Guardian of Her Heart. Linda O. Johnston
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he had to make sure nothing happened to her, with her husband’s worst enemy so close.
“I’ve read in the local newspaper,” he said, not moving his gaze from hers, “that the Van Nuys civic center is about to have a street fair as a fund-raiser for more redevelopment.”
“That’s right,” Dianna said. “I’ve been working with government agencies and local merchants to put it together.”
“Security will be beefed up, too,” Flynn huffed importantly. “We’re already planning it, along with the private companies that support other nearby buildings.”
“Any idea why that date was chosen?” Travis ignored the pompous security guy and kept his gaze firmly on Dianna’s. Of course, he knew the answer.
“It coincides with the first anniversary of the opening of Englander Center,” she said.
“I need to have you fill me in on the festivities,” he said. “What the public has been told. Whether there’s anything Glen Farley might know about the celebration, and anything he doesn’t—or shouldn’t—know.”
“Oh.” One small hand flew to Dianna Englander’s mouth. “Oh, what?” Wally Sellers asked. He appeared confused.
“I wondered,” Dianna said slowly, “when we first talked about the fair, if it was a good idea, but I got so caught up—”
“That you failed to consider whether some anti-redevelopment nut like Farley might consider it a challenge,” Travis finished.
“What do you mean?” Wally still didn’t get it. He rose to stand beside Dianna. He was about her height, his hair black and thick, and it was hard to tell where his chin ended and his neck began. “We need good press,” he continued. “A few months ago, a celebrity couple worked out their divorce settlement here, in the Center. We got such good publicity that our conference rooms are scheduled months ahead for arbitrations and mediations. We’ve even been booked for movie shoots in our simulated courtrooms. A big anniversary celebration will put us in the news again, bring more business. Maybe even more movie shoots.”
“Farley might have come here because of the anniversary celebration, Wally,” Dianna said quietly. “He may intend to do something to…” She hesitated, as if the things she contemplated as within Farley’s plans were too terrible to voice.
Travis had no such compunction. “Something that would definitely get your center publicity on its first birthday,” he said. “A bombing? Killing the widow of the Center’s namesake? What better time than a celebration to make his perverted point?”
SINCE SEEING FARLEY the second time, Dianna had avoided parking in her designated space in the garage. She paid for valet parking, a service offered by Englander Center that allowed more visitors to stow their cars in the building’s lot and added an extra touch of prestige to the dispute resolution center.
But now she was visiting her empty second-floor parking space. She ignored her apprehension. This time, she was not alone. And even if Glen Farley didn’t realize that the tall, muscular pushcart peddler standing beside her was a trained—and probably armed—policeman, Dianna knew it.
She kept her voice low. “He was over there,” she said to Lt. Bronson. Travis. He’d told her, before they began their tour, to call him by his first name.
In fact, he’d told her to do a lot of things. She was to cooperate. To show him around. To treat him like a pushcart peddler trying, as so many actors and others in L.A. did, to get discovered as a street entertainer, a guy who also tried to get his friends a break: showing off their skills at the anniversary celebration. His apparent attempts to convince her to hire his buddies and him would be the ostensible reason for their spending time together in the next week, as he and his fellow multitalented officers watched over her and the Center.
And, he’d told her with determination, they would nab Farley.
When Travis and she reached the lobby, he told her to let him get out of the elevator first. She had been married to a man who had told her exactly what to do. Sometimes she had listened. Sometimes she hadn’t, yet she’d had to give up her public relations career in favor of his political one. As a result, there had been friction between them—she’d hated his commands—but there had been love, too.
Except—if Brad had known when to keep his mouth shut, when not to issue commands, might he still be alive today?
And their baby—
“Let’s go over exactly where you were standing, and what else you remember,” Travis said. “All right, Dianna?”
She had automatically responded, when he’d said to call him by his first name, that he should use hers as well. Even though it was the norm these days not to use the more formal title of Mr., Mrs. or Ms. whatever—or, in his case, Lieutenant—she now regretted the informality. It seemed almost…well, intimate, for the two of them to be on a first name basis. And Dianna did not want to be in the least intimate with any man, particularly not an officious officer of the law—even to support his cover.
“All right, Travis.” The coolness in her voice earned her a sideways look from the man who had been surveying their surroundings. Deliberately, she explained where her car had been parked both times and where she’d been standing. “The first time I saw him, he got out of a white car parked a few vehicles away in a reserved space.” She shuddered at the recollection. Farley had known where she was. Why not? She’d made no secret of where she now worked—in the building her husband had once championed that now bore his name.
It was no surprise, either, that he found her in the parking garage, near her spot at the time she usually arrived for work in the morning. If he had been watching her, he would know that.
“Are you all right, Dianna?” Travis’s deep voice rang with concern, and it snapped her from her reverie.
She looked up, focused on the planes of the face of the man beside her, the light shadow of beard barely showing beneath his rugged skin.
He was staring intently, as if he figured she would break.
She wouldn’t. But neither would she look, right then, at the confining walls of the parking garage. The cars that could disgorge Farley at any moment.
She described the scene she’d been reliving.
“And you think Farley knew this was your space, and that you would be there then?”
She nodded. “He got out of his car long enough to smile at me.” She cleared her throat. “He got back in and drove away.”
“I don’t suppose you got his license number.”
“Part of it—a California plate that began with 4ACR.”
Travis jotted it down in a small notebook he extracted from a pocket. “Probably rented with a false ID or stolen, but we’ll see if we can figure it out.”
“I’m not sure what kind of car it was, either,” she continued. “It was a sedan that looked like a high-end Japanese import. But when I saw Farley again, I didn’t see the same car, and that time he just seemed to disappear without driving away.”
“Okay. You’re doing fine, Dianna. Now, let’s go over this again.” Question by question, he led her carefully through the events before, during and after both sightings of Farley, continuing to make notes.
The telling became cathartic, for when she was done, she was able to lead him to where she had seen Farley each time, without hesitation. Without fear.
Except when, in the middle of her attempt to recall what Farley had been wearing, she took a step backward and a car horn sounded right behind her. She jumped, reaching out to grasp the nearest thing she could for comfort.
It turned out to be Travis’s hand.
He squeezed hers in return, pulling her out of the way by putting his other hand soothingly on her back.
Only