Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Reid had been kissed in parking lots, in the shadow of military housing before dawn, in moments stolen between duty and departure. He knew what it was to want someone. He knew heat, urgency, and the foolishness that made otherwise rational people forget consequences existed.
None of that prepared him for Holly catching the front of his shirt in her fist and pulling him down to her mouth.
Want had gone through him so fast and hard that it nearly stripped every careful thought from his head.
But she was shaken, grieving, angry, and barefoot in the dim light of her apartment with a murdered man’s name still hanging in the air.
She was kissing him because every emotion in her had finally collided with every other one, and Reid would not be the man who took advantage of that collision.
Then her mouth moved against his, uncertain and fierce at the same time, and his restraint cracked.
He’d dreamed of this since the morning he’d left.
He kissed her back carefully for one breath, then with more honesty than control.
His hands found her waist, holding enough to steady both of them.
She made a soft sound in the back of her throat, and the years between them disappeared into the heat of her body and the taste of tears on her lips.
His whole life seemed to narrow to Holly’s hand twisted in his shirt, her breath catching against his, and her choosing him when she had every reason not to.
He didn’t deserve this, but he wanted it anyway.
Blue huffed, clearly unhappy, and Reid might have laughed if Holly’s fingers hadn’t tightened against his chest. She rose onto her toes, and he bent closer, letting her set the pace even as everything male and reckless in him wanted to pull her in and make up for six years of bad decisions with one impossible kiss.
His phone rang from the kitchen counter. Reid ignored it.
Holly didn’t. Her mouth stilled beneath his, and the instant she pulled back, the cold air between them felt like punishment. Her eyes were too bright, her lips parted, her fingers still caught in his shirt.
The phone rang again with Garrett Cross’s ringtone. Of course it was Garrett. The man had the timing of an incoming mortar.
“You should answer it,” Holly said, voice husky and ragged.
“I don’t want to.” That truth escaped before he could discipline it.
Holly released him and stepped back, putting one hand to her mouth as if she could hold the kiss there or hide from it. Maybe both. “It could be about Hoyt,” she said.
She was right, which made him resent the phone more. He turned away, crossed to the counter, and picked it up. “Fleming.”
Garrett’s voice came through clipped. “Claire filled me in. You secure?”
“Yes.”
“Holly?”
“Safe but shaken.”
“You need another body there?”
Reid looked toward the living room. Holly had moved to the edge of the couch, one hand on Blue’s head, her face angled away from Reid. “Not tonight.”
“You sure?”
Reid rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and tried to drag his mind back into the operational lane where it belonged. “No immediate threat has presented itself here.”
“Still think this Hopper Shaw looks good for it?”
“Unsure. I’ve started a preliminary search.”
“Send it to Jasper. He can dig deeper.”
“I will.”
Garrett paused, and Reid heard what was coming before he said it. “You want to bring Holly to the compound?”
The compound would be safer. Fewer windows, controlled access, armed personnel, cameras, gates, and people who understood danger. But it would mean asking Holly to leave Sanctuary, Blue’s routine, her apartment, and every fragile scrap of control she still had. “She won’t want that.”
“That wasn’t what I asked. This is your wheelhouse, but it’s her call.”
Reid looked toward Holly again, but she wasn’t there. The couch was empty. Blue stood near the hallway, watching him.
Reid’s pulse kicked once, stupid and hard, before he saw the mostly closed bedroom door.
Garrett’s voice sharpened. “Fleming? Offer her the compound.”
It was the right thing to do. “I will.”
“If you get even a whisper of movement around that shop tonight, you call.”
“Understood.”
“And Reid?”
“What?”
“Don’t try to carry this alone.”
Reid almost said he wasn’t, but the lie would’ve been too obvious, even over the phone. He had his grandfather’s streak of stubbornness and independence. “Copy.”
Garrett ended the call.
Reid glanced past Blue to Holly’s bedroom door. The kiss still burned through him like an accusation. He’d handled cross-examinations with less difficulty than standing ten feet from that door.
The first opening statement he’d ever given had been in a Navy courtroom under fluorescent lights that made everyone look guilty.
His mouth had gone so dry he’d nearly choked on the first sentence, and he’d still managed to argue the case with more competence than he currently trusted himself to show.
