DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  I slapped Kasey’s arm, snagging his sleeve and jerking him back from the window.

  “Give them a little privacy,” I said.

  “They’re right there in front of the building,” Kasey argued. “They have no expectation of privacy.”

  “Perv,” Amelia, another of our operatives, said.

  I just laughed, shaking my head as I turned back to my desk. I had a report I needed to write out before I could escape tonight. And I needed to be out of here within the next two hours if I didn’t want to be late for my date with Pamela. Since I’d been late the last three times we’d gone out, I supposed it would be best not to be late tonight.

  “Kevin!”

  Mag Bishop, our secretary, called to me from her perch at her slightly elevated desk. I’d always wondered why her desk was higher than the rest of ours, but when she looked over our little kingdom the way she was doing now, I knew. It was so she could watch over us and make sure we were keeping in line. And she had her hands full keeping this group of rag tag operatives in line.

  “What can I do for you, Mag?”

  “You have a phone call. Line two.”

  “Thanks.” I snatched up the receiver, wondering if Pamela was already getting annoyed even though I wasn’t supposed to pick her up till eight. “This is Kevin McKinsey. What can I do for you?”

  “I can’t believe I’m making this phone call. You are the last person on earth I thought I would ever ask for help!”

  “Kirsten?”

  I hadn’t heard that voice in years, not since I was eighteen. But it was one I would never forget. Kirsten was … she was so many things. My childhood nemesis, my next-door neighbor, the daughter of my mother’s best friend. Kirsten Kramer. She had made my life a living hell in high school. And maybe she’d decided she wasn’t quite done.

  “Who else? I need your help, Kevin.”

  “With what? Is something wrong on the ranch? Is my dad okay?”

  “It’s not about the ranch or your family. It’s Dallas. My sister is about to make the biggest mistake of her life!”

  I cursed under my breath. I should have known. Kirsten was something of a drama queen as a kid. And, from what my parents had told me, she hadn’t changed much with age.

  “Kirsten, I don’t have time for this!”

  “I’m serious, Kevin. She’s trying to marry a guy she’s only known for like two weeks! Mom and Dad don’t seem concerned, but you know Dallas. She’s always doing things she shouldn’t and then paying a price later.”

  “Maybe she loves the guy.”

  Kirsten snorted. “Love? How could she love someone she’s known two weeks?”

  “You’d be surprised how quickly a person can fall in love. But, again, you’d have to have a heart to feel love.”

  “Oh, here we go! That’s the Kevin I know.”

  “Why don’t you just let Dallas do what she wants to do? Butt out for once.”

  “Because she’s my sister and, despite your opinion of me, I love her and I care about her future.”

  “She’s an adult.”

  “This guy she’s wanting to marry, his name is Jason Winston. He’s got a criminal record.”

  That made me stop for a second. Dallas was like my little sister, the adorable kid in the pigtails who used to follow me around everywhere I went, asking a million questions even though she knew the answer to some of those same questions better than me. The last time I saw her, she was an awkward thirteen-year-old girl, braces on her teeth. I’d been told she was quite a beauty now, a new graduate of the nursing program at Texas Tech University. A part of me couldn’t quite reconcile that information with the child I’d left behind when I joined the Marines.

  “What kind of criminal record?”

  There was a touch of satisfaction in Kirsten’s voice when she responded. “He was arrested five years ago for stealing a car. And before that was an assault charge and a drug charge.”

  “Was he ever convicted?”

  “Well, no, but— “

  “Kirsten, I don’t think—”

  “Listen, Kevin, she met him at the ER where she’s been working for her training hours. He was there because he was in a car accident in a car that wasn’t his. Dallas doesn’t think it’s important, but I do. What if this guy is some sort of career criminal who’s just been too smart to get caught the last few years? And what if he pulls her down into that world? She’s just beginning her life, Kevin. I can’t let her destroy it before it’s gotten off the ground.”

  She had a point, as much as I hated to admit it.

  “She called just a few minutes ago. They’re going to Miami to elope. Mom and Daddy think it’s the most romantic thing they’ve ever heard! But I can’t, in all good conscience, let it happen. But she won’t listen to me.”

  “And you think she’d listen to me?”

  “Yes. She’s always adored you, for whatever reason.”

  “I don’t know, Kirsten. I’ve got a life here in Houston now. I can’t just drop everything and come running.”

  “You owe her. Hell, you owe us all! You just walked away, like nothing mattered. Left Trevor and your parents without so much as a goodbye, and never came back even for the shortest of visits. Dallas used to sit down at the end of the lane, watching for your car, waiting for the few letters you sent. It broke her heart when you left.”

  If she’d wanted to make me feel guilty, it was working.

  “What about you? Did you miss me when I left?”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Finally, she sighed.

  “Will you come or not?”

  Maybe she was right. I hadn’t been home in nearly nine years. And I’d been thinking about my parents a lot lately, especially my mom. She sounded tired whenever she called me these days, tired and a little frustrated with life. It wasn’t like her to sound that way.

