Geri Krotow - Her Christmas Protector

“Go to this address. There’s an intercom at the door. They’ll buzz you in, same as our security here.”

“And if I’m not interested?”

“Tell them.” Superintendent Todd had his “you’re dismissed” expression in place and Bryce knew better than to refuse. Todd was one of the most fair-minded men he knew—he had to have good reason to send Bryce to this mystery organization.

Besides, Bryce didn’t mind finding out about the organization Zora really worked for.

* * *

Zora had been eager to get out of the farmhouse and away from her mother’s scrutiny, but twenty minutes into her field trip to Walmart she was winded, sweaty and annoyed.

Her irritation was at herself for allowing a lone shooter to get close enough to hit her, and on her own property to boot. As much as her past with the True Believers was over, she more than anyone should have known to put a decent security system around and in her home when she purchased it two years ago.

There were members of the True Believers who’d probably give their eyeteeth to find her after all these years and make her life miserable, if not snuff it out completely.

Familiar anger left her hands shaking as she walked up and down the holiday aisles, reaching out to touch an ornament here and there. She’d been twelve, damn it, and the abuse had started years before that. Being primed to become a “true disciple” of Leonard Wise, the sick bastard who’d convinced over a thousand people that he alone knew the meaning of life and had direct contact with God. He’d preached that all of his descendants would inherit his God-given abilities, too. Hence the need for so many of his own offspring.

By as many young women—“god mothers” as he’d referred to them—as possible.

She’d been one of the lucky ones. She’d gotten out at age twelve, before he’d had a chance to touch her. Her biological mother had told her over and over how lucky she was that “the Master” had chosen Zora as one of his mothers for the True Believers’ children. Her mother had never wanted to believe that meant Zora would be molested by the man. Truth was, he molested all the girls once they reached seventeen. They’d be impregnated by him and a few select male disciples as mothers to his future minions. This way he skirted the law on the legal age of consent.

If not for the newspapers she’d read in the grocery store they’d visited on random Saturdays, she’d never have realized that the world wasn’t meant to be such a scary place. That real families who loved and nurtured their children did exist. That Leonard Wise was a criminal.

“Can I help you find something, ma’am?” A young clerk smiled at her and Zora willed her grimace to relax. Since taking her counseling courses she’d figured out she still suffered from PTSD, a remnant of a childhood under constant duress.

“No, thank you, I’m just browsing.”

“Let me know if I can help you.”

“Will do.”

The young man walked away and relief that it had only been a store clerk, not one of the True Believers, made her shoulders relax, as if they’d been carrying a huge burden.

There are no more True Believers. You’re safe.

Of course there would always be bad guys, just not the kind who wanted to entrap her for the rest of her life.

Her PTSD had kept her from choosing to serve on board a ship as a full-time career. The thought of being confined to a ship in the middle of the huge ocean could bring on a panic attack without warning. So she’d picked Intelligence, knowing her shipboard time would be limited, if not completely avoided. As it was she’d had to serve on board an aircraft carrier for two years, but only three months of the tour was exclusively on the ship since it had been in the yards for a refitting. She’d lucked out.

“I want some candy, Mommy!” A tiny girl harangued her mother from her precarious seat in a shopping cart, throwing skeins of yarn from the cart into the aisle.

“That’s not very nice. You know the rules—no candy in the morning, Becky. And if you make a mess of the nice yarn we picked out, there won’t be anything to make pom-poms with.” The mother looked like Zora felt—weary.

Had her biological mother ever taken her out for a normal mother-daughter shopping trip? Or had it all been as she remembered and centered on their “community”?

Cursing her trip down memory lane and knowing she had minutes until the exhaustion from her healing body would catch up to her, she made a beeline for the grocery section. Mom had said she needed eggs and milk. Zora preferred almond milk to cows’, so she’d need to get a carton of each if she didn’t want to listen to her mother’s explanations of why Zora should drink cows’ milk to ensure she got enough protein and calcium. She’d tell Anna that the almond milk was a treat, for special concoctions like her homemade hot cocoa. It was a bold-faced lie, though, as Zora rarely drank dairy milk if she could help it. She caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. Whether it was the color of the woman’s scarf, her uniquely styled hair or the silhouette she made in her long, dowdy skirt and plaid blouse, topped with an unbuttoned, very basic wool coat, Zora didn’t know. But something forced her gaze to the strange woman who stood at the end of the aisle Zora pushed her cart in. The woman who stood there and watched every move Zora made.

As if she knew her.

Recognition bolted Zora to the spot.

The woman had the same green eyes as Zora. The same wide mouth. The same red hair, only streaked with gray, and pulled into a tight bun that made the woman look far older than she should, that emphasized the long lines that splayed from her eyes and again from her nose to her lips.

Deep wrinkles—the kind that either a long life or a hard life brought.

Lines a woman who’d lost her only daughter would have.

Panic pressed into Zora’s lungs, and bright spots floated across her vision. Her hands clutched her shopping cart.

No. Breathe, damn it.

She closed her eyes and breathed, using every yoga technique she could muster in the middle of the busy store.

When she opened her eyes, the woman was gone.

But she hadn’t been a figment of her imagination. Zora knew the woman too well.

Edith Simms. Her biological mother.

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