Chapter 9 Jace
JACE
Jace was halfway up the hill when Holly’s scream hit him like a lightning bolt.
He had no conscious recollection of deciding to move, or even of moving, before he was sprinting down the hill in long bounds. It was something beyond decision or thought, and it came from the deepest, most instinctive part of him, the wolf side of him.
Holly was on the porch of the farmhouse. She was kneeling, with the dogs nuzzling anxiously at her, and she was alone; all of this he took in at a glance. What had made her scream? She had her knees together and something cradled in her lap.
Jace crouched near her. He cautiously put a hand on her shoulder, and she startled a little. “It’s okay. It’s me.” He kept his voice steady, trying to crush down the adrenaline. It would have been easier if there had been someone to fight. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
She might have slipped on an icy patch on the porch. But her scream hadn’t sounded like the startled yelp of someone who had fallen over. There was real fear and hurt in it.
And yet there was nothing nearby to have threatened her. The dogs didn’t look like they sensed a threat; they were only puzzled and upset because their mistress was scared and unhappy.
Holly raised her head. Her eyes were wet. “It’s one of my dolls,” she whispered.
That didn’t make any sense. Jace frowned at the thing in her lap, a mess of broken white pieces and fluffy pale foam and tattered fabric—oh.
Suddenly he realized what he was looking at.
It was one of those antique dolls with a china face and hands and feet, the rest of the doll made up of a stuffed body and dress.
One of the girls in the group home, a long time ago, had a doll like that; it was a keepsake from her grandparents.
But this doll had been damaged. Destroyed. The fabric of its dress and body were deeply gashed, with stuffing bleeding out the holes. One of the arms was dangling, nearly separated from the body.
“Did the dogs do this?”
“No,” Holly whispered. “I—I mean, I don’t think so.”
Her voice quavered. Jace went down fully to sit on the porch, so that he could put an arm around her. She leaned into him a little. Rocket stuck her wet nose in Jace’s ear, and he gently but impatiently pushed the dog away.
“Can I?” he asked Holly quietly.
Holly put the doll in his hand. She was shivering a little, and leaned into him more.
As soon as he got a close look, he saw why she said it wasn’t the dogs. The doll had been cut with a knife. Someone had gashed its body, torn the dress, broken the china face and hands.
The sheer anger that it would take to destroy something in this way was horrifying.
“Who would do something like this?” Jace asked.
Holly shook her head helplessly.
Jace pushed away Rocket again and helped Holly stand up. “Was the door locked?”
“No. We never lock the door here.”
And up at the tree farm, with vehicles coming and going, they would never have noticed if someone had pulled into the farm yard and then left again. “Stay out here with the dogs,” he said. “I’ll check the house.”
Holly recoiled. “You don’t think there’s someone—”
“I don’t know. But I’ll look around.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Holly whispered, almost too quiet to hear.
With her behind him, Jace stepped into the downstairs. The door opened into a small entry, with racks crowded with coats, and rows of boots and shoes lined up against the wall. There was a thick, braided rug on the floor that looked handmade.
Beyond that, a large living room took up most of the space at the front of the house.
It looked lived-in, too; the furniture was squashy and patched and dusted with pet hair, there were dog toys everywhere, and bookcases groaning with a disordered mix of books and magazines.
Family pictures hung on the walls, and there were holiday garlands draped across the mantel and around the doors and windows.
“I’m sorry it’s such a mess,” Holly half-whispered behind him. As she came in on Jace’s heels, the doll clutched in one hand, she bent over to pick up a knotted rope toy and put it on a shelf.
“Don’t worry about it. Stay here ‘til I clear the house.”
“Can’t I come with you?”
She was so close she was almost tripping over him. The destroyed doll had really unnerved her, and he couldn’t blame her. “Okay, just keep behind me.”
From the living room, they went into a dimly lit dining area with a large, old-fashioned table, and from there to the kitchen. The dogs ran immediately to a pair of food bowls and a water dish near the door, looking hopeful.
The kitchen was bright and cheery, with checked curtains and canisters with painted fruit on them, a classic country vibe.
Like the rest of the house, it was messy enough to feel lived in, without being unhygienic or dirty.
There were dishes in the drain and a large bowl on the counter covered with a dish towel.
A second door led to the backyard, with a few more shoes and boots beside it and jackets hanging on a rack.
Jace looked out just to make sure there were no other surprises behind the house.
With that confirmed, he went on clearing the house.
There was a large bedroom at the back of the house with an attached office or study—”Dad’s room,” Holly said, though he had guessed that.
The surprising thing was how many female touches were in the room (cute cherubic figures on shelves, a lacy throw over the back of a chair); it was clear that the memory of Holly’s mom was still vividly present in the household.
He also checked the master bathroom and a laundry room.
From there, he went upstairs. Here there were several doorways along a hall.
“My sisters’ old rooms and mine,” Holly said. She was still following him, holding the doll. “Mine is this one here, at the top of the stairs.”
“How many bedrooms?”
“Three. Plus a bathroom. The younger ones used to share.”
Holly’s room looked like it had barely changed since she was a kid.
There were dolls on shelves, quite a lot of them, and posters of boy bands ten or fifteen years out of date.
There was something almost sad about it, like a time capsule into which she had tried to reinsert herself. But there was no prowler.
The other rooms had evidently been repurposed from the original uses of their inhabitants, although they still had beds and some girlish decorations on the walls.
But one had a sewing machine in the middle of the floor and bins of craft supplies, and the other seemed to be in use as a general storage area, with boxes of books stacked on the bed.