  And there was Dallas. I kept this picture on my desk, one taken at my high school graduation. I was still in my cap and gown and Dallas was wearing her Sunday best, a huge smile on her pretty face despite the braces.

  It was a picture I carried with me all through basic training and my tours of duty in Afghanistan. And now it was in a silver frame my mother had sent me for Christmas last year. A piece of home that reminded me of where I came from and that there were people back there who still loved me.

  Even if the one person who’d once mattered the most no longer did.

  “All right,” I said. “I can probably take a couple of days off.”

  “Great. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She hung up. No thank you, no I appreciate your help. Nothing.

  That was the Kirsten I knew.

  ***

  It was more than seven hours in the car, back roads and two lane highways. I drank a lot of coffee, eating quick meals at roadside diners, flirting with the harried waitresses so that they would bring me the freshest of the greasy food items. I wasn’t in a huge hurry. I considered stopping over night, but knew Kirsten well enough to know she would have a stroke if I didn’t show up when I promised. Besides, the sooner I was there, the better the chance I’d have to catch up with my folks. Since I hadn’t seen them in nearly nine years, that didn’t seem like a bad idea.

  I arrived at the ranch late in the afternoon. It was a little surreal, driving past those gates. Half a mile back and the main house appeared behind an unnatural stand of oak trees that worked as a wind guard out here in the desert. It was a beautiful house, one of those with huge white pillars out front and black shutters decorating each of the long windows. Kirsten and I used to play tag around those pillars, along the porch, irritating the adults who were often trying to have a proper conversation over their glasses of tea.

  But it was the back of the property where most of my memories lived. There was a garden back there that served as a great place for creating hiding places, little forts that only the two of us knew about. We’d sit out there until late in the night during the summer, reading
by flashlight or telling silly ghost stories to each other. It was there that I told Kirsten some of my darkest secrets, the same secrets that she would use against me years later.

  We grew up together from the time we were in diapers. Best friends forever. But then we became teenagers, began attending high school, and everything changed.

  I followed the road past the main house, noting the slight differences in the landscape as it wound around the training paddocks for the thoroughbreds Carol Kramer raised herself. The main stables were off to the left, the stocks about two miles behind those. Off to the right was the narrow lane that led to the bunkhouse for the hired hands. Further down this lane was the foreman’s house.

  That’s where I headed, my heart in my throat as I traveled the lane I’d traveled millions of times throughout my childhood. I rode my bike here, rode horses back and forth here, drove my first car—a beautiful blue and black GTO—around these curves so fast that I gave a few girls a fright, including my mother, who once grounded me when I came into the yard too fast and kicked up dust over her prize roses.

  It was all the same, including the roses. It was a three bedroom, ranch-style bungalow made of dark bricks. The garage door was open, my old man bent over the engine compartment of the old mule he’d used to survey the property since I could remember.

  “This thing still runs?” I asked as I climbed out of my SUV, sliding off my sunglasses as I walked up beside the man and the machine.

  “Occasionally.”

  My father shook his head as he stepped back, his eyes focused on the engine, as he wiped his hands. And then he looked up and his eyes widened as he focused on me.

  “Kevin?”

  He laughed, throwing himself at me, his arms pulling me into him in a massive bear hug that only a father can offer. I closed my eyes for an instant, and the familiar scent of my father—sweat, dust, animal dander, and just a hint of Old Spice—enveloped me. I’d not let myself feel how much I’d missed home until that moment, until his scent filled me with memories and emotions I’d pushed away for nine years.

  “I can’t believe you’re here! Why didn’t you call?”

  “I would have thought Kirsten—”

  “We have to tell your mother. She’ll be beside herself!”

  My father turned, screaming up toward the house. “Rachel! Love, you will never guess who just drove up!”

  “Quite your yelling, old man,” my mother’s familiar voice called through the open garage door. “I have a quiche in the oven!”

  “Forget the quiche! Come out here and say hello to your son.”

  “Trevor’s back? He was just here an hour ago.”

  “Not Trevor.”

  “What are you talking about?” my mother mumbled as she stepped out the door, her hands on her hips. And then she spotted me and her stern expression immediately crumbled. She ran toward me, her hands outstretched, tears already streaming down her cheeks.

  “Kevin,” she whispered as she took my face between her hands, pulling me down for an explosion of kisses across my cheek.

  She was a small woman, my mother. Petite, but stronger than anyone I’d ever met. She had bright red hair that she’d always worn pulled back from her face. Her porcelain skin somehow managed to remain porcelain despite the constant exposure to the hot West Texas sun. And she had these intense green eyes that always seemed to see right through the lies I tried—stupidly—to tell.

  “Hi, Momma,” I said softly.

  She shook her head. “Hi? Is that really all you have to say after all this time?” She smacked my arm hard enough to make it sting. “Nine years you don’t come home. Nine Christmases and Thanksgivings! And all you have to say is hi?”

  “Rachel, my love, he’s here now.”

  My father slid his arms around his wife’s chest and pulled her backward, both of them smiling like fools at me.

  “We’re proud of you, son,” my father finally said. “You made your family and your country proud over there in Afghanistan.”

