The Warlord Returns novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Portrait
At the Carrie Thurmond Memorial Gala, Jo stands in front of the dead woman's portrait when Margaret orders it taken down, and the new security guard tells her he is Carrie's brother.
The portrait of my dead best friend was six feet tall, and Margaret Ellsworth wanted it gone before the champagne.
I was at the edge of the ballroom with a tray of crab puffs.
I heard her say it from ten feet away.
"Take it down," she told two men in hotel vests.
"Wyatt's fiancée will be on that stage in an hour. She shouldn't have to look at it."
Nobody moved for a second.
Then the men started toward the easel.
The easel held Carrie.
Carrie Thurmond, twenty-four forever, laughing at someone just outside the frame.
It was the picture from her desk at the Harbor Fund.
I had taken it myself, the week before she died.
I put the tray on a stranger's table and walked across the room.
I stood in front of the portrait with my back against the gold frame.
"No," I said.
Margaret turned. Her silver hair didn't move.
"Joanna." She said my name like she was reading it off a bill. "You serve drinks. Go serve drinks."
"It's the Carrie Thurmond Memorial Gala," I said. "It's on the banner. It's on the invitations. You can't have a memorial without her."
A few of the guests had stopped talking.
Margaret smiled at them, and then she stopped smiling at me.
"Move, or I will have you moved."
"Then you'll have to move me in front of all of them."
I was shaking, and I hoped nobody could see it.
Fourteen months ago I had sat in a lawyer's office and said Carrie was drunk and sad.
I had signed my name under it.
I was not going to stand by while they took her face off the wall too.
One of the hotel men touched my arm.
"Miss, please."
"Don't."
A new voice spoke from behind him.
"Let her stand there."
The man in the hotel vest let go of me.
I looked past him.
The security guard from the north door had crossed the room without my noticing.
He was tall and broad, in the black suit and earpiece all of them wore.
He had short dark hair and a scar through his left eyebrow.
He wasn't looking at Margaret.
He was looking at the portrait.
"Who asked you?" Margaret said.
"Nobody, ma'am." His voice was low and level. "But it's a memorial. I'd hate for the press to ask why the picture came down."
The press.
There were three photographers by the bar, and one of them had already raised his camera.
Margaret saw it too.
Her jaw tightened.
"Leave it," she told the men. Then she looked at me, slowly, top to bottom. "We'll discuss your manners later."
She walked away in a cloud of perfume.
My knees were going soft.
The guard stayed where he was.
I kept my back to the frame because I didn't trust my legs to carry me anywhere else.
Then the lights dimmed, and a spotlight found the stage.
Wyatt Ellsworth came out to applause.
He was thirty-three and golden, and he walked like the room belonged to him.
He had been Carrie's fiancé for eight months.
He tapped the microphone.
"Thank you all for coming tonight to remember a remarkable woman."
He paused so everyone could look sad.
"Carrie believed in giving veterans a home. That is why every dollar raised tonight goes to the Harbor Fund, in her name."
Applause.
"And Carrie would have wanted me to be happy," Wyatt said, softer now.
"So tonight, with her blessing, I want you to meet the woman who helped me find my way."
A pretty woman in a green gown stepped into the light.
She took his hand.
On her finger was a square emerald.
The room clapped louder.
Wyatt kissed her cheek, then looked out over the crowd and found the portrait.
He lifted his glass toward it.
"To Carrie."
Everyone drank.
I felt sick.
I turned my head and found the guard watching me from three feet away.
His gray eyes didn't look like a hired man's.
They looked like a man doing hard arithmetic.
"You're the only one in this room who didn't drink to her," he said quietly.
"I don't drink on shift."
"That's not why."
I didn't answer.
He took a half step closer, so no one could hear.
"She used to say you were the only person in Baltimore who'd fight a bus for her."
My blood stopped.
"Who are you?"
"Jack Thurmond," he said. "Carrie's brother."
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