Lover Beware

anything wrong, was there?
    The dogs roared a vicious challenge. The animals were in the front yard, inside the fence, yet they were hurling their bodies against the front door so hard the wood threatened to splinter. Damon did as Elle commanded and phoned the sheriff’s office for help.
    No one screamed. Most women might have screamed under the circumstances but none of them did. When he carried the tray into the living room, all four of the Drake sisters were sitting quietly in their chairs. He ignored the two men standing in the middle of the room with guns drawn. Where before, when confronted with guns and violence, he had panicked, this time he remained quite calm.
    He knew they were killers. He knew what to expect. And this time, he knew he wouldn’t allow them to hurt the Drake sisters. It was very simple to him. It didn’t matter to him if he died, he needed the women to survive and live in the world. They were the ones who mattered, all that mattered. The women would remain alive.
    Damon set the tray on the coffee table and handed each of the sisters a cup of tea before turning to face the two men. He remembered them in vivid detail. The man with the swollen jaw had taken pleasure in torturing him. Damon was glad he had swung his cane hard enough to fracture the jaw.
    Damon straightened slowly. These men had murdered for the knowledge Damon carried in his brain. They had crippled him permanently and changed his entire life. Now they stood in Sarah’s home, sheer blasphemy on their part. They had entered through the sliding-glass door and had left it open behind them.
    Outside, the sea appeared calm, but he could see, in the distance, small frothy waves gathering and rolling with a building boom on the open water. He felt power moving him, a connection with the women through Sarah. Beloved, mysterious Sarah. He waited while the women sipped their tea. Stalling for time, knowing exactly what he would do.
    “You two seem to keep turning up,” Damon finally greeted. He took two steps to his right, closer to Sarah, turning slightly sideways so she could see the small gun he had taken from the hidden drawer where Elle had said he would find it. “Do you not have homes and families to go to?”
    “Shut up, Wilder. You know what we want. This time we have someone you care about. When I put a gun to her head I think you’re going to tell me what I want to know.”
    Damon looked past the man to the rolling sea. The wind was gusting, chopping the surface into white foam. The waves crested higher. The dogs continued roaring with fury and shaking the foundations of the living room door. Damon calmly raked his fingers through his hair, his gaze on a distant point beyond the men. The sisters drank the hot sweet revitalizing tea. And the power moved through Damon stronger than ever. Around each man a strange shadow flitted back and forth. A black circle that seemed to surround first one, then the other. At times the shadow appeared to have a human form. Most of the time it was insubstantial.
    “Would you care for a cup of tea?” Sarah asked politely. “We have plenty.”
    “Do sit down,” Kate invited. She shifted position, a subtle movement hardly noticeable, but it put her body slightly between the guns and Hannah.
    “This gun is real,” the man with the swollen jaw snapped. “This isn’t a party.” He grinned evilly at his partner. “Although when it’s over we might take one or two of the women with us for the road.”
    Sarah looked bored. “It’s very obvious neither of you is the brains in this venture. I can’t imagine that the man in jail is, either. Who in the world would hire such comedians to go looking for national secrets? It’s almost ludicrous. Are you in trouble with your boss and he’s looking to get rid of you?”
    “You have a smart mouth, lady; it won’t be so hard to shoot you.”
    “Do have some tea, at least we can be civil,” Abbey said sweetly. There was a strange cadence to her voice, a singsong quality that pulled at the listeners, drew them into her suggestions. “If you’re going to be with us for some time, we may as well enjoy ourselves with a fine cup of tea first and get to know one another.”
    The air in the room was fresh, almost perfumed, yet smelled of the sea, crisp and clean and salty. The two men looked confused, blinking rapidly, and exchanged a long bewildered frown. The man with the swollen jaw actually lowered his gun and took a step toward the