Kansas City Christmas

by Julie Miller

  Either nervous about facing the press himself, or caught up in the excitement of the chaotic scene, Temple’s gaze darted from Edward out through the doors and back. “We were supposed to meet for a ballistics briefing a half hour ago, but she never showed.”

  So much for hope. “Did you try calling her?”

  “Uh, yes. At about eight fifteen this morning. Her lab was dark, so I figured she wasn’t in yet. I called her cell but she didn’t answer.”

  Edward had left the conversation two sentences ago. He hurried toward the stairwell to the basement, processing the time frame. He’d watch Holly drive away from Caldwell Technologies just after 11 p.m. last night. She’d been out of touch with the world for over ten hours now. And he hadn’t been looking for her. He hadn’t known she’d even needed him. Son of a…He hadn’t done his job.

  “Holly!”

  He took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the jolts in his knee and ankle each time his foot came down hard on a step. Atticus was thinking a little more rationally, questioning the two guards following them down the stairs. “How much of a search have you gotten done?”

  “We located Dr. Masterson’s car in the garage. But she never signed in or out of the duty log, sir,” one of them reported. “And like Rick said, there was no one in the basement lab when we did a walk-by. We’ll have to call in more men to do a room-to-room search.”

  “Was there any sign of a struggle?”

  “No, sir. The cleaning crew went by about three a.m. They said the lab was empty, and everything inside was spic-and-span.”

  “What about at her car?”

  “Not that I could see.”

  “She’s here, A,” Edward insisted. “She said autopsy.”

  “I’m not arguing with you. I just want to make sure we have all the facts, in case—”

  “In case what?” Edward didn’t want to hear the options. He whirled around and glared at his brother. He couldn’t handle in case.

  Atticus, thank God, could keep a cooler head. “Let’s just get inside there and do a thorough sweep. I didn’t know you and Holly were so close, but I can see how important it is for you to find her. We will.”

  “Sorry, A.” Edward nodded and reached for the door. He wanted to see Holly with his own eyes and put his hands on her and know that she was all right. That she was in one piece. He needed to know that the woman he cared about hadn’t been hurt because of him. Again.

  He’d deal with the ramifications of caring later.

  “Whoa.” Atticus’s hand on his arm stopped Edward from pushing the door handle. He nodded toward the jamb at the base of the door. “Do you see that?”

  “See what? Let me in, A.” He’d never punched a brother before in his life, not even as kids. But so help him…

  But Atticus wouldn’t let him pass. “Look.”

  Tearing his eyes from the lab door, he spared a second to follow the line of Atticus’s pointing finger. He didn’t have to ask what his brother was looking at. Edward saw it now, too.

  A tiny ruby-red crescent.

  He squatted down beside his brother to get a closer look at the tiny shard caught beneath the baseboard beside the door. Even Atticus’s keen eye would have overlooked it if it hadn’t been painted that Christmas red color.

  “Does Holly have manicured nails?” Atticus asked.

  All too easily, Edward pictured Holly’s long, articulate fingers, sliding into plastic examination gloves or reaching up to gently caress his face. Her nails were sensibly short. Functional. Clear. “No.”

  “Holden’s girlfriend, Liza—when she saw Dad’s killer leaving the crime scene at the warehouse, she said she was certain it was a woman.” Atticus’s gray eyes bored into his. “Could you have stirred something up with your off-the-books investigation? Maybe you’re on to something that could lead us to that woman.”

  And that same woman may have been down here with Holly? “Move!”

  Edward shoved himself to his feet and pushed open the door. The wildly desperate feeling that he was already too late tunneled his senses to one purpose—finding Holly. Alive.

  Stepping through the doorjamb, he pulled off his leather gloves and used one to flip the switch and flood the lab with light. He was only vaguely aware of Atticus ordering Rick Temple to grab a camera and evidence bag and process the broken nail.

  “Are you sure she was here, sir?” The two security guards had followed him in. “It doesn’t look like anybody has been in here tonight.”

