Homefront Defenders

Keep telling yourself that.

Alana said, “Does Beatrice Colburn live here now?”

She looked lost in childhood memories. “What does the file say?”

“House number is 456. It’s the right one.” Alana paused for a moment. Locke didn’t even try to figure out what she was thinking.

He grabbed the door handle on his side. “Let’s get on with this.”

They had visited three people since the briefing. Beatrice was the fourth, and it was still early. Before POTUS landed at Hilo airport, they had to visit anyone who’d ever been flagged by the Secret Service’s intelligence division. Anyone who’d written a threatening letter to the president was entered into a file. If they had the means or the inclination to actually carry out the threat, they were of particular interest to the Secret Service.

“Tell me what you learned from Beatrice’s file.”

“In 1977 Beatrice Colburn wrote a series of angry letters to the then president after her boyfriend was killed in Vietnam. The threats were directed at the office in general and not at President Ford specifically. As a high school chemistry teacher, Beatrice was deemed a viable threat because she had the knowledge to carry out her stated intentions, as well as access to the materials necessary. She was also fired from her job.”

“And your assessment?”

“She’s a retired supermarket manager with a deep tan who visits the library once a week and checks out six books at a time. She takes Krav Maga classes, and her four dogs are each champions in agility competitions. This is an active woman with a busy life enjoying the time she has now.” Alana pressed her lips together. “I find it highly unlikely she’s going to attempt anything against the president during this visit.”

She locked the iPad screen and got out of the car.

Alana met him on the sidewalk, and Locke went first. Not because he wasn’t a gentleman, but because he would never allow a woman, or any subordinate, to stand in front of him on the job. He was the first line of defense for any threat.

He stopped at the front door. “So why are we here?”

“Because we have to ask her what her intentions are, and she has to tell us that she plans to stay far away from the president.”

Locke nodded, once. “She’ll have cookies still warm from the oven. And lemonade she made fresh this morning.”

Alana blinked and then smiled. “Seriously?”

He knocked on the door. “We develop a rapport with these people on each presidential visit. It’s procedure, but it doesn’t have to be boring.”

Every time he knocked on a door, Locke held his breath. At this point it was habit, but after an anarchist had shot at him and his partner through the door his first year as an agent, he felt that same hitch with every visit. The echo of that shot so many years ago, a boom that had him diving to the ground. It had never left him. He still had scars on the outside of his arm to remind him that being careless never turned out well.

Barking erupted from inside the house. There was a crash, and a woman screamed.

Locke tried the door handle, and it opened. He drew his weapon and glanced back at Alana. “Right behind me.”

She had her Sig out also and gave him a short nod. The times he saw her business face instead of the easygoing, relaxed Alana who hung out with the team were few and far between. He should have been pleased to see it now, but instead he missed that spark in her eyes.

The hall was the same yellow paint and linoleum floor as it had been the last time Locke was here. The door was open, as were all the windows in the place, letting in the morning breeze. He cleared each room from front to back, where the bedroom was. Dogs raced in circles around his feet and barked. Locke nudged his way through. “Beatrice?”

He reached the bedroom doorway. Beatrice Colburn was on the floor. Her shirt matched the hall paint, which leached the color from her skin, now a gray pallor. Locke slid to a halt in something sticky that covered the floor and saw the man in the window, sitting on the frame—half in, half out. The same man Locke had chased at the beach that morning.

The assailant’s gaze hit Alana, and he started. Surprised by something.

Locke and Alana held their weapons on him. The guy had an intricate tattoo on the inside of his left forearm and a bloody knife clasped in that hand. His right hand was holding a roll of paper big enough to be a poster. Or a painting.

“Free—”

The man dived out the window.

“Stay with Beatrice,” Locke said over his shoulder. “Call for backup and an ambulance.”

Locke raced to the window and climbed out. He didn’t want Alana anywhere near the man who had tried to kill her this morning. The window frame snagged a thread on the pants of his new suit. He grimaced but cleared the window to land in a bush and then raced across the backyard through the open gate.

Thunk.

