Elle James - Her Christmas Hero

“Want me to play with you?”

The little girl whispered into her stuffed animal’s ear and shook her head, disappearing beneath the afghan.

Laurel sighed and put away the groceries, keeping a close eye on Molly.

Within a few minutes, the little girl was rubbing her eyes and yawning. It had been a tough few days. Not to mention just getting over strep throat.

Massaging her temple, Laurel scanned the room. They couldn’t stay here forever. The only way out was to find who was behind Ivy’s murder. And her father’s disappearance. And stop them.

Garrett knew more than he was revealing. She believed that, and she didn’t know who he was, really. That uneasy feeling at the base of her neck increased the urgency. She needed to do something. To protect Molly and herself. Not just for the moment, but for the future.

Laurel checked once more on her niece, but the little girl had zonked out.

Careful not to make any noise, she opened Garrett’s office door and walked inside. She propped the door open so she could hear Molly or anyone outside and turned the machines on.

She’d had an idea. Maybe, just maybe, it would work.

Growing up with her father’s ability to discover what his daughters were doing, Laurel had become adept at hiding her tracks. She’d joined the computer club at school. Yeah, it had helped her get into college, but more important, it had taught her a few tricks. Tricks that came in handy at her job, and that might come in even handier now.

She risked a lot doing this without Garrett here, but she had to try. It was her last chance or they’d have to go with Garrett’s plan.

She navigated to a portal leading into some of the intelligence organization’s unclassified databases.

When the log-in came up, she tapped her finger on the keyboard.

If she entered her information, she was starting a ticking clock. Eventually they would know she’d entered the system; they’d know what she discovered.

Garrett still hadn’t returned.

She took a deep breath. She had to take the chance.

Her finger trembled typing in the password.

She was in.

Glancing at the time on the computer screen, she quickly navigated to the travel database. Relatively low priority. She entered her father’s name.

Access denied.

Interesting. She backed out, this time searching for Ivy’s name, then hers. Finally, with her own name, she received a different screen.

Clicking on a link pulled up her personal data.

Status: Missing, presumed dead.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Chapter Six

Strickland cursed. “Waiting around in this godforsaken town is getting us nowhere.” The December Texas sun heated up the SUV and sweat trickled down his neck. He wiped his arm on his forehead. “Garrett Galloway isn’t coming back.”

“Do you think he knows the boss has found him?” Krauss asked, rolling down the window enough to allow a small crack. A soft, cool breeze flowed in. “I sure wouldn’t stick around.”

“Could be he ran. Or maybe he’s hiding the woman and the girl.”

“We’re screwed either way, you know.” Krauss’s tone held nothing but resignation. “The boss’ll find out we lost him, and we’ll be dead. We’re expendable and you know it. We both know it.”

Krauss was right. But there had to be a way out. Maybe that deputy... Derek Bradley, aka Garrett Galloway, had lived in this town awhile. Strickland had discovered the people liked him. The waitress at the diner, the deputy, the local motel owner—they all thought the guy walked on water. Though that motel guy had shown Strickland the door too fast when his loopy sister had shown up and started yammering.

Maybe the tattooed freak knew more than he let on.

Strickland drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “So, Krauss. You think Galloway would come back if real trouble visited Trouble, Texas?”

Krauss slowly nodded his head, a glimmer of hope reaching his eyes. “After what we know about both his identities, yeah. He’s just enough of a hero to take the risk...if the bait is right.”

“And I think I know exactly who—” Strickland’s phone sounded. One glance at the number appearing on the screen and he could feel the blood drain from his face.

“It’s the boss, isn’t it?” Krauss said, a string of curses escaping from him. “What are you going to say?”

“I don’t know.” Strickland rubbed the back of his neck and tapped the phone. “Strickland.”

“Imagine my surprise when I discovered your current location. Why didn’t you tell me you were already in Trouble, Texas?”

At the biting tone of his boss’s voice, he shivered, then gulped. He didn’t have a good answer.

“Don’t bother lying. There aren’t a thousand people in that town. You come clean, Strickland, I might let you live...minus a body part or two.”

Strickland met Krauss’s gaze. The man’s expression looked as if he’d scarfed down a large helping of bad fish. He’d seen the boss’s handiwork. Missing fingers, missing toes, missing eyes...and worse.

“I—I saw a note Ivy Deerfield wrote when we went to set up the bomb.” Strickland couldn’t prevent the squeak in his voice as he lied. “She wrote down this sheriff’s name. I just wanted to make sure she hadn’t given anything—”

“How did you discover the connection between the McCallisters and Galloway?” his boss asked sharply.

“I didn’t know about a link. I just had a bad feeling.” More truth in those words. Strickland swallowed again. “You ordered us to follow up on loose ends. And to get rid of them.”

“Which you enjoy a little too much,” his boss muttered. “Okay, Strickland, I’ll let you fix your little problem, but if I find out you’re keeping something from me—”

“I’ve worked for you too long, boss,” he said. Yeah, long enough to know that if he told her the truth of how he’d had them and lost them, she wouldn’t just take a body part—she’d make him suffer and want to die.

Krauss just shook his head.

“Perhaps.” The boss paused for a moment. “Well, Strickland, this may be your lucky day. I have Garrett Galloway’s location for you. A gift from...a good friend.”

The boss gave him a frequency. Krauss entered the number into the small tracking device. A red dot appeared on the screen. “He’s in the mountains not far from here,” Krauss said. “Rough country.”

“Are you sure it’s him? Or could this be his laptop or something?” Strickland asked.

A chuckle filtered through the phone. “It’s inside him. You track that frequency, you’ll have your target.”

Strickland scratched at a surgical scar from a rotator-cuff repair a year or so ago. “That’s not possible.”

“Really? You have an inside track on the latest research and development of the agency, do you?”

Strickland gulped at the disdain in his boss’s voice. “Of course not.”

“You better be glad the chip isn’t widely available. If I’d had one inserted inside you, I have a very good feeling you’d already be paying the price for some extracurricular activities.”

The muscles in Strickland’s back tensed. The only way out of this mess was clean it up and beg...or find out something he could bargain with.

“Find him, Strickland. And kill him. No mistakes.” The phone call ended.

He grabbed the map from Krauss’s hand and smiled for the first time since he’d realized the McCallister woman had escaped the bomb. “We have a pointer to Galloway. Which means we have McCallister and the kid, too. They’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Easy to dispose of bodies out there. No one will ever find them.”

“Yeah.” Strickland stared down at his phone. Now if he could only find a way that he wouldn’t disappear either.