Christmas in Hiding

by Cate Nolan

  Which meant it was time to remind herself of what she had to be grateful for, starting with one amazing and handsome marshal who was bent on keeping her alive. Time to shake off the self-pity and be happy to have him and that she was still alive.

  By the time Callie reached the front of the line, received their drinks and headed to the door to meet Jackson, she’d gotten herself back under control. God had a purpose for her, and she would follow it, whatever it was and wherever He led her.

  Jackson was pacing outside the door. Maybe he wasn’t quite as relaxed as he’d had her believe. Callie hastened her steps and pushed her back against the door to open it. Then stopped cold.

  “Jackson, it’s snowing.”

  “Yeah, all the more reason to get going. The forecast is for a few inches.”

  “Really?” Callie twirled, sticking her tongue out to catch a snowflake. “I’ve never seen real snow before—only in the movies or on TV. It’s so pretty.”

  “It will be prettier where we’re going. Let’s get started.”

  “What color car do we have this time.”

  He grinned. “Green.”

  A huge smile burst across her face. “You rented us a green car for Christmas?”

  He winked. “It will blend in better with the trees.”

  “You can’t fool me, Jackson Walker. Little by little I’m winning you over to the Christmas spirit.”

  He bit his lip as he opened the door for her. “Let me take the drinks while you get in.”

  Callie handed over the tray, then ducked into the car. She stopped the second she saw the interior and popped back out. “No way! You didn’t! Tell me you didn’t just do this.”

  Jackson’s wide grin told her he had indeed.

  “Jackson, you sweetheart! You gave me Christmas. It’s amazing!” Little white lights twinkled around the car’s interior. Garlands were draped along the windows and across the back. A mini–artificial tree sat on the backseat, and Christmas music spilled from the CD player.

  She swirled herself around and into his arms and planted a kiss on his cheek. “You are the sweetest man ever. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  He smiled gently back at her. “You’re welcome.”

  “How did you manage it?”

  “I bought it earlier. I put it up when you took a really long time in the coffee shop,” he teased.

  “There was a line.”

  “That’s fine. It gave me plenty of time. But now it’s getting late. Can we get back on the road?”

  Callie climbed in and inhaled deeply. The car smelled so good, like a pine forest. “What’s the smell?” she asked Jackson when he came around and got in the driver’s side.

  He pointed to the bag wedged under the front dashboard. “Open it.”

  Callie picked up the bag and opened it carefully. She peeked inside and gasped. Burying her face in the bag, she inhaled deeply of the fragrant pine-scented candles. She knew tears were glistening in her eyes when she looked up to thank Jackson, but she didn’t care.

  “You bought these in the store, too?”

  His voice was soft when he answered. “Yes. While you were staring at the mother and her children.”

  Callie took a deep breath. She hadn’t known he’d been watching her. She should feel embarrassed, but something about Jackson’s gesture removed that restraint. She was simply overwhelmed.

  “You’re a very special man, Jackson. No one has ever done anything like this for me. You’ve gone above and beyond. Thank you.”

  The warmth of his smile stirred deep in her heart.

  “Making you happy is fun. I wish I could have seen you with your class. You’re like a big kid.”

  She sighed wistfully. “The kids would adore this. I used to love seeing their faces the first time they came in after I decorated the classroom.”

  “I think I know the feeling. That was some squeal.” His grin told her he had enjoyed it almost as much as she had.

  Callie settled back into her seat, contentedly sipping her mint-flavored mocha latte, listening to the soft music and watching the snow gently coat the car and road. These moments were proof enough that God was good and life was worth celebrating. You could build a life snatching small moments like these so long as you took the time to appreciate them and give thanks.

  “All we’ve done is talk about me,” Callie said as she drained the last drop of her coffee. “What about you? What kinds of memories do you have?”

  He didn’t answer right away so Callie looked over to see what had distracted him. “Jackson?”

  She saw his fingers tighten on the wheel and his face take on a stark expression. Had she said something wrong?

  “I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me. Do you usually spend the holidays with your family?” She hesitated a moment as a thought came to her. “Won’t they miss you if you’re here with me for Christmas?”

  The intensity of his silence should have warned her.

  “I don’t have any family.”

  Her brow furrowed. “All this time I’ve been talking about me...I didn’t think to ask about your family. Were you an orphan, too?”

  “If you can call losing your family at eighteen being an orphan.”

  Callie gasped. “Oh, Jackson.” She reached out to him, but his shoulder felt so rigid. She squeezed gently and whispered. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  He didn’t respond. His posture and the sudden eerie calm that had descended over him told her there was much more to the story.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  “They were murdered.” Silence stretched as the harsh words hung between them. “Please don’t ask. I don’t talk about it. Ever.”

  His voice sounded stark, raw. Callie recoiled, unsure how to respond. Finally she reached over to shut off the Christmas CD. The festive music, the twinkling lights, the garland—what had seemed joyous moments before—now seemed glaringly inappropriate.

  Jackson put his hand out to stop her. “That’s okay, Callie. I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment. It’s just not something I talk about.”

