by Amelia Autin
Or maybe it was the self-satisfied expression on Evalinda McCay’s face when she thought Chris wouldn’t see it, when he’d been perusing the financial reports they’d handed him and he’d glanced up unexpectedly. The expression had been wiped away almost instantly, replaced with the look of worried concern she’d worn earlier. But Chris’s instincts—which he trusted—had gone on the alert.
He’d been a private investigator for nine years, ever since he’d received his bachelor of arts degree in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Texas at Arlington. From day one he’d trusted his instincts, and they’d never steered him wrong. Only an idiot would go against his instincts in his line of work, and for all his laid-back, seemingly good-old-Texas-boy persona, Chris wasn’t an idiot.
He’d also run a credit check on the McCays the same day they’d come to see him—standard procedure for all his clients these days. He never took anyone’s word they had the wherewithal to pay him—he’d been burned once early in his career and had learned a hard lesson. The credit report on the McCays had come back with some troubling red flags. They were living beyond their means. Way beyond their means, and had done so for years, despite Angus McCay’s well-paying job as a bank president down in Houston. Even though Chris was taking this case pro bono and wouldn’t be paid except for expenses, that credit report had given him pause.
Now he was glad he hadn’t called the McCays for several reasons, not the least of which was that he knew Peg Merrill, had known her all his life. If she and Holly were friends, then Holly couldn’t be the woman the McCays had made her out to be. Peg had an unerring BS meter—she’d nailed Chris on a few things over the years—which meant Holly couldn’t have fooled Peg about the kind of woman she was. To top it off, Peg reigned supreme in one area in particular—motherhood. The worst insult in her book was to call someone a bad mother. No way would she be friends with a woman who was a bad mother.
Besides, Peg was his sister-in-law. Former sister-in-law, really, since Laura was dead. But he wasn’t going there. Not now. Sister-in-law or not, Chris didn’t want to be on Peg’s bad side. Especially not on a pro bono case he’d already been having second thoughts about.
* * *
Chris waited until Holly McCay strapped her twins into their car seats and drove away before he got out of his truck. He shrugged on his blazer to hide his shoulder holster, then settled his black Stetson on his head and ambled toward Peg’s house, determined to find out whatever he could about Holly McCay from Peg.
“Chris!” Peg exclaimed when she opened the door. “This is a surprise. Come on in.”
“Unca Chris!” Peg’s two-year-old daughter, Susan, made a beeline for Chris when he stepped inside, and he bent over to swing her up into his arms. A cacophony of barking from three dogs—one of which had been Chris’s gift to Laura not long before she died—prevented anyone from being heard for a couple of minutes, but eventually Peg’s two dogs subsided back to their rug in front of the fireplace in the family room.
Chris settled into one of the oversize recliners, still cuddling Susan against his shoulder while his other hand ruffled Wally’s fur. “Hey, boy,” he murmured, gazing down at the golden retriever Laura had adored. If his heart hadn’t already been broken when Laura died, it would have broken at losing Wally, too. Chris had given Laura the puppy thinking they’d soon be moving from their apartment into a house with a large fenced yard. But that dream house sat vacant now—Chris couldn’t bear to live there without Laura. And an apartment was no place for a growing dog, especially since Chris was rarely home. So when Peg and her husband, Joe, volunteered to adopt Wally, Chris had reluctantly accepted their offer. At least he’d still get to see Wally, he’d reasoned at the time—he was always welcome at the Merrill house.
Chris and Peg chatted about nothing much for a few minutes. About Bobby, Peg’s napping one-year-old son, who was already starting to walk. About Joe’s thriving gardening center in Granite Gulch, the Green and Grow. About Chris’s highly successful private investigation business—which he’d thrown himself into even more thoroughly after Laura’s death—and the fourth office he’d nearly decided to add in Arlington.
