Mistletoe And Murder

Shamus’s arms never wavered as he kept his gun pointed at Tripp. Where did he get the strength? Her whole body was shaking.

“Ask the guy, Tripp,” Shamus said, “what happens if I don’t leave?”

“Please,” Tripp begged. “He says he’s going to kill my daughter. He says he’ll prove it.”

The phone chirped on Shamus’s desk, startling Mallory so badly she jumped right into the side of him. He lowered one arm long enough to grab her hand and squeeze it gently. His fingers were warm, his touch calming. She wanted to keep holding his hand and go into denial.

The phone rang again, but the idea of talking to someone who was threatening them by holding a teenage girl hostage overwhelmed her to the point she couldn’t move.

Go into denial? She was already there.

“Pick it up!” Tripp ordered. “It’s him.”

Stepping sideways to the phone, Shamus answered it, hit the speaker button and took his gun again in two hands. “Look, you—”

“Daddy!” The voice of Tripp’s daughter wailed over the speaker. “Come get me!”

They heard a slap that Mallory felt through her cheek and into her bone. She slammed her eyes shut, remembering another abduction, long ago. How helpless she’d felt not being able to do anything…

Tara’s scream cut through the air, and Mallory opened her eyes. This was not happening to her—it was happening to Tara. She couldn’t do anything then, but now she could get a grip and help this girl.

“Tara, it’s Mallory, your father’s probation officer,” she said toward the speaker. “Don’t be scared. I promise I will help you. No matter what.” Somehow. And she could only pray she’d be able to keep that promise.

The phone went dead.

Mallory’s eyes flew to Tripp. He was leaning against the wall, on the verge of collapse. His daughter was sixteen. Mallory figured he loved Tara tremendously—he’d risked everything to steal money to get her away from bad influences at her old school. He’d broken the law and needed to be punished and finish making restitution, yes, but a part of Mallory admired him and wished her mother had been brave enough to get her and her brother out of the situation they’d been in.

But she needed to stop thinking about her past before she had no future.

Tripp’s knees gave out, and he sank to the floor. “He’s going to hurt Tara! She’s all I have.”

Shamus started toward Tripp again, with Mallory right behind him. She didn’t get three steps before Shamus put up his arm as a barricade and forced her to stop.

Tripp was picking himself up, his weapon once again pointing outward. “Can’t sit,” he said, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. “Blocks the camera view. He has to see when Burke leaves.”

Shamus was specifically mentioned, but not her. This attack was about Shamus. She was obviously expendable.

But why? What was going on? If it was about Shamus, then why was her probationer involved?

“You’re not leaving?” Tripp asked, sounding desperate.

Mallory didn’t take her eyes off Shamus, who shook his head negatively.

“Then I have to. He says abort the mission. Please don’t follow me. My daughter won’t be safe if you do.” Still pointing his weapon at them, Tripp edged swiftly to the door, opened it and hurried through, leaving the two of them alone in the room.

“I need to go after him,” Mallory said, but Shamus beat her to the door and threw the deadbolt.

“Go out the back,” he whispered close to her ear.

“Why?” she asked, whispering back. “You heard him. The bomber told him not to go through with it.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the rear of the huge office. “I’m not sure I believe Tripp, and bomb or no bomb, whoever it is will be expecting us to come out the front. I don’t like that idea. Hopefully, it’s only one person, and there’s no one waiting in back. We’ll call the police outside.”

“You didn’t hit the alarm?”

“What alarm?” he asked, looking frustrated.

Yanking out of his grasp, she double-timed it to her desk and stuck her foot under it. “Under our desks. They probably didn’t install yours yet.”

Now someone tells him—after the emergency starts. Shamus grabbed his present from her so she would have her arms free to run and went to the door in the back that connected the receptionist’s office to theirs.

Opening it, he saw the adjoining office was clear. So was the bulletproof receiving window at the very front of the room that showed part of the hallway through which Tripp had exited. Shamus strode four feet to the exit door, yanked it open and surveyed the parking lot. No signs of anyone lurking in wait. He hoped he was right.

He turned to motion for Mallory.

She wasn’t there.

Shamus cursed and reached the inside door just as she got there, clasping the laughing Santa from Mosey Burnham’s desk. She paused in place when she saw the fury on his face. Did she have a death wish?

“The Santa belonged to Mosey’s daughter. She was killed in action,” she explained quickly. “It’s all he has left of her.”

“Items can be replaced—people can’t.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I guess my heart gets in the way of my thinking sometimes.”

She sounded so sincere that Shamus considered apologizing for his abruptness. No time. Turning without responding, he strode to the door and stepped out onto the welcome mat. He hoped he was wrong about Tripp’s leaving the bomb behind. Hoped they had all the time in the world to get out of the building. Hoped—

The air around him exploded.

TWO

The force slammed Shamus upward and away from the building, sucking the breath out of him. He hit the snowy asphalt a few feet away and lay there, stunned, as all the emotion he’d buried since his wife’s death tumbled back onto him along with the debris from the bomb. Emotion over another woman.

Mallory.

Did she make it? He pushed himself onto his knees. Swiveled around to face the building. His head spun. He made himself focus, but he didn’t see her. She had to still be inside.

Annoying, do-gooder Mallory, who just had to stay late to give him a present so he wouldn’t feel left out. Who couldn’t believe her client could actually hurt someone. Who wouldn’t leave him behind even though she’d had the chance…

He had to rescue her. He could not have another woman’s death on his conscience.

Finding his gun on the ice, he holstered it, then lunged toward the building. At least, his muddled mind thought he was lunging, but he was startled to find he was only limping slowly. No matter. He pushed onward, trying to move faster, his ears ringing and his head spinning when he tried to turn it.

Sucking in a deep breath of clean air, he plunged inside the doorway and found a dazed Mallory against the outer wall, clutching Mosey’s Santa. Fire licked at what was left of the wall near the receiving window. Smoke poured into the area. Get her out. He had to get her out.

Fighting the stars that threatened to push him into darkness, he lifted her into his arms and carried her outside into the parking lot and away from the swirling smoke and dust. She didn’t speak, not one word, and something inside him—he wasn’t going to call it his heart—clenched.

His wife hadn’t spoken when he’d found her, either. She was already dead.