Holly had kissed him. Then she’d disappeared behind a closed door.
He didn’t know if she was embarrassed, angry, overwhelmed, or regretting it. Maybe all of that. He didn’t know if knocking would feel like pressure. He didn’t know if not knocking would feel like retreat.
He set the phone on the counter, crossed the room, and stopped outside her door. Blue came with him, as if he needed an emotional bailiff.
Reid lifted his hand. The door opened before his knuckles touched wood.
Holly stood on the other side in the old cardigan and pajama pants, her hair loose around her shoulders and her eyes still damp. She looked at his raised hand, then at his face.
Reid stepped back so quickly Blue had to sidestep him.
“I wasn’t—” He stopped because that was a terrible beginning. “Garrett—my boss—that was him on the phone.”
She rubbed her arms as if cold. “I figured that out.”
“Claire informed him about Hoyt. They’re married, so…”
She swallowed and looked away. “I see.”
“He wanted to check on security. Whether I needed backup. Whether you were safe.” Reid heard himself speaking as if every sentence had been drafted by a committee and approved by no one. “He also offered you the compound.”
Holly met his eyes again. “The compound?”
“Yes. For safekeeping. If you wanted. Not that you have to. It’s only an option. Garrett said to offer you the choice, and I am offering it. Poorly.”
Her mouth moved a little, not quite a smile. “Have you actually argued in courtrooms, Fleming?”
“I was better at those. Considerably more structured.”
A trace of warmth crossed her face, which did nothing to help his ability to speak like an adult. “You’re asking if I want to leave my apartment in the middle of the night and go hide at the Shadow Point compound.”
“I’m asking if you want to stay somewhere with controlled access, more personnel, and fewer windows.”
She dragged in a shaky breath. “You think I’ll say no.”
“Yes.”
“Then why ask?”
“Because it’s your choice.”
She held his gaze, her earlier words humming between them. Blue sat next to Reid’s leg, the lamplight was soft enough to make the hallway feel more intimate than it should. Holly’s eyes dropped briefly to his mouth, and the air between them tightened again.
Reid didn’t move. He would not reach for her. Not when she’d just kissed him out of grief and fury and want. Not when the offer on the table was safety, not seduction.
“No,” she said at last. She rubbed her eyes, releasing a long, slow breath. “As great as it sounds”—sarcasm laced her voice—“I’m not going to the compound.”
He nodded, releasing his breath in a rush. “Okay.”
“That’s it? You’re not going to argue? Not even a little?”
“I reserve the right to argue later if the threat escalates.”
She leaned against the doorframe and rubbed both hands over her face.
“I can’t leave Sanctuary. Tomorrow is Sunday; we’ll be closed.
That gives me time, like you said, to hear what Agent Dawson finds out between now and then, and then I’ll be able to make a clearer decision.
I don’t know what I’m doing yet, but I can’t let whoever this is scare me into hiding while my customers are still out there. ”
“I understand.”
“Good. I want to help with Hopper.”
“Holly—”
“No. If I’m staying, I’m helping. You said it was my choice.”
She turned her body to slide past him, Blue following as if they had formed a committee. In the living room, she sat on the couch and pulled the laptop toward her. “What are we looking for?”
Reid remained in the hallway for another second, gathering the pieces of himself the kiss had scattered, then joined her. “Connections. Hoyt, Sanctuary, the other victims, any public history that gives Hopper motive or opportunity.”
She tucked one leg beneath her. “Sit down, Counselor.”
He sat beside her. It shouldn’t have felt like returning to the kiss. They were working, and Holly kept her eyes on the screen, scrolling through property records and search results while he guided her away from unreliable sites and toward others that were useful.
He took over when she reached a database that required more technical skills, then let her point out details he might not have known mattered: a road north of town, a development site Hoyt’s company had argued about years ago, the rough timing of when Hopper had started coming into the shop.
None of it proved anything, and Reid didn’t pretend otherwise.
The search gave them only fragments, but the act of doing something seemed to steady her.
It steadied him, too.
Their shoulders brushed. Neither of them acknowledged it.
Holly’s knee rested against his thigh, and he could feel her warmth through the thin distance between them.
Every time she leaned forward to read something on the screen, he remembered her hand in his shirt and the taste of her mouth.
He kept his attention on Hopper Shaw through discipline alone.