As they drove the short distance to Granite Gulch, Holly wondered about Chris. About his motives for doing this—protecting her boys and her. She also couldn’t help wondering about his wife, Laura, and what had happened to her. Car accident? Some kind of illness, like cancer? Peg had never mentioned Laura that she could recall. But it wasn’t just idle curiosity. She really wanted to know, because it was obvious Chris had been in love with his wife.
Holly glanced in the rearview mirror at the man in the truck behind her and sighed. If only Grant had loved her the way Chris had loved his wife. If only...
She couldn’t help feeling a dart of envy comparing Chris to Grant. Not that Grant hadn’t been a good man—he had been. So very different from his parents. No, the problem was that Grant had been her best friend growing up, and while he’d loved her, he hadn’t been in love with her. Not the way she’d been in love with him.
She’d grieved for Grant. Those first few months after his death she’d been devastated...but she hadn’t been able to grieve for long. The McCays had seen to that.
Was that why I recovered from Grant’s death so quickly? she asked herself now. Because Grant’s parents tried to gain custody of Ian and Jamie and that took all my energy and concentration? Because when that didn’t work they tried to have me killed, forcing me to take my babies and flee?
The first time a car unexpectedly swerved into her lane on the expressway just as she was approaching an overpass, Holly had dismissed it as merely poor driving on someone’s part. The second similar attempt only two weeks later had raised her suspicions, especially since she thought she recognized the car. But the third try on her life had been the clincher—someone had deliberately attempted to run her down in the grocery store parking lot, and she’d escaped with her life only by diving between two parked cars as the vehicle in question sped away without stopping.
Holly glanced in the rearview mirror again. Or is the reason I’m not still grieving because Grant never loved me the way I wanted him to love me? The way I loved him.
She would never know. All she knew was that not quite a year after Grant’s death she was ready to move on with her life...if the McCays would let her.
* * *
Holly buckled Ian into one car seat while Chris buckled Jamie into the other. She’d been surprised at first at how baby-knowledgeable Chris was, but she quickly realized she shouldn’t be—Peg’s kids adored their “Unca Chris,” as Susan called him. Which meant even though she’d never met Chris at Peg’s house in the three months the two women had been friends, he had to be a fairly frequent visitor.
Holly turned back to thank Peg just as the other woman came out of the house with a bag of dog food balanced on one hip, a bag of doggy treats perched precariously on top and a leashed Wally dancing joyously beside her.
“What the—” Chris began, but Peg cut him off.
“Holly’s kids adore Wally, and he’s attached to them, so that will help the kids acclimate faster. Besides, it won’t hurt to have a guard dog out there, Chris. You know that. It’s why you got Wally for Laura in the first place.”
Chris’s slow smile did something to Holly’s heart. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but she wouldn’t have minded having that smile aimed at her.
“Thanks,” Chris said, relieving Peg of the dog, the dog food and the doggy treats before planting a kiss on her cheek. “Come on, boy,” he said, opening the door of his F-150 and letting Wally scramble up onto the front seat as Chris plopped the dog food on the floor.
Holly turned to Peg. “Thanks for watching the boys for me,” she said softly. “I wasn’t going to leave without telling you—please believe that.”
Peg smiled and hugged her. “I do.” She stepped back and her smile faded. “But you can’t run forever, Holly. I know it’s not easy, but sometimes you just have to face up to the truth and take a stand. Chris’s idea is better any way you look at it. You owe it to your boys to have the McCays put away so y’all can stop running.”
“I know.”
The two women embraced once more, and Peg whispered in her ear, “Chris needs to do this, Holly. I can’t explain, but he needs to do this. So just let him take care of you and your boys.”
* * *
Chris drove at a sedate pace—unlike his usual hell-bent-for-leather style—watching Holly’s SUV in his rearview mirror, making sure he didn’t lose her. And as he drove he wondered about her. Not the facts and figures he’d uncovered in his investigation—he already knew far too much about her past, much more than most people would find out in a year of knowing her.
He knew where she’d grown up, what had happened to her parents, where she’d gone to college and where she’d worked after graduation. He knew she’d been a stay-at-home mom when her husband had been sideswiped on the I-45 in Houston, triggering a massive pileup that had killed three people...but not the drunk who’d instigated the accident—a driver who’d been using a revoked license, and who now resided in the state prison. He knew how much Holly had received from her husband’s insurance, and he knew how much her twins had inherited from their father in the trust the McCays had told him about—just about the only truth in their pack of lies.
But he didn’t care about all that. What he wanted to know was what made her tick. She obviously loved her sons. Had she loved their father? His investigation hadn’t uncovered any men in her life other than her now-deceased husband, which put her head and shoulders above most of the women he’d been hired to investigate. While the bulk of his work was doing background checks for a couple of major defense contractors in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, as well as extensive white-collar-crime investigation, no PI could completely avoid divorce work. Infidelities were profitable.
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,