  “Please, Edward. Hurry.”

  “She’s here,” he said with certainty. Then he walked into her office and saw the chair behind the desk. “She’s here.”

  He picked up two water-stained leather high heels and pushed them into the hands of the young guard who’d doubted him. “She was wearing these last night.” He shouted, “Holly?”

  “Autopsy.”

  He looked straight across the room to the glass door with the plain black letters that marked the work she did inside. That marked where Cara and Melinda had rested the night they’d died.

  Of all the places in the world to have to look for someone. “Oh, no.”

  “Ed?”

  “In here!” Edward tore across the lab and threw open the door hard enough for it to bounce against the thick glass windows insulating the autopsy room from the rest of the lab. Inside the sterile room he could hear the whirring motors of the cooling and air filtration units.

  And he could hear a faint tapping sound.

  His eyes zeroed in on the stainless steel gurney wedged beneath the handles on a row of body drawers along the east side of the room. “Holly?”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “Help me move this thing.”

  The tapping grew louder.

  With Atticus’s help, he shoved the gurney back to the center of the room and they started pulling open each of the body drawers. Empty. Empty.

  Tap. Tap.

  Empty.

  When he felt the weight resistance on the third drawer, Edward nearly cried out. He quickly slid the chamber out of the wall. “Holly?”

  A soft gasp answered him. “Help me.”

  “I’m here, honey. I’m here.” Joy soared through him as he glimpsed a cap of dark brown hair, eyes squinting against the bright light, and a cell phone resting against her ear. But relief plummeted down to his toes when he saw all the blood matted in the back of her hair and drying on the tray beneath her head. There was blood on her lab coat, too. And she looked so pale. “Get the EMTs down here!”

  “Edward?”

  Good. Her eyes hadn’t opened but she’d recognized him by sound or mood.

  His fingers shook as he brushed the bangs from her forehead. He leaned down to press a kiss to the same spot. Her skin felt clammy, unnaturally cold. “Where are you hurt? Can you tell me what happened?”

  “He hit me…in the head. With a flashlight, I think.”

  He winced along with her when she tried to roll toward him and moaned. “You have to lie still.”

  But now she was trying to push herself up. “I want out of here. I’m so cold. I need air. Now.”

  “The EMTs—”

  “No.” A tear squeezed between her lashes. “I can’t stay in this tomb one more second.”

  Understanding the desperation in her voice, Edward pried the phone from her hand and handed it off to Atticus. “Introduce yourself to Jillian and tell her I’ve got her sister.” He unzipped his coat and peeled it off, covering Holly’s shivering body. “Then bag that phone. I want to know who belongs to every number that’s called in.”

  “Got it.”

  As Atticus moved to a quiet corner to handle the phone call, Ed slipped his arms beneath Holly’s body. “You know about this kind of doctoring, too, right? Can I move you?”

  She nodded, and the pain that slight movement caused her knifed through him as well. With her eyes squeezed shut against the ache in her head, she whispered brief instructions about needing to stay warm and stay awake unt
il another professional could examine her. “I can focus my eyes. My head feels like a ton of bricks is shifting around inside it, though.”

  “I’ve got you, then.” He lifted her, coat and all. “Just stay with me, honey. Stay with me.”

  Trusting that the head wound and possible shock were the only physical injuries he needed to watch out for, he decided to deal with the emotional and mental injuries caused by the assault. He needed to deal with them.

  Hugging her against his chest, Edward carried Holly into her office, looking for a bit of privacy as well as the warmth she needed. She didn’t weigh enough to put any strain on his mended joints, but still, his legs nearly gave out from tension and worry. Only twenty minutes had passed since Jillian had received Holly’s call, but he felt drained, as though he’d been worrying about this woman’s welfare for a lifetime.

  Before his willpower failed him, Edward kicked the chair out from under her desk and sank into it, spilling Holly into his lap.

  “No,” she protested, curling her fingers into the front of his sweater and trying to hold on. “Please. I don’t want to be alone.

