Lisa Phillips - Homefront Defenders

Locke made his way to the front door. They stepped outside, and he scanned the area while Alana shut the trailer door. “Huh.”

He turned back. “What is it?”

“This lock is broken. Maybe someone came in and abducted him. Took some guns,” she said. “It explains the food he left. And the clothes. Maybe it was after you saw him this morning. He could have returned home, and then it happened?”

Locke shrugged. “Or he had a visitor other than us.” His phone beeped. He read the message aloud. “‘Air Force One is four hours out.’ Let’s get over to Hilo.”

She nodded, and they walked to the truck. Alana’s phone started to ring, and she whipped it out. Then sighed.

“Not your sister?”

“Nope.” She shook her head. “My neighbor in DC. I’ll call her back later.”

When she was quiet for a while, he apparently decided he needed to get her to talk. Locke said, “So you surfed in competitions, isn’t that right?”

She nodded.

“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?” She was sure he knew the story but he must have wanted to hear her tell it.

“Maybe I do mind.” In the couple of seconds he took his eyes off the road in front of him, he probably saw the flash of pain in her eyes. She wasn’t going to hide it. “What are you doing, Locke? Why the personal question all of a sudden?”

He shrugged one shoulder and flicked his wrist so his watch was straight again. “Just making conversation, getting to know someone I work with better.”

“I was so good I was getting approached by swimwear companies, board shops that franchise all the way to New Jersey. Then, bam, I get hit by a swell and my knee kisses the bottom of the ocean while my leg is twisted...” She shook her head. “There was something down there. I still don’t know if it was an old board or wreckage from something. All I know is the pain was so bad I wanted them to cut my leg off. I’m pretty sure I screamed at everyone on that beach and cried uncontrollably until they all walked away in embarrassment, even my sister. I was so out of it with pain I don’t remember.

“She made sure I knew, though. Told me all about how I screamed in her face to get away from me. I was in the hospital nearly a week, and she didn’t come to see me. Then when I got out, she was gone for days, busy studying. When I did see her, she’d barely talk to me.” Alana took a breath. “We were never the same after that.”

* * *

Locke hardly knew what to say. “She didn’t know it was the pain talking, not you?”

Alana shrugged.

“And now you’re back home?”

“Now I’m back.”

Neither of them said much on the drive to the airport, though Locke made a few calls on the car’s speakerphone. Alana made notes on her phone for him and sent emails to update their team.

In a break of quiet, her phone rang. “Your neighbor?”

“Nope.”

“Your sister?”

“Nope.” She answered it. “Mikio Adachi. How are you?” Alana sent Locke a smile as she spoke. They were a good team.

Secret Service work was a team effort, and not just those standing between the president and whatever lone gunman wanted to kill him this week. Their biggest nightmare was a threat that originated with a group. Multiple points of attack, an IED or some other split-second attack that cared nothing for collateral damage.

It was a dangerous world they lived in, and the Secret Service was in the thick of it. Not like frontline soldiers who were shot at every day, but the threat to their lives was very real. Like a police officer who left for work not knowing if today was the day he might not come home.

“Thanks, Mikio. I’ll find out what the boss wants to do and get back to you.” She hung up. “Okay, so that was interesting. Mikio Adachi was in my graduating class in high school. Everyone knew his dad and his uncle were yakuza. Guess it runs in the family. He said he’s the boss now, just volunteered it up like it’s no big deal.”

“Does he know you’re Secret Service?”

“Yes. Though I don’t know how.” She frowned. “It was like two old friends chatting. I’m not sure why he’d be like that with me. It was a little weird.”

The guy probably thought he had a shot at a relationship with her. Like that would make him more powerful, getting a Secret Service agent in his pocket—and his life. “And the yakuza guy we saw at Beatrice’s house?”

“That was where things went downhill. Mikio said he couldn’t be sure which of his men it was, even though I gave him a pretty good description.” She made a face as Locke pulled into the airport and passed through security.

The staff knew Locke’s face, so he only had to flash his badge ID and up went the gate. He drove around the building. “Once we look at mug shots and identify the guy, we’ll be able to visit this Mikio and get a lot more specific.”

“He did say he hadn’t heard of anything going on regarding the president’s visit. Though he mentioned he had enough problems with his guys. He wasn’t surprised we saw one at a murder scene, but he hasn’t been all that attentive to whispers circling outside his people.”

“So if there is a plot, this guy hasn’t heard about it.”

“I can talk to him again, find out if there’s anyone else on this island worth talking to.”

Locke parked beside their other vehicles and pulled the team in for one last briefing. Alana wasn’t the only woman on Secret Service protection detail, but he knew she didn’t know the other—much older—female agent all that well. He talked them through what had happened and got their reports on every person they had seen. Each pair had emailed him after their visits, but Locke never discounted the personal telling of an experience. He saw things in the inflections and their emotions that he never saw in the body of an email. The two could hardly be compared.

“Okay, you all know where you’re supposed to be.”

Each team member had a position for the president’s arrival. They all hooked up earpieces to their belt radios and checked that communications were working. It was a complicated setup that took all the time from when they arrived at the airport until the plane arrived, and they were each only a piece of the puzzle.

Alana walked beside him as they left the group. “Do you think it’s weird no one else on our team had problems with their visits while we found a dead woman and a missing man?”

“Sure, it’s weird, but whether it means anything is another matter. There’s nothing we can do about it this minute. We run the president’s arrival just like we do everything else. By the book. Stick to what you know. Remember your training, and if something happens, we’ll all deal with it. All of us, together.”

Alana nodded.

“When you get a minute later on, call Officer Morton. Find out if the cops discovered what that call in Beatrice’s history relates to. Maybe they’ll know whose number it is, because I certainly don’t believe she’s answering an ad for work at a gun shop like Brian Wells. It’s a solid link between them, and the police have the jurisdiction to look it up. If we prove there’s a link, then it’ll help us when they find Brian Wells.”

“Okay, I can do that.” She looked relieved, probably because he hadn’t asked her to call Ray.

“And don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”

They walked toward the tarmac as the plane came into view. The sleek lines of Air Force One gleamed in the setting sun as the plane’s brakes engaged and the president’s aircraft descended to the tarmac. It was a textbook landing, the arrival of the president signaling Locke’s team’s switch from preparation to action as they aided in guarding POTUS on his vacation.