  NINE

  After hours of driving with no sign of trouble, Jackson began to relax—slightly. He wouldn’t let down his guard, but hopefully in ditching their tail, they’d made it safely away and could hide out until the trial without any further trouble.

  Something needed to change. These days of constant tension and running were taking a visible toll on Callie. Of course he wanted her alive to testify, but he wanted her spirit to survive also. He wanted her to be able to live without fear.

  As he was thinking that, Jackson realized he’d mostly come around to believing in her innocence. The more he got to know her, the less he worried about her involvement. Now he worried about her future. She’d had to give up everything that made her who she was. What would she do for work?

  That wasn’t his concern. His job was to get her safely to trial, not to obsess about what happened next. But being alone together in confined spaces for so many hours had begun to encourage a different relationship than he usually had with witnesses. He wanted good things for Callie. She deserved them. At least the Callie he thought he knew deserved them. There was still a tiny kernel of doubt that warned him not to trust too deeply, but it was losing strength with each passing day.

  A person couldn’t fake the good heart she showed. She truly cared about people. That didn’t jibe with her being part of the drug gang.

  He’d thought Ben was getting soft. Time to rein himself in and focus on the job. The fact that he was even thinking such things was a complete departure from protocol and from his norm. So be it. He would stay focused, but no harm would come from being kind to a person who needed care for a few days. So long as he didn’t let his guard down in any pers
onal way to her. Which meant he had no intention of answering her unspoken questions about his family. As he’d warned her, he didn’t discuss it. Or allow himself to consciously think about it, though the memory was never very far away. It couldn’t be. That one incident had made him who he was today—the good and the bad.

  Because Callie was curled up in the backseat asleep, Jackson took one last chance to check in with the sheriff in Ohio before committing to their new destination.

  Once he had assurances that all was quiet, the men were still locked up and no one had shown up to bail them out, Jackson decided it was safe to stop. He turned off the highway to the small Vermont town he’d been aiming for. If Callie wanted a true Christmas, there was no better place to find it than Millers Creek, Vermont.

  Jackson knew the town from his college years, and it was far enough off the beaten track that they wouldn’t be easily found. Millers Creek wasn’t exactly a hotbed of drug trafficking.

  He’d worked there with his college roommate the summer after his freshman year, when his family was still alive and life was full of promise.

  He’d come back again to mourn after his family was murdered. There was something soothing in the quiet rhythms of life in this farm town. People were real and kind. He’d come close to putting roots down here. Until he discovered he was the kind of person who didn’t put down roots.

  The murders had severed all the ties that grounded him. They’d cut him loose to become a restless wanderer. He’d joined the army for a while, tried his hand at school and eventually ended up in the Marshals Service.

  Now he’d be back in Millers Creek. It was fitting he take Callie there, a fellow lost soul seeking some way of holding her own in a harsh world. He hoped she’d find the peace of the season in his favorite town. He’d come up with the idea when she started him thinking about Christmas. He remembered being there the December after his world had crashed. All around him people were celebrating the season with simple joy. He’d been too mired in his own grief to want any part of it then, but he knew it was exactly what Callie needed now.

  Night had fallen as they drove, and it was too late to go into town. He’d save that surprise for another day. Tonight he just wanted to get her fed and tucked safely in bed. He reached over the seat divider and tapped her leg. “Callie, time to wake up.”

  “What? Why?”

  He caught her image in his rearview mirror. “You’re going to want to see this. We’re almost there.”

  She uncurled and stretched, and Jackson kept his eyes firmly on the road to avoid staring. The sight of her emerging from sleep, heavy eyed and yawning, stirred the very feelings he was fighting to tamp down.

  “Are you finally going to tell me where ‘there’ is?”

  “Vermont.” He hoped she didn’t detect the clipped tone.

  “Vermont.” Callie repeated as she rubbed at her tired eyes. “That’s a long way from Texas.”

  “It is, but they have airports. We can fly you right in for the trial.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I was just thinking that this witness protection gig has me seeing more places than I ever dreamed. Maybe that should be your motto. Join WITSEC, and see the country.”

  She stretched and rubbed her eyes again. “Sorry, I’m just a little giddy.” She crawled over the seat divider and settled into the seat beside him.

  “You’re cute when you’re giddy.”

  Callie started to laugh. Jackson looked on quizzically.

  “You just reminded me of my favorite line from the old movie, when Clarice tells Rudolph he’s cute and he dances around singing.”

  He smiled. “I remember. Haven’t thought of that movie in years.” He turned the car down the tree-lined lane to the cabins. If she was excited now, wait until she saw what awaited them. Anticipating her reaction made him feel slightly giddy himself. He considered trying to squash the feeling. US marshals were supposed to be serious. But given the day they’d had, starting with the car chase and ending up with a six-hundred-mile drive, he figured he was entitled to a little frivolity.

  Snow was still falling lightly when he pulled up in front of the main building. “Do you want to wait here or come with me?”

  A smile lit her face. “I’m coming. Is this the surprise?”

  He nodded and they got out of the car.

