by Amelia Autin
But the cases that eviscerated him were the noncustodial kidnappings. He’d had half a dozen of those cases in his career, three of which he’d taken pro bono, the same way he’d taken the McCays’ case. What he wouldn’t accept—could never accept—were people who deliberately separated children from the rest of their family for no real reason except selfishness. Not just parent and child, but also brothers and sisters.
His foster parents had done that. They’d deliberately isolated him from most of his siblings growing up. They hadn’t been able to keep Chris away from his twin sister, Annabel—Granite Gulch had only one high school, and they’d had classes together from day one.
But his foster parents had done their best to keep them apart anyway—even grounding him on the slightest of pretexts and piling him with a heap of after-school chores in addition to his homework—but Annabel had needed him. And beneath his laid-back exterior, Chris had always been something of a white knight. His twin had come first...even if it meant being perpetually grounded.
Chris had managed to reconnect with the rest of his siblings once he was an adult—all except his baby sister, Josie—but he could never get back those growing-up years he’d spent without his four brothers. Without those close familial bonds brothers often formed. That could have made a difference in all their lives, especially given their tragic family history.
That was why he’d taken those pro bono cases in the first place, one of which had come early in his career, when he’d been struggling to make ends meet. But he couldn’t turn down a case involving children. Which was why he’d almost fallen for the McCays’ sob story. Which was also why he was taking on the toughest case of his career to date—protecting Holly, Ian and Jamie McCay.
* * *
“Four bedrooms, Holly,” Chris said as he shifted Ian into his left arm and unlocked the front door, then keyed in the code to disengage the alarm system. “Take your pick. Let me know which one you want for the twins, and I’ll set up their fold-a-cribs. One of the bedrooms is—”
He broke off for a heartbeat, then attempted to finish his sentence, but Holly said quickly, “I want them with me.” She cuddled Jamie, who was starting to fret. “I know all the baby books say it’s a bad idea, but ever since...well, ever since we left Clear Lake City, Ian and Jamie have stayed in the same room with me. First in the motels and then in the Rosewood Rooming House. I’m afraid they’ll be scared if I try to change that tonight, especially since this is a new place to them and all.” She smiled down at the toddler in her arms. “Yes, Jamie, I know you’re hungry. Give Mommy a few minutes, please. Okay, sweetie?”
“If that’s what works,” Chris said, “then it’d probably be best if you took the master bedroom. It’s a lot bigger than the others, more room for both cribs.”
“But that’s your bedroom,” she protested. “I don’t want to put you out of—”
Chris shook his head. “I’ve never lived here. Never slept a night in that room. So you wouldn’t be putting me out.”
I did it again, Holly thought as that closed expression replaced Chris’s smiling demeanor. She put Jamie down, and he clung to her leg. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was quiet. “You’re going out of your way to help us, and I...I keep saying the wrong thing.”
Chris lowered Ian to the floor but kept a wary eye on him so the toddler didn’t wander off. “Not your fault,” he said gruffly. He herded Ian toward Holly with a gentle foot. “Why don’t you give these two some lunch while I get everything unloaded? I’ll bring in the groceries and the high chairs first.”
* * *
Chris set up the fold-a-cribs in the master bedroom while Holly fed the twins. As he’d told Holly, the master bedroom held no memories for him, except...Laura had picked out the furniture. She’d picked out everything in the house...without him. Her dream house, she’d laughingly called it. But he’d been too busy to go with her, so she’d gone without him. She’d driven into Fort Worth with her sister, armed with the platinum credit card Chris had given her, and she’d furnished the house, room by room.
That was where she’d been exposed to viral meningitis. Somewhere in Fort Worth she’d come into contact with a carrier of the disease. Much later the Center for Disease Control had reported a mini outbreak of viral meningitis in Fort Worth—too late. Laura had never mentioned the subsequent symptoms she’d experienced to Chris—the severe headache, fever and neck stiffness—and he hadn’t noticed. He’d been too busy to—
His cell phone rang abruptly, startling him out of his sad reverie. “Chris Colton,” he answered, recognizing the phone number.
