Perilous Christmas Reunion

by Laurie Alice Eakes

Chris rested his free hand on the door handle, ready to leap out of the SUV at a moment’s notice. “Yes, of course I was serious about that. Why—”

  “Then they’re here.” A shaky sigh shuddered over the airways. “They took my dog.”

  * * *

  The slamming door of the other sheriff’s vehicle jerked Lauren upright. She must have dozed off in the warmth of the vehicle and being alone, off guard. Her neck stiff, her eyes crusty with sleep, she stared at Chris charging around the hood of the other SUV, a phone clamped to his ear, his voice strong and calm in contrast to the alarm on his face. He headed straight for Lauren’s door.

  She pushed it open and got out. “What’s wrong?”

  “We’ll wait for you inside the store,” Chris said into the phone. “Drive carefully, but come as fast as you can.” He ended the call and approached Lauren. “That was Ryan’s mother.”

  Lauren started. “Why did she call you?”

  “While she was across the street taking cookies to a neighbor,” Chris said, “someone broke into her house and stole Saber.”

  “Stole that adorable dog?” Lauren staggered back, resting her palms on the side of the SUV for balance. “She’s sure? The dog didn’t just get out somehow?”

  “They left her a message spelled out in Christmas cookies.”

  “That’s just wrong. Sick and wrong on so many levels.” Lauren took a long, deep breath to ease the coil of anger in her middle. “Who would use an innocent dog like that? I don’t understand such—such depravity. Trying to murder us and burning down my house are one thing. We’re human. We can fight back, get help, rebuild. But a dog is innocent and helpless to call for help. Oh.” Realizing tears flowed down her cheeks, she wiped them away with the backs of her hands. “Why did they do it? Because Ryan was there earlier today?”

  “They want the USB drive.”

  “The USB drive.” Lauren felt like a parrot repeating Chris’s words like that, but her brain seemed to be freezing. “Which one?”

  “They didn’t specify, which makes me think they don’t know we have a second one.”

  “And that little piece of plastic is important enough to them they are willing to kidnap a dog to get it back?”

  “They were willing to kill us to get it back.”

  “But a dog? That sweet, friendly dog in exchange for a bit of plastic and metal?”

  “That plastic-and-metal piece must hold some powerful data.”

  “Like the other one.”

  Wet from her tears, her hands grew cold. Needing a moment to think, to take in everything that had happened, she retrieved her backpack and gloves from the SUV behind her and donned both. The action didn’t help much. Fatigue, a lack of decent food and wondering how someone would try to next kill her raced through her as though each incident were a horse on a carousel spinning, spinning, spinning and going nowhere. She could grab the reins of any one of those whirling horses and have enough to think about and take action on for a week. All of them together left her dizzy and weak, a state she wasn’t used to. She had been on her own for the past five years other than occasional visits from her brother. She had built a successful company. She had managed her broken heart without over-or undereating or falling behind in her goal of creating a business that was wholly honest, that protected other businesses against criminal activities like hacking and embezzlement.

  But the events of the past twenty-four hours were about to defeat her. Not because she had lost her house, not because she had come so close to death several times, but because these men had picked on a dog with big brown eyes and a wagging tail, the sort of dog Lauren wanted to greet her at the door when she returned from work.

  “So how do we get Saber back?” Lauren asked.

  “We give them the USB drive.”

  Lauren stared at him. “It’s evidence, isn’t it?”

  “It is, though its provenance is so compromised it could never be used in a trial. But we don’t give them the actual drive—we give them a copy.”

  “How?” Even as she asked the question, Lauren knew the answer. “So where do we get a computer and the time to make the copy?” She hesitated, then asked the more important question, “And how long do we have to get the USB drive to these guys?”

  “Midnight.”

  Lauren pulled her phone from her pocket and stared at the time. “Twelve hours.”

  “Can you do it in twelve hours?”

  “Maybe. If I have a place to work.”

  “I’m calling Sheriff Davis to see if he will be helpful again.”

  “Won’t your office mind? And how do we get there?”

  “Mrs. Delaney is coming here. As for my office, they’ve given me the assignment of babysitting, to break off from my pursuit of Ryan Delaney.” His tone was too neutral, too flat for that news not to be bothering him.

  “Did you tell them you have a past relationship with me? I would think that would convince them you shouldn’t have anything to do with me.” Her tone was too edgy to hide her hurt at his dislike of being assigned to keep her safe.

  “It’s precisely why they want me watching over you. They think you are more likely to talk to me than an officer who is a stranger.”

  “I have nothing to say that I haven’t said already. I told you about Donna’s house.”

  “Just in time for us not to catch him.”

  Lauren counted to ten before she dared respond. “You really do suspect everyone of wrongdoing, don’t you? That has to be a sad way to live your life.”

  “It’s a safe way to live my life.”

  “You’d rather be safe than have close relationships?”

  “My personal life is irrelevant here. Our lives, your life, depends on me being suspicious.” Chris raised his phone and began to thumb the screen. “I’ll call Davis. Do you mind asking the sheriff if we can go back into the store? It looks like they didn’t shut it down.”

