if you found Holly, Mr. Colton, but...it’s been a week and we haven’t heard from you. My wife...well, she wanted me to call you and see if you’ve made any progress.”
“Not to worry, Mr. McCay,” Chris assured him, his mind working swiftly. “I tracked Holly to Grand Prairie, but she gave me the slip.” He deliberately named Grand Prairie because Holly had stayed there...just not recently. And Grand Prairie was southeast of Fort Worth, nowhere near Granite Gulch. “I’m hot on her trail, though. I think she might have moved northeast to Irving.” Another place Holly really had stayed...briefly. “Just sit tight, and I’ll let you know as soon as I have something concrete.”
“It’s not just our grandchildren at stake, you know. They still haven’t caught the Alphabet Killer and...well...you see how it is. Holly’s name begins with H.”
Yeah, Chris thought. Keep beating that drum. How stupid do you take me for? “I don’t think you have to worry about that, Mr. McCay. Both Grand Prairie and Irving are closer to Dallas than to Fort Worth, and the Alphabet Killer isn’t striking anywhere near there.”
“Okay, well...just remember, if you find Holly, we don’t want you to do anything to scare her off. Just let us know and we’ll fly up from Houston immediately. If we can just see that the boys are okay...if we can just talk to Holly...”
“You bet,” Chris told him. “I’ll keep you posted. And don’t worry, Mr. McCay. Holly won’t slip through my fingers next time.” He disconnected just as a sound from the doorway made him swing around. Holly stood there, white as a ghost, a twin balanced on each hip.
“You...you said you believed me about the McCays,” Holly managed, despite the way her heart was pounding so hard she could barely breathe.
Chris tucked his phone back in his pocket. “I do.”
“Then why... What were you telling my father-in-law? It sounded like you—”
He cut her off. “Just throwing him off the scent, Holly. I had to tell him something, and part of the truth is better than an outright lie—I did track you to Grand Prairie...after I’d already located you in Rosewood. And I wasn’t lying...you did move on to Irving after you left Grand Prairie. But you only stayed there two weeks, too.”
“How do know that?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
One corner of his mouth curved upward in a half smile. “I told you, I’m damned good at what I do. After Irving you moved to Mansfield, then Arlington. After Arlington you stayed almost a month in Lake Worth before you moved here.”
He walked toward her as he said this, and she backed away on trembling legs, clutching Ian and Jamie as if they were talismans. I was so careful, she thought feverishly. How could he know all that?
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until Chris gave her an “are you kidding me?” look and said, “You make a lousy criminal, Holly. But that’s a compliment, not an insult.”
When Holly bumped into the hallway wall outside the bedroom doorway, she realized she was trapped. But all Chris did was take Ian from her, hefting him under one arm like a football and gently swinging him until Ian laughed at the game. “Time for your nap, bud,” Chris told him. “You and your brother.” His blue eyes met Holly’s brown ones, and there was a gentleness in his face. An honesty she couldn’t help but believe. “I’m not going to hurt you, Holly. Ever. And I’d never do anything to hurt your sons.”
* * *
Holly was so mentally exhausted and emotionally drained that after she read the twins a story, sang them two songs and tucked them up in their cribs, she lay down on the bed, telling herself she’d rest for just a moment. Then she’d unpack their suitcases, wash the lunch dishes, put away the dry-goods groceries she and Chris had bought and decide what to make for dinner. But before she realized it, she was out like a light.
At first her dreams were of happier times, when the twins were newborns and Grant was there. He’d been so proud and nervous at the same time, like most new fathers. Then her dreams segued into nightmares, starting with the devastating news of Grant’s death...the lawyers trying to probate Grant’s will and the McCays attempting to contest it...followed swiftly by the McCays trying to seize custody of the twins, along with control of the trust Grant had set up for his sons. A dazed and bereft Holly had been forced to fight, not only for custody and to carry out Grant’s last wishes but for her good name, too.
That time in her life had been a waking nightmare. She’d won the preliminary battles in the courts and thought she was finally on firm ground...until those three close calls. Any one of them could have been an accident, but three? After the last one, when she’d shown up at the McCays’ house shaken and trembling to pick up the twins, she’d sensed the McCays’ surprise...that she was still alive. And she’d known in that instant they were trying to kill her.
In the way of dreams, Holly suddenly found herself at the Rosewood Rooming House with Chris. He was holding her, but not the way he had in real life. This time his strong arms were surrounding her in comforting fashion as he pressed her head against the solid wall of his oh-so-warm chest and promised her she was safe. “I won’t let them hurt you,” he said, referring to her in-laws. “And I won’t let them get custody of Ian and Jamie.”
The sense of relief she felt was incredible, and all out of proportion to her real life. Holly didn’t subscribe to the theory that a woman couldn’t take care of herself, that she needed a man to look after her. She was a software engineer, for goodness’ sake! She’d supported herself after her missionary parents had been killed in one of their trips to South America—leaving very little in the way of life insurance—and had put herself through college. After graduation she’d held down a challenging job for NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake City, Texas, before she’d taken maternity leave when the twins were born. She didn’t need “rescuing” from her life...as a general rule.
But that was before the McCays had tried to kill her. The situation she found herself in now was so totally outside her experience, so much like one of the thrillers Grant had loved to read but that Holly had always avoided, that she recognized she couldn’t do it all on her own. Single mother? Check. Guardian of her children’s financial future? Check. Putting attempted murderers behind bars? Not so much.
Maybe that was why when Chris had held Holly in the shelter of his arms in her dream and promised she and the boys were safe, she’d believed him...because she wanted to believe him. Because she needed to believe him.
Then he’d kissed her.
No one had ever kissed her that way, with an intensity that shattered everything she’d thought she knew about men and women. Chris’s kiss exploded through her body, as if she were gunpowder and he were a lighted match. He was hard everywhere she was soft, and it made her want to get closer...impossibly closer. Her nipples tightened and her insides melted as Chris tilted her head back and his lips trailed down, down, to brush against the incredibly sensitive hollow of her throat. Then lower.
Holly moaned in her sleep and curled onto her side, pressing her legs together against the throbbing she felt there. And the dream suddenly vanished.
* * *
She woke to the mouthwatering aroma of baked chicken, Ian and Jamie’s chorus of “Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma” as they
