“Oh my God! Do you think he found out where I lived and since I wasn’t home, he attacked Marcy instead?”
“I do. I think he is sending a message—the message being that he is coming after you.”
“That son of a bitch can just come and get me then.” She said angrily, “We got him once, and we can do it again.”
Once the plane landed in Houston, Brock and Holly headed down to the precinct to see if there was an update on finding Todd. Unfortunately he was still in the wind. The address that was listed for him was vacant and had been for quite some time. His parents hadn’t heard from him in months, and the bars where he worked paid him in cash. They had hit dead end after dead end—Todd had become a ghost.
“He can’t just disappear into thin air. Let’s check cell phone records, financial records, DMV records. I want every rock turned over—someone knows where he is or how to find him.” Brock ordered.
“We are on it, but it has been a slow process.” Officer O’Malley offered.
“We need his picture plastered in the paper and on television. Hell, I will put up money for a reward for any information that leads to his arrest if I have to.” Brock continued.
It was past ten before Brock and Holly left the precinct and headed for home—neither one of them saying a word the whole time. It wasn’t until they were in the house that Holly finally spoke, “I need to go back to my house.”
“Did you forget something?’
“No. I mean I need to go back to my house, as in I need to move back to my house. If we are to catch this sick bastard, I am going to need to go back to my house. He is coming after me, so let him come. I already showed that I can handle myself, and I will do it again. I couldn’t stand it if he lashed out at someone else because he couldn’t find me.”
“No—that is a horrible idea, I won’t let you.”
“My mind is made up. Tomorrow, I am moving back to my house—I haven’t really moved in here completely, so it’s just a matter of grabbing what little I have and taking it back to my house.”
“Then I am coming with you.”
“You can’t—if he sees you or knows that you are there, he will just strike out at someone else close to me. I can’t let that happen—I won’t let that happen.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about that Holly. He’s a loose cannon right now—there is no telling what he is up to or what lengths he will go to. It’s just plain dangerous and I don’t like it.”
“Duly noted, but that doesn’t change the fact that if we want to catch him—I still need to be the bait. He has now made it very personal by attacking my next door neighbor. You yourself said that he did it to send a message. The message is ‘I’m coming for you’… I say, come and get me.”
“I have always trusted my gut feelings Holly, and my gut feeling says this isn’t the route we need to go.”
“I know you feel a need to protect me, but I’m telling you that I can handle it.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you. Under normal circumstances you can more than handle yourself, but what I am telling you is I don’t want you to shoulder the risk.”
“It’s getting late—can we resume this in the morning? I just want you to hold me tonight.”
Brock’s phone rang at three in the morning, “Hello?”
“Hey bro, it’s Luke.”
“What’s wrong? Is Brooke okay?”
“We’re headed to the hospital, Brooke’s water broke. She thought she was having those Braxton Hicks contractions all day, but come to find out—they were the real ones!”
“We’ll be right there.”
“We? Is Holly there with you?”
“Yeah. See you soon.”
“What’s wrong?” Holly asked.
“Nothing is wrong—Brooke is headed to the hospital—her water broke.”
Holly jumped out of bed and dressed quicker than Brock. “Hurry up—we need to get going!”
“I don’t see what the hurry is. From what I have heard this could literally take hours.”
“Or she could have it by the time we get there if you take any longer getting dressed.”
When they arrived at the hospital, they were met by both sets of parents with Sam arriving shortly after. No sooner was Brooke settled into her labor and delivery room, than the doctor told her they were ready for her to push. Luke held her hand and ran a cool washcloth across her forehead. “Almost there beautiful—you can do this.”
Twenty minutes later, the doctor declared, “It’s a girl!”
Luke didn’t realize he was crying until his tears hit Brooke’s cheek as he leaned down to kiss her. “We have a baby girl sweetheart.”
“I told you it was a girl!”
“Really? Are you going to make me admit I was wrong so soon? Okay, I was wrong and with two females in the house now, I will probably never be right again!” He said laughing.
After she was cleaned up and given her Apgar score, the nurse brought the new baby girl over to her parents. “Who wants to hold her first?”
“Let her daddy hold her, I am still pretty shaky.”
Luke beamed as he took his daughter into his arms and kissed her on the cheek. “Hi precious girl.” Luke froze as he realized that they hadn’t picked out any names yet, “Brooke—we need to come up with a name.”
“How about Hannah Rose McClellan?”
“You had to have that already picked out—did you?”
“Maybe.” She said as she smiled at him. “What do you think?”
“I like it and I think it suits her just fine. Are you ready to go to your momma Hannah Rose?”
Hannah started to suck on her fist as Brooke cradled her in her arms. Luke couldn’t wait to tell everyone he was a dad and that he had a baby girl. He ran to the waiting room and found everyone pacing the room waiting to hear the news. “Well?? Are you going to keep us guessing?” Brock asked.
“Hannah Rose McClellan has arrived and she is as beautiful as her momma.”
