Yuletide Protector

“If someone gets too pushy or personal for you, call me about that, too. Anything. I’m not taking any chances with our star witness.”

So the warmth of his hand on her arm and the patient, adult conversation was about protecting the outcome of his task force investigation. “You’re not taking any chances?”

“No.”

With a wry smile, Bailey shook her head. Spencer Montgomery had KCPD running through his veins. Any shivers of awareness she might feel at his warm hands or masculine smells or polite attention were misguided responses to a man who was simply doing his job.

She was the surviving victim who could put away the Rose Red Rapist forever.

“I’ll call,” Bailey promised. “If I suspect anything’s not right, I’ll call.”

“Don’t go shopping by yourself. Make sure someone knows where you are at all times. You do whatever you have to to stay safe.”

She’d had younger, more charming men hit on her with sweet words and shower her with gifts. But she’d never responded so easily, so basically, to any one of them the way she was reacting to Spencer Montgomery today.

“I’ll try not to let you down, Mr Montgomery.”

“You won’t.”

You won’t.

Did those last two words mean Detective Montgomery had faith in her ability to get the job done?

Or were they a warning that he intended to make sure she didn’t screw this up?

Yuletide Protector

Julie Miller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling author JULIE MILLER attributes her passion for writing romance to all those books she read growing up. When shyness and asthma kept her from becoming the action-adventure heroine she longed to be, Julie created stories in her head to keep herself entertained. Encouragement from her family to write down the feelings and ideas she couldn’t express became a love for the written word. She gets continued support from her fellow members of the Prairieland Romance Writers, where this teacher serves as the resident “grammar goddess.” Inspired by the likes of Agatha Christie and Encyclopedia Brown, Julie believes the only thing better than a good mystery is a good romance.

Born and raised in Missouri, this award-winning author now lives in Nebraska with her husband, son and an assortment of spoiled pets. To contact Julie or to learn more about her books, write to PO Box 5162, Grand Island, NE 68802-5162, USA, or check out her website and monthly newsletter at www.juliemiller.org.

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Prologue

September

“I’ll save you,” she whispered into the phone.

Brian Elliott looked at her through glass that separated them. The lines of strain around his blue eyes and handsome mouth were more pronounced. And the orange jumpsuit certainly didn’t flatter.

After all she’d done for him, he still doubted her? “You don’t think they’re screening all my visitors? You’re tempting fate by coming here.”

If he wasn’t looking so haggard, so in need of the comfort he normally sought from her, she would have been irritated by his doubt. Instead, she smoothed a smile on her face—for his benefit as well as the guards who might be watching. “It makes perfect, logical sense for me to come see you. Besides, you’ve had a lot of visitors, haven’t you? Too many for the authorities to focus solely on me.”

“You arranged all those visits?”

“Not many people can benefit from being associated with an alleged serial rapist.” She’d gone to work as soon as she learned the news of his arrest. “Some of your friends and business associates probably are truly concerned for your welfare. And I might have suggested to some of them how staying in your good graces would prove most beneficial once you’re acquitted.”

He tipped his mouth closer to the phone that connected them and rubbed at his temple, as though the stress of the past couple of days had given him a headache. “How can you be sure that will happen? The police have eyewitness testimony. Experts from the crime lab to talk about trace evidence and DNA.”

“The only thing their evidence proves is that you once fathered a child with a woman who’s now in a mental institution. The D.A. will never put her on the stand to argue that it wasn’t consensual sex. Everything else is circumstantial. A good lawyer will make that go away—and you’ve got the best attorney in town on your payroll. Any other charges are minor, and I expect you’ll get probation and time served.”

Her heart twisted with sympathy when he rubbed at the cuts and scratches on his forearm, painful wounds inflicted during his arrest just days earlier. “All it takes is one woman to stand up and identify me as the man who raped her.”

“An eyewitness?” Despite his pain, she had to laugh. “How can any victim swear it was you? They were all unconscious, and you wore a mask.”