  I couldn’t get out, and he kept calling me, over and over, and there was no one…”

  “Shh, I’m not letting go. I just need to warm you up.” He allowed the distance between them just long enough to wrap his coat more securely around her before drawing her back into his arms. “He’s not going to hurt you again. Do you understand? I’m not going to let him hurt you.”

  Tucking her head beneath his chin, Holly curled herself into a ball and burrowed against him. She needed to talk about it, to get the horrible experience out of her, and though it angered him to hear about the shadow and the lights going out and the flashlight crashing down on the back of her skull, Edward listened. He clenched his jaw and held his curse as she described the sensation of waking inside what was virtually a steel coffin. When she described the tormenting calls that kept her from answering her phone or calling someone until she began to get disoriented from the mix of what was probably a concussion and a shrinking supply of oxygen, he rubbed his hands up and down her arms and along the length of her legs. He needed to generate some heat into her chilled body and reassure himself that beyond bumps and abrasions and the clotted gash behind her left ear, she truly was in one piece.

  Edward pressed his lips to the crown of her hair. He’d reached her in time. He hadn’t failed her. Holly hadn’t died like his wife and daughter had.

  “You scared me, Stick. I couldn’t find you and I thought…” An unforgiving fist squeezed his heart.

  Maybe sensing the depth of his distress, Holly released her death grip on his sweater and wound her arms around his neck, tilting her face up to his. “It’s okay, Edward. I’ll be okay.”

  She touched her lips to his. Something hard and anguished unfurled inside him at that gentle caress. Palming the back of her neck, he lifted her higher and claimed her mouth in a ragged, needy, possessive kiss. The bulk of his coat was too much between them and he slid his arm inside, catching her tight against his chest, palming her hip and stroking her back.

  She speared her fingers into his hair and hugged his shoulders, giving him everything he needed to make the raw hurt inside him go away. “Shh. I’m okay.” She kissed his eyes, cradled his face between her hands, kissed him again. “You’re not responsible for what happened. It’s not your fault.”

  She was the victim here. And yet she was the one comforting him?

  Though he couldn’t deny how much he craved her tenderness, he eased his hold on her and settled her back in his lap. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry you got hurt.”

  “Thank you for finding me.”

  “Thank you for living,” he whispered against her hair, hugging her almost painfully tight. She tucked her head beneath his chin and snuggled close as he covered her again with his coat.

  “I’ll be fine now,” she promised, whispering against his beating heart. “Just don’t let go.”

  It took both Atticus and Sawyer to pry her from his arms to allow the EMTs to clean and stitch the wound in her scalp.

  By the time they’d dismissed her and she’d given an official statement to Atticus, Holly was clear eyed and able to stand on her own two feet. She still wore Edward’s fleece-lined coat around her shoulders as she led Atticus through the crime scene.

  “Be sure they process the trace from under my fingernails. It may just be from my own struggles in the morgue unit, but I could have gotten something off my attacker.”

  “I’ll have the lab look at the debris the medics removed from your head wound as well.”

  Holly nodded. “There were tissue samples on the cart I knocked over. I don’t see any of the containers now, but I catalogued them in the computer so trace will know what to exclude.”

  Atticus followed Holly toward the autopsy room, asking questions and jotting answers. “Could you tell whether your attacker was male or female?”

  “I suppose it could have been a woman. She wasn’t any taller than I was. I think he or she tried to pick me up but ended up dragging me.”

  “Maybe you injured her in the struggle,” A suggested.

  Holly pulled the coat more tightly around her as they entered the air-conditioned autopsy room. “The lights went out and he—or she—was dressed all in black. I smacked him with my clipboard, but I couldn’t see the face. Once he hit me, everything got fuzzy. I passed out and woke up in—”

  The door closed behind them, leaving Edward to watch without hearing any more of the violent report. Holly described everything so coolly, so practically, but he was pretty much a mess of irrational rage and gut-deep fear.

