Page 2

CHAPTER 2

Teller Osgood jammed his feet into his running shoes without untying or retying. His cell phone, on speaker, lay beside him on the bed. “Did anyone call 911?”

“I notified them before I called you,” Hawk said. “I sent you a pin location of the house where Sachie lives. She’s only been there a little over a week.” An incoming text pinged Teller’s cell phone.

Teller grabbed the phone and stood, stomping his foot to set it firmly in the shoe. “Where did she come from before landing in Hilo,” he asked, pulling a black T-shirt out of a drawer.

“Honolulu,” Hawk said. “She left there after a traumatic incident. I don’t know all the details, but Kalea said it was bad. Maybe you can get her to open up about it.”

Great. Now, he was supposed to be her therapist?

“Is she working on the Big Island?” Teller asked.

“Yes,” Hawk answered. “She’s a teen counselor, helping with abuse and addiction.”

Teller cringed. Was he supposed to dig into the counselor’s psyche to figure out what was wrong? Hell, maybe he was the right man for that job. He’d been on the other side of a counselor’s couch after being taken from his abusive father and placed in foster care at the awkward age of ten.

He pulled the T-shirt over his head, grabbed his phone and raced for his apartment door, glancing down at the watch on his wrist. He’d gone from a dead sleep to fully alert in less than a minute.

He looked down as he leaped past the last couple of steps from his apartment building, arriving at his vehicle in three long strides across the parking lot. Teller opened the door to the sleek black SUV and jumped in, still amazed at his find. He’d purchased the vehicle secondhand from an older man who’d lived on the Big Island but was moving to the mainland to be closer to his children as he grew older.

The SUV was in mint condition, lovingly cared for, with low miles and more than enough engine to satisfy Teller’s need for speed .

Having backed into his parking space, he slammed the shift into drive and hit the accelerator hard. The SUV leaped forward. The built-in Bluetooth capability picked up the pinpoint on the map Hawk had sent and displayed it on the screen. Teller slowed at the corner, glanced at the map to get his bearings and then made a sharp right, hitting the accelerator again. At two-thirty in the morning, traffic was almost nonexistent. Still, he remained alert, knowing those folks on the road had probably shut down a local bar and were either headed home or to the closest all-night diner, half drunk and more than half-asleep.

Teller zigzagged through the streets of Hilo, lined with houses that appeared to be straight out of an advertisement for houses designed and built in the nineteen-fifties, sixties or seventies. Each house sported a low roofline and stood close to the other like a crowd of spectators watching the parade of cars passing by on the streets.

Traveling faster than the posted speed limit, Teller wove in and out of turns and dodged cars parked next to curbs. A cat stepped off the curb onto the pavement, paused and stared at Teller’s oncoming headlights.

Before Teller could hit the break, the animal spun and darted back in the direction from which it had come as if the cat had changed its mind. The result was saving Teller from making a decision to go around the beast, possibly coming to the wrong conclusion as to which direction the cat would go. He wasn’t much of a cat person, but he didn’t like hurting animals if he could help it.

Four minutes had passed since he’d received the call from Hawk. He realized the phone call had come to him minutes, if not seconds, from the moment when Sachie had spotted the face in the window and subsequently discovered her car had been vandalized. The perpetrator could still be at her cottage. She was lucky she hadn’t been hurt at the point she’d made the call.

He still couldn’t believe she’d trotted her happy ass out of her cottage to confront the owner of the face in the window.

If he was to be her protector for the next few days, weeks or whatever timeframe he was needed, he’d have to set a few ground rules. First, if he wasn’t available, she should never leave the safety of her home, where she had the benefit of a lock on her door and her cell phone to call for help. Two, always assume the worst. In this case, she should have assumed what she saw was real, not a hallucination. She was lucky that the man who’d smashed the windshield on her car hadn’t taken whatever heavy, blunt instrument he’d used to deliver the damage to her car and turned on her, using that instrument to crush her skull.

Teller didn’t normally judge a person before he met her, but this lady appeared to fit into the category of too stupid to live. Which meant he would have his hands full if he was to protect her from a determined stalker who’d been following her around in Honolulu as well as on the Big Island.