  “You did,” Mom quietly agreed as she wiped the tears from her face.

  It was an awkward moment, one of those moments I’d hoped to avoid by not coming home. But here it was. I buried my hands in the front pockets of my jeans, both happy to be home and wishing I was anywhere else. But then my mother took my hand and tugged me toward the house.

  “You’re too thin. Let me feed you.”

  And then I knew I was truly home.

  We sat at the kitchen table, my parents peppering me with questions in between my mother shoving plate after plate of pot roast toward me. Was I seeing anyone? Did I like my job? Were there good people in Houston, people I could depend on? Was I making good money? Was I safe?

  It was worse than being interrogated by the police.

  I escaped a little less than an hour later, telling them I wanted to find Trevor. Really, Trevor was the last one I wanted to see, but I knew wherever he was I would find Kirsten. The two of them were inseparable all through high school and I had no reason to believe things had changed in the last nine years. Especially since I knew that Trevor had taken over a lot of my father’s duties as foreman of the ranch.

  Sure enough, I took the newly repaired mule back up to the main stables and found Kirsten grooming one of her mother’s prize horses, her dark hair pulled back into a thick braid, her slender figure clad in a well-worn pair of jeans and an oversized man’s work shirt knotted at her waist. She was whispering to the horse, her full lips not far from the animal’s ear.

  She was as beautiful as she’d been the last time I’d seen her. She’d been on the horse that day, riding in the training ring, effortlessly encouraging the horse into a canter, her hair flying in the breeze behind her. It was an image I’d seen a million times before, but one that had stuck with me all this time. It was like she was racing the wind, the devil close behind. All I could think that day was that she was running from me, leaving me in the dust.

  She turned slightly, reaching down for the bucket that held the oats she was letting the horse take from her bare hand. She had the grace of a dancer, the body of a ballerina. Long legs that disappeared into narrow hips and an even smaller waist. Slender shoulders that held a long, swan-like neck. Her skin glowed almost gold, a lighter shade of caramel than the gold that shot through her long, curly tresses. When she turned, those eyes that had haunted me every night since I was sixteen, green as the grass in summer, brushed my face with a warm caress for just a second. And then they grew cold, icy cold, as they had been since that same summer when I turned sixteen.

  “Kevin,” she said, her voice a little higher than normal.

  “You asked me to come.”

  “I wasn’t sure you actually would.”

  “It’s about Dallas, right?”

  She inclined her head just slightly before turning back to the animal she’d been showing such kindness to. She carefully released it from the post it had been tied to and led it back to its stall, feeding it a few more oats before kissing its nose and securing it back into the stall. She brushed her hands on her jeans as she came back toward me.

  “She and this Jason flew out to Florida this morning.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Then why am I here?”

  “I thought we could fly out there in the morning.”

  “I could have just met you there.”

  “Well, I didn’t know they were leaving today. I was hoping you could talk to her tonight.”

  “Does she know I’m coming?”

  Kirsten shook her head. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “Which is the same reason you didn’t tell my parents, right?”

  She shrugged. “I thought they deserved a treat.”

  I opened my mouth to argue with that logic when a familiar voice called out to her.

  “Hey, Kirsten, do you want to hose down Clementine?”

  He came around the corner a second later. He was as tall as me, maybe half an inch taller, with the same blon
d hair and the same blue eyes. We both looked like our father, both broad shouldered, capable ranch hands. The only difference was, Trevor was thinner, scrawnier than I ever was. I was the football player, the soldier, who’d built muscle without really trying.

  He stopped short when he caught sight of me.

  “Hello, Trevor,” I said, stepping a little further into the stable.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Last I checked, this was still my home, too.”

  “Could have fooled me, seeing as how you haven’t bothered to come around in more than eight years.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “Yeah, you’ve been busy playing at being a soldier while the rest of us were stuck with the real work.”

  I buried my hands in my jeans pockets, this time to keep them from balling into fists. I wanted nothing better than to bury one of my fists in the soft, doughy flesh of his cheek.

  “I asked him to come,” Kirsten said.

  “Oh,” Trevor said, glaring at me like he suddenly understood everything. “You wouldn’t have come otherwise, would you have? Never mind that Dad’s working himself into an early grave and Mom’s tired of begging him to retire. Never mind that Dad still has this crazy idea that you’ll come back and take over as foreman because, God forbid, I do it even though I’m the one whose been here, whose been working this ranch right alongside him all this time. Never mind that you disappeared without bothering to tell anyone, yet they’re both so proud of what you’ve done that they brag to everyone who’ll listen.”

  “You didn’t seem to care that I was gone. It’s not like I got a lot of letters from you.”

  “Why would I bother? You probably wouldn’t have read them anyway.”

  “Nice to know you haven’t changed, Trevor. Still feel like the whole world owes you something.”

  My brother’s face turned bright red, his hands clutching at his sides. “Fuck yourself, Kevin.”

  I could have said something more. I could have escalated the situation. I knew every one of his buttons and I could see they were all the same even after all this time. A year older than me, Trevor was always my closest friend and my mortal enemy. But it’d been a very long time since I’d seen my friend.