Mike slowly shook his head, but at least he didn’t go screaming down the road in terror. Finally, he mustered up a shaky smile. “I’ll listen to your story, but I’m going to need that beer you mentioned, and maybe several of its brothers and sisters for good measure.”
The tight band of worry that had made it hard for Eli to draw a full breath eased up a little. “It’s a deal.”
4
Safara stared at the door, so tantalizingly close and yet so far. Could she make it all the way to her cruiser outside in the parking lot before her father finished talking to the mayor? The distance to the car combined with a sprained ankle said the odds were against her. She was already late heading out on patrol, but it wasn’t her sense of duty that was fueling her need to escape.
No, it was the inquisition that would resume as soon as her dad hung up the phone. The gods knew she’d already told him almost everything that had happened the night before, withalmostbeing the operative word. From the dark looks he sent in her direction every so often, he wasn’t satisfied with her answers. He clearly didn’t appreciate finding out only after the fact his daughter had been in danger on multiple fronts without him there to protect her. There was also his understandable concern for the others of their kind who lived in and around Ridgewick whose lives would suffer if the truth were ever to come out about their origins. And finally, he had a lawman’s innate distrust of any stranger who’d moved into his territory without anyone noticing.
The fact that she’d spent the night in that stranger’s cabin was just the icing on the cake. Darn Eli for introducing himself as the man she’d spent the night with—although the look on her dad’s face had been pretty funny.
As if sensing her escape plan, her father stepped out of his office to glare at her from across the room. “Yes, sir. I’ll definitely get back to you on that by the end of the week.”
He disconnected the call. “Want a refill on your coffee?”
“Sure.”
He was back all too quickly, meaning she’d run out of time and options. After setting their cups down on her desk, he plunked down in the chair he’d pulled over to sit on earlier. “Now, let me make sure I’ve got all of this straight.”
Resigning herself to a long lecture, she sipped the hot drink and let him talk. He launched right in, starting with her most grievous sin. “You went up to the mountain alone and without telling anyone where you were going.”
Yep, she had. She was also a trained police officer, who carried both a sword and a gun. She wisely refrained from mentioning either of those facts, because they hadn’t actually played out in her favor last night. She also didn’t mention she needed to make another trip up there to retrieve her service revolver and the Kalith blade that had been handed down in her grandmother’s family for generations.
He was still talking. “You brought down the barrier without knowing who was standing on the other side, again alone and without backup.”
This time she felt obligated to protest. “Yes, just like I’ve done on many other occasions. Someone has to bring down the barrier so Granddad can come home.”
That much was true. Her father’s own ability to manipulate the barrier was only a fraction as strong as hers. “He and I had agreed before he left that I would check to see if he was ready to come home last night. I’m supposed to check back again next week. We had a plan.”
“A plan that wasn’t worth a damn thing, Safara.” Her father slammed his cup down on the desk hard enough to splash hot coffee onto his hand. “You could’ve been killed. We both know that we’ve been having more trouble with rogues slipping across. If your cousin hadn’t been alone, you would’ve been dead before Eli Jervain got there.”
Time to divert the attention to another quarter. “Did Martin ever mention anything about Eli to you?”
“Not that I can recall, but you’d be better off asking your grandfather when he gets back. He spent more time with the old man than I did. As far as I know, Martin only had the one grandson, but he hasn’t been around here for years. He’s in the military. The army, I think.”
That jibed with what she knew. “From what Eli told me, he inherited Martin’s cabin when the grandson died in a helicopter crash about five weeks ago.”
She had no reason to doubt his word, but there’d been that slight hesitation before Eli had answered when she’d asked if Martin’s grandson knew he was staying in the cabin. His answer hadn’t felt like a lie exactly, but she bet there was more to the situation than he was willing to tell her.
“Should be easy enough to check out his story. I’ll do some poking around and see what I can learn.”
“Good. And while you’re at it, Eli has questions about Martin’s death. I offered to get the report from the county sheriff’s department. He told me to forget about it, that he was just curious what they’d found out.”
She paused to sip her coffee, mainly to give herself time to think. “But even if he isn’t all that interested, I am, because it sounds as if Martin was killed by someone like Tiel. If so, we need to increase security on both sides of the barrier.”
Her father’s eyes, pale gray like her own, took on a hard edge. “I’ll request the report. I heard the deputies who responded to the scene were bewildered by the condition of the body. The coroner thought some of the wounds were odd, but Martin had been worked over by scavengers pretty good by the time he was found. As bad as that sounds, it might’ve been a blessing in disguise if it threw the investigators off the track. We can’t afford any suspicions that there’s a sword-wielding killer on the loose.”
Speaking of which, it was past time to tell her father about her initial suspicions about her rescuer. “You know, Pop, Eli seemed pretty darn handy with that broadsword. I thought for sure a Paladin had finally found us.”
She shuddered at the memory. They all lived with the nightmare specter of the Paladins charging through town, herding their people like cattle back across into their homeworld. She’d grown up in this one, so it was home. Then there was the almost certain fact that the darkness in Kalithia would eventually rob her of her sanity, sending her charging back across the barrier to die on the point of a Paladin sword.
But that was a problem for another day. She dragged herself back into the moment at hand. “However, I’m reasonably sure the sword wasn’t Eli’s. When we reached the cabin, he hung it back on the wall with the rest of Martin’s collection.”
The image of him fighting her cousin played out like a movie in her head. Eli had moved with such lethal control and power, a male in his prime. It would’ve been sexy if the whole experience hadn’t been so terrifyingly dangerous.
She picked up where she’d left off. “But also, when I accused him of being a Paladin and asked him to leave me—leave us all alone, he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. All things considered, I believe him.”
“We owe him the benefit of the doubt if for no other reason than he saved your life last night.” Her dad sat back in his chair, looking more relaxed than he had since she and Eli had driven into the parking lot. “That doesn’t mean I won’t be doing some quiet checking to see what I can learn about him. I’ll also warn the clan leaders about Tiel. We’ll have to organize a hunt if he continues to be a problem.”
