Protecting Holly

by Lynn Bulock

  “And good morning to you, too,” Jake piped up. “Can’t you tell that I’ve been home, had one of my mom’s home-cooked dinners and a great night’s sleep, and even a nice workout at the club this morning?” His blue eyes sparkled to match the grin he wore.

  “Maybe, if I look real hard. Did you honestly go over to your mom’s for dinner?” Holly found that part hard to believe. She had been sure that Jake would have stayed late into the evening after finding the key to unlocking Barclay’s secrets.

  “Well, no, I cheated on that part. When I was over there the last time she handed me a stack of frozen dinners she’d made up for me. She said that now that she doesn’t have to worry about how Adam’s eating anymore since he’s married, she only has me to fuss over. Colleen won’t let her.”

  “Figures,” Holly said. “Still, I’m glad you got a hot meal. It makes me feel better about not stopping for bagels or anything this morning.” She looked over to the credenza in surprise. “And you even made coffee yourself?”

  Jake huffed a bit. “I am capable, you know. I’ll admit to having to ask Sara about the filters, but otherwise it came out just fine. I figured that since you’ll have plenty to do today, I could get that much done by myself.”

  “Thanks. Now to get to that pile of sticky notes you’ve already left for me and start getting everything going.” Holly even poured herself a cup of the coffee Jake had made, silently wondering if it would be drinkable. Surprisingly, he could make decent coffee. She thought about telling him that perhaps they should take turns all the time. There was no reason she had to spoil him.

  She smiled as she saw the top note on the pile. “Send Miriam Atwater a dozen roses,” the note said in her boss’s bold hand. It also directed her to tuck a generous gift certificate to the nicest local department store in with the card. So Jake had actually heard what she’d said about Barclay treating his former assistant badly. She hummed a little while she worked through the rest of his directives. Jake was the best boss she could think of possibly working for.

  “I feel silly letting you do this,” Jake said, trying to sound stern. He knew that Holly’s time was less valuable than his right now, especially when he was making such progress on the Barclay files. But she was running so many of his personal errands that whatever life she had otherwise had to have evaporated by now.

  “Can’t be helped,” she said with a shrug, making the Christmas tree pin on her red sweater sparkle. “Besides, I still say that I should be handling all the insurance runaround on your vehicle anyway, since I was the one driving it—”

  “You’ve used that argument enough, Vance. Let’s just say I appreciate this, and I owe you one.”

  She stuck her chin out, looking a little stubborn about letting him cut her off in the middle of her argument. “I still think it’s a shame they don’t have a loaner to give you for the afternoon while they paint your car. If they did you wouldn’t even have to come get me in my Jeep later. You won’t forget, will you?”

  Jake chuckled. “So that’s the real reason you were so unhappy about the loaner not being available. You think I’ll get involved in work and forget to pick you up, don’t you?”

  “It could happen.” She looked a little put out at being caught, but Jake could have told her she was right. It could certainly happen, and he’d have to set the alarm on his watch to make sure it didn’t.

  Only the insistent beeping forty-five minutes later pulled him out of his fog at the computer and made him scramble for his coat and Holly’s car keys, looking up the address of the body shop where she had taken the Escalade.

  Traffic was heavy for a weekday afternoon, and Jake found himself hunting for a parking place on the side street the auto body shop occupied. Nothing was available in the lot there, and the places closest to the shop along the street were taken as well. He had to drive past the place, honking for Holly, who seemed pulled out of some kind of reverie by the sound. He motioned that he’d turn around and get the one spot available across the street, and she nodded. As he did just that, she craned her neck to find an opening in the traffic herself and cross over to where he was pulling over.

  Jake concentrated on parallel parking the unfamiliar vehicle for what seemed like only thirty seconds. Yet as he did so, there was the sound of squealing tires and blaring horns, and he looked up to see Holly fall back toward the curb. Leaving her car still running, the keys in the ignition, he was across the avenue in a flash. “Holly! Are you all right?”

