Head over Heels for the Holidays

by Jennifer Bernard

  It felt as if their entire relationship had gone into fast-forward mode.

  It took only a few minutes to reach Harris’ property. She turned off the headlights as they passed his house. The last thing she wanted was for her father to put himself in the line of fire—which he would, in a heartbeat.

  She noticed that Vicki’s Jeep was parked in the drive. For the first time, that didn’t bother her. Maybe that cranberry wine had cast a spell on her, but she was glad her dad had company. Vicki would keep him occupied and safely inside.

  After they’d passed the house, she turned the headlights back on so she could see where she was going. “See if you can spot anything unusual,” she told Rune. Luckily, the storm clouds had cleared and sleet was no longer pouring from the sky. A quarter moon had risen, though it had to fight through patches of racing dark clouds to be seen. Even so, visibility was much better than when they’d parked down at the beach.

  When he’d told her he loved her.

  Don’t think about that now. Deal with the emergency.

  “There’s something back in those woods to the right,” Rune said in a low voice.

  “A person?”

  “I can’t tell what it is. I caught movement, that’s it.”

  “Okay. Let’s park and see if binoculars help.”

  She brought the car to a stop next to the old fish house and reached into the backseat for the case that held her binocs.

  “I’m going inside to check on Cara,” Rune told her.

  “No, I’ll go. You stay in the car with the binoculars. You’re the one who saw something, you can locate it better.” Before he could object, she swung out of the car. If someone was going to take a shot at them, it was her job to take the risk.

  But nothing happened between the car and the house. She knocked on the door. “It’s Maya,” she called in a low voice. “Open up.”

  She heard thumping inside, and then the door opened. Cara hauled her inside. “Oh my God I’m so glad you’re here. I’m totally freaking out. Did you see anything outside? Is he out there? Is there a letter or some weird dead flowers or—“

  “No no, there’s nothing like that,” Maya reassured her. Over Cara’s shoulder, she saw Maggie, brandishing a hunting knife. “Put that away.” Maggie, startled by her police chief voice, stuck it back into the sheath attached to her belt.

  “Did you find my brother?”

  “Yes, he’s outside in the car. Are you both all right? I need to get back out there.”

  “You mean besides totally freaked out? We’re fine.”

  “Can you say what direction the noise came from?”

  “It started on that side—“ Cara waved her hand in the direction of the car, where Rune still was.

  Maya’s stomach twisted. What if an intruder was still out there, and Rune went after him on his own? It was just the sort of reckless thing he used to do.

  “But then it came from over there.” Cara pointed to the other side of the house, the same direction where Rune had spotted something in the woods. “Then it went away, but it came back again. I thought maybe he was leaving something for me. He’s done that before.”

  “Let’s not jump to any conclusions.” Maya touched her arm to reassure her, then turned to go. “You girls stay where you are, we got this.”

  “Be careful. That guy is crazy, you never know what he’ll do.”

  “Do you want my knife?” Maggie asked. “I don’t usually lend it to anyone, but you can have it, Maya.”

  “I appreciate the gesture, but I have my own weapon.” She patted the shoulder holster under her jacket. Truthfully, she was rather touched that Maggie trusted her enough to offer up her precious hunting knife.

  Back outside, she found Rune safe in the car, peering through the binoculars. “There’s definitely something,” he murmured. “But I honestly don’t think it’s a human being.”

  She shivered at his phrasing. “You think it’s something non-human?”

  “The fuck if I know what it is. It could be two people. It’s pretty large. Maybe two kids are making out in the woods and I’m staring at them like a creeper.”

  “No. I know all the make-out spots, and those woods aren’t on the list. We have Harris on this side and a well-armed city council member on the other. Hand me those.”