The map guidance indicated he had reached her street, so Teller turned onto a long, quiet street, immediately accelerating. Her home was one of the last three houses at the end of the block. As he neared the pin’s location, Teller slowed quickly, coming to a halt just short of a little cottage.

No strobing lights greeted him, and no other vehicles had parked in front of Ms. Moore’s house. He’d arrived before the first responders.

Grabbing his Sig Sauer P365 handgun from the console, he shoved open his SUV door.

In the distance, sirens wailed, the sound growing steadily louder as the emergency vehicles got closer.

He could wait for them to arrive before he approached Sachie’s home. Having backup was always a good idea, but what if the perpetrator had breached a window or door and was inside with Ms. Moore now ?

No. He couldn’t wait. He had to make sure she was okay. In certain situations, seconds counted.

He quickly eased up the steps onto the front porch and approached the door. When he reached for the door handle, he noticed the door wasn’t closed. It stood just barely ajar, the wooden doorframe split as if someone had hit it hard.

Immediately, Teller moved to the side of the door and listened. No sounds filtered through the gap. With the barrel of his gun, he nudged the door wider, testing the water.

Bullets didn’t fly in his direction. He considered it a good sign but wasn’t taking any chances. Inhaling a quick breath, he lunged through the door, threw himself into a somersault and came up into a crouched position in a shadow behind an armchair.

Footsteps rang out in the back of the house, moving quickly.

Teller’s entrance into the home hadn’t gone unnoticed.

A door hinge creaked somewhere near the rear of the structure, followed by the loud bang of a door slamming with enough force to shake the entire house.

The attacker was getting away.

Teller lunged to his feet and gave chase, running through the living room to a hallway that led into a kitchen. Starlight shone through the window set into the back door. He approached the door at an angle to avoid giving the perpetrator a clear target.

Gripping the door handle, he twisted it and swung it open and away from him.

Two sharp popping sounds pierced the night, followed by the dull thwack of something impacting the sheetrock on the wall across from the open door. It let Teller know the man was armed and had fired two rounds from what sounded like a small-caliber pistol. If it was equipped with a full magazine, he could have any number of bullets remaining.

He waited a moment longer. When no more shots were fired, Teller ducked low and peered around the doorframe. A tall, lanky shadow of a man was just disappearing through a hedge of bushes at the rear of the property.

Teller took a split second to debate whether to follow the man or to stay in the house and find the woman he’d been sent to protect. If the attacker had found her before Teller did, he could already have hurt or killed her. With the sirens growing ever louder, Teller turned back into the house, determined to find the woman and make sure she wasn’t bleeding out. His time in the military had taught him the skills necessary to treat battlefield wounds. He knew how to stop or slow the flow of blood at least long enough for the emergency medical technicians to arrive and take over.

Not knowing whether there was only one attacker, Teller eased through the house, tiptoeing quietly and clearing each room he passed, one at a time. Hesitant to call out her name, he performed his search in silence. If she was being held at gunpoint by a second attacker, he might be willing to use her as a human shield to buy his freedom.

The kitchen was empty, the small pantry barely large enough for the narrow row of shelves, a broom and a mop. Teller checked behind a bifold door to find a washer and dryer and no additional room to hide a child, much less a full-grown woman.

He worked his way back to the hall and pushed open the first doorway on his right, finding a small bedroom barely big enough for a twin-sized bed. Dropping to the floor, he used the flashlight on his cell phone to scan beneath the bed. Nothing but dust bunnies and an old suitcase. The closet was completely empty but for a few wire hangers pushed to one side on the rod. Moving quickly, he left the bedroom and hurried to the next door along the hallway.

The second room was as small as the first, with a double bed, just the mattress and bedframe beneath. No sheets, blankets or curtains on the window. The closet was as empty as the bedroom.

After only a cursory glance, he moved to the bathroom across the hall. With his back against the wall, he nudged the shower curtain to one side. No psycho killer lurked behind it, nor was a scared woman hiding there.

He stepped out into the hallway, his muscles tensing as he studied the entrance to the only unchecked room in the corridor. The door stood slightly ajar, the doorframe splintered much like the front door.

Senses on alert, he nudged the door wider and stepped through, avoiding the pale square of starlight cast through the window. Dropping to his haunches, he peered beneath the bed. Relying on the little bit of light from the window, he discovered two suitcases, no dust and a pair of house slippers. The only door in the room had to open to either a closet or a bathroom.