  She sat on the curb between two parked vehicles, rubbing one knee and looking dazed. “I’m okay, I think. I guess that guy just didn’t see me…. He sure headed for me awfully fast.” Jake looked up the street where the taillights of a vehicle that might have been a dark-blue SUV were disappearing rapidly around a corner.

  “I’m afraid he saw you just fine,” he said, trying not to clench both fists. “Let me go shut off your car. Then come on back inside the shop while I make some phone calls. First I’m calling Rose, and then the police department. Somebody truly is out to take me off this case any way they can.” His heart was pounding as if he’d run miles, not just across the street, because Jake Montgomery was having awful thoughts. Someone might be out to unnerve him, but they’d almost harmed Holly instead and that wasn’t going to happen as long as he was drawing breath.

  Chapter Four

  Holly looked at her boss, certain that he had finally sprouted a second head. The man was crazy, and she didn’t think she’d ever say that about Jake. Sure, he could get wrapped up in work, but this kind of overreacting was just not like him. She sat across the table at the Stagecoach Café, where in another example of overreacting, he had insisted that Lidia and Fiona open up just for them, an hour after their normal lunch closing. That was odd enough, but what he’d proposed once they sat down was just out of the question.

  “No,” she told him, trying to make her voice as firm as possible. “I am not leaving the office and going into hiding. You are not leaving the office and going into hiding. Nobody is going to do such a ridiculous thing.”

  Jake’s blue eyes glowed with a fervor she hadn’t seen before, and it made Holly even more rattled than the crazy driver who missed her with his car this afternoon. “I’m not backing down on this one, Holly. You’re going somewhere, and I’m going with you until this trial prep is over or we figure out who’s targeting me. I won’t put you in more danger.”

  The strength of his words made shivers run up her spine. “I don’t really feel like I’m in danger. Surely not enough to turn tail and hide somewhere.” She stirred the cup of cappuccino Aunt Lidia had insisted on making her, heavy on milk and cinnamon. It should have been comforting, but right now Holly wasn’t sure that anything that came in a cup was capable of calming her down.

  Jake’s right eyebrow quirked up in challenge. “Let’s see…so far we’ve been followed at least twice between the office and the courthouse, my vehicle’s been vandalized while you were driving it, and you were nearly run down in front of me. How much more has to happen before you call it danger?”

  When he put it that way, there wasn’t much argument. Still, it sounded like overreacting for Jake to want her to leave. “This seems so cowardly somehow,” she grumbled. “And it’s a definite lack of faith.”

  Jake’s expression hardened even more. “Cowardly? I don’t think so. This is sensible, not cowardly. And faith, the kind of blind faith you’re talking about, is where you and I part company, Holly. I know you’re willing to trust God to keep you safe, but for me, I haven’t seen God patrolling down here with a Beretta.”

  “That’s not the way life works, and you know it, Jake Montgomery.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve seen life work just that way too often to put a lot of trust in this faith business. I know you have that kind of faith, and I know my parents do, but you haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”

  It was on the tip of Holly’s tongue to tell him just how much she’d seen. Still, if she told Jake any more
about her own past, he’d just be more protective of her right now and that was the last thing she wanted. “I don’t think this guy can do anything that the Lord won’t protect me or you from, no matter what you believe. And I still feel that hiding out someplace now just shows a lack of faith in God’s promises of protection.”

  Jake’s chin jutted out. “Fine, then. Feel that way. But prepare to feel that way somewhere else, because we are definitely going to go to a safe house or another protected location until it’s safe to do otherwise.”

  Holly felt her resolve melting faster than the foam on her cappuccino. “You’re not backing down, are you?”

  “Not a chance. Too many people have already shed blood over this case for me to give up now and let Barclay and Escalante think they’ve won. And that’s exactly what it will look like if we let them distract us from putting together the evidence that will convict Barclay in a few short weeks.”

  Now Holly felt even more defeated. Just moments ago she pictured Jake as her defender, a knight in shining armor protecting her from the world. Now it looked like he was protecting the evidence in the Diablo case, and she was just a side issue.

