Murder Under the Mistletoe

by Terri Reed

  “You’re a cop?”

  The distinctly female voice had him blinking rapidly to adjust to the light. He lowered his sidearm. His gaze fixed on the woman standing by the back door he’d just come through. She held a large black cast-iron skillet in her hands, looking as if she were ready to take another swing at his head.

  He nearly laughed out loud. He’d allowed an assailant to get the drop on him. A woman with a frying pan, at that. Man, he must be suffering burnout.

  He could only imagine the ribbing he’d suffer when his fellow agents found out he’d been clocked by a raven-haired beauty in a fuzzy yellow robe and... Were those toe socks?

  Her tangle of thick ebony curls cascaded about her shoulders like a cloud, and the most amazing hazel eyes regarded him with stark fear. Her gaze moved to the gun in his hand, then back to meet his scrutiny.

  Forcing himself to a sitting position, he reholstered his weapon and let his head sink into his hands with a groan. “You hit me.”

  “I’ll do it again if you don’t tell me who you are and what you’re doing here and how you have a key to my house,” she growled.

  Feisty, considering he’d had her at gunpoint. Lifting his head, he started at the sight of his hands covered with blood. Apparently the knock over the head with the pan had broken the skin on his scalp. Hopefully, that was the only thing she’d broken.

  He reached for his ID wallet and held it up for her to see. “Agent Tyler Griffin, DEA. You must be Heather.”

  One lip curled up. “Obviously.” Her dark winged brows dipped as she took a step closer to inspect his credentials. She danced back and frowned. “How do I know that’s real, and how do you know my name?”

  “It’s real. You can check it out if you’d like.” He held the leather case out for her to take. “There’s a number on the card you can call.”

  “Throw it over.”

  Smart, too. He liked that. He tossed it so it landed at her feet. Keeping her focus on him, she picked the wallet up. Her straight white teeth tugged on her bottom lip. “You didn’t answer me. How did you get a key, and how do you know who I am?”

  “Your brother.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What?”

  “Seth gave me the key.” Tyler probed the tender spot on his head. “He was working with us.”

  Disbelief skipped across her lovely face. “Right. Seth was working with the DEA? Why would he give you a key to the house?”

  “Yes, he was working for us.” He cringed. He loathed explaining why he had the key, but there was no help for it. He had to tell her. “He gave me the key in case anything happened to him.”

  “I don’t believe you. The sheriff’s on his way.”

  Perfect. Could this operation get any more complicated? They’d purposely kept the local law out of the loop in case there was corruption within the department. Tyler hadn’t wanted to blow his confidential informant’s identity.

  He mentally snorted as the sharp blade of guilt twisted in his gut. Seth’s cover had been blown just the same.

  “Look, call the number on the card. Then we’ll talk.”

  “Put your gun on the floor and kick it over to me,” she said, her eyes sparking with challenge and distrust.

  “No way. That’s not how this works.” An agent never handed over his firearm. He stood. The world swam. His vision blurred. He reached out for the desk and missed.

  He toppled face-first onto the floor and fell into darkness.

  * * *

  Oh, no. He’d passed out. Or had she killed him?

  Horrified by either prospect, Heather remained rooted to the floor. Her first impulse was to help him. But the need to protect her son was a fierce force, urging her to turn tail and run, grab Colin and head for the car.

  She couldn’t leave the intruder lying there without making sure he wasn’t dead. Or that he didn’t die from the wound she’d given him. She would not feel guilty for clobbering him with the pan.

  Stuffing his wallet into the deep pocket of her robe, she tentatively moved closer. Her foot bumped up against the gun holstered at his hip. Carefully, she slipped the weapon from the leather holster and clicked on the safety before tucking it into her pocket next to his ID.

  Her muscles and nerves tensed, on high alert, ready to jump away if he so much as twitched. He didn’t move. She laid two fingers against his neck. His pulse beat with a strong rhythm. Good. He wasn’t dead, only unconscious.

  Which wasn’t good. She’d probably given him a concussion.

  She gently turned him onto his back. He’d made an intimidating picture awake, but now with his features relaxed, she noticed the chiseled strength of his jaw, the angles and planes of his brow and cheekbones. Handsome. Though his eyelids were closed now, she’d noticed his striking blue eyes were the color of the sky on a clear day.

  He had to be at least six feet tall. The black cargo pants and black long-sleeved T-shirt beneath the leather jacket showed off a well-conditioned physique. Was he really a drug enforcement agent? What did he mean, Seth had been working for them?

  She grabbed a kitchen towel and used the material as a makeshift bandage for the laceration on his scalp. Then, after undoing the ties to the dining room chair cushion, she slid the cushion off the seat, gently lifted the injured, unconscious man’s head and slipped the pillow beneath him. His eyelids popped open. Startled, she scuttled back and slipped a hand into her pocket to cradle the gun there.

  Keeping a close watch on him, she called the number on the card placed opposite his badge inside the brown leather case and even though the man that answered identified himself as Deputy Director Moore, she asked, “How do I know you’re who you say you are?”

  The agent sat up and rubbed his head. She stared him down, and he met her gaze, waiting.

