if that happened to it.”
“Hey, it isn’t your fault. It was probably some thoughtless kid, or somebody with a kid’s intelligence anyway, just looking for a little stupid fun. Could have happened anywhere, no matter who was driving.”
Holly seemed to calm down a little. “I still feel bad. You drive such nice cars, and keep them up so well. It isn’t fair that somebody would do this to one of them.”
Jake shrugged. “A whole lot of life isn’t fair. Now let’s have lunch and afterward I’ll go down to the parking garage and take a look. It might not be as bad as you’re making it out to be.”
Her dubious expression said that it was going to be bad, but Jake still wasn’t prepared for the depth of the damage when he stood in the garage half an hour later. The gouge was deep, and ran an easy eight feet across the front fender and both passenger side doors. There was no way this could have been anything but a deliberate, malicious act.
He went back up to the office where Holly was still cleaning up the remains of their lunch. She hadn’t done more than pick at hers, even though Jake had tried to reassure her that this was no big deal. He tried to stay nonchalant even as he asked her questions now.
“Anybody parked next to you on the passenger side when you went in?”
“Nobody. I remember, because there was still snow in the space as if no one had been in it for a while. Even when I came out, there were no fresh tracks over there.”
“Did you happen to see any vehicles peel out in a hurry?” Jake was forming a picture in his mind, and it wasn’t pretty.
“Hard to tell. In this kind of weather there’s always somebody seeing what their truck or SUV will do, the old man against machine thing.” Holly had lived here for most of her life, Jake knew. She was familiar with the macho contests that seemed to go on every time it snowed. “I don’t know, maybe…”
“Go on. It doesn’t hurt to be wrong once in a while.”
Her brow wrinkled. “I’m not sure. There might have been a dark-blue SUV pulling out across the street. If I didn’t know better, I would have said the driver of that one didn’t want me to see him.”
“It’s something. Not anything I’d bring to the police, or even put on the insurance report I’m going to file, but it’s something.” It was the kind of something, Jake decided, that made him want to talk to Rose D’Arcy again. And this time he’d tell her that her suspicions that somebody might be out to get him could be on the money after all.
Chapter Three
“I still say this is ridiculous.” Jake’s expression wasn’t quite as grumpy as a frown or a glare, but there was a serious cast to his features that Holly wasn’t used to.
She sat at her desk, determined to stick to her guns. “Sorry, this isn’t negotiable. I was the one driving when Red got all scarred up. I’ll handle all the insurance paperwork. Just give me your card and I’ll do it.”
“With everything else you have to do?” Jake waved an open hand over her desk, highlighting the piles of paperwork, print requests, sticky-note-covered documents and more that kept them from seeing the surface.
“And your workload, we both know, is going to let you handle this before next Christmas?” Holly shook her head. “Face it, Jake, you have to admit I’m right this time. Or at least that my way makes more sense. If you wait until you handle this yourself, it will be February, at least. And if you wait that long, you could be inviting rust spots on Red.”
Holly was pretty sure she had him now. While she might not understand what drove her boss to the endless round of social engagements he usually went to, she did know one thing: the two vehicles that he drove were far more important to him than any of the women he went out with. It wasn’t a priority she would have chosen in her own life, but it was Jake’s.
Jake harrumphed some, and pulled up the side chair next to her desk. Holly felt a twinge of surprise; he never did this unless there was a serious discussion coming on, and she wasn’t sure that even repainting one of his precious vehicles rated that.
“Okay, I’ll let you do it your way,” he said, settling into the chair. “But you have to promise me something.”
“What?” Even for Jake, she wasn’t about to make promises without hearing the details.
“That you’ll be careful while you’re out in public with Red. And it’s not because I’m afraid for the car, Holly. I’m getting a little bit worried for you.”
Now it was her turn to scoff. “What for?”
“It’s the case we’re working on. When Rose was here a week ago, she warned me that somebody working for Escalante might target me because of what I’m doing. I didn’t believe her then, but I’m starting to think she was right. And I don’t want my problems spilling over into your life.”
Holly blinked. This just hadn’t entered her mind before. “Okay, I’ll be careful, even though I think you and Rose are probably getting worked up over nothing. You were probably right when you said it was a kid that did this, or just somebody being ignorant.”
“I hope it is. But until I can be sure of something like that, I want you to look out for yourself. Human beings are worth more than anything with an engine, Holly, and I want you to remember that.”
“I will.” It wasn’t a sentiment she was prepared to hear from her boss. Especially not said with such warmth and conviction, those blue eyes boring into her in a way that made her feel extremely warm. Suddenly it was time to change the subject to almost anything else.
“So, what’s the next step in taking down Alistair Barclay?” The project was taking up more and more of Jake’s waking hours, and because of that, her life as well.
Jake shrugged. “You tell me. The man might have been unfamiliar with computers to a large degree, but somebody working for him was very, very good with them. And the programs that someone wrote to hide and encrypt Barclay’s personal files are good. I keep thinking there’s something I’m missing that could help me unlock all this, but I don’t know what it is.”
Jake was already looking through his open office door, anxious now to get back to the puzzle. “Go in there and work on it. I’ll tell you if I’m going any farther than the copier in the hall, okay?”
“I expect no less.” And whatever else she knew, Holly was sure that she’d do whatever Jake Montgomery expected of her. He headed to his office, and she went back to untangling the piles of notes and paperwork on her desk.
As she plowed through the piles of stuff, sifting out the important tasks and taking care of them, setting aside what she could for later, an idea began to form in Holly’s mind.
By eleven that morning she’d gotten through the worst of the piles of paperwork on her desk, and made the phone calls and e-mails that were necessary to take care of the things that came next. She knocked on Jake’s partially closed door. “I’m going to the drive-though insurance claims office and I have one other stop to make on some errands. So I’ll need your car keys. And yes, before you ask, I have my cell phone.” She hadn’t worked for Jake this long without being able to answer at least half the routine questions before he asked them.
