Homefront Defenders. Lisa Phillips

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