Always a Hero Read online

  Like father…

  She nearly bit her tongue, afraid the words that popped into her mind were going to pop out of her mouth. “He doesn’t want to do anything you say?”

  “I think he only listens so he can do the opposite,” he said wryly.

  He tugged at the faded blue T-shirt, and she caught a glimpse of lean, flat stomach.

  And another scar on his left side, just above the low-slung waistband of his jeans. This one was tidier, and there were marks from stitches or staples, but also an odd rounded indentation in the middle.

  How on earth did a paper pusher end up with scars like that?

  And, almost reluctantly, it occurred to her that perhaps Wyatt Blake had reason to be the way he was.

  It seemed he’d been through his own kind of hell.

  And now here he was, back again, hiding. Trying to keep his son out of the same kind of mess.

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  Dear Reader,

  As a writer, I lug an incredible number of fragments around in my head. Bits of conversation overheard, faces I’ve seen, even little vignettes, bits of human action that my mind needs an explanation of, or a story for. Some of these things fade after a while. But some of them stick around, resurfacing occasionally like a dolphin for a breath. Some are urgent, demanding that explanation now. Others float around, patiently awaiting the right story or characters or inspiration to be brought to life.

  Always a Hero is one of the latter. The idea, the basic concept, has been in my head literally for years. But it burst to life when, in the produce section of the market, I overheard a child telling his mother that his father’s job was soooo boring and uncool. The mother simply smiled and said, “If you only knew…” So amid the onions and the sweet corn, this story was truly born.

  And I still wonder about that boy’s father, and remember the smile on his mother’s face.

  Happy reading!

  Justine Davis

  JUSTINE DAVIS

  Always a Hero

  Books by Justine Davis

  Romantic Suspense

  *Lover Under Cover #698

  *Leader of the Pack #728

  *A Man to Trust #805

  *Gage Butler’s Reckoning #841

  *Badge of Honor #871

  *Clay Yeager’s Redemption #926

  The Return of Luke McGuire #1036

  **Just Another Day in Paradise #1141

  The Prince’s Wedding #1190

  **One of These Nights #1201

  **In His Sights #1318

  **Second-Chance Hero #1351

  **Dark Reunion #1452

  **Deadly Temptation #1493

  **Her Best Friend’s Husband #1525

  Backstreet Hero #1539

  Baby’s Watch #1544

  **His Personal Mission #1573

  **The Best Revenge #1597

  **Redstone Ever After #1619

  Deadly Valentine #1645

  “Her Un-Valentine”

  Always a Hero #1651

  Desire

  Private Reasons #833

  Errant Angel #924

  A Whole Lot of Love #1281

  **Midnight Seduction #1557

  Silhouette Bombshell

  Proof #2

  Flashback #86

  Silhouette Books

  Silhouette Summer

  Sizzlers 1994

  “The Raider”

  Fortune’s Children

  The Wrangler’s Bride

  JUSTINE DAVIS

  lives on Puget Sound in Washington State. Her interests outside of writing are sailing, doing needlework, horseback riding and driving her restored 1967 Corvette roadster—top down, of course.

  Justine says that, years ago, during her career in law enforcement, a young man she worked with encouraged her to try for a promotion to a position that was at the time occupied only by men. “I succeeded, became wrapped up in my new job, and that man moved away, never, I thought, to be heard from again. Ten years later, he appeared out of the woods of Washington State, saying he’d never forgotten me and would I please marry him. With that history, how could I write anything but romance?”

  To all of those who, in whatever kind of uniform, stand between us and the dark side.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 1

  “I hate you! I hate this place. I want to go home.”

  “I know. Just do it.”

  Jordan Price threw down the rake, scattering the leaves he’d just gathered. His father chose not to point out that he’d just guaranteed himself more time spent in the task he loathed.

  “I’m never going to be such a jerk to my kids.”

  Wyatt Blake smothered a sigh, but managed to keep his tone reasonable; he remembered thinking much worse thoughts about his own father. And at younger than thirteen, too.

  So that’s how you want you and Jordan to be? Like you and your father?

  He fought down his gut reaction and spoke calmly.

  “If you don’t learn to finish what you start, your kids won’t listen to you anyway. If you can even find a woman who’d have them with a man who doesn’t keep his word.”

  Yeah, right. You’re such an expert on keeping promises.

  “I don’t know why Mom married you anyway.”

  “It’s a mystery. Finish.”

  The grumbling continued, with a couple of words muttered under the boy’s breath that Wyatt decided not to hear. He had enough on his plate at the moment, trying to keep the kid out of serious trouble, without expending energy on his language. If he didn’t straighten around soon, a few obscenities would be the least of his problems.

  Later, when after another battle Jordan had gone to bed, Wyatt went through his nightly ritual at the computer that sat in the corner of the den. Jordan wasn’t allowed to have it in his room, another bone of contention. But tonight something disrupted the usual process; a message alert window popped up. One he had hoped he’d never see.