  “So where do we go? My place is out and so is yours,” she said.

  “That’s the truth. If this guy has been tracking us this closely, my loft is the first place he’d look. Besides, it’s no place for a lady.” If she didn’t know better, Holly would have said Jake was blushing. The ruddy cast to his cheeks made him look even more attractive than usual.

  “And my mom would never put up with you moving in, even to protect me. I guess this would be less of an issue if I’d gotten an apartment like I’d planned.” It was long past time for her to move out on her own again, but Holly had put it off for one reason or another for close to two years now. When she’d moved back to Colorado Springs from Ohio, living in the house she’d grown up in was comforting. She’d needed shelter from her own personal storms, and her mom was still getting used to widowhood after Dad lost his battle with cancer. Now they were both at a point where moving on was probably the right thing to do. Maybe once this case was over, Holly thought, she and her mother could sit down and talk the situation through.

  “I doubt that an apartment would solve the problem,” Jake said, breaking into her thoughts. “Whoever he is, he’s probably got your place staked out, too. It wouldn’t be any different whether it was a house or an apartment complex. We need to go someplace more remote and protected. At this point I don’t even want to use any of the bureau safe houses if there’s another alternative.”

  “You’re giving this guy more credit than he probably deserves.” Holly tried to cross her legs under the table, but found the sore spot on her knee where she’d grazed it earlier.

  “Maybe so. But I’d rather give him more credit than less and be sorry about it later. Peter couldn’t ever pinpoint the mole in Escalante’s organization back here in Colorado. For all we know, the guy stalking us could be government, and good at what he does. I’ve got a call in for Rose to see if she’s got any ideas on where to put us.”

  Now that she had stopped rejecting the idea of hiding out altogether, a thought was beginning to grow in Holly’s mind. “What, exactly do we need in this hideout?”

  “Safety. A remote location. And enough tech support to let me get all this evidence squared away while you help me.” Jake’s brow furrowed. “Which is why it’s going to be hard to find a safe house that will meet our needs. They’re just not built to accommodate heavy-duty computer equipment.”

  “What would you say if I told you I had the perfect place?”

  Jake cocked his head. “One you’d actually agree to go to, that meets our needs?”

  “It will if you give me twenty-four hours,” Holly told him. Her mind was racing now with all the different things she had to accomplish. Twenty-four hours would be pushing it, and her brother Mike would skin her alive when she told him what she had in mind.

  “You’ve got it, on one condition. You will not, under any circumstances, be alone at any time in those twenty-four hours. Got it?” His piercing blue gaze made her shiver again. Holly wrapped her hands around her cup, but the warmth had faded from it, and she comforted herself with a silent prayer instead, as she should have done to begin with.

  “Got it,” she answered, trying to keep her voice steady. “Now take me back to the office for a couple hours.”

  Jake looked dumbstruck. “You’re kidding. You don’t want to go straight home?”

  Holly shook her head. “Not yet. You have work to get done this afternoon, and so do I. And I have a couple phone calls to make to set this all in motion.”

  “If you say so. You’re certainly one tough customer, Holly.” There was an appreciative glint in his blue eyes.

  She didn’t feel all that tough or brave right now, but Holly knew she had planning to do, and felt that the best place to do it was back at the office with Jake in the very next room. “I’m just following your orders,” she told him, watching his puzzled look. “You said you didn’t want me alone, right?”

  “Right,” he said, still looking mystified.

  “Well, my mother won’t get home until nearly six from the paper. I don’t want to worry her this afternoon by telling her to come home early. If I do that, getting her to agree to this for a week will be next to impossible.”

  Jake groaned. “I’d forgotten about that part. Guess I have phone calls to make, too, letting my parents know I’ll be out of touch for a week. This is going to be lots of fun this close to Christmas.”