When Susan’s eyelids began fluttering, Peg reached to take her daughter from Chris, but he forestalled her. “I’ll put her down for her nap,” he told Peg, doing just that. When he came back, Peg handed him a frosty glass of iced tea prepared the way he preferred it, with two lemon wedges, not just one.
They’d just settled back into their spots in the family room, Wally at Chris’s feet, when Peg put her own glass of iced tea down on a coaster on the end table and said, “So what’s wrong?” She didn’t give Chris a chance to answer before she continued, “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Susan—you would not believe how much she understands already. I told Joe he needed to watch his language now that Susan is so aware—and she mimics everything he says...especially the bad words.” Chris laughed, and Peg said, “But something’s up. You wouldn’t be here in the middle of the week, in the middle of the afternoon, if something wasn’t wrong.”
Chris shook his head and smiled wryly. “You must have second sight or something.” He hesitated, considering and then discarding his original idea of pumping Peg for info about Holly McCay on the sly. “The woman who was here a little while ago—”
“Holly?” Peg’s surprise was obvious.
“Yeah. Holly McCay. I’ve been hired by her in-laws to find her.”
Chapter 2
Two days later Holly drove away from Peg’s house with her vision blurred from unshed tears. She’d left the twins in her friend’s care one last time, but that wasn’t why she was practically crying. She hadn’t told Peg—she’d chickened out at the last minute—but she wasn’t going to do errands. She’d wanted Ian and Jamie to have one last opportunity to play with Susan and Bobby...while she packed up the contents of their room in the Rosewood Rooming House and loaded everything into her SUV. Then she would pick up her boys, hand Peg the note she was trying to compose in her mind so Peg wouldn’t worry about them...and they’d be gone.
* * *
Chris followed Holly away from Peg’s house, keeping enough distance between his truck and her little SUV so she wouldn’t spot the tail. He was surprised when she didn’t stop at any of the stores in Granite Gulch but kept driving. She kept driving even after she reached the state highway that was the boundary between Granite Gulch and Rosewood. Puzzled but not really worried, Chris let the distance between their two vehicles increase, because there weren’t any cars out this way to hide the fact that he was following her.
When Holly pulled into the Rosewood Rooming House parking lot, Chris was faced with a dilemma. He drove past, then doubled back as soon as he could, just in time to see Holly entering the rooming house’s front door.
“What the hell is she doing?” he muttered to himself, wondering if she’d forgotten something and would be back outside soon. He made a U-turn a hundred yards down, parked close enough so he could watch the front door and Holly’s SUV, but far enough away from the rooming house so he wouldn’t be spotted, and waited. And waited.
A fleeting thought crossed his mind that the Rosewood Rooming House wasn’t really the safest place for a woman on her own with two young children. Not only was the rooming house full of transients, but Regina Willard—whom law enforcement had pretty much identified as the Alphabet Killer—was known to have roomed here not that long ago. Not his baby sister, Josie, thank God. The Alphabet Killer hadn’t been caught yet, but at least now everyone in town knew it wasn’t Josie.
Thoughts of Josie reminded Chris that she was still missing, even after all these years he’d been searching for her. His two most spectacular failures as a PI both had their roots in his family history—Josie...and his mother’s burial place. He touched his heart in an automatic gesture. The pain he felt over those failures ranked r
ight up there with Laura’s death and his guilt over that.
If his serial-killer father could be believed, however, his mother’s burial place might at last be discovered, something all the Colton children devoutly wished for. When their father had killed their mother, he’d hidden her body. She’d never been found, not in twenty years. But Matthew Colton had provided four clues to where Saralee Colton’s body was buried. Not that the clues made any real sense...so far. But they were clues. He’d promised one clue for every child who visited him in prison. Annabel had been the last to visit their father, and her clue—Peaches—had been just as enigmatic as the first three: Texas, Hill and B. The siblings had theorized that maybe—maybe—the clues were pointing to their maternal grandparents’ home in Bearson, Texas. But that house sat on acres of land. Even if their mother was buried somewhere on her parents’ property, they weren’t really much better off than they’d been when they started this sorry mess.
