Chapter 18
Mary’s eyes fluttered open when emergency medical technicians hoisted her onto a stretcher, strapped an oxygen mask to her face and wheeled her out into the cold night air.
Every rescue vehicle in North Pole had to be there.
Silas Grentch hovered near another stretcher being loaded into an ambulance. “Is he awake? Can we get a statement from Santa?”
An EMT held his arm out to block Silas. “No, sir, please get back so we can do our jobs.”
Mary half sat up, but the medic attending her pressed a hand to her shoulder. “Please lie back.”
“Get him out of here,” she said, her voice sounding like a hoarse bullfrog.
The medic laughed, his breath raising a cloud of steam in the chill air. “You must be feeling better if you’re ready to tear into old Silas.”
Mary wanted nothing more than to pass out and let the world go on without her for a while, but she wanted Silas away from her father more. “Is my dad going to be all right?”
“He appears to have a concussion and suffering from smoke inhalation, but his vitals are strong.”
Not enough assurance for Mary.
Once they loaded her father into the ambulance and closed the door, Silas turned his attention to her and hurried across the snow-covered parking lot.
“Mary Christmas, with the destruction of the store, the death of Mrs. Claus and your father being out of commission, will this mean the end of Christmas Towne store and year-round Christmas in North Pole?”
“Christmas Towne is smoke-damaged, not destroyed,” she said.
“How could a man who has just lost his wife possibly come back to rescue Christmas this late in the season?”
Mary pulled the oxygen mask from her face. “Christmas will happen as always. My father will recover and so will the Christmas Towne store and year-round Christmas in North Pole.”
“If you’re tired of all the hassle of the store, I know someone who would like to buy it, as is, smoke-damaged and all.” He waved toward a man standing on the fringes of the excitement. “Nelson, come over here, I want you to meet someone.”
The EMT tried to shove Silas out of the way, but the older man wouldn’t budge.
The man Silas had motioned over hurried forward and held out his hand to Mary. “Hi, name’s Nelson Bailey. I just want to tell you how sad I am that your family was attacked so viciously.”
“I don’t care who you are.” Mary refused to take the man’s hand. “My father isn’t selling and if the choice is up to me, neither will I.”
Norton gave her a gentle smile and dropped his hand.
“I fully understand how you feel. And I wouldn’t dream of offering.
It would be an insult to you, your father and everyone who cares about Christmas Towne and what you’ve built in this community through your work.
It’s an honor and a pleasure to make your acquaintance.
” He sketched a slight bow and backed away.
Silas’s face puckered into a distressed frown that almost made Mary laugh. “But I thought you wanted to buy Christmas Towne.” He turned to Mary. “Mary, this would be best for you and your father. Sell the store. If not to Nelson, then to me. I’ll pay you top dollar.”
Mary held out her hand. “Give me the microphone, Silas. I have something to say to the people of Alaska.”
Silas hesitated.
“Give it,” Mary demanded, a cough racking her lungs.
The older man handed her the microphone.
Mary waved the cameraman closer. “For the record, Santa will be fine, he isn’t selling Christmas Towne, Operation Santa will go according to schedule and Christmas will happen as it does every year.
Merry Christmas, everyone.” Then she forced a smile.
Once the cameraman lowered the camera, Mary threw the microphone as hard as she could.
It landed with a soft whoosh in a snowdrift.
A loud round of applause rose from the people gathered around to witness the spectacle.
Satisfied she’d set the record straight, Mary collapsed back against the stretcher and proceeded to cough so hard she thought she might hack up a lung.
The EMT pulled the mask over her face and the coughing eased.
As he wheeled Mary toward the second waiting ambulance, she had only one thought left in her exhausted brain. Where was Nick?
Nick staggered through the shattered, gaping front door of Christmas Towne in time to hear Mary’s speech and the applause of onlookers. When rescue workers pushed her stretcher toward a waiting ambulance, Nick gathered his last bit of energy and hurried toward her. He had to know she was all right.
Long, blond hair matted with soot lay tangled against the clean white sheets. Her dirty face stared up at him, perhaps the most beautiful sight he’d seen, ever.
“Move it, buddy.” The EMT tried to push past Nick. “She needs medical attention.”
“No, wait.” Mary pulled the mask off her face and smiled up at Nick. “You made it.”
“I had incentive.” He lifted her hand in his and squeezed.
Her eyelids swooped down and he could swear that beneath the smudges of ash, her cheeks reddened. “And what was that?”
“What do you think?”
She sucked in a breath and let it out in a cough. “I’m too tired to guess, just tell me.”
He lifted her smoke-smudged hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “You, Mary Christmas. You were my incentive.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “Does that mean you’re going to ask me out on that real date you mentioned?”
“Absolutely.”
“Could you hurry it up, then?” The rescue worker stamped his feet in the snow.
“Well, will you go out with me?” Nick stared down at Mary. “Even though I’m a man who has more secrets than he has hairs on his arms? I promise, I’m not married, nor have I ever been.”
A slow smile spread across her face. “I guess I can risk it, just this once. For some foolish reason, I can’t stop trusting you. Oh, and one other thing...” Her brows drew together.
