Claiming Holly (Holiday Cove 1)

Sundays were slow for news, and the stories looped over and over again on TV, until I finally shut it off and went back to only searching news websites for anything breaking.

I was mid-search when my phone rang. I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound and whipped the phone from the coffee table where I’d set up camp the night before. “Hello?”

“Hey! You’re not still sleeping, are you?” Rachel’s voice came over the phone and all of the composure I’d mustered cracked.

“No,” I mumbled. I’d had less than a couple of hours of sleep, and even then, they’d been fitful, nightmare laced bouts on the couch.

“Hey girl, are you okay? Are you sick?”

I shook my head, unable to find words.

“Holly?” The concern in her voice shifted to alarm. “Where are you?”

“I’m at home,” I croaked out. “Jack—he’s—I don’t know where he is, but something happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“We were on Face App last night, and everything was fine, but then all of a sudden, this siren went off and he had to leave. The voice over the speaker was saying something about an emergency. Rach, I think he’s in trouble.”

“Oh my God!”

“I’ve been up all night, watching the news, but they aren’t saying anything about an attack. But I don’t even know where he is or where he was going. He couldn’t tell me anything. But…Rach…something’s wrong.” I sniffed and wiped away the beginning of a new rush of tears.

“I’m sure he’s okay. Maybe it was a drill? You know, like a practice?” Rachel replied, her voice forcing a note of positivity.

I shook my head again. “No, Rach. It wasn’t. Something bad is happening.”

She hesitated. “I’ll be right there.”

“Okay.”

“Just hang in there, okay? We don’t know anything yet.”

“I will.”

I hung up and set my phone to the side. I knew Rachel was just trying to be nice and keep me calm—but there was no way in hell I could pretend everything was normal. Something had taken Jack away, and if he was alarmed, I could only draw one conclusion.

Something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.

Jack and I hadn’t known each other all that long, but in the time we’d spent together, I knew him to be one of the coolest, calmest people I’d ever met. He was always in control. And I had no doubt that when he was on the job—he was the exact same—keeping his stoic, unruffled exterior even in the thick of things.

The fierce look in his eyes haunted me and had me unraveled because it was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

I stroked Hunter’s head, trying to gather some semblance of calm. I hated feeling like this! Is he okay? Are we at war? Is it just a regular drill? The crazy thoughts kept rambling around in my head and I wanted them to stop!

I turned the TV on to get some background noise and studied the headlines scrolling underneath the news anchor’s desk in a black box along the bottom of my screen. Nothing was related to his Aircraft Carrier, nothing about a battle in the Middle East, or about fighter jets crossing enemy lines.

As the same stories began to recycle, I turned my attention back to my computer. I continued searching for anything that hadn’t been shown on TV. I wasn’t entirely sure how TV news worked. Still, I figured it was a lot faster to throw up a news article on a website than it was to get the script into the prompter for the TV anchor to read it off. I started with cable news and went from there, getting lost in a mess of links and referral websites.

I had no idea how much time had passed until I heard Rachel using her key in the front door. I tore my eyes away from the screen to see her walk into the entryway. Hunter launched from the couch, oblivious to what was happening, and ran to circle her legs and beg for attention. Rachel smiled down at him and pat him on the head before he backed off enough to let her into the living room without tripping over his wiggling body.

“Hey, honey. Did you find anything yet?” She asked, coming over to sit beside me.

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

“Well, that’s good. Isn’t it?”

I shrugged and turned my attention back to the computer, refreshing the news page for the dozenth time since beginning my search. “I don’t know.”

“Stuff like this happens fast, so I’m sure if something big had happened, we’d know about it by now,” she replied, laying a hand on my shoulder.

I glanced at her, wishing I could feel as confident as she looked. “You didn’t see his face, Rach. He’s never looked like that before. It was like he was…scared…”

She sat silent for a moment as though she didn’t know what to say. After a few seconds, she gestured at the computer. “Have you tried to call him again?”