Chapter 16
As midnight approached, the wind picked up, slinging fine grains of snow like grains of sand from a sandblaster.
Mary huddled on the leeward side of a tall spruce, facing the back of the little gingerbread house—the place she’d called home until two years ago.
A single light shone from the kitchen. Every other room lay in darkness.
Cold penetrated through the thick layers of her snowsuit, through Mary’s sweater and skin and right down to her bones.
Her body shook. Her mind was as numb as her fingers and toes.
This was it. She’d left Chris with strict instructions to contact Nick at exactly midnight. If Nick found out what she was going to do any sooner, he’d try to interfere with her plans to trade the manuscript for her father’s life.
After spending the past hour and a half reading by flashlight, Mary had guessed this “trade” might be a one-way trip for her and her father. But she had to try.
Frank Richards’ manuscript was nothing more than a confession. Richards had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and he had a lot to get off his chest before he passed. He’d poured his heart onto the pages, pulling from his memory and the journal he’d kept hidden since his tour to Bosnia.
As a young, aimless twenty-year-old, with no idea of which direction he wanted to go in life, he’d been on a downward spiral, hanging out with the wrong people.
Caught with a pound of marijuana in his pockets on the streets of Brooklyn, he’d been hauled before a judge who gave him the choice of going to jail or going into the Army.
He chose the Army.
His first deployment was with the 1st Armored Division to Bosnia as part of NATOs peacekeeping forces.
With the hostility still in the country, multi-national forces all around and himself angry at the world, Richards didn’t have to look far to find a source for drugs.
He also didn’t have to look far to find ways to make fast cash to buy the drugs.
One night on guard duty, he’d stumbled across a little illegal trading going on between his squad leader and a young Bosnian woman, Jasminka who did laundry for the GIs in camp.
The outwardly meek laundress led the negotiations, her understanding of the English language excellent, her knowledge of weapons even more impressive.
Desperate for drugs, Richards promised to help with the arms deals for a cut.
Mary’s heart had thudded against her ribs the more she read. “My God, Richards was a traitor.”
“Yeah.” Chris had read the pages, his ever-cheerful face growing graver by the minute. “Americans selling weapons to the enemy.” Mary grimaced. “Seems like we never learn, do we?”
The weapons trading went according to plan for several weeks, until American soldiers uncovered a Bosnian Serbs camp with a cache of American weapons. Military investigators swarmed into the area.
Richards and his squad leader got scared. They decided to cut their losses.
The squad leader sent more than half of the squad out on a bogus mission to check out a potential enemy camp a couple of miles away. Richards led them to ensure that they were well out of the way for what his leader had in mind.
After the recon mission left, the squad leader gathered the remainder of his men, informed them that the Bosnian Serbs had infiltrated the village, pushing the villagers out into the forests.
They were to go in and shoot anything that moved and burn the village to keep the Serbs from coming back.
He had the soldiers so pumped up and scared that by the time they entered the village, they were fully engaged and ready to kill any and all of the enemy.
Not until they’d torched half the huts did the soldiers realize the villagers hadn’t left at all. Women and children screamed in fear, as fire consumed them in their homes.
Mary had pressed a hand to her mouth, tears welling in her eyes. “They killed children.”
Men of the village came out fighting with the only weapons they owned, spears and knives. The squad leader mowed them down, using an AK-47 he’d staged near the village. Then he personally targeted the hut of his contact, Jasminka.
Mary stared at her home, reliving the horror of what she’d read. Had her father been one of the soldiers in the village or on the recon mission? Had he headed for Alaska like everyone else, to leave the world and his past sins behind?
Sorrow swelled like a tumor in Mary’s throat, choking off her air. Bosnia had been a terrible war where unspeakable atrocities occurred. Had the man who spent the last thirty years playing Santa committed some of those atrocities? Was his role as Santa atonement for his sins?
Mary hoped she’d have the opportunity to ask her father about what really happened.
For now, someone wanted this manuscript badly enough to kill for it.
But who? Richards didn’t name the squad leader, preferring to make him impersonal in the position he played on the squad.
