Page 36 of Operation Protector
She wasn’t sure what that meant. Or didn’t mean. All she knew for certain was that she wanted to help these two, and that she was happy Foxworth was going to let her.
Chapter 16
“Do you remember that movie we saw last summer, about the kids who fought off the bad guys?” Colby asked his daughter.
Grace nodded immediately. “I remember. They won!”
“Yes, they did, in the end. But it took a long time, remember?”
She nodded again. Then she looked around at the adults in the room, as if she were trying to figure out what that movie had to do with any of them being here, or with anything else.
“Remember why they nearly lost?”
“Because that little snitch Mitch couldn’t keep his mouth shut,” she said, sounding disgusted.
“You told me you never would have spilled the beans no matter what.”
“I wouldn’t have,” Grace exclaimed.
“You ready to prove that, Gracie?” he asked softly.
Her brow furrowed as she stared up at him. She was very good at reading him, and he knew she’d realized he was dead—and maybe deadly—serious. “What? What’s happening, Daddy?”
Colby took a deep breath. “We’re going to fight, baby.”
“Fight?” She looked puzzled. “Fight what—” She broke off and her blue eyes, so like his own, widened. “Mother?”
He nodded. “And her whole family, if we have to. Just like those bad guys in the movie.”
He saw eagerness bubbling up in the child’s expression. He also saw the moment when she tried to tamp it down. She glanced over at the Foxworths. “But…who are they?”
“They’re friends,” he said. “They’re Cutter’s people.”
“Oh.”
Grace relaxed a little, as if that was all she’d needed to hear. As if in her book, anybody who owned a dog like Cutter had to be all right. He wasn’t sure she was wrong.
Then she shifted her gaze to the woman sitting close beside her. “You, too, Ali? Like Daddy said in his note, you’re helping us? Really?”
“As much as I can,” she said.
“I knew you were good. Cutter said so.” Grace looked thoughtful. “That’s why you’re letting me come to your house?”
“I’d want to do that anyway,” Ali assured her. “But yes. If you ever need a place to go in a hurry, you can come to me. And if I’m not there, we’ll figure out a way you can get inside.”
“I can do that,” Liam said, almost lazily. “We’ll rig up a handprint lock. I’ll show you how it works.”
Grace studied the young Texan for a long moment. “You’re with them, aren’t you?” she said, pointing at Quinn and Hayley. “You don’t really work with my daddy.”
Liam looked surprised, but he was smiling. “Well, now, aren’t you as bright as a new penny,” he drawled.
“You’re talking funny again,” Grace pronounced, and Liam laughed.
“And you’re bein’ smart again,” he retorted.
Grace giggled.
At that sound Colby felt such a rush of feeling, of gratitude, of thanks, and so many other tangled emotions that he couldn’t get a word out past the knot in his throat.
