Private S.W.A.T. Takeover. Julie Miller
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made a good shot. They should all be celebrating.
But the beer and noise had given him a headache. The greasy food had been tasty enough, but it had sat like a rock in his stomach. As for the women? Well, when doing a little flirting began to feel like a polite chore he had to perform, Holden knew he needed to get out of there.
With the honest excuse of a long day and a longer night before that dragging him down, he shook Dominic’s hand, warned Delgado and Trip to keep an eye on him, and left. Instead of heading home, though, he found himself at his Fourth Precinct police locker, changing into his gray sweats and running shoes. After a brief chat with his brother, Atticus, who was there to pick up Brooke for a late dinner after a meeting with her boss, precinct commander Mitch Taylor, Holden pulled on his black KCPD stocking cap and headed across town.
Sleep might have been a wiser choice, but Holden was more inclined to get his blood and adrenaline pumping, and cleanse himself of this restless apprehension from the inside out.
Normally, he was content to work out in the precinct’s gym or run the streets near his apartment. But tonight, he needed something fresh and different to shake him out of this funk. The brisk dampness in the air would clear his head, while every turn on the route would reveal something new to pique his interest.
And if the path just happened to lead him past the address where Liza Parrish lived, then that could be excused as coincidence. The houses were close to the road, but set far enough apart to almost give the feeling of living out in the country. Probably at one time in Kansas City’s history, this had been farmland, but with expansion and annexations, the neighborhood was inevitably being transformed into suburbia. As he passed a quarter mile of grass and trees, he realized how this must seem like a different world from the downtown animal clinic where Liza worked an internship through the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine.
“Are you looking up what I think you are?” Atticus had caught Holden sitting at a computer in one of the darkened precinct offices. Leading his fiancée by the hand, he’d entered the room before Holden was even aware of his presence.
Brooke peeked around Atticus’s shoulder with a wry smile. “Sorry. We were on our way to the car when I mentioned that I’d seen you here. He figured out the rest.”
His smarty-pants older brother never missed a trick, so there was no sense in lying to him. Holden folded the print-out he’d made and shut down the computer. “Yeah. I checked out the public information available on Liza Parrish. Brooke just told me where to find it on the computer.”
“You helped him?” Shaking his head, Atticus turned to Brooke. “Honey, we talked about this. As much as it galls me to sit on the sidelines, we have to let Grove and his men run their investigation.”
Brooke adjusted her glasses on her nose and softened her expression into a smile that always seemed to turn his brother’s suave control into mush. “That’s not what you said this summer, when we were on a hunt to decipher the clues your father left me. You were certainly involved in the investigation then.”
“Yeah, well, we both know what kind of danger that ‘investigation’ put you in. I don’t want to see anyone else get hurt.”
She lay a calming hand on Atticus’s arm. “All I did was show Holden a shortcut to the public access files on the computer. So he wouldn’t accidentally trigger any security protocol that might alert Grove or anyone else to his search.”
Holden circled around the desk and draped an arm around her shoulders. “I knew if I had a computer question, Brooke was the source to go to. I didn’t mean to get her into trouble.”
As their father’s former secretary, Brooke had been a friend for so long that she felt like family. Holden had been more than pleased to see that Atticus had opened up his heart and put an engagement ring on her finger to make that familial feeling into the real thing. So he wasn’t about to let his leggy buddy here accept any of his brother’s blame.
But Atticus wasn’t angry, nor was he looking to place blame. His pale gray eyes reflected concern and an admiration for Brooke’s talents that went far beyond her computer skills.
“Brains as well as beauty, eh?” He pulled Brooke from Holden’s hug and curled her under his possessive arm. After pressing a kiss to Brooke’s temple, Atticus gave Holden a look as serious as any he’d ever seen. “Just be careful, little brother. Don’t get caught sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.” He guided Brooke to the door, then paused to glance over his shoulder. “And if you find out anything, give me a call.”
Holden grinned. Yeah, Mr. Serious was not only crazy in love but as determined as he was to find the whole truth about their father’s murder. “Will do.”
So now he was here with his brother’s blessing, running his third mile, wondering why the hell he’d thought checking out Liza Parrish’s place would give him any sense of peace. He was working up a sweat and getting irritated with himself because no matter how hard he pushed his body, his thoughts kept coming back to the freckle-faced witness who could make or break the investigation.
At least Holden wasn’t as alone in this misguided late night jaunt as he’d first thought. Someone else was out on foot, either walking the streets a couple blocks over or biking or running the path ahead of him, closer to the houses. One by one, he could hear dogs barking at the intruder passing their territory.
Holden’s senses pricked up a notch to a mild alert. This wasn’t a dangerous part of town, but it was pretty remote for a woman who lived alone to reside in. Surely, Liza Parrish wouldn’t be out for a stroll at this time of night. The woman did possess some common sense, didn’t she? Of course, her preliminary deposition to KCPD said she’d been chasing after a stray near the docks in the warehouse district where his father had been murdered. Late at night. And that was definitely a dangerous part of town. Maybe he should hold off on the common sense assessment until…
Another bark pierced the night, turning his attention back to the houses. It was something yippy, aggressive, much closer than the other sounds had been. Holden’s wariness sharpened the way it did when a call came in for the S.W.A.T. team. Maybe it’d be worth a detour through one of the yards to the nearest street to find out what was putting all those mutts on alert.
Lengthening his stride, Holden veered toward the next access point and rounded the corner, straight into the path of a fast-moving pack. “Ah, hell!”
The woman holding on to that pack gave a curse as pithy as his own, a fact which amused him for all of two seconds before he realized she was zigging when she should have zagged. Between his bulk, the momentum of the three dogs, the tangle of leashes and the speed of her roller blades, the collision was inevitable.
“Look out!” Holden threw his arms out to catch her.
The smallest of the dogs darted between his legs. The greyhound leaped and the big malamute just kept running.
“Yukon!” the woman shouted as her helmet smacked into Holden’s shoulder.
Recognition was as surprising as it was irrelevant. A leash jerked around Holden’s ankles, cinching his legs and abruptly tripping his feet. “Hold on!”
He snaked his arms around the redhead’s waist and twisted, dodging the dogs and taking the brunt of their fall as they went down hard. Holden landed on his back with Liza Parrish sprawled across his chest.
“What the hell…? You?” Liza froze above him. The sounds of panting dogs and her accusation filled the air. Her eyes caught the moonlight and reflected like silver coins. But there was more fire than cold metal in their expression as surprise quickly changed into indignation. Bracing one fist against his shoulder, she pushed herself up. “Are you following me?”
“I…damn.” Holden sat up as best he could with a nylon lead looped around his neck as she clambered backward onto