A leader who’d gone wrong. The information could be traced through military records if someone wanted to dig hard enough.
Maybe that was it. His squad leader wanted the manuscript kept quiet.
Of the men in the picture she’d found in her father’s footlocker, which one was the squad leader?
Now wasn’t the time to check. She hadn’t risked going back to the B and B in case Nick lay in wait to stop her from doing what she had to.
She illuminated the digital display on her watch. Midnight.
Showtime.
Clutching the envelope to her chest, Mary straightened, cast another glance around the snow-covered clearing and hurried toward the rear entrance. Her heart hammered and her shallow breaths puffed steam into the air.
She entered the kitchen through the unlocked back door.
A single light shone over the sink. Fear pinched her lungs as she crept across the tiled floor, forcing herself to concentrate on all the good memories of this very room, when she was surrounded by her mother and father and all the love they’d shared.
Her father couldn’t have been one of the soldiers who killed the women and children of that village. He didn’t have it in him.
The door to the basement stood ajar, a light shining up from the depths.
“Hello?” Under her breath she cursed, angry that her voice shook.
“Down here. Now!”
Mary jumped and stifled a scream.
“And close the door behind you.” The disembodied voice rapped out the words.
She hesitated at the top of the steps. If she descended into the basement and closed the door, no one would hear what happened down there. No one would know if she and her father were being threatened or killed until too late.
Her gut told her to stall. “How do I know you’ll live up to your end of the bargain?”
“You don’t. But if you want to see your father alive, you’ll get down here.”
How long would it take Nick to get from the B and B to Christmas Towne? Would he come storming through the front door of the house or sneak in through the basement? Stall, Mary, stall. “How do I know he’s even down there?”
The sound of something ripping echoed up the staircase. “Say something to your daughter,” the voice demanded.
When there was no response forthcoming, a thump was followed by a moaning grunt.
“Don’t, Mary! Run for the police! Now!”
Mary pressed a hand to her mouth to keep from crying out. She knew her father’s voice. He was in the basement and he needed her.
“Run, Mary!” her father shouted. “Get the hell out of here. Do you hear me? Go!”
Another sickening thump and her father’s words died.
“Daddy?” She’d been concentrating so hard on sounds emitted from the basement, she didn’t know someone else was in the kitchen with her until a hand touched her back.
Relief welled in her chest. Nick had come early. When she turned, she stopped short of flinging herself in his arms. Standing before her was not the tall, broad-shouldered man she’d expected to ride to her rescue.
Her stepmother stood in front of her, a finger pressed to her lips. “Don’t scream.”
What the hell? “Jasmine?” Mary whispered, teetering on the edge of the step.
“On the count of three I shoot Santa and then I’m coming after you,” the man in the basement shouted.
“Give me the manuscript and I’ll take it down.” Jasmine held out her hand for the envelope.
Mary frowned at the woman. “I can’t. I have to trade it for my father’s life.”
Jasmine nodded. “I know but let me. Your father would want you to be safe.”
“Thanks, but I can’t let you do it. That’s my father down there.”
“That’s my husband and I won’t let anything stand in the way of our happiness.” She held out her hand and lifted a gun with the other, pointing it straight at Mary’s chest. “Give me the manuscript.”
Shock glued Mary’s feet to the floor. The way she saw it, she had three choices.
One, to take her life in her hands and try to disarm and beat the snot out of the woman who’d driven a wedge between her and her father.
If she went with this option, she might stir up enough noise and trouble that both she and her father would end up with matching sets of bullet holes.
Two, she could hand over the manuscript and shove the woman down the steps and let her take a bullet from the bad guy in the basement.
“Don’t try anything stupid. I know how to use this gun.”
Mary stared straight into Jasmine’s eyes, ready to implement plan three.
“I’m coming down.” If Jasmine wanted to shoot her, she’d have to get in line with her father’s captor in the basement.
She turned her back on Mrs. Claus and took the first step down.
She clutched the wooden handrail and held her breath, waiting for a loud bang and the impact of a bullet that would send her tumbling down the steps.
The impact didn’t come and she reached the basement floor intact.