Kansas City Christmas (10 page)

The elevator arrived, the doors opened and Holly stepped inside. Edward pushed the lobby button and retreated to the opposite corner before he finally spoke.

“Trust me, Stick. I can tell you anything about addictions you want to know.” She slid him a sideways glance. His eyes were focused on a distant place. “You can love your sister to death and try to protect her all you want, but in the end, she has to fight her battles herself or she’ll never control the monster.”

“The monster?” Jillian had used that term before.

Edward’s gaze rose to meet hers, shrinking that distance between them. “I have a feeling, after a screwed-up night like this one, I’ll need to go to an AA meeting.”

Holly relaxed her defensive stance. “You’re an alcoholic?”

“Recovering. I’ve been clean and sober for eight months.”

His chest expanded and fell with a gut-deep sigh. “Explains a lot about me, huh?”

She took a step toward his corner of the elevator. “I didn’t know. Eight months.” Holly clicked off the numbers in her head. “That’s since your father’s murder. That’s a wonderful tribute to him. Congratulations.”

For a moment, he seemed taken aback by her compassion. But then his mouth set in a grim line, and he thumped his cane in his hand. “I can’t lose anyone else. I can’t start to care and lose anyone again. Is that clear?”

Did that mean he cared about her? Holly took another step. “So, now who’s being overprotective and not letting someone fight her own battles?”

“This is different. Z Group is different.” He thumped his cane in his palm a second time. “You leave bending the rules and risking somebody’s neck up to me. You stay in your lab where it’s safe, and everything will work out just fine.”

“You’re sacrificing your career—maybe even your life—for this case? I thought you didn’t want to lose anything else.”

“Don’t get smart with me and twist my words around.”

“Then say what you mean.” Now that she wanted eye contact, he wouldn’t look at her. She touched his chin and turned his face to her. “Let me see—you don’t like to say ‘Merry Christmas…’” He pulled his chin away, but she cupped his strong jaw and kept him facing her. “You don’t like kissing women in closets, you don’t like anyone hinting that you’re a good cop whom KCPD could still use and you don’t like admitting when you have feelings for someone.” Holly stroked her thumb across his lips, thinking about reawakening his dragon’s heart with another kiss. The elevator hit a gentle bump and slowed its descent. “Am I pretty clear as to what your words are telling me?”

Edward turned his whole body toward her, huffing up. He opened his mouth, about to deny the truth.

But the elevator doors slid open and a woman’s voice spoke from the lobby. “Edward?”

The party’s host, and Caldwell Technologies’ owner, William Caldwell, braced the doors open with his hand. He looked every inch the wealthy entrepreneur and power broker she’d read about in the papers—from his hand-tailored tuxedo to the polished gold pinkie ring he wore. But it was the elegant brunette on his arm who’d spoken.

Holly quickly snatched her hand from Edward’s face. This was what “caught” felt like. Now she was about to be escorted off the premises—if not hauled away in a police car.

Perhaps sensing her urge to bolt, Edward’s hand clamped down over her wrist. He pulled her off the elevator beside him. “Mom.”

Mom? Holly felt her eyes bug open. This was his mother?

The dark-haired older woman stretched up on tiptoe and exchanged a hug and a kiss with Edward. “I didn’t know you’d changed your mind about coming tonight, sweetie. Does this mean you’ll be at the house for Christmas Eve, too?” Holly had managed to wipe the shock off her face by the time the woman turned to greet her with a warm smile. “Hi. I’m Susan Kincaid, Edward’s mother. Are you a friend?”

She could see the resemblance now—the bone structure around the cheeks and eyes, the dark brown hair—though hers was peppered with streaks of gray. Taking Susan Kincaid’s hand, she completed the introduction. “Holly Masterson. I’m…”

What was she? Accomplice in crime? Confessor? Closet make-out artist?

“She’s an M.E. from the crime lab, Mom.” Edward’s gruff voice answered the question for her.

“Oh.” The small lines beside Susan’s dark eyes creased with disappointment. But just as quickly, her expression perked up again. She beamed a smile at her son. “You’re working?”