  He went still. Maybe it was a mistake, a computer glitch. They were prone to that, one-time, inexplicable weirdness.

  For a long moment he did nothing, postponing the inevitable. A measure of how far he’d come, he supposed, that he didn’t dive in instantly.

  Finally, knowing he had no choice, he began the digging process that would take him to the program buried deep within the computer’s file structure. There was no convenient icon for this one, no listing on the menus, no easy way to get there. And once he was there, the encryption was so deep it would take him five minutes to work his way through all the levels.

  Assuming he could remember the damned process, let alone the multiple passwords.

  In the end it took him six minutes and change. But at last the screen opened. The message was short. Far too short to have the effect it did.

  Old acquaintance asking for you. Afraid I gave him wrong directions, but maybe he’ll find you anyway. Was a friendly when you knew him,
but keep your eyes open.

  He stared at the unsigned message. He didn’t need a signature, there was only one person who knew how to contact him this way. Who knew how to contact him at all. When he’d left that world he’d literally cashed out, cutting all ties. The man who’d sent him this email had spent a great deal of time convincing him to agree to this one thin thread of connection.

  The message was innocuous enough on the surface, but he knew better. It was a warning as surely as if it were a fire alarm.

  He’d spent most of his adult life knowing his past could catch up with him someday. That past held too many grim memories for him to relish the idea, but that didn’t change the possibility. He’d always looked upon it as a cost of doing business, his business at least.

  But now there was Jordan, and that changed everything.

  Knowing there was nothing more to be gained by staring at this unexpected jab from the past, he quickly typed one word that would serve as both acknowledgment and thanks, and sent it. Then he deleted the message, reset the encryption and exited. The small but sophisticated program would erase its own tracks as it went, and go back into hiding.

  He had a little time, thanks to the misdirection, but he’d have to redouble his watchfulness. In the meantime, with that ability to compartmentalize that had worked so well for him back in those days, he returned to his original task.

  When the social networking site was loaded, Wyatt called up the usual page and without a qualm entered the password Jordan didn’t know he knew. Then he hit the next link in the process.

  My father has to be the most boring guy on the planet.

  The first post since he’d last checked glowed at him.

  Wyatt didn’t wince, even inwardly, at the damning—at least in a thirteen-year-old’s view—indictment. In fact, he felt a certain satisfaction. Boredom, he’d often thought, was highly underrated.

  He went on reading, scrolling through the entries from where he’d left off last week. Jordan, of course, had no idea he knew the page existed. The boy had never asked if he could do it, had just set it up on his own shortly after they’d moved in. Perhaps he’d known if he’d asked the answer would be no. Better to beg forgiveness later and all that.

  And that thought did make him wince. Hadn’t he lived by that credo himself, often enough?

  And now Wyatt was glad he’d done it, and was using it against him. At least, that’s what Jordan would think. He went back to reading. He noticed the new friends added, made a note of a meet-up Jordan had been invited to next Saturday night. Invited several times by several people Wyatt already had been wary of after checking their respective pages. He didn’t like the sound of it, so he’d have to make sure his son was otherwise occupied.

  He kept reading, and reached the final post.

  I hate him. I wish he was dead and my mom was still alive.

  The last entry sat there, unchanging, undeniable. He blinked. Closed the browser. Shut down the computer. Got up from the desk. Walked up the stairs. Opened the first door on the right.

  Jordan lay curled up on his side, like his mother had said he used to sleep when he’d been much, much smaller. The room was a mess, clothes strewn about, belongings scattered. But he was there, and for the moment, safe. Wyatt went on down the hall to his own room.

  Mechanically he went through the rituals of getting ready for sleep, as if that would help it come, or that it would be restful when it did. He knew what would happen. He would lie down, resisting the urge to draw up in a fetal curl himself. And then it would begin, the nightly parade of images and memories. And if he was really exhausted, the idea would occur to him that all the people around the world who had damned him were getting their wish.

  He turned out the bedside light. His head hit the pillow.

  He closed his eyes, wondering if this would be one of the nights he regretted going to sleep. In the silence of the house, broken only by the occasional creak or snap as it contracted in the rapidly chilling night air, the latest in the long string of confrontations played back in his head. He thought of all the things he’d done, all the places he’d been, all the situations he’d faced, all the times when he’d been written off as dead or likely to be.

  He’d survived them all.

  But he wasn’t at all sure he was going to survive a thirteen-year-old boy.

  I hate him. I wish he was dead and my mom was still alive.

  “So do I,” he whispered into the darkness.

  Kai Reynolds heard the guitar riff signal from the front door of Play On as she got to the last line of the vendor form. She’d rigged the system to rotate through a series of recorded bits daily. This week it was the classics. Yesterday had been a few seconds of Stevie Ray, today was The Edge on her fave, that sweet Fender Strat, tomorrow would be the simplest and oldest, that classic single chord from George Harrison’s Rickenbacker 12-string that opened “A Hard Day’s Night.”