The voice of one of the administrative assistants in his Fort Worth office sounded in his ear. “Chris? It’s Teri. Angus McCay just called. He wants to know the status on his case. I told him you’d call him. Do you need the number?”
“No, I’ve got it, thanks. Oh, and, Teri, I’ll send an email, but can you let everyone in all three offices know I won’t be in for the next few days? Something personal has come up I need to take care of. They can reach me by phone or email if it’s urgent. And if any other client calls come in, have Zach or Jimmy deal with them.”
“Sure thing, Chris.”
He sensed the question Teri wanted to ask but wouldn’t. His staff knew not to ask because that’s the kind of manager he was—he kept his personal life and his business life completely separate. Chris disconnected, then thumbed through his phone book until he found the listing for Angus McCay and picked the office number. The phone rang only twice before it was answered.
“Angus McCay.”
“Chris Colton here. You called me?”
Angus McCay cleared his throat. “I know you told us you’d let us know if you found Holly, Mr. Colton, but...it’s been a week and we haven’t heard from you. My wife...well, she wanted me to call you and see if you’ve made any progress.”
“Not to worry, Mr. McCay,” Chris assured him, his mind working swiftly. “I tracked Holly to Grand Prairie, but she gave me the slip.” He deliberately named Grand Prairie because Holly had stayed there...just not recently. And Grand Prairie was southeast of Fort Worth, nowhere near Granite Gulch. “I’m hot on her trail, though. I think she might have moved northeast to Irving.” Another place Holly really had stayed...briefly. “Just sit tight, and I’ll let you know as soon as I have something concrete.”
“It’s not just our grandchildren at stake, you know. They still haven’t caught the Alphabet Killer and...well...you see how it is. Holly’s name begins with H.”
Yeah, Chris thought. Keep beating that drum. How stupid do you take me for? “I don’t think you have to worry about that, Mr. McCay. Both Grand Prairie and Irving are closer to Dallas than to Fort Worth, and the Alphabet Killer isn’t striking anywhere near there.”
“Okay, well...just remember, if you find Holly, we don’t want you to do anything to scare her off. Just let us know and we’ll fly up from Houston immediately. If we can just see that the boys are okay...if we can just talk to Holly...”
“You bet,” Chris told him. “I’ll keep you posted. And don’t worry, Mr. McCay. Holly won’t slip through my fingers next time.” He disconnected just as a sound from the doorway made him swing around. Holly stood there, white as a ghost, a twin balanced on each hip.
Chapter 4
“You...you said you believed me about the McCays,” Holly managed, despite the way her heart was pounding so hard she could barely breathe.
Chris tucked his phone back in his pocket. “I do.”
“Then why... What were you telling my father-in-law? It sounded like you—”
He cut her off. “Just throwing him off the scent, Holly. I had to tell him something, and part of the truth is better than an outright lie—I did track you to Grand Prairie...after I’d already located you in Rosewood. And I wasn’t lying...you did move on to Irving after you left
Grand Prairie. But you only stayed there two weeks, too.”
“How do know that?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
One corner of his mouth curved upward in a half smile. “I told you, I’m damned good at what I do. After Irving you moved to Mansfield, then Arlington. After Arlington you stayed almost a month in Lake Worth before you moved here.”
He walked toward her as he said this, and she backed away on trembling legs, clutching Ian and Jamie as if they were talismans. I was so careful, she thought feverishly. How could he know all that?
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until Chris gave her an “are you kidding me?” look and said, “You make a lousy criminal, Holly. But that’s a compliment, not an insult.”