  “Shut down the only department store for miles on Christmas Eve? The man wants reelection.” Realizing her comment held too much sarcasm in it to be kind, she added, “Or maybe he’s just compassionate toward the people here who need to shop for the holiday. And speaking of shopping...” She pulled his credit card from her backpack and gave it to him. “I’ll pay you back with interest. I kept the receipts and you can give me the receipt for the phone.”

  “Thanks.” Chris took the card. “I’m the one who needs to buy some clothes now.” He raised the phone to his ear.

  Lauren slipped past him to find the sheriff or his deputy.

  They were standing guard over the wreckage of the Jeep and the vehicle next to it. The driving lane to that section had been closed, but cars were allowed to move in and out through the rest of the parking lot. The store was far enough away not to be part of the crime scene. When the bomb had been planted was easy to figure out. Lauren and Chris had been inside the store for at least an hour. Chris had parked in a corner for their safety, and while that had turned out to not be safe at all for the Jeep, it had probably saved dozens of shoppers—men, women, babies. Babies could have been harmed. Lauren held no doubt these men were ruthless enough they would have risked the lives of families to destroy someone they thought had information they didn’t want disseminated.

  I don’t know anything, Lauren wanted to shout at their nameless, faceless enemies.

  Ryan hadn’t had time to tell her or his mother anything. The first USB drive was full of encrypted information. Lauren suspected the second one would be, as well. So why did these men want her dead and want to control Donna by stealing her dog? She probably knew less than Lauren about the USB drive. Donna hadn’t even known of the drive’s existence. So what else...

  Halfway between the SUV and the sheriff, Lauren halted, her gaze fixed on the distance without seeing anything, her hands clasped behind her, her mind trying to grasp another of those
revolving carousel horses. She envisioned a hand reaching for the leather reins draped over a carved and painted wooden mane and a coat of chestnut the same shade as Lauren’s hair.

  The right question now was, what did she and Donna have in common? The answer was Ryan. Ryan had gone to Lauren, then to his mother. With them out of commission, Ryan had fewer options for finding safe harbor.

  Feeling exposed and vulnerable in the middle of the driving lane, Lauren headed for the sheriff at a trot. “Sir, if you don’t need to question us further, may we please return to the store? Chris—Mr. Blackwell—needs to buy a few things.”

  “‘Chris,’ is it?” The sheriff gave her a narrow-eyed glare. “That seems awfully friendly. Are you two friends?”

  “Far from it. Now, may we go into the store?”

  “Yes, but don’t leave the premises.”

  “We don’t have a car, sir. I don’t know how we would leave.”

  As she returned to Chris, she realized that wasn’t true. If Donna was meeting them there, she had to have a car of some sort. Something with four-wheel drive in that climate. Lauren pictured some crossover, feminine car or smaller. Right then, she didn’t care if Donna drove a two-seater, as long as it would get them away from the sight of the pile of junk that had been Chris’s Jeep and a too vivid reminder of how close they had come to dying.

  “What’s wrong?” Chris asked when Lauren reached him.

  “I was thinking about how close we came to dying.” Lauren breathed deeply to calm her jumping stomach. “Twice today alone. And losing my house and all my stuff...”

  “Hey, don’t freak out on me now.” Chris’s voice held so much tenderness Lauren wanted to rest her head on his broad chest and cry.

  That gentleness came from the Chris she had known and loved, not this harder, cynical federal officer.

  She was probably fortunate he was so changed most of the time. If he acted like the old Chris, she would lose all the ground she had gained over five years of reminding herself not to love him. His hardness now protected her heart from further hurt.

  Except at that moment when he raised his hand to brush a stray tear from her cheek. Gestures like that punched holes in the protective shell around her feelings for him.

  “Let’s go.” The command barely passed her lips.

  “Good idea to get away from here. You don’t need to see this.”

  “The sheriff told us not to leave the area.”

  “He has no reason to hold us here. We’ve given our statements.” Chris stepped aside so she could precede him between cars. “Sheriff Davis says we are welcome to return there and use their computer. He said it’s a quiet as a—that it’s quiet there.”

  As quiet as a what? Grave? Tomb?

  She understood why he stopped himself from saying one of those things. They had been too close to death to use the term lightly.

  “Donna will be here in an hour or so?” Lauren asked.

  “And so will someone from the nearest marshal’s office to deliver a vehicle of some sort to me.”

  “So what do we do with Donna?” Lauren glanced around the parking lot, noting how little the crowds had thinned.

  Seemed like everyone had waited until the last minute to Christmas shop or buy groceries for parties or family dinners.

  Lauren hadn’t enjoyed a family dinner since she was a teen. And enjoyed wasn’t the right word for it. They had been catered affairs with cousins she never saw the rest of the year, many of whom looked at her like some sort of pariah. She was the daughter of the “other woman,” and most of her cousins had preferred Donna. The majority would end up senseless from drinking too much, and she spent the time in her room as soon as she could escape.

  Except for the Christmas she’d spent with Chris’s family.