He rose and padded softly across the room, setting his feet down one at a time as quietly as he could. If the woman was being held captive by a man in the closet, Teller couldn’t risk making a rash move that might cause the man to react brutally, killing Ms. Moore.

If Ms. Moore lay on the other side of the door, mortally wounded, he was wasting time he could use to save her. Standing to the side of the door, he reached for the handle.

As his fingers touched the cool metal knob, the door exploded outward. A blond-haired woman burst from inside, screaming like a banshee straight from hell, wielding a wickedly large butcher knife.

Teller ducked his head and shoulders to the side, narrowly missing the blade that glinted in the starlight.

With a lightning-quick sweep of his arm, he knocked the hand holding the knife hard enough to send it flying across the room.

No sooner had the knife left the banshee’s hand than the woman hunkered over and rammed her shoulder into his midsection, moving him backward like a linebacker bulldozing a quarterback.

“Whoa, hold on a minute.” He staggered out into the hallway before he regained his balance. “I’m here?—"

He didn’t get the rest of his sentence out before she balled her fist and jabbed toward his gut.

Teller captured her small fist in his big hand but didn’t twist his body around in time to avoid the knee she slammed into his groin.

“Oomph,” he grunted as pain shot through him, the force of her assault taking his breath away. He doubled over, losing his grip on her fist.

The woman spun and raced away from him, heading for the back of the house.

“Wait,” he wheezed, still bent over, pain radiating from his crotch through the rest of his body, making it nearly impossible for him to straighten. He gritted his teeth, fought past the pain and limped after her, struggling to get air from his lungs past his vocal cords. Finally, he yelped, “Ms. Moore!”

It was too late. She’d bolted out the back door and down from the porch.

Teller increased his speed until he sprinted after her, calling out her name. “Ms. Moore! Wait.”

She kept running, crying out, “Help me! Please, help me!”

He had to stop her. Though the police cars neared, her attacker might still be lurking in the shadows of the bushes, armed and willing to shoot.

As Ms. Moore passed a concrete bird, Teller caught up with her. He grabbed her around the waist with one arm, bringing her to an abrupt halt.

She fought, kicking and screaming.

Teller struggled to maintain his hold on her and his gun while her bare heels battered his shins.

When he turned toward the house, the woman planted her feet against the concrete birdbath and pushed hard, sending him flying backward.

He tripped over a garden paver and fell with her still clutched in his arm. He landed flat on his back, the wind knocked from his lungs. Though he lay stunned, his arm didn’t loosen its hold on the squirming woman.

“Let me go!” she cried, elbowing him in the ribs. “Help! Someone, please help!”

“ That’s. What. I’m. Trying. To. Do ,” he said through gritted teeth. Maintaining his hold around her waist, he rolled over, squashing her small frame between his big body and the ground.

“Get off me,” she murmured, her voice strangled by the weight of his body crushing her into the grass.

“I am not the man who attacked you. I’m not here to hurt you,” he said, easing some of his weight off her.

“Then why did you smash my car and then break into my house?”

“That wasn’t me. Your front door was already broken when I arrived.” He didn’t want to move until he knew she wouldn’t try to run again. If the assailant returned, Teller’s body might be the only shield protecting her from gunfire. “Jace Hawkins and his wife, Kalea, sent me. ”

All the fight went out of her. She lay still, her breathing coming in shallow gasps.

He realized he was crushing her, but he didn’t want to let her up until he was certain she wouldn’t run into the attacker’s range.

“The man who broke into your house has a gun. We need to get back inside before he uses it on us,” he said softly. “Can you make it back to the house?”

“Only if you let me up,” she grunted.

Sirens screamed loudly. Teller figured the police were on her street by now and would arrive outside her home in seconds. The perpetrator would have to be insane to stick around. Teller wasn’t taking any chances. “On three, we’re both getting up at the same time. Stay low and move in front of me. Don’t stop, don’t look back, just keep going until you’re all the way inside and in the hallway. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“Ready?” he whispered. “One...two...three.” Teller pushed to his feet, grabbed her around the waist, yanked her upright and shoved her in front of him. Hunkering down, they ran toward the house.

