Page 52 of Holding Out For A Holiday Hero

“That is a beautiful tree!”

Great. Now Perry seemed offended.

“And I had practically no budget.” Perry sniffed. “Considering what I had to work with, the tree in our office is a miracle. Ahem, speaking of miracles, you can’t really expect me to find a twelve-foot Christmas tree?—”

“A live one. I want it to smell like Christmas.”

Again, silence. Then, “Sir, are you feeling well? Have you, by chance, recently hit your head?”

His head was just fine. “Money isn’t an issue. Go big or go ho-ho-home, am I right?”

“You just made a Christmas joke.”

Yeah, shit, he had. “Use the company credit card. Deliver the tree to my place, ASAP. You get it decorated, and there is a Christmas bonus in it for you.”

“I do not know what is happening right now, but I am both excited and scared,” Perry informed him. “Though that is often the way I feel when I work at our agency. Especially when you tell me that you’re tracking a murderer.”

I’m tracking a murderer right now. I’m just taking a small Christmas detour for True because her tears and her pain make me want to break something.

Footsteps rushed behind him. “Jake!” True’s breathless voice called.

“Got to go,” Jake told Perry. “Get the tree.” Low. Gruff. He hung up the phone and spun just as True came rushing right up to him.

Her eyes were wide, her lips parted, and her breath heaved a little too fast from what looked like a run she’d taken in order to reach him.

“I was wrong.” True grabbed his arms. “I didn’t think anything had been taken, but I just checked through my briefcase. It was upstairs. And—I was wrong.”

Now they were getting somewhere. “Okay, sweets, don’t leave me in suspense. What was taken?”

“I’d brought home some inventory lists from the museum. I’d intended to go over the lists during the holiday break so I could see exactly what items I had to work with as I made plans for reenergizing the place.” A shake of her head sent her hair sliding over her shoulders. “But some of the papers are missing. All of the inventory lists aren’t there.”

The killer had taken inventory lists from the museum?

True was attacked twice in the museum.

Dots were connecting in Jake’s mind and forming a picture he didn’t like. “These inventory lists—are you the only person who has recently taken a look at what is and what is not stored in the backrooms of the museum?”

“Well, yes.” Her gaze searched his. “It’s my job. Like I said, I want to reenergize things there. Part of doing that means pulling items out of storage and putting them on display. Giving new life to things that have been forgotten.”

Suspicions swirled in his mind. “You can’t give new life to something that isn’t there.” Maybe they’d been looking at this all wrong. Maybe it wasn’t about True—about some obsession that a person had gotten with her. For her.

Maybe…maybe it was about stopping True. Before she uncovered a crime.

Then why did Dylan Dunn wind up as the dead one?

“We need to get back in that museum,” True murmured.

Damn straight, they did. “Tell me that your beautiful, organized heart has copies of the lists that were missing.”

“My organized heart has copies of the lists that are missing.”

He hauled her close and kissed her. A fast, hard kiss. “Of course, you do.”

“Those were the originals in my briefcase.” Her eyes gleamed at him. “But I scanned them onto my computer at work because I wanted backups. Some of the notations were so old—I scanned them so I could have them in an updated system. I’m trying to update everything at the museum.”

And someone did not like what she was doing. Because that someone thinks True will discover something she shouldn’t. “Did you tell anyone that you were creating the backups?”

“Aliyah knows.”

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