“There’s Hope Lockhart.”

“You didn’t rape her.”

He cupped the receiver with his hand and revealed a hushed admission. “I wanted to. I wanted to hurt her so badly—”

“Shh.” She leaned toward the glass and splayed her fingers there, wishing she could physically touch him and reassure him. “A jury can’t convict you for being angry and having these revenge fantasies. But it won’t help public perception if word gets out that you...enjoy the violence.”

“I’m sitting in a jail cell. My bail hearing isn’t until tomorrow. Public opinion doesn’t matter in here.”

“You talk as though you don’t believe you’re getting out.”

She was pleased when he flattened his larger hand close to his side of the reinforced glass, touching her in the only way he could. For now. As long as he needed her, as long as he loved her, she’d find a way to make it work so they could both get what they wanted. “Do you really think we can fix this and make it go away?”

“Yes. But you have to trust me.” She pulled her hand away, getting down to business. Brian had always appreciated her practical sense about how to get things done. It was one of the things that had drawn them together in the first place, even though the arguments often drove them apart. “I would have taken care of that issue with Miss Lockhart, too, if I had known how upset you were. If you had listened to me before, if you had let me handle the situation, you wouldn’t be sitting where you are now.”

“Let you handle it? I can’t tolerate a betrayal like that. She needed to understand that I—”

“Hush.” She quieted him before his agitation drew the guard’s attention to their conversation. “Your emotions are your Achilles heel, Brian. I can think rationally, for the both of us. Let me do this for you. I’ve saved your gorgeous hide more than once. That was our agreement, remember? I take care of you. I know you’re sick. I can live with that. As long as you love me. But you have to trust—”

“Sick?” He shook his head and leaned back, the boardroom glare that had intimidated many an adversary directed squarely at her. “Trusting a woman is what got me into this mess in the first place.”

She smiled. Poor thing. Didn’t he know by now she couldn’t be intimidated? “Trusting a woman is what will get you out of it, too.”

She waited, displaying far more patience than he had ever shown her. At last, his broad shoulders lifted with a heavy breath and he nodded, accepting her promise. Accepting her.

“I love you.” Pursing her lips together, she blew him a kiss. “Oh, and Brian, darling?” There were rules to this relationship, and he needed to understand them. “I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to save you. But if you betray who I am to anyone—a cell mate, a police officer or even a fly on the wall—I will destroy you.” She smiled again. “Now, say you love me.”

She held the defiant challenge in his dark eyes until, with a nod of understanding, he lowered his gaze. “I love you.”

She hung up the phone and walked away.

Chapter One

December

“That’s him. I recognize his voice. The build’s right and the eyes are the same. He’s the man who raped me.”

Bailey Austin braced her hand against the chilly window that separated her from the suspect and decoys lined up in the adjoining room at KCPD’s Fourth Precinct headquarters and closed her eyes. They all wore black clothes and surgical masks over the lower half of their faces. But she didn’t need a visual to relive the sounds and smells and every violent, humiliating touch that had changed her life more than a year ago.

“Shut up!” A fist smashed across her cheekbone when she’d dared to beg him to stop. Pain pulsed through her fractured skull, swirling her plastic-covered surroundings into a dizzying vertigo that made her nauseous. Her stomach was already churning from the stingingly bitter smell of vinegar and soap on the washcloth he was bathing her with. As if he could simply wash away the pain and shock and violation of what he had done to her. Bound and battered, helpless to struggle against him, she tried to blank her mind against the unspeakable things he was doing to her. “I’m the one in charge here, you filthy thing,” he needlessly reminded her.

Dark eyes swam in and out of focus from the grotesque black-and-white mask he wore. “Please...”

“Close your eyes and that mouth, or I’ll put the hood on you again.” She squeezed her eyes shut, dutifully doing what she could to save herself more punishment. “Do exactly what I tell you,” he warned her, scrubbing away any evidentiary trace of himself or the crime scene from her body, “and maybe I’ll let you live.”

