Page 73 of Operation Protector
Colby felt a jab of disquiet. He knew she had to go, but he didn’t want to let her leave without kissing her one more time. It felt awkward, here in front of Hayley. But then Cutter’s mom laughed.
“Would it help if I said it would be no surprise to any of us that you want to kiss her goodbye?”
“Goodbye…for now,” he amended, his voice more than a little rough.
Then he did kiss her, and thought that if the Foxworths hadn’t been here, he would have wanted to carry her inside to resume their earlier joyous activity. And as he watched her drive away, with Cutter now secured into the front passenger seat, the only one not full of plant life, he marveled at how things had changed.
He’d assumed he would forever have to fight alone for Grace. He’d assumed someday he might lose that fight, and thus lose his precious girl. He’d assumed he would never again risk getting close to a woman, certainly never let her in to batter his heart.
But now he had the thought that life seemed determined to turn everything he’d always assumed on its head.
Ali had just slid the tree off the dolly in its selected spot when Cutter, who had been sitting and watching all the plant arranging with apparent interest—more than she would have expected from a dog, anyway—suddenly leaped to his feet, spun and headed for the door.
That she had almost expected. Because when Grace and the mother had arrived home about twenty minutes ago, she’d heard the girl’s wailing “I hate you!” even from inside the greenhouse. It made her stomach knot, because her first instinct was to run to the girl and comfort her, but she knew she couldn’t. She had to play this as if she didn’t know a thing.
And she had to let Cutter do his job. Which included responding to the whistle she couldn’t hear.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t watch. And she did as the dog ran over to the back of the big house next door. Normally Grace would appear on the back porch, ready with a note to place in the tiny canister on the dog’s collar. But this time there was no trace of the girl.
Cutter sat, waiting, for a minute or two. His head tilted, as if he were trying to figure out why she wasn’t there. Then he moved back along the side of the house, stopping, to her surprise, at the window to Grace’s bedroom. The same window Colby had broken that day, which seemed so much longer agothan just three weeks. The window where Grace now appeared, although she was looking back over her shoulder.
They’d warned her that the new cameras would show if she tried to open or climb out that window, warned her that everything on that side of the house was being watched, yet she seemed to be trying to slide the sash-style window up. But she stopped, turned and vanished back into the room, and Ali let out a breath of relief.
Then Ali saw something else. Something small and white falling to the ground. Something Grace had slid through the tiny gap she’d made at the window sill. Cutter was on it immediately, picking it up with his teeth. Then he spun on his hindquarters and raced back toward her. She stepped outside the greenhouse and shut the door behind her, thinking rapidly.
She tried to picture what that would look like on those cameras. She hoped it would seem the dog had come over to play, but when he got no response had given up and left. Would the thing the dog had seized be recognizable? Would it even occur to Liz or anyone else who saw the video that the dog could be this clever?
She had no more time to dwell on those questions because Cutter was there, offering the carefully folded note delicately.
She won’t let me be with Daddy on Saturday and I can’t come see you anymore at all. She thinks you’re telling me bad things. I can’t even play with Cutter or Ziggy. Tell Daddy I’m going to run away, I can’t be with her anymore.
The knot in Ali’s stomach tightened even more, making her faintly nauseous. Did the woman really think Colby would just take this lying down? Did she know so little of how much he loved his daughter? Of how far he would go for her?
Well, you’re about to learn, mommy dearest.
She made herself walk back into her house at a normal pace although she badly wanted to run. Once inside and out of sightfrom next door she did run, to the counter where the Foxworth phone was. And this time she hit the red button.
Chapter 33
“You don’t seem surprised,” Quinn said.
Colby grimaced as he stopped pacing the Foxworth headquarters. “I’m not. I’ve been expecting this.”
Hayley tilted her head slightly as she looked at him with that intensity he’d come to expect from the woman. The intensity that meant she was hearing much more than his actual words. Then she looked at Ali, who was sitting almost huddled in on herself, hugging Ziggy close as if the pup could ease the pain. As if she were hurting as much as he was.
“You answered her?” Hayley asked.
Ali nodded. Managed a small smile and a nod toward Cutter. “That dog of yours… I wrote that I was calling right away—I figured she would know who—folded it up and gave it to him. Not in the note holder, since Grace couldn’t get to it without getting into more trouble. And darned if he didn’t run over there, plop it on the window sill and nudge it with his nose until it caught in that tiny sliver of an opening she left, right where he picked up her note.”
Colby had no words for the amount of amazement and gratitude he felt for this animal, so settled for a stoke of the dark fur on his head. And felt yet again that odd, calming sensation, as if somehow things would work out.
Ali let out a long breath before going on. “I thought I’d best stay out of sight, so I just watched on our monitors. It was maybe five minutes before she came back to the window and found it. Once I knew she had it, I headed here.”
Hayley nodded, then she and Quinn walked over into the office area, and started to make calls. That was one thing he’d learned about the Foxworths, they didn’t waste any time when the ball needed to roll.
Ali shifted her gaze from Hayley back to him. “You’ve been expecting this? That she’d clamp down like this?”
He nodded. “Ever since the day you hugged her outside, in the clear.”
