Christmas Hostage (Christmas Romantic Suspense Book 1)

by Jane Blythe

  “I’ll be fine on my own.” All she wanted was to sleep. Adrenalin was draining from her system leaving her exhausted.

  “Of course, you will.” Terseness was back in Tom’s tone. For some reason, he didn't like her to be self-sufficient. It had been a regular argument between them those last few weeks of their marriage. “I’ll walk you to the ambulance. Don’t even think about arguing,” he snapped when she opened her mouth to protest.

  There was no point in arguing. It wasn't worth it. She was too tired. Hannah climbed out of the car and was unsurprised that Tom was already there, ready to take her arm and help keep her on her feet.

  At the back of the ambulance she went to unwrap the blankets that were still around her shoulders, but Tom stopped her. “Keep them, you’re still shaking.”

  “What about your jacket?”

  “Keep it. You can give it back to me tomorrow when you come to give your statement.”

  The thought of seeing Tom again tomorrow wasn't an altogether pleasant one. He stirred up too many unresolved feelings and emotions. Things had ended abruptly, and she could admit to herself that she still had unresolved issues with their breakup.

  As medics bundled her up into the ambulance, Hannah watched Tom walk away.

  He was here only because this was his job.

  When it was over, he would walk away again.

  She hoped her heart could handle it.

  * * * * *

  11:57 P.M.

  Eat or go straight to bed.

  Neither option sounded particularly appealing.

  Tom locked the door behind him and tossed his keys on the table in the hall, and then stood and stared at his dark, empty house. He’d moved in here shortly after he and Hannah split up, neither of them had been able to stay in their house after what had happened there.

  Although it had been three years since he’d bought the townhouse, it had never felt like a home. He hadn’t furnished it with more than the basics. The big open plan living, dining, and kitchen had nothing more than a single sofa and a TV—that he never watched—on an entertainment stand. There was no dining table. When he ate here, he sat on the one stool at the breakfast bar. Although the house had three bedrooms, two sat empty, and the master contained only his bed.

  This was his house, not his home.

  He hated living alone. He hated coming back from work after a long day and being met with nothing but silence. When he and Hannah had lived together, he’d come home each night to all the lights blazing, the smell of a home-cooked meal wafting out to meet him, and if he was lucky, Hannah would have baked something special.

  It wasn't that he wanted a woman at home to take care of him. He had helped Hannah build her business and encouraged her in any way he could, and he had loved that she was smart and successful. Coming home to her was what had mattered. She had made their house a home, she had made his day better—no matter how bad it had been—just by being there.

  Now without her, Tom felt so empty.

  Letting her go had been the hardest thing he had ever done, but at the time it had felt like the only option. They had become poison to each other, taking a bad situation and making it so much worse. They had bickered constantly. Long, bitter arguments that left Hannah in tears and him feeling like the most useless human being on the planet.

  It had been hard to accept that he wasn't helping his wife; he was hurting her.

  It had been harder to accept that Hannah didn't need him.

  What she needed was to be free of him.

  She wanted to do it on her own. That had been her choice, and one that he had had to accept for both their sakes.

  So, he had walked away.

  It had nearly killed him, but he had done it because he had loved Hannah enough to do what was best for her, even if that meant being away from him.

  Did he still love Hannah?

  Yes.

  He didn't even have to consider that. He would always love her. She was the one great love of his life. He hadn’t really dated since they had split up, only the occasional relationship that never went anywhere because his heart just wasn't in it. They had been nice women—pretty, funny, sweet, smart, sexy.

  They could have made him happy if he had let them, but his heart was still tangled up in Hannah Buffy.

  Seeing her tonight looking so small and scared and fragile brought back so many bad memories. Holding her in his arms when she had fainted had brought back a mixture of good and bad memories. Tom had loved carrying her curled against his chest, and when they used to go for hikes, Hannah had hated crossing streams, so he’d always picked her up and carried her across them. But the last few times he’d held her in his arms, it had been to comfort her as she relived the horror of what had happened to her.

  A horror that would be brought back by tonight’s events.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have left her alone.

  The whole time he was interviewing her, he had been debating whether he should stay with her while she was examined by the paramedics, then personally see her safely home. She was holding it together surprisingly well, but he knew inside she must be a mess.

  Inside he was a mess.

  The thought of anyone hurting Hannah made his blood boil.

  The thought of anyone holding a gun against her beautiful, soft skin rendered him useless.

  But now wasn't the time to be rendered useless.

  Now was the time to be focused and on his game. The robbery at Hannah’s store was different than the other four. And if it was different, then there was a chance that it wasn't related. And if it wasn't related, then it meant that the jewelry might not have been the main goal. And if the jewelry wasn't the main goal, then something else was. And Tom was terrified that the something else could be Hannah herself.

  He couldn’t stomach the thought of her in any sort of danger.

  He wouldn’t allow it.

