Unforgettable Christmas Dreams: Gifts of Joy

by Rebecca York

  Whoever it was hadn’t left!

  She turned to get out of the house, but the lock confounded her shaking hand, and by the time she got the door open a crack, she was grabbed from behind. She kicked back and used her elbows to help twist her way out of his grip and ran toward the rear door. No sooner did she reach the kitchen than her attacker caught up to her and tripped her. She went down hard and he was on her, searching her again.

  Lexie fought, beating at him with both fists, trying to knee him, but missing. And this time there was no Simon to pull the bastard off her.

  Then he got hold of both her hands.

  “What do you want?”

  “The key,” he demanded. “Hand it over and you’ll never be bothered again.”

  His voice was low and husky coming from behind the knit mask that hid his face.

  So she’d been right about the key. What could be so important about it that someone would attack her twice to get it?

  “What key?”

  “Don’t play dumb. You know I mean the one found on the grounds of Drake House.”

  “Oh, that one.” She thought quickly. “I threw that key away.”

  Gripping both of her wrists together with one hand, he reached in his jacket pocket for something. Her eyes were adjusting to the dim early-morning light and she saw him pull out a roll of duct tape. The next thing she knew, he was taping her wrists together.

  “Where is the damn key?” he demanded.

  “I told you it’s gone.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “What does it open?” Lexie asked, hoping he would say something that would give her a clue. “A safe-deposit box filled with money or bonds or jewels? Is that why you’re so set on getting it?”

  “Stop playing games. If you don’t want to get hurt, tell me what I want to know.”

  Remembering that her attacker had hit her before, Lexie went stiff. Still, if the key was important enough to commit a crime to get, she couldn’t just turn it over to this bastard.

  “I asked around. No one claimed it, so I threw it away,” she lied, hoping she sounded convincing.

  “Where?”

  “In town. The trash can between the police station and the library.”

  Now he was securing her ankles together with the tape. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why would I want to keep a key I couldn’t use?” Lexie tried not to panic, but keeping an even head wasn’t doing her any good. “I swear I don’t have it anymore. Why is an old key so important?”

  He placed a piece of the duct tape over her mouth. “Maybe I’ll have to wait until your girl comes home and ask her about it.”

  Katie? He was threatening Katie now? Behind the duct tape, Lexie screamed.

  Too bad no one could hear her.

  ***

  Simon was devastated. He’d missed the last dozen years with a kid who was his and Lexie’s — years that he wouldn’t ever want his child to know about. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better if Katie never knew about him, either.

  Saddened by the thought, he sat in his truck down the road from Lexie’s house, waiting for lights to go on somewhere. Despite her harsh words, he’d finished dressing quickly and had driven like a maniac until he’d gotten her SUV in sight. Well trained in the art of subterfuge, he’d followed at a discreet distance, and when she’d hit the gravel road, he turned off his truck’s lights so that she wouldn’t know anyone was behind her.

  Still no light in the house.

  Getting a bad feeling, Simon left his truck and walked in closer to the house, his gaze shooting from corner to corner. He couldn’t see anything wrong, but his gut told him otherwise. When he got close to the front door, he saw that it was open, if just a crack.

  His gut tightened.

  Lexie would never leave her front door open, not after the attack the night before. He should have forced her to let him go with her, rather than staying in the background as he had.

  Listening intently, Simon thought he heard a sound like a muffled voice from another part of the house. Removing a knife from his jacket — carrying a weapon on him for thirteen years was a hard habit to break — he slowly edged the door open until he could see inside. The living room was a mess, but it was empty so he edged himself in and followed the low murmur of a male voice.

  “Your girl will tell me what I want to know.”

  The answer was a muffled protest.

  He was talking about Katie, Simon realized, silently moving forward until he saw a dark-clad figure standing over Lexie on the kitchen floor.

  The bastard must have sensed him, because he threw a glance over his shoulder, then ran for the back door.

  Simon stopped only long enough to cut the tape holding Lexie’s hands and feet together, and pulled another strip from her mouth. Then he ran, too.

  The assailant had already disappeared. Simon looked down at what was left of the snow on the ground. Tracks led back and forth to one side of the house. By the time he rounded the corner, however, he heard an engine start up. The bastard had parked his vehicle somewhere beyond the stand of trees, just far enough so that Simon couldn’t see it until the lights went on. Too late.

  He ran anyway, hoping at least to identify the vehicle, but all he got was a glimpse of something dark in the distance. He couldn’t even distinguish whether it was a car or a truck or an SUV. Finding where it had been parked, he checked the tire tracks, and he suspected they were made by all-terrain tires with a lot of traction. He took a mental snapshot of the pattern, then shot back to the house.

  Lexie wasn’t in the kitchen. Hopefully, she was calling the police. “Lexie?”

  “In here.”

  He followed her voice. Rather than on the phone, he found her at the stairs that led to the second floor. She stood at the newel post, the carved finial in her hand.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  She reached into the shallow depression at the top of the newel post and pulled out something small. “A key. I just wanted to make sure this was still here. This is what he wanted. He said so.”