Mr. Caldwell lifted his chin, looking curious to hear the answer to that one, too. “Have you finally decided to go back to KCPD, son? Or are you moonlighting on your father’s murder investigation?”

Edward’s grip on her wrist tightened and he muttered under his breath. “I definitely need to find a meeting.”

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Edward pulled his stocking cap low over his ears and turned up the collar of his coat to keep the newly-falling snow from drifting down the back of his neck.

“You’re going to do the right thing, aren’t you, Daddy?”

There were bad nights when Edward couldn’t fathom why he’d been left alive when the two people he’d loved the most had been taken from this world. And then there were ones that were off-the-chart crazy like this one, and he had a sneaking suspicion that learning to cope with beautiful, headstrong, insightful, vulnerable, well-meaning, complex, troublesome, stubborn women like his mother and Holly Masterson was actually some kind of cosmic punishment for failing his family.

“Yeah, baby, I’m gonna try,” he muttered into the freezing air. “I’m going to try.”

“What’s that?” Though covered by a long dress coat, Holly’s delectable bottom bounced like forbidden temptation as she backed out of the rear seat of her Honda. Edward sternly tipped his face to the black sky and the snow that seemed to be falling straight from the lights towering over Caldwell Technologies’ parking lot. She straightened with the scraper-brush she’d gone fishing for in her hand and matched his stance, squinting up into the falling snow. “Is it getting worse?”

Edward wished he could have explained to his daughter what it cost a man to be a gentleman sometimes. But Melinda never would have understood. Her world had always been black and white. Good and evil. Daddy was a good guy, so he would separate work to be done from the pleasure to be had in kissing Holly again.

He’d let his mother think that his life was getting normal enough to attend a party with a female friend again. But the truth didn’t sound much better. Um, no Mom, I’m not dating—I’m following up a lead on a case I’m not really supposed to be working on because, you know, I’m not really a cop anymore and, oh yeah, the potentially incriminating evidence I found here tonight might just point to our old family friend who seems to be becoming much more than a friend to you since Dad died.

Explain those kinds of complications to an eight-year-old girl with Down’s syndrome.

He wasn’t sure he could explain them to himself.

So he plucked the scraper from Holly’s hand and said, “Looks like it.” As she closed the back door, he opened the front one for her. “You sit inside while the engine’s warming up and I’ll brush the snow off your windows.”

“You’ve walked me to my car to make your mom happy, kept me from blowing my cover with Mr. Caldwell and snuck me out of the building without my sister or Blake Rivers seeing me. I think I can scrape my own car.” She closed the front door, sending an avalanche of snow down over the tops of her high heels. Her face froze for a moment in mute shock. Almost instantly, the icy crystals started to melt and seep inside her shoes. Her toes would be frozen in a minute if they weren’t already. “Really, I can.”

Edward was too tired to wipe the amused smirk off his face at her deadpan delivery. “Allow me.” Shifting his balance, he went down on his good knee in front of her and brushed the snow off her feet. He was still smiling when he stood back up. “Now, will you get in the car and let me work?”

“Why do you carry a cane?” she asked in lieu of “I’d love to get warm, thanks.” “You don’t need to use it. You knelt down just now without any problem. When you dropped it in Blake’s office, you still managed to toss me into the closet and then run back and get it without missing a beat. From everything I’ve observed, your body has healed.”

She couldn’t just get in her car, could she. Edward gave up on smiling and went with the logical explanation. “It’s for that one time my knee or ankle gives out or I hit a patch of ice and I slip. I’m not going back to the hospital because vanity kept me from using a cane to balance myself.”

One dark brow arched beneath her snow-dotted bangs. “Sounds like an excuse to me.”

“Yeah, well, the cold air makes my joints ache like a big bear, so I’m using the cane.”

Holly shrugged. “I’m not an orthopedic doctor, but your limp is barely discernible, your reflexes are quick and you have enough musculature on your body to compensate for any minor shifts in balance. Have you tried to pass your active-duty physical since you were injured?”

He tried glaring her into the car.

A knowing smile bloomed across her face. “You passed the physical already.”

If she asked about the mental exam, this conversation would be over. It needed to be over. “It’s something my physical therapist has me go through every month so she can benchmark my progress.”

