Homefront Defenders. Lisa Phillips

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