Holly, Ivy, & Intrigue

by Celebrate Lit Publishing

  Her heart thundered in her chest.

  As Brianna changed lanes, her mind frantically searched for a way out. She floored the pedal again, the motor whining. The arrow edged so far to the right it seemed she was going the maximum speed this vehicle could handle.

  Her palms grew clammy with sweat. She wanted to turn down the heater, but she was reluctant to unglue her fingers from the steering wheel.

  The headlights of the blue car grew even closer.

  She couldn’t go any faster. As it was, she was barely controlling the vehicle, risking going off the road. That was, if she wouldn’t be pushed off the road first.

  A shot thundered in the air.

  Brianna’s insides shook, and her blood turned to ice. Should she grab the weapon Richard had left her?

  No. There wasn’t much she could see in darkness. Besides, she couldn’t shoot and drive at the same time. Her teeth chattering, she took the next exit.

  All she could do was pray.

  The wail of sirens made her flinch. The car following her turned to the left while Brianna went straight. As the patrol car neared, she pulled to the curb, her heart beating so fast it felt as if it were about to break her rib cage.

  She was about to get a ticket, if not worse, and she’d never been so happy about it. As she killed the engine, she would’ve slid down her chair in relief had she not had her seatbelt buckled.

  Unless…

  Liam hadn’t wanted to go the police, probably because he didn’t want to be punished. Or was it because he suspected Porter was a dirty cop? And if so, there was no guarantee her pursuers didn’t have another cop on their payroll. Who might be walking toward her right now.

  Brianna’s gut twisted.

  Dear Lord, what should I do?

  If she drove off now, the officer could easily chase her and stop her again, but with more dire consequences. She considered reaching for her gun, then decided against it.

  When the policeman tapped on her window, she was mentally preparing herself to receive a bullet in her head, and so far, that preparation wasn’t going well.

  She pulled down the window and resisted the urge to duck. “Yes, officer?” She hated how small her voice sounded.

  “Your driver’s license and your insurance, please.” The guy looked to be in his late twenties, clean-shaven with dark hair cut short. “Do you know what speed you were going?”

  Brianna felt like she could breathe again. She would’ve hugged the guy if it was allowed. “Really? You’re just going to give me a ticket for speeding? Yay!” She nearly squealed.

  The policeman raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never seen anyone so excited about getting a ticket.”

  Maybe it was because nobody had her alternative, getting killed. Brianna refrained from that comment as she handed her driver’s license and insurance.

  Another car pulled up in the back. Why?

  The officer frowned. “This insurance isn’t for this car.”

  Brianna slapped herself on the forehead. “That’s correct. I borrowed this vehicle.” She could hear in her mind Liam’s explanations how he’d borrowed a car. “This vehicle is—”

  “Mine.” Richard’s voice loomed somewhere to her left.

  “Hello, Richard. You were right calling me about people possibly speeding on this road.” The policeman stopped aside, and they talked about something.

  It was Brianna’s turn to raise an eyebrow. These two knew each other? Obviously, they did, and very well, if they were on the first name basis. If not for Richard calling the police, she probably wouldn’t be among the living right now…

  Her stomach clenched.

  She said a prayer of gratitude.

  The policeman walked up to her and returned her driver’s license and the insurance. “Describe the vehicle that was following you.”

  She gave her best description, but she didn’t see much in the darkness in the mad dash.

  After the officer had returned to his car, Richard came back and leaned to her window. “Follow me. I’ll take you to another hotel. The patrol car will follow you.”

  Regretting dragging him into this mess, Brianna shook her head. “You don’t have to do this.”

  A twinkle appeared in his eye. “Maybe I just want to get my car back in one piece.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Once in the new hotel room, Richard walked up to her. “Please do me a favor. Next time, charge your phone.”

  “Bossy, aren’t we?” Brianna raised her chin. “And how do you know I didn’t charge my phone?”

  He chuckled. “I’m a PI. I should figure out such things. Especially when you don’t answer my calls.”