Chris sighed. This month was his turn to visit their father in prison. He didn’t know why Matthew was putting his children through this torture—other than the fact that he could because they were all desperate to locate their mother’s body and give her a decent burial—but it almost seemed as if their father was getting a perverse pleasure out of it. “The serial killer’s last revenge,” he murmured. Matthew Colton was dying. Everyone knew it, especially Matthew himself. “It would be just like that bastard to torture us with these disparate clues...then die. Taking his secret to the grave.” He relieved his anger and frustration with a few choice curse words...until he remembered he was supposed to be giving them up. He’d resolved two days earlier that he was going to clean up his language for Susan Merrill’s sake, and Bobby’s, just as Joe Merrill was supposed to do.
“Heck and damnation,” Chris said now. It didn’t have the same impact.
* * *
Regina Willard groaned as she rolled out of her uncomfortable sleeping bag and staggered outside to relieve herself. She hated this hideout, hated being forced by the Granite Gulch Police Department and the FBI to hurriedly leave the Rosewood Rooming House. Her place there hadn’t been luxurious by any means, but at least she’d had a comfortable bed and civilized facilities at her disposal. Not this hole-in-the-ground living quarters without any running water.
She thought fleetingly of her half brother, Jesse Willard, and his thriving farm. The last time she’d talked to him, years ago, he’d tried to encourage her to move on. To stop grieving for her lost fiancé. Jesse didn’t understand. That bitch had stolen the only man Regina could ever love, and she’d had to pay. No matter how the woman disguised herself, no matter how many times she changed her name, Regina recognized her...and made her pay.
Regina shook her head. She kept killing that woman, but the bitch refused to stay dead. So Regina had to keep killing her again and again. If she killed her enough times, eventually she would stay dead. Then she could relax, move away from this area and try to forget.
She blinked, then rubbed her eyes, trying to focus. How many times had it been altogether? She ticked them off on her fingers. “Seven,” she said at last. She chuckled to herself. Yes, she’d been forced into hiding out in this shelter in the middle of nowhere, but not even the vaunted FBI had been able to stop her. She was on a mission, and no one would stop her until the bitch was dead. Permanently.
* * *
Holly packed swiftly. While her hands were performing that mindless task, she tried to make plans. Where to go? she thought. New Mexico? Arizona? Or should she just keep driving until she’d put thousands of miles between herself and the McCays? She’d never lived in the United States outside Texas, and a little niggling fear of the unknown made her heart skip a beat as she envisioned going to a completely strange place. Not just the difference between Houston and Fort Worth, but completely different. Yes, she’d visited South America as a young child with her missionary parents, but that was a long time ago—Texas had been her home ever since she’d started school.
Leaving again hadn’t been an easy decision for Holly to make—she didn’t want to leave. Not just for her own sake but for her boys, too, who had reached the age where they noticed changes in their lives. But the time had come to move on.
She wasn’t really concerned about the Alphabet Killer, despite the fact that the killer was up to the Hs now. All seven of the killer’s victims had long dark hair, and while Holly’s wig was dark, it was very short. Not that she was careless of her safety—she wasn’t going to risk being the exception to the killer’s rule.
But she wasn’t running from the Alphabet Killer. She was running from the McCays. The McCays...and their attempts on her life.
She hadn’t wanted to admit it at first. But when one near miss had led to a second, then a third, she’d been forced to look at the McCays with suspicious eyes. Someone wanted her dead. Who else could it be? She didn’t have an enemy in the world. But she was the trustee for the twins’ inheritance from Grant. Which meant she controlled the income earned on nearly twenty million dollars. Over and above the cash invested conservatively, the trust also owned stock in Grant’s software company—now being run by others, but still doing well. So the trust had unlimited growth potential.