  “Then why didn’t you give it over? It’s not worth your life!”

  “I don’t know. Instinct. I get the feeling this key unlocks a mystery, as well as a lock.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  She shook her head. “What if the chief’s involved? Not that he attacked me himself. But what if he’s the one who told the attacker I have the key? When I showed it to Phil, one of my workers at the garden center, Hammer was there. He seemed awfully interested in the key, wanted me to hand it over. I didn’t.”

  “Even when I was a kid, I heard rumors that Hammer could be bought.” He moved closer then, and his eyes lit on the vintage key in her hand. It was a barrel key with a decorative leaf at the end. He’d seen one like that before…. Then suddenly, the memory crystalized. “One of the men responsible for my disappearance had a key like that. I was drugged, but I remember seeing it before he slipped it into his pants pocket.”

  “Did you see his face?”

  Simon shook his head. “I only came to for a few seconds and then was out until I awoke on the transport.”

  “You know what that means. The key must belong to someone involved in the human trafficking business here. The man responsible had undoubtedly already been dead when that key ended up on the Drake property. And his assistant had already committed suicide in his jail cell.”

  “I read that the authorities think there’s something fishy about that death, but they haven’t been able to prove it,” he said.

  “Plus they’re certain others must have been involved in transporting the people from Eastern Europe to this area to do the harvesting,” Lexie said. “This key proves it. Even if the ring isn’t operating now, someone involved is still out there, and for some reason this key is too important to him to let go.”

  Made sense, Simon thought. “If the state investigation turned up anything, it hasn’t hit the media.”
/>   Lexie shivered visibly. “No, it hasn’t. But this might be the clue they’re looking for.”

  “Or at least the one I’m looking for,” Simon said. “Maybe you’d better give it to me.”

  Lexie locked gazes with him. “You’re not the only one affected by this.”

  “But I may be the only one who can solve it.”

  “Pitting yourself against professional investigators? Isn’t that taking a bit too much credit?”

  “I didn’t just learn to kill while I was gone.”

  Lexie flinched at that. “I’m the one who has access to various places at this time of year—”

  “You’re not going to try to investigate yourself,” he said.

  “Why not? I have as much at stake as you do. You might have been shipped off by the owner of this key, but I was attacked for it, my house searched.”

  With that, Lexie returned the key to its hiding place in the top of the newel post and reattached the finial. Remembering how stubborn she could be, Simon didn’t think he could change her mind.

  But he could keep her and their daughter safe.

  “Then we’ll work together.” He could move in, shadow her if necessary. “I’ll bring my things here and—”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You need protection. And don’t tell me again how you can protect yourself, not after what just happened.”

  Lexie needed more than his protection unless he could be with her 24/7 until this case was solved, and he had the feeling that wasn’t going to happen. It was time to call in reinforcements — professional bodyguards, ones who would have to keep their distance, since he was certain Lexie would never agree to that, either.

  Bray Sloane, an old buddy of Simon’s from his tour in Afghanistan, ran Five Star Security in Baltimore and had contracts all over the Eastern Shore. Simon had already contacted him; he had Bray’s word that he would send help on the spot if Simon needed it.

  Well, Simon needed it now to keep Lexie and their daughter safe.

  In addition, Bray’s wife, Claire, was making it her mission to see if she could find any of the survivors. With her computer skills, she was bound to find any leads available online and would follow them up.

  In addition to which, Simon had her place ads for survivors in all the newspapers within a hundred-mile radius of Jenkins Cove. Simon was offering a very generous reward for anyone who would step forward and give him information. Then again, victims who’d been tricked once might not trust anyone to do right by them a second time.

  ***

  Though Lexie continued to resist Simon’s attempt to move in with her, deep inside she was tempted to let him. It wasn’t the promise of protection, but the feelings for him that she couldn’t resist. Obviously, he still had feelings for her, as well, or he wouldn’t be so insistent.

  Suddenly she remembered her attacker’s threat. “I don’t want Katie involved in any of this.”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “He said he was going to wait for her to get home and get the information from her.” Lexie’s pulse picked up at the thought that he could get to her daughter. “Katie doesn’t know anything, Simon. And for the moment she’s at her grandparents’, but what if—”

  “She’ll be fine.” Simon pulled out his cell phone. “Within the hour, I’ll have someone watching your parents’ house and following Katie wherever she goes.”

  Lexie wanted to object, but this was her daughter they were talking about. She couldn’t jeopardize her child’s safety because of her own stubbornness.

  “All right,” she agreed. “In the meantime, I’ll call Mom and make sure they’re not going anywhere this morning. I won’t tell her about any of this, though. I don’t want her worrying.”

  “Sensible.”

  Simon moved into the next room to make his call and, heart fluttering, Lexie dialed her parents’ number. It was just about eight. Early, but not so early as to be suspicious.

  Her mother answered on the third ring. “Hey, Mom, how are things going over there?”

  “Fine, Lexie.”