Holly plunged her gloved hands into the pockets of her coat. She was shivering. “Jillian is studying to be a physical therapist.”

This was ridiculous. “If I hand over my cane, will you get in the car before you freeze?”

As usual, she had one more thing she wanted to say. She clutched her collar together at her neck and lightly stamped her feet. “I knew the party was going on tonight because of my sister. I wanted to get in here and see one of those bullets you mentioned. But I also wanted to check on her. I mean, I didn’t want her to know I was checking on her, but I was worried because of her history with Blake.”

Her tongue darted out to nervously moisten her lips. Edward’s gaze darted to the spot and something needy growled inside him.
He
was having no problem staying warm.

“I just wanted to thank you for listening to me—for reminding me that I can’t be such an overprotective sister that I start enabling her addictive behavior again.” The fingers at her collar reached out and brushed against his chest, lightly petting him while she sought her next words. When she curled her fingers beneath the placket of his coat, he wished there weren’t gloves and coats and sweaters between them. “Thank you for telling me about your addiction, too. Sometimes I forget that other people can understand what my family has gone through. It’s good to be reminded I’m not alone.”

That better be snow melting on the tips of her lashes. Even before she blinked away the sheen of tears, the urge to kiss a smile or defiant pout or any other expression but sadness onto her lips surged through him. Edward dipped his head and pressed his mouth to hers, taking a gentle kiss. He angled his head the opposite way and kissed her again, kissed her until he’d warmed away the chill from her lips and she was kissing him in return.

But when the need to feel her long curves aligned against his harder angles had him backing her into the car to deepen the kiss into something that was more passionate than healing, Edward reluctantly pulled away. He stepped back far enough to let the wintry air surge between them and cool his randier impulses. His breath might be stuttering inside his chest and his jeans might be feeling a little tight behind his zipper, but he was going to be a gentleman. He was going to be a good guy.

“So…” he began gruffly. Holly’s cheeks were flushed with more than the cold and he had to look away or his good intentions might go to hell. Plucking the scraper from her unresisting grasp, he went to work cleaning the snow off her windshield. “…you infiltrated Bill Caldwell’s party because you wanted to see if you could get some information on one of those bullets.”

She cleared her throat. “Yes. But I couldn’t get into any of the labs. I knew Blake Rivers worked in product development, so I thought if I could get into his office I might be able to find a schematic or chemical recipe for the bullet to see how they decompose so quickly. Wait.” With a little more energy to her voice, she opened the car door and pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from her purse. “I did find this on Blake’s computer. Actually, it was on the network server, so it could belong to anyone in the company, but…” She smoothed out the paper against her thigh and handed it to him. “There’s a coded file marked ‘Z’. Now it could mean projects made with zinc or an employee named Zach, but I thought the coincidence was too much to ignore since we’ve traced similar bullets back to Z Group.”

“May I keep this?”

Holly nodded. “I wish I could have gotten my hands on one of those bullets. There are so many things the lab could find out if I could compare just one that wasn’t tainted to the decomposed bullets.”

Edward pulled off a glove and lifted his coat to fold the print-out into the pocket of his jeans. Then he dug deeper and pulled out a small plastic bag. “You mean one of these?”

Holly’s face lit up like Christmas d—no, he didn’t even want to think that comparison. “Is that a disintegrator? How did you get your hands on one?”

“It helps to be friends with the boss. One of the guards recognized me as a friend of Bill’s, and I talked him into letting me tour a lab.”

She ducked and weaved like a prizefighter, trying to look at the inch-long projectile from all angles without touching the bag. “I don’t have any examination gloves with me. The fibers from these wool ones would transfer too easily.”

“Lord, woman, you’d think I’d brought you chocolates or flowers.”

Her green-gold eyes glanced up at his. “Trust me, this is better. May I see it?” Without pressing her fingers against the bullet inside, she lightly took hold of one corner of the plastic bag and examined the contents more closely. “So, you stole this, huh?”

“There were boxes of them in Rivers’s storage locker.”

“Boxes?” She frowned without looking away from the specimen she held. “I thought you said Caldwell Technologies had created a prototype.”

