Defender for Hire. Shirlee McCoy

in Africa.

      Both men had black hair and tan skin. Both were tall and thin, but Tessa’s gaze was on the older of the two, her smile only for him. He had to be her husband.

      Seth flipped the photo over. No note, date or label.

      He slid it back into the envelope, anxious to hear Randal’s take on it. The photo had obviously been taken during the mission trip to Kenya. Whoever had taken it might also have put it in the box with the tarantula.

      The wind knifed through his jacket as he went down the porch steps and around the side of the house. A light flashed in the woods at the back of Tessa’s property—Randal, searching for evidence.

      Seth could sit in his car and wait for him to return, but he didn’t believe in standing still when he could be moving forward. Something in Tessa’s past had come for her. The sooner Randal figured out what it was, the safer she would be.

      And that’s the way Seth wanted her to be. Safe.

      The word ricocheted through him, a grim reminder of his failures.

      He hadn’t been able to keep Julia safe.

      He’d been in Afghanistan when she’d been killed by a drunk driver. He’d flown home to arrange her funeral, to comfort her parents and his, to try to come to terms with the fact that his best friend—his childhood sweetheart, the woman he’d married straight out of college—was gone, and there was nothing he could do to change it.

      He’d thrown himself into military life after that, making a career out of working covert operations deep in enemy territory. He’d planned to keep doing that until retirement, because work numbed the loss.

      But God had had other plans, and Seth had been forced to leave the military much earlier than he’d expected. He couldn’t complain. He’d survived his injuries, had found a new career, created a life that kept him content and happy.

      But guilt about Julia tormented him every day. And there was no getting around that.

      He tucked the envelope into his pocket and headed across the dark yard. There was no way he would leave Tessa alone until he made sure that everything was in place to protect her.

      FOUR

      Tessa hated silence—her mind filled it with voices from the past. Daniel’s. Andrew’s. The dozen children she’d been teaching the night of the attack.

      If she hadn’t been at the church with them, she’d have died in the tiny hut that she and Daniel shared. The one they had been standing in front of in the photograph.

      She shuddered.

      She vividly remembered the day the photo had been taken. They’d been in Kenya for three days and had two years of work stretching out ahead of them. A villager had taken the photo. Tessa hadn’t seen it since the massacre.

      She flicked on the small radio that sat on the kitchen counter, letting classical music drift into the silence. Better, but not the same as having Bentley following behind her as she paced to the window that looked out over the backyard.

      Amy should be calling with an update soon. If she didn’t, Tessa would call her. Bentley was the closest thing to family that she had, and she wanted to know that he was going to be okay.

      She frowned, tucking Seth’s business card into the junk drawer beside the fridge. She had no intention of calling him. He was too much of everything that she didn’t want in her life. Confident, decisive and driven, he was probably the kind of person who devoted time and attention and complete commitment to whatever cause he was championing. Right now, he seemed to be championing her, and that felt too good, the temptation to lean on him and let him take care of things for her almost overwhelming her common sense.

      Almost?

      Completely.

      She’d given him the photo and asked him to bring it to Logan. As if getting it out of the house could change the fact that she’d received it.

      A light bobbed on the hill, appearing and disappearing as someone moved through the trees. Probably Logan. If Tessa had been brave enough, she’d have joined him. It would have been easy to pinpoint the place where she’d been attacked, show him the direction the attacker had come from.

      She turned away from the backyard, her chest tight, her eyes hot. She’d dreamed big when she was in college, imagining a life that was exactly the opposite of the one she’d had growing up. Security and routine, love and happiness. She thought she’d have it all with Daniel, and she almost had.

      Instead, she’d come full circle, ending up right back where she’d been when her parents had died and she’d been shipped off to foster care.

      Alone and terrified.

      She shoved the thought away. She was alone by choice, because relationships were too complicated and too risky. She liked her old Victorian house and her job, and loved the serenity and slow pace of Pine Bluff, Washington.

      The bruises on her throat throbbed.

      She didn’t want to leave Pine Bluff, but she wasn’t sure she could stay.

      Walking up the curved staircase, she ran her hand over the smooth mahogany banister. She’d spent days stripping paint off the hand-carved wood and polishing the intricate spindles, imagining the generations of people who had walked up and down the stairs, trailing their hands along the railing. She’d planned to become part of the house’s history.

      Her plans were changing.

      She might not want deep connections and all the complications that went with them, but she wanted a life lived in peace without the past making constant appearances.

      Maybe that meant doing what she’d considered doing dozens of times since the first rose had arrived—changing her name, becoming someone completely new. People went into hiding all the time, created wonderful new lives out of the ashes of their old ones.

      In her room overlooking the backyard, she pulled back the gauzy curtains and stared up at the hill behind the house. The light was gone. Either Logan had finished his search, or he’d crested the rise and was heading down toward the river.

      He’d want to talk to her when he returned, but for now, she needed keep her mind occupied and her hands busy. She lifted the phone that sat on the nightstand and dialed Amy’s number. She’d check on Bentley, and then she’d go up to the attic and grab the suitcase she’d put there when she’d moved in.

      Never again, she’d told herself. No more packing and unpacking and packing again. This is it forever.

      She should have known things wouldn’t work out that way. Should have kept the suitcase under her bed like she had for the first four years she’d been back in the States.

      She left a message on Amy’s voicemail and walked down the hall to the attic door. The old-fashioned glass doorknob gleamed in the overhead light, the skeleton key that was usually in the small nook on the wall beside the door already in the keyhole.

      Had she left the key there the last time she’d gone in the attic? When had that been? A week ago? More?

      Wouldn’t she have already noticed the key in keyhole if it had been there since the last time she used it?

      Of course she would have. She’d spent the past five years noticing everything, constantly on the alert, tracking changes in her environment and looking for any sign that danger was closing in.

      She hadn’t left the key in the hole. Someone else had.

      Her heart jumped, her throat dry with fear. Someone could be in the house. Her attacker could be waiting in the attic for her to settle down and go to sleep.

      She backed away from the door, her pulse pounding frantically.

      The doorbell rang and she screamed, whirling away from the attic, then turning back, afraid if she wasn’t watching the doorknob, it would start to turn.