By then, the sirens were so loud he barely heard the pop of small-caliber gunfire. Something stung his left shoulder. He didn’t stop to investigate but ran faster, knowing he hadn’t been stung by a bee. “Go! Go! Go!” he said, urging Ms. Moore to pick up her pace. When the woman stumbled going up the back steps, he lifted her off her feet and carried her through the open back door, through the kitchen and into the hallway, out of the gunman’s range. Out of the man’s range, only if he didn’t follow them into the house.

Strobing lights flashed through the front windows. The police had arrived.

Teller remained in the hallway with Sachie Moore, his body bent over hers, shielding her from behind in case the attacker came through the back door.

The police stormed through the front door, spread out in the living room, one heading toward where they lay low in the hallway.

“Drop your weapon,” the young officer yelled.

“I’d rather lay it down.” Moving very slowly and deliberately, Teller laid his gun on the floor and slid it across the floor toward the officer.

The policeman kicked the gun behind him. “Now, raise your hands in the air and step away from the woman.”

Teller straightened, raising his hands in the air, wincing at the stab of pain in his left shoulder. “The attacker went out the back. He’s armed. If you hurry, you might catch him. He’s already fired three rounds.”

The young police officer kept his weapon trained on Teller. “I said move away from the woman. ”

Teller stepped backward, keeping his body between Ms. Moore and the back of the house. “The longer you wait, the further away he’ll get.”

“How do I know you’re not the attacker?” the young officer said. “No one’s leaving until backup arrives.”

Another siren wailed toward them, dying down as the police car came to a stop in front of the cottage. Two more officers entered the house, all aiming their weapons at Teller.

“I’m not the attacker,” Teller said. “Ms. Moore’s friend sent me.”

“Are you hurt, Ms. Moore?” the officer’s partner asked. “Can you move toward me?”

The woman’s body shook so much that her voice trembled when she answered. “I’m not hurt.” She struggled to her feet and moved toward the officer. Once she made it past the officer who’d been holding his weapon aimed at Teller from the start, his partner moved forward.

“Hands against the wall,” he said. “Spread your feet.”

Teller wasn’t going to argue with armed men who might spook and start shooting. Having been shot once that evening, he didn’t want to risk taking another bullet from well-intentioned, if nervous, young officers. He turned and planted his palms flat against the wall and spread his feet wide. The fact that he could still move his arm with minimal pain was a good sign. The bullet had only grazed him. It was just a flesh wound.

The man holding him at gunpoint called out over his shoulder to the two officers who’d just joined them. “He said there’s another armed assailant who left through the rear of the building. We’ve got this one. Go!”

Teller shook his head as the two men ran past him, down the hallway and through the kitchen. The gunman would be long gone by now.

The officer approached him, kicking Teller’s heels out wider, then proceeded to frisk him, starting at his shoulders and working his way downward. When he reached his hips, he removed Teller’s wallet from his back pocket, slid it into his front breast pocket and continued. When he reached the bottom of Teller’s right leg, he stopped and jerked the denim up, revealing the Ka-Bar knife he kept as backup. The policeman yanked the Velcro loose and tossed the knife in its sheath toward his partner. After running his hands over Teller’s other leg, he finally stood and flipped open the wallet he’d confiscated. “Driver’s license says this is Teller Osgood. If this is, in fact, his wallet.”

“That’s my face on the driver’s license and my military ID,” Teller said, still leaning against the wall. “While you’re holding me at gunpoint, the real bad guy is getting away.”

“We got a call saying this woman and this house was under attack. On our way here, we got another call stating neighbors heard gunshots and a woman screaming. Since you were the only one with a gun when we arrived, we have to assume you’re the attacker. By rights, we need to haul you into the station and sort things out from there.”

“They heard gunshots because the attacker fired three rounds.”

“Those rounds could have come from your gun,” the man holding his wallet said.

“Check my gun. It hasn’t been fired.” Teller straightened and faced the officers. He couldn’t protect this woman if they hauled him into their station to sort things out . “Check the kitchen. You’ll find two bullets lodged into the wall. Small caliber rounds, not nine-millimeter. And I didn’t shoot myself in the arm.” He turned just enough to point at the wound on his left shoulder, which had gone unnoticed when the officer had frisked him.

“Speaking of which,” the man holding him at gunpoint said, “Does he have a license to carry?”