Seeing hundreds of them inside that storage locker had bothered him, too. “That’s all it was supposed to be. I don’t know if these are new or have been sitting there for a while, but the bullets have definitely been put into production at some time. I’ll wait for a more private moment to ask Bill about them.”

“Or Blake Rivers. You said they were in his storage locker?”

Edward nodded. “Rivers could be manufacturing them on the side and selling them under Bill’s nose. I’ll see what I can find out. Do you have a way to compare this bullet to what’s left of the ones at your lab?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe someone here is supplying the ammunition Z Group is using to kill its former operatives in Kansas City.” Edward glanced around the parking lot to make sure no one was eavesdropping on their conversation. But since they’d departed the festivities early, they appeared to be alone. “According to my dad’s journals, the organization is responsible for some major arms smuggling. If these do match up to the slugs taken out of the victims, then there may be other types of weapons and technology being produced at Caldwell and shipped out of the country.”

“But this it isn’t a legal seizure of evidence.” Edward stifled a groan. Couldn’t Holly see that following the rules and obeying strict investigative protocols hadn’t solved any of the murders yet? “If we do prove a connection, we couldn’t use it in court,” she continued.

“One step at a time, Stick.” He opened her car door, tossed the scraper onto the floor behind the front seat, then stepped aside for her to climb in behind the wheel. “Let’s make a connection first, and then we’ll get nitpicky with the details. What if I’d told you that I found that in Rivers’s trash can?”

“Did you?”

He kept a straight face through the lie that would temporarily absolve them of guilt. “Yes. Now quit smiling at me like that. Call me tomorrow, and let me know what you find out on that bullet.”

“I will.” She reached across the space between them and squeezed his hand. “Good luck finding your meeting. Take care of yourself.”

He squeezed back. “You, too.”

Edward closed the door behind her, brushing some snow off the side window as she shifted the car into Reverse. Then he patted the roof of the car, letting Holly know she was clear to back out of the parking space.

He watched the silver Honda until it turned onto the access road. Then he hunched his shoulders against the cold and headed toward his Jeep, carrying his cane in his hand.

“Good job, Daddy. Good job.”

Was that his conscience congratulating him for letting Holly drive away without forcing more of his conflicted feelings and desires on her?

Or was his little girl’s voice—and some rusty investigating instincts—telling him he was finally on the right track toward solving his father’s murder?

H
OLLY WASN’T SURE IF IT WAS
fear that she’d be caught or just flat-out excitement that she’d finally gotten her hands on an intact disintegrator bullet that made her drive away from the Plaza lights and her apartment and toward the crime lab facility.

She’d always done her best thinking alone in her lab at night when there were fewer interruptions from coworkers and fewer calls to crime scenes. The quietness of the building and the sleeping world beyond its walls seemed to soothe her nerves and free up her powers of observation and concentration.

Tonight was no different. She’d dumped her coat in her office and kicked off her high heels. She wore the black silk dress with a hand-beaded sweater underneath her lab coat. But the rest of the trappings that put her in a productive mental groove were the same.

With Julie Andrews singing Christmas carols through her headphones, her plastic goggles and gloves on, and her metal clipboard on the countertop beside her so she could jot notes, Holly quickly lost herself in her work. Though she wasn’t the ballistics expert Rick Temple was, she knew the basics about testing for chemical components and running reaction tests. Using sample scrapings from the unfired bullet, she’d already determined a few fundamental facts—the metal jacket was partly fabricated with a dense ceramic compound. And while that compound was resistant to physical stress, it had a tendency to break down quickly when combined with certain chemicals.

A saline solution similar to human tears had no effect. The chemicals in sweat, nothing.

But something inside the human body turned that rock-hard object into mush in a matter of hours. And there were plenty of chemical combinations left to try.

Holly had lost track of the hour by the time she walked out of the lab’s sample bank for blood and tissue. “Glo-o-o-o-o-or-ia…”

She stopped by Rick Temple’s office and wrote out a note requesting a favor. Could he provide a list of chemical compounds that would be resistant to the minute gunpowder explosion that fired a bullet from a gun? Since he was so keen on proving who between the two of them was smarter, she’d give him the chance to strut his stuff.