  She slammed the door on that memory and followed Chris into the store. This time she was the one to go to the cell phone kiosk to buy him a car charger and charge her own battery while she waited. Once done with that, she located the electronics section to buy a USB drive with cash Chris had given her.

  Since one exactly the same wasn’t available, she found one as close to the original as she could locate and hoped the men who had kidnapped an innocent animal wouldn’t know the difference. If they had never seen the original USB drive, they were all right. If they had and understood the differences...

  She would figure out something. She would not allow that poor puppy to be harmed.

  An imbedded self-destruct sequence on the drive would be her insurance to convince them to turn over the dog. She wasn’t sure she could pull something like that off in this short amount of time, but she would certainly try.

  Which led her to wonder why they wanted the USB drive so badly. Surely they knew the data had been extracted from the other one and she and Chris would have enough time to obtain data from this second one. That meant the data the devices held still mattered regardless of who else knew about it.

  She wished she knew what that data was. No doubt the cryptologists for the government would never release the information so she could find out. But she was safer not knowing anyway.

  Safer. That was a joke these days.

  The same sense of vulnerability she’d experienced in the parking lot washed over her again. The man buying video games might not be a father picking up some last-minute gifts for his children as he claimed. He might be following her, seeking an opportunity to harm her. The two women in designer coats and boots purchasing a wide-screen television might in truth be accomplices with the men who had pursued her and Chris. Lauren wasn’t even certain those were men. The driver of the van had a chiseled profile she had seen, but it could belong to a woman with strong facial bones as much as to a man.

  She. Could. Not. Live. Like. This.

  Glancing over her shoulder several times, she scurried to the front of the store to meet Chris. He stood in line already, and she hastened to join him despite several mean looks from those behind.

  “I found—” She started to tell him she’d found a USB drive close to the appearance of the original one, then stopped herself.

  Two men, a generation apart, stood in the line ahead of her and Chris. A mother and two small children followed behind. The mom was probably all right, but the men were dubious.

  She might not want to live her life like this. For the moment, however, she had no choice if she wanted to stay alive.

  She said nothing until they’d paid for their purchases and left the store. “Why are the USB drives so important?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself.” Chris scanned the parking lot. “What does Mrs. Delaney drive?”

  “I have no idea. Something feminine, I bet.”

  “Like a pink Cadillac?”

  Lauren smiled. “Not that feminine. But about the data. It’s important enough they want it even though they know we’ve had time to get it.”

  “Names? Locations? If they have the key for breaking the encryption, they could get to locations or people before us.”

  “Of course. Then we should make sure they don’t have access to the data.” She began to rethink her plans.

  “Let’s sit on that bench.” Chris pointed to a bench against the outside wall of the store and tucked behind a support post for the overhang. “I feel a little too exposed just standing here.”

  They started for the bench, but Chris’s phone rang. He answered it. “We’re at the front of the store. Is the baby blue compact—” His eyebrows shot up. “Okay, I see you.”

  Lauren followed his gaze and her own eyes widened.

  Donna drove a Yukon.

  “Park it,” Chris said into the phone.

  The black Yukon roared past, Donna giving the horn a brief tap.

  And behind her by two cars rumbled a black truck with oversize tires.

  ELEVEN

  “G
et inside, Lauren.” Chris didn’t need to tell her what to do. She was already moving, speed walking so she didn’t run over anyone, not waiting for the automatic doors to open all the way before she slipped through. Her orange backpack disappeared behind the glass, and Chris focused his attention on Donna Delaney and the truck in pursuit.

  He hadn’t seen the vehicle in daylight. He hadn’t got a license plate. He had no reason to think this was the same truck that had blocked Lauren’s driveway the night before, then sat on the road waiting for him and Lauren. Yet he knew it was with the gut instinct that had saved his bacon more than once.

  Now it idled between him and Mrs. Delaney’s Yukon, its windows too tinted for Chris to see more than the driver’s profile—and the silhouette of a large dog sitting up in the back seat—from where he stood half-behind a support pillar. The post wasn’t much protection if the man started shooting. Only one person seemed to be inside the truck though. Chris could manage one man. Better if he had his weapon.

  Slowly, Chris edged toward the truck. It had pulled up to the curb as though intending to pick up a passenger. He would feel like a fool if this were some innocent man waiting for his wife. But he would be more foolish if he didn’t try to apprehend this man, service weapon on hand or not.

  He reached out one hand to knock on the window—

  And the truck peeled back into the lane of traffic, narrowly missing the fender of a Camry. The Camry driver blasted his horn. Nothing to the truck driver. He kept going.

  And Chris got a camera shot of his license plate.

  It was muddy and salt-encrusted, but readable because the vehicle sat up so high it had missed most of the road grime. He could text the picture to his office and trace the truck. Finally, a break. The driver of the truck had made a mistake exposing himself to—

  A scream reverberated from inside the store, drowning the strains of “Blue Christmas” and the cacophony of blasting horns and excited children.

  For a beat, Chris didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Then he whirled on his heel and raced for the store, elbowing his way past shoppers, ignoring their protests.