put thousands of miles between herself and the McCays? She’d never lived in the United States outside Texas, and a little niggling fear of the unknown made her heart skip a beat as she envisioned going to a completely strange place. Not just the difference between Houston and Fort Worth, but completely different. Yes, she’d visited South America as a young child with her missionary parents, but that was a long time ago—Texas had been her home ever since she’d started school.
Leaving again hadn’t been an easy decision for Holly to make—she didn’t want to leave. Not just for her own sake but for her boys, too, who had reached the age where they noticed changes in their lives. But the time had come to move on.
She wasn’t really concerned about the Alphabet Killer, despite the fact that the killer was up to the Hs now. All seven of the killer’s victims had long dark hair, and while Holly’s wig was dark, it was very short. Not that she was careless of her safety—she wasn’t going to risk being the exception to the killer’s rule.
But she wasn’t running from the Alphabet Killer. She was running from the McCays. The McCays...and their attempts on her life.
She hadn’t wanted to admit it at first. But when one near miss had led to a second, then a third, she’d been forced to look at the McCays with suspicious eyes. Someone wanted her dead. Who else could it be? She didn’t have an enemy in the world. But she was the trustee for the twins’ inheritance from Grant. Which meant she controlled the income earned on nearly twenty million dollars. Over and above the cash invested conservatively, the trust also owned stock in Grant’s software company—now being run by others, but still doing well. So the trust had unlimited growth potential.
She’d always known Grant’s parents—especially his mother—were cold and calculating. Grant had known it, too, although they’d never really discussed it—not when they were kids, and not after they were married. It was one of those things they’d just taken for granted. Was that why he hadn’t left them anything in his will? Because he knew they were more interested in the fortune he’d earned from his breakthrough software design than they were in him or their grandsons?
She had no proof the McCays were trying to kill her, though. Nothing to take to the police except a growing certainty it couldn’t be anyone else. Especially after the McCays tried to gain custody of the twins through the courts and had lied about Holly in their depositions—warning bells had gone off loud and clear. But even if she’d gone to the police, what would they have said? Those near misses could have been a coincidence. Accidents. The McCays were solid, middle-class, upstanding, churchgoing citizens. The salt of the earth. Or at least that was the image they projected. How could she even think of making a slanderous accusation against them...especially for such a heinous crime as attempted murder?
Which was why she’d packed up the bare necessities three weeks before Christmas, buckled her sons into their baby car seats and headed north toward the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex with fierce determination. She hadn’t really had a plan—plans could wait, she’d told herself—but she knew she had to put herself out of reach of her in-laws until she had time to think things through. She’d thought she could lose herself in Texas’s second-largest metropolitan area.
But she wasn’t a criminal on the lam, and she had no idea how to go about getting a fake ID. Not to mention she couldn’t carry huge wads of cash with her in lieu of using her credit and debit cards. She had to withdraw money from the bank periodically—a bank account she’d opened with her real social security number and driver’s license.
She’d moved a week after she’d opened the new bank account—as she’d moved every time she got the feeling the McCays were getting close. But she hadn’t switched banks. She’d picked the Cattleman’s Bank of Fort Worth precisely because it had hundreds of branches throughout the DFW area, including small branches in grocery stores. And Holly had used many of them to throw the McCays off the scent...assuming they were still trying to track her down. But she had to assume that. She didn’t dare assume otherwise.
Which meant her time in tiny Rosewood, right next door to Granite Gulch, where Peg lived, had finally come to an end. Rosewood was so small she’d thought the McCays would never find her in this out-of-the-way place, since she was still paying cash for everything and varying which bank branches she was using to withdraw that cash.
She loved the small-town atmosphere here, and after she’d made friends with Peg at the Laundromat—thank God Peg’s washing machine broke down that day!—she’d started to feel at home. So she’d convinced herself she was safe. But for the past three days she’d had...well...the willies, she told herself, for lack of a better term. A feeling she was being watched. Followed.
It could be the Alphabet Killer, she supposed. But she didn’t think so. Either way was a disaster in the making, and she wasn’t going to stick around to find out for sure one way or the other.
Holly stashed two suitcases into the rear of her SUV, then headed back to the rooming house for another load.
She held the door to her room open with one foot as she picked up a box of toys and books, then tried to scream and dropped the box when a tall blond man in a black Stetson loomed in the doorway.
A large hand covered her mouth, stifling her voice, and all Holly could think of in that instant was No! No, she wasn’t going to be a victim. She wasn’t going to let herself be raped or murdered or—
She tore at the hand covering her mouth, but the man plastered her against the wall inside her room and kicked the door shut behind him. Then just held her prisoner with his body as she desperately tried to free herself. She gave up trying to fight the hand that muzzled her and went for his eyes instead. But he ducked his head, placing his mouth against her ear as he said in a deep undertone, “Stop it, Holly! I’m not going to hurt you—I’m trying to save your life. Peg Merrill’s my sister-in-law.”
She froze. Her heart was still beating like a snare drum, but she stopped fighting at Peg’s name. And when she did that, she realized the stranger wasn’t using her immobility to his advantage. She tried to ask a question, but the hand over her mouth prevented her.
“If I take my hand away, are you going to scream?” he asked, still in that same deep undertone. Holly shook her head slightly and was surprised, yet not surprised, when he did just that—he removed his hand. But it hovered near her face, as if he’d clamp it back in place if she screamed.
She swallowed against the dry throat, which terror had induced, then whispered, “Who are you?”
“Chris Colton. And yes,” he answered before she could ask, “Peg’s really my sister-in-law.”
“I don’t understand. Why are you here? Why did you force your way into my room?”
An enigmatic expression crossed his face, and he looked as if he was of two minds about answering those questions. “If I let you go, are you going to run for it? Or are you going to give me a chance to explain?”
A tiny dart of humor speared through her, despite the dregs of terror that still clung to her body. “You’d catch me before I ran three steps,” she said drily. “So I guess I have no choice but to listen to what you have to say.”
He surprised her again by laughing softly, but “Smart woman” was all he said. He took a step backward, then another and another, slowly. As if he was expecting her to make a break for it. But Holly wasn’t stupid. If he was there to kill her, she’d be dead already—her strength was no match for his. And if he was there to rape her, he’d never have let her go.
Besides, she’d felt the bulge of his gun in
