Christmas Vendetta

by Valerie Hansen

“You want a big family. You always said so. I can never give you that.” Tears were coursing down her cheeks.

  “Fostering or adopting is a good alternative. You know what it feels like to be an outcast. Think of all the lost kids you and I can help. But I can’t do it alone.”

  “That’s not the same,” she argued, sensing that her resolve was starting to slip away.

  “In some ways it’s better,” Clay countered, reaching for her hands. “I love you, Sandy Lynn Forrester. I did before, although I was too young and inexperienced to realize it. We’ve both done things we wish we hadn’t, but that’s all behind us.”

  Sniffling, she reached for a tissue, using the time it took to blot her tears to make up her mind, once and for all. “And?”

  Clay looked confused. “And what?”

  “And we have years to make up. Are you going to ask me to marry you pretty soon or make me wait forever?”

  Cheers from the sofa filled the room as Sandy Lynn stepped into Clay’s waiting embrace and clung to him.

  “Merry Christmas, Sandy Lynn,” he whispered into her ear. “Will you marry me?”

  “Merry Christmas,” she echoed. “Yes.”

  * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Captured at Christmas by Jodie Bailey.

  Dear Reader,

  Like Sandy Lynn, I have problems with all the glitz and hoopla surrounding the secular celebration of Christmas. There’s nothing wrong with being joyful and spreading good cheer. It’s simply the memories of past experiences that tend to dampen my enthusiasm for decorating my house or putting up a Christmas tree these days. If you want to help me celebrate, find one of those Angel Trees and take a child’s name to buy gifts for. Or give an extra gift to a charity for children. Kids need to know someone cares about them. We all do. I wish you the most blessed, peaceful Christmas of your life, this year and for all the years to come.

  I love hearing from readers, so feel free to email me at val@valeriehansen.com, follow me on Facebook or go to my website at ValerieHansen.com for more info about books and all my goings-on.

  Blessings,

  Valerie Hansen

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  Captured at Christmas

  by Jodie Bailey

  ONE

  The small residential street was quiet, dusted with a brief afternoon snowfall. The dozen houses along both sides of the narrow road were decked out in Christmas tree lights and sparkly decorations. If she wasn’t undercover trying to catch a spy, the scene would be idyllic.

  “We’ve been looking at this all wrong. We’re back to square one, without a single suspect. It’s past time to read the captain in on our investigation.” Army captain Rachel Blake adjusted her earpiece and shifted to a more comfortable position in the front seat of her rented blue sedan.

  From his desk at Eagle Overwatch headquarters several hundred miles away in the North Carolina mountains, Major Gavin Harrison didn’t immediately answer. Only the creak of his chair said the line was still open.

  “Sir, I’ve been at Fort Campbell operating as Lieutenant Shelby in this company for three months.” She emphasized the undercover name they’d set up for her when the operation began. “In those three months, my team has uncovered four more hard drives for sale on the dark web. Four more hard drives that tie back to this infantry unit. Somebody, somehow, is getting their hands on those drives. We’ve cleared the captain of this company because he wasn’t within eight thousand miles of the first theft, and we need him involved. He has knowledge we don’t.”

  Plus, she needed more eyes than her own. Calling in her team now would be risky. This was a solo undercover mission for a reason. “I need your permission to talk to Captain Slater.”

  “I’ll run it up the chain of command as soon as we hang up.” Major Harrison exhaled loudly. “The potential breaches in intelligence if those hard drives fall into the wrong hands are huge.”

  Dragging her palms down her cheeks, Rachel wished again for coffee. She already knew everything he was saying. It all rested on her shoulders.

  “I’d like to talk to him tonight. It’s—” She leaned closer to the windshield. Had she really seen that?

  She had. A dark figure crept across the side yard toward Captain Marshall Slater’s stone-and-siding two-story.

  “Blake?”

  “Somebody is breaching the captain’s yard. I’ll keep you posted.” She killed the call, pulled the earpiece from her ear and tossed it onto the seat. Snatching a black ski mask, she pulled it over her head and crept out of the car, keeping to the shadows as she eased her way across Captain Slater’s front yard to a position between the bushes and the house.

  In the damp December darkness, footsteps around the corner crunched on the recently fallen dusting of snow.

  Listening for more sounds from the backyard, Rachel pressed her back against the house. She pulled her SIG from its holster and gripped it with both hands, keeping the barrel aimed at the ground.

  From behind the closed curtains at the front picture window, Christmas lights tinted the thin snow in the front yard with a pale, dancing sheen. The muted sounds of a classic holiday cartoon drifted from the room where father and daughter watched television, oblivious to her presence outside.

  And unaware of the shadowed figure Rachel had watched disappear through the gate in the privacy fence.

  Angling her head, she tried to pinpoint where the intruder might be lurking. It wouldn’t be wise to open the gate without some idea of where the threat might be.

  She hoped none of the neighbors would spot her dark-clothed, face-covered self hiding behind the bushes. Her cheek itched under the balaclava, but wearing it was necessary to maintain her cover.