  Next week it would be some Wylde, Rivers Cuomo and Mustaine balanced by a variety pack of Atkins and Robert Johnson leavened with a bit of Urban.

  She took three seconds to finish checking the order against her inventory of guitar strings, then looked up. She quickly spotted who had come in, one who didn’t often have to ask because he usually knew, even from the three- to five-second clips, who was playing. For a kid his age, Jordan Price had a good ear.

  An idea struck her, that she should add in some people he might not know. Ry Cooder, maybe, or Derek Trucks. And to bolster the feminine side, some of Raitt’s sweet slide and Batten’s two-handed tapping.

  “Hey, Kai,” Jordan said, his face lighting up when he saw her behind the counter.

  “Jordy,” she acknowledged with a return smile. The boy had told her some time ago, rather shyly, that he allowed no one else to use that nickname. She knew he had a bit of a crush on her, so she’d gently told him that someday he’d meet another girl he didn’t mind it from, and then he’d know she was the one.

  “The Edge, right? The Stratocaster?”

  “Right in one,” she said, her smile becoming a grin.

  “You oughta put you in there.”

  Her smile became a grin at the words he said at least two or three days a week when he came in after school. “Nah. I’m not in their league.”

  “But that riff you did on Crash, that was killer.”

  “I borrowed it from Knopfler.”

  “But yours sounded completely different.”

  “That was the Gibson, not me,” she said, as if they hadn’t had this conversation before. “What did you do, run all the way?”

  The boy walked from the middle school that was about a mile away. Then, when he was done, he walked back to school, usually in haste, before his father got there to pick him up. She thought it odd, since she was closer to where the boy lived than the school was, but Jordy said his father insisted because he didn’t trust him.

  “Should he?” she’d asked.

  “Sure,” Jordy had answered, his expression grim. “Where am I gonna go in this town?”

  There had been a wealth of disdain in his voice, but Kai had let it pass.

  “Nah, it’s just hot out today,” he said now.

  “Enjoy it. Fall’s hovering.” The boy made a face. “Maybe we’ll get snow this winter.”

  His expression changed slightly, looking the tiniest bit intrigued, as she’d guessed a kid who’d grown up in Southern California might at the idea.

  “That would be cool,” he said, then smiled at his own unintentional pun.

  “So how’s life today?”

  “Sucks,” Jordy said, his smile fading.

  “Still not getting along with your dad, huh?”

  “He’s an as—” Jordy broke off what had obviously been going to be a crude bodily assessment.

  “Good save,” Kai said, acknowledging the effort. “Your mom probably didn’t like you swearing.”

  “Only reason I stopped,” Jordy muttered, looking away. Kai guessed he was tearing up
and didn’t want her to see.

  “If we can’t cry for the ones we’ve loved and lost, then what good are we?” she asked softly.

  He looked up at her then, and she indeed saw the gleam of moisture in his eyes. Those green eyes, she thought, were going to knock that girl he’d meet someday right on her backside.

  “You understand, because you lost someone, too.”

  The boy not only had a good ear, he was perceptive.

  “Yes.”

  “Kit.”

  She didn’t talk about him, ever. But this was a kid in pain, worse today than she’d ever seen it, and she sensed he needed to know he wasn’t alone. And she suspected he already knew how Christopher Hudson had died; the info was out there, on the Net, and easy enough to find.

  “Yes. And I loved him very much,” she finally said. “But it wasn’t like your mother, who didn’t want to leave you. He did it to himself.”

  Jordy’s eyes widened. “He killed himself?”

  No outside source would have said that, she knew. They all said it was accidental. She didn’t look at it that way. But then, she’d been in the middle of it.

  “Slowly. Years of drugs.”

  “Oh.” Jordy was silent for a moment before he said, in a small voice, “How long ago?”

  She hesitated again. Was he wondering how long it took to feel life was worth living again?

  “A long time ago.” Six years ago was almost half his lifetime, so she figured that was accurate. “And,” she added quietly, “yesterday.”

  She saw his brows furrow, then clear as he nodded slowly in understanding.

  “So you haven’t…forgotten?”

  Panic edged his voice. Ah, she thought. So that was it. “No. And I never will. And you won’t either, Jordy. I promise you.”

  “But…sometimes I can’t remember what she sounded like.”

  Interesting, she thought, that it was sound and not image that he was worried about.

  “But do you remember how you felt when she talked to you, told you how much she loved you?”

  The boy colored slightly, but nodded again.

  “Then you remember the important part. And you always will.”

  It was a few minutes before the boy got around to asking if he could have the sound room and the slightly battered but well-loved Strat she often let people use. Jordan was just starting out, and it was a bit too much for his hands. She had a small acoustic in back she thought he’d do better with, but he thought acoustics were boring and wasn’t interested. Yet.