The sound reverberated in his skull. He’d been hit from behind, blinded for a second as pain set off like fireworks in his head.

Locke landed on one knee on the concrete. The perp shoved him down so that he fell prone and ran past. Locke reached out for the man but grasped nothing. He aimed his gun from his position, then blinked as his vision split the man into three and back to one. Locke got up and ran after the guy. A sidewalk rimmed the house, and his shoes clipped the concrete with every step. Locke held his weapon up and traced the wall of the house with the other hand.

The man raced to a mustard-colored Cadillac parked two doors down and jumped in, still holding the rolled-up yellowed paper. No license plate on the back of this vehicle, either. The engine turned over, and the guy peeled out. Locke pulled out his phone and snapped a photo of the car before it turned the corner.

Hearing sirens in the distance, he went back inside. The dogs weren’t any calmer, so he herded them into the kitchen and shut the door before he strode to the bedroom. “Is she...”

Beatrice Colburn lay on the floor, two bloody fingerprints where someone had touched her neck to check for a pulse.

“Alana?”

She emerged from the bathroom, a tissue balled up and pressed against her mouth. She lifted it away, her face pale and clammy. “Beatrice is dead.”

“And you’ve never seen a dead body before.”

It was a guess more than a question, but she didn’t want to talk about it. “I’m okay.”

She didn’t look it. Locke put his hand on her back and led her to the living room. “Sit for a minute. If you can handle the dogs, get yourself some water. I’ll show the cops in.”

She’d gone through selection and training, and now the sheen was wearing off. Long days, round-the-clock protection, stress and physical strain. Sure, they were in most people’s ideal vacation spot, but this was so far from a fun trip it was almost sad. After two years working together Locke was still wondering if she was going to last as an agent.

She lifted her chin, but her lip trembled. “I’m fine, Locke. I just needed a minute.”

No one called him James. His mom and his friends from back home called him Jay. He wondered what it would sound like coming from her lips. He knew she didn’t like the rookie moniker, but everyone had been a beginner at one point, even him.

What he said next would be a big test. “That was the same man who tried to kill you this morning.”

Police sirens sounded right before two black-and-whites pulled up. She didn’t answer him; instead Alana rushed to the window. “Oh, no.”

* * *

Alana sucked in a breath to get that smell out of her nose and shook out her head, her shoulders, her arms...all the way down to her hands. It was a technique she’d learned to combat the fear that surfing—especially competitively—brought. Shake the feeling off and then get on with it anyway. But a dead body? Not something she wanted to see again any time soon.

A black glove. He grabbed her foot.

And now her brother was here. There wasn’t even time to catch her breath. Locke had already gone outside to greet the officers, one of whom was Ray, but she needed a second before she faced him. Alana unclipped her phone from her belt. That attack was not going to slow her down. She’d seen the tattoo. Beatrice’s killer, the man who had tried to kill Alana, too, was Japanese mafia. Pulling up old numbers, decades old in some cases, she sent a text to a guy she’d gone to high school with. Everyone knew Mikio Adachi’s father was the yakuza boss on the Big Island, the head of the Japanese mafia. And even if things had changed since she left, Mikio would likely still know something about a yakuza soldier and why he might’ve tried to kill her.

The text sent, so she stowed her phone away. A long shot, but if it paid off she’d tell Locke about it. She knew this island, these people, but that didn’t mean she needed to rub it in everyone’s faces. Coming home wasn’t exactly turning into a pleasant experience.

Alana looked around, then realized she was standing alone in a dead woman’s living room. She circled the beat-up coffee table, brushed the dog hair off her back that she’d picked up from sitting on the couch and walked past the tasseled lamp to reach the door. Locke had the front door open, so she went out.

Two cop cars, three officers. One was the sergeant she’d been avoiding all day. They were huddled around Locke—the Secret Service director, the team leader. Mr. Never Wrong. Suit and tie.

