Page 14 of Shadow Justice

He gave her none of them.

Not here. Not now.

Holly looked away first. “I hate this.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t know what this place is to me.”

He chose his next words carefully. “You talked about it once. A place that felt safe. Where people could come when they needed warmth and quiet and needed to feel like they belonged.” He looked at the first dollar on the wall, then back at her. “You built it.”

Her expression softened, and for a second he saw the young woman she’d been that night, lying beside him in the dark, speaking dreams into the space between them because neither of them had wanted to talk about morning.

Then the present moved back in. “And now someone is using it,” she said. Her throat moved. “To find people like Nell.”

“It looks that way.”

She swallowed hard again. “And you, standing behind my counter, are supposed to fix that?”

“It gives us a way to watch without warning him.”

“You’re sure it’s a man?”

He shook his head. “We’re not sure of anything, but the profile suggests it is.”

She exhaled slowly, pressing her fingers to her temples. “I cannot believe this.”

“I wish you didn’t have to.”

Her laugh broke off before it became anything real. “How noble of you.”

Reid took one step closer, then stopped when her shoulders tightened. “A uniformed officer would scare people. An obvious bodyguard would do the same. The suspect may be watching you, the shop, or both. If I’m here as an employee, I can stay close, observe the regulars, and see the patterns you may not know are there.”

“I know all of that, but these customers…”

“Are your family.”

Holly dropped her hands. “So what am I supposed to do? Look at every person who walks in here and wonder if they’re next, or if they’re guilty?”

“You keep running your shop,” he said. “You tell me when something seems off, even if it’s small.”

Her eyes sharpened. “You don’t get to walk back into my life and start issuing rules.”

“I’m trying to keep you alive and help stop a killer.”

He saw the effect pass over her face, saw the anger lose its easiest target. He would rather she yell, throw every deserved accusation at him until the room was cleared of the old ghosts between them. But Holly had always been more dangerous when quiet.

“I’m not here to take over your life,” he told her. “I’m here because someone has brought this to your door. Let me stand between you and them until we know who they are.”

Her gaze held his for a long moment. “You were always good at deciding what was best and leaving other people to live with it.”

The words cut deep. He took a breath before he started defending himself and made things worse. There would be time to discuss their past later. “You’re right. I’m working on that.”

Her lips parted slightly, as if she’d expected an argument. She closed them without saying a word.

The distant kitchen refrigeration hummed through the wall, and rain tapped the window. Reid wondered if she could hear his pulse, because he could feel it in his throat. There was an apology waiting there, years late and still inadequate. He wanted to tell her he’d regretted leaving before his truck reached the county line. That the further the Navy took him, the more he understood distance didn’t erase the shape of someone from your life. It only made the empty place harder to fill.

But Holly was standing in front of him with too much emotion to carry already, and he wouldn’t make his guilt another thing she had to manage.