  He gave her the binoculars and she focused toward the dark stand of spruce that provided several acres of thickly wooded border between the two properties. It was so dark that she was amazed Rune had been able to distinguish any movement among the trees. Maybe it was just branches moving in the wind. Or a moose who’d missed his dinner. Or even a porcupine; with their quills extended, they could appear much bigger than they actually were. Or—

  A cloud drifted out of the moon’s way, allowing its pale glow to illuminate the woods and reveal a glimpse of a large, definitely non-human creature. It didn’t move like a moose, and it looked bulkier somehow.

  “Wait a minute.” She dropped the glasses, looked at Rune, then back into the woods. “I think that might be Mrs. Holt’s yak.”

  “What?” He snatched the binoculars back and focused on the woods. “I’ll be damned. That’s what a yak looks like?”

  “You didn’t see the flyers? We put the damn things everywhere.”

  “Yes, but it’s different in person.” He handed the glasses back to her. “What now, Chief?”

  “I should call the Fish and Game people, but it’s Thanksgiving night. I hate to bother them. Mrs. Holt’s probably been asleep for hours. What is it, past three?”

  “Three-twenty, last I checked.”

  If they waited until the light of day, it would be easier to handle the fugitive creature. But she had no idea how fast yaks could travel. Would he still be here in the morning?

  “What do yaks like to eat? We can try to lure him closer with sugar cubes or something. Leftover pecan pie might work.”

  “I don’t know what they eat. I can look it up online.” Rune pulled out his phone. “I’m texting Cara to let her know she can relax.”

  He fired off a text, then got an answering ping right away. “They’re laughing their asses off,” he told her.

  A moment later, Cara and Maggie came racing out of the guesthouse. The backseat door opened and the two flushed and giggling girls slipped inside. “I can’t believe we were stalked by a yak!” Cara exclaimed. “That’s so much cooler than the real kind.”

  “Keep your voices down,” Maya ordered. “We don’t want to scare him away.”

  “Are you trying to catch him?” Maggie asked. “You aren’t going to hurt him, are you?”

  “Not if we can help it. Maybe we need a fishing net. My dad has some under the fish house.” But as soon as she said it, she knew how absurd that sounded. The yak would just wander away draped in the net, most likely. “We have to disable him somehow.”

  “You can’t hurt him,” Maggie said passionately.

  “No way,” Cara agreed. “Maggie, can’t you talk to him?”

  “No, I told you I can only understand animals I grew up around. I’ve never met a yak. I want to, though. We can’t do anything that might hurt him.”

  “I have an idea,” Rune volunteered. “I have some sedatives in my medical supplies. We can try to inject him.”

  Maya knew that was what the Fish and Game people would do, but they had experience with such things. “Do you know how much to give a yak?”

  “Girls, can one of you look up the average weight of an adult Tibetan yak?”

  Cara punched the keys on her phone. “Between about eight hundred and twelve hundred pounds. Wow.”

  “I probably have enough sedative to knock him out.”

  Maya eyed the dark figure out there in the woods. “Then what?”

  “Hogtie him while he’s sleeping and call Fish and Game first thing in the morning?”

  It was as good a plan as any. Except— “How do we get the sedative into his system? I don’t want anyone getting too close to something th
at weighs a thousand pounds.”

  “Well.” Rune cleared his throat and glanced into the backseat. “We happen to have an excellent markswoman here in the car with us. I can rig up a syringe and Maggie can let it fly.”

  “I can do it,” Maggie said instantly. “I can sneak up on him. I’m really good at tracking and being quiet in the woods.”

  “No. I’m calling Fish and Game.”

  “But the yak might be gone by the time they get here,” Cara cried. “Maggie can do it. I’ve seen her shoot. She’s so accurate.”

  Oh good God. This was ridiculous. She could think of so many ways this could go wrong. A girl shooting up a yak with a bow and arrow rigged with tranquilizers?

  “What if you just make him mad? He could charge you the way a moose would.”

  “I’ll just climb up a tree, the way I did in the wilderness when I couldn’t get a moose to listen to reason. Don’t worry about me. I’ll go get my crossbow. I left it here so Cara could practice.” Maggie scrambled out of the car, with Cara right behind her.