Everyone congratulated Luke on his daughter and wanted to know how soon they could see her. “Once Brooke is moved to a private room, you can all meet Hannah. She has blonde hair and blue eyes just like her mamma.”
Holly excused herself and let Brock know that she wanted to go to the gift shop and pick up a gift for Hannah and would be right back.
She took the elevator down to the first floor where the gift shop was located only to find that it wasn’t open yet. There was a drug store a couple of blocks away, so she decided to get in the car and drive the short distance. She had only driven one block when she heard “Hello Peaches—miss me?”
Holly looked in the mirror to see Todd sitting in the backseat of the car with a gun drawn on her. “What do you want?”
“I want you to drive to your house.”
“You know you aren’t going to get away with this—you will get locked up and they’ll throw away the key.”
“Shut up and drive.”
Holly slowly reached into her pocket and dialed Brock’s phone number hoping that he would be able to track her.
Brock noticed that Holly was gone for over ten minutes so he started to head downstairs when he got a call from her. “Hey babe, I was just coming looking for you.” When she didn’t respond, he listened closer and could hear a conversation between her and someone else. His immediate reaction was that she had accidentally dialed him and he was ready to hang up when he heard a man’s voice tell her to drive faster. “Shit!” He ran back to the waiting room and shouted “I need someone’s cell phone right now! I’ll need car keys too!”
Sam handed Brock his phone and truck keys, “What’s wrong Brock?”
“The rapist has Holly—they’re in a car. I need to keep this line open to Holly’s phone and I need to call the station on yours.”
Brock dialed the precinct and ran through the hospital and down the stairs leading to the first floor. He hit the panic button on the key to locate the truck. When the alarm sound
ed, he ran as fast as he could. Mary at the precinct answered the call, “Precinct ten, this is Mary.”
“Mary—Detective Brock McClellan—I need a trace immediately on the following cell phone number 713-555-3155. It’s Detective Cavanaugh’s phone—the rapist has her.”
“I’ll run it right now.”
In the mean time, Brock heard the following conversation, “What do you plan to do with me?”
“You’ll find out soon enough—now keep driving and don’t even think about making a wrong turn because I know where you live.”
“Never mind Mary—I know where he is taking her. I need the closest cruiser to get to her house and an officer to get inside her residence. We need to surprise him.”
Brock gave her Holly’s address and was told that there were two cruisers fairly close. He prayed that they would get there before Holly and be able to help her until he got there.
Holly tried to keep a conversation going with Todd so that Brock could figure out not only what was going on, but also to be able to find her. With all of the self defense training she had, she knew that driving a car with a gun at your back was pretty risky. She also knew that she needed to take that risk and try something—anything—because she didn’t want him to get her in the house. She looked into the rearview mirror and noticed that Todd wasn’t wearing a seat belt and she knew immediately what she had to do.
Brock wished he had lights and sirens so that he could get through the traffic faster, but driving Sam’s truck limited his driving abilities. He couldn’t risk innocent people’s lives with erratic driving, yet he had to save Holly. He hadn’t had a chance to propose to her yet—he hadn’t had an opportunity to tell her that she meant the world to him. “Hang in there Holly—help is on the way. Don’t do anything stupid.”
The words barely came out of his mouth when he heard a loud crash and then nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Brock’s heart sank as he accelerated—he wanted to call for an ambulance, but he didn’t even know where to send it. He dialed Mary back as he weaved the car in and out of traffic at a high rate of speed. “Mary—Detective McClellan—trace that phone to its last signal and send an ambulance right away.”
Holly knew there was a ramp coming up and it would be her only opportunity. When she started on the ramp, she accelerated and yanked the wheel to the left causing her car to nosedive into a deep ditch. As the front of the car hit the bottom, her airbag engaged and she knew that Todd had been thrown through the front windshield before she lost consciousness.
Brock saw the traffic to the exit ramp backed up for miles. He knew immediately that Holly must have crashed her car near the ramp. He took the shoulder and made his way to the scene of the accident. He jumped out of Sam’s truck and slid down the embankment until he was at the bottom. He could see Todd laying on the ground unconscious as he ran to the car. He tried to open the driver’s door, and when it wouldn’t budge he took off his shirt and wrapped it around the butt of his gun and slammed it against the window shattering it into a million pieces. He reached in and placed his hand on Holly’s carotid artery and felt the relief fall from his body when he could feel a strong pulse. “Honey, I am here and I am going to get you out of there.”
The sound of sirens from the rescue vehicles and ambulance were like angels singing to his ears. “Help is here baby.”
As soon as rescue crews got to the car, Brock headed over to where Todd lay on the ground only to find out that he was dead.
Sam arrived on the scene as they were loading Holly into the ambulance and spotted Brock climbing into the back and sprinted over to them. “Is Holly okay?”
Brock looked surprised to see Sam, “How did you get here? I have your truck.”
“I took Luke’s when I got the page that there was an accident, I didn’t know if I was going to find you or Holly, and I couldn’t sit and wait for the ambulance to arrive back at the hospital to find out who. How is she?”
