”

  Jack marched over to the body and lifted his wallet out of his back pocket, then turned him over and searched his front pockets. “Found ‘em.” Jack tossed them up in the air a little then caught them again. He rounded the body and then crouched down behind David. In a flash, he had the cuffs off and David was free.

  “Aw, fuck, that hurts,” he groaned, testing the movement of his arms.

  Hannah held out her hand and helped David to his feet. After he was standing, she pulled his arm around her shoulder so she could help him walk. “Come on. We’re going to get you out of here.”

  “Not yet.” Lucy stood in the center of the room, staring at the bodies with a shocked and very worried expression, “Right now we have a whole new issue to work out. What the hell do we do about these guys?”

  CHAPTER

  24

  DAVID

  The gunshot never came. He had closed his eyes and must have passed out again because when he did open his eyes, he thought he’d died.

  She was there, in front of him. Her beautiful red hair peeked out from beneath a black hood. He should have known her face would be the last thing he thought of before death took him, but he never thought that the Grim Reaper would come and get him in the form of his true love.

  “David, wake up.”

  Oh, her voice, how he had longed to hear it over the years. Thank God he’d had the last couple days with her. That made everything worth it.

  “David, please …”

  Something wasn’t right though. He painfully pried his eyes open. “Am I dead now?” he croaked. He had to be, Marcus shot him. But … he shifted his eyes away from Hannah. The surroundings sure as hell weren’t what he expected he would find when he died. Then, realizing that he hadn’t actually died, he shook his head. “No, Heaven doesn’t have green shag carpets.”

  She laughed. “That’s right, not heaven, but it looks like you weren’t far off from that.”

  Suddenly, it all came back, hitting him like a ton of bricks. Marcus, Aaron … where were they? He tore his eyes away from Hannah so he could take a look around.

  Holy shit, the place was filled with people. Marcus and Aaron were both dead, their bodies lying on the ugly ass carpet. Hannah’s entire family milled around, whispering and staring at the bodies. There was a blond man he’d never seen before hanging out near Jack and Lucy. He really hoped that guy was legit because whatever just happened in this house was real fucking bad.

  “How did you guys know where to find me?” He turned his attention back to Hannah.

  “We can talk about that later, right now we need to get you out of here. Where is your handcuff key?”

  Damn, his head hurt so fucking bad, but he pushed the pain away and thought about where his key ring would be. “Uh, check that big guys pocket for my car keys.”

  Jack was the one who took initiative and rolled Marcus’s dead body over so that he could check the front pockets of his jeans. “Found ‘em.” Jack pulled a key ring out.

  Thank God. He wanted to be able to move. Jack hurried over and knelt down behind David, he heard the first click and then felt the cool metal being removed from his wrist. The next one followed and he was free.

  He brought his arms around, intending to wrap them around Hannah, but pain flashed through his stiff muscles. “Ah, fuck, that hurts.”

  She held out her hand for him and he took it, letting her help him to his feet. This was embarrassing as hell, he’d never needed a girl to help him before. But, bottom line, he was fucked up.

  “Come on. We’re going to get you out of here.” She lifted his arm so that it was around his shoulder.

  But then Lucy brought reality back to them, “Not yet. Right now we have a whole new issue to work out. What the hell do we do about these guys?”

  Both David and Hannah, as well as everyone else, set their gazes to her. “But, David needs to go to the hospital,” Hannah insisted.

  Lucy shook her head. “Seriously, Hannah. Do you realize what just happened here? There are two more dead guys lying on your boyfriend’s floor and you’re on bond for murder already! I think we need to clean this up before you go anywhere.”

  David blinked. “That’s right … she’s right. We have to take care of this.”

  Hannah shook her head. “Oh shit. I didn’t realize the repercussions of this. Oh fuck.”

  With a quick squeeze of her hand, David lifted his arm off of her shoulder. “Don’t worry. This was all me. Those guys were going to kill me, and we have a history, I can get out of this on my own. There isn’t any reason anyone should even know that you all were here.”

  The strange blond guy raised his hand a bit and stepped forward. “No you can’t. I shot them with my own gun.”

  “Shit,” David cursed. “I forgot about that part.”

  Hannah nodded. “The bullets will trace back to his gun, which is not the same as yours.” She plopped down onto the chair he had just vacated. “Dammit! I can’t believe this shit is happening again.”

  “It’s all right. We will figure it out.” Greg crossed the room and rested his hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “Why did these guys want you dead, anyway?” he asked, the question obviously directed at David.

  Time to let it all out … to share with Hannah’s family what a fuck up he was. He gave them the short and sweet version, but it got the point across. “So, they were supposed to find me, in hopes that I knew where Coop was so they could get their money and probably off Coop as well. Those two hated me because I fooled them, I pretended to be one of them and they believed I was. It pissed them off.”

  The Estmonds, Ethan, and the blond guy, who he still didn’t have a name for, stood in a semi-circle around him, listing to his story and gaping at him. “Holy shit, Dave!” Dan reached into his trench coat, withdrew a flask, twisted the cap off and took a long pull. “You were a fucking gangster, man.”

  David shook his head in denial, “No, I was never one of them. I didn’t have it in me.”

  Hannah closed her eyes for a second and then peered up at him. “Yes you did,” she told him softly, “or they wouldn’t have believed you were one of them. Guys like this, and that Julian, they aren’t dumb. Their business did well because they were smarter than most.”

  It was true, but he didn’t ever want to be called a gangster or a mobster or anything of the sort. He was completely the opposite, a cop … one of the good guys. The most disturbing part of all of it, though, was that he was goo
d at being the bad guy.

  James glanced around the house again. “Well, as nice as it is to know why all this happened, we still have two bodies to deal with.”

  Aiden stepped forward. “I’ll take the blame, they were my guns. I can tell them what happened and just leave out the fact that you all were here, which would protect Hannah.”

  “No,” Jack shot the idea down. “You can’t if you are going to be Hannah’s witness for the other murder.”

  “I don’t mind doing it. Just tell me what you need me to do,” Aiden assured them.

  “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” David began, “but who the hell are you anyway?”

  Aiden and Jack eyed each other, a question clearly being asked there.

  “That’s Aiden.” Hannah finally rose from her spot on the chair. “And he’s Jack’s friend, our friend.”

  Aiden moved his gaze and met hers, then nodded acknowledgement of something. Apparently, the two of them had just reached some kind of terms with her statement.

  Knowing who the guy was had to be enough for him though, at least he had a name for the blond guy now. “Nice to meet you Aiden. Wish the circumstances were better.”

  Aiden smiled. “The circumstances could always be better, man.”

  James paced back and forth with Steph right on his heels. “What is it James?” she asked.

  He stopped pacing and stared at the bodies. “I know this isn’t going to be the suggestion everyone wants to hear because you all keep talking about who is going to take the blame for this. Well … fuck.” He paused and ran his hands through his dark red hair. “Has anyone considered the option of us not telling anyone this happened? I mean, shit, these guys are drug dealers … sent here to assassinate you. Do we really think anyone is going to come looking for them?”

  Dead. Fucking. Silence.

  James turned away, waving off the group. “It was just an idea. Sorry man, I know you’re a cop and all that.”