Page 13 of Operation Protector
And there was nothing guaranteed to make ol’ Brian Hollen, Liz’s father, madder than that.
“So what happened after she reconciled with her family?” Hayley asked.
He shrugged. “She got madder and madder at me for not following her plan. Then one day I came home to an empty house. She’d packed up herself and Grace and gone. I wasn’t home more than five minutes when a guy knocked on the door and I was served with divorce papers.”
He’d never forget that horrible day. Staring at his little girl’s room, stripped of everything that made it Grace’s. Except, he’d noticed through numbing shock, the things he’d gotten for her. Those were left behind in garbage bags.
He tried to describe the next steps in the grim journey, but he wasn’t sure he’d gotten it all through the gray, light-dimming curtain that descended in his mind every time he thought about Grace, his poor little Gracie, caught in the middle of a battle she couldn’t understand.
“Then I made yet another mistake,” he said grimly. “I assumed—that damned word again—that Liz just wanted to be rid of me, that she still loved Grace and wanted her to be happy.”
“And instead she used her as a weapon,” Hayley said gently. At his startled look she gave a sad shake of her head. “We’ve seen it before. Too often, sadly.”
He sucked in a deep breath, so relieved at this immediate understanding of—and belief in—his situation that for a moment he couldn’t go on.
“When I hired a lawyer, I didn’t realize I’d need the most bloodthirsty shark around. So it was the full cadre of Hollen attorneys and all the Hollen money against me. I ended up with the right to three hours a week and one weekend day a month with Grace.”
“Ouch,” Quinn said.
“Bad enough if Liz would have abided by it. But she didn’t. She was always finding things to take up the whole weekend, things that were for Grace’s benefit, so she said. And the last time Iconfronted her about it she told me to back off or I’d never see my girl again.”
This time he did shove that hair back, deciding he needed that little jab of pain to keep him on track, and not spiral into the morass of regret and sadness that tried to swamp him every time he tried to deal with losing his little girl. And it did help him focus, enough to go on.
“The local sheriff’s office doesn’t have the staffing to come out and stand by every time I go to pick Grace up, but I know damned well that if I even accidentally lay a hand on Liz trying to get Grace away from her I’ll be in jail faster than I can blink. And then I really might never see her again.”
“What’s your worst fear about all this?” Hayley asked gently.
He didn’t have to think about his answer. “That she’ll make good on her threat to disappear with Grace, to go somewhere her family has access to but that I’d never be able to set foot, lowly being that I am.”
He thought he heard Ali say something, but it was too low for him to make out the words. The tone, however, was perfectly clear, and it steadied him.
Quinn and Hayley exchanged glances. “I’ll call Gavin,” Quinn said, in the same moment that Hayley said, “I’ll call Carly.”
Colby blinked. He thought about the accounts he’d read of the big scandal a few months ago, wondered if he was remembering right. “Gavin…?” he began.
“De Marco,” Quinn confirmed.
Colby went still. Very still. Having a good lawyer was one thing. Having world-famous Gavin de Marco on your side was an entirely different atmosphere. He did okay financially—at least he thought so, as long as he wasn’t compared to the Hollens—but a guy who could probably charge a thousand dollars for a three-minute phone call was beyond heady, it was downright absurd for a common carpenter.
“I…could never afford him,” he said, feeling oddly as if he was watching a ship leaving the dock, a ship he’d hoped—however briefly—to be on.
“That’s not your problem,” said Quinn briskly. “Gavin works for Foxworth now. And we foot the bill. Because when we take on a client, it’s not for money. It’s for what’s right. And the only thing we ask of you is to help us help someone else down the line.”
“What a wonderful rule to live by.”
Ali’s voice was soft, but still full of awe when she said it. And Colby certainly couldn’t disagree. Still…
“I did break that window,” he said. “Grace was…” He had no words for how seeing his little girl nearly hysterical had affected him. “I had to get to her somehow, and I knew if I just knocked on the door Liz would do her worst.”
“You didn’t try calling the sheriff?” Quinn asked.
“I…” He grimaced again. It was becoming a habit. “I don’t have a working phone at the moment. I just this morning discovered Liz was tracking mine, and monitoring my calls and messages, so I bricked it. I don’t know how she got the spyware on there, but she did. Probably one of the Hollen tech people did it for her, she’s not that tech savvy.”
Hayley’s brows rose as she spoke. “And location tracking?”
Damn. He hadn’t thought of that. “Probably,” he said wearily. “That’s why she came raging back to Grace’s room so quickly. In fact, that’s probably why Grace was crying in the first place, now that I think of it. Her mother must have known I was in the area, and gloated that she was going to get me thrown in jail. That’s her usual approach when Grace gets stubborn.”
“Where’s your car?” asked Quinn.