  “I know. But we’ll manage, I guess. At six you can take me home so that I can pack a suitcase and you can do the same. If this is going to be ready in twenty-four hours, I’ve got a lot of work to do.” Holly stood up, ready to leave her cold coffee and get back to work on this new plan.

  Holly had never seen her mother look quite as surprised as she did that night when she opened the door to find her daughter standing outside with Jake Montgomery beside her. Marilyn Vance was rarely at a loss for words, but she seemed to be as she invited Jake in and offered to put on a pot of coffee.

  “Make it tea, Mom,” Holly told her. “I’ve had enough coffee to last me a while, and I suspect Jake’s feeling the same way. You’ve met my boss, Jake Montgomery before, I know.”

  Marilyn sniffed. “Not only met him, but taught him English, what he learned through high school. I trust you’ve improved your grammar since then, Jake.”

  “I’ve made every effort, Mrs. Vance. But we have more important things to discuss than my past right now. I wanted to explain to you why I’m borrowing your daughter for a few days or more.”

  “Borrowing my daughter? You know I’m going to start quoting Shakespeare at you if you use that phrase,” her mother said, drawing herself up to her full height of sixty-three inches.

  “I know, Mrs. Vance. Hamlet, Polonius speaking to his son, ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’ and all that, but this time I’m afraid that advice won’t work. Holly might be in danger and it’s my doing. So until this blows over, we need to go away for a while.”

  “Just what kind of danger are we talking about, Mr. Montgomery? And where do you intend to take my daughter?” Watching this exchange, Holly wondered if Jake had ever been grilled by someone in law enforcement quite as effectively as her mother was capable of doing.

  “I can only answer one of those questions, Mrs. Vance, the one about the danger. Why don’t we sit down someplace and I’ll explain as much of this as I can to you?”

  “You certainly will,” her mother said, still sounding as suspicious as she would have been of one of her students handing in a forged permission slip. “Just let me get that tea started. You two make yourself comfortable in the living room. When I come back you can explain why it is you can’t tell me where you’re going, Jake.”

  Holly showed him into the living room, aware as she looked around the room that it was probably smaller than the entry foyer of his parents’ home.
Her family had never done much entertaining or decorating, so the compact room was filled with antique chairs that needed their faded silk upholstery replaced and glass-fronted bookcases that still held her father’s old medical books as well as her mother’s leather-bound classics.

  In one corner was the tall, skinny fir her mother had insisted they bring home last weekend and decorate with her heirloom glass ornaments. It was strung with popcorn and cranberry garland and there was a battered old wooden Nativity scene under the tree. Holly could distinctly remember the year that her twin brother Kenneth had snapped the head off one of the Wise Men’s camels playing airplane with it, getting himself in deep trouble with their mother while their more indulgent father laughed.

  She looked at Jake to see what his impression of this homey, somewhat shabby room was. His expression surprised her. “Jake, are you sweating? You look uncomfortable. Why don’t you sit down?” Holly pointed toward the most comfortable of the chairs.

  “Thanks, I think I will.” Jake was definitely a bit pale and looked like he’d been perspiring around the temples.

  “What’s the matter? Did the day finally get to you?” Jake had been the solid one all day when Holly had felt shaky. True, he’d overreacted as far as she was concerned, but he’d done it with such conviction and strength that he’d finally won her over. Now he sat in her mother’s living room looking unwell.

  His answering laugh was weak. “No, I’m handling the day okay. If you want to know the truth, it’s facing your mother that has me rattled.”

  Holly felt like giggling. Her mother? Marilyn might have been a tyrant in the classroom, but that was over fifteen years ago for Jake. “I don’t think she’s going to bring up your sophomore English grades, Jake,” she said softly, trying to stifle the laughter she felt.

  “Probably not.” His blue eyes widened. “But I’ll tell you the truth, Holly. I’d rather face a dozen guys like that maniac who tried to mow you down today than take on your mother. With my own mom, and even my aunts, I could always charm my way out of anything. Your mother never bought it. And now I’ve got to sit in her living room and explain to her why I’m spiriting you away for probably a week or more.”