  And if he let the past suck him back into that same cycle that had almost destroyed both Hannah and himself, then she could wind up paying the price, and that was unacceptable.

  All he had to do was keep the focus on work.

  He was here to do a job. And do his job, he would. He would find who had held Hannah and her co-workers at gunpoint and he would arrest them. Then she would be safe.

  Although things were over between them, and they could never go back to the way they’d been before, he wished her all the best. He wanted her to be happy. He wanted her to find someone who could be the partner she needed. He wanted her to get married and have children and live out the rest of her life happy and at peace.

  Maybe seeing her again, as hard as it was, was for the best.

  Things had ended so abruptly that neither of them had really gotten any closure. Back when they got divorced, they had both been so raw, in so much pain, still traumatized by what had happened. Then they had decided to end their marriage and that was it. They hadn’t seen each other again until tonight.

  But now they could get that closure.

  Now they could tie up any lingering feelings that still existed. They could say their goodbyes properly, so this time when they walked away, they would both be able to move on with their lives.

  Move on with his life.

  Walk away.

  It was the right thing to do; he knew it was, and it was what Hannah wanted.

  That didn't mean it was going to be easy.

  DECEMBER 19th

  9:26 A.M.

  “Do we have anything from ERT?” Tom asked Chloe as they sat down at their desks.

  “No fingerprints. We do have the bullet the doctors removed from Jeff Shields in the emergency room. ERT is running it through ballistics. Hopefully we’ll get a match.”

  The armed robbers hadn’t fired any shots at the scenes of any of the other robberies, so there was no possibility of linking the crimes that way, but if they got a hit to a particular gun then they might be able to find the shooter. “No fibers or DNA or anything?” he asked. He wanted
something that would conclusively prove the robbery at Hannah’s store was related to the others. He just didn't know what that conclusive evidence would be. The Evidence Response Team Unit had scoured the scenes of all four of the previous robberies and come up with no forensic evidence. How could he find a link between the four other crimes and the one at Hannah’s store when they had no forensics and no descriptions of the robbers?

  “Nothing. I'm sorry, Tom. I know you want to confirm that the same men committed the other robberies and the one at your . . . uh . . . friend’s store,” Chloe finished, arching a perfectly sculpted brow at him.

  He just nodded. He didn't want to discuss Hannah with his partner. Or with anyone else. He just wanted to solve this case, get some closure, and move on with his life.

  “Who is she?” Chloe asked. His partner wasn't one for tact and was clearly choosing to ignore the blatant signals he was giving that he didn't want to talk about it.

  “My ex-wife,” he replied. If he refused to answer, it would only further pique her curiosity.

  “I didn't know you were married. Why did you two split up?”

  “Chloe,” he reprimanded.

  “What?” she asked, brown eyes all wide and innocent. “We only just became partners, I’m just getting to know you.”

  Working with Chloe Luckman was going to be interesting, if nothing else. She was a recent graduate from the academy. She was full of enthusiasm and zeal for her job. She was smart and strong, and just like him, she paid attention to details. He liked her; he just didn't want to discuss his failed marriage with her.

  Her face softened. “She was most stressed out by the gun. Has she been held at gunpoint before?”

  He may as well just tell her. She obviously wasn't going to give up, and it wasn't like she couldn’t find the information out on her own anyway. Besides, if he was right and the robbery at Hannah’s store was committed by a different set of perpetrators than the others, then it might even end up being relevant to the case.

  “Hannah was raped,” he told her. He hated that word. Hated the way it felt in his mouth, hated the images it conjured up in his mind, hated what it had done to the woman he loved.

  “Oh, Tom, I'm so sorry.” Chloe’s eyes filled with sympathy.

  “Hannah has been through enough. I want to make sure that if this has anything to do with her and not just the jewelry that we get those men off the street before they try to hurt her again.”

  “You really think it’s not related?”

  “I don’t know. It just feels different, and I want to be sure. And not just because it’s Hannah. If we’re dealing with two different sets of perpetrators, we need to get them both off the streets.”

  “Okay, well let’s go back to the first robbery.”

  “November twenty-first, around 2:00 P.M., three armed men wearing jeans, black hoodies, and clown masks enter a small jewelry store in a quiet strip mall. Inside there were two employees and three customers. A middle-aged couple looking for an engagement ring, and an older woman looking for a gift for her granddaughter’s sixteenth birthday. They came in, demanded jewelry, smashed a few of the glass cases, grabbed what they could and ran. In and out in under two minutes. No one was hurt. They didn't ask for codes to the safe. They just took what was accessible.”

  “Second robbery was similar,” Chloe said. “Exactly one week later, on November twenty-eighth, 1:00 P.M., another strip mall jewelry store. Again, three men, dressed the same, armed with guns, enter the store, where there are five employees and six customers. They demand jewelry, smash the glass cases, and run off with whatever they could grab. Witnesses say they weren't in there any longer than two or three minutes. They didn't ask for codes or entry to the safe.”