  Maya chewed at the inside of her cheek, weighing the options and risks. Didn’t she always say that being a police chief on the edge of the wilderness required flexibility and creativity?

  Rune put a hand on her knee. “I won’t make up a syringe without your go-ahead.”

  “At least someone’s listening to me,” she grumbled. Then shrugged her shoulders. “What the heck. Just make sure it’s not a lethal dose. I don’t want Mrs. Holt on my ass.”

  “I don’t even have enough for that.”

  “Oh, fine.” She dropped the binoculars with a sigh. “It’s our first sighting in three months. It may be the last. Let’s give it a try.”

  “Operation Yak Attack is a go.” He swung out of the car, just as excited as if he was wading into the surf with his spearfishing gear.

  “We’re not calling it that,” she called after him.

  Now that she knew the stalker hadn’t arrived to steal Rune away, Maya actually enjoyed the rest of Operation Yak Rescue.

  It took some intense finagling to get the syringe set up in the strings of the crossbow, with a fishing lead against the plunger to provide the force needed to push it into the yak’s hide. The plan sounded sketchy as hell to Maya.

  “Aim for its rump, that’s the biggest target,” Rune told her. “The straighter the better.”

  “And don’t shoot until you have an exit strategy,” said Maya. “A tree to climb, place to hide, whatever.”

  Maggie just rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry. This is so much easier than math and grammar.”

  She loped off toward the dark woods, crossbow in hand. Maya kept watch through the binoculars, while Rune and Cara carried on a whispered conversation.

  “How’s this going to sound in the police blotter?” Rune mused. “Lost Harbor girl captures runaway yak with a dart in the ass.”

  Cara shot back with, “Lost Harbor’s version of Katniss Everdeen saves the day and wins all the reward money.”

  “What would she spend it on?”

  “Christmas presents. Or maybe a plane ride to see her mother.”

  Uh oh. Maya made a mental note to check in with Kelsey about the trip to Aurora Lodge. “Don’t let her do that, Cara. I have some ideas about how to get her and Kelsey together.”

  “Maggie kind of does what she wants.”

  “I get it, but will you let me know if she tries? Promise me, Cara.”

  “Cara?” Rune urged her gently.

  “I promise. What’s going on, Maya? Can you see anything?”

  “The yak hasn’t moved. He’s just swaying back and forth. I think he might be sleeping. Do yaks sleep on their feet, like cows? I should have done more research. I thought the yak was gone for good. I kept telling Mrs. Holt not to get her hopes up. But she thinks he’s her dead husband, so…”

  “Did her husband like wandering around in the woods at night?” Cara asked.

  “Jack ‘Hammer’ Holt mostly liked rum,” she said wryly. “Rum and playing pranks on other fishermen. He was a pain in the ass for my predecessor.”

  “And now he’s going to get a pain in his ass,” Rune said gravely.

  Cara groaned, but Maya laughed at his goofy joke.

  “Don’t tell me you like his lame puns, Maya,” said Cara. “You must really like my brother.”

  Yeah. She did. So much. More than she wanted to admit. As if Cupid had hit her in the ass with a dart and sent her thudding to the ground just like that yak.

  She squinted through the binoculars as she caught sight of Maggie near the yak. Time for a play-by-play. “Maggie’s about twenty yards from the yak. She’s putting down the crossbow! She’s approaching the yak. Now she’s jamming the syringe into the yak’s butt. Ow. There he goes, he’s toppling over. He’s on the ground. Not moving.”

  Cara and Rune erupted into cheers.

  Maya set aside her binoculars and the three of them jumped out of the car. They ran toward the woods, Rune carrying a length of rope from the fish house. Racing across the moonlit snow, cold air on her cheeks, Maya experienced a moment of sheer exhilaration. She could have been gliding above the snow on a jetpack.

  No stalker was going to take Rune away from her. The wild winds of fate had delivered him here and the joy of being with him again made her laugh out loud.

  Maybe the late night and the peekaboo November moon were getting to her. Or the holidays. Right, exactly. She could blame all these wild careening emotions on the holidays.