  “Excuse me? Who is this?” Irritation threaded through the tone of the man on the other end of the line.

  Not willing to give her name, she said, “I’ve a man here claiming he’s a DEA agent and that you are his boss. But how do I know you two aren’t in league together and this isn’t some elaborate scam?”

  “Madame, call this number.” The man rattled off a ten-digit number. Thankful for the memorization skills she’d learned in college, she put the number to memory. “You can confirm for yourself who I am. Once you have, ring me back.” The man hung up.

  Still disbelieving, she input the number into the phone and waited a moment until a woman answered, “Department of Homeland Security, how may I direct your call?”

  Surprised, she hesitated, then hung up. Was this for real? Homeland Security? No way.

  She quickly called 411 and asked for the main number of the Department of Homeland Security. The automated voice gave her the same number that she’d just dialed.

  Stunned but not quite ready to accept that the man sitting on the floor watching her was really law enforcement, she redialed the number for Homeland Security and asked to speak to Deputy Director Moore.

  “The deputy director is not in at the moment. Would you care to leave a name and number for when he returns?”

  Heather chewed on her bottom lip for a second before she said, “Uh, can you tell me if there is an agent name Tyler Griffin working for the DEA?”

  “I’m not at liberty to give out that information. Did you want to leave a message for the deputy director?”

  “No, that’s okay.” Heather hung up.

  Tyler arched an eyebrow at her.

  She narrowed her gaze and redialed Deputy Director Moore’s direct line. He answered on the first ring.

  The man confirmed his agent’s identity. The relief was unexpected. At least she didn’t have to fear the agent was there to hurt her.

  “Let me speak to Agent Griffin,” the gruff man on the phone demanded.

  She sq
uatted down next to Tyler and handed him the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

  Tyler held the phone to his ear. “Griffin here.”

  He listened, his mouth pressing into a grim line. “Yes, sir. I understand, sir. The local sheriff is on his way here. Thank you, sir.” He pressed the end button. “My boss will be in contact with the sheriff’s department.” He held out the phone. “Are you satisfied?”

  “I suppose.” Her fingers curled around the phone.

  His hand clasped around her wrist.

  She let out a little yelp and tried to break his hold. His grip was warm, tight, but not painful.

  “Not so fast,” he said. His intent gaze held her captive as surely as his hand. “I want my gun back.”

  Her heart beat wildly. “It’s in my pocket.” Why did she sound as if she’d run a marathon?

  With his free hand, he reached into the pocket of her robe, retrieved his weapon and jammed it into his holster.

  “Uh, you can let go of me now.” She stared at the point where his big hand circled her slender wrist. She had no doubt he could break her bones with a quick snap if he chose to.

  He let go, holding his hands up, palms out. “Sorry.”

  “Tell me what you meant when you said my brother was working with you. And why did he think something would happen to him?”

  Tyler scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Your brother informed my office that your family’s tree farm was being used to smuggle cocaine into Canada.”

  She dropped from a squat to her knees. “Cocaine?”

  The official ruling in her brother’s death flashed in her mind. Overdose of injectable cocaine. She’d had so much trouble accepting the coroner’s findings. Seth had been belonephobic. He abhorred sharp objects, especially needles. He’d snorted, smoked and swallowed his drugs.

  Plus he’d promised her he was clean. She’d believed him.

  However, the sheriff hadn’t believed her when she’d claimed Seth wouldn’t have injected himself with drugs. She could tell the sheriff had thought she was fooling herself. He’d said junkies would do whatever they could for the high, even overcome a lifelong fear.

  Without any evidence to the contrary, she’d had to come to terms with Seth’s death as an accident. But now...?

  “Someone here on the farm was involved in drug smuggling?” It didn’t make sense. “That can’t be. Most of our employees have been with us for years. I trust them. I can’t imagine any of them partaking in drugs, let alone using our farm for nefarious purposes.”

  “Not all of your employees are long-term, right? You do have some transient workers.”

  She chewed on the inside of her lip. An anxious flutter started low in her tummy. “True. We do have a few seasonal laborers who come in the fall and stay until Christmas day. Then they travel back to their homes. But those few have been coming for years, as well.”

  “You can’t always predict what people will do if given the right motivation.” He slowly stood.

  His words sent a shiver of apprehension crawling across the nape of her neck. She rose to face him. “Where is the cocaine coming from?”

  “We don’t know the direct route, but we do know the source of the cocaine coming into the US is from Central America. There are many drug cartels in various countries south of the border infiltrating both the US and Canada. And more recently, Australia.”

  Her mouth went dry. “There’s a drug cartel here?”

  “Possibly.” Tyler sank down on the dining room chair. “I’m working with IBETs—Integrated Border Enforcement Teams—we’ve been investigating rumors of drugs crossing the US–Canadian border for months. Two weeks ago Seth reached out to me and my team.”

  Pride filled Heather. She could only imagine how scary it had been for Seth to seek help. Going up against a drug cartel was no small feat.

  “Apparently last year he’d needed some extra cash,” Tyler continued. “He had allowed a shipment of cocaine to hitch a ride into Canada with a shipment of trees from your farm. He’d thought it was a onetime deal. But when they came back to him this year, he realized he’d gotten in over his head.”