  Only the sounds of the TV broke the late-evening stillness. The eerie silence from behind the house set Rachel’s teeth on edge. She’d seen someone slip into the yard. She had no doubt someone was back there.

  But they weren’t moving. There were no more snow-crunching footsteps.

  Either they’d walked too far around the back of the house before she made it across the street from her car, or they knew she was out there and were waiting to see what she’d do.

  A standoff between good and evil.

  Her watch vibrated against her wrist, and she glanced at the tiny screen. Update.

  With a quick tap, she sent back a fist emoji, her investigative unit’s accepted shorthand for Hold tight. Nothing’s changed.

  Pulling her black jacket sleeve down to cover the watch face, she eyed her footprints in the yard. The snow forecast for tonight had better be heavy enough to cover her tracks. Otherwise, the Slaters might wake up to the stark knowledge that someone—make that two someones—had been skulking around their yard in the darkness.

  She couldn’t wait any longer. Whoever had made their way through the Slaters’ gate was still back there, and there was no telling what they were doing or how much danger they were about to rain down on the small family.

  There was no way of knowing why the person had targeted them, either. Was it about her undercover investigation? Or was it something else entirely?

  Regardless, no one got to traumatize a father and daughter who’d already known too much pain.

  Regulating her breaths, Rachel pushed away from the house and crept along close to the dark gray stone where the eaves had prevented the day’s earlier light snowfall from hitting the ground. She rolled her feet from heel to toe as she walked, careful to remain silent. There would be no telltale crunching from her footfalls.

  At the gate she stopped, held her breath, listened.

  A slight scrape came from the wooden deck on the back of
the house. Since no breeze stirred the trees, it had to be the person she’d observed.

  No intel had indicated that Captain Slater was in danger, so what exactly was going on here?

  There were too many unknowns, but a cloaked figure sneaking around his yard meant danger—maybe even death.

  Rachel would not let that happen. She would not let his young daughter grow up an orphan.

  Lifting the latch, Rachel eased open the gate and slipped through, weapon raised and steady in her hands. She slowly scanned the yard, which was lit only by soft light spilling from a rear window. No shadow moved.

  Easing to the corner of the house, she peeked around to the deck.

  A man dressed in black, his face hidden by an army-issued balaclava almost identical to her own, knelt by the back door, attempting to pick the lock.

  One side of Rachel’s lip lifted slightly. Gotcha.

  If she did this right, she might be able to take him down without Captain Slater or his daughter ever knowing they were in danger. She might be able to prevent that little girl from nightmares about faceless men roaming through her home.

  Rachel shuddered, then dragged her attention out of the past and into the job at hand. She flattened against the house, tapped her watch with a pointing-finger emoji—going in—then raised her weapon and rounded the corner.

  She was halfway to the deck when the man spotted her and rose, his hand moving toward his back.

  “I wouldn’t.” Rachel kept her aim steady and her voice low as she lifted the hem of her black fleece jacket to reveal the badge at her hip. “Military investigator. Lace your fingers behind your head, walk slowly down the steps, turn your back to me and kneel.” And don’t you dare make a sound that would scare that precious little kindergartner in the house watching TV with her daddy.

  The man hesitated, his gaze skittering to the side as though he were considering a jump from the high deck to make a run for it. He must have been smart enough to know he wouldn’t get far because, with one last sneer at Rachel, he obeyed, his knees crunching softly in the snow as he knelt at the foot of the stairs.

  SIG in one hand, she pulled her handcuffs from the hip pocket of her black cargo pants and approached her suspect. As soon as she had him cuffed, she’d pull that ski mask from his face. If this was about her investigation, she might find out exactly who the mastermind was behind a ring of thievery that had plagued the 101st Airborne Division for nearly a year. If it wasn’t, she’d somehow managed to be in the right place to take a random thief into custody.

  What were the odds?

  “I know why I’m wearing a mask. Why are you, Officer?” The man kept his voice low, and he spoke with an atrocious fake Australian accent. The timbre of his voice was slightly familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “You undercover?”

  Her pulse quickened. He was too close to the truth. “Stop talking.” The last thing she needed was for him to raise his voice enough to bring the captain outside.

  Or, if he were from the battalion, for him to recognize her.

  She lowered her arm to holster her weapon and reached for his right hand to cuff him.

  He bucked as she reached for him, driving her to the ground on her lower back. Her pistol and handcuffs flew into oblivion. Her neck whipped, ripping pain down her spine. The jolt from her neck collided with the pain from impact in a blinding flash.

  She tried to roll onto her side, but a damp, snowy boot caught her in the chest and pinned her to the ground.

  When her vision cleared, the man stood over her, silhouetted against the light in the kitchen window. He was nothing but a gray shadow in her pain-blurred vision, but it was clear when he raised his hand that he held a gun.

  * * *

  It sounded like the Chavezes’ cats had scaled the fence and tipped over his trash can. Again.