She’d always known Grant’s parents—especially his mother—were cold and calculating. Grant had known it, too, although they’d never really discussed it—not when they were kids, and not after they were married. It was one of those things they’d just taken for granted. Was that why he hadn’t left them anything in his will? Because he knew they were more interested in the fortune he’d earned from his breakthrough software design than they were in him or their grandsons?
She had no proof the McCays were trying to kill her, though. Nothing to take to the police except a growing certainty it couldn’t be anyone else. Especially after the McCays tried to gain custody of the twins through the courts and had lied about Holly in their depositions—warning bells had gone off loud and clear. But even if she’d gone to the police, what would they have said? Those near misses could have been a coincidence. Accidents. The McCays were solid, middle-class, upstanding, churchgoing citizens. The salt of the earth. Or at least that was the image they projected. How could she even think of making a slanderous accusation against them...especially for such a heinous crime as attempted murder?
Which was why she’d packed up the bare necessities three weeks before Christmas, buckled her sons into their baby car seats and headed north toward the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex with fierce determination. She hadn’t really had a plan—plans could wait, she’d told herself—but she knew she had to put herself out of reach of her in-laws until she had time to think things through. She’d thought she could lose herself in Texas’s second-largest metropolitan area.
But she wasn’t a criminal on the lam, and she had no idea how to go about getting a fake ID. Not to mention she couldn’t carry huge wads of cash with her in lieu of using her credit and debit cards. She had to withdraw money from the bank periodically—a bank account she’d opened with her real social security number and driver’s license.
She’d moved a week after she’d opened the new bank account—as she’d moved every time she got the feeling the McCays were getting close. But she hadn’t switched banks. She’d picked the Cattleman’s Bank of Fort Worth precisely because it had hundreds of branches throughout the DFW area, including small branches in grocery stores. And Holly had used many of them to throw the McCays off the scent...assuming they were still trying to track her down. But she had to assume that. She didn’t dare assume otherwise.
Which meant her time in tiny Rosewood, right next door to Granite Gulch, where Peg lived, had finally come to an end. Rosewood was so small she’d thought the McCays would never find her in this out-of-the-way place, since she was still paying cash for everything and varying which bank branches she was using to withdraw that cash.
She loved the
small-town atmosphere here, and after she’d made friends with Peg at the Laundromat—thank God Peg’s washing machine broke down that day!—she’d started to feel at home. So she’d convinced herself she was safe. But for the past three days she’d had...well...the willies, she told herself, for lack of a better term. A feeling she was being watched. Followed.
It could be the Alphabet Killer, she supposed. But she didn’t think so. Either way was a disaster in the making, and she wasn’t going to stick around to find out for sure one way or the other.
Holly stashed two suitcases into the rear of her SUV, then headed back to the rooming house for another load.
She held the door to her room open with one foot as she picked up a box of toys and books, then tried to scream and dropped the box when a tall blond man in a black Stetson loomed in the doorway.
A large hand covered her mouth, stifling her voice, and all Holly could think of in that instant was No! No, she wasn’t going to be a victim. She wasn’t going to let herself be raped or murdered or—
She tore at the hand covering her mouth, but the man plastered her against the wall inside her room and kicked the door shut behind him. Then just held her prisoner with his body as she desperately tried to free herself. She gave up trying to fight the hand that muzzled her and went for his eyes instead. But he ducked his head, placing his mouth against her ear as he said in a deep undertone, “Stop it, Holly! I’m not going to hurt you—I’m trying to save your life. Peg Merrill’s my sister-in-law.”
She froze. Her heart was still beating like a snare drum, but she stopped fighting at Peg’s name. And when she did that, she realized the stranger wasn’t using her immobility to his advantage. She tried to ask a question, but the hand over her mouth prevented her.
“If I take my hand away, are you going to scream?” he asked, still in that same deep undertone. Holly shook her head slightly and was surprised, yet not surprised, when he did just that—he removed his hand. But it hovered near her face, as if he’d clamp it back in place if she screamed.