  “Oh. Maybe I didn’t feel like talking to you,” Brianna muttered as he headed away.

  But who was she kidding? She was glad he was there for her.

  How was her brother faring? Had he been in a car chase, too, trying to get away?

  Despite her worry for Liam, her eyelids grew heavy, fatigue overtaking her. Little sleep was taking its toll on her.

  Once Brianna and Richard settled in their rooms, she slid under the covers in jeans and a T-shirt, having everything ready nearby.

  She whispered a prayer of gratitude again.

  Then she prayed for finding Liam in time.

  And the sooner she’d find Porter’s killer, the better it would be for everybody. Brianna just needed to make sure that she didn’t die in the process.

  Easier said than done.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  A knock to their connecting door woke Brianna up. She rubbed the cobwebs out of her eyes, leaped out of her bed, and opened the door.

  “Good morning.” Richard looked freshly showered, with his black hair slightly damp. “Would you like room service?”

  “Sure. With a recipe for how to solve a murder a-la-carte.” Her hair probably was a mess, and she had no makeup to speak of. Well, she shouldn’t care about that. Maybe just a little.

  He stared at her.

  “I’m kidding, Richard.” She dialed room service and ordered scrambled eggs with extra cheese and pancakes, then handed the phone to Richard. He went with an omelet, hash browns, and bacon.

  Wondering how far her morning breath travelled, Brianna hurried to brush her teeth. By the time she was done, the food arrived.

  Brianna bowed her head and said grace.

  Richard didn’t say anything, but he did wait for her.

  The scrambled eggs tasted tender and delicious, and a piece of bacon she got from Richard’s plate was nice and crunchy. She flushed it down with orange juice.

  In a black sweater that was hugging his muscular torso, he looked different since the last time she’d seen him. More mature? Mature enough for a relationship? For a family one day?

  Was she?

  “You can have it all, you know,” Richard said.

  Caught staring, Brianna nearly choked on her stolen bacon. “Excuse me?”

  “You can have all the bacon, if you want it. I’m full.”

  “No,” she squeaked. “I’m good.”

  “Let me tell you what I found out so far.”

  “Good idea.” Brianna polished off her scrambled eggs.

  Richard finished the rest of the hash browns and bacon even though he was full. “Porter had a girlfriend, a twenty-three-year-old waitress named Rosalie—”

  “Wilson. I know.” Brianna drained the sweet juice till she saw the bottom of the glass.

  “O-okay. They were going out for a year and a half. I have a list of their regular hangouts.” He pushed the empty plate aside.

  “I have that one, too.” Done with breakfast, she moved her plate aside, too.

  His dark eyes narrowed slightly. “What exactly am I doing here?”

  Brianna gave him an innocent look. “You were in the process of telling me about Porter’s work. Was he a homicide detective? Maybe the motive for his murder was some case he was working on. Oh, and it’s not my fault that people put everything on the Internet these day
s.”

  Richard’s gaze became open again. “Porter wasn’t a homicide detective. He was giving out traffic tickets. Unless somebody got furious about a fine, I don’t see how his murder is connected to his job. Maybe it’s not related, but did you know there was a series of auto thefts in Arlington recently?”

  Brianna gasped.

  Liam!

  No, it couldn’t be. When not working, Liam had been at home most of the time playing video games with car chases or trying to rebuild the engine on an old convertible in the garage. Those times he hadn’t been home, he couldn’t make it to Arlington and back quickly. But he did have great hotwiring skills, could drive fast, and had a lax judgment about borrowing a car.

  “How recent?” Her voice came out in a whisper.

  “They started about three weeks back.”

  No, it was impossible for Liam to get involved. But doubt spread nasty little tendrils in her gut.

  “Porter’s car was found behind our house,” she said slowly. Sweet juice turned sour in her stomach.

  Richard nodded. “He could’ve been killed somewhere else. Or he could’ve driven the car there himself.”