Nick’s heartbeat kicked up a notch. Would she tell him she only wanted the one date, then for him to get the hell out of her life? He’d do as she asked, but he’d rather she didn’t ask him to do that.
“Someone needs to catch up with Gordon Thomas. He murdered Jasmine Claus and tried to kill Reuben Tyler when he was a soldier in his unit. Oh, and if you check the other man’s body, you’ll find Jasmine’s bullet in it.” Her voice cracked and she coughed, pulling the mask back over her face.
“Interesting. I’d like to hear the rest of the story.”
“You will,” she wheezed, “if you stick around.”
While the ambulance driver opened the rear of the ambulance, Nick held Mary’s hand, delaying her departure for just a moment longer. “I’ll see you later.”
“Promise?” She held tighter.
“Promise.”
The door closed, Nick’s last image of Mary was that of a medic inserting an IV into her arm.
If he didn’t have more work to do, Nick would have ridden with her to the hospital. He straightened, sucking in a deep breath that sent him into a coughing fit.
“You need to be in that ambulance.” Kat appeared at his side, her jacket covered in snow as though she’d been in a scuffle.
“You missed the excitement.” Nick coughed, glanced at her and back to the ambulance pulling away.
“Had a little of my own to contend with.” She brushed at the snow clinging to her short dark hair. “Found our senator slipping through the streets on foot. When I stopped to ask him why he was on foot instead of in his car, he took off.”
“And being the suspicious agent you are, you pursued.” Nick laughed, the image of Kat, at least six inches shorter, if not more, than Gordon Thomas, chasing him across the snow on foot. “Did you catch him?”
“I always get my man, St. Claire.”
“Where’s he now?”
“In the back of an Alaska State Trooper’s car on his way to the Fairbanks Jail.”
“What did he charge him with?”
“Murder.” Kat crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the scene around her. “I think I scared him a little. He spilled his guts on a number of issues.”
“Just to you?”
“No, he was more than willing to share with the trooper, by the time I was through with him.” She nodded toward the gingerbread cottage, scorched with smoke. “It really makes me mad when someone messes with a fellow Alaskan.”
“Remind me not to make you mad.” Nick’s lips twisted to hide a smile. “I might be confessing to sins I haven’t committed.”
“Yeah. And don’t forget Mary Christmas is a fellow Alaskan.” Kat’s brows rose in a challenging gesture.
Nick rocked back on his heels and let a long gap fill with the noise of firemen reeling in their hoses, the fire effectively quenched.
Crime scene investigators entered the house with cameras and rubber gloves.
Nick and Kat waited out of the way until firemen brought up not one but two stretchers, clean white sheets draped over the faces of the victims.
Kat’s cell phone rang.
While Kat hung back to answer, Nick moved forward.
Trey Baskin pulled back the sheet and checked the identity of the first one. Even from the distance and beneath the layer of soot, Jasmine Claus’s diminutive body could be easily identified.
With his special investigator badge that SOS had designed for just such occasions back before they’d quit as a government agency, Nick was able to slip by the police personnel to join Trey.
“Hey, Nick. Glad you made it out of there. A few more minutes and you’d have been a goner.” Trey nodded at the man lying on the stretcher, with a gunshot wound to the chest. “I haven’t a clue who this guy is.”
“Call in the FBI. This man went by the code name Cobra.”
“Cobra, huh?” Trey’s eyes widened. “Cobra? The hit man for hire? Damn, I’ve read about him. What the hell’s he doing in Alaska?”
Nick’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “I suspect the price was right.”
“Holy crap. And he was after Santa? Isn’t that taking hatred of the holiday a bit far?”
A state trooper called to Trey, leaving Nick standing in the snow. Medics loaded the two stretchers into the back of another ambulance, both bound for the state medical examiner’s office.
As she closed the distance between them, Kat slid her cell phone into her pocket. “That was Royce, he wants to know when you’re headed back to Texas.”
Nick stared up into the sky. The clouds cleared, exposing a million stars like jewels adorning the heavens. “I was thinking of staying here for a while.”
“A long while or for an extended weekend?”
“I’d like to play it by ear, but if things work out, I might ask for a transfer.”
“Oh? I’m sure we could find room for another agent in the Alaska office of the SOS. Considering there are only two in it now.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Nick inhaled the crisp clean Alaskan air. “You know, this place grows on you.”
Kat crossed her arms over her chest, a smile playing around her full lips. “The place or the people?”
Nick didn’t answer. “If you could stick around to answer questions, I’d like to get to the hospital.
” He didn’t wait for her response, instead he strode toward his rental car.
He needed to get to the hospital and have the staff check him for smoke inhalation.
If he hurried, he could catch Mary before they gave her a sleeping sedative.
Now that the danger had passed, he was looking forward to an extended vacation and the chance to get to know North Pole, Santa and Mary Christmas a little better. And not in that order.
He was willing to start believing in Santa for the first time in his life. Knowing how stubborn Mary was, Nick wondered if he’d have any trouble convincing her that he’d had a change of heart.