Guardian of Her Heart. Linda O. Johnston
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then headed toward the stairway to the second floor. The meal should be ready by the time she changed her clothes.
She had barely reached the stairs when she heard the phone ring. The closest extension was in the antique-laden living room. She hurried in there.
“Hello?” she said, expecting to hear Julie’s breathy, childish voice on the other end, babbling about what they’d done for dinner, asking questions about her essay.
Instead, she heard only silence.
Until a click signified that the person on the other end had hung up.
A chill inched up Dianna’s spine. She forced herself to walk slowly back into the kitchen, where she again turned off the phone ringer. She would call the Alberts later.
TRAVIS CHECKED IN first thing the next morning at the Van Nuys LAPD station. He had already called the undercover guy outside Dianna’s house the night before. All had been quiet.
After greeting some cops he was beginning to know there, Travis went through the break room into the station’s report-writing room. Empty for the moment, it was lined with narrow tables along the walls, where computers were available for any cop who needed to use them. It was a little less cluttered than many areas of the busy station.
He logged onto a computer to make some notes. When he was done printing them, he used one of the many desktop phones and called his supervisor.
Captain Hayden Lee answered on the first ring. “What have you learned so far?” he asked when Travis identified himself.
Captain Lee, of Asian descent, was head of the special “L” Platoon of the LAPD Metro Division, the undercover unit where Travis worked. He had been tapped by the Chief of Police for that assignment. Now that “L” Platoon was running as smooth as a well-maintained engine, the chief wanted to promote him to start up another new unit. But until the captain found a worthy successor, he refused to leave.
He had approached Travis to succeed him. More than once.
But, hell, Travis didn’t want a damned desk job. He’d had to sit too much as a kid—that or get laughed at for his awkwardness after the accident that destroyed his family. Too many times, he’d been called “Cripple.” Eventually, he’d taught himself what he’d needed to know—on his feet. Boxing. Wrestling. Football. No one laughed then.
Now, fieldwork was what he knew. Investigating crimes, catching bad guys and saving lives were what he did.
Except when he failed…
“I haven’t learned much,” he admitted now to Hayden. He gave a run-down of meeting Dianna Englander and the managers of the Englander Center the day before. Plus, he described the reaction of the turf-conscious private security chief Flynn.
“I’ll run a check on his outfit,” Lee said. “He sounds like a pain in the butt, but maybe you can find a way to use him.”
“Right,” Travis said. “You might also check on my request for DMV info on the beginning of a license plate.” He explained that he had called one of the detectives at Parker Center, the main police headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, requesting a follow-up with the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Maybe they’d come up with a white sedan or two with license numbers beginning like the one Dianna had jotted down. Better yet, they might even find one with the owner’s address in the L.A. area. Unlikely, but stranger things had happened.
“Right,” Hayden said.
They’d known each other for a long time, and Hayden had helped him put together his cover for this assignment. He knew a lot of Travis’s talents. And many of his flaws as well.
“Now get out there and keep the Van Nuys civic center safe for mankind, Bronson,” Hayden finished. “And watch all those knives in the air.”
DIANNA WENT TO WORK early that morning.
Why not? She hadn’t slept much the night before. She was wide awake, despite the heaviness of her eyelids. And she certainly had plenty of work to do.
She drove upstairs into the garage and parked her prized little red vehicle in its assigned space, right beside Wally Sellers’ black imported sports car that was surprisingly small, considering his girth.
Jeremy’s space, on the far side of Wally’s, was empty. He hadn’t arrived yet, but that wasn’t surprising. He always arrived later than they did, since he had to drop Julie off at school. This morning they might even be later than usual, since it had been past Julie’s bedtime yesterday when she had finished her school report, with Dianna’s help over the phone.
She had called the Alberts house a couple more times before reaching them. But she hadn’t turned her phone ringer back on.
Still, today, for the first time in two weeks, Dianna had defiantly shunned the valet.
But she breathed a sigh of relief when the elevator door closed behind her, and she hadn’t spotted Glen Farley.
There was always that evening…
“Cut it out,” she whispered vehemently in the confines of the otherwise empty car. She felt her face redden as she looked around. Had the new security measures implemented by Flynn and his crew included hidden cameras in the elevator cars?
She hoped not.
Involuntarily, she glanced down at her clothes. As usual, she wore a professional-looking outfit. Today’s was a deep-olive pantsuit. She wore a purse over her shoulder and carried her briefcase.
The elevator took her down to the lobby, where she needed to change elevator banks for a car that would take her up into the Center’s office building.
She made the mistake of glancing out the vast expanse of glass toward the plaza outside. Sure enough, there was the same pushcart that had been there yesterday.
Travis Bronson stood beside it. A crowd had gathered around him. All Dianna could see of him was his head, for he stood taller than all the people surrounding him.
What was he doing to attract attention now? Juggling those vicious-looking knives again? She thought undercover police were supposed to be inconspicuous.
He was certainly not what Dianna would have expected, had someone told her to watch out for an undercover cop. But, then, to her knowledge she had never met an undercover cop before.
Security details, certainly. Uniformed police, bodyguards, FBI, even Secret Service—they had been part of her old life in Washington, D.C., as the wife of a U.S. Representative.
The life she had left behind, when Brad had died.
Without stopping to analyze the origin of her impulse, she pushed open one of the glass front doors and exited onto the plaza.
He seemed immediately to be aware of her, for their eyes met. For being so preoccupied with the crowd, and whatever tricks he performed for them, he was undeniably alert. And observant.
That, undoubtedly, was part of his job.
As he looked at her, a corner of his mouth curved slowly upward, as he acknowledged her with a lazy half smile.
Damn. Her pulse rate had no business speeding up like that, for no reason. Just because a too-handsome man full of his own importance smiled at her…
Forcing herself to chill out, she approached the “Cart à la Carte.” The man who’d handed Julie a sandwich yesterday was busy pouring coffee, passing out sweet rolls and containers of juice— “Fare to keep you awake and alive,” as written on the cart’s side—and taking customers’ money. What was his name? Manny?
Like many in the surrounding crowd, Manny appeared to be of Hispanic background. His smile was broad. No half grins from him. But why should he be anything but happy? He probably owned the cart, and Travis was undoubtedly drawing a huge crowd. Garnering plenty of tips, too.
Keeping her attention on the line in front of her, she waited impatiently