Chapter 15
As she emerged on the street behind Ms. Betty’s house, Mary fumbled with the zipper on her coat. Her decision to leave Nick’s rental car had been a hard one.
No sooner had he entered Betty’s house Mary had received a text message from her father’s cell phone. A flutter of excitement soon became a lump of dread, settling deep in her belly.
Bring the package to Santa’s house by midnight. Come alone or
YOUR FATHER DIES
Mary read the message twice, her hands shaking. She didn’t have a package. But she had a good idea who did.
She’d glanced at Ms. Betty’s house, hesitant to wait for Nick and Ms. Betty.
She couldn’t let Nick leave her at the police station while someone else attempted the package delivery.
It was too risky. Whoever had her father expected her to deliver the package.
She couldn’t stand the thought of being held hostage by well-intentioned officers of the law, while her father was in danger.
Images of Bob Feegan’s limp body lying in the snow surfaced, causing her body to quake. With every step, she peered into the inky shadows. With every moan of the wind or snapping twig, she jumped and spun in a circle, searching for its source, imagining some killer dogging her footsteps.
The note her father left made more sense now that she’d been by to see Ms. Reedy.
The Shop Around the Corner was a story about a woman receiving mail at a post office box.
Chris had been sent to collect a package her father had expected to be delivered at his Fairbanks post office box.
Find Chris and she’d find the package. She had to get to Chris and the package. Her father’s life depended on it.
If Chris were in trouble, he would have headed back to North Pole. But where would he hide?
When Chris’s parents abandoned him to head south, Chris had managed to stay in the trailer his parents had rented for the three years they’d lived in North Pole.
He’d managed to survive for the first four months because it was still summer, the temperatures hadn’t dipped into the teens and lower.
Thankfully, Mary’s father had caught on to his plight before the freezing temperatures of winter set in with a vengeance.
As far as Mary knew, the trailer was in such bad shape, it had never been rented out again. The property owner pretty much abandoned the home. Could Chris have gone there to hide out until he could rendezvous with Santa?
Mary’s footsteps quickened, the moon and stars lighting her way through the streets and backyards.
Ten blocks didn’t sound like much, but clear skies meant no clouds to hold in any of the residual daytime heat.
The thermometer would plummet below negative twenty.
A light breeze kicked up, penetrating her jacket.
By the time she reached the edge of the lot where the lone trailer sat, her fingers burned with the cold, and she questioned her sanity at running away from someone as solid and safe as Nick.
So what if the agent had enough secrets to last a lifetime?
He knew his stuff. Knew how to combat a killer.
If a maniac wanted to eliminate everyone vaguely associated with her father, he’d have an easy target in Mary.
Her steps slowed and her body shook violently. She’d check Chris’s old home and then hustle back to someplace warm. Maybe back to Nick. The thought of being safe and warm inside the police station wasn’t sounding so bad after clumping through snowdrifts.
The trailer stood like a dark, hulking monster at the end of a deserted road.
Spruce trees studded the yard like silent sentries.
The branches were flocked in four inches of fluffy white.
Snow lay a foot deep on the roof and piled waist-high in drifts around the base. Virgin snow, untouched by human feet.
Across the street from the trailer, Mary hunkered down near the trunk of a tree, hoping her light blue jacket and snowpants blended with the snow, tinged blue by moonlight. She scanned the empty road and the shadows beneath nearby trees. Nothing moved.
Keeping to the tree line as best she could, she maneuvered to the edge of the road, then raced across to the back of the trailer.
Her heart fluttered and she sucked in a gasp.
The snow at the rear entrance had been trampled. Someone had been here recently. But how recently?
A twig snapped and a shadow moved beneath the trees headed away from her.
Mary didn’t think, just raced after the shadow. Was it Chris? Hope welled, propelling her forward.
The retreating figure ducked behind a dark structure deep in the woods.
Halfway between the trailer and what looked like an old shed, Mary returned to her senses. What was she doing? She didn’t know who that was out there. It could be the killer, leading her farther away so that no one would hear her cries for help.
Fear brought her to a stumbling halt. She’d spun in the opposite direction and took her first step back the way she came when a voice called out.
“Mary?”
“Chris?” Mary turned back toward the crumbling shed. “Chris? Is that you?”