  Chapter 23

  Rune decided to avoid mentioning the word “love” when he was with Maya. His feelings hadn’t changed. But he had to give Maya a chance to let it all sink in. He knew she was cautious by nature. He also knew she had good reason to guard her heart after getting blindsided by Jerome.

  He wanted her whole heart, and he was willing to be patient for as long as it took to win her over. The only wild card was whether Stalker Chad would show up and ruin everything.

  The night of the yak capture showed him just how hard it would be to leave. He’d been ready to say goodbye to Lost Harbor, but man…the relief of seeing a yak instead of a creeper made him fucking giddy.

  That made two false alarms—the letter and the yak. But that didn’t mean he could let down his guard. He just had to take it a day at a time.

  Every day they didn’t have to leave Lost Harbor was a gift. It was another day he could see Maya. Another day that Cara could have a normal life.

  And then there were the nights.

  After Maggie proved her warrior skills with Mrs. Holt’s yak—who was delivered safely back to her homestead the next morning by Fish and Game—he felt more comfortable stealing away at night to see Maya.

  Cara and Maggie kept clamoring for overnights. He would feed them dinner, make sure they got their homework done, then vaguely mention a patient and disappear out the door. He’d race over to Maya’s, tap-tap on her door, and spend the next few blissful hours in her bed.

  He was ravenous when it came to her. Just the scent of her skin got him turned on. The welcoming curve of her lips as she opened the door brought his cock to immediate attention. He tried to hide it—to ask how her day was—get a preview of the next day’s police blotter—see how Harris was doing—find out what the next holiday party would be—get updated on the Lost Souls investigation.

  But damn it was hard when all he wanted was to whisk her behind those princess curtains and shut out the rest of the world.

  He talked about his day too, of course. Told her funny stories from his patient visits—names redacted. Kept her updated on Cara and all the teenage gossip from the high school.

  One night, by the end, he was talking so fast that she burst out laughing. “In a hurry, Rune?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  They were cuddled up on her couch. Her feet were tucked under his thigh for warmth, her Lost Souls file on her lap. She wore a snug creamy top that made her rich brown skin look especially radiant. A silk banda
nna held her hair away from her face. She was so beautiful and smart and grounded that she took his breath away.

  “I am a detective, after all. I notice things.”

  “Oh good. I was worried you might be so wrapped up in your file that you missed the big white dude on your couch.”

  She giggled. He could always make her laugh, and it always made him feel good. “Ain’t no one going to be missing you, Rune. That would be impossible. For anyone, let alone someone who’s seen you bare-ass naked.”

  He shifted a little on the couch cushions. The word “naked” got him going again. “How much more work do you have to do?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know. There’s something I’ve been thinking about with this investigation that I’m not even supposed to be involved with anymore.”

  He wrestled down his arousal. Police Chief Badger was on the job, and he was here for it.

  “Want to brainstorm about it?”

  She pursed her mouth to one side, thinking it over. “That’s probably okay. Just don’t tell anyone what we talked about. The FBI closed the case and warned me that I was making a fool of myself over it.”

  “Got it. It’s going into the patient confidentiality vault.”

  She shuffled through her papers. “The part I keep coming back to is the Berensons. They came to Alaska to adopt a baby—which was Maggie—but the baby was kidnapped by another couple. The Berensons were on their way to pay the ransom, right? They were following the instructions. So why would their plane get shot down? No ransom was delivered because they never made it. It seems counterproductive.”

  “So you’re thinking it was just an accident?”

  “No. The NTSB found nothing to indicate a mechanical problem. They believe it was shot down.”

  “So it was deliberate, just…not connected to the kidnapping?”

  “Right. I’m wondering if the ransom demand was a smokescreen to get rid of the Berensons. Maybe the purpose all along was to get possession of the baby, Maggie.”

  She tapped a pen against her cheek, deep in thought. He wanted to eat her up, she was so delicious. “But why?”