  Heather silently groaned. One step forward, two steps back. Seth had always courted trouble with his decision making.

  “We—” Tyler grimaced “—I convinced him to find out as much as he could and keep a record of everything he learned, including who, what, where and when.”

  Stunned, Heather rocked back on her heels. “Let me get this straight. My brother came to you with information about an illegal drug operation on our farm and you—” A cold sweat broke out on her skin. “He was spying for you?”

  A grim expression stole over Tyler’s face. “Yes.”

  Heather backed away. Her mind scrambled to make sense of what she was hearing. It was one thing for Seth to be a whistle-blower and another entirely for him to play the role of spy. “That was a dangerous thing for you to ask of him.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  She stilled as a thought burned through her brain. Her blood turned to ice. “He didn’t die of an accidental overdose. Someone killed him.”

  “That’s what I believe.”

  “He’s dead because of you!”

  Tyler closed his eyes. When he opened them, the bleakness in his gaze confirmed her accusation. “Yes.”

  TWO

  Tyler held Heather’s gaze with what he hoped was dispassion and not the swirling maelstrom of guilt laying siege to his psyche. He wouldn’t shirk the responsibility of Seth Larson’s murder.

  Despite Seth’s past addictions, Tyler had sensed his sincere need to get out from under the thumb of the drug cartel. Though Tyler may not have injected Seth with the lethal dose of cocaine, he felt responsible. Tyler had no doubt that someone had found out that Seth was keeping an account of the illegal activities going on at the Larson family Christmas tree farm. And that someone then killed Seth. He gritted his teeth against the throbbing in his head.

  Heather stared at him with wide eyes full of flashing anger. “How could you let this happen?”

  It was a valid question. One he’d been asking himself for the past five days. One his superiors were asking, as well. “Your brother initially wanted us to raid the farm, but we didn’t know who we were looking for and where the drugs were stashed. And Seth claimed he hadn’t been privy to how the smuggling took place. At least at first. A raid too soon would have only shut down the operation here, not stopped the flow. We needed evidence. We needed facts. Still do. Seth began to gather intel and had thought he had enough to shut the ring down, but then he was killed.”

  Her eyes widened even more. “You really do believe he was murdered?”

  “I do. Whatever information he had cost him his life.” And now it put Seth’s sister and nephew in danger. They weren’t supposed to be here. Seth had said they lived in Washington State. And now, per Tyler’s boss’s mandate, Tyler and his team were to make sure the widow and her son were protected.

  She shook her head. “No, you cost him his life. You pushed him to do something he wasn’t trained to do.”

  The sharp tip of her barb hit him squarely in the gut. “A fact I will have to live with,” Tyler stated with more regret than she could possibly know. This wasn’t the first time an informant had lost his life. “But Seth got himself into this mess. Seth came to us. He knew the risks. Believe me—I wish I had done things differently.”

  If he could go back, he’d have extracted Seth a week ago. But Tyler had wanted more information. He’d wanted to cut off the head of the ring, not just pull in a few low-level minions. So he’d pushed Seth to keep up the pretense of going along with the drug-smuggling scheme until he knew the identity of the mastermind behind the illegal operation.

  Tyler had been doing his job. A job that wasn’t finished. “If
I am going to bring his murderers to justice, I need to find the notebook he told me he had.”

  “That’s why you broke into the house.”

  “I didn’t break in. As I said, Seth gave me a key. He’d said if anything happened to him that I’d find what I needed here at the farm. I didn’t mean to scare you. I had thought you and your son lived in Washington and would have returned there after Seth’s burial. Otherwise I would have arranged to meet you away from the farm.”

  A contemplative expression crossed her face. “Ah. That’s why Seth offered to pay for our plane tickets to Florida for the upcoming holiday—so we wouldn’t come here.” A sad light entered her eyes. “My late husband’s parents live in a nursing facility there. Seth had insisted we should spend Thanksgiving with the Randalls. I declined Seth’s offer.” She gave a little shrug. “The Randalls barely know us, and we wouldn’t be able to stay with them. I didn’t want to spend the holiday in a motel.”

  Her words resonated with him. He spent most holidays in motels or on stakeouts. It was a lonely way to celebrate.

  “And now we’ll be spending the holiday here alone, without Seth.”

  Guilt burned at her words. He had nothing to say to soothe her hurt.

  Visibly pulling herself together, she asked crisply, “What does this notebook look like?”

  “I wish I knew. All Seth had told me was to get the notebook if anything happened to him.” Tyler planted his feet beneath him and slowly rose. The world tilted. He swayed. He braced his feet wide, forcing back the dim shadows creeping in at the edges of his mind.

  Heather rushed forward to steady him. “Take it easy. You probably have a concussion. You should go to urgent care. You might need stitches.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I find what I came for.” But he would lean on her for the moment, to keep from embarrassing himself again by falling flat on his face a second time. “You know how to handle a frying pan.”

  “If I’d had Ken’s service weapon handy, I’d have used that,” she retorted drily. “But it’s locked in a safety deposit box at the bank in town.”