The young man eased from behind the rotting boards, his head turning right, then left before he stepped out into the moonlight. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“What are you doing out here?” She hurried toward him and wrapped him in her arms. “We’ve been so worried.”
He pulled away, his brow furrowed. “I’m worried about Santa.”
“Me, too,” she said. “How did you get back from Fairbanks?”
“I hitched a ride with the beer truck.”
“Why didn’t you wait for Ms. Betty?”
“I couldn’t. Someone was following me.”
“Why?”
“Because of this.” Chris reached inside his jacket and pulled out a large envelope.
The package.
Mary took the item from him. Aware that delivering this package could be the only way to keep her father alive.
Her hands shook as she lifted it to the light of the moon. All that was written on the outside were the numbers she’d seen on her father’s note. The numbers were the P.O. box number to a box in Fairbanks. “Did this arrive today?”
“Yes. Your father left a note and a key in my room at Mr. Feegan’s.”
“Did the note say The Shop Around the Corner?”
“Yes, it did. I recognized it as that crazy game he’d play when he’d want me to find a surprise.”
“And you’d seen that movie?”
“Yeah.” Chris shrugged. “Your dad and I watched it just the other night before all this happened. It wasn’t bad for an old black-and-white.
Anyway, when I got the note, I ran down to the North Pole post office, but the numbers on the boxes didn’t go that high, so I figured he meant for me to go to Fairbanks. ”
Chris shivered and pulled his collar up around his ears.
“Once I found the box and retrieved the package, I slipped through one of the back doors, like I used to slip in and out of the grocery store back when I had to steal for food.” He took a deep breath and let it out.
“I circled back around and watched from a distance. A man waited by the door for a while, watching everyone entering and leaving. After a while, he went inside. When he came out, he stared around like he was looking for someone. I think that someone was me.”
“Oh, Chris.” Mary hugged him close.
The young man pushed her away. “I can handle myself. Since Ms. Betty had dropped me off, I figured he’d seen that and would be watching for her, so I decided to find my own way back to North Pole.
That’s when I caught a ride in the back of the beer delivery truck.
” Chris grinned. “A guy could get into a lot of trouble in the back of a beer truck.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“When I got back to town, I heard about Mr. Feegan.” Chris’s eyes glistened. “He’d been so good to me, letting me stay with him and all.” The young man rubbed his coat sleeve over his eyes.
Mary patted his shoulder. “Mr. Feegan was a good man.”
“I couldn’t go there, that’s why I’m here. I hoped your dad would call me on my cell phone and let me know what to do with that.”
The tune to “Here Comes Santa Claus” sounded from Chris’s jacket pocket. He stuffed his gloved hand in and pulled out a cell phone, staring down at the number on the display. “It’s Santa.”
Mary froze. Had the message she’d received been a lie? Could it be her father wasn’t being held hostage?
Chris received the call and pressed the phone to his ear. “Hello.” The young man listened, his eyes widening. “What did you say?” He jammed the phone to Mary’s ear.
She wrapped her fingers around it and listened.
“If you want to see Santa alive,” an ominous voice said, “bring the package to Santa’s house by midnight. Enter through the back door. Just you. No one else. If more than one person arrives or if any of the information in the package gets out, I’ll slit the old man’s throat. Understood?”
Mary gulped and answered in her best Chris impersonation, “Yes.”
The caller hung up.
Mary’s hands shook so badly she almost dropped the phone when she handed it back to Chris.
“I got a similar text message just a little while ago.” She held out her cell phone, showing him the text.
“He’s got my dad. I have to go there. Now.
” She glanced down at the package, disgust curling her lips.
“What could be so important in this that someone would kill a nice old man?”
“Looked like a manuscript to me. I read parts of it while I was waiting.” Chris gave her a weak smile. “It’s something about weapons smuggling during the Bosnia peacekeeping mission.”
“Oh my God. I wonder if it names who was responsible.” Mary looked around at the surrounding woods. “Is there someplace I can go to read through this?”
“You don’t have much time. Midnight will be here all too soon, and you have to get across town to Santa’s house.”
“I have to know. Do you happen to have a flashlight?”
“Yeah, come inside the trailer, I have a flashlight in there.”