His partner dug through Teller’s wallet and pulled out a card. “Apparently, he is licensed to carry.” He turned to the woman behind him. “Do you know this man?”

Standing barefooted, dressed in nothing but an oversized T-shirt, the woman had wrapped her arms around her middle. She shivered, though it wasn’t that cold in the home. “No, I don’t know him,” she said, her voice trembling along with her body.

The officer pointing his gun at Teller sent him a narrow-eyed glare. “Officer Jacobs, cuff him.”

Jacobs unclipped his cuffs from his service belt and approached Teller.

Teller’s fighting instincts roared to the surface. It took every ounce of control inside to beat it back. The situation was bad enough with a stalker on the loose. Being led away to the police station made things even worse. Yet, punching a cop would only land him in jail. Then, who would protect the blonde who looked more like a homeless kid than a young woman? Alone, Sachie Moore would be exposed and vulnerable to the next attack. He had to work through this obstacle legally and get back to the job he’d been sent to do.

“I don’t know him,” Ms. Moore repeated, her voice more controlled this time, “but he took a bullet that was probably meant for me.” She squinted at the nametag on the officer’s shirt. “Officer...Layne, Mr. Osgood got me out of the backyard and into the house safely. This man saved my life.”

Officer Layne’s gaze never left Teller. He didn’t say anything for several seconds and finally said, “Well, until we figure this out, he’s coming with us to the station.”

“What about Ms. Moore?” Teller demanded. “I was sent here to protect her.”

“Tell your story to the chief,” Layne said. “Ms. Moore is welcome to come with us or follow us to the station and make her statement.”

Jacobs snapped the cuffs on Teller’s wrist, pulled his arms behind him and cuffed the other wrist. He hooked a hand around Teller’s arm and led him toward the front door, passing the woman.

“Ms. Moore, you need to come with us,” Teller said. “You can’t stay here alone.”

Her eyes were wide. She looked more like a child in the well-worn T-shirt, her bare knees green with grass stains.

The two officers who’d gone in search of the assailant appeared in the doorway.

The first man through the door said, “We didn’t find anyone, but we did find a couple of casings.” He held up a plastic bag with two brass bullet casings.

As Teller had suspected—they were a smaller caliber than his Sig Sauer’s nine-millimeter rounds .

“And we just heard from the chief,” the officer continued and turned to Teller. “Are you Teller Osgood?”

Officer Jacobs held up Teller’s wallet. “He is.”

Teller nodded.

A frown passed over the officer’s face. “The chief got a call from his buddy, John Parkman of Parkman Ranch.”

Officer Layne frowned and adjusted his hold on his weapon. “Yeah, so?”

“You know Parkman has a security agency operating on his ranch called the Brotherhood Protectors.” The officer tipped his chin toward Teller. “Parkman said they sent one of the Brotherhood here to provide protection for Sachie Moore.” He turned to the blond woman. “Is that you?”

Ms. Moore nodded. “My friend, Kalea, John Parkman’s daughter, is married to the man in charge of the Brotherhood Protectors here in Hawaii. I called her when I first realized someone was outside my house and that he’d smashed the windshield of my car. She said they were sending someone over to protect me.” Her gaze shifted to Teller.

“That would be me,” Teller said, his lips twisting. “I didn’t have a chance to formally introduce myself.”

Ms. Moore bit her bottom lip. “I’m sorry. I thought you were the stalker. ”

The man with the bullet casings nodded toward Officer Jacobs. “You can release him. He’s legit.”

“At least escort him out of the house before you do,” Officer Layne said. “Then Ms. Moore can decide whether or not she wants him to stay.”

Officer Jacobs grimaced apologetically and led Teller out of the house into the yard, where strobing lights blinded him.

“Ms. Moore, I can’t protect you if I’m not with you,” Teller said as Jacobs unlocked the cuffs and freed his wrists.

Officer Layne stood with the woman on the porch, looking down at Teller. “Ms. Moore, it’s your call. Do you want him to stay or leave?”

“Look, Ms. Moore,” Teller said, “I could leave, go back to my apartment and sleep. You were attacked, not me. How well will you sleep without protection?”

She met and held Teller’s gaze for a long moment. Finally, she nodded. “I want you to stay.”