She knew it wasn’t all that easy being the boss in a job like theirs, but the man seriously needed to lighten up. She wanted to know what he looked like in board shorts. Alana would have a lot of fun teaching him to surf—as if that would ever happen in a million years. She caught the snort before it came out and cleared her throat. Much better than thinking about this morning, or what Beatrice looked like lying on her bedroom floor.

Locke turned. “This is my partner, Agent—”

“I guess you couldn’t avoid me all day.”

Alana stared down her brother, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was right. Thankfully he hadn’t been at the police station that morning when she’d gone there with Locke to give their statements about the attack on her.

“Can we not do this, Ray?”

She couldn’t look at Locke. Alana was supposed to be a professional, a success. He couldn’t know she was such a disappointment to her family. Her brother had been her biggest supporter, at every one of her surf competitions. He’d been crushed when she was injured so badly she had to quit. She’d kind of thought that becoming a Secret Service agent would prove to him she could still do something good, but evidently not.

Her brother didn’t back down, his dark eyes disapproving over that flat, wide nose she shared with him and their sister. “Went surfing this morning, got yourself hurt.”

Deep down, below where he could show it, her brother cared. Alana had figured that out, despite his lousy way of exhibiting any feelings whatsoever. She could have brushed off his comment, but instead she said, “I’m okay.” Alana didn’t know how to bridge a gap that spanned years. “Ray—”

Locke broke into the conversation. “The same man was here. Same knife, probably. He killed Beatrice Colburn and stole something.”

No one said anything. The tension was so thick she could have cut it with the shark tooth her father had given her. Locke probably had no idea what was going on, and she wasn’t about to explain it to him.

Ray’s jaw twitched. She could tell he didn’t like the fact she’d been close to a killer, one who’d hurt her already. “He saw you?”

Alana couldn’t answer that in a way her brother would like.

Locke said, “I caught up with him. He hit me and got away.” He touched the back of his head, and his fingers came away with a spot of blood.

“He hit you?” He hadn’t told her that. She’d probably already given herself away, with that reaction, but she couldn’t go to him. Ray would see right through it.

Locke pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it against the back of his head. “It didn’t hurt until I touched it.” He gifted her a tiny smile.

Alana stared at the curve of his lips. Ray cleared his throat, and she spun around.

One of the officers, an older man, came over. “Joe Morton. I worked the job with your father.”

Alana nodded, shook his hand. Her father had been shot one night during a drug deal gone bad. Cops had been called in, and some guy hadn’t wanted to come quietly so he’d shot her father only a few years before he was supposed to have retired.

Dad had been dead before she and her sister could meet their twenty-two-year-old rookie-cop brother at the hospital. Two weeks before her eighteenth birthday. Six months after her dream of being a champion surfer died when the doctor told her that even after her knee healed, she’d never get her edge back. Worst year of her life, and the catalyst for her seventeen-year-old sister screaming at her to get out and never come back. The upside of that being she hadn’t had to see the disappointment on her brother’s face every single time he looked at her.

Locke cut through her spiraling thoughts. “Let’s get inside and get to work. Sound good to you guys?”

The cops moved toward the house, but Locke intercepted her. “We’ll be there in a sec. Let you secure the scene first.” When the two officers and her brother had stepped in the house, he turned to her. “You okay?”

“Sure, why not?”

His black eyebrows lifted. “Because that was your first dead body. And because you were attacked this morning. And apparently that police sergeant is your brother.”

“I don’t want to talk about Ray.” She wasn’t going to explain that it wasn’t her first body, though maybe seeing her father in the morgue didn’t count. “I can help, you know.” She folded her arms, careful not to stretch the cut on her abdomen. She just didn’t want to be in her brother’s space. “I’ll search the basement.”

“Very well.”

She rolled her eyes, but he didn’t see because he’d unlocked his phone and was making swirly patterns on the screen. They walked inside and he showed the drawing on his phone to the first cop, Joe Morton, who’d worked with her father. “Any idea what this means?”

“Huh.” He scratched his chin, and his gaze drifted to her. “Looks to me like it might be yakuza.”

“Japanese mafia?”

Ray strode in. “Show me that.” He took Locke’s phone before Locke could hand it over. “It’s yakuza. But then, Alana would know that.”