No one was in any of the rooms, and while it wasn’t like he’d be able to tell if anything had been damaged or taken with all the cheerful clutter, at least he could recognize that nothing had been damaged or spoiled like the doll.
Whatever anger had led to someone cutting up the doll hadn’t been carried out against the rest of the house.
Just the doll.
Jace didn’t like that at all.
He heard a sudden gasp from Holly’s room, and half-ran down the hall to where she was standing just outside the door.
“That wasn’t there when I got up this morning,” Holly said.
She pointed to the bed. At first Jace didn’t know what she was pointing at. Then he saw a small, folded piece of paper in the middle of her neatly fixed pink and white comforter.
Before he could caution her about touching it, she picked it up and unfolded it.
For a minute she stood there looking at it.
Then she made a faint hissing sound. Jace looked from her hands to her face, where her brows were drawn into a contorted, furious expression that sat uneasily on features made for smiling.
“That asshole,” she snarled.
Jace offered a hand. Holly shoved the note into it, dropped the doll on the bed, and whipped out her phone. She began typing furiously.
The note said, in scrawled handwriting even worse than Jace’s, You’ll change your mind. You’ll see.
A cold chill ran down Jace’s spine, and the heat of fury began to rise in him. “Who wrote this?”
“I’d put good money on my stupid worthless ex, either that or one of his awful friends.” Holly was still typing. “I’m unblocking him just for this. How does this sound? Leave me the fuck alone, Rob. If you show up again, I’m calling the police.”
“Sounds perfect,” Jace said. Now he had a target for his rage. He was all but vibrating with it, his wolf snarling with protective fury. Taking a deep breath, he tried to control it. “You sure you shouldn’t call the police now? This looks pretty serious.”
Holly pressed send and dropped the phone on the bed. She sank down next to it and looked at her hands. “Look at me. I’m shaking.”
Jace sat beside her and cautiously put a hand on her arm. He couldn’t quite bring himself to put his arm around her again as he had so impulsively on the porch—not here, in the bastion of her most intimate space. But he felt her lean against his hand anyway.
“Anyone would be,” he said. “Was that the guy at the community center the other day, the one who wouldn’t leave you alone?”
“Yeah.” Holly curled her hands in her lap. “My old high school boyfriend. We were over a long time ago, but he won’t give it up.”
“You tell me where to find that son of a bitch, and I’ll make him regret the day he was born.”
Holly blew out a long breath and clasped her hands between her knees. “Please don’t. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. Rob wants attention; he always has. Maybe if I ignore him, he’ll give up.”
Jace didn’t like that idea. He wondered if he could find this Rob character on his own. “Do you think he’ll come back?”
“No,” Holly said. “Rob is all talk and no action.”
The ruined doll looked like action to Jace, and he didn’t like it. “People like this don’t always stop. You might be in danger.”
Holly started to shake her head, then looked up at the sound of an engine rumbling into the yard. Jace jumped to his feet, his heart hammering.
“It’s just Dad,” Holly said. “That’s the truck.” She stood up, turned to look at the ruined doll and the note, and then, shivering a little, she leaned down and took the empty trash bag from the bin beside her bed. She gently wrapped the doll up in it and put it on a low shelf.
Jace ached to hold her, but every part of her body language bristled with defensiveness. “What do you want to tell your dad?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Holly said promptly. “I don’t want him to know a thing about this.”
“This guy broke into your house and left a note in your bedroom.”
“I know. But Dad always hated Rob. I just can’t deal with the I-told-you-so’s right now. If Rob gives up, if this is as far as it goes, then Dad never has to know.”
“Your dad will want to protect you.”
“Yeah,” Holly said flatly. “And that’s why I don’t need him getting involved. I absolutely cannot deal with Dad on a Papa Bear tear right now, I just can’t.”
She wiped her hands on her jeans and tucked them under her arms. She was still wearing her coat and looked absolutely miserable.
“Look, someone should,” Jace said, and she looked up sharply. “Help you, I mean. I hate the idea of you being alone with all this.”
Holly smiled a crooked, sideways smile. “Well, I have you.”
Yeah, a guy who was going to be leaving in a couple of weeks. But he could already feel his wolf’s protective instincts homing in on this like a missile.
“I will,” he said. The words seemed to come from a burned-out, empty place deep inside him. It had felt like a wasteland in there. Now green shoots were tentatively springing up.
Holly looked puzzled. “You’ll what?”
“Protect you.”
She frowned. “Jace—”
“No, listen. I know you’re not scared of this guy.” Although you should be. That slashed-up doll still gave him chills. “But I’m going to be around all the time anyway, since I’m staying up the hill. Wouldn’t you feel safer having a bodyguard, just in case, just for the next couple of weeks?”
The downstairs door slammed. Holly jumped. Jace put out a hand automatically, brushing her arm, and stepped between her and the door of her room before the Colonel’s voice called from downstairs, “You in here, honey?”
Holly cleared her throat and visibly got herself under control. “I’m changing upstairs, Dad!” To Jace, she hissed in an undertone, “He absolutely cannot find you in my room.”
As they both froze, the Colonel called up the stairs, “I brought one of those deli chickens from town. We just need some potatoes and a side.”
“I can get right on that!” Holly called down the stairs. After the Colonel’s footsteps clomped away, she said quietly to Jace, “Wait until I’m in the kitchen with Dad and then come down the stairs. You can pretend to come in from any direction, just not up here.”
“I’m serious about protecting you,” Jace whispered.
“I know,” Holly said under her breath. She pressed her lips together. “Just until Christmas.”
“Just until Christmas,” Jace promised softly.
But until this thing with Stalker Rob was resolved, he didn’t plan to be away from her for a minute.