Page 55 of Daybreak

* * *

Holly came to work early to put a thank-you note on her boss’s desk for the flowers that were sent to her mom’s funeral and then began sorting through her own messages.

The most urgent ones were follow-ups on deeds that had not gone through probate and needed to be updated so the sales of the houses could go through. After that, it was all about running down other deeds that had been misfiled at court clerks’ offices in the surrounding counties. She had her work cut out for her today and would work through the oldest requests first and go from there.

The thought of Gunner using himself for bait to catch a dirty cop was horrifying, but she had to trust that he knew what he was doing. She knew he would initiate phone calls when it was safe for him to do so, but she needed to let him know she was thinking of him.

She reached for her phone and sent him an emoji greeting.

Gunner heard his phone ding a text. He opened the message from Holly, saw the good morning GIF with a sun rising above the horizon, and a good morning message to go with it, and smiled.

He returned the message with a kiss emoji and wished he could deliver that in person, then called a florist near her place of work and ordered her flowers and had them sign the card Roadrunner. He paid through PayPal rather than giving them a credit card number more easily traced.

Soon, darlin’, soon, he thought, then kept going through that piece of video from the security camera over and over until he finally spotted something he hadn’t noticed before.

On the driver’s third trip past Gunner’s house, he met a car coming from the other direction, and in the moment just before they were passing, the car’s headlights briefly flashed on the windshield, revealing a blurry image of the driver.

He tried to enlarge it, but it only blurred the pixels more. He didn’t have an editing program on his laptop, but he knew who did. He sent a clip of that video to Nora, explaining what it was, and asking if she could clean it up enough to identify the driver.

Within a couple of minutes, Nora replied, verifying she’d received it and that she’d begin working on it ASAP, and when she was finished, she’d send it back as clean as she could make it.

Satisfied that he was finally making headway, he sent his dad a message that all was well. It wasn’t exactly the truth, but close enough for Jacob to rest easy.

* * *

It was midafternoon when a floral delivery man with a bouquet of yellow roses entered the realty office where Holly worked.

“Delivery for Holly Dillon?”

“That’s me,” she said and quickly cleared off a place on her desk for him to set it down. “Thank you. They’re lovely!”

He nodded. “Have a good day,” he said and hustled out the door.

At that point, her boss, Gene, and her colleagues, Leigh, Josie, and Lisa, stopped what they were doing and turned to look.

“Wow, Holly! Have you been keeping secrets from us?” Leigh asked.

Even before Holly took the card from the bouquet, she knew in her heart who sent them, but seeing the brief affirmation for herself was everything.

Roadrunner.

She flushed a delightful shade of pink as she clutched it to her heart. Twelve perfect yellow roses from the perfect man for her. Her eyes welled. If only I could call Mama. She waited years for me to tell her I was in love.

“Who sent them? Do we know him? Was it a client?” Josie asked.

The questions were coming from right and left. “None of your business. No, you don’t know him. No, he’s not a client.” When her desk phone rang, she slipped the card in her pocket. “That better be from the Tarrant County Court Clerk,” she muttered as she went back to her chair to answer, which ended her coworkers’ moment of curiosity, but it didn’t end Holly’s delight. The roses on her desk were a beautiful reminder of the man who’d sent them.

* * *

Lieutenant Samuels hadn’t been able to get past the look on Kingston’s face after admitting he hadn’t talked to the higher-ups about the possibility of an informant in their midst.

But Samuels had an obligation to also protect his detectives against false accusations, and he could not, in good conscience, do it without proof and a name to go with it. The thin blue line in law enforcement was real. They had to have each other’s back at all times, and it was bothering him greatly that Gunner Kingston was so certain he’d been betrayed by one of their own.

He was standing at the window behind his desk when he felt a tightening across his chest. Within seconds, the tight feeling turned into a sharp, stabbing pain.

“Oh God,” he muttered and stumbled out of his office. “Call 911. I think I’m having a heart attack.” And then he dropped.

Six detectives came out from behind their desks so fast they knocked over their chairs getting up.