  “Something led him to San Angelo and to the forest close to our place. I need to find that connection.” Brianna rubbed her forehead in thought. She was afraid to find that connection.

  Richard’s jaw set tight. “Liam?”

  “Though Liam knew how to hotwire a car and disable the alarm system, it doesn’t mean he put those skills to use in Arlington. Thankfully, Arlington is too far from San Angelo to make it back and forth on a regular basis.” Brianna pursed her lips, the need to defend her brother rising to the surface again.

  “Okay.”

  Sensing his doubts, she lifted her hands in surrender. “I’ll check with his employer to see if he was really working all the days he claimed.”

  She paused.

  Something had been off about that shooting. But that something was getting away from her, slippery, fast, as if she were trying to catch fish in the stream, the way she and Liam had done it when they’d been kids.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Brianna quit trying to catch an elusive thought. She had a different idea. She recalled Porter’s and Wilson’s favorite hangouts and zoomed in on one of them. “Looks like I’ll be visiting a billiards place tonight.”

  Richard quirked an eyebrow. “Since when do you play?”

  “Since never. But they have a darts board, too. Besides, judging by reviews, they have great wings, and I definitely can eat.” She gestured to her empty plate, as if Richard needed any proof to her words.

  “Got you. You want to wait for Rosalie at the place Porter and Rosalie used to frequent. I’ll be there, too, then. I can play pool.”

  Brianna shook her head. “I need your help in a different capacity. Can you act mean?”

  His dark eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

  “Can you find your inner meanness?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Brianna sighed in exasperation. “Can you pretend to attack someone? Rosalie Wilson, to be exact.”

  A muscle twitched in his cheek. “I’d never hit a woman.”

  Okay, this was going to be more difficult than she’d thought. “You don’t need to hit her. You’ll just pretend to attack her so I can defend her and become her best friend.” Brianna grimaced. “My social skills aren’t great.” That was putting it mildly. She’d never been a happy, cheerful kid people would want to adopt, and things hadn’t changed much since. “I don’t think I can become her best friend in five minutes by any other way.”

  Richard stared at her. “And here I was, about to go talk to Rosalie as a PI. What was I thinking?”

  “I know, right!” Brianna paused. “Oh, you were being sarcastic. Well, she’d never tell a PI what she’d tell—”

  “Her best friend. Got it. So, I’ll have to pretend to attack Rosalie then to pretend to lose a fight to you?”

  Why did Richard sound so incredulous in the second part? Brianna might be hopeless at playing pool, but she’d been good in hand-to-hand combat, even if he outweighed her by many pounds.

  Brianna kept that thought to herself, figuring that voicing it wouldn’t help her cause. “Yep. I know it’s a lot of pretending.”

  Richard had a resigned look in his eyes. “You won’t give up until I agree, right?”

  Brianna grinned. “You know it.”

  “I like it,” Richard said quietly.

  Huh?

  It was Brianna’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “You like what? Me knowing you’d agree?”

  “No, your smile. Since you arrived here, you looked too—”

  “Heartbroken?” Her brother was missing. She shouldn’t be smiling at all. She’d left behind the Christmas gift she’d bought for her brother, the new video game. And the painful emptiness inside her told her she’d left behind a part of herself, too.

  About half an hour later, Richard left to talk to Porter’s colleagues and friends and check several of Liam’s hangouts. Brianna placed a call for the second time to everybody she thought Liam would contact. She also called Liam’s boss in San Angelo. The good news, Liam hadn’t missed any work in the last three months. The bad news was that once again, she had zero result to show for her efforts.

  To check the street outside, she walked to the window and looked out through the blinds. Snow flurries were covering the ground in a white blanket.

  She recalled Liam and her building a snowman the day before Christmas when they’d been kids. Their laughter… The snowball fight. Happiness.

  She needed a Christmas miracle.

  She needed it badly.

  As Brianna paced the room, ready to throw the phone against the wall, Richard arrived with Chinese takeout. Had he found Liam? He shook his head in response to her silent question.