  Callie closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. She gave a contented sigh. “It’s lovely.”

  “Even in the dark?”

  “Especially in the dark. I don’t need light to smell the pine trees. They’re amazing. Look at how the snow is drifting down and just resting on the branches. And the lights. I love all the tiny white lights.”

  They stepped into the lobby of the lodge and Callie’s smile grew wider. “Can we just camp out right here?”

  He had to agree it sounded like a great idea. A roaring fire in the huge fieldstone fireplace threw a blanket of heat across the room. An instrumental Christmas song played softly through unseen speakers, and a towering pine tree dominated the room from its place in the window. Evergreen boughs hung in swags from the balcony, and everywhere tiny white lights twinkled.

  “This is amazing. I hope we can stay here until the trial.”

  Jackson hoped so, too. It was nice to be back. He’d worked here at the lodge that long-ago summer, so this was a homecoming of sorts.

  Once they’d checked in, Jackson called to Callie to head back to the car. Her face fell. “We’re not staying here?”

  Jackson hid his smile. “We have someplace even better.”

  She looked doubtful but climbed willingly into the car. Jackson took off down the road that curved along the lake. As they drove, the cabins became spaced farther and farther apart.

  Finally he pulled into the driveway of a lakeside cabin at the end of a cul-de-sac. When he’d made their reservation, he’d requested an outdoor light be left lit, and it provided a wonderful view of their cabin.

  “Oh, wow. Wow. This is amazing.” Callie gushed as she pressed her face against the windshield. “If this is witness protection, I don’t ever want to be found.” Her happy laugh wound its way right into Jackson’s heart.

  He laughed along with her, delighted to see her so happy. And she hadn’t even seen the inside yet. From what he remembered, the interiors were always exquisitely designed, but when he reserved the cabin, he’d put in a special request for a few Christmas decorations, if possible.

  “I need for you to wait in the car while I check out the cabin.”

  Callie seemed surprised. “Is that really necessary?”

  “Necessary to check? Absolutely. Do I expect to find anything? No. I expect this to be totally clean and safe. But then we thought the New York office was safe, too, and you know how that turned out.”

  “You never relax, do you?”

  He could ask her to explain the question, but he knew what she meant. “Not if it means your safety. There’s a time for relaxing. It’s not the same thing as being careless.”

  “That must be a difficult way to live.”

  He shrugged it off. It wasn’t something he thought much about. Maybe because he didn’t know any other life. “We all make choices. You made the choice to testify.”

  “I did. I have to admit, though, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”

  “Do you regret it?”

  He could see her chewing on his question. “Am I sorry my life was turned on its head? I am. Do I regret agreeing to testify? No. Those men need to be stopped from hurting anyone else.”

  “Then you understand. Sometimes the choice isn’t the one that makes life easy. But you do it because it’s right.”

  Callie nodded slowly as if she were contemplating what he’d said. She finally reached over to place her hand on his arm. “Thank you for choosing to keep me alive and s
afe. And thank you for finding this place and giving me this time.”

  Jackson couldn’t get out of the car fast enough. Every time she started praising him, he got more uncomfortable. He was doing his job. That was all.

  Was it? Or was he deluding himself? Either way, it had to stop. This was a job. Nothing more. He’d just keep telling himself that. He drew his gun and headed for the cabin door.

  He didn’t expect there to be a problem here. They’d made a clean getaway and there was no reason anyone would have heard his reservation call. He’d used a fake name anyway, hoping that he wouldn’t encounter anyone who might recall the youth who’d worked here more than a decade ago. If they did, he’d cover, but that wasn’t his concern now. He needed to play it safe and scope the entire cabin.

  A quick walk-through yielded nothing suspicious. The resort staff had outdone themselves decorating the cabin. Callie would be thrilled. Imagining her reaction, Jackson was just turning for the door to call her when a sharp crack sounded from the woods. Jackson raised his gun and rushed toward the door.

  From the porch, he couldn’t see Callie in the car. Panic burned in his throat and he broke into a cold sweat. Forcibly restraining himself from blindly running out, Jackson stood in the shelter of the porch and let his gaze search the woods for any sign of movement.

  How in the world could they have been tracked here? He’d done everything imaginable to make sure there was no way to be followed. Except...

  Jackson felt a little sick. He hadn’t wanted to alert the office to his plans, just in case... He couldn’t even finish the thought. Didn’t want to actually put it into words. That was giving too much credence to the possibility that someone he worked with couldn’t be trusted.

  Jackson sensed motion in the woods off to his right, so he ducked down behind a post on the porch and slowly scanned the landscape. The new fallen snow lent a brightness to the night and the clouds were starting to clear. He could make out the trees, but all was still. Had whoever was out there seen him?

  Whoever they were, at least he knew they hadn’t grabbed Callie yet. The only sound he’d heard had been from the woods. There had been no noise of a car door opening or closing. He hadn’t heard any sound from Callie either and he knew she wouldn’t go silently. She must be hiding in the front seat. He wanted to call out to her for reassurance but couldn’t risk alerting the enemy.