She didn’t rise to it, even though he was intent on baiting her. “We went to school with a few of them.” She turned to Locke. “It is yakuza.”

“Were you planning on telling me this?” Great, now Locke disapproved.

“If it turned out to be significant, yes.”

“If...” Locke actually sputtered. It was kind of amazing to hear him at a loss for words. And why did it please her so much? Being in the same room as Ray and Locke was messing with her head.

“I’m gonna go check the basement.”

“I’ll go with you,” Joe Morton offered.

“No, I will.” Locke’s voice stalled both of them. Alana mushed her lips together to keep from objecting.

She turned to the cop. “Maybe next time, Joe.”

The basement wasn’t a big room. Workbench. File cabinet. Not a man cave or some kind of old lady knitting or crafting space or anything like that. There were schematics printed on huge sheets of white paper and framed on the wall. A lamp had been shoved over, and the shade was crumpled. The outline on one wall where a painting had hung was now just a void. The frame lay bent on the floor with broken glass.

Much better than thinking—or talking—about a dead woman. Or her brother. Or the glove, and the sting of that knife. Alana was sad for the loss of life, but she could hardly process what she’d seen in the rush of everything. Was it going to hit her later? She hoped not. She didn’t want to know what that would feel like.

However, and whenever, it happened, Locke would not be there.

Behind her, he said, “Oh, no.”

She spun to Locke, who said, “That frame, the roll of paper he was holding. It must have been this.”

“What?”

He looked up. “Schematics for a bomb.”

THREE

Alana stepped back from him. “That was on her wall?”

Locke nodded, fully aware that things had now escalated. “She kept it as a memento. I didn’t really understand it, but she showed it to me every time I came. Wanted to talk about the old days when she could say what she really felt. But it was pretty harmless.” He sighed. “The yakuza soldier who tried to kill you came here to kill Beatrice and steal this.”

Alana looked at her phone. “No reply, not yet.” She told him about the text she’d sent—to the yakuza boss’s son, of all people.

Locke looked around one more time. “Okay, let’s head back upstairs and tell your brother what we suspect the man took. We need to wrap this up and make our last visit.”

“There’s one more?” She climbed the stairs behind him.

Locke didn’t turn around. “The marine, former sniper—” Something clicked in Locke’s brain as two thoughts coalesced. Was the Caucasian man he’d seen in the beat-up car their next visit? Could their day be that connected? If it was him, the man’s appearance had changed a bit since Locke had last seen him, so Locke couldn’t be sure until he saw the file.

He said, “After that we’re done for the day. Just in time for lunch.”

“I don’t think I’m going to eat for a week.” She paused. “But what was that about the former sniper?”

“I just need to look at his file when we get back in the car. That’s all.” Then he would know for sure whether it was the sixty-something guy he’d seen that morning.

She nodded, and it didn’t seem fake. She was actually holding up pretty well, and he was proud of her. He’d figured they would run across her brother at some point, but hadn’t known the sergeant was Ray until she’d confirmed it. Alana had been through a lot in her life, and now this on top of it. Did she have faith to fall back on? There was something in Alana that helped her hold it together, even now. He thought it might be pure strength of will. Unless all that bravado was just for show. Locke couldn’t tell yet which it was.

He, on the other hand, had been born and raised in Chicago, and his family had gone to the same church his whole life. Christmas wasn’t Christmas if he didn’t make the trip home to attend the carol service. Locke’s father was still the CEO of the same company he’d started forty years before. Two older sisters, the youngest of whom was six years older than him. Private school. College paid for by his dad. He’d seen a presidential detail at the age of eight and decided then that protecting the president was exactly what he wanted to do with his life.

This was the path God had put in front of him, and until Alana showed up, he’d been completely satisfied. Being a Secret Service agent took one hundred percent of his focus and attention. It was everything he’d always wanted. He’d been convinced this was the best, the only way to be a good agent. Had relied on it, in fact. Now when he saw how Alana tackled everything, it made him wonder if she was destined to fail trying to cope without relying on God for strength.