  He didn’t know how long Sawyer had been standing beside him until his brother made a few observations of his own. “If the cleaning crew was here between two and three, then that fingernail you found had to be deposited after three. Is that when we’re placing the attack?”

  Edward nodded, forcing his brain to think analytically about the details of Holly’s assault instead of focusing on the stitches and bandage that interfered with the way her short, sleek haircut normally fell into place. He needed to listen to what his brothers were saying with an unbiased ear instead of coloring his opinions through the pale cast to Holly’s cheeks.

  “Does this place look too clean to you?” he asked.

  Sawyer shrugged. “It’s a sterile lab.”

  “Yeah, but if the cleaning crew was here before the attack—” “—then her attacker cleaned up. Do you think he or she was after something in the lab and Holly just happened to be in the way?”

  “I think the attacker took what Holly was working on. There are no evidence bags, no samples, no notes.” Edward scraped his palm over the scarred ridges and angles of his jaw. “Can I make a confession to you? As a brother, not a cop.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Holly and I ‘borrowed’ something from Caldwell Technologies last night.”

  “Bill’s company? Mom was hosting the party with him, wasn’t she?”

  “Yeah.” It felt awkward to be discussing the man whom Edward and his brothers had camped and fished with growing up, a man who’d been as close as a brother to their father, as if he was some kind of suspect. “We located a stash of disintegrator bullets.”

  Like the ones three prison escapees—and suspected Z Group employees—had used during a crime spree earlier in the year. Sawyer had become personally involved in that case when he discovered that his wife’s abusive ex-husband was one of the escaped convicts. “Are you saying they’re the same kind of trademark bullet Z Group uses?”

  “It’s possible. And there were a lot of them—not a single prototype like Bill told us when we questioned him a couple of months ago.”

  “You think Bill’s a part of this?”

  Sawyer’s incredulity matched his own. “He and Dad served together in military intelligence years ago. They were both a part of Z Group, too, before the government shut down their operation in
Sarajevo. Dad’s journals—the ones Atticus and Brooke found—said that Dad had discovered Z Group was still in operation, trading arms and technology on the underground market. Maybe Dad ran across something like this at Bill’s company, too. Maybe that’s how he knew the organization had never died.”

  “No way could Bill be involved with Dad’s murder. He’s family.” Sawyer’s emotions ran pretty close to the surface. “No way. Mom’s been dating him. Just because his company produces something similar to the disintegrators doesn’t mean he’s supplying Z Group with weapons or that he’s any part of their cover-up.”

  “Down, boy.” He wanted to agree with Sawyer’s defense of the man who had always been a second father to them. But facts didn’t lie. “I’m not accusing Bill of anything. But either he knows about the production of that ammunition, or he has a traitor in his company who’s been using him.”

  “One of those bullets nearly killed my son,” Sawyer spoke on a low, tense voice. “Bill wouldn’t let that happen. Dad wouldn’t have let Bill get involved with something like that. If he had anything to do with Z Group, Dad would have stopped him. Too many people have died.”

  At this bleak moment of clarity, Edward didn’t feel just like the older brother—he felt ancient. “Dad did try to stop them. That’s why he’s dead.”

  They stood together in silence while each man processed the possibilities. Sawyer was calmer when he spoke again. “So Dad found out something illegal was going on at Caldwell Technologies. And either Bill’s involved, or Bill is in danger because of it.” He glanced down at Edward. “So, how do we find out exactly what Dad discovered? How do we prove Bill’s innocence or guilt?”

  “First, we prove those are the same disintegrators Z Group uses. Then we find out who’s using the company to make them.”

  Sawyer nodded. “And knowing who’s behind the bullets can lead us to Dad’s killer.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you have a plan as to how we can get a hold of one of those bullets legally?”

  “I’m working on it.” It might come down to confronting Bill himself. But Edward was keeping his options open. “Holly was going to run some tests to compare what we found to bullets she’s removed during autopsies. I just didn’t know she was going to do it last night—while she was here alone.”