Page 71 of Delta Force Defender

“We keep the outside looking as down-market as possible,” Lindsay said, sounding defensive.

“The Francis factor,” Caradine said, nodding as if that made sense.

She noticed Isaac studying her from inside the screen door. “The man my sister was supposed to marry liked calling herprincess. He liked her helpless, surrounded by luxuries, all of which he could take away whenever he felt like it.”

“What he really liked,” Lindsay added with a brittle laugh, “was making me pay for them.”

Isaac watched as a very dark look passed between the sisters, while beside him, Koa looked murderous. The rest of the team came in from the jungle then, ambling across the clearing like they’d been out for a hike. And Isaac had been doing this a long time. But he still enjoyed the automatic look of alarm people got when they were wise enough to find an Alaska Force team intimidating.

Templeton broke the tension almost immediately as he strode onto the lanai, booming out analohato Koa and immediately lapsing into a mix of English, pidgin, and Hawaiian.

“My mother always said that leaving Oahu was the biggest mistake of her life,” Templeton told Koa. He said something in Hawaiian that made the other man laugh. “From the islands to Mississippi, if you can believe it.”

Koa mock-shuddered. “Sounds like death to me, brother.”

“Good thing I resurrect well,” Templeton replied blandly.

They both laughed and clapped each other on the back, lightening the mood considerably. It seemedalmost natural for all of them to sit down on the lanai together, but this time more as guests than unwanted intruders.

As far as Koa was concerned, anyway. Isaac wasn’t sure Lindsay was on board.

“The only question I’m really interested in,” Koa said when they were all seated, “is how this ends. I want my family safe.”

“I’m interested in that question, too,” Isaac agreed.

“I’d like it to end,” Caradine agreed. Too cautiously, Isaac thought. “But I’m also very interested in who’s doing this.”

She and Lindsay looked at each other then, and Isaac didn’t like it.

“Is there something you two aren’t telling us?” he asked.

Lindsay glanced at Caradine beside her, then frowned at Isaac. “There are probably a million things I’m not telling you. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

Caradine smirked. “Isaac is used to a greater level of deference, Linds. If you genuflected, that wouldn’t go amiss. That’s the level of reverence he prefers.”

Her sister didn’t grin, but the light in her eyes changed in a way that was too much like Caradine for Isaac’s peace of mind. “Have you taken up genuflecting? That doesn’t really sound like you.”

“I don’t know how I feel about this,” Templeton said, looking back and forth between the two women.

“Two of them?” Blue laughed. “I know how I feel about it. Freaking terrified.”

Even Jonas looked amused at that.

“If the two of you have thoughts about who’s behind this,” Isaac said, finding it harder than he should have to keep his voice level, “this is the time to share that.”

Again, Caradine and her sister exchanged a look that clearly communicated all kinds of information they had no intention of sharing with everyone else.

“After Phoenix you must have started to think about who it could be,” Isaac pushed.

Lindsay paled a bit at that, but Caradine only scowled. At Isaac.

“Of course,” she said. “But then five years passed. As far as I know, that bomb through the front window of my restaurant was the first sighting we’ve had since then.” She glanced at Lindsay, who nodded. “So the list remains the same. It has to be someone who would benefit from getting rid of my father in the first place. The question then is, Did the call come from inside or outside the house?”

Isaac waited for Templeton or Blue to make the requisite horror-movie joke, but neither one did. Possibly because the real horror was more than enough.

“Everyone thinks we died in that fire, too,” Lindsay said after a moment. “It’s never been much of a stretch to imagine that other people, who are supposedly dead, aren’t.”

“Who do you think would be most likely to hold a grudge that long?” Jonas asked from his place near the wall.

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