Or if he was the one who was wrong about everything.

Ray was crouched over the body of Beatrice Colburn. From the doorway Locke explained what they’d found in the basement.

The sergeant nodded but didn’t look at Alana. “You were right. It was a stab wound to the inside of her arm. The medical examiner will have to confirm, but if the cut severed her brachial artery she could have bled out in thirty seconds.” He looked at his sister. “It was precise. And intentional. If I’m right, then he knew what he was doing. There wasn’t anything you could’ve done.”

Her brother cared, though Locke had never seen a sibling act like that with another sibling. It was like they didn’t even know how to communicate with words—just the sentiments that went unspoken between them. He shuddered to think what it would be like if they were forced to talk about their feelings with one another.

Alana wandered over to the cop who knew her father, Joe Morton. The man was scrolling through the victim’s cell phone. Probably looking at Beatrice’s call and browser history. What apps she had that might give them a clue why the yakuza killed her.

Locke needed to call the other director, William Matthews. His colleague was lead on the team traveling in with the president, while Locke was lead on the advance team. Coordinating made both of their lives easier, as would their being friends. Had they actually been friends. Locke respected him fine and they’d worked together a long time, but he didn’t particularly like the man.

Alana had requested to be on William’s team for this trip, but Locke had made sure she was on his. As much as she would rather downplay her background he needed her expertise and her knowledge of local people to aid their team on this trip.

As she wrote down the numbers Morton was also noting, Locke dialed William. He was glad Alana had turned her attention to something practical, even though they weren’t part of the murder investigation. It would keep her mind off seeing her first dead body.

“Matthews.”

Like he didn’t know it was Locke calling. “William, it’s Locke.” He bypassed the pleasantries neither of them had any interest in exchanging and told William about the dead woman, the yakuza guy who’d tried to kill Alana and the missing bomb schematics.

There was quiet on the line, and then William spoke in a low voice to someone he was with.

“Can you hear me?”

“Sure,” William said. “Seems like a crazy coincidence, the two of you stumbling on a breaking and entering gone bad. Is Agent Preston okay?”

“Alana is fine.” He saw her turn and smile at him, but he didn’t believe it. Nor did he believe William’s concern was simply that. More likely the man was playing defense—determined nothing would interfere with the President’s trip, least of all a break-in. “I’m a little more worried right now about the fact this guy stole bomb schematics.”

Alana’s brow crinkled, and the smile evaporated off her face. She turned away. It wasn’t his job to make her happy. She was going to have to work that out all by herself.

“Yeah, crazy. Bomb plans are probably worth something on the black market. People will buy anything off the internet.” William’s voice quieted, and he spoke again to someone he was with. “I’m interested to know this guy’s angle. Think the local police will find him?”

Locke said, “I’ll be going over there again with Alana to look at mug shots of yakuza soldiers. We’ll figure out who he is, then the cops can pick him up. Guess we’ll unravel this, and this morning’s attack on Alana, somehow.”

Would her brother help? The man could be a valuable ally if he wanted to be.

William said, “That’s the police’s job, Locke. You’re not their director, so make sure you go see their captain and get approval for anything you do in their jurisdiction.”

Locke wanted to roll his eyes but had practiced the art of resisting that urge from the age of four. William spoke like he was Locke’s director, or at least someone he reported to, instead of his colleague. “I’ll take care of it. And I’ll file the report.”

“Report?”

Locke said, “This needs to be passed on. A woman on our intelligence list is dead, and the man who killed her stole schematics to a bomb designed with the purpose of killing the president.”

“Like I said, it’s nothing but a coincidence. Even if your killer was going to construct the bomb from archaic plans he stole, he could be planning to...kill a wild pig with it. The president? That’s a stretch.”

Locke ignored the man’s sarcasm and said, “It’s a stretch I’m supposed to make.” That was their job—to see the threat no one else saw and take appropriate steps to neutralize it. Or if there was no other choice, to give their lives to protect the president. Locke stepped outside. “I cannot in good conscience ignore a possible threat. You know that, William.”