LITMIR.BIZ

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we talking about, and just what kind of research did you do?”

      “Not very much,” Arden said. “Miz Greta had a…a personal curiosity and asked for my help with some reading. I found a few books about secret societies in general, but this one—they’re called the Comi…?”

      “Comitatus,” provided Greta softly.

      “The Comitatus were hardly ever mentioned. I went online to some conspiracy Web sites and posted questions, but almost everyone denied ever hearing of them. Except of course for the teenagers who pretend to know everything but can’t tell you anything. Then I found a conspiracy buff who seems to be local—he calls himself Vox07. He offered to meet me with the names of some area members of the society if I would trade information, who knows what kind…That’s as far as I got before last night. Why do you keep looking out the window?”

      “Never hurts to be careful,” said Val. “Especially when—assuming there really is a Comitatus—anyone from a bookstore clerk to this Vox person could have let on that you were asking questions. Way to be stealthy there, Leigh.”

      Arden resisted the urge to make a face. Val wasn’t usually paranoid. She was just…careful.

      Arden hated thinking she might have cause.

      And why was the dog spending so much time in the kitchen, with company here? Smith had once told her something about dogs and security…. “Where’s Dido?”

      Neither Greta nor Val understood her non sequitur at first, but Miz Greta called, “Dido! Come!”

      The cocker spaniel scrambled happily into the parlor, wiggling her pleasure at being called…But she also cocked her head back toward the kitchen, as if torn. Why?

      Dido loved company!

      “Check her breath,” suggested Arden, standing suddenly.

      Val was on her feet even before Greta—barely able to hold her exited dog still long enough to open her mouth—exclaimed, “Strudel? Bad dog! How did you get into the—?”

      By then, Arden and Val were heading down the narrow, wood-floored hallway past the staircase and library, toward the kitchen—aiming for stealth, which is why Arden had left her pumps back in the parlor. She dropped back a pace only when she saw Val draw a gun from a small-of-the-back holster. Texas had a carry law—and Southern girls were well versed in gun safety, too.

      Val practically rolled around the kitchen doorway, weapon first, like the cop she’d once been. She scanned, then crossed the large room with Arden following, past its yawning fireplace and shelves, toward one of three doors. She pushed open one, revealing a second set of stairs blocked with boxes and storage, and shook her head before closing the door to glance back at Arden. “Stairs?” she mouthed in surprise.

      “Servants’ stairway,” Arden whispered back, moving to the 1950s stove to check the pan of strudel. Too much pastry was gone, and it looked like someone had been serving with their fingers.

      Dogs make the best security systems. That’s what Smith had once told her. Except for the bribing-with-food part. He might have driven her crazy sometimes—more often than not, truth be told—but he’d always made her feel safe.

      “Someone was here,” she said softly.

      “What’s wrong?” called Miz Greta from the hallway, her voice quavering in a way that hurt Arden’s heart. “Did you find someone?”

      “Not that we can see,” Arden reassured her brightly. “You just keep hold of Dido and let us make sure, all right?” Careful not to cross Val’s line of fire, she stepped to the middle door, this one obviously leading onto the covered porch. Its hook-and-eye latch hung open…Was Greta that lax about security? Around here?

      Crouching, Arden pushed the door open. Gun first, Val swept the porch.

      Again—nobody.

      The friends exchanged pregnant glances, torn between amusement at their Charlie’s Angels routine and the fact that there was one…last…hiding place.

      In her stockinged feet, breath shallow from the risk, Arden crossed to the third doorway. Probably the pantry or the larder.

      Val held up one finger, to create a count. Then two.

      At three, Arden pulled the door open. From behind the shelter it made, she saw Val feint back and shout, “Freeze!”

      Dido began to bark wildly—

      And a second gun poked past the door as a too-familiar voice, both pleasant and deadly, said, “It’s August. This place isn’t air-conditioned. I couldn’t freeze if I wanted to.”

      Smith? Arden leaned past the door to peek at the man she’d immediately recognized, both from his voice and from his truly inappropriate sense of humor. His eyes didn’t look that mischievous just now, but his jaw was set even more stubbornly than usual—and his aim on her best friend didn’t waver.

      Val aimed right back.

      Over a year with no word, and now Smith had shown up twice in less than twenty-four hours? As ever, Arden took refuge in hard-won composure.

      “Hey, Smith,” she drawled coolly at the gunman, deliberately imitating his cocky greeting of the night before. “How’ve you been?”

      Chapter 3

      Well.

      This wasn’t how Smith would’ve preferred to kick off his next meeting with Arden. Not that he’d actually meant her to see him again. Despite following her here. But…still.

      He kept her Latina friend in his sights—mainly because she still had him in hers—but said, “Arden Leigh, as I live and breathe. Seems like forever, huh?” What with them replaying last night and all. Since he didn’t want to take his gaze off the lady looking to shoot him, he didn’t put a hand to Arden’s pretty cheek. Instead, he made do with an air smooch. “Kiss, kiss.”

      “And here I thought you didn’t like guns.” How could she put such thick disapproval into such a sweetly phrased statement? She was right, of course. He didn’t. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t hit what he aimed at, or that—after seeing a Comitatus flunky holding her at knifepoint the previous night, and after listening to Mitch’s partial recording of the Comitatus agenda—he wouldn’t carry one until he knew she was safe.

      Which she wasn’t, here.

      The old lady in the hallway said, “Blades are more honorable than guns, don’t you think?”

      That surprised the hell out of him, so much that he glanced away from the muzzle of the Latina’s Saturday Night Special to the older woman’s pale gaze, which seemed to look not just at him but through him. More honorable. Those were almost the exact words the Comitatus leaders used when giving a teenaged boy his ceremonial knife upon entry into the society. Blades were personal. Blades were honorable. Guns might be more practical, but if ever someone of Comitatus blood outright betrayed his brethren, he would be shown the honor of dying by blade.

      How could she know?

      Only when she smiled down at the dog, wizened and wise, did Smith grasp his rookie mistake. The old woman hadn’t known—not about his own involvement with the Comitatus, anyway—until he’d reacted.

      Blades. “Honor’s a luxury some of us can’t afford,” he said carefully.

      “Obviously.” Arden glanced pointedly between the two guns. “Will you two please put those nasty things away?”

      “Her first,” said Smith at the same time Arden’s friend said, “Him first.”

      “At the count of three.” Arden made it a velvet-gloved order. “One.”

      The tall, dark woman narrowed her eyes in challenge.

      “Two.”

      Smith wished he was staring

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