When Holly bumped into the hallway wall outside the bedroom doorway, she realized she was trapped. But all Chris did was take Ian from her, hefting him under one arm like a football and gently swinging him until Ian laughed at the game. “Time for your nap, bud,” Chris told him. “You and your brother.” His blue eyes met Holly’s brown ones, and there was a gentleness in his face. An honesty she couldn’t help but believe. “I’m not going to hurt you, Holly. Ever. And I’d never do anything to hurt your sons.”
* * *
Holly was so mentally exhausted and emotionally drained that after she read the twins a story, sang them two songs and tucked them up in their cribs, she lay down on the bed, telling herself she’d rest for just a moment. Then she’d unpack their suitcases, wash the lunch dishes, put away the dry-goods groceries she and Chris had bought and decide what to make for dinner. But before she realized it, she was out like a light.
At first her dreams were of happier times, when the twins were newborns and Grant was there. He’d been so proud and nervous at the same time, like most new fathers. Then her dreams segued into nightmares, starting with the devastating news of Grant’s death...the lawyers trying to probate Grant’s will and the McCays attempting to contest it...followed swiftly by the McCays trying to seize custody of the twins, along with control of the trust Grant had set up for his sons. A dazed and bereft Holly had been forced to fight, not only for custody and to carry out Grant’s last wishes but for her good name, too.
That time in her life had been a waking nightmare. She’d won the preliminary battles in the courts and thought she was finally on firm ground...until those three close calls. Any one of them could have been an accident, but three? After the last one, when she’d shown up at the McCays’ house shaken and trembling to pick up the twins, she’d sensed the McCays’ surprise...that she was still alive. And she’d known in that instant they were trying to kill her.
In the way of dreams, Holly suddenly found herself at the Rosewood Rooming House with Chris. He was holding her, but not the way he had in real life. This time his strong arms were surrounding her in comforting fashion as he pressed her head against the solid wall of his oh-so-warm chest and promised her she was safe. “I won’t let them hurt you,” he said, referring to her in-laws. “And I won’t let them get custody of Ian and Jamie.”
The sense of relief she felt was incredible, and all out of proportion to her real life. Holly didn’t subscribe to the theory that a woman couldn’t take care of herself, that she needed a man to look after her. She was a software engineer, for goodness’ sake! She’d supported herself after her missionary parents had been killed in one of their trips to South America—leaving very little in the way of life insurance—and had put herself through college. After graduation she’d held down a challenging job for NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake City, Texas, before she’d taken maternity leave when the twins were born. She didn’t need “rescuing” from her life...as a general rule.
But that was before the McCays had tried to kill her. The situation she found herself in now was so totally outside her experience, so much like one of the thrillers Grant had loved to read but that Holly had always avoided, that she recognized she couldn’t do it all on her own. Single mother? Check. Guardian of her children’s financial future? Check. Putting attempted murderers behind bars? Not so much.
Maybe that was why when Chris had held Holly in the shelter of his arms in her dream and promised she and the boys were safe, she’d believed him...because she wanted to believe him. Because she needed to believe him.
Then he’d kissed her.
No one had ever kissed her that way, with an intensity that shattered everything she’d thought she knew about men and women. Chris’s kiss exploded through her body, as if she were gunpowder and he were a lighted match. He was hard everywhere she was soft, and it made her want to get closer...impossibly closer. Her nipples tightened and her insides melted as Chris tilted her head back and his lips trailed down, down, to brush against the incredibly sensitive hollow of her throat. Then lower.
Holly moaned in her sleep and curled onto her side, pressing her legs together against the throbbing she felt there. And the dream suddenly vanished.
* * *
She woke to the mouthwatering aroma of baked chicken, Ian and Jamie’s chorus of “Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma” as they stood and banged on the sides of their cribs to get her attention and the guilty memory of Chris’s dream kiss. Not the kiss so much as her reaction to it, she acknowledged as a flush of warmth swept through her body. As if...
A tap on the door frame drew her attention, and there stood Chris in the doorway, almost as if she’d dreamed him into existence. Holly quickly hid her face with her hands and rubbed at her eyes, pretending she needed to wake up that way. She didn’t—she just didn’t want Chris to see her flaming cheeks.
