Page 19 of Holding Out For A Holiday Hero

Jake stared at him. Just stared. Harris could be such a pain in his ass.

Beside him, True sucked in a sharp breath.

“Except for the body,” Harris hastened to add. “That is not a Christmas miracle. That is a Christmas homicide, and rest assured, I will get to the bottom of this mystery.”

Oh, yeah, Jake felt all kinds of reassured.

“I’m to assume that you’ll be sticking close to True from here on out?” Harris asked as he stopped pointing with the damn file and dropped his hand back to his side.

“You assume correctly.” They had a murderer on the loose. One who’d been in True’s house. Good thing Jake excelled at tracking down killers and criminals.

“The ME is working on her report. I’ll be sure to give you the highlights when Sara is done.” Harris lowered his voice as he revealed, “Based on rigor mortis, though, we’re thinking the vic was shot around midnight. And it doesn’t take a degree in medicine to realize the guy was shot in the heart.”

“No neighbors heard the shot?” Jake had to ask the question.

Harris shook his head. “Could be they were sound sleepers. And the houses aren’t that close together on the cul-de-sac.”

Or it could be that a professional had fired the shot to kill the SOB. A professional with a silencer? Shit, if that was the case, things were getting very, very complicated.

Harris’s gaze slid to True. “You sure you didn’t know the guy?”

She shook her head.

“The name Dylan Dunn means nothing to you?” Harris pushed.

“Is that—is that who he was?”

Harris nodded.

“The guy’s last known address was Atlanta,” Jake told her.

True gave a start of surprise. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know him. There are a whole lot of people in Atlanta.” She grimaced. “I have no idea why he was in my house, and I have no clue who killed him.”

“But we’ll be finding out,” Jake promised.

“I knew you were going to say that.” A sigh from Harris. “You get that I’m the one with the badge, right? Told you a million times, if you want to solve the cases, you should join the force. The job was made for you.”

“I like making my own rules.” He’d followed enough of them during his special ops time. He wasn’t ready to sit behind a desk and take orders from police brass.

“No, you just like being a badass who gets to stalk his prey. That shit is scary.” A uniform appeared at the end of the hallway. Harris immediately straightened and raised his voice as he said, “That’s all the questions for now. I’ll be sure and contact you for follow-up.”

Jake saluted him. “Yeah, you do that. We’ll be waiting.” Then he threaded his fingers with True’s and began walking down the hallway and toward the exit. They’d taken five steps when…

Harris snapped his fingers. “Sorry! Forgot to mention—True, your home is a crime scene. I’m gonna suggest you find another place to crash for the next twenty-four—maybe forty-eight—hours while the techs do their work.”

Jake turned his head to look at True. She was already looking at him. “She’ll be with me.” Hadn’t they already covered that he had no intention of letting her out of his sight?

Not with a killer on the loose.

Talk about your nightmare-before-Christmas situation.

Ho, ho…homicide.

Chapter Five

“When you deck the halls, you don’t typically leave a dead body under the Christmas tree.

That’s just…not very festive.” –True Blakely

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