“She was conscious for a short time after they cut her out of the car, but that was it.”
“I’ll follow you back to the hospital and have one of the guys take my truck to the station.”
As soon as the ambulance arrived at the hospital, they wheeled Holly into the ER and a doctor began barking orders for a variety of tests and x-rays and barred Brock from being in the same room. After what seemed like hours, the doctor came out to the waiting room to find Brock, “We are prepping an OR, x-rays showed some broken ribs and an ultrasound showed that she has internal bleeding. We need to go in and find the source of the bleeder and while we are in there, we’ll make sure everything else is okay. Are you her husband?”
“No, that was my intention, but I never got the chance to ask her. Why?”
“We need someone to sign the authorization to operate.”
“I’ll sign it—her parents live in Florida.”
Brock felt the love of his family as they surrounded him in the waiting room. “Luke, you should be with your wife and baby not here with me.”
“Brooke wanted to get some sleep since she didn’t get any last night from being in labor. I’m not going anywhere—I am here for you bro.”
“Sam, don’t you need to go to work?”
“Are you trying to get rid of us?” Sam growled. “We are here to support you and we aren’t going anywhere until we get word on Holly.”
“Thanks guys—I’m just not good at waiting around—I don’t know what the hell I am supposed to be doing.”
Two and a half hours later, the doctor walked into the waiting room looking for Brock. He leapt to his feet and asked, “How is she?”
“She is in recovery doing just fine. She has a slight concussion from the airbag that deployed, and we had to remove her spleen as it was ruptured from one of the broken ribs.”
“Doesn’t she need a spleen?” Brock asked.
“Her liver will automatically take over some of the spleen’s functions, but the main function of the spleen is that it has an immunological component to fight infections, so she will now require annual vaccines to help fight off infection and other potential illnesses. Just remember that any time she would require surgery of any kind, she would need vaccines before the surgery. Many people live without their spleens and do just fine.”
“When can I see her?”
“She is in recovery right now and will probably be there approximately an hour. From there we will move her up to the third floor into a private room. I’ll come and get you when they are ready to move her to her room and you can see her then.”
“Thank you doctor, I appreciate everything you have done.” Brock said more relaxed.
Luke and Sam patted Brock on the back and hugged him. “That was great news.”
“Yeah, now Luke you can get back to your wife and little girl, and Sam you can get to work.”
“There you go again—trying to get rid of us.” Sam said.
A little over an hour later, Brock was walking alongside Holly and holding her hand as they wheeled her up to her room on the third floor. Even though she was still groggy, she did her best to smile at Brock and squeeze his hand. “How is Todd?” She managed to ask.
“Let’s just say that he won’t bother anyone ever again.”
“He’s…”
“Yes, now save your strength.”
Once they settled her in her room, Brock pulled over a chair next to the bed so that he could continue to hold her hand. “You’re going to be sore for a while baby.”
“I don’t think you needed to tell me that.” She groaned.
“Get some sleep—we’ll talk later.”
Luke popped his head in the room a couple of hours later and found Brock asleep with his head on Holly’s bed still holding her hand. He smiled as he turned around and headed back to the maternity ward where he found Brooke breastfeeding Hannah. “How are my two favorite girls?”
Brooke looked up and smiled, “We are doing great. How is Holly?”
“She is sleeping right now. They had to remove her spleen and she has a few broken ribs, but she is strong and will be good as new in no time at all knowing Holly.”
Three weeks later
Brock stopped by the jewelry store on his way home to pick up the engagement ring for Holly that he had chosen a couple of weeks ago and had resized. He was surprised that she had never brought up the subject of marriage knowing that he had indirectly asked her before they visited her parents. When he got home, she was on the couch reading, “Hey, you’re running late today—were you working on a big case?”
“No, I just had some other matters to take care of.” He said as he kneeled down on the floor next to her and kissed her on the forehead.
“Do you want to tell me about them?”
Brock picked up Holly’s hand and brought it to his lips. “Baby, I have been waiting too long for this. I fell in love with you so quickly—at first I didn’t even realize what it was that I felt, because I never felt it before. I was so scared when I thought I had lost you a few weeks ago and I don’t know how I would have made it. I want to spend every waking hour and every sleeping hour with you. Holly, will you make me the happiest man in the world and marry me?”
Holly smiled at Brock, “Did you ask my dad for his permission?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a ring?”
“Oh shit.” He exclaimed as he pulled the ring box out of his pocket. “Yes!”
He opened the box and showed Holly the ring and asked again, “Holly, will you marry me?”
“Yes!” She exclaimed.
“I’d like to get married as soon as you are all healed up. Can you make it happen?”
“I was thinking a spring wedding myself. How about March?”
“If that is what you want, I will live with that.”
It was a small wedding with family and close friends in attendance. Holly made a beautiful bride, but the girl who stole the show was Hannah. She was an honorary flower girl and was pulled down the aisle in a wagon all decked out in wedding finery. The reception was much larger and included all of their co-workers.
Seal It With A Kiss (McClellan Trilogy) Page 18