“Dinner’s ready” was all Chris said, and as he walked farther into the room, Holly scrambled off the bed. “I’ll take Ian for you,” he said, lifting the older of the twins—older by three minutes—out of his crib.
“How do you know that’s Ian?” she asked, moving to grab Jamie. “They’re identical. Most people can’t tell the difference. Peg can, but it took her a week.”
The intimate smile Chris gave her curled her toes. “Ian looks up when he sees me. Jamie looks away.”
“That’s it? That’s how you can tell them apart?”
“Well...that and the fact that Ian’s ears stick out just a little more than Jamie’s, and Jamie’s hair is just a shade lighter than Ian’s.”
Holly stopped short, glancing from the toddler in Chris’s arms to the one in her own arms. “You’re right,” she said after a minute. “I never realized about the ears...but you’re right.”
“So how do you tell them apart? Motherly instinct?”
She adjusted Jamie to balance him against her hip and popped a kiss on his rosebud mouth. “I can’t really tell you,” she confessed. “I just know.”
Chris nodded as if she’d given him the answer he expected. “Motherly instinct,” he repeated, but this time it wasn’t a question. He turned toward the doorway. “Come on, dinner will be getting cold.”
“I was going to make dinner,” she protested as she followed Chris into the kitchen, feeling guilty.
“You were fast asleep every time I came to check on you, and I didn’t have the heart to wake you.” Chris settled Ian in one of the two high chairs he’d pulled up beside the kitchen table and strapped him in. “Hang tight, buddy,” he told the boy as Ian began banging on the tray and shouting, “Din-din-din-din-din!”
Jamie took up the chant as Holly got him settled. “Sorry,” she told Chris over the boys’ urgent demands. “I usually feed them a little earlier. I must have been more exhausted than I thought.”
“Adrenaline will do that to you,” Chris said as he grabbed two child-sized plates that were sitting in the microwave, added the baby cutlery she’d used at lunch from the rack on the drain board—he must have washed the lunch dishes, Holly realized with another little dart of guilt—and whisked the plates in front of Ian and Jamie. Baked chicken, cut i
nto baby-sized bites, sat next to miniature mounds of mashed potatoes. Peas with a tiny dollop of melted butter rounded out the servings.
“Are you sure you’re not a nanny in disguise?” Holly joked as the twins’ eyes lit up and they dug in, soon making a mess out of feeding themselves. “How do you know—”
“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence,” Chris told her in a stern voice, but the twinkle in his eyes gave the lie to his tone. “I’m the second oldest of seven. That many kids in a family—you need a lot of hands to get all the work done. My twin sister, Annabel, and I used to help Mama with the younger kids, especially my baby sister, Josie.”
He turned away to take the rest of the chicken out of the oven, but not before Holly saw a troubled expression slide over his face. More land mines, she warned herself. He doesn’t want to talk about his childhood. That made sense given what he’d told her this morning—that his father was a notorious serial killer who’d killed Chris’s mother, too.
She cast about in her mind for a safe topic of conversation as she filled a plate for herself from the chicken pan and the pots on the stove, and Chris filled Wally’s bowl with fresh water. “I didn’t realize you’re a twin,” she said as she seated herself at the table.
Chris started to respond, but Holly leaned over to Jamie, who was rolling his peas across his high-chair tray and then smashing them flat with the tip of one chubby pointer finger. “You’re going to eat those, mister,” she told him in a no-nonsense voice. “So you just peel them up and pop them into your mouth.” She waited until Jamie obediently scooped up two peas and ate them before she glanced up at Chris. “Sorry. It’s a constant battle with boys this young. They want to feed themselves, but... What were you going to say?”
“I was just about to say that yeah, I’m a twin myself. Not identical, of course, but there is an unbreakable bond.”
“I’ve seen that with Ian and Jamie already.”
