His eyes focused back on the scene at hand, and he seemed to notice Darius for the first time. “Who are you?”
Darius flinched and then straightened up, doing so in a way that made his long limbs seem unwieldy and in the way. “Darius Sandberg.” After a moment’s hesitation, he extended his hand. “It’s an honor to officially meet you.”
Justin shook it automatically, recognition lighting his features. “Sandberg. From New Stockholm.”
Darius’s head bobbed up and down. “I can’t thank you enough for what you did, Dr. March. For my family.”
“I think you helped me as much as I did you.” As the memories of that grave case returned, Justin added, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.”
Justin’s brows knit in a frown. “You aren’t here to thank me in person, are you? Long trip.”
When Darius faltered, Tessa jumped forward. “He goes to my school. For tertiaries.”
“Ah.” Justin relaxed. “Another free thinker, huh?”
“Creative thinker. He was hoping you could help him get an internship,” explained Tessa, now feeling obligated to Darius. “You know, with your Internal Security connections.”
That brought about Justin’s first smile since returning home. He shook his head. “You don’t want to work for Internal Security. Especially SCI.”
Darius’s earlier zeal returned. “I want to work for any place I can be useful! Any government branch that’ll let me get a start.”
Justin shook his head again, and Tessa could tell he was on the verge of politely refusing. After few seconds, though, Justin glanced at Tessa, and his expression softened a little.
“He saved my life,” she said, guessing what Justin was thinking.
“I don’t suppose you broke that coatrack, did you?” he asked at last.
“Justin,” growled Cynthia.
Darius, not knowing the coatrack’s history, looked startled. “I . . . I don’t know. I’m very sorry if I did. I can replace it.”
Justin waved off the comment. “Forget it. I’ll see what I can do for you.”
The euphoria filling Darius’s feature was so cute that Tessa couldn’t help but smile over it—and at the subsequent outpouring of gratitude that obviously discomfited Justin.
“Thank you, thank you, Dr. March! This means so much! I mean it. You have no idea. Wow. Thank you. And if there’s anything I can do for you . . . wow . . . thank you and—”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” interrupted Justin. “If you want to help, stay for dinner, and keep your coatrack handy until I get real security around here.”
That brought Cynthia back in. “What are you talking about?” she asked warily.
“Some guy showed up here brandishing a weapon. You think I’m going to leave you guys exposed after that?” Justin demanded.
His sister put her hands on her hips and tossed her dark hair back. “You just said it was a random attack—and a rarity. You think we’ll be ‘lucky’ enough to get another anytime soon?”
Justin took his time to phrase a response, and Tessa watched him very closely. He’d once told her that she had observation skills to match his own. She wasn’t always so sure of that, but just then, she was almost certain that Justin had more on his mind than a random dissident. There are other threats worrying him, she realized.
“Probably not,” he said, almost smoothly enough to convince Tessa. “But do you want to take the chance? You want to take the chance with him?” He nodded toward Quentin, and Cynthia faltered, as Justin had no doubt known she would.
“What do you have in mind?” she asked. “We’ll hire personal security. Bodyguards.”
Cynthia’s eyebrows rose. “Did you just use a plural?”
“You don’t all travel together,” pointed out Justin. “You’re each going to need someone with you.”
Even Tessa was surprised at that. “Like, all the time?” she asked. “A shadow?”
Justin stood up. “You’d be surprised how used to it you get. Don’t look at me like that, Cyn,” he warned. “You can make the calls around here on decorating, food, and what, uh, lifestyle choices are allowed in the house, but this one’s all me. None of you are going around unprotected.”
Tessa had a feeling Cynthia wanted to protest, simply because she was used to contradicting Justin, but she finally gave a nod of acquiescence. It was hard to fight the logic. “Where are you going?” she asked, seeing him move toward the door. “You just got back!”
Justin held up his hand in farewell and then turned toward the front door. “Off to find someone who’s an expert on security type stuff,” he called
.
CHAPTER 4
Moonlighting
It wasn’t difficult finding Mae. Many facets of her were still a mystery to Justin, but some things were pretty predictable. After leaving his house, he immediately got on a train for downtown, knowing she’d either be at her place or a bar. When he called her, and she answered with voice-only, he had his answer.
“Where are you drinking?” he asked promptly. “How do you know I’m drinking?”
“Because you were instantly sending messages the moment our plane had stream access. You only do that on our trips if you plan on going out afterward.”
“Well, congratulations on another brilliant deduction. Are you trying to find out where I’m at so you can verify some other amazing guess?”
“It wasn’t a guess,” he retorted. “And I need to find you so we can talk.”
There was a moment of heavy silence. Then: “We were stuck on a plane for ten hours. Couldn’t we have talked then? There’s such a thing as personal space, you know.”
He sighed, mentally and physically exhausted after the long day of travel. “Something’s happened. Something involving danger and death and all that other stuff you like.”
She fell into thought again and then yielded. “I’m at Brownstone.”
“Where is it?”
“Really? There’s a bar in the greater Vancouver area you don’t personally know every inch of?”
“Man, you’re in a bad mood,” he grumbled. “I’ll look it up. See you soon.”
A quick check on his ego told him Brownstone was a bar frequented by military personnel, due to its proximity to a train stop used exclusively for traveling to the base just outside the city limits.
Justin uneasily wondered if he might be walking into a praetorian drinking party. Mae’s two regular sidekicks, as Justin thought of them, could be trying enough, let alone when they were en masse with others. No use worrying about it now, he supposed. And, for all he knew, maybe they’d have recommendations on this latest complication in his life.
He was still blown away that Antonio Song, the devotee of Mithras who’d attacked Tessa, had proven that unstable and vindictive. Justin had meant what he said about these sorts of retaliations being rare. Most shut-down churches blamed the government as a whole, not its individual servants. And Justin had also meant it when he said this was just a random, routine zealot. He didn’t believe Song was part of some larger conspiracy or one of the dangerous elect Mama Orane had warned about. Song was a fluke, but he was a fluke that had driven home to Justin just how great the potential for harm this job presented. Enough supernatural sightings and trips to the provinces had reinforced the dangers of his work. He’d accepted it, just as he’d accepted Mae as his shield from those threats.
But having his family targeted? It was a startling and disturbing revelation, especially in light of this “war of the elect.” And from what he knew, there were just as many elect and godly devotees walking the RUNA as the provinces—maybe more, considering Geraki had told him the religious vacuum the RUNA had maintained for so long was opening itself up to divine influences. If elect were willing to attack other elect they considered threats, then loved ones of the enemy could be a starting tactic. Song might be a nobody in the grand scheme of things, but he was a warning of what could be much more dire things to come.