  Lexie could hear the questioning note in her mother’s voice. “Don’t worry, Mom, I’m not going to crash your cookie-making party. I only wanted to know what was going on. Have you already started this morning?”

  Sounding relieved, her mother said, “We just finished breakfast. As soon as I get off the phone, we’re going to make those Christmas bells Katie loves so much.”

  Lexie was relieved, as well. “Great, Mom. Is she there?”

  “Of course she’s here. Do you want to speak to her?” Without waiting for an answer, she called, “Katie… your mother wants to talk to you.”

  She could hear Katie’s irritable voice from a distance. “Tell her she’s ruining my life, Nana. And that I’m not planning on trying to talk you into letting me go to that party, so she can relax already and just leave me alone.”

  Lexie actually smiled. “Let it go, Mom. She’s still angry with me.”

  “Like daughter, like mother.”

  Lexie had to laugh. “Okay, okay, you can stop rubbing it in now. I love you, Mom. Tell Katie I love her, too.”

  She was hanging up the phone when Simon returned, carrying a framed photograph of her and Katie taken the summer before at the Fourth of July picnic her family always had. Katie still had long hair in a ponytail and her body hadn’t started filling out yet, but she didn’t look much different now. Their arms were around each other and they held one big piece of watermelon between them.

  “She’s beautiful,” Simon said, his voice even, as though he were controlling it. “Just like you.”

  “We made a great kid, Simon.”

  But the idea of introducing them still didn’t sit well with her. He hadn’t come back for them… for her. He’d come back to settle his own score and they just happened to be there.

  Simon set the photo down on the counter. “So you talked to your mom. Is Katie okay?”

  “As well as a preteen can be.”

  Though his expression was puzzled, he didn’t ask her to explain. “The cavalry is on the way.”

  Lexie got a bowl from the cabinet and started to crack eggs for an omelet. “Good. Now, about the key…”

  “We need to figure out what it opens.”

  To Lexie’s surprise, Simon pulled a frying pan from the rack and, opening the package of bacon, started laying down strips in the pan.

  “It’s so unusual,” she said, adding three more eggs to the bowl, “it must belong to an old cabinet or file drawer, something likely owned by one of the Drakes. Drake Enterprises was implicated in the human trafficking ring. The fiancé of one of the victims said they were brought over on a Drake cargo ship. He was crazy with grief over her death, though, and now he’s dead, too.”

  “Hard to say if he actually knew anything or was just making wild accusations.”

  “Right. So far, the authorities haven’t been able to come up with any kind of connection.”

  “Let’s assume Drake Enterprises is somehow responsible,” Simon speculated. “That would mean either Brandon or Cliff is involved, right?”

  “Not Brandon,” Lexie said. Surely Marie’s fiancé would have nothing to do with anything illegal.

  She popped bread in the toaster and started cooking the eggs.

  She said, “I don’t see it being Cliff, either. He’s not the type to get involved in anything serious. He’s into yachts and partying and women who are too young for him.”

  “Then who is the type?”

  Lexie thought about it for a moment. “Maybe Doug Heller. I don’t know.” When it came right down to it, she hated to implicate anyone.

  “Heller… Who’s he?”

  “Cliff’s manager. Basically, he’s in charge of the Drake properties on the Eastern Shore.”

  “Right, I think I remember him.”

  Heller was pretty much a loner, so Lexie didn’t know him well, but she didn’t want to point fingers. “I don�
�t think he has anything to do with the shipping arm of the company, though.”

  “Well, someone has to be guilty,” Simon insisted. “Someone responsible for bringing the victims here, where their organs were harvested. And if that was done with Drake ships, who else could it be?”

  “I hate this,” Lexie said, not wanting either Brandon or Cliff to be guilty. Heller was the wild card, as far as she was concerned. “But I hate what happened to a bunch of innocent people even more.”

  “Not as much as I do,” Simon said, his voice grim. “This is going to sound… well, crazy, I guess… but I saw one of the victims last night.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The kid who was shot in the woods. He led me to the cemetery. To the gravestone with my name on it.”

  “You mean a ghost?”

  Simon nodded.

  Lexie shivered. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I have a hard time believing in ghosts myself, but other people around here have claimed to see them lately, too. Maybe it’s because they want the people who did this to them brought to justice.”

  “That’s what I want, what I intend to make happen,” Simon said, something in his tone sending a spear of ice through her. “Seeing the kid made me wonder how three grown men would react if they were visited by a ghost from their past.”

  “You mean you. But whoever put you on that transport knows you aren’t dead.”

  “But I wonder how they would react if they saw me.”

  As they ate, Lexie wondered what would happen if they solved this mystery and Simon settled the score. Would he want to stay in Jenkins Cove with her and Katie?

  Her heart ticked a little faster as she considered that possibility.

  But no matter what she might want for herself, she had Katie to think of. She couldn’t allow her daughter to be hurt. Not physically. Not emotionally. If Katie met Simon, she would probably fall for her dad as much as Lexie had. Before she introduced father and daughter, Simon would have to prove himself, convince her that he could be trusted and care for Katie as much as she did.