  “Third one occurred a week later once again, December fifth; they hit at midday. Same MO as the others; this time there are four employees and only one customer. Fourth one was one week later on the twelfth. Three employees, eight customers, they struck at three in the afternoon. In none of those four robberies do they ask for anything else other than what they can easily grab.”

  “Maybe they built up enough confidence after the first four and were ready to escalate things,” Chloe said.

  “Maybe,” he nodded. “Times of day were different, too. The other crimes were committed in the early afternoon. The one at Hannah’s was at night, after the store was already closed.”

  “Again, that could fit in with the escalation. It’s easier to try and get the more expensive stuff from the safe when there are less people there.”

  “Maybe,” he acknowledged again. “I agree, the differences in time of day and what they’re after could just be an escalation related to gaining confidence and moving on to bigger things. But they struck a day early. If they kept with their pattern, they should have robbed their next store on the nineteenth, not the eighteenth.”

  “Maybe something was going to prevent them from hitting a store today,” Chloe countered. “Or maybe they realized it made them too predictable. If they kept going with the same day, then we were going to catch them. This way they make it more difficult, and we don’t know when they’re going to strike.”

  “The men who attacked Hannah didn't wear clown masks. They wore balaclavas,” he moved on to his next argument.

  “Could be the clown masks got lost or broken, or they just changed their minds and decided to go with something different.”

  “We can explain away every difference between the robberies except one.”

  “There were only two people who robbed Hannah’s store,” Chloe said.

  “Exactly.”

  “One could be sick,” his partner suggested. “Or otherwise occupied.”

  “If you’re running a robbery ring, you only hit a store when you can all do it. If one of them was sick, they would have waited until today; this is when they were supposed to strike. A group of three men robbed stores coming away with only a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of stolen jewelry. A group of two men robbed Hannah’s store, attempting to walk away with millions.”

  “What are the odds there are two separate gangs hitting jewelry stores in the same city at the same time?”

  “Not very high,” he answered Chloe’s rhetorical question.

  “Maybe the hit on Hannah’s store was someone hoping to take advantage of the other robberies. They knew we were looking at a gang of robbers, and they could swoop in, make it out with millions in stolen jewels, then disappear, all the while we think we’re looking for someone else.”

  “I suppose,” Tom agreed. It was a viable possibility and certainly preferable to the alternative, that Hannah was the intended target.

  “Last night’s was the only one that turned violent. But was it because it was just different men who wanted something different, or because they had always intended to turn things violent?”

  “There’s no way to know that.”

  “No, there’s not. If the robbery at Hannah’s store was committed by different men, then who? And why? Do you know of anyone that would want to hurt her?”

  “There’s no one who would want to hurt her,” he replied adamantly. Hannah was stubborn, but so sweet, he couldn’t imagine her making any enemies even if she tried.

  “What about the man who raped her?”

  “Prison,” he replied shortly.

  “Let’s say you're right, and it was someone else. Do we know for sure she was the target? After all, it was Jeff Shields who was shot.”

  “If Jeff was the target, then why would they shoot him at Hannah’s store? If someone was after him, then there were plenty of other places they could have shot him.”

  “If Hannah was the target, then why didn't they shoot her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If there was an ulterior motive to this robbery, then I think we should be looking at Jeff and not Hannah.”

  “We will look at Jeff. When his doctors clear him, we’ll interview him and see if there’s anyone who might wan
t to hurt him by staging a robbery.”

  “Why would we think it was staged as a robbery at all? I mean, they broke in, they smashed the glass cases and took what they could, they try to get the code for the safe so they can take even more with them. Then, when they can't get what they came for, they turn violent to try to get it. Why would we look at this as anything other than a robbery gone wrong?”

  “Because we want to look at all the possibilities,” he replied, or rather, lied. Tom couldn’t explain why he thought this was not just an ordinary robbery. “Two different groups of men committed these crimes, and we have to look at the motivations. We don’t have any forensics yet, so we need to keep ourselves open to everything.”

  “I agree. We do have to keep ourselves open to everything. Including to the possibility that it’s just coincidence that there are two separate groups of robbers operating at the same time. And just because it does look like two different groups of perpetrators, that doesn’t mean this has anything to do with Hannah. I think you’re letting what happened to her and who she is to you cloud your judgment.”

  Logic told him Chloe was right.

  There was nothing to suggest that this was anything more than a random robbery.

  So why couldn’t he shake the feeling that it was something more?

  Was he just imagining things because it involved Hannah? Was he just after a reason to spend more time around her? Was he just after a scenario where this time he could save her?

  Or was Hannah really in danger?

  * * * * *

  10:13 A.M.

  It felt weird walking back in here.

  She didn't want to be here.

  She wanted to never come back here again.

  But Hannah wouldn’t do that. She would never run away from things that scared her, no matter how tempting that may seem at times. It just wasn't who she was. She faced her problems, she tried to work through them, she tried to make the best of even the worst of situations. She had done it before, and she would do it again.