Texas K-9 Unit Christmas: Holiday Hero

“What’s going on, Emma?” Bea asked. “Why are we back in the car?”

“The front door was open. Lucas wanted to...” What? Make sure a killer wasn’t lurking inside? She couldn’t say that to Bea. “Do you think you forgot to close the door last night?”

That was the easiest explanation, the most palatable one.

“Of course not!” Bea exclaimed. “I’d have been afraid that Fluffy would get out. You know how she is. Always wanting to wander the neighborhood.”

Actually, Bea’s dog was more likely to curl up on the couch and sleep, but Emma didn’t point that out. She was too busy staring at the open front door.

“Maybe it just didn’t close tightly,” Emma said. “It was damp and cold yesterday. That door is always tricky in the winter.”

True. All of it. But Emma still couldn’t shake her fear.

“Not so tricky that I can’t manage it. Besides, I locked the door when I left. I remember that clear as day,” Bea insisted. That didn’t mean she actually had locked the door or even shut it. Bea’s memory was about as reliable as the old car she used to drive.

Lucas appeared in the open doorway, a squirming white dog in his arms.

“There he is! Stay here, Bea.” Emma jumped out of the car, her head throbbing with the sudden movement.

“Slow down, Em,” Lucas jogged toward her, grabbing her arm when she would have sprinted up the porch steps. “You just got out of the hospital.”

“Was someone in there? Were we robbed?” She tried to pull away, but his fingers were like silken vises.

“How about you let me get rid of this dog before we discuss the open door, okay?” He walked her back to the car, passed Fluffy to Bea.

“Can you hold her for a few minutes, Bea? I want to bring Emma in the house, make sure nothing has been moved or touched.”

“Of course,” Bea murmured. “You’re such a kind and responsible young man, Lucas.” She glanced at Emma and smiled. “Isn’t he kind and responsible?”

“Sure,” she muttered, and Lucas laughed.

“Thanks, Em. I’m glad you think so.” He closed the car door and led her back to the house. “I checked all the rooms. It doesn’t look like anyone has been inside the house, but I thought I’d get your take on it.”

“Bea said that she thought she closed and locked the door when she left the house last night.” Emma hesitated in the threshold. The place looked the same—dusty wood floor that Emma really needed to dry mop, peach-colored walls that she was determined to paint as soon as she got Bea’s permission, big bulky furniture.

“It’s okay,” Lucas murmured near her ear. “I’ve checked every room. You’re not in any danger.”

She forced herself to walk inside. The living room was untouched, the book Bea had been reading sitting on the coffee table. The kitchen was spotless, the new appliances Emma had had installed gleaming in the sunlight that streamed through the back window. The dining room table had been set for two, the old sideboard Emma had found in the diner matching Bea’s eclectic style. The bedrooms were empty and silent, untouched as far as Emma could tell.

She opened the door that led to the attic conversion that Bea and her husband had made years before Emma was born. Narrow steps led to a spacious room that had once been the master bedroom. Bea couldn’t use it anymore. Emma had moved her into one of the main-level bedrooms so that she wouldn’t have to navigate up and down the stairs. Bea thought she’d move back into the room eventually. Emma hadn’t had the heart to tell her it wasn’t going to happen.

“You okay?” Lucas asked as he followed her up the stairs.

“Fine.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“Because I always am.” She glanced around the room, swallowing down a lump of sadness. She’d spent a lot of time in this room when she was a girl, lying on Bea’s queen-size bed and staring out the small dormer windows. Bea had always been there, bustling around the room, ironing shirts or skirts, talking about everything and nothing. More of a mother than Emma’s mother had ever been.

She walked to the rolltop desk she’d found in the diner’s office, touched the smooth old wood. When she’d brought it to the house, she’d imagined it lined with old photographs, imagined Bea sitting at the desk, writing letters to all her choir friends. It wouldn’t fit in Bea’s room downstairs, though, and there was no room for it in the rest of the house. Emma was going to move it back to the diner, put it back in the office where she’d found it. Forget the idea of Bea enjoying it.

“Em?” Lucas turned her so that they were face-to-face, his hands warm on her shoulders.

“Everything looks just the way we left it,” she said, her gaze on the old desk, the floor, the dormer windows. She didn’t want to look into Lucas’s eyes. She was afraid he’d see all the sadness and fear she was trying to hide, but she couldn’t not look. She met his gaze, felt the hot hard knot of grief pulsing behind her eyes.

He touched her uninjured cheek, his fingers lingering as he studied her face.

“It’s going to be okay,’ he said, his breath ruffling her hair.

“How do you know?” she said, her hands moving of their own accord, sliding around his waist and settling on the small of his back. She felt taut muscle and warm skin and the strange feeling that she was finally where she should have been all along.

She would have stepped back, but he wrapped her in a gentle hug.

“Faith. I believe God is in control and that He’s going to work everything out the way it should be,” he said simply.

“Faith is easy, Lucas. It’s trust that’s hard.”

Lucas eased back and looked into Emma’s face. She was the same Emma. Striking rather than beautiful, her cheekbones high, her eyes large and tip-tilted at the corners, her dark hair contrasting sharply with her fair skin. The same but different, too. No more colorful streaks in her dark hair. No more nose ring or multiple ear piercings. She looked grown-up, mature. Breathtaking. “I guess that depends on who you’re putting your trust in,” he said.

She nodded, stepping away, running her hand over a large rolltop desk. “I trust God. It’s people that I struggle with.”

“That’s not surprising. Your parents weren’t overly concerned about you or your well-being. I don’t think your boyfriend was any better.” He was blunt because that was the way it had always been between the two of them.

She stiffened.

“How about we change the subject?” she asked coolly.

“Sure. Let’s talk about the diner while we go get Bea,” he responded, and she finally met his gaze, her eyes the deep blue-purple of the sky at sunset. He’d forgotten what a dark blue they were. Forgotten how easily a guy could get lost in them if he let himself.

“What do you want to know?”

“You’re opening next week, right?” He pressed a hand to her lower back, urging to the stairs.

“Yes. Two days before Christmas. Bea chose the date. It would have been her sixtieth wedding anniversary.”

“Is there anyone who would want to keep that from happening?”

“No.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “The community has been really supportive. The local paper even did a feature article on the diner reopening.”

“When was that?”

“Last weekend. It ran in the Saturday edition of the paper,” she said as she walked down the stairs and into the hallway.

Lucas filed the information away, his mind racing with possibilities. Anyone who’d read the article would have known when the diner was set to reopen. Any predator looking for an easy victim might have kept watch, waiting for an opportunity to attack Emma when she was alone.

“You’re looking at me like I’m a bug under a microscope,” she muttered, swiping at a stray lock of hair that fell across her cheek as she led the way into the living room.

“You’re an attractive woman. It’s possible someone saw your picture in the paper—”