  Brianna stopped pacing, sat down, and said grace.

  Richard kept quiet.

  Over the fried rice with beef for him and fried rice with shrimp for her, they discussed the new information he’d dug up.

  “One of his colleagues said Porter seemed to be working on something last week. On a lead that was supposed to give him a promotion. But he’d said such things before, and nothing ever came out of it. So, his colleague didn’t pay much attention.”

  “Any idea what the lead was about?” Brianna took another spoonful of rice.

  “The guy didn’t know. Apparently, Porter didn’t want to give it away before he could claim the credit. He’d done it before, and someone else got the promotion. But Porter mentioned it was supposed to be something big. Not homicide, but big. Like a series of crimes.”

  “Auto thefts?” Brianna stopped chewing.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Richard took a sip of his soda. “Or Porter found out about a dirty cop in another city. Just because Porter parked not far from your house doesn’t necessarily mean he was watching Liam.”

  Brianna froze. “He could be watching my neighbor. Karen? But I’ve known her forever. She’s as honest as they come. Besides, she didn’t live with her parents anymore. She only came for visits.” Another suspicion wormed inside her, but she filed it away for now…

  By the evening, Brianna got restless and was pacing the room again. “I know Rosalie usually didn’t show at the billiards place until seven or eight, but I think we should start preparations.”

  Richard looked up from his laptop. “I’m ready.”

  Brianna pinned him with a stare. “You’re kidding me, right? I hope you’re not going like this.”

  He met her gaze. “What’s wrong with my appearance?”

  “You’re clean-shaven, your hair is combed, and your clothes are fine and clean. You even smell… nice. Worst of all, you don’t look bad.”

  “I thought that was a good thing.” Considering the twinkle in his eye again, he couldn’t resist a bit of teasing.

  She played along. “No, that’s a very bad thing. I’ll need to help you with that. When I’m done with
you, you’ll look horrible.”

  Now Richard looked slightly alarmed. “Thanks. I guess.”

  Brianna pulled out the chair from the desk, gestured for him to sit down and went to get her supplies. “Good thing I brought this moustache, beard, and man’s wig. I was going to use them for myself again.” She paused. “Don’t ask.”

  His eyes widened slightly. “I don’t think I want to know.”

  “I meant for a disguise!” She started putting makeup on him. First a little scar, then a black eye. Her fingertips prickled when she touched his face, and a wave of awareness rippled through her.

  His breathing seemed to quicken. “That’s what I thought, too.”

  “Now, the hair. Let’s go with black. Shoulder length. Unkempt.” She put a wig on him and stepped back, surveying her work. “It would be better if your hair was dirty, but that’ll do.”

  “Done?” He attempted to get up.

  She pressed on his shoulder to make him stay seated. “Nope. Those shoes are too clean. We’ll put some dirt on them.” She started applying a moustache.

  Richard visibly swallowed. “What about my clothes? I won’t have to roll in dirt, will I?”

  “Well…” Seeing his narrowed eyes, Brianna shook her head. “No. We’ll just tear them a little.”

  His eyes narrowed more.

  “Or something.” She was done with the moustache and switched to the beard. “The beard looks much better on you than it did on me.” Brianna paused. “Okay, that didn’t sound right.”

  “It would be interesting to see you with a beard.” He reached for her makeup and wigs supplies.

  “Oh, don’t you dare.” She shook her head. “Now, I need to teach you how to walk.”

  His lips curved up. “What’s wrong with mine?”

  “Okay. Show me.”

  He walked across the room, broad shoulders squared, his back straight.

  “No. No. No.” Brianna shook her head in disgust. “You need to slouch, hands in your pockets, eyes hooded, as if you have something to hide.”

  “Like this?” He did the second walk, following her instructions.

  “Much better. But…” Brianna sighed. The essence of a good guy still showed. She handed Richard sunglasses. “Here. Cover your eyes.”