  US Army captain Marshall Slater scrubbed the top of his head and glanced down at his daughter, Emma, who was curled up against his leg, fast asleep with a Winnie the Pooh doll tucked against her chest. One of her dark pigtails lay across her cheek. She’d conked out ten minutes into the Christmas cartoon she’d bubbled about all through dinner. Kiddo was exhausted from the excitement about her class Christmas party.

  Leaning his head back against the couch, Marshall stared at the ceiling, where the red, white and green lights from the tree created a pattern that blurred in front of his tired eyes. Maybe they could sleep right there on the couch. Maybe he could ignore the cats and deal with the garbage can in the morning.

  Another crash made up his mind for him. If he waited until morning, those cats would have a week’s worth of trash strewn from here to post. That would be no fun to clean up, especially if it snowed tonight on top of it.

  He eased to the side and stood slowly, careful not to wake Emma, and padded across the hardwood, his socks slipping at the kitchen entry when another thud seemed to rattle the entire deck. What in the world were those cats doing?

  At the back door, he slipped his feet into soccer slides, then flung open the door as fast as he could, hoping to scare the cats into quick motion across the fence into their own yard.

  A curse blistered his ears, followed by another string of them in a thick accent.

  The Chavezes’ cats definitely didn’t utter curse words.

  Adrenaline surging, Marshall stepped onto the deck and turned toward the stairs.

  Two men dressed in black, their faces covered, stared up at him. One was pinned to the ground by the other.

  It was the one standing who stopped Marshall’s heart. He held a semiautomatic pistol aimed squarely at the other man, and his calculating gaze shifted from Marshall to his victim.

  As Marshall took another step onto the deck, the smaller man on the ground took advantage of his attacker’s distraction and leaped to his feet. With a round kick worthy of any ’80s action movie, he caught the other man’s hand and sent the gun flying with a clatter against the side of the house.

  The tall man stumbled, eyes wide with anger or shock. He moved as though he might attack again, but then he scrambled backward and made a run for the fence gate.

  No way was he getting away to come back another day. Marshall bolted for the steps, determined to catch the retreating intruder, but his foot slipped on the snow-covered wood, and by the time he recovered his balance, the man had disappeared through the gate.

  When Marshall made it to the fence, he was gone.

  Tires squealed around the corner, and a car’s engine roared into the night. There was nothing he could do with the escapee, but there was one man to go.

  Whirling toward the yard, Marshall scanned for the smaller of the two men.

  Near the base of the stairs, the man struggled to get to his feet. The gun he’d kicked away from his partner lay only a few feet away.

  Marshall scooped up the weapon and took aim before the man could rise. “Stop. Right there.” He might not have both of his backyard intruders, but he could certainly hold this one at bay while he called the police. He pulled his cell phone from his sweatshirt pocket. “I don’t know what your buddy and you were fighting about or why you were doing it in my yard, but the party’s over.” He pressed and held the volume and power button on his phone to activate an emergency call. Connection in five, four, three—

  “That was most certainly not my buddy.”

  Wait. Marshall’s fingers slacked on the phone, releasing the keys. That voice definitely was not masculine. It was either a kid or...

  He gave the hooded figure a quick survey as it came to its feet, straightened and lifted its hands in surrender. That was definitely a female.

  And that voice... He knew that voice. But from where?

  “Who are you?” He steadied his aim but kept his finger flat beside the trigger rather than on it. “Were you with that guy?” He sounded like a babbling idiot, but his brain was still trying to
comprehend the past minute and a half.

  “I was trying to save you from that guy.” The woman kept her hands raised, but she tipped her index finger toward her waist. “I’m a military investigator. I have a badge clipped to my belt on my left side. My ID is in the thigh pocket of my pants, if you’ll let me show you.”

  Marshall jerked his chin up in assent, but he didn’t lower the weapon.

  Gingerly, she gripped the side of her jacket between two fingers and little by little lifted the hem.

  A polished badge glinted in the faint light. Releasing her jacket, she raised her hand again. “I’m guessing you won’t let me dive into my pocket for the ID.”

  Narrowing his eyes, Marshall continued to study her. She was trying to keep her voice low, but it was familiar. The tone tickled the back of his brain. Her stature, her build... He eased a few steps to the right, trying to see her eyes in the light.

  They were pale blue.

  With an exhalation that almost deflated his chest, he lowered the pistol. This night just kept getting weirder. “Lieutenant Shelby?”

  Even beneath the balaclava, it was easy to tell from the motion of her eyes that she winced. She turned her head toward his deck and seemed to measure her words before she spoke. “Call the police. Tell them you had intruders in your backyard, but don’t mention me. You need them to come and file a report and pick up that gun, although the only fingerprints on it are going to be yours.” She stepped sideways toward the gate. “That makes it useless to me.”

  “Lieutenant.” He put all the force of his command into his voice. If she thought she was simply going to walk out of this mess, even with a badge on, she was a lot less intelligent than he’d given her credit for the past few months.

  She glanced toward the gate, then met his gaze again. Rather than look defiant, she almost appeared defeated.

  “I’ll call the cops once you show me your ID, but you’re not going anywhere. Seems to me you have a whole lot of explaining to do. And you’re starting now.”