Bailey had been one of the lucky ones. She’d survived.

But she hadn’t been able to erase the memory that night, and she couldn’t now. Even with a simple recitation from a Kansas City travel brochure, she recognized his voice—so bitter and devoid of caring. “That’s him,” she repeated, opening her eyes to see a uniformed officer stop and cuff the black-haired man she’d identified. When he peeled off his mask, she recognized his face from the business and society pages of the Kansas City papers. “Brian Elliott is the man who... He’s the Rose Red Rapist.”

District Attorney Dwight Powers stood beside her at the one-way window. “You’ll testify to that in court? You’ll point him out to the jury?”

She swallowed the emotions that rose in her throat. Despite all logic that told her she was invisible to him here in the look-at room, Bailey hugged her orange wool coat tighter in her arms and backed away from the glass when her attacker turned and looked in her direction. She nodded, transfixed by the cruel eyes, warm with color and yet so cold. There was something wrong with that man, something sick or disconnected inside his head. A brilliantly successful businessman, charming on the surface, yet twisted, damaged, inside. And he’d taken all that rage, all that self-loathing out on her. As if she’d been the cause of his pain. Even through the glass she felt his hatred aimed squarely at her.

She could feel his hands on her all over again, her arms pinned above her head, his body on top of hers, and she shuddered.

“This is a dubious identification at best, Powers, and you know it.” Shaking off the nightmare crawling over her skin, Bailey turned away from the glass as Kenna Parker, Brian Elliott’s articulate defense attorney, started earning her expensive fee. The taller woman clutched her leather attaché in her fist and looked down with sympathy. “I’m sorry for what you’ve gone through, Miss Austin. But if the district attorney here puts you on the stand, I can promise you that my cross-examination won’t be pleasant. If you’re certain my client is your attacker, then why didn’t you identify him sooner? He’s a known figure in Kansas City society.”

“I didn’t know him. Not personally.” Bailey’s gaze darted up to meet the blond woman’s faintly accusatory question. “I identified him by voice. And I did recognize his eyes as soon as I saw them again. Once he was arrested, I picked out his mug shot from a group of several suspects.”

“You had a head injury, didn’t you? Perhaps your memory isn’t as clear as you’d like it to be.”

Before Bailey could form the appropriate words to defend her competence as the prosecution’s star witness, Harper Pierce, the family attorney her parents had insisted accompany them down to Precinct headquarters this morning, interrupted.

“Is that a threat, Kenna?” he challenged.

The woman smiled up at the attorney in the three-piece suit. “Of course not. I’m good enough I don’t need to make threats.” With a polite nod to everyone in the room, she turned on her Italian leather pumps and headed out the door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go talk to my client. Chief Taylor?”

Mitch Taylor, the Precinct commander who blocked the door, folded his arms across his barrel-chest. “My people made a good arrest, Ms. Parker. They pulled a dangerous man off the streets.”

“Did they?” She waited until he stepped aside to let her pass. “Or did they just find a convenient scapegoat so you could close your investigation and get the press off your back?”

Everyone in the tiny room turned their heads at the onslaught of voices and bright lights that greeted the lady attorney as soon as she stepped into the hallway. Reporters.

“Ms. Parker. Is your client a free man?”

“Will he still be out on bail?”

“Did the witness identify him as the Rose Red Rapist?”

“Who is the witness?”

Bailey clutched her stomach as a wave of nausea churned inside her. They were closing in like vultures. “Oh, my.”

Dwight Powers braced his hand beneath her elbow. “Mitch,” he warned.

“I’m on it.” With a curt nod, Mitch stepped into the hallway. With a booming voice that made Bailey tremble, he took charge of the surging crowd. “This is a police station, not gossip central. Kate Kilpatrick, our task force liaison to the press, will answer your questions downstairs.”

“Is that Brian Elliot?” a woman asked. “Could we talk to him?”

“My client is being released on bail, and we’ll be making a formal statement later,” Kenna promised.

“Joe! Sarge!” Bailey ducked behind the D.A.’s broad back as Chief Taylor called for backup. “Get them out of here. I’m not putting on a press conference for that scum. The reporters can talk to Elliott outside, once we get his ankle bracelet back on him.”

“Yes, sir.” A dutiful voice from the hallway hastened to do his chief’s bidding. “Ms. Owen. Mr. Knight. This way, people. I’ll escort you down to the front door.”

As soon as Chief Taylor closed the door behind him, Bailey’s mother, Loretta Austin-Mayweather, spoke from the back of the room. “I don’t like that woman. Do you think Kenna Parker staged that harangue of reporters to frighten Bailey?”

With the reporters’ protesting voices reduced to a murmur, the D.A. released his grip on Bailey. “It’s a possibility. She’ll use every weapon in her arsenal to prove reasonable doubt to the jury. And since a lot of our case rests on your daughter...”

Bailey’s chin popped up when he turned his eyes on her. Forcing herself to take easy, calming breaths, Bailey nodded. She had to do this. “Don’t worry, Mr. Powers. You can count on me.”

Loretta glanced up at the distinguished gentleman standing beside her. Her beautiful features were drawn with worry and fatigue. “Jackson, isn’t there something you can do about Ms. Parker to protect Bailey? I’ve already lost Kyle. I don’t think I could stand to see another child get hurt.”

Too late for that, Bailey thought as a less-than-kind impulse bubbled up. But her sarcasm quickly turned to sympathy. They’d all been devastated by Kyle’s death, her mother to the point that when Bailey had needed her most, Loretta had been incapable of empathizing with her daughter’s pain. Her mother had lost weight from the stress and turned to a nightly glass or two of wine in order to sleep. For months now, Loretta had deflected any conversation more serious than the weather or the family’s social calendar.

They all had their ways of coping. Bailey just hoped her efforts to take charge of her own life and to confront her attacker would lead to her own healing.

“We won’t let that happen,” Harper Pierce assured Loretta. “Will we.” Bailey had to look away from the solicitous expression on the attorney’s handsome face.

He used to look at her that way—before the assault, when they’d been engaged to be married—when she’d been able to tolerate a flirtatious wink or intimate touch, when she would have been satisfied to become his trophy wife and take her place at his side in Kansas City society. Once, that look would have bolstered her courage. Now, that sly wink was just something else she had to deal with.

“You can’t talk me out of this, Harper,” Bailey stated firmly. She was no longer the wide-eyed Pollyanna who’d doted on his needs and shared so many interests with him. Understandably, she had to put herself—and now her mother—first. She crossed the room to give her mother a gentle hug, then pulled away, smiling into the blue eyes that matched her own. “But I promise I’ll be as careful as I can, Mother. Mr. Powers has assured my anonymity for as long as possible. And you know my counseling sessions with Dr. Kilpatrick have included lots of advice on ways a woman can keep herself safe. I’ve been listening. I won’t take any unnecessary chances.”

“I wish you hadn’t cut your hair, dear.” Without even acknowledging her daughter’s attempt to reassure her, Loretta reached up to smooth Bailey’s bangs back into the short wisps at her temple. “Those long, blonde waves were so beautiful.”

Yes, but the short haircut was all about being safe, not making the pages of a fashion magazine. Having a man grab her by the hair and sling her to the floor or into the back of a van had a tendency to make a woman want to remove any “handles” that made it easy for an attacker to latch on. “Mother—”

“Jackson?” Loretta clung to her husband’s arm, turning to Bailey’s stepfather for the answers she wanted. “Can’t you make this whole mess go away?”

Bailey’s stepfather wasn’t oblivious to the emotional undercurrents in the room. But his typical response was to try to fix whatever the problem might be. He slid a supportive arm around his wife’s waist. “I’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect this family, dear.” He turned to the D.A. “Do you think Ms. Parker will bring that ugly business with my stepson into the trial?”

“I had nothing to do with that,” Bailey protested. She wasn’t sure when or where her brother had gotten so caught up with greed that his reckless business dealings had made him desperate enough to kidnap and attempt to murder their half sister, Charlotte. But she knew the devious, violent man who’d been arrested, and subsequently murdered in prison, had no resemblance to the brother she’d once loved and admired. A different sort of character ran through her veins. Something smarter. Stronger. She hoped. “What Kyle did has nothing to do with what happened to me.”

But Jackson was looking to the men in the room for a solution, not her. The D.A. understood his concern. “It’s possible she could bring your family history into the courtroom, use it to taint the veracity of Bailey’s testimony. If there’s one liar in the family, why not two? I’d argue irrelevancy, of course.”

“I’m not lying,” Bailey insisted. “And my head wasn’t so scrambled that I’ve forgotten what I heard and saw and went through that night.”

The burly D.A. nodded. “I’m counting on it. The KCPD task force has given me plenty of forensic and circumstantial evidence to make a case. But science and legal jargon can overwhelm a jury. I need you to be the face of all his victims. The jury will sympathize with you and with your eyewitness testimony. They’ll convict him, and the judge will put Elliott away for the rest of his life. Kenna Parker, however, is going to do everything she can to discredit you on the witness stand.”

Chief Taylor, who put together the task force that had finally brought in the Rose Red Rapist, muttered a choice word beneath his breath. “Leave it to Elliott to buy the best. Parker’s already got him out on bail. From what I hear, he got his ex-wife, Mara Boyd-Elliott who runs the Journal, to post it.”

“Sounds like Elliott’s got all kinds of friends we’ll be up against.”

Chief Taylor agreed. “I have somebody watching him around the clock, but he’s running his business and buying Christmas presents, acting like he’s facing traffic court instead of twenty or more years in prison. Kenna’s only been in Kansas City for a year, and she’s already earned a cutthroat reputation by winning cases.” The senior cop pointed a warning finger at the D.A. “My task force worked for more than a year putting this case together and finally bringing him in. It’ll demoralize my team, if not this entire city, if Elliott wins in court. Can you beat her, Dwight?”

“I win cases, too. Against tougher odds than this.” To his credit, Dwight Powers didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by either the reputation of his opposing counsel, pressure from the police department, or the wealth and influence Jackson Mayweather commanded.

Top attorneys. Top cop. Top society movers and shakers. Ex-fiancé. A nervous city. Her own fragile sense of confidence. They were all formidable opponents to stand up against in order to make herself heard. But Bailey finally shut down the memories and fear, and hastened to reassure Dwight Powers that he could rely on her to help send Brian Elliott to prison. “I can talk about the rose he left with me, the van he transported me in, how he dumped me in that alley, and what happened during the assault. Once I came to in that horrible room, I remember everything. He bathed me afterward and disinfected me with vinegar.” She ignored her mother’s pained gasp. “I’m not confused about any of it.”

The burly D.A. pulled a pen from his suit jacket and jotted a note onto the yellow legal pad he held. “You’ll confirm the surgical mask and stocking cap he wore, as well as a description of the construction site where he took you?”

Bailey nodded. She could do this. She had to stand up and face her attacker in the courtroom or she’d never be able to stand up for herself and feel any sense of strength or self-worth again. “I’ll tell everything.”

“Oh, sweetie. Surely not everything.” Loretta crossed the room to squeeze her daughter’s hand. “You were always such a sensitive child. And after this nightmare—”

“Mother.” Just because she’d never been called on to deal with something like this before didn’t mean she couldn’t. Bailey pulled her hand away. “I’m twenty-six years old, not a child. I can do this. I need your support, not a lecture to talk me out of doing it.” She thumbed over her shoulder toward the empty lineup room. “If I don’t stand up against that man now, then I’ll be his victim all over again—and for the rest of my life.” Her hand turned into a fist as